Читать книгу Hunter Moon - Jenna Kernan, Jenna Kernan - Страница 10
ОглавлениеIzzie stilled at Clay’s accusation as heat flooded her face. Indignation rose with the pitch of her voice.
“You think I did this?”
“What? No! I just asked where you were.”
Now her face flamed with embarrassment.
“I don’t accuse folks of things, Izzie. That’s Gabe’s job.”
She touched his arm and felt his bicep flex beneath the worn cotton. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded his acceptance.
“I was with the ferrier. Biscuit and the other horses were getting their feet trimmed and teeth filed.”
“So the ferrier was here. I wonder who else knew you’d be with him.”
She started to compile a list in her mind. When she got to ten people she sighed and gave up. Clay trailed back out on to the road. Izzie went to her truck to grab some wire to fix the gaping hole.
“I wouldn’t do that until after they have a look. The police, I mean.”
Izzie wasn’t leaving a hole between two posts, so Clay helped her rig a temporary closure.
When they got back to the truck Clay got her door again. After she climbed up into the cab, he hesitated before closing the door.
“Somebody is after your herd, Izzie. You need to watch your back.”
Izzie met the concern in his gaze and tried to look brave. But inside her fears gobbled her up. Keeping the herd was hard. Keeping them while under attack...
She reached out and Clay took her hand. He gave a squeeze.
“Thank you for helping me.”
He flushed and released her, stepping back, closing the door. She watched him round the front of her truck.
She started the engine and waited as he climbed in. She was so darn lucky that he was a big enough man to put aside her snub and help her when she really needed him. Would she have done the same?
Izzie swallowed her uncertainty as these questions made her shift with discomfort.
The motor idled, and Clay glanced her way, his hat in his hands and brows raised in an unspoken question.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t agree to help me.”
His voice was quiet. Intimate. “I’ll always help you, Izzie.”
“Maybe we can be friends again.”
His brows lifted higher. “Is that what we are?”
Was he thinking of what she had been? How could you ever be friends after you loved someone? Was it even possible to mend the fences cut between them?
“We could be,” she whispered.
Clay faced forward and said nothing as she drove them up the hill.
“There is cell service at the top of the mountain here. I can call the police from up there.” She hoped the gunmen and the police were gone. Really, she wanted nothing more than to wake up and find this day was all a nightmare. But then she looked at Clay sitting beside her again and wondered if it was all worth it just for these few minutes together.
At the top of the pasture, she turned onto the improved road. The sun shone through the tall pines to the west in flashing bands of brilliance, but it was starting to go down now. Clay directed her where to park and then exited the truck. Izzie followed, just as she always had. What would he do if he knew the reason she’d dated Martin? Would he be flattered or angry?
It had been a stupid, childish idea, and it had blown up in her face.
The entire episode was embarrassing. Funny that Martin had charmed her mother into believing he was a good guy. A good Christian boy, Carol Nosie had called him. He’d fooled a lot of folks with his manners. But she’d known what he was, and she’d still agreed to go out with him, for a while.
She could see nothing on the gravel that Clay studied, so she watched him, enjoying the way the light gilded his skin and the stretch of denim and cotton as he stooped and rose.
On the gravel road the rocks crunched beneath his feet. He walked slowly, his eyes scanning back and forth. At last they reached the wide bulldozed stretch that had been muddy the last time she’d been up here but now was packed earth. Clay made a sound in his throat, and Izzie wanted to ask him what he saw, but she cultivated patience. He walked back and forth, ventured into the woods, knelt a few times, lifted a stone, and examined a branch. The only thing Izzie saw for sure were the prints of her cattle that had made it up this far. She tried to count the number of cows, but they circled back on themselves, so she gave up.
“Look,” she said, finding an interesting track at the edge of a drying puddle. “Dog.”
“Coyote,” he said from some forty feet off.
She gripped her rifle tight as she squatted to examine the print. Why hadn’t she learned to track?
“This way,” Clay said, and she followed him past the cut of dirt, up the steep incline sprinkled with quaking aspen. She glanced up at sunlight shining its last rays on the golden leaves and smiled at the beauty. With her focus elsewhere, she did not see Clay stop and nearly ran right into him. He stood with hands on hips, staring down. She heard the buzz of many flies before her attention snapped to the three cows all lying motionless in the tall grass. Her cows.
Izzie gave a little cry and tried to rush past him. But he halted her with one hand, effortlessly bringing her back to his side.
“That your brand?” he asked.
She glanced at the flank of the closest cow and recognized the two interlocking circles.
“Yes. Are they dead?”
The question was answered by their absolute stillness. It was two heifers and one yearling. Their legs stuck out straight as if they had been stuffed and then toppled, and their eyes were a ghostly white. Izzie calculated her herd. One hundred and eleven in all, minus one to Clay, minus three to death was a hundred and eight. But that included the fifty-one now impounded. She glanced around, searching for more dead cows. This was a disaster.
She threw up her hands in frustration. “What are they doing way up here?”
“You got a fence between this and the upper pasture?”
“Too much ground to cover. They mostly just stay together in the pasture.”
Clay pointed at the grass. “Coyotes chased them.”
Izzie fumed and lifted her rifle to her shoulder, searching for the coyotes. Then her brain reengaged, and she realized coyotes couldn’t take down two heifers. They’d been after the yearling.
Clay rested a hand on her shoulder and gave a squeeze before releasing her. She turned from her dead cattle to glance up at him.
“Coyotes didn’t do that! There’s not a mark on them.”
He nodded his head and glanced back at the carcasses. Flies buzzed and landed in their nostrils and on their filmy white eyes. She looked at the lolling tongues and noted the saliva was a neon-green color. She’d never seen anything like it before.
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
He shook his head. “Not sure. Sick?”
The very thought of that caused a surge of terror to crash through her like a wave, the impact rocking her on her feet. Clay steadied her with a gentle clasping of her elbow. She shook him off, looking for a fight.
“My cows aren’t sick!” she said, more to herself than to him. She could think of no greater catastrophe than sick cows. But her eyes locked on the green sputum. Oh, Lord help her if they had something contagious. The tribe would order them slaughtered. She’d be left with nothing. And without the cattle, she couldn’t maintain the permits. She gripped the rifle tight and tried to think.
Clay withdrew his phone from his front pocket.
She clasped his wrist, feeling the cool skin and the roping tendons beneath.
“Wait a minute.”
He did, but his face was granite.
“Give me a second.” She glanced around as if someone would come to her rescue. But no one ever did that. She stared up at Clay. “Someone chased my herd onto the road. Now they are trying to make it look like my cattle are sick. It’s another setup.”
“Maybe. Need a vet to know for sure.”
She gripped the forearm of the hand that held the phone.
“Don’t call them,” she begged.
His eyes widened, and his mouth gaped. Then his look went cold and his posture still. Her cheeks burned with shame. Had she just asked him to break the law?
He lifted his arm, and she let her numb fingers slip from his sleeve as the shame burned her up with the last of the sunlight.
Clay drew up a number and pressed the call button. A moment later she heard a familiar voice. “Gabe? It’s Clay. I’ve got a problem.”
