I pulled the wire gate shut and dropped the loop to secure it. I sure didn’t know whether this was a good idea, her along with the sheriff on T-Bar Ranch land. There wasn’t no one in sight; just a lot of grassy hills, greening up in the spring, and blue sky, and puffy white clouds that could betray a feller and dump snow or ice or cold rain in a moment.
I guessed we wouldn’t see anyone, what with all but two or three of them T-Bar men in town. But I pulled my badge from my pocket and pinned it on my coat. That badge could put me there on the ranch proper. But I didn’t have no badge for her.
It sure was quiet. The wind had slowed to a whisper and the midday sun had warmed things into a fine day. I didn’t see one steer or cow or calf or bull. Nothing but a golden eagle, wings spread out to every last feather-tip, patrolling for mice or rabbits.
We began to ride among T-Bar cattle, grazing peacefully, their brand burned into their left flank. Crayfish wasn’t much interested in breeding up, so his cows were a motley bunch, every color I could think of and then some, and showing a lot of horn, like there was some Texas longhorn in the lot.
We rode onward, and then hit a bunch of young stuff, yearlings mostly, and this bunch interested me because it had a Two Plus brand burned into their left flank, instead of the T-Bar. I steered Critter close to have a look, and sure enough, the brand was one I’d never seen, and I could see how easy it was to turn a T-Bar into a Two Plus with a running iron. But there the bunch was.
“I guess I’ll have to look in the brand book to see who owns those,” I said. “Maybe Crayfish does.”
“Maybe he didn’t but does now,” she said.
“What do you mean by that.”
“They’ve been mavericked. You can call it the Two Plus if you want. I’ll call it the Double Cross.”
That sure was a revelation.
“I guess I’ll look for some answers,” I said.
“Now I’m going to take you to the cemetery,” she said.
“What’s there?”
“You’ll see.”
She took the lead, riding toward ranch headquarters located in a broad gulch a mile ahead. We still didn’t see a soul, what with all them boys in town. But long before we reached the ranch buildings, she turned into a side gulch, and we followed it completely out of sight of the main buildings. It was a brushy gulch, and we scared up deer and skunks and various critters, working through red willow brush and whatnot. The gulch divided into three branches, and she took the rightmost one, which wound deep into grassy hills.
I sure got to wondering where she was going, and how she knew to come to this silent notch in the foothills, but she kept right on until she suddenly stopped.
There, on a clay flat, were four long mounds, that sure looked to me like four graves. They weren’t marked, and one of the mounds was pretty much disintegrated from flash floods running over it.
“Dig,” she said.
But I didn’t have a shovel.
SIXTEEN
There sure wasn’t a shovel anywheres except maybe at the T-Bar headquarters, and I wasn’t planning to borrow one there. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to itch.
“How do you know these are graves?” I asked Queen.
“What else would they be?”
“Ranchers bury lots of critters.”
“No, we mostly drag dead horses or dogs or sheep into brush and let nature take care of itself.”
“I don’t know of anyone come up missing. Them cowboys come and go, riding the line, and I don’t know of any one that’s gone and got himself killed.”
“Not cowboys. Women,” she said.
“Now what the devil are you mouthing about?”
“Women in those graves. The ones who vanished from the Red Light District.”
There were some of those. A few of them fancy ladies had up and vanished, and the madams told me about it. But mostly everyone figured they got hooked up with some cowboy promising to marry them and live in eternal bliss forever, and so they just took off.
“There were a few,” I said.
“Crayfish Ruble’s women.”
Crayfish Ruble was a veteran of every parlor house in town, and I’d heard a thing or two about him and the girls. He had favorites, and once I heard he’d bought one from a madam and hauled her off. That’s the last anyone saw of her.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“It’s common knowledge,” Queen said. “And here’s where they ended up.”
“You got proof?”
“Sheriff, I know things without what you call proof.”
