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Authors: Bill Crider

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He'd been in the chair for less than a minute when he heard rifle shots.
RHODES BRAKED THE CAR TO A FAST STOP NEAR THE TENTS AND jumped out. The dust cloud that had trailed behind him from the camp house rolled over him and past him as he looked for Bud Turley.
Turley wasn't there, which meant that he was in the woods, which was where the gunshots had come from. Rhodes ran down the path and into the trees.
He hadn't heard any more shots, but that didn't mean there had been none. Closed up in the car and bouncing along two dry ruts with weeds slapping at the car's sides, he might not have been able to hear them.
Before Rhodes had gone twenty yards into the trees, he saw Bud Turley coming toward him at a lope. Rhodes moved off the trail and waited for him.
Turley didn't stop. His eyes were wild, and he hardly even glanced in Rhodes's direction. Rhodes called his name, but Turley
ignored him. So Rhodes turned and followed him out of the woods. Since there didn't appear to be anyone, or anything, chasing Turley, Rhodes took his time.
When Turley reached his Jeep, he leaned against it breathing hard. By the time Rhodes got there, Turley's breathing was still ragged, and his eyes were still wild.
“What happened?” Rhodes said.
“I don't know,” Turley said. He took off his cap and wiped his head. His hands were shaking. “I didn't want to go in those woods, but you made me. I was looking for the fellas you told me to find, and somebody started shooting at me.”
“There's nobody else in there except your friends,” Rhodes said.
“If they were my friends when they got here, they're not now, not if they're shooting at me.”
“I told you your friends would be dangerous with those rifles. You get people stirred up about Bigfoot, they're likely to shoot anything that moves.”
“You're the one that sent me in there.” Turley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You must have wanted me to get shot.”
“If I'd wanted you shot,” Rhodes said, “I could have done it myself. Your friends should be more careful.”
“Maybe it wasn't them. Why don't you go and have a look for yourself. You're the sheriff. It's your job to investigate when somebody gets shot at.”
Rhodes hated to admit it, but Turley actually had a point. It was indeed a part of the county sheriff's job to make sure that idiots didn't kill each other by accident. However, now that Turley was
back at the tents, he was out of danger, a fact that Rhodes pointed out to him.
“That doesn't make a damn bit of difference, and you know it,” Turley said. “They shot at me!”
His voice shook with anger. He was more disturbed than Rhodes had first thought.
“And it's your fault,” Turley said.
“Don't blame me,” Rhodes told him. “And don't say it's my fault. It's the fault of your buddies, the idiots with the rifles. Now how are we going to get them out of there?”
Rhodes could see that while Turley didn't object to the word “idiots,” he did object to the “we.”
“That's your problem,” Turley said. “It's not my job.”
“You're the one who brought them here,” Rhodes said. “You have a responsibility.”
Turley didn't reply. He just stood by his Jeep and looked at Rhodes.
Rhodes looked back.
After a while Turley said, “I can't go back in there. I just can't. I don't want to get shot.”
Rhodes couldn't say that he blamed him.
“At least you can see the problem,” Rhodes said. “You can see why those two, not to mention all those other Bigfoot hunters who've checked into the Western Inn, need to get out of town and let things settle down here. If they don't, someone's going to get hurt.”
“They won't like that idea. They think Bigfoot's in these woods, and that he killed Larry. They want to find him. Some of them have been waiting for years to get a chance like this.”
“That's too bad,” Rhodes said. “Because you're going to have to convince them that they're wrong about Bigfoot and about this being a chance to find him. I'll get those two out of the woods, but you'll have to do the rest.”
Turley shook his head as if he didn't believe Rhodes could do it. “How are you going to get them out?”
“Like this,” Rhodes said.
He walked over to the Jeep and started to honk the horn. He kept on honking until he was sure the men in the woods must have heard it.
His only mistake was forgetting what generally happened when cattle heard a horn honking. Often a rancher would honk to call the herd when he wanted to feed them, so when Bolton's cattle heard the Jeep's horn, they responded by starting toward the sound. Before Rhodes had stopped honking, the entire herd that Rhodes had seen near the camp house had come into sight, all of them ambling in the direction of the Jeep. Rhodes didn't mind the cattle, but they might cause some problems if they stepped on the tents.
On second thought, he didn't care what happened to the tents. He honked the horn a few more times.
“Maybe they don't hear it,” Turley said. “They're pretty deep in the woods.”
“If the cows can hear it, your buddies can hear it,” Rhodes said, honking the horn again.
As slow as the cattle were, they arrived at the Jeep before Turley's friends. They surrounded the tents and the vehicles, nosing around, looking for food, mooing when they didn't find it.
“I hope they don't go in the woods,” Rhodes said. “Your friends might shoot them.”
Turley didn't respond. He stayed close to his Jeep and tried to keep the cows from licking the sides. They weren't going to do any damage to the front of the Jeep or the headlights, thanks to a heavy-duty brush guard that was protecting them.
Finally Rhodes saw two men coming along the path in the woods. They were both carrying rifles, and as they walked along one or the other of them would look over his shoulder back down the path.
When they came out of the trees, they walked over to Turley, who introduced Rhodes as the sheriff.
“This here's Charlie and Jeff,” Turley said.
The two men nodded to Rhodes. Both wore faded jeans and T-shirts. Jeff's shirt was emblazoned with a picture of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the number 8, while Jeff Gordon was smiling from the front of Charlie's shirt. Both Jeff and Charlie wore NASCAR pit caps. Jeff's was a red and white Earnhardt that sported the Budweiser logo. Charlie's was purple and gray. It had the number 24 on it, and it advertised DuPont Motorsports. Neither man said anything to Rhodes, and they didn't offer to shake hands.
“The sheriff says we gotta leave here right now,” Turley told them. “He says we're trespassing on private property and you'll have to take down the tents and leave.”
The men stared at Rhodes with silent disdain from under the bills of their NASCAR caps. They looked so much alike that he thought they must be brothers, with their pointed, unshaven chins and their lank hair hanging out from under their baseball caps. The bills of the caps were pulled low so that Rhodes could hardly see their eyes. He didn't like that.
“We can't leave,” one of the men said. His jaws worked in a rhythmical movement as he chewed what Rhodes supposed was
tobacco. “There's a Bigfoot in there, for sure. We spotted him a while ago. Ain't that right, Jeff.”
“Sure is,” Jeff said. “We took a couple of shots at him. We'd a-got him if he hadn't been able to run so fast. That sucker can really move. No wonder nobody's ever got a picture of him.”
Rhodes looked at Turley. Turley looked at the ground.
“Bud,” Rhodes said.
Turley's head came up.
“Tell them,” Rhodes said.
“Hell, that was me you shot at,” he said. He swallowed hard. “If I hadn't run like a jackrabbit, and if you two were any better shots, I'd be dead back in those woods.”
Jeff and Charlie shook their heads.
“Sure as hell didn't look like you,” Charlie said. “I'd a-swore what we was shootin' at was ten feet tall.”
“Me, too,” Jeff said. “At least ten feet. You really sure it was you, Bud?”
“Damn right, I'm sure. I know when someone's shooