Part 3
Wade glanced toward the store windows. His truck stood outside with an empty feed sack blowing against its rear tire.
“Lark’s got old rope damage,” he said. “Not from somebody being careless once.”
“I’ll check the missing-child reports and get the county notified,” Denise said. “For now, keep him where he feels safe. I’ll start on the horses too.”
She wrote a few more lines, then looked directly at him.
“How are you holding up?”
“They both need feeding.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Wade took the salt cart from her. “It’s the answer I’ve got.”
She let him push it to the counter.
When he drove home, Lark was waiting near the gate. Noah ran out of the barn before Wade had finished shutting off the engine.
“I rode her!”
Wade’s hand stopped on the door handle.
“Noah—”
“Just from there to the water bucket. She stood for me to get on, and then she walked. Real slow.”
Wade looked from the boy to the mare. He ought to have scolded him. A recovering horse, a child alone, no helmet, no one to catch him if he fell. The words were ready.
But Noah was grinning with his whole face. Wade remembered Adam on Tuck for the first time, sitting so straight that his small back must have ached.
He crouched in front of Noah.
“Next ride, I’m here. That’s not up for discussion.”
The grin faltered.
“Okay.”
Wade touched the brim of the boy’s cap. “And you tell me every bit of this one while we unload.”
Noah began before Wade had lifted the first sack.
They ate stew that evening. Lark worked through a heap of hay outside the cabin, close enough that Noah could hear her chewing. Wade caught himself humming as he washed their bowls. He stopped, rinsed the cloth, then started again without quite meaning to.
After Noah went to bed, Wade walked out to the fence. The moon had cleared the roof, and the snow in the paddock was blue in the shadows.
He rested a hand on Lark’s neck.
“You two made yourselves a team out there.”
She blinked and leaned, barely, into his palm.
A clink came from the trees.
Lark stiffened before Wade turned. Her ears fixed on the dark beyond the fence. He waited, looking between the trunks. The sound had been small but distinct: metal striking metal, then a brief drag.
Nothing else moved.
He brought Lark into the barn and fastened the door. For a long time afterward, he sat beside the cabin window with the lamp turned low.
In the morning, he found bootprints outside the paddock.
They had softened at the edges, but they weren’t his. They came down from the ridge, stopped near the fence, and went back the same way.
He said nothing to Noah. He didn’t tell Denise yet, either. Instead, he strengthened the gate, checked his rifle, and saddled Tuck for a slow circuit along the lower ridge.
The trees held no movement. Snow slid from a branch behind him, and he turned hard enough to make Tuck sidestep.
“Sorry,” he muttered, rubbing the gelding’s neck.
When he returned, Noah was sitting on a patch of thawed dirt beside the porch, drawing with a stick.
Wade bent over the marks.
“What’s that?”
“Me.” Noah pointed to a small circle. Then he traced a larger shape around it. “And her.”
The bigger outline was open on one side, with a hooked line where Lark’s head would have been bent toward him.
“Was that in the storm?”
Noah nodded. “She put her nose right here.” He touched his own shoulder.
Wade laid a hand on the boy’s hair, then stood and looked toward the trees.
That evening Lark refused to settle. She stood at the paddock’s outer rail, testing the air with lifted nostrils. A crow came low over the snowfield and vanished beyond the ridge.
Wade followed the mare’s stare until his eyes watered from the cold.
“I’m paying attention,” he told her.
He stayed outside until she would follow him into the barn.
The next morning, he packed the rifle in the truck and told Noah he was going to look at the old horse range. The boy had been running around Lark only minutes earlier. Now he stood motionless beside her.
“You’re coming back?”
Wade checked the cabin latch, then turned.
“Yes.”
Noah watched him without blinking.
“I’m coming back,” Wade said again.
The road climbed through pines bowed under old snow. He parked beside the former range entrance. Its wooden sign had tilted off one post, and someone had shot holes through the line identifying it as a mustang conservation area.
He continued on foot.
Fresh tire tracks cut across the trail. Beyond them, the snow had been churned by hooves and dragged equipment. Wade followed the disturbance into a clearing where lengths of rope lay beside a bent gate. A broken halter hung from one hinge.
Near the gate, a dark patch had frozen into the snow.
He knelt to look more closely.
A branch cracked behind him.
Wade turned with the rifle coming up, then lowered it when he recognized Denise’s coat.
“Give a person some warning,” he said.
“I tried your name twice.” She stepped into the clearing. “You were looking pretty hard at that ground.”
He pointed to the ropes. “Tell me this is permitted.”
“No. The bureau closed this holding site two years ago. Whatever’s happening now, it isn’t theirs.”
She crouched beside a set of hoof marks and brushed away loose snow.
“Shod saddle horses,” she said. “They’ve been using riders to work the captured ones.”
“Lark came from here.”
“Looks likely.”
He stood. “Maybe they turned her loose in the storm.”
“Or she got away.” Denise looked toward the broken gate. “Either way, somebody lost a horse they meant to keep.”
They searched for another hour. They found spent shells, cigarette ends, and the frozen body of a young coyote near the brush. Wade stopped beside it, his mouth pressed flat, before moving on.
At the edge of the clearing, Denise held up a hand.
A metallic groan rose from the ravine below. The wind pushed through the cut, and the sound came again.
Wade moved to the edge. Partway down, a truck bed protruded from a drift. A loose panel shifted against its frame.
He picked his way down while Denise remained above, watching the footing. The truck had gone nose-first into the cut. One door was open, its window gone. Inside lay broken chain, torn cloth, and a strip of leather wedged beneath the seat.
Three letters had been stamped into it.
“KAR,” Wade called up.
Denise went still.
“What?” he asked.
“Keldane animal research. Private contractor. They used to work with the bureau before an investigation shut them down.”
Wade held the leather tag between his thumb and forefinger.
“Somebody kept the equipment,” he said…
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