Hardesty did as commanded and set off beside Elmer; his broad back in the bulky coat made the farmer look like a capering boy. Ricky glanced back at Sears, just now approaching the gate and regarding the snowy field with disgust "He might have told us we'd need snowshoes."
"He's enjoying himself," Ricky said wonderingly.
"He'll enjoy himself when I get walking pneumonia and fire a lawsuit at him," Sears muttered. "Since there's no alternative, let's go."
Gamely Sears put a well-shod foot down into the pasture, where it immediately sank into snow up to the laces. "Ugh." He retracted it; shook it. The others were already halfway across the field. "I'm not going," Sears said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his opulent coat. "Damn it, he can come to the office."
Ricky said, "Well then, I'd better go at least," and started after the other two. Walt Hardesty had turned around to look at them, stroking his ragged mustache, a frontier lawman translated to a snowy field in New York state. He appeared to be smiling. Elmer Scales plodded on oblivious. Ricky picked his way from one footprint to another. Behind him, he heard Sears emit enough air to fill a balloon and begin to follow.
Single file now, Elmer talking and gesticulating in front they went across the field. With an odd air of triumphant glee, Elmer stopped at the top of a ridge. Beside him, half-covered by snow, were piles of dirty washing. When Hardesty reached the low gray piles, he knelt and prodded; then he grunted, pushing, and Ricky saw four neat black feet roll stiffly into the air.
His shoes soaked and his feet wet, Ricky came up to them. Sears, holding his arms out for balance, was still threading toward them, his hat brim flattened by the wind.
"I didn't know you still kept any sheep," he heard Hardesty say.
"I don't, now!" Scales yelled. "I just had those four, and now they're all gone. Somebody killed 'em. Just kept 'em around for the sake of the old days. My daddy had a couple hundred, but there's no money in the stupid dang things anymore. The kids liked 'em, that's all."
Ricky looked down at the four dead animals: flat on their sides, eyes glazed, snow in the matted wool. Innocent, he asked, "What killed them?"
"Yeah! That's it, ain't it!" Elmer was working himself up into a tantrum. "What! Well, you're the law around here, you tell me!"
Hardesty, kneeling beside the dirty-gray body of the sheep he had rolled over, looked up at Scales with distaste. "You mean you don't even know if these animals died naturally, Elmer?"
"I know! I know!" Scales lifted his arms dramatically: a bat in flight.
"How do you know?"
"Because nothing can kill a damn sheep, that's how I know! And what the hell would kill four at once? Heart attacks? Boy!"
Sears now joined them, his frame making the kneeling Hardesty look small. "Four dead sheep," he said, looking down. "I suppose you want to sue them."
"What? You find the lunatic who did this and sue his ass off!"
"And who would that be?"
"Dunno. But…"
"Yeah?" Hardesty looked up again from the sheep huddled at his knees.
"I'll tell you inside. Meantime, Mr. Sheriff, you look 'em over good and take notes and find out what he did to 'em."
"He?"
"Inside."
Hardesty, scowling, was probing the carcass. "You want the vet for this, Elmer, not me." His hands moved to the animal's neck. "Uh oh."
"What?" said Scales, almost leaping with anticipation.
Instead of answering, Hardesty crab-walked to the next nearest sheep and thrust his hands deep into the wool at its neck.
"You might have seen this for yourself," he said, and gripping its nose and mouth pulled back the sheep's head.
"Jesus," said Scales; the two lawyers were silent. Ricky looked down at the exposed wound: like a wide mouth, the long slash in the animal's neck.
"A neat job," Hardesty said. "A very neat job of work. Okay, Elmer. You proved your point. Let's get back inside." He wiped his fingers in the snow.
"Jesus," Elmer repeated. "Their throats are cut? All of 'em?"
Wearily Hardesty yanked back the heads of each remaining animal. "All of them."
Old voices spoke clearly in Ricky's mind. He and Sears looked at each other, looked away.
"I'll sue the heart out of whoever did this!" Elmer screeched. "Shit! I knew something was funny! I knew it! Shit!"
Hardesty was now looking around at the empty field. "You sure you went up here once, and then went straight back?"
"Uh huh."
"How did you know something was wrong?"
"Because I saw 'em up here this morning from the window. Normally when I'm washin' my face at my window them stupid animals is the first thing I see. See?" He pointed across the fields to his house. The shining pane of the kitchen window faced them. "There's grass under here. They just walk around all day, stuffin' themselves. When the snow gets real bad I pen 'em up in the barn. I just looked out an' I saw 'em, like they are now. Something sure was wrong, so I put on my coat and my boots and came up. Then I called you and my lawyers. I want to sue, and I want you to arrest whoever done this."
"There aren't any tracks besides ours," Hardesty said, smoothing his mustache.
"I know," said Scales. "He brushed 'em out."
"Could be. But you can usually tell, on unbroken snow."
Jesus she moved she can't she's dead.
"And there's another thing," said Ricky, breaking into the suspicious silence which had developed between the two men and interrupting the lunatic voice in his mind. "There's no blood."
For a moment all four men stared down at the sheep and the fresh snow. It was true.
"Can we get off this steppe now?" Sears said.
Elmer was still staring down at the snow, swallowing. Sears began to move across the field, and soon they were all following.
"All right kids, out of the kitchen. Get upstairs," Scales shouted as they came into the house and removed their coats. "We gotta talk in private. Go on, git." He shooed his hands at some of the children who were clustered in the hallway, staring at Walter Hardesty's pistol. "Sarah! Mitchell! Upstairs, now." He led them into the kitchen and a woman as thin as Elmer shot up out of a chair, clasping her hands. "Mr. James, Mr. Hawthorne," she said. "Could you use some coffee?"
"Kitchen toweling, if you please, Mrs. Scales," Sears said. "Then coffee."
"Kitchen…"
"To wipe my shoes. Mr. Hawthorne undoubtedly requires the same service."
The woman looked down in dismay at the lawyer's shoes. "Oh, good heavens. Here, let me help you…" She took a roll of paper toweling from a cupboard, tore off a long section, and made as if to kneel at Sears's feet. "That won't be necessary," Sears said, taking the wadded paper from her hands. Only Ricky knew that Sears was disturbed, not merely rude.
"Mr. Hawthorne…?" A bit rattled by Sears's coldness, the woman turned to Ricky.
"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Scales," he said. "That's very kind of you." He too accepted several sections of the toweling.
"Their throats were cut," Elmer said to his wife. "What did I tell you? Some crazyman's been out here. And-" his voice rose "-a crazyman who can fly, because he didn't leave no prints."
"Tell them," his wife said. Elmer looked at her sharply, and she hurried off to put the coffee together.
Hardesty asked, "Tell us what?" No longer in the Wyatt Earp costume, the sheriff was restored to his proper age of fifty. He's hitting the bottle worse than ever, Ricky thought, seeing the broken veins in Hardesty's face, the deepening irresolution. For the truth was that, despite his Texas Ranger appearance, the hawk nose, lined cheeks and gunslinger blue eyes, Walt Hardesty was too lazy to be a good sheriff. It was typical of him that he had had to be told to look at the second pair of sheep. And Elmer Scales was right; he should have taken notes.