J.D. RODE the pharmacist’s yellow mare down across the wash above Little Snake Creek. The mare picked her way along uncertainly, awkward with the unaccustomed weight of a man on her back. Her small ears flicked forward and back. She leaned on the bit. Automatically, J.D. dickered with the reins, moving his hands gently, just enough to get her to soften her mouth and bring her nose back an inch.
His mind wasn’t on the job. He hadn’t gone on this ride for the benefit of the mare. He’d saddled her only because his work ethic wouldn’t allow him to do much of anything that wasn’t productive in some way.
What about Mary Lee?
Time spent with her might have been productive had she shown any sign of offering him the chance to buy Lucy’s land. But then, the idea of prostituting himself went against his ethical grain. It was a no-win deal. If he went to bed with her for the purpose of gain, he was nothing but a gigolo. If he went to bed with her for any other reason, he was asking for trouble he swore he didn’t want.
The point was moot. He wouldn’t be going to bed with her again.
He made a sour face and shifted his weight back in the saddle as the mare negotiated her way down the last slope to the creek bottom. Life in general was turning out to be a no-win deal. He’d gotten nowhere in his attempt to put together an offer for the Flying K. A call to set up an appointment with Ron Weiss, vice president of the First Bank of Montana, had netted him condolences on Will’s unprecedented losing streak at Little Purgatory. Bryce was probably sitting back laughing at his futile attempts to keep the property out of Bryce’s hands, biding his time and counting his money. With Samantha in his camp, he had to be thinking ownership of the Stars and Bars wasn’t that far off.
And now Will was leaving-had in fact already left. J.D. had watched him drive out of the yard in Tucker’s old International Harvester pickup. He had always expected him to relinquish his claim to the family land and move on to greener pastures. Now that the day had come, J.D. felt neither relief nor triumph, but a sick hollowness in the pit of his stomach. Old guilt revisited. Remorse for losing something he thought he had never wanted in the first place.
They were family, and there was a strong obligation there. But he had taken that sense of duty as a license to badger and bully and preach. He treated Will more like a screwup ranch hand than a brother. Only he couldn’t fire Will for his drinking or for not showing up to work or for gambling away ranch money or for playing them into the hands of their biggest enemy or for totaling his pickup, which brought him back full-circle to the drinking.
Mary Lee thought Will needed help, that his drinking was out of control. J.D. had viewed it as a nuisance. This was rugged country with rugged people. Drinking was part of a cowboy’s life. Too big a part in too many cases. Alcoholism was a problem in the ranching culture. The stress, the loneliness, the code of manhood, all contributed. He’d seen Will drunk more times than he could count, and all he had ever done was ride the kid about wrecking his truck or being late to work.
The guilt dug its teeth a little deeper and gave him a shake. The truth pulled on him. The lead weight of accountability. He had come out here to escape the burden of his responsibilities, not put them under a microscope. He had come out here to lose himself in his first love-the land.
This stretch along the Little Snake was a favorite spot-when there weren’t half a dozen city idiots in their Orvis vests and waders fly fishing. Luck was with him for once. He could see a red Bronco parked some distance downstream, but no sign of its owner. Probably someone hiking in the woods, looking for morels. He might stop and pick a few himself on the way home. Tucker could fry them up a feast of fresh trout and wild mushrooms for supper.
This little valley and the slopes on either side belonged to the Bureau of Land Management. Once upon a time the McKeevers of the Boxed Circle spread had owned the grazing lease, but the McKeevers had sold out in ’ninety-one to a network news anchor who didn’t raise anything but a few head of horses a year, and the lease had gone back to the BLM. J.D. had considered trying for it, but an environmental group had taken up the “Preserve the Little Snake” banner for fly fishermen and weekend hikers from Bozeman and Livingston, and the small amount of grass hadn’t been worth the trouble of a fight.
He still liked to ride over here when he got a chance. It was secluded, unspoiled for the moment. The Little Snake, which was actually a small river, wound between columns of cottonwood and aspen. Fed by mountain runoff, it ran fast this time of year, and was cold and clear and studded with boulders. Along the banks the grass grew in a lush strip dotted with wildflowers. Wooded slopes rose sharply beyond. It wasn’t uncommon to see mule deer drinking from the creek, their black-tipped tails flicking nervously. He’d seen bears here more than once. The Absarokas were thick with grizzlies and black bear. The encroachment of man pushed them deeper into the wilderness areas every year, but conflicts with ranch stock and tourists still happened from time to time.
