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Now he took care of the stock. Broad shoulders obscuring half the length of Gideon's back, he carefully curried the animal's hide. The huge man was whistling "If I only had a brain…"
A
Karl jumped as if she'd poked him with a cattle prod and Gideon shied in sympathy.
"Sorry," A
"I was thinking," Karl said as if that explained things. "You going riding?"
"I thought I would. Are you taking Gideon out?" She was just asking to be polite. Karl wouldn't ride. And he wouldn't say why. It was that that had probably cost him the Dog Canyon job. Like everyone else, A
Karl shook his head. "Just combing him. They're still nervous. That lightning a few nights ago got ' em jumpy. It scared me too," he addressed the horse and Gideon rotated one ear back to listen. "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. Lookie here," he said to A
A
"I'll take Pesky," A
Maybe he's just passing gas, she thought and startled herself by laughing. There was something about Karl that was oddly i
"Pesky needs to get out, air himself off," Karl said.
Pesky and two of the pack mules were milling around the small paddock, fussing at each other and snatching mouthfuls of hay from between the pipe bars on the manger.
Affecting nonchalance, A
"Gotcha!" A
She haltered Pesky and tied him to the hitching rail. Karl had moved back and was painstakingly combing the tangles from Gideon's tail.
"You look like you heard already," he said as A
"Probably not," A
"About the hunt." The Norwegian's voice was bland, the careful neutrality of a cautious man.
A
"They're putting together a hunt. Paul and the Chief Ranger. Superintendent's orders."
"How can they know which one to kill?" A
Karl just looked at her, then back to Gideon's tail.
Already rumors of a man-eater would be buzzing around the local ranches. Old stories would be flowing as fast as the Coors. Any excuse to drag out the hunting rifles was a good excuse in Texas. Texans were the best hunters in the world. They were born to it, believed in it, almost like a religion. Hunting and football, not opposable thumbs and the ability to laugh, were what separated Man from the apes.
The killing of one cat wouldn't affect the health of the lion population as a whole. Maybe if the National Park Service sacrificed one animal, preferably shot near the area of the incident, it would buy off wholesale slaughter. That's how the argument would go. It would all sound so rational when Paul or Cori
"But it's just a goddamned lynching party," A
Pesky twitched as if her angry words were flies landing on his neck. Karl said nothing, just combed.
Outraged injustice.
A
No one would see.
A
5
THREE-six-one; seven-two-five Alpha."
The radio woke A
Lying on the hood of her old American Motors Rambler, she'd watched the stars deepen the endless Texas sky. She'd finished a bottle of California Chardo
Near midnight, while she'd still toasted those long-since vanished radio-collared lions, Rogelio had left, bound for Mexico, for a meeting of the Friends of the Pinacate. They were all converging at a little place he kept down there. A
"Three-six-one; seven-two-five Alpha," the radio bleated again and A
"Answer your goddamn radio, Harland," she growled.
As if in obedience, Harland Roberts, Roads and Trails foreman, keyed his mike. "This is Harland. Go ahead."
Ma
"Dispatch," A
Tuesdays and Wednesdays were her lieu days, her days off. She'd call her sister, do her laundry, go into Carlsbad, shoot fifty rounds at the range, have a Prissy's Special and a couple of Tecates at Lucy's, take in a movie, do her grocery shopping. Then there'd be Wednesday to get through.
A
Opening the bottom drawer, A
"Don't do it," she said aloud. "Just don't do it." But she folded back the flap and pulled the pictures out anyway.
A tall, ski