C Box - Trophy hunt

Inside the house, Marybeth jumped. "What was that?"

"Just the horses," Missy said, wearing her hostess smile and filling coffee cups on a silver tray. "Bud brought them down to the corral." "Mom," Marybeth asked, "why did he bring them down?" The tone in her voice caused Missy to frown.

"You know," she said, "since Tuff was killed, Bud's been a little nervous about the stock."

Marybeth cursed. "Thegirls are out there."

Marie covered her mouth with her hand.

Marybeth was halfway to the front door when Joe suddenly strode out of the study and over to her. Cam appeared at the study door with a drink in his hand, watching Joe with concern.

"Did you hear that?" Marybeth asked him.

"I did," he said.

The deep bass drumming sound of horses' hooves filled the night and reverberated through the ground itself as Joe ran from the porch toward the ranch yard and called aloud.

"Sheridan! Lucy! Jessica!"

Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment of their van as he passed, Joe thumbed the switch. No light. The batteries were dead, damn it. He thumped the flashlight against his thigh and a weak light beamed. He hoped the dying batteries held.

Looking up toward the corral, he could see a kind of fluttering across the ground that made his heart jump. The fluttering, though, turned out to be his daughters and Jessica Logue who were running across the ranch yard toward him from the corral with coats, hair, and dresses flying.

Thank you, God, he whispered to himself as they neared.

"Dad! Dad!"

They met him at the same instant that the outside porch lights came on and the front door opened. He could hear a rush of footsteps behind him as Sheridan and Lucy flew into him, hugging him tight. Jessica veered toward the house and buried her face in her mother's waist.

"Something happened with the horses while we were out there," Sheridan said, her words rushing out. "They just went crazy and started screaming."

"It's okay," Joe said, rubbing their backs. "You two seem all right."

"Dad, I'm scared," Lucy said.

Marybeth came down from the porch and both girls released Joe and went to her. Joe looked up to see Bud Longbrake filling the door, a.30-.30 Winchester rifle in his hands. He was looking toward the corral.

"Do you have a flashlight, Joe?" Bud asked, walking heavily from the porch.

"Yes, a bad one," Joe said.

"Bring it," Bud said, passing the van and walking across the ranch yard toward the corral.

Joe nodded, even though he knew Bud couldn't see him in the dark. He wished he had brought his pickup, with his good flashlight as well as a spotlight, instead of the van. His shotgun-the only weapon he could hit anything with-was nestled behind the coiled springs of his pickup bench seat.

As they approached the corral, which was still exploding with the fury of pounding hooves and the whinnies and guttural grunts of spooked horses, Joe felt rather than heard someone close in next to him. Cam.

"Okay, calm down, goddamit!" Bud shouted to his horses in the corral. Joe lifted his weak beam through the railing. Horses shot through the dim pool of light as they ran and thundered through the corral. He caught flashing glimpses of wild eyes, exposed yellow teeth, heavy, blood-engorged muscles flexing under thin hide, billowing nostrils, flying manes and tails.

Joe, Cam, and Bud climbed the rails and dropped into the soft turf of the corral.

"Take it easy, take it easy," Bud sang, trying to calm them. They walked shoulder-to-shoulder through the corral. Horses swirled around them. Joe could feel the weight of the animals shaking the ground through his boot soles. A horse ran too close, clipping Cam and spinning him around.

"Shit, he hit me!"

"Are you all right?" Joe asked.

"Fine," Cam said, turning back around and joining Joe and Bud.

Then with a mutual, collective sigh, the horses in the corral stopped running. It was suddenly quiet, except for the labored breathing of the animals who looked at them from shadows in each corner of the corral. "Finally," Bud said. Joe could see a few of the horses, who moments before had been in a frenzy, drop their heads to eat hay. "How strange," Cam said. "Remind me never to get any horses." Joe smiled at that. Bud lowered his rifle and whistled. "Whatever got them going is gone now." "Could have been anything," Joe said, knowing that something as innocuous as a windblown plastic sack could sometimes create a stampede within a herd. "Probably one horse establishing dominance over another one," Bud said. "Administering a little discipline within the herd. Or maybe a coyote or mountain lion came down from the mountains. Or Joe's damned grizzly bear." Why is it always my bear, Joe wondered, annoyed. He moved his light beam across the horses. Most were now eating calmly. "Okay, fun's over," Bud declared. "Thanks for the help, boys." Cam chuckled. "I think this is enough action for one evening." No one said what Joe knew they were all thinking: that somebody, or something, had attacked the herd. And the girls were right there, he thought as a shudder rippled though him. As they turned to go back to the house, Joe shone his light into a tight grouping of four horses drinking from the water trough. He could hear them sipping and sucking in water by the quart. The light bounced from the rippling surface of the water on the velvety snouts of the animals, and it reflected in their eyes as they drank. As he raised the flash, he saw something. He felt a blade of ice slice into him. "Bud." Joe held the faltering light steady on the second horse from the left, a blue roan. Bud and Cam were starting to climb the railing to get out of the corral.

"Bud."

Bud stopped as he straddled the top rail, and turned back to Joe.

"What is it?"

"Look."

"Oh, Jesus," Bud Longbrake whispered.

Cam said, "My God," his voice cracking.

The horse Joe shined the flashlight on raised its head from the trough. Excess water shone on its thick lips with growing beads of bright red. A thin stream of blood ran from the chin of the animal into the trough, changing the color of the water to pink. The eyes, much larger than they should be, bulged obscenely from the sides of its head. They were lidless.

Most of the roan's face had been cut away, and it hung in a strip from its jawbone, looking like a bloody bib. n their way home, Joe listened in as Sheridan and Lucy described what they had seen, felt, and heard at the corral. He knew it was important for them to talk it out, even though they had told him everything after the mutilated horse was first discovered.

Bud had been kind enough to put the rifle back in the house until the Picketts were down the road, Joe had observed. When they were gone, the rancher would destroy the injured animal before it bled to death, out of the sight of Missy's grandchildren. Joe appreciated the gesture.

Bud hadn't said whether he planned to call Sheriff Barnum or Hersig before the morning.

"Dad, I just thought of something," Sheridan said from the back.

"What's that?"

"Remember that feeling we had when we found the moose in the meadow?"

"Yes," Joe said cautiously.

"I felt the same thing during my falconry lesson with Nate, when the falcons wouldn't fly."

"Okay."

"Well, this time I didn't feel anything at all. What do you suppose that means?"

Joe drove for a few miles but couldn't come up with an answer.

In the driveway, he waited outside until Marybeth and his daughters were inside. Then he leaned against the hood of the van and crossed his arms, looking up. The sky was clear and milky with stars. It didn't look threatening, but it did appear endless and immensely complicated. There was a sliver of a moon. Over the mountains to the west was the fine chalk- line of a jet trail. He saw nothing else up there that shouldn't be there. He didn't know what exactly he was looking for, or what he would do if he saw anything unusual. This thing was beyond him, he thought. Unless… Marybeth opened the front door and looked out. "Joe, are you coming in?" "Yup."