Her prayer this morning, she was thinking, was a bit more fervent than usual. She had set her alarm for five a.m. and left her home in Rodeo very quietly, not wanting to awaken Eleanda, whose regular breathing she could hear in the adjoining bedroom. Ed Henry’s call had come last night just after she’d watched the weather report on the evening news and hit the sack.
The TV weatherman had sent along some hope that maybe tomorrow would be a rainout, and if the Border Patrol actually had such holidays she would certainly enjoy one. Yesterday had been long, tiring, and unproductive, spent with two other CPOs, both male and both experienced, following the tracks of ten or eleven people, presumed to be illegals, northward through the San Bernadino Valley in extreme southeastern Arizona into the edge of the Chiricahuc Mountains.
The afternoon had been hot, with a gusty wind blowing dust up her pant legs and stinging her face. The other officers, a Tohono O’odham local and a White Mountain Apache, had assumed the role of her teachers. They had laughed off her experience as a Navajo police officer and cast her as a green recruit who was probably teachable, but incurably a “girl.” They had explained why the group they were tracking were not merely illegals slipping into the U.S. in search of minimum-wage jobs but were mules carrying illegal products. They drew her attention to the short steps being taken—evidence of carrying heavy loads—and places where these loads were put down presumably when the mules needed rest, and how some of the loads had been the sort of sacks in which marijuana is often carried. Early on Bernie had pointed to the dents in the dirt that might have been caused by luggage, or a frying pan, or some equally logical cooking utensil, but after this had produced only amused looks, she had kept her opinions to herself.
It had been almost sundown before the tracks disappeared beyond hope of retrieval, erased by the increasing wind. The two males, in charge due to seniority—and their own ideas about gender—had decided that they could think of no reason dope importers would be climbing into these empty and roadless mountains. They decided everyone should go home for the evening and tomorrow they would all continue her education by tracking down four pack horses reported to have been seen in Guadalupe Canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains.
Thus Bernie had reached Rodeo exhausted, dusty, dehydrated, and disgruntled. Eleanda had saved some yogurt and a fruit salad for her, and they’d watched the evening news for a while. Bernie had taken her shower, climbed into pajamas and into bed. There she tried not to think of tomorrow’s chore, tried to remember why she had thought joining the Border Control Shadow Wolves unit was such a good idea, and finally comforted herself with a couple of her happier memories of Sergeant Jim Chee. She was just getting sleepy, and was hoping that the weatherman knew what he was talking about, that the already late monsoons might be starting tomorrow, and if it did rain, she wouldn’t be hunting pack horses in a mountain canyon.
That’s when the telephone rang.
“It’s for you,” Eleanda shouted. “The boss.”
Ed Henry, as always, was short and to the point. “Got a schedule change for you tomorrow,” he said. “Cancel that tracking job over in the Guadalupes. They’re predicting rain anyway. I want you to go out to that construction site on the Tuttle Ranch. Get there bright and early. Look around. See what’s happening and let me know.”
“You mean back to that gate? Do you think they’ll let me in this time?”
“They know now it was just a mistake when you followed that truck in there. You didn’t do no harm.”
Bernie spent a moment dealing with her surprise. Then she said a doubtful sounding “OK,” and asked Henry what he was expecting to find. “Am I supposed to be looking for something specific?”
“Bernie,” he said, “I sort of owe you an apology. I’ve been thinking about everything you told me, and it seemed to me that maybe something not quite right might be going on out there. So just go out and take another look around, and give me a call and let me know what you think.”
“Fine.”
“And use that cell phone number I gave you. I got some running around to do tomorrow so I won’t be in the office. In fact, I’ll be coming out to the Tuttle place myself later in the day. I’ll sort of serve as your backup.” With that, Henry chuckled.
Now, back on the road again with the morning sunlight flooding the valley and clouds beginning to build up over mountains in every direction, Bernie was remembering that chuckle instead of enjoying the vast expanse of beauty. Would it finally rain? That was no longer among the questions on her mind. What kind of thinking had Ed Henry been doing to cause him to reconsider the Tuttle Ranch? What did he think she might find? Why did Henry think the gate would be unlocked this time? That must be because he’d arranged for someone to let her in. Or to let him in. He’d said he was coining out himself a little later. That thought reminded her of the picture Henry had taken of her, and what Delos Vasquez had told her about seeing a copy of it held by one of the drug gangs in Mexico.
By the time she reached the hilltop from which she had first looked down upon the gate, she was feeling thoroughly uneasy about this assignment. She unsnapped the strap on her holster, took out her Border Patrol pistol, and confirmed that the magazine was filled with the official number of nine-millimeter rounds of ammunition. She had scored expert at the firing range test she’d taken after applying for this job, just as she’d scored expert on the range with the similar pistol used by the Navajo Tribal Police. But she’d been shooting at targets. She’d never shot at anything alive. Certainly not at a fellow human. Could she if she had to? Maybe, she thought. Probably she could do it. She checked the safety, put the pistol back in the holster, took her binoculars out of their case, and got out of the truck.
The gate was not only unlocked, it was standing open. No vehicles anywhere around it, none in sight in any direction. No humans either, no horses, and no oryx. She focused again on the gate. Wide open. Beckoning her. She found herself wishing to see Mr. O’day driving up, wishing he would tell her she absolutely could not come in without a personal invitation from the owner and he didn’t give a damn what her supervisor had told her. She gave Mr. O’day a few seconds to arrive at the gate. He didn’t. She climbed back into her vehicle, rolled it down the hill through the gate, and drove slowly up the hill beyond it, and over it to the top of the next hill. There she stopped again and looked at the construction site below. No sign of motion. She got out the binoculars, stood beside the car, and studied the place.
No vehicles there, either. The construction crew was gone but it was obvious it hadn’t been idle. The major change was the addition of a rectangular building, apparently a modified form of a mobile home. The small windmill that had been laying on the ground in sections on her first visit was now mounted atop the building, its blades turning slowly in the mild breeze. She scanned the surroundings carefully, changing the binocular’s focus as the circle widened. Off to her left she caught motion. Focused again. Four oryx, running down the slope into the playa, where, from what she’d been told, they found water. All the animals seemed to be either immatures or females. At least none was carrying that great curved horn, the declaration of male oryx machismo, like the one she’d photographed. No horn. No other sign of life. She drove down the trail to the construction site.