For an hour they rode through the vast pasture, straining to see the cattle. As they rode, a growing sense of panic moved in their chest, each fought to find their way back in the direction they came.
They stopped their horses in a barren windbreak edged by the walls of a deep ravine, jutting out at the foot of the Gloss Mountain Range. There, they sheltered from the driving wind.
“We need to head back to the truck.” Tawny shouted over the wind.
Zeke tilted his head toward her from its protection behind the collar of his coat and narrowed his golden-brown eyes in a sardonic squint.
“Ya think?”
Tawny resisted the temptation to lash out at his sarcasm. She was out of energy and wishing she had a put aside her pride and put on the coveralls. Her gloves were soaked, and fear tickled the back of her brain as she began to know she didn’t recognize this ravine, or at least it wasn’t one she knew to be anywhere near the truck and trailer.
“I don’t know where we are.”
“No shit? I couldn’t tell,” he snorted when he laughed.
“Will you stop the bullshit and help?”
“Well honey, I’d love to but I don’t know where we are either. I didn’t know to begin with.”
Tawny spurred her gray, and made him climb the steep, slick ravine until he was atop on a ridge.
She strained to see something – anything that could give her an idea of where she was. To her right, the tiniest blinking red light flickered. She was sure of it. It was up and to the west of them. If correct, it was the radio tower Dwight allowed the county to put on the property last year.
That meant the two had ridden for an hour south and west of the truck. The way the snow was coming, and now the drifting, they would never get back before it started getting dark, if they could get back at all.
She again spurred the gray and the two of them slid and stumbled down the side of the ravine back into the shelter of it.
“I think I know where we can go.”
“Fabulous.” Zeke looked like a hat and a coat with no face or neck. “Is it a place I can order a double?”
“Oddly, yes, it is.”
Tawny forced the gray’s face into the driving snow, put the red blinking light at her left shoulder, and headed south.
It was odd, the snow seemed to be coming from that direction, but she felt more sure of her direction now.
“Aren’t we still going south?” Zeke stopped the piebald and looked north. “I may not know this ranch, but I know which direction we’re going and which direction we came from.” Riding towards him to reply, Tawny shouted against the storm.
“We need to get outta this. Just follow and shut the hell up.”
“Oki doki.” Zeke was past caring. He only knew that Adler and Thornton would be pissed he was out here doing his “job” when really, he was supposed to be in there sewing up the collar on whoever robbed the bank while they hung out in a posh hotel somewhere.
And there was the cold. It was damn cold out and he was tired of the snow blowing into the back of his coat. It melted and dripped between his shoulder blades and down the middle of his back.
He dropped his head against the snow and the piebald dropped her head as well. The two riders pushed on in a direction they both hoped would save them.
Long ears peeked over the small drift of snow that made a mound just in front of a lonely Cheyenne County road.
A lone jackrabbit sat rigid and seeming motionless as he timed his accent up the snowdrift, into the road and across where his den was waiting, warm and inviting.
Propelling himself with split-second timing, the jack leapt across the growing mound of snow onto the recently snowplowed road. Extending his over-sized thighs and long back legs, he raced across the more slippery but less deep snow that coated the road toward the safety of his den.
A ticking clock seemed out of place in Landry’s home.
It’d been his granddaddy’s and from the time he’d been a little boy, Landry had pictured it standing, tall and almost mean looking in his own place.
He glanced at it now and hoped, in that crazy way folks find themselves thinking, when they did something they are guilty about, that the clock was not some kind of magical portal.
The kind like ya see on them movies now where past and present meet. It’d be a damn shame for my granddaddy to leap through that portal and see me now hidin’, drunk and worthless. I’m a criminal now.
He turned his head away from the clock and quietly peeked at Tippi, now sleeping soundly beside him.
What’d she see in him? He didn’t know.
He hadn’t known when they met and began the affair and he damn sure didn’t know now.
Hell, it’d been me that caused the bullets. I’d meant em to go into the ceiling, but they still hit her. Who knew the beams there were steel under that cement?
Long, deep breaths gave away secrets about how tired she was and told him what he needed to know.
