Clyde bellowed with laughter and the ranch hands laughed too. Luke knew his father was looking at him, but he kept his own eyes on his plate while his mother piled it with salad and potato. She put it down in front of him and started serving second helpings to the hands.
‘So, Luke,’ his father said. ‘You heard we found a dead calf.’
Luke had his mouth full so he just nodded. His father waited for the reply.
‘Yes sir. W-w-where did you f-f-find it?’
‘Over by Ripple Creek,’ Clyde said. ‘You know the gully that runs along the foot of the meadow there?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Just up there.’
The hands were concentrating hard on their food, sensing this was family business. His father’s eyes hadn’t once left him.
‘I thought you said you checked along there every day,’ he said.
‘Not down in the g-g-gully always. I ride al-along the t-t-top. ’
‘That’s where it was. Along the top, lying there right out in the open.’
Something had found it and hauled it up there again, Luke thought. What would do that? Maybe the wolves had come back.
‘Wh-wh-what k-k-k—’
‘What killed it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nat Thomas reckons it was a wolf. That Prior fella’s trying to get hold of Bill Rimmer to come up this afternoon. What bothers me is how many more dead calves have we got up there?’
‘I d-d-don’t think there are—’
‘You wanted that job, Luke. If you’re going to do it, you’re going to have to do it properly. Okay?’
Luke nodded. ‘Y-y-yes, sir.’
‘Or we’ll just have to put Jesse here onto it.’
‘Phew,’ said Ray, wiping his brow and grinning. ‘That’s good. Least I ain’t going to get chewed up by wolves.’
Everyone laughed and the tension loosened a little. His father stood up and, as if attached to him by invisible strings, so did Clyde.
‘Probably wasn’t a wolf anyhow,’ his mother said.
‘That’s not what Nat Thomas says,’ Buck said, putting on his hat. Luke’s mother was cleaning pans at the sink, not looking at him.
‘Nat Thomas would swear it was the Easter Bunny, if you gave him ten dollars.’
When his mother said things like that, Luke realized how much he loved her.
Dan had told her a lot about Buck Calder, but nothing he’d said had quite prepared Helen for the shock of the real thing. The sheer physicality of the man was overwhelming. He made those around him seem like suckerfish to a shark.
Dan had introduced them down at the house, telling him Helen had just come on board to help find the wolf, taking care to keep it singular. She and Buck had shaken hands. His hand was huge and strangely cool and he had held on to hers just a little too long, fixing her with those pale eyes. The gaze was so direct, so immediately intimate, that Helen had found herself blushing. He had asked her to ride up here to the pasture with him in the truck and she’d replied, a little too quickly, that no, it was okay, she would ride up with Dan and Bill Rimmer. Dan had teased her about it on the way up.
‘Sure missed your chance there, Helen.’
‘Whoa! My mom calls eyes like that bedroom eyes.’
‘Bedroom eyes?’ Bill said.
‘Yeah. First time I heard her say it I was only little and I thought she meant, you know, sleepy or something. And one day she heard me tell Eddie Horowitz, the kid next door, that he had bedroom eyes and she gave me a slap.’
Bill Rimmer laughed loudly. He seemed a nice guy.
Calder’s son-in-law had called the office in Helena just as she and Dan were about to set off up to the cabin and were packing the Toyota with Helen’s gear and the ton of provisions they had just bought at the supermarket. It was still all stacked in the back.
Now they were standing around this supposed wolf-kill with grasshoppers jumping all over their boots.
Bill Rimmer was on his knees beside it, inspecting it and taking his time. Helen stood beside Dan who was videoing it. Facing them across the carcass, Calder and his son-in-law stood waiting for the verdict.
It was a farce. Dan clearly thought so too. She had caught his eye briefly when Clyde swung the tarpaulin off and the flies cleared enough for them to see what was left of the calf. It was so far gone, nobody could possibly say how it had met its end. It could have been shot or died of a broken heart.
A horse snickered somewhere below them and Helen looked down into the gully and saw Calder’s son riding up toward them through the rocks. She had seen him down at the house but no one had bothered to introduce him. She had been struck immediately by how good-looking he was and wondered why he had hung back, listening while his father and Clyde did all the talking.
Once Helen had caught him staring at her with those intense green eyes and she’d smiled but he looked away immediately. They had passed him on his horse coming up here and Dan had told her who he was.
Luke got off his horse when he was still some way off and stayed there, standing beside it and stroking its neck. Helen smiled again and this time he gave her a little nod before looking away to where the others stood around the carcass.
Rimmer was standing now.
‘So?’ Calder said.
Rimmer took a long breath before answering.
‘You say Nat Thomas saw this just this morning?’
‘About three hours ago.’
‘Well, I don’t see how he can say this animal was killed by a wolf.’
Calder shrugged. ‘Experience, I guess.’
Rimmer ignored the insult. ‘You see, sir, there’s just not enough to go on. We can take it away and have some tests done—’
‘I think Nat’s the man to do that,’ Calder cut in.
‘Well, that has to be your decision, sir. But, frankly, I don’t reckon tests would give us anymore of an idea. Dan and Helen here have both seen a fair number of cattle predations. Dan?’
