Part 53 (1/2)
”What are the chances of navigating that road in the dark?”
Michael seemed hesitant to answer. ”Physically speaking?”
I knew more was coming. ”Right.”
”There's nothing out there to b.u.mp into, except maybe a cow. There, uh, there might be another problem, though.”
”Go ahead.”
It embarra.s.sed Michael to be afraid, but his fear was real, and it showed. ”When you're up at the ranch, you can feel it.” He struggled for words, got fl.u.s.tered, then tried, ”Have you ever had somebody sneak up on you from behind, and something told you they were there right before they jumped you? That's the way it always feels up at the ranch, like somebody's there, just out of your field of vision. You can turn your head but you still won't see them. They don't jump out and scare you or anything, but they're around. And that's why . . . Cantwell . . . always seems to know everything. He has other eyes working for him. I used to think they were angels . . .” He stared into s.p.a.ce-and maybe some terrifying memories. ”I wouldn't go up there in the dark.”
A knock at the door made me jump. The door cracked open. ”h.e.l.lo?”
”Yeah, Kyle, come on in. Michael, have you met Kyle?”
Kyle strode directly to the kitchen table and gave Michael his best pastor's handshake. ”Praise G.o.d! It's great to see you free of that mess up there!”
Michael didn't know how to reply to that, but I just indicated the map he was drawing. ”He didn't actually see them dig the spring, but he knows where it is.”
”I've got two shovels in my car.”
Grave robbers, I thought grimly. ”Uh . . . okay. But what we really need is a backhoe. We aren't going to have all night.”
Another knock at the door. ”Travis?”
Jim Baylor! This was no casual visit. Jim was breathing hard, sweating, and agitated, and he was wearing a sidearm. I didn't even have to guess the source of the trouble before he said it. ”He's got Dee.”
He told us his story and we told him ours.
”Hey, I've got a backhoe!” he said.
”I know,” I replied, nodding a strong hint at him.
By the look in his eye, you'd think I'd invited him to help us sneak under a farmer's fence to steal some corn.
Michael did not look so gleeful.
”Let's have a word of prayer here,” I suggested, ”and then we'll get started.”
We gripped hands in a circle and yes, we all prayed.
I GOT MY CELL PHONE and called Morgan. She was still at the engagement dinner, but would be heading home soon. ”Be very careful,” she said. ”I want to see you again.”
”Talk to you soon.” I put the cell phone in my coat pocket.
BY THE TIME KYLE AND I reached the north gate to the Macon ranch, there was barely enough light to see it. The sun had set, and only a thin band of pink remained on the horizon. Overhead, the sky was s.h.i.+fting from indigo to black and the stars were coming out. Jim Baylor got there five minutes after we did, chugging up the shallow rise in his big dump truck, headlights blazing, his backhoe on a trailer. Michael said he'd rather wait at my place, so it would be the three of us. He was right about the gate, though. All we had to do was swing it open. We moved quickly and got inside the fence before any other traffic came by.
I felt like I was doing an Isuzu Trooper commercial, taking my trusty rig into the rugged outback over rough roads and uneven terrain and doing it in the dark, no less. Kyle kept studying Michael's map with a penlight and peering out through the winds.h.i.+eld, trying to find the landmarks Michael had noted. The dirt road, still rutted and soft in places, weaved and wound, rose and fell, went on and on. We often pa.s.sed small, idle bunchings of the Macon herd, resting by the road, grazing in the fields, paying us little mind. Jim stayed right with us, his headlights bright in my mirrors. After five miles I could make out the soft, roundish lines of the hills that sheltered the willow draw.
We came to the grade, climbed, b.u.mped, and wound our way upward, then dropped into a valley on the other side.
I saw a distant, vague form in my headlights. ”I think I see the dead tree.”
”Uh . . .” Kyle checked the map. ”It should have a feeder on the south side.”
I slowed and swerved the Trooper that direction. The headlights finally caught a white planked cattle feeder with a dozen head of cattle dozing or munching.
”Okay,” said Kyle, ”straight on for another mile, then left where you see the willow grove.”
A mile later, we found the grove and turned left. There had been some work here. The road was wider. It had been sc.r.a.ped and spread with coa.r.s.e gravel. We came to a wide, flat area.
”Here's the turnaround,” said Kyle.
”And there's the fence,” I said.
Michael had come through.
I drove into the turnaround and circled to where I'd be out of Jim's way. He rolled in, found a good spot, and shut down his engine. When his headlights winked out, the darkness moved in like a presence on every side, heavy and close, almost a liquid we could feel between our fingers. Our flashlight beams seemed pitifully weak in opposing it, like three tiny fireflies in a vast cavern. While Jim set about unchaining his backhoe, Kyle and I went to scout out the gully on the other side of the fence.
There wasn't much to see. Apparently, this used to be a boggy area filled with weeds and willow saplings. Now it was cleaned and carved out, filled with washed rock, and dammed with pressure treated timbers. A pipe ran out under the dam, with a large gate valve to control flow. It was neat and simple.
Clean too.
”What are we looking for?” Kyle asked.
”A car.”
”Well, I mean . . . you know, how do we-”
I was shaking my head. ”I don't know.”
All we could see in our roving cones of light were the wide, graveled turnaround, the post and wire fence to keep cattle out of the gully, a little bit of bare, brown soil where the gully had been sc.r.a.ped out, and a thin, green mantel of gra.s.s just coming up wherever the original soil had been disturbed. One fresh, car-sized hole, recently dug and then covered over, would have been nice.
Beyond our little circle of light, coyotes yowled and yapped somewhere in the same valley, and shadows, only shadows, provided cover and hiding for any kind of beast or spirit to come close. Was it just Michael's paranoia creeping into me? No, I had some of my own. I'd dealt with Justin Cantwell myself. I knew what it was to be watched by eyes that were . . . somewhere . . . but not really there.
CLANG! I jumped.
It was Jim, dropping a come-along on the deck of his backhoe trailer. He was working efficiently, but for me it wasn't fast enough.
I kept my light moving, both to search and to cut through the shadows to make sure they were empty. I could hear Kyle muttering little Pentecostal prayers. It wasn't paranoia. He was feeling it too.
Jim started up the backhoe, and its headlights and floodlights chased the shadows from a sizable piece of ground, a precious piece of illumined real estate we could stand and defend. While the engine warmed up and the lights consoled us, he walked along the fence line, eyeing the ground, digging in his heel here and there. ”What do you think, Jim?” The sound of my own voice startled me.
He leaned over the fence at the lower end of the turnaround and pointed his floodlight into the gully. ”This here's fill dirt, fill gravel.” He came to where we stood and studied the dam and catch basin. ”Eh, they didn't work those banks much, just filled in between 'em with the rock. But lower down . . . they put some dirt in there.” He went to his truck and grabbed a shovel from the cab. ”Somebody hold my light.”
I held his flashlight while he went along the fence, stomping the shovel in and spooning up the soil every few feet. ”Eh, yeah, you see that? This stuff here is new, it's fill.” Kyle and I looked at him like two disciples of digging awaiting wisdom from the master. ”This shoulder's new. It's all fill. Let's give it a scratch.”
He climbed into his backhoe and backed up to the lower corner of the turnaround overlooking the gully, his floodlights illuminating the work area. He lowered the first outrigger, a big hydraulic foot to stabilize the machine for digging. The backhoe tilted as the outrigger contacted the ground. He lowered the opposite outrigger. It contacted the ground- And kept sinking, breaking through. We heard something crinkle.
Jim cut the throttle on the backhoe and hopped out. We ran up, our lights searching the broken ground around the foot of the outrigger.