Brenda visibly shuddered and clutched her purse even tighter when she seemed to recall viewing the ride.
“So Dallas has been home awhile?” Reed asked.
“Yes, sir,” Eldon said.
“Was April here with him?”
“Nope.”
“Where was she?” Reed asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Eldon said. “Dallas said she took off a while back, after they broke up. She left with some other buckle bunnies and he ain’t seen her since.”
Dulcie asked, “Buckle bunnies?”
“That’s what some folks call girls who hang around rodeo cowboys,” Reed told her. “Kind of like rodeo groupies, I guess. You can see ’em strutting around in tight clothes by the ready area during the rodeo. That’s where the cowboys get ready to ride.”
When he realized what he’d said, Reed turned to Joe and mouthed, “Sorry.”
“Buckle bunnies,” Dulcie repeated, shaking her head.
“When was the last time Dallas was with her?” Reed asked.
“Oh, it’s been a while.”
This was all news to Joe, but he kept his promise to Reed and Marybeth and didn’t speak. As far as he and his wife knew, April had been with Dallas since she’d left months ago. The idea of April traveling with a pack of girls from rodeo to rodeo—being known as a buckle bunny—made his stomach lurch.
“What is ‘a while’?” Reed asked Eldon.
The man looked back at him dully, then turned his head toward Brenda. Joe saw her nod quickly to him, as if prodding him on.
“A few weeks, I guess. A while. I don’t know,” Eldon said.
“He’ll be able to tell us?” Reed asked.
“I’m sure he will,” Eldon said.
“So how long has he been home with you after his injury?”
“’Bout a week,” Eldon said. Then something went even deader in his face. Brenda glared at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“A week?” Joe asked. “I thought I heard you say it was a couple of days.”
Eldon didn’t even move his head when Joe spoke.
“Joe,” Reed said, “we had a deal. I ask the questions.”
Joe looked to the sheriff with an exasperated Then ask them look. Dulcie carefully observed Eldon and Brenda Cates.
“Which is it, then?” Reed said. “A couple of days or a week? It’s important that we know.”
He didn’t go on, but Joe thought everyone in the room knew what he was saying. If Dallas had been home a week, that meant he’d been injured during the first few days of the Houston Rodeo and was at home recovering while April was . . . out there somewhere. But if he’d just returned home the day before, he could have had April with him. Until he didn’t.
Brenda put her hand on Eldon’s thigh. It shut him up. She took over. She said, “Do you know why some people call my husband ‘Snake’ when his real first name is Eldon?”
“No,” Reed said, “but I don’t know what that has to do with this.”
“They call him Snake because he has a strange gift for being bitten by rattlers,” she said. Brenda had a husky voice, but it was smooth and convincing, Joe thought. “How many times have you been bitten by rattlesnakes, Eldon?” she asked her husband.
After a long pause, Eldon said, “I don’t remember. Seven, maybe eight times.”
“Nine times,” Brenda corrected him, then looked from Joe to Reed to Dulcie with wide-open eyes to hammer home her point. “Six times since we’ve been married. We don’t know what it is, or why it is. Whether Eldon has some kind of smell that attracts poisonous snakes or what. But if three men are walking across a pasture and one of them gets bit—it’s Eldon. I don’t know how many times he’s been out hunting with clients or on a septic tank job when he calls me on the radio and says, ‘Brenda, I got bit again.’ So I drop whatever I’m doing and take him to the hospital for treatment. But the thing is, all that venom has affected his memory. He can’t remember days or dates anymore. So when he says Dallas has been home for a day or a week, well, you can’t really believe him.”
She turned to Eldon and said, “Sorry. I had to tell them.”
He didn’t react.
Brenda looked directly at Joe and said, “Dallas used to love that girl of yours. Eldon and I met her at the National Finals in Las Vegas last year and the two of them couldn’t have been happier. That’s the kind of boy he is: Dallas bought our plane tickets and put us up in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Eldon hadn’t been on a plane in years.
“You should have seen them together, Mr. Pickett. He doted on her. Just doted on her. They were like the Barbie and Ken of the rodeo set. Now, I don’t know what happened between them. Dallas doesn’t talk about things like that. I know she watched him like a hawk when other girls were around. He told me once she got real jealous for no reason, and he thought she was smothering him. Dallas has always been the social type, and I’m sure she didn’t appreciate that very much. I think that’s why he broke it off with her, that jealousy. I’m guessing she didn’t take it well at all. I’m just speculating, but I’m a pretty good observer of human nature. April is as fierce as she is good-looking, and I can’t see her just shrugging her shoulders and moving on.”
Joe shook his head, not understanding. Dulcie picked up his cue.
“Did April try to get back at him somehow?” she asked.
“Oh, he never told me anything like that,” Brenda said. “But I think the breakup affected him. It happened just before Houston, which is probably why his head wasn’t in the game and he got bucked off and hurt so bad.”
“So it was April’s fault?” Joe asked. He’d once again broken his agreement by speaking up, and Reed gave him a disapproving look.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Brenda said, looking aghast. “I just meant that he didn’t ride with the kind of total confidence and concentration he’s known for. You can watch the tape of it and see for yourself. I’m not blaming that poor girl for anything at all.”
“So he came home alone,” Reed broke in. “Did you two pick him up at the airport?”
“He drove,” Eldon said.
“He drove back from Houston with broken ribs?” Joe asked, incredulous.
He noted that Brenda again gripped Eldon’s thigh with her hand. This time, she appeared to be applying real pressure, but the man looked ahead stoically.
“Like a lot of boys around here, Dallas has a thing about his pickup,” Brenda said. “He’d never leave it, no matter what. He never likes to be without it. Even if he was dying, he’d drive. Imagine how tough that kid must be. He drove from Houston to Saddlestring all alone with broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. I don’t know how he did it.”
Joe raised his eyebrows and caught Dulcie’s eye. The dislocated shoulder was new information. She’d caught it also.
“Which arm is dislocated?” she asked Brenda.
“His left, thank goodness,” Brenda said. “That’s because he has to grip that bull with his right hand. So he’ll still be able to do that.”
Joe visualized the act he’d seen many times. Bull riders lowered themselves carefully into a steel chute filled with a two-thousand-pound animal. Often, the bull was so big there was barely enough clearance on either side of it for the cowboy to mount it. A flanking strap lined with lamb’s wool was cinched to the rear quarters of the bull with an easy-release snap. After the cowboy had jammed his gloved hand into the opening of his bull rope, which was cinched around the middle of the bull, the gate was opened. It was a common misconception that the flanking strap was attached to the bull’s genitals, when it wasn’t at all. As much as trying to get the rider off its back, the bull was just as concerned about ridding himself of the flanking strap, which was alternately pulled tight and released and served as an irritant. It took a tremendous amount of upper-body strength and balance for a rider to stay on the bull while it spun, twisted, and bucked.