As she slept, he leaned to the edge of his side of the bed and swung his feet out from under the comforter and onto the hardwood floor.
He knew what he had to do.
Without hesitating, he slipped on his Wranglers and a pair of boots that lay beside them. Stepping over her dress where it lay the second time, he slipped his watch on his wrist and left the room.
Tippi opened her eyes.
The sound of the Chevy pickup growling to life confirmed that he had left the house.
Quickly, she hopped out of the bed and tiptoed to the window seat knelt on its soft cover and peeked under the curtain. A flash of white and the four-door Chevy sped out of the icy and snow packed drive.
Tippi trotted, naked and cold to her dress.
“Oh my God, I can’t wear this.”
Sprinting to his closet, she ran her hands along his Wranglers until she found a pair near the back that looked like some from his younger years. Yep. Too long but rolled up they’ll work.
She slipped her feet, small and bluish now from the cold floors, into her shoes, grabbed her leather bag and jumped out the back door onto the snowy walkway. She ran in long, jumping steps through the snow to her SUV, now covered with snow. Yanking the door open, she hopped in, dragging with her ice and snow that had already filled her tiny ballet like slippers she had no-so-wisely worn to work that day.
Sitting for a moment, Tippi then leapt across the seats to the back of the SUV.
Pushing a Rand McNally, and two crinkled McDonald’s sacks haphazardly out of her way, she found what she was looking for. It was a brightly colored, almost embarrassing pair of psychedelic rubber snow boots. She grimaced at the thought of them on her feet but it was better than freezing.
Back in the driver’s seat, she shoved the ugly things on her feet, started the engine and pulled carefully around the circle drive. She paused briefly, and cautiously approached Maple Street, craning her neck to see around the curve in the direction his truck tracks led.
The snow made it easy to follow. By now, the roads were bad enough, she fancied, that no one or not many would be out on them, especially out here.
Landry lived in a sparsely populated area. It was a neighborhood where the ladies still stayed home, and the men didn’t have jobs requiring their presence on days like this.
Pulling out to the county road just west of his place, shaky fingers drummed on the steering wheel and kept time with the windshield wipers.
She drove in his tracks into what was beginning to look like Alaska, and followed it to a long, winding ranch road she recognized. It was the road to his barn and pasture where he kept his horses.
She had never been down to the pens but had met him where his ranch road met the highway and picked him up in her car when they were seeing each other months before.
He always parked his well known, well recognized personal pickup in his barn, then would walk up the ranch road and jump into her car. For some reason, he had his ranch pickup today.
Now, she eased slowly down the road. Squeaking snow under her tires seemed loud to her as she rounded the curve, creeping towards a tree line.
Pushing the brake pedal, she felt “Little Red” slide just the least little bit and then halt. If she leaned out over her steering wheel and pushed her face against the front windshield, she could see him bridling what looked like a huge dark brown horse and pulling him into the barn.
Tippi plopped back into the driver’s seat.
“Now what?”
Quickly she threw “Little Red” into reverse and careened through the snowy trail backwards toward the county road.
If she was right and the new business story about a new development she had written just two months ago was true, she would be able to follow him.
“Why are you so focused on him? We are supposed to be getting to the bottom of a bank robbery, not spying on our fixer and that girl he’s working with.”
“Because, this is our chance to move him out’ so-to-speak.”
The man said it in a whisper, even though the two were skidding down a Cheyenne County road all alone in the worst snowstorm either of them had ever seen.
“This place out here, Indianville or whatever they call it…”
“Cheyenne?”
“Whatever the hell it is, it’s a place no one cares about. No one cares if the bank is robbed and no one will ever look for a broke-down cowboy we used as a fixer out here. It’s perfect.”
The man driving, Mitch Thornton, almost shouted the comments to his partner of 13 years, Frank Adler.
“Watch out,” Adler shouted and held onto the dash of the Tahoe.
The black Tahoe slid to the left and bounced off the drifting snow piled two feet on each side.
A pair of $1,000 Versace black leather shoes pumped the breaks and forced the Tahoe to a sliding halt.