‘I’m afraid I have to agree.’
‘Well, there’s a surprise,’ said Calder sarcastically. ‘Miss Ross? Would you care to venture an opinion?’
Helen felt the power of his stare again and she cleared her throat, hoping her voice wasn’t going to show how nervous he made her.
‘You can’t say it wasn’t a wolf, but there’s no sign left that it was. Did anybody look for prints before the ground got all scuffed up like this?’
‘Course I did,’ Clyde said, defensively. He darted a look at his father-in-law. ‘The ground’s too hard. Too much rock and stuff.’
‘Or scat maybe? You know, droppings—’
‘I do know what scat is.’ He gave a little humorless laugh. ‘There wasn’t none of that either.’
Dan said, ‘Maybe, Mr Calder, if you’d called us first, we could have—’
‘Who I choose to call first is my business, Mr Prior,’ Calder snapped. ‘And with all due respect, I reckon Nat Thomas’s opinion is a sight more objective than others’ around here.’
‘What I meant is, I can understand why you might want Nat to come and have a look too, but if—’
‘Oh, you can?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Seems to me you government fellows don’t understand a damn thing. You let these wolves loose, let them kill our pets and now our cattle, and then try and pretend they’re not to blame.’
‘Sir, I—’
‘Don’t make an enemy of me, Prior. It’s not a good idea.’
He looked away, down the valley, and for a long moment, no one spoke. Somewhere way above them in the mountains an eagle called. Calder shook his head and looked at the ground, nudging some sage with his boot. The grasshoppers scattered.
Helen thought it amazing. Here they were, all adults, and he had them hanging on his every word like naughty schoolkids hauled before the principal. But they all went on watching him and waiting for him to speak and at last he seemed to reach some conclusion.
‘Okay,’ he
said, and after a moment more looked up at Dan. ‘Okay. You tell me this young lady here is going to be working full-time on this.’ He didn’t grace Helen with his eyes when he said this, just tilted his chin in her direction.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then she’d better do a good job and do it quick. Because I tell you, Mr Prior, if I lose another calf, we may have to do something about it ourselves.’
‘Well, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the law about—’
‘No sir, you sure as hell don’t.’
They were glaring at each other, neither one prepared to be the first to look away. Helen could see Dan was seething. She’d never seen him so angry. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d stepped over the carcass and punched the rancher on the jaw. Then Calder suddenly flashed his white teeth and turned to Helen, clicking on the charm again, as if nothing had happened.
‘So you’ll be living up by Eagle Lake?’
‘Yep. Going up there right now.’
‘It can get kind of lonely up there.’
‘Oh, I’m used to being alone.’
Calder gave her a look that said plainly as any words, How could that be? Pretty little thing like you. It was like a lustful uncle putting a hand on your knee.
‘Well, Helen, you must come down to the house and have supper with us some time, tell us how you’re getting along.’
She gave him a blithe smile.
‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘That’d be nice.’
11
It took Helen the rest of that day and most of the next to unpack her things and get the cabin into some kind of livable condition. And it would have taken longer if Dan hadn’t helped.
Compared with some places she had to stay in, it wasn’t too bad. It was twelve feet square and built of logs, with a screened window in each wall and a roof that would soon need some serious attention. In one corner stood a pot-bellied stove with a top you could cook on. Dan had filled a box beside it with a month’s supply of firewood and given her a chain saw for when it ran out. There was also a Coleman gas stove with two burners.
‘Hey, I can throw dinner parties,’ she said.
‘Yeah, for your new friend Buck Calder.’
‘Please!’
Stacked on rickety shelves beside the stove were assorted cups, bowls and plates, all of them chipped and emblazoned with the Forest Service logo, in case anyone was desperate enough to steal them. Apart from the cobwebbed curtains, which looked as though they might fall apart if you touched them, the only decoration was a laminated map of Hope and some blackened cast-iron pans that hung from nails above the cracked enamel sink. The sink itself was rigged with an elegant pitcher pump and drained into a somewhat less elegant slop pail below.
In the opposite corner were two bunk beds, for the bottom one of which Dan had thoughtfully provided a new mattress, blankets and pillows. The only other pieces of furniture were an old wardrobe and a plain wooden table with two chairs.
Sunk into the planked floor was a trapdoor.
‘What’s down there?’
‘Oh, that goes down to the basement. You know, laundry room, sauna, that kind of thing.’
‘No hot tub?’
‘They’re installing it next week.’
She opened the trapdoor and found a bare, cement-lined root cellar, some three feet square and four feet deep. It was to keep food from freezing in winter and getting too hot in summer.
The one luxury was the neat little Japanese generator that Dan had rigged outside the door so she could recharge her laptop, stereo and the cell phone Dan had supplied her with. In theory, he said, she should be able to hook the phone up to her laptop and get e-mail. The trouble was, cell phones didn’t work too well up here in the mountains; often as not you couldn’t get a signal. The prospect of isolation didn’t bother Helen at all. As backup, Dan was also going to set up a voice-mail number for her.
