Neil McMahon - Lone Creek

She told me it was a quarter to seven. We were within a few miles of Kirk's now and darkness was settling fast. I started refocusing on why we'd come here.

"Now let me ask you some things," I said. "What made you and your husband decide to buy the Pettyjohn Ranch?"

"Wesley wanted it."

"You didn't?"

"I thought it was insane from the first. But I went along, like always."

"So tell me why a city businessman who doesn't know anything about horses or even like them decides to move to Montana and start raising them? I mean, I can buy it up to a point that he's trying to compensate for his feelings of inadequacy or whatever. But that's a hell of a lot of compensation."

"There was also a much more practical reason. He needed money. Like always."

"I don't get that, either. From what I've heard, he's not making any or really even trying to."

"That's not what I mean. It was a way of getting his hands on more of mine."

I shook my head, confused still further. My sense of finances didn't extend much beyond going to work and bringing home a paycheck, and the more macro the economics got, the more micro my grasp was. The concept of trickle-down threw me completely.

"My inheritance is controlled by trustees," she explained patiently. "They let Wesley invest out of it at first, but he went through several million and ended up with nothing but debt. My family got furious and had us cut off. We got an allowance, but no capital."

Life's hard lessons, I thought. The "allowance" probably would have financed a third world nation.

"Then Wes came up with the ranch scheme, and he made me go to the trustees and convince them it was for me," she said. "I'd fallen in love with the west, it would be my lifelong dream, all that. They finally agreed to give him the down payment, but that was the end."

"But he didn't gain any cash, right?" I said. "Just the opposite-he took on a huge mortgage to pay off." I had only a rough idea of what a place like that was worth, but for sure it was more than twenty million and maybe closer to twice that. "He must have known there wouldn't be any short-term profit. How'd he figure to make money? How is he making it?"

"Is this why you wanted me all to yourself?" she said, with sudden sharpness. "To interrogate me about my husband's business?" She swung away to gaze out her window, crossing her arms.

I exhaled. "Laurie, I've hardly been able to think about anything but you and last night. But I need to make sense of all this. It's the only chance I can see for us getting out of it." I reached over and touched her knee. "I intend to give you my full attention real soon, believe me."

She squeezed my hand forgivingly but didn't turn to look at me.

"Wesley found a new investor," she said. "A man named DeBruyne. The kind you never hear about, but very rich and powerful. I think he's Belgian originally, but he has homes all over the world."

I blinked. That was news.

"How did Balcomb 'find' this guy?"

She shrugged. "Business contacts, I suppose. I really don't know."

"And he just started writing checks? Let's face it, Laurie, your husband doesn't have the kind of track record that would draw most smart investors."

"Monsieur DeBruyne literally has more money than he knows what to do with. What matters to him is the huge cachet-a ranch in Montana and fine thoroughbred horses."

"Has he ever been here?"

"No. Wesley wants their partnership kept secret. I'm not even supposed to mention his name."

"I'd say all those kinds of bets are off now."

For a couple of seconds, I thought she hadn't heard me. Then she turned and gave me a smile, warm and steady.

"Of course they are," she said. "It just hasn't sunk in yet."

The ranch that surrounded Kirk's place was owned by a family named Jenner. We drove past the headquarters, a distant cluster of lights inside their main gate, then another couple of miles to the back road Reuben had described. I didn't want to risk driving on their land, but Kirk's was only about a mile and a half in. I figured I could make it there on foot, take a quick look around, and be back within an hour. There was no good place to hide the truck-not a tree in sight, and the landscape was flat as a lake-but we still hadn't seen anybody, and the odds were slim that we would. I found a roadside patch of tall weeds, gave Laurie the rest of the brandy, and told her if somebody did come by to spin a story about a spat and a boyfriend out taking an attitude adjustment walk.

The autumn chill had a real bite up here, borne on that wind that never stopped. It gave me extra incentive to travel fast and I made good time, with enough moonlight for fair visibility filtering down through the hazy clouds.

The site was easy to recognize from Reuben's description. The flat terrain dropped abruptly into a shallow coulee, sheltered and pretty, with timbered slopes and a little creek running through. The road was carved to the bottom in a few long switchbacks. Near where they ended, I could just make out the small dark shape of the shack. I walked on down there, moving quietly now on the tiny chance that someone might be keeping watch for Kirk. But it seemed as deserted as any place could ever be.

I wasn't surprised to see that his building repairs hadn't gone any farther than hauling in some materials and dumping them haphazardly outside. The lumber was warped from long exposure to the sun and the insulation had the dead soggy look of many soakings. I turned on my flashlight and stepped inside. Even calling it a shack was saying too much. It was a box hardly bigger than a pickup truck, with a sagging tin roof, rotting floor, and gaps in the barn-wood walls. Broken glass panes in the couple of windows were stuffed with rags. The furniture consisted of a bunk like a workbench, a rickety table, and a pair of chairs. The bedding, dishes, and a few cans of food were all layered with dust.

So was the mining equipment-picks and shovels, a couple of gold pans, a chemical kit, and a collection of smaller items like hammers and a compass. There were also half a dozen books on the subject. Most of the stuff was brand-new, as if he'd gotten a list somewhere, walked into a store, and bought everything on it. There was an element both laughable and pathetic about it, like with a kid who decides he's going to take up a hobby and acquires all the gear, then quickly loses interest.

But it strengthened my guess as to the actual reason Kirk had wanted this place. He'd never intended to prospect or even spend any time here to speak of. The mining tools and building materials were for show-an excuse to come here and a red herring for the ranch hands. They probably shook their heads at his ignorant belief that he was going to find gold-but never suspected what he was really up to. The Canadian border was within another two miles-just a waist-high barbed-wire fence across those empty fields. The contraband could easily have been brought here or even thrown over the fence for him to pick up.

I also didn't have much doubt by now that I'd been wrong in thinking Wesley Balcomb wouldn't be involved in something so crude. His horse-raising business was just as much of a sham as the gold panning.

The pieces were fitting together better by the hour.

When I'd talked to Reuben last night-Christ, was it only last night?-he'd told me the story behind the sale. Balcomb had already looked at several other pieces of property around the state, without making any offers. But he'd quickly gotten serious with Reuben and agreed to the asking price.

Reuben was dubious. As a matter of course, he'd checked Balcomb's financial history and learned that it was shaky. Because of that and Balcomb's inexperience, Reuben figured the venture was doomed to foreclosure. But Balcomb came up with a down payment of more than three million dollars, which must have been the last of the money he'd been able to squeeze out of Laurie's trust, plus financing for the remainder. Reuben was surprised that any bank would give him that kind of loan-and more surprised when Balcomb not only kept up with the payments, but started throwing a ton more money into building projects.