“What in the hell is your problem?” Thornton could not see what his partner had shouted about and made him nearly crash the Tahoe over.
“You hit a rabbit man!”
“You’re kidding right?”
“Na man, look back there.” Adler pointed to the jackrabbit’s form, spread limp and warm on the icy county road.
He didn’t look. The Versace leather shoes left the break and slammed as hard as they can on the gas pedal and the angry man set out again for the stupid little town he’d been sent to in order to solve the most ridiculous bank robbery in his career with the agency.
“You idiot!” Thornton shouted.
The man’s pockmarked face turned an ugly shade of red and it made him uglier.
In moments the men skidded to a stop in front of an old house trailer converted into an office.
On the outside, a blinking neon “Open” sign buzzed and shorted off and on from mounting snow on the box where it was plugged. In front, the business name, “High Plains Snow Mobiles and Four Wheelers,” was unprofessionally painted in large, electric blue letters with a black background. The business’s motto was underneath. “Where speed and snow are still legal.”
In front there was one customer, a blonde woman in blue jeans that looked much too large for her frame. She sat on one of the machines.
A scraggly little man who looked like he’d snorted and shot up his and someone else’s meth in his lifetime, leaned over the girl who inexpertly straddled a snow mobile.
The men strode up and interrupted the pair.
“Excuse me, we need to rent two snow mobiles and we are in a bit of a hurry.”
The man turned and peered at them for a moment and said nothing. Instead, he returned to his instruction.
“See here’s the throttle and the brake is right here.”
“Excuse me?”
And once again, the former druggie whose name was Clancy, stared at them with a withering look and returned to the job at hand.
“Hey man, we need you to get us a couple snow mobiles, and I mean now.”
Thornton pulled his badge and flashed it to the man.
The blonde-haired woman started hers and revved the engine.
“I got it Clancy,” she said and before the obviously smitten Clancy could stop her, she was around the corner. On her way out, the woman stopped and snapped a photo of the vehicle those two threatening men were in. She wasn’t even sure why she did it. There was just something about them and how they treated Clancy she didn’t like. As she drove by, she heard Clancy talking to them.
“Yeah man, I already done my time, why you all hasslin’ me all the time.”
“Just shut up Clancy,” Thornton said his name sarcastically. “Get us a couple of snow mobiles and we’ll make it worth your while.”
“Thank God, there it is.” Tawny shouted the words as the two came in sight, finally of her destination.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the Morris cabin.”
“Oh, of course. I shudda known,” Zeke said rolling his eyes again.
It was nearly a sunless, late morning now and Zeke rode to the south side of the small cabin constructed of cedar logs. He could not tell in this light and with the snow sticking to the sides of it, but it looked like Red Cedar.
He rounded the corner, startled a bit and jerked his horse to a stop.
At first, she jumped a little and attempted to get up. But the Herford heifer was out of it, spent from trying to birth the calf that was only half out of her. The calf was helplessly hip-locked in his mother.
Her eyes rolled to her rear as she tried to get a look at the man as he approached her.
Behind him, Tawny rode up.
“Oh shit.” He shouted above the storm. “Get in my saddlebag and get those chains.”
She carefully let herself down, feet tingling painfully as her weight came to rest on them in the snow that was now piling around the cabin nearly two feet deep. Leaning her elbow for balance on the piebald’s hip, she wrestled with the rusty buckle. Her fingers, slow and worthless, complained.
The obstetrical chains chimed, clinking together as she pulled them out for their cold and cruel mission. She handed them to Zeke, who was already kneeling in blood stained snow with his hand elbow deep inside the heifer, determining how tight the fit was, he stared into the cow’s back.
“I don’t know how she got the shoulders out and not the hips, but she sure did it.”
Zeke seemed to be talkin’ to no one. There was no need for her to respond.
She knelt beside him, made a loop of the chains, and held them ready for him to grab and wrap around the two front feet. Zeke grunted and used his knees on the slippery snow to push his arm deeper into the heifer, his fingers numb and tingling.
“I just need to shift him a little and I think she can go on and have him.”