Around the back of the cabin was a logbuilt outhouse and, beside it, a kind of improvised shower - a metal bucket with holes in the bottom. Birds had been nesting in it, but with a little maintenance Helen would soon have it working.
‘I tried to clear things up a little,’ Dan said.
‘It’s terrific. Thank you.’
‘And whatever your friend Buck Calder says, I can guarantee you’re not going to be lonely.’
‘How do you mean?’
He showed her the mousetraps he’d set behind the stove and under the beds. They were all sprung, bait taken, no mouse.
‘I see you’re still no better at trapping, Prior.’
‘That’s why I took the desk job.’
‘What bait did you use?’
‘Cheese, what else?’
‘Hey, buddy, you know better than to ask a trapper her trade secrets.’
That first night she was too tired to be bothered with trying to catch mice and regretted it almost as soon as she shut her eyes. Buzz spent the whole night scrabbling around for them and made so much noise that in the end she took him out and shut him in the Toyota. Left to their own devices, the mice scuffled in and out of her dreams till daybreak. By the time Dan arrived the next day Helen had set up an elaborate trap which had him in fits.
It was a method Joel had taught her their first year together on the Cape when the ship-house suddenly became the neighborhood refuge for homeless rodents. All you needed was a bucket, a length of wire and a tin can, drilled at both ends. You fed the wire through the holes in the can and rigged it so that it hung across the top of the bucket into which you poured a few inches of water. All that was left to do was prop a stick against the side of the bucket, smear the can with peanut butter, lock the dog away and retire. The mice climbed up the stick, crawled along the wire and when they stepped onto the can it spun and dumped them in the drink.
‘It never fails,’ Helen said.
‘No way.’
‘I’ll bet you dinner on it.’
‘You’re on.’
That night she caught three mice and had them proudly on display when Dan showed up in the afternoon with all the radio collars, trapping gear and some mapping software for her computer. He’d halfheartedly accused her of cheating, but true to his word, after another day getting the cabin straight, took her that same evening to Nelly’s Diner.
Helen was now struggling to finish the biggest steak she had ever laid eyes on. The menu called it a T.Rex bone and even that didn’t do it justice.
The diner was wallpapered throughout with huge photo-panoramas of the Rocky Mountains which once must have made the real thing, glimpsed from the small front windows, look like poor imposters. Over the years, however, the colors had grown saturate and dark and the joins had split open with the heat, so that now the landscape seemed to be in shadow, ominously riven with seismic cracks. Against this background of imminent doom, the tables with their paper cloths of red and white check and candles afloat in little red glasses strove bravely to make the place cheerful.
Only two other tables were occupied: one by a family of German tourists whose monster Winnebago was blocking all view from the front windows and the other by two old men in matching white Stetsons, who were arguing about hearing aids.
The only waiter was a friendly giant with blue-tinted aviator glasses and long gray hair tied in a ponytail. From the voice that hectored him from backstage in the kitchen (Nelly’s, perhaps), they gathered his name was Elmer. The tattoos and the black T-shirt with Bikers for Jesus emblazoned on the front proclaimed him the owner of the Harley that stood gleaming outside. When Helen and Dan had first walked in, he’d said, ‘Angels on your body.’ It took them a moment to realize it was a greeting. They’d avoided catching each other’s eye until they were safely alone at their table.
Helen pushed her plate away and leaned back.
‘Dan, this steak’s got me beat.’
She wondered if she would lose all credibility with him if she were now to light a cigarette. She decided not to risk it.
T
hey had spent most of the meal reminiscing about the good old days in Minnesota. Helen reminded him of the time his hand had slipped while he was trying to give a trapped wolf a shot of sedative and emptied the syringe into his own thigh instead. He’d gone out like a light. They laughed so much the two little German kids kept turning to stare at them with big blue eyes.
No mention had been made of that one time they had briefly become more than just friends and for this Helen was grateful. The news that Dan was now divorced had bothered her a little. Whether there was anyone new in his life, she didn’t know, but she hoped so.
Dan couldn’t finish his steak either. He took a drink of beer and sat back, silent for a moment, smiling at her.
‘What are you grinning at?’ she said.
‘Oh, I was just thinking.’
‘What?’
‘Just that it’s good to have you out here.’
‘Hey, I’ll go anywhere for a free dinner.’
She could tell from the way he was looking at her that there was more to it than that. She hoped he wasn’t going to voice it and spoil things.
‘You know, Helen, after Mary and I broke up, I nearly called you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. I thought about you a lot. And how, you know, that summer, if I hadn’t been—’
‘Dan, come on.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’
She reached across the table and took his hand and smiled at him. He was such a sweet guy.
‘We’re friends,’ she said softly. ‘And that’s really how it always was.’
‘I guess.’
‘And, right now, I really need a friend more than, well, more than anything else.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Say that once more and I won’t ever share my mouse-trapping secrets with you again.’
He laughed and let go of her hand. Elmer loomed to the rescue and asked them if they were done with their steaks and did they want cream pie or death by chocolate? They settled for coffee.
‘You’re the new wolf lady, huh?’ he said when he came back to pour it.