He rode the yellow mare to the edge of the water at a shallow spot and urged her to step in. She arched her neck and blew through her nostrils at the water rushing past. J.D. spoke to her and coaxed her, urging her forward with his legs. She lifted a foreleg and pawed at the water, splashing herself, then moved tentatively forward, her attitude telling J.D. she wasn’t too sure about this idea, but she trusted him not to get her into trouble.
When she was standing knee-deep in the water and had relaxed enough to bob her head around, checking out the scenery, he reached into the tubular boot he had strapped to his saddle and extracted the components of his fishing rod. The mare looked back at him with curiosity, but stood quietly as he assembled the rod.
He had ridden her only a dozen times, but she was naturally sensible and bright. She would make the pharmacist’s daughter a good, safe mount. She brought her head up the first time he cast, and danced a little as he reeled it in, her muscular body tense beneath him. But when she saw that this process was not so different from having a rope thrown from her back, she relaxed again. The true test would come when he hooked a trout.
J.D. relaxed as well. He cleared his mind as he found his rhythm with the rod. The sun shone down, warm on his back. The water chuckled and hissed as it rushed on its way to the Yellowstone River. The air was sweet with the scent of the grass, sharp with the vaguely metallic undertone of the water. The cottonwood and aspen leaves quivered and chattered. The reel whined as he cast, clucked when he cranked the line back in to try again. A kestrel hovered over the far bank, beating its blue wings furiously as it waited for the perfect second to drop on its prey in the grass below.
Nothing was biting. J.D. reeled in and waded the mare across to the opposite bank. She climbed out and they moved downstream sixty yards. This time when he asked her to step down into the stream, she didn’t hesitate. He patted her and talked to her, then took up his rod and started fishing again. An hour passed this way. When he couldn’t get a nibble in one spot, they would move down to another, crossing from bank to bank, sometimes walking downstream in the shallows. He had no desire to run into the owner of the Bronco, but the best spots happened to be downstream. J.D. figured he would try his luck until someone came along, then they would start back for home. The ranch was an hour’s ride and the afternoon shadows were already growing long.
As they moved closer, he recognized the truck. Miller Daggrepont’s name and the titles he had bestowed on himself were emblazoned across the driver’s side door in three lines of gold gay-nineties-style lettering: MILLER DAGGREPONT, ESQ., ATTORNEY AT LAW, DEALER IN ANTIQUITIES. Miller wouldn’t hike up a mountain to hunt for mushrooms unless they were lined with gold. He was a fisherman, but there was no sign of him along the banks of the Little Snake.
J.D. frowned, more at Miller’s imposition on his thoughts than out of any concern for the lawyer’s whereabouts. Thoughts of Daggrepont brought thoughts of the land Mary Lee had inherited, and, therefore, brought thoughts of Mary Lee. They were through. He should never have gotten tangled up with her in the first place.
He cast his line, flicking it at the edge of a brackish spot in a bend of the creek. Here the bank had eroded away over the years, creating a marshy pool that filled with water every spring and during hard rains. Rushes and cattails grew in profusion. More than one lunker had been caught browsing at the border between the pool and the stream.
J.D. snapped his wrist and swore as his fly went sailing into the tangle of growth. Thoughts of Mary Lee had broken his concentration. He jerked back on the line, hoping it would come free without a lot of trouble. It didn’t. He tried reeling it in slowly, but succeeded only in tightening the line against whatever the fly had snagged. He waded the mare across to the other bank, let her climb ashore, and stepped down off her. Reins in one hand, rod in the other, he moved toward the marshy spot, wishing the mare were far enough along in her training to ground-tie reliably.
He decided to take his chances as he reached the stand of cattails without freeing the damned line. If he had to wade out into the muck, he didn’t want her with him. The bottom was soft and muddy, and she would likely become frightened as her footing sank beneath her. Fear could spoil a young horse as quickly as mistreatment. He dropped his reins and backed away from her, scowling at her as she started to follow. He took an aggressive step toward her. She stopped and tossed her head, ears pricked as she watched him turn back toward the bank.
Reeling in more line, he stepped off into water thigh-deep, flushing a blue-winged teal out of its cover. The duck flew up with an angry squawk, wings pummeling the air like a fighter shadow-boxing. Glancing back over his shoulder, J.D. checked to see that the mare hadn’t spooked. She watched him with interest, and he maintained eye contact for just a second to let her know he hadn’t forgotten her. As he waded forward, his left knee connected unexpectedly with something solid, and he lost his balance. His right foot slipped in the mud and he went down… landing squarely across the body of Miller Daggrepont.