“Is he still alive?”
The heifer pushed, strong and unrelenting against the feeling of the calf being pushed back into her.
“His nose is moving but he’s pretty limp otherwise.”
The calf’s tongue protruded, pink but swollen. It was a sign she knew that his birth had been taking too long. If they didn’t get him out and up nursing soon, he would die. Nevertheless, there was no need to talk about it. Both knew what it all meant.
Quietly she knelt beside him, the wetness of the snow permeating now the leather of her chaps and seeping, cold and miserable through her jeans and long underwear to her skin.
“Come on bitch.”
He said everything between breaths and grunts each time the heifer pushed against the process.
“Ah ha!”
“You got it?”
“Yep. Gimme the pullin’ handles.”
She jumped up and trotted to the saddlebags, pushed her hands that now felt like bricks into the bag, blindly feeling for the handles.
She doubted they would work to get this calf out. It looked extremely tight to her.
Zeke grabbed the D-shaped handles and hung them on the chains wrapped like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Standing up slowly, he groaned and straightened his back.
“Okay, you grab one of these and I’ll grab the other.”
Tawny forced wet gloves back onto her purple hands then grabbed the handle.
The two waited for a moment with some tension on the chains until the heifer heaved.
Each leaned all their weight backward into the chains and the calf’s hips slowly emerged.
The heifer seemed to know things were going better because she lifted her head and bellowed as she strained the next time. This time, the calf inched almost out but stopped at the widest part of its hips.
“Okay,” Zeke said and stood again to ease the pain in his back. “When she strains this time, give it all ya got.”
“Okay!” she shouted above the roar of a worsening storm.
Awkwardly, the calf slipped out easier than she had expected. An abrupt exit from its mother pitched them both backward into the drifting snow behind them. A gush of yellow fluid followed the calf. The two jumped up and hung the calf upside down to get the goo out of his mouth so he could breath.
“It’s too cold out here. Can you get in this place?”
“I can try.”
She ran to the east of the cabin and tried the log door, knowing there was a high probability of it being locked.
Cold, tired and defeated for a moment, she studied the door and the small porch as if she could will it to open. Pulling her hands back out of her gloves, she ran her fingers along the top side of the door-sill, and then she looked under the mat. Feeling around all the normal places, under a barren planter, in the small wooden mailbox tacked beside the door, where normal people hid keys.
Her boss though, was anything but normal. Where would he put it?
She strode to the small ceramic fire pit centered on the porch and felt under the lip of the small opening.
“Bingo.”
She trotted to the south edge of the porch and yelled over the growing storm’s wind.
“I got it!”
Zeke struggled onto the porch with the red, white-faced calf shivering and barley alive. He ducked into the door she held open and laid the calf on the wood flooring. He stood upright and looked around at the warmth and style in which the tiny cabin was decorated.
“Hmmm. Looks warm. Feels freezing.” He chuckled lightly.
“I’ll get some wood from the porch. It looks like there is still some here they didn’t use the last time they were here.”
Tawny trotted over to the small pile of old logs left behind.
Zeke jumped off the porch and went back to the south side of the cabin where the heifer lay.
Getting behind her neck, he pushed his leg under her head and shoved her until she was lying in an upright position.
Ya can’t leave em down like she was. She would never get up again. The knowledge came from years on his father’s cattle operation in Arizona.
She wobbled there, but it stuck.
Shielding his head again from the blowing snow, Zeke pulled the horses from behind the protection of the cabin to a small lean-to, where it was obvious whoever had used the cabin years earlier had kept their horses.
It was not much, but it would do for the time being. There was no way they would make it anywhere else in this snow. They would have to wait it out and this was a dry place for the horses to get a break from the snow.
He reached into his other saddlebag and tugged on a half empty Jack Daniels bottle. Reaching deeper he pulled out a can of tomatoes and a bag of old beef jerky he knew had been in there about a month.
Zeke untied dried and brittle leather strings from his canvas bedroll. They’d need it tonight. He hadn’t told her, but he supposed she knew. They’d not be getting out of this place tonight.
