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CHAPTER THREE
This was a part of the county where I hadn’t spent much time.
The western part of Cottonwood County climbed up the eastern slope of a portion of the Rocky Mountains mostly known as the Absaroka Range. Mostly because to flatlanders like me, mountain ranges are not neatly segmented like county or state lines. They blur and blend.
Or, they strike out on their own.
Take the Big Horns. They sit well east of here, with a hundred miles of Big Horn Basin stretching between them and the Absarokas, yet the Big Horns are also considered part of the Rockies. Does that make sense? No.
But back to the Absarokas being part of the Rockies, which does make sense, even to this Illinois-bred reporter.
In the southern corner of Cottonwood County, the semi-arid basin reaches farther west than in the rest of the county, with the mountains barely beginning their rising march before you run out of county.
That’s where Elk Rock Ranch was located.
From the flatter land, you had a better view of mountains than once you’re in them. As the road started climbing, pines obscured more and more of our line of sight. An s-curve-laden dirt road brought us to the classic pole ranch entrance with a top crossbar. A hanging wood sign with wood cutouts announced Elk Rock Ranch.
As we drove in, a familiar vehicle coming out slowed for the driver to raise a hand in greeting and the passenger to wave with a broad grin.
Rubbing it in.
The passenger was Needham Bender, owner and editor of the Sherman Independence, the driver was Cagen, his reporter.
They not only got to the story before KWMT-TV, but they were done before we arrived.
My consolation was that we’d have the story on-air multiple times before Needham’s next edition came out Friday.
Their being here first and our reporting the story first would be parsed in every detail when we next had dinner, most likely cooked by Needham’s wife, Thelma.
It required a couple more s-curves on this entry road before the pines retreated and we crossed a wooden bridge over a creek, reminding me of arriving at the home ranch of Tom’s Circle B. But instead of a ranch house and multiple working buildings, what we saw ahead here were cabins. Lots of cabins.
Close by, clusters of two or three cabins nestled into the trees and contours of the land, roughly circling a large timber building with a front porch that nearly dwarfed its two stories.
Diana drove to where the road became a dirt loop, connecting the inner grouping of cabins, the big house, a paddock, and, farther back, a large, wooden barn, with other outbuildings nearby, like chicks around a hen.
It all had the air of a well-equipped stage without any actors.
Not a person. Not an animal.
Back past the outermost of the outbuildings, I spotted three cabins that appeared to be the oldest of any I could see. One had yellow crime scene tape around it.
“Back there,” I pointed out to Diana.
“Uh-huh. I see the road to get there.”
She followed what was less a road than a route lightly passed over by a couple horse-drawn wagons a hundred and fifty years ago. But she did get us close.
The middle cabin had the door in the middle and a window on either side. The other two were mirror images of each other, with the door to one side and the pair of windows on the other. The one with crime scene tape was on the left.
The good news was there was no sign of a current official presence. The Cottonwood County Sheriff’s department had been here, done its work, and departed, leaving only the crime scene tape to mark its territory.
The bad news was there was no sign of anyone else, either.
Except — finally — one living creature. A solitary, medium-sized dog, flouting the crime tape by sitting on the porch inside it.
As it took in our vehicle, it slid into a dejected down, chin on paws.
We were not the hoped-for arrival.
