The Work of Wolves (34 page)

"I don't like Magnus Yarborough none. That's true. But I ain't in the habit a stealin horses I train. Hard on my reputation."

"Look." Greggy gazed around at the ranch site. "I know damn well you didn't take no horses. What you and Magnus got against each other, I don't need a know unless I got more suspicions than I got right now. I just gotta do what I gotta do."

"Magnus tell you how to do your job?"

Greggy's jaw hardened. He sucked his teeth, a single, quick, fish-like sound, the corner of his mouth jerking upward.

"No, he don't. But I ain't a idiot. Guy like that can make trouble for me. There's doin my job, an there's appearin to do my job. Right now, I'm appearin to do it."

"Well, hell then. You wanta appear to look around here, go ahead. Just shut the gates behind you."

"I appreciate that. I'll peek into a pasture or two, just so I can say I did."

"Where was I supposed to have stole these horses from, anyway?"

"Says they were in a pasture about a half-mile from his house."

It took Carson a moment to absorb this. Lostman's Lake was nowhere near Magnus's house. So Magnus had found the horses gone and then invented a lie. Hoping Greggy would find them on Carson's ranch, he'd misdirected Greggy. If Greggy found them, Magnus could dismantle the fence above the lake before Greggy got a warrant to prove or disprove Carson's story, and when Greggy went up behind Lostman's Lake, he'd find nothing but a patch of trampled grass, or maybe not even that. Magnus might take a disc harrow up there, claim he was going to seed it, and so hide all evidence. Pretty shrewd, Carson thought. There was no reason for Magnus to believe Carson had a hand in taking the horses, but he'd gambled on the possibility while manipulating the story to protect himself. Pulling levers, hoping for the reels to align.

Greggy took several steps toward his car, then stopped and turned back. "Mind if I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"You have a problem with the way Magnus treated them animals you was training?"

Interesting, Carson thought. New territory now. Something going on that Magnus hadn't thought about and didn't control. Greggy doing his job while appearing to do his job. Why would Greggy ask the question? And how to answer it? Magnus hadn't mistreated the horses while Carson had worked with them.

"I don't like the way Yarborough treats a lot of things," he said. "Including them horses."

Greggy gazed at him. "That right?"

Carson thought he might have revealed more than he wanted to. As Greggy had just said himself, he was no idiot.

"Why you asking?" Carson wanted to make the sheriff talk. He wasn't sure what question might emerge from Greggy's mouth right now if he were allowed to ask one. Odd, though: Was he protecting Rebecca or endangering her by directing the sheriff away from Magnus's treatment of her? He didn't know. For the moment he had to take her at her word.

Greggy sucked his teeth again, jerked his head in a small, dismissive gesture.

"I got my own suspect I think stole them horses," he said. "Indian kid. Talked to me a while back. Claimed some horses was bein harmed. Claimed they was on Yarborough's land, but not where Yarborough says they was. Kid says they was bein starved. You think Yarborough'd starve horses?"

Carson felt himself on slippery ground. By being too sure in his answer, he could give away his own involvement, reveal too much. At the same time, it wouldn't hurt to reinforce any suspicions Greggy might have about Magnus Yarborough.

"Yarborough's a curious one," Carson said. "You don't know what he'd do."

"That right?" Again, that gaze.

Carson shrugged.

"A funny thing," Greggy said. "You been hearin them stories about some horses lifted right out've a pasture? Goat Man shit? How you suppose that kind a thing gets started? And then I get this report about stole horses. Don't know what to make a that."

"Guess I ain't heard them stories."

"You ain't, huh? You need a get out more. Anyway, I guess I done enough lookin to satisfy appearances here. I need a go talk to the real suspect. Maybe he has an idea."

C
ARSON WATCHED GREGGY LEAVE
, then called Earl and warned him. "He's fishin," he said. "He don' know a thing. If he did, he wouldna come out and seen me, no matter what Yarborough told him. He's got suspicions, but that don' mean nothin."

"But what if he asks where I was that night? He could find out I wasn't home, you know?"

"What night? It's been a week an a half. He don't know when them horses disappeared. It ain't like Yarborough's been up there every day checkin on 'em."