“Jesus, I’ve hauled dead cattle out of rivers easier than this.” Deputy Doug Bardwell sloshed through the reeds, waist-deep in water, trying to get a better hold on the body. “Hey, J.D., you wanna throw a rope around him and drag him out with that yellow mare?”
Quinn brought his head up from examining the foot-prints in the soft ground of the bank and glowered at his deputy. “Peters, get in there with him and haul the body out the other side of the slough. I don’t want any more tracks on this bank than we already got. Look at this mess,” he grumbled, turning back to his task. “God knows how many people been out here since it rained, tramping up and down.”
J.D. was hunkered down beside him, frowning at the ground. “I reckon there’s been a few, but see here in this area? Looks to me more like two people maybe scuffling around. Don’t see these kind of tracks anywhere else along the bank.”
“Still don’t mean nothing,” Quinn said, tipping his hat back to scratch through his wheat-colored hair. “Could have been two people milling around, digging through their tackle boxes, for all we know. Besides,” he said, standing and stretching out his bad knee, “looks to me like ol’ Miller had himself a heart attack and fell in. You see the way he was clutching his chest?”
They walked around to the far side of the pool, where Bardwell and Peters were struggling with Daggrepont’s lifeless body. Rigor mortis had yet to set in, and the lawyer’s massive weight and rotund shape made their task as much fun as moving a stranded whale.
“Jesus, Bardwell!” Quinn barked. “Don’t be pulling on his arm that way! Get your legs under him and push!”
Groaning with the effort, the deputies hauled the dead man onto the bank.
“Man.” Bardwell heaved a sigh and sat himself down half a foot from the body. “My daddy always said the only good lawyer was a dead lawyer. Guess he never had to move one.”
“See here?” Quinn said, crouching down by Daggrepont. He pointed to the right hand that was frozen in a death grip over the dead man’s sternum, clutching a wad of his brown madras plaid western shirt and the ends of his bolo tie. “That’s called a cadaveric spasm. Means he was hanging on that way when he died. Had a bum ticker, you know, Miller did.”
“Ain’t no wonder,” Peters commented. He had his face behind a 35mm camera and was clicking off photos of the corpse. “You ever see that man eat? I’ve had feeder cattle couldn’t pack it away the way Miller could.”
“He’d’a ate them too if he had a chance,” Bardwell said as he pulled his boots off and dumped the water out of them.
J.D. let their banter roll off him. He knelt beside the body, studying every detail. A dark uneasiness had settled over him as he waited for Quinn to arrive after calling from Daggrepont’s car phone. Daggrepont had been Lucy’s lawyer. Mary Lee had it in her head that there was something fishy about Lucy’s death. His own take on that scenario had been to let dead dogs lie. Bryce’s pal had taken the blame, which was a hell of a lot better than Del taking the blame. But now Daggrepont was dead, and J.D.’s gut told him there was more to it than a bum ticker.
He glanced up at the wooded slopes beyond the valley. Del knew those hills like the back of his hand.
“Look here,” he said, pushing the half-formed questions from his mind. He pointed to splotches of discoloration that marred the folds of Daggrepont’s fat neck. “Looks to me like somebody had him by the throat.”
“I can think of only twenty or thirty people woulda liked to choke Miller,” Bardwell said. “You think of more than that, Pete?”
“You countin’ old ladies or just the men?”
Quinn frowned as he turned the lawyer’s head to the side. “Rigor’s just starting to set in in the jaw,” he mumbled. “He hasn’t been in here long.”
He fingered the dead man’s jowls, noting the way the discoloration remained when he applied pressure, indicating bruising rather than any strange kind of lividity. He hummed a little to himself, as if he were trying to come up with a list of viable suspects when he was really just wishing the whole damned mess away. Lucy MacAdam’s lawyer was dead under suspicious circumstances. He’d have Marilee Jennings camped out on his doorstep, trying to sell him her conspiracy theory. Blasted outsiders. Nothing could ever be simple with them.
“Well,” he said, rising and wiping his hands off on his pants, “we’ll ship him up to Bozeman and have them take a look.”
“Slice ’em and dice ’em,” Bardwell commented.
Quinn scowled at him. “Bardwell, shut up and get the body bag.” He turned back to J.D. “Guess I’ll have to go break the news to Inez that she’s out a boss. He didn’t have any family that I know of. Can you think of anyone else ought to know right away?”
“Yeah,” J.D. said on a sigh. He started for his horse with anticipation and dread pushing against each other in his chest. “I’ll tell her myself.”