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“Hey! I’m not confused!” John bellowed. “You wanna see the tracks? I can show you.”
“Just listen for a second,” Ben insisted, the story evolving in his head as he spoke. “Yesterday some clients—a couple—wanted to go for a quick trail. I agreed, but I told them to stay on this side of the thicket. I bet they went through it and ended up next to your field. But they weren’t gone very long, and they certainly didn’t come back with any horses following them.”
“What about that rail?” John demanded, though lowering his voice as the sheriff’s car rolled to a stop nearby.
“I don’t know what to tell you about that. I can only assume one of the horses must have kicked it out and they all took off. That fire break is hard ground and gravel. If they’d headed off down there I doubt you’ll see any tracks.”
“Hi, Ben, hi John,” Trevor said cheerily as he ambled towards them. “You don’t look too happy. What’s goin’ on?”
“Three of my horses have disappeared,” John grunted. “I came over to see if they came down here.”
“That’s too bad. How did they get out?”
“There was a rail down on the fence near the thicket and the tracks show them goin’ through the trees and up the hill. But Ben just said he sent a couple on a trail ride yesterday, so I guess some of those tracks are theirs.”
“Give me a description,” Trevor said, lifting a notepad and pen from his pocket. “I’ll send out an alert. If your horses are runnin’ loose they’ll be spotted pretty quick.”
“Thanks. A brown and white paint, a dark bay mare with a splash of white on her face, but don’t know the breed—could be a thoroughbred cross—and a chestnut quarter horse.”
“Got it,” Trevor declared. “You should drive your ATV along the firebreak. At some point they’ll stop and graze, or maybe wander into another ranch.”
“Yeah, I will, I’ll go right now. Hey, Tom, we’re takin’ off,” John called, waving to his cousin who had been wandering nearby. “Bye, Ben.”
“Bye, John, and good luck. I hope you find them.”
John grunted something as he walked away, but Ben didn’t hear it. He was too busy silently sighing with relief.
“You don’t wanna mess with him,” Trevor murmured quietly. “Once he loses his temper there’s no stoppin’ him. He got in a fight at The Tavern a couple of months ago and it took three of us to get him on the ground.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Dan told me. Anyway, are you stoppin’ for coffee?”
“Yep, and you can tell me what’s really goin’ on,” Trevor replied. “Off the record of course.”
* * *
Big John and Tom were halfway up the hill when John paused his step and turned around to look back at the impressive facility.
“Sure is a nice spread,” he remarked.
“Yep, now start talkin’,” John said gruffly. “Was he bein’ straight with me?”
“When he told you he’d been gone and just got back, it had the ring of truth. I could tell you thought so too.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“But there was one thing I noticed, and it wasn’t anything he said.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“His truck was parked real close to where we were, so when you two were busy talkin’ I checked it out. He had one of those big blue passes on his rearview mirror. The kind they give out at the rodeo for trailer parkin’.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Trailerparkin’, John, not regular parkin’,trailerparkin’. And it was dated today.”
“Yeah, so, he took some horses to the show grounds. What’s so strange about that?”
“Didn’t he tell you all his stalls were full and you could look for yourself? That means he was haulin’otherhorses. Where did they come from? He’s too busy to be doin’ favors like that, and even if did decide to help someone out, he would’ve sent one of his lackeys in a barn truck, not his expensive F150.”