"I suppose."

"Look, Longwell don't even know where those horses disappeared from. Yarborough told him someplace different."

"But I told him right."

"None a that's gonna matter. Longwell don't know anything unless we tell him. All you gotta do is, if he asks you a question, you ask one back. Make him be specific. He won't be able to be. Long's you do that, you'll be OK."

"How do you think Magnus Yarborough found out? Maybe he does know when they disappeared."

"He doesn't. Wouldna taken Longwell this much time to get goin if he'd got a report right away. Truth is, I can't see Yarborough visiting them horses at all. Unless he went up to see if they'd died yet. Could be just bad luck anyone found out at all."

"I hope so."

"Longwell said somethin odd. You been hearin stories about some Goat Man stealin horses?"

There was a pause on the line. Then Earl said, "Some."

"Who the hell's Goat Man?"

"We talk about him, you know? He's, I don't know. Not real, really. Or maybe he is, kind of. It's hard to explain. He's like half-goat and half-man."

"Somethin like Bigfoot?"

"Kind of. But not, too."

"How'd that get started? Weren't no wild goats out here. Why would the rez have a goat man? Seems like a deer man or a buffalo man'd make more sense."

"Maybe he doesn't want to make sense."

"Well, it's another strange thing. Longwell was wonderin how them stories got started before he ever got a report on these horses. You think that's coincidence?"

"Maybe. Or maybe Goat Man saw us taking those horses and started the stories himself."

"Maybe we should ask him next time we see him."

"He doesn't like being asked questions."

GREGGY VISITED EARL
just as Carson said he would—came within an hour of Carson's call, and Earl was thankful for that call when he saw Greggy's police cruiser pull off the highway and come down the driveway, through the intersecting shadow web of the fall trees, yellow leaves rising behind Greggy's car or loping alongside the wheels for a moment, then settling. Earl had been waiting outside and met him in the driveway. They stood in the leaves, and Greggy demanded to know where Earl had been on the night the horses were taken, but Earl followed Carson's advice and asked what night Greggy meant. Greggy tried to intimidate him as he had in his office, but Earl was on his own land now and prepared, and he refused to give the sheriff anything. A wind arose. Leaves swirled past their feet in a yellow current, coming out from the trees and sweeping over the ground, a stream of leaves rustling and scraping, so many and so loud that Earl had to raise his voice when he talked. Greggy switched tactics and asked Earl to say again where he had found the horses he had reported. Earl told him he had nothing new to add to the report he'd given, that it had been complete and the answers to Greggy's questions were in it. The wind blew harder, and the stream of leaves became a river rising up from the ground, sweeping over their shoes, then clutching at their pants cuffs, beating against their shirts. Shouting. Raving. Howling and chattering. Earl was standing with his back to the wind and didn't pay much attention, but Greggy became restless. The leaves rose higher, in gusts and starts, rushed past Earl's head and at Greggy's face, brittle claws scraping at his eyes until he could no longer stare Earl down, and as Greggy's glance shifted to the ground, Earl felt himself growing taller, more confident, buoyed by the wind at his back, his voice rising above the commotion, until he became certain that Greggy would get nothing useful out of him.

"Damn!" Greggy finally exclaimed. "You got ignorance down to a art, don't you? Don't know why I bothered to come out here. And don't you ever rake this place?"

"No," Earl said. "We don't."

Greggy turned his back on the wind and went to his car and slammed the door against it. Leaves pulverized themselves against his window like water breaking into bright droplets, a mist of leaves streaming past the car, and Greggy staring for a moment out of it until he started the engine and left. Earl watched him out the driveway.

The Ignorant Indian,
he thought,
doesn't even know what a rake is.

Then he noticed how suddenly quiet it was.

AND THEN HIS MOTHER FOUND OUT.

"A policeman?" Her eyes widened, and under the strands of her shining black hair, Earl saw the silver feather of an earring quiver. She stood stock-still, except for the tiny glint of that changing light. "
A
policeman was here? What was a policeman doing here?"

