“Stay, girl,” Joe told Maxine as he parked to the side of the Sheriff ’s Department vehicles and swung out of his pickup. He fitted his gray Stetson on his head and skirted the Blazers. The smell of the cows was not as ripe as the smell of the moose had been, and he was grateful for that.
“Who called you out here?” Barnum asked. His deep-set eyes were cold, bordered by blue folds of loose skin. He lowered a cigarette from his lips and jetted twin streams of smoke from his nostrils.
“Heard it on the mutual-aid band.”
“This look like a Game and Fish matter to you?”
“I’m not sure what it looks like yet, Sheriff,” Joe said, walking among the carcasses, “but I found something similar done to a bull moose on Crazy Woman Creek.”
It had been months since Joe had seen Barnum, and that had been fine with Joe. He despised Barnum, knowing the sheriff was as corrupt as he was legendary. There were rumors that Sheriff Barnum was in his last term of office, that he would retire within the next year. The electorate that had supported him for twenty-eight years seemed to be turning on him for the first time. The local weekly newspaper, the Saddlestring Roundup had run a series of editorials in the spring saying outright that it was time for Barnum to go.
Deputy McLanahan said, “Your moose have his pecker cut off ?”
Joe turned his head to McLanahan. This guy was just as bad, Joe thought, if not worse. Although the deputy wasn’t as smart or calculating as Barnum, he made up for it with his cruelty. He was a loose cannon, and he liked to pull the trigger.
“Yup,” Joe said, dropping to his haunches to examine a heifer. “Something took off most of his face, as well as his genitals and musk glands from the back legs.”
“I ain’t never seen nothing like this,” Don Hawkins said, bending over one of the dead cows. “These cows are worth six, seven hundred bucks each. Something or somebody owes me nine thousand bucks, goddamit.” The reason the smell was not as bad, Joe realized, was that the cattle had been dead for at least two weeks. Although still somewhat bloated, the bodies had begun to deflate and collapse in on themselves in fleshy folds. The wounds looked similar to the bull moose’s, with some differences. Skin had been removed from most of the heads in precise patches. One heifer’s head had been completely denuded of hide, which made it look like a turkey buzzard with its thin neck and red head. In some cases, tongues and eyes had been removed, and oval patches were missing from shoulders. On the females, their bags had been removed. Half of the cows had missing rectums, showing large dark holes between their flanks.
Joe felt a distinct chill as he walked from body to body. This was like the moose, times twelve. It also meant that whatever had been doing this had been in action for at least two weeks.
“The blood’s drained right out of ’em,” Hawkins said, shaking his head. “This is crazy.”
“Are you sure about that?” Joe asked, looking up at the rancher.
“Look at ’em,” Hawkins cried, holding his hands palms-out. “You see any blood anywhere? How in the hell can you cut up a damned cow like that and not have any blood on the ground? Do you know how much blood there is in a cow?”
“Nope, I don’t,” Joe said.
“I don’t know either,” Hawkins said, flustered. “A shitload for sure.” McLanahan said, “No matter how much there is in a cow, there’s none of it on the ground. It’s like the blood got sucked right out of them.” “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Barnum growled, turning his back to McLanahan. “Don’t start saying things like that.” “So what did it?”
“How in the hell should I know?”
“Maybe some kind of predator?” McLanahan asked. “A bear or a mountain lion or something?”
“There is a bear,” Joe said. “A big grizzly. I saw his tracks this morning. But I can’t believe a bear could do this.”
“That’s all I need,” Barnum said, his voice rising, “a bunch of mutilated cattle and a goddamned grizzly bear on the loose.”
“Not to mention space aliens sucking the blood out of domestic animals in the middle of ranch country,” McLanahan said dramatically. “It’s happened before, you know.”
“Stop that!” Barnum spat. “I mean it.”
Joe battled a smile and addressed Don Hawkins.
“When did you find these cattle?”
Hawkins was slow to answer, and when he did, it was with hesitation. McLanahan’s speculating had rattled him.
“My guy Juan found ’em a-horseback this morning. He called me at the ranch house on his radio.”
“Have you been missing these cattle?”
Hawkins nodded. “We moved most of our herd up to Montana where they have some grass. The drought here forced us to move our cows this fall. We knew we had stragglers in the timber, and Juan’s been looking for them and herding them down.”
“Did you see anything unusual? Hear anything?”
Something washed across Hawkins’s face. Joe waited. He could tell that Hawkins seemed a little embarrassed about something.
“This is stupid,” Hawkins said. “Juan told me a few days ago he was getting dizzy when he rode up here. He thought it was the elevation or something. I thought it was laziness. It’s easier to look for cows on flat ground than in the timber, so I figured he was angling for easier work.”
Joe didn’t say that he thought he knew the feeling. “Dizzy?” McLanahan asked. “Like dizzy how?”
