“Well, they think so.”
“Let’s hope so. Look, I’m at your place right now. Pat hasn’t been here yet. His own truck is still here. Yours isn’t.” I reached out and patted the hood of the veteran Chevy. It was cool. “His truck hasn’t been used.”
“Huh,” Herb said.
“Was he planning to go somewhere today with your rig? Pick up some hay, maybe? Livestock feed?”
“Hadn’t planned on it.”
“A load of railroad ties, maybe?”
“Nope. We was going to move the cattle, and then go on over to Bender’s Canyon to replace an old boundary fence. We got about a quarter mile stretch over there that needs work. But I don’t think…”
“He’d take your truck for that?”
“Well, sure. Not with the trailer, though. Can’t get through the canyon trail haulin’ that son-of-a-bitch.”
I walked toward the white, prefab workshop on the far side of the house. The doors were open, and I could see the reels of new barbed wire and a pallet of metal posts. “The wire and posts are here in the shop,” I said.
“Then there’s that,” Herb said. “Look, he may have had some errand of his own that he took a mind to do. He’ll show up.”
“He wouldn’t drive your rig to Cruces, I don’t think.”
“Oh, hell no. That rig’s a diesel-suckin’ hog with that stock trailer hooked on behind. Bad enough without it. No, I don’t think he’d do that. You got the dog, though?”
“I do.”
“Just put him in the boys’ trailer. They never lock the place, and old Socks, he’ll be all right.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “My best to Annie.” I switched off, and aimed an expletive at Pat Gabaldon for being so thoughtless. Despite Herb’s suggestion, I wasn’t about to dump the dog in the bunk house. The Torrances wouldn’t be back from Cruces until who knew when. If Pat was on a fling somewhere, the abandoned heeler would take the butt end of it. On the off chance that luck would change, I tried Pat’s phone again, with no response. Ambling back across the yard to my truck, I tried to come up with some stroke of genius, but drew a blank. Tearing out a page from my notebook, I jotted a message to Pat and stuck it under the windshield of his truck, then made another copy and clamped it in the screen door of the mobile home.
Socks was clearly upset, just a click on the down side of berserk, when I returned to the SUV. He wanted out of this strange cab so he could herd something. I reached back for the Thermos cap again and gave him another shot of water, but he was too distracted to enjoy it. None of this was the way his world worked, and his distress was pitiful.
As I headed out the Torrance’s driveway, my phone rang, and I snatched it off the seat, the sound and the motion setting the furry dervish off again, his tongue spray spotting the inside of the windshield, the dashboard, and my right forearm.
“Hey,” Sheriff Robert Torrez said. “Gayle said you had a question.”
“Hey yourself,” I replied. “And yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I have several questions at the moment, Robert.” Socks was headed for my lap, and I nudged him back across the center console.
“Where are you now?”
“At the moment, I’m at Herb’s ranch. Just now leaving.” I quickly explained about Dale Torrance’s adventure, and Bobby made a little grunting sound that translated as, “Why do I need to know all this?”
“Actually, my original question that I mentioned to Gayle was about the property just north of Herb’s place, but I already found out the answer to that one. That’s not what’s on my mind at the moment, either. Right now, I’m trying to find Pat Gabaldon,” I said. “I have his dog.”
“His dog?”
“Yes. His heeler.” I gave the sheriff an abbreviated version of the puzzling events up on Cat Mesa, and he listened without interruption. “I can’t imagine Pat being so careless, is all.”
“Huh,” Torrez said. “Did you check to see if he went on down 26 to cut some firewood or something like that?” Forest Road 26 ran along the rim of Cat Mesa.
“I didn’t see tracks,” I said. “I also have to admit that I didn’t look that way more than a glance.”
“Yeah, well. He might have done that. He’s still drivin’ that rig of Herb’s?”
“As far as I know.”
“Not too easy to hide that,” the sheriff reflected. “He’ll turn up. You told Collins to keep an eye out?”
“Sure.”
“And you’re keepin’ the dog?”
Concern for this fifty-pound bundle of worried muscle and slobber wasn’t surprising. Heeler pups didn’t come cheap in the first place, and the hours spent training them to do something constructive added to the investment. I had no illusion that Pat Gabaldon thought of Socks as a study in economics-the nineteen-year-old cowboy and the energetic heeler were simply pals. Had it been the dog who suffered a broken leg instead of Dale Torrance, Patrick’s world would have come to a stop.
“I guess I am,” I said. “I don’t want to leave him tied up or shut in the trailer. I doubt that Herb and Ann will be back from Cruces until late tomorrow. Maybe even later.”
“Well, suit yourself,” Torrez said, sounding characteristically unsympathetic. “Lemme know.”
“I’ll do that.” During the conversation, Socks had settled down, facing me with both front paws hanging over the center console. As I switched off the phone, he pushed himself back up, looking expectant. “It would be much, much easier if you would talk,” I said. My eyes had started to itch from dog dander, and I was ready to give Victor Sanchez another try.
Chapter Nine
Just before six, I pulled into the parking lot of the Broken Spur Saloon. Victor’s little place was a haven for local ranchers and a watering hole for folks heading north and south-the last chance to tank up before crossing the Mexican border, and the first place for northbound folks to celebrate their arrival in the United States.
Five vehicles had collected in the lot, with a sedan sporting Michigan plates pulled up to the self-serve fuel pump island that Victor had installed the year before. The rest were local trucks, and I tucked the Trail Blazer in at the end of the line beside electrician Roy Ocate’s overstuffed van, leaving Socks with a view of the open prairie on his side.
I left the engine running with the air conditioning on full blast, cracked three of the windows a couple of inches, and lowered the passenger front window far enough that Socks could stick his muzzle out comfortably, but not squirm his shoulders through. I locked the door, depending on my Swiss cheese memory to recall the entry code for the door’s touch pad when the time came.
A clutter of projecting ladders, pipes, vises, and whatnot sprouted from Ocate’s vehicle, and I skirted those and made my way across the graveled parking lot. Victor Sanchez eschewed air conditioning, and with good reason. Even on the hottest days, his saloon was a dark, cool cave, the thick adobe walls an effective fortress against the outside world. I entered and paused for a moment, letting my eyes adjust.
“Hey, there’s the Man,” Gus Prescott called. The rancher was sitting with Ocate near the end of the bar, both of them enjoying a long-neck. The trouble with being a retired cop with decades of memories was that I had learned more nasty little secrets than I really needed or wanted to know. One of the reasons Gus Prescott was a marginal, hard-scrabble rancher was that he spent way too much time curled around a bottle. His daughter Christine-the target of Dale Torrance’s randy infatuation that led to rustling-was working behind the bar, and that certainly put her in an interesting position with the old man. A sociologist or psychologist would have had a field day.
“Gents.” I nodded at Christine, a strawberry blonde who looked as if she should be center on a college volleyball team…lithe, muscular in a fetching way, gorgeous clear complexion that she didn’t ruin with gunk, and her thick hair swept back in a ponytail. She had tried New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, but my theory was that she worried too much about her old man and chose to work at Victor’s so she could be near at hand.