Earl gave his grandmother a look of betrayal and dismay. He'd shut the curtains to the house after Carson called, claiming there was too much sun through the windows, and he'd waited outside, hoping the noise of the television would hide the sound of Greggy's car. But even if his grandmother did hear the car and get up and peek through the curtains, Earl thought she would keep it a secret. She might ask him what was going on, but he never thought she would go straight to his mother. His grandmother had often been his confidante when he was younger, and though he spoke more with Norm now, he knew that his grandmother, in her quiet way, understood much that he didn't reveal. Sitting in her corner, watching television, beading, she seemed the center of the world, taking everything in. She was the fulcrum of the family. Though she seldom got directly involved in disagreements between Earl and his mother, she understood both of them, and their knowledge of that understanding, their confidence in it, quieted them, allowed them a kind of balance. Simply because they knew that she understood, she served to dampen any mood swings and bring them into balance, sometimes without saying a word.

But she'd never done this kind of thing. Never, like a little child, tattled. True, cops didn't come to the door every day, but his grandmother hadn't even asked him what it was about. She had spied through the curtains, then kept silent for several hours, pretending ignorance, and the moment his mother came home, told her. Earl was sent reeling by it. And his mother was looking at him, waiting for a reply. And when he didn't reply, his grandmother did. Calmly lifting more beads onto her needle and sliding them down the thread, she ignored Earl's stricken gaze and answered Lorna's question.

"He was talking to Earl," she said. She pulled the needle upward and away, locking the beads onto the moccasin. On the television a narrator was describing the habits of hippopotami, how they graze on the bottoms of rivers.

"Earl?" His mother's tone made it clear he had better explain.

Earl had never lied outright to his mother. He couldn't start now. The thought of doing so ran through his head, but no lie would form in his brain. He couldn't disrespect her by telling her what wasn't true.

"Some horses were stolen," he said. He shot an accusatory glance at his grandmother again, but her needle swung in its little dance through the air without missing a beat, dipped into the tray, clucked contentedly among the beads.

"And?" Lorna demanded.

Earl returned his attention to his mother. "He thought I might know something about it."

Lorna raised her hand, bent at the elbow, to chest level and waved it, as if she were tentatively trying to stop traffic, or waving to someone she wasn't sure she recognized. "Wait," she said. "I've heard about these stolen horses. You mean that isn't just talk?"

"I don't think so," Earl's grandmother said calmly. "Otherwise a policeman wouldn't have come here to talk to Earl."

Earl couldn't believe what was happening. He stared at the floor. A few wind-driven leaves struck the windows. The trees, thinned of their foliage, made a sound half-whistle, half-moan. A crow cawed.

"We're going to start this whole conversation over," Lorna said. "And both of you, I want Earl to do the talking. All right?"

Both Earl and his grandmother thought it best to keep silent.

"All right," Lorna said. "Earl, did a policeman come here to talk to you about some stolen horses?"

Earl nodded.

"
Why
did he want to talk to you?"

"He thought I knew something about it."

"And do you?"

Earl nodded again.

Lorna took a deep breath "Whose horses were stolen?"

"Magnus Yarborough's."

"Magnus Yarborough's. And why would you know anything about horses stolen from Magnus Yarborough?"

Earl hesitated. For a moment his mother waited. Then her body seemed to lose its internal supports, as if her bones were made of crystal sugar, and water had been poured on them. She staggered, put out her hand, then collapsed into the nearest chair. Her coat, which she hadn't taken off—Earl's grandmother had told her about Greggy Longwell the moment she stepped in the house—puffed up from the floor, settled on her knees momentarily, then dropped, to hang forlornly off the chair cushion.

"Earl," she said. "You actually had something to do with this?"

Earl looked to his grandmother, not accusing her any more but hoping for support, hoping that since she'd gotten him into this, she might help him out. But his grandmother merely smiled at him, a brief, fleeting smile that Earl couldn't interpret—as if she thought there was nothing the matter, everything just as it should be. Within her black-rimmed glasses, reflecting for a moment the television's light, Earl saw two identical herds of tiny hippos filling the frames. Then she turned back to her beads, and the herds disappeared, and the narrator said something about how docile hippos looked but how dangerous they could become.