“How do you know all this about the Breedlove ranch, and Demott and everything?” Chee asked. “This is Colorado. It’s not your territory.”
“Ranching—and stealing cows off of ranches—don’t pay much attention to state lines,” Finch said, not taking his eyes off the cows.
“The Lazy B has leases in New Mexico. Makes ’em my business.”
Finch extracted a twenty-stick pack of chewing gum from his jacket pocket, offered it to Chee, extracted two sticks for himself, and started chewing them. “Besides,” he said, “you got to have something going to make the job interesting. I got one particular guy I keep looking for. Most of these cow thieves are ‘hungries.’ Folks run out of eating money, or got a payment due, and they go out and get themselves a cow or two to sell. Or, on the reservation, maybe they got somebody sick in the family, and they’re having a sing for the patient, and they need a steer to feed all the kinfolks coming in. I never worried too much about them. If they keep doing 11 of 102
15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
it, they get careless and they get caught and the neighbors talk to them about it. Get it straightened out. But then there’s some others who are in it for business. It’s easy money and it beats working.”
“Who’s this one you’re specially after?”
Finch laughed. “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be talking about it, now would we?”
“I guess not,” Chee said, impressed with how insulting Finch could be even when he was acting friendly.
“We’d just go out and get him then, wouldn’t we?” Finch concluded. “But all I know about him is the way he operates. Modus operandi, if you know your Latin. He always picks the spread-out ranches where a few head won’t be missed for a while. He always takes something that he can sell quick. No little calves that you have to wean, no big, expensive, easy-to-trace breeding bulls. Never messes with horses, ’cause some people get attached to a nag and go out looking for it. Has some other tricks, too. Like he finds a good place beside a back road where there wouldn’t be any traffic to bother him and he’ll put out feed. Usually good alfalfa hay. Do it several times so the cattle get in the habit of coming up and looking for it when they see his truck parking.” Finch stopped, looked at Chee, waited for a comment.
“Pretty smart,” Chee said.
“Yes, sir,” Finch agreed. “So far, he’s been smarter than me.”
Chee had no comment on that. He glanced at his watch. Another three minutes and he’d go ring the doorbell and get this job over with.
“Then I’ve found a place or two where he fixed up the fence so he could get ’em through it fast.” He paused again, seeing if Chee understood this. Chee did, but to hell with Finch.
“You could cut the wire, of course,” Finch explained, “but then the herd gets out on the road and somebody notices it right away and they do a head count and know some are missing.”
Chee said, “Really?”
“Yeah,” Finch said. “Anyway, I’ve been after this son of a bitch for years now. Every time I take off from home to come out this way, he’s the one I’m thinking of.”
Chee didn’t comment.
“Zorro,” Finch said. “That’s what I call him. And this time I think I’ll finally get him.”
“How?”
Silence, unusual for Finch, followed. Then he said, “Well, now, that’s sort of complicated.”
“You think it might be Demott?”
“Why you say that?”
“Well, you wanted to come up here. And you’ve collected all that information about him.”
“If you’re a brand inspector you learn to pick up on all the gossip you can hear if you want to get your job done. And there was some talk that Demott paid off a mortgage by selling a bunch of calves nobody knew he owned.”
“So what’s the gossip about the widow Breedlove?” Chee asked. “Who was the lover who helped her kill her husband? What do the neighbors say about that?”
Finch was wearing a broad smile. “People I know up in Mancos have her down as the brokenhearted, wronged, abandoned bride.
The majority of them, that is. They figured Hal ran off with some bimbo.”
“How about the minority?”
“They think she had herself a local boyfriend. Somebody to keep her happy when Hal was off in New York, or climbing his mountains or playing his games.”
“They have a name for him?”
“Not that I ever heard,” Finch said.
“Which bunch you think is right?”
“About her? I never thought about it,” Finch said. “None of my business, that part of it wasn’t. Talk like that just means that folks around here didn’t like Hal.”
12 of 102
15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
