The Pettyjohn Ranch's dump was a sea of trash the size of a city block and fifty feet deep, gouged into a section of prairie toward the northeast corner. It held more than a century's accumulation of old refuse, from kitchen slop to sprung mattresses to entire vehicles. There was also plenty of stuff nobody wanted to talk about-refrigerators, asbestos insulation, tons of toxic sludge from fertilizers and pesticides and lead paint, enough to make a private little superfund out in the middle of God's country.
Officially, it hadn't been used for the past few years-new sanitary codes required that the ranch's refuse was now hauled off to the city landfill. But it saw occasional action on the sly, for things like our construction scrap and items that were inconvenient to get rid of legally.
I had never known that to include carcasses, but I started catching the first hints of the smell before I could even see the dump-the sickly reek of meat gone bad. The closer I got, the more it filled the pickup's cab, lying like a greasy blanket on the warm afternoon air. The dump always smelled some, like any big collection of garbage. But this was special.
About fifty yards out, a bunch of crows and magpies were having a party, hopping, fighting, and tearing with their beaks at something buried. Thumb-size horseflies and yellow jackets swarmed around with a buzz I could feel in my teeth. The old D-8 Cat that was used for maintenance was parked off to the side as usual. It wasn't run often these days, but I could make out fresh ridges from its tracks, leading toward the quarreling scavengers.
The ranch hands must have butchered some cattle, and the remains were ripening in the hazy afternoon heat. It seemed a little strange that they'd take the trouble to bury them-usually they just pitched things over the edge, same as me. But as I drove closer, I could see a hoof sticking up out of the mess.
That was it, then.
There was one good thing-the flies were too busy to bother me. I dropped the truck's tailgate and started tossing out my own load of trash.
The real reason I'd been working alone on Saturdays for the past few months was that I had the job site to myself, without the havoc of a crew around. Every week, I'd try to save a tricky task like cutting stairs or rafters and use Saturday to get through the part that required the most concentration.
Sometimes my buddy Madbird came along, but he liked the peace as much as I did. He'd take off on his own to work on the wiring, and I'd hardly be aware of him except for the occasional crash of a tool or part being thrown and some muttering in Blackfeet that I assumed was cursing.
I'd spend the last hour cleaning up and thinking about what was on the slate for Monday, then make this dump run. I'd come to look forward to it. It was the ritual start of the weekend, full of the anticipation of Saturday night before the crash of Sunday morning. And if you ignored the crater of garbage, you couldn't ask for finer country.
The ranch was about ten miles northwest of Helena, up against the foothills of the Rockies. The view went on forever. This time of year, the larches were turning yellow, big bright splashes on the bottle green slopes. There were no buildings in sight, no sounds in any way human. All in all, it was like the kind of magazine cover that made dentists in Omaha go out and buy a couple thousand dollars' worth of trout fishing gear.
The original owner was Reuben Pettyjohn's grandfather Nathan, who'd fought with renown in the Civil War but had been on the losing side. Like a lot of his comrades, he'd left the South in disgust when the carpetbaggers invaded and had made his way west. He'd had the good luck and sense to acquire this gold mine of property, roughly fifteen thousand acres of well-watered hay fields, pasture, and timber. His descendants had added lease rights to more big chunks of state and Bureau of Land Management grazing land, and parlayed it all into a network of property and other interests that stretched through Montana and beyond.
I, on the other hand, was the kind of guy who'd always bought dear and sold cheap.
I slung the last bag of trash into the pit and gave the truck's bed a quick sweep. Then I paused, realizing that I'd been hurrying, not enjoying this as usual. The reason was that smell. It clung to me like a second skin, putting an unpleasant edginess in my head that was amplified by the buzzing of the insects.
But there was something else bothersome. I'd kept glancing at that hoof as I unloaded, and now I tried to focus on it through the debris and flapping birds. It seemed oddly shaped.
And I almost thought I could make out an arc of extra thickness on it, like an iron shoe.
I told myself I was full of shit, and there was no reason I should care anyway. Even if it was a horse, there was nothing strange about one of those dying on a ranch. There were several working plugs here besides the Balcombs' thoroughbreds, and their passing wouldn't create any stir. I closed the truck's tailgate, got in, and started the engine.
I switched it off again-honest to God, I don't know why. Maybe because of old habits I'd developed during the years that I'd worked on a newspaper in California, maybe just because of a prickly sense that something was really wrong.
I rummaged through the spare clothes I carried and found a hooded sweatshirt to cover my head and neck. I made a mask of my bandanna and pulled on a pair of gloves. Then I started picking my way across the pit. The surface felt queasy underfoot, like I was walking on boards laid over quicksand.
The crows backed up, but not far, and they screamed at me to get off their turf. The flies and hornets stayed, and so did the smell.
The hoof was shod, all right.
The short length of foreleg sticking up had been chewed on, probably pulled free by coyotes. It looked like they'd tried to dig down to the rest of the carcass, layered over by a foot or two of junk, but something had stopped them.
I figured out where the head would be and clawed trash out of the way. A triangular piece of plywood about three feet across was wedged in as a protective covering. Measurements were scrawled on it with a heavy carpenter's pencil.
I recognized them. I'd written them there myself, framing a gable dormer a couple of weeks earlier. I'd carried the scrap here to the dump, too. But I sure hadn't left it anywhere near this spot, and I couldn't believe that the Cat had dragged it here by accident.
My uneasiness climbed a notch. Somebody had taken the trouble not just to bury the horse, but to protect it from predators that might have exposed it.
I got hold of a corner of the plywood and worked it free. Flies settled instantly on the horse's bleared gummy eye. The lips were stretched tight above bared teeth. The dark brown coat was matted and dulled by death. A blue nylon construction tarp was wadded up underneath like a tawdry shroud.
But the real ugliness lay in how it had been killed. A chunk of flesh the size of my fist was gouged out of its neck. Bits of spine showed under the raw blood-crusted meat. I'd seen plenty of dead game, including some that had been shot up pretty badly by inexperienced or unlucky hunters. But this was a difference of kind.
My brain didn't want to believe what my eyes told it-that the wounds had been made by a shotgun, at very close range.
Worse still, I glimpsed another, lighter-colored horse under the first one.
I swallowed hard and pulled away more of the junk with one hand, swatting at the bugs with the other. I guess I was hoping I'd find something that would convince me I was mistaken, help me make sense of this. Instead, I saw more big wounds behind the shoulder and on the flank, and enough of the second horse to tell that it was gouged in the same way.
Then I yanked free another good-size scrap of plywood. I just got a glimpse of the gut piles, spilling out of the ripped-open bellies, before the stink exploded in my face.
My own guts heaved up a thin stream of bile. I tore off my bandanna and stumbled away, hacking and spitting out the sour burning taste.
Hunched over, hands on my knees, I could feel the warm still air wrapped around me, hear the insects droning and see the crows flapping. But for a few seconds all that was a screen, and something inhuman and pitiless was on the other side, watching me. I think I yelled, like I was trying to wake up out of a nightmare.
There might have been more I could have seen, but I was done looking. I shoved the scraps of plywood back into place and kicked some trash over them.
As I slogged across the pit to my truck, I thought I could hear a new sound in the distance, like the rippling purr of a small engine.
I twisted the key in the ignition and got the hell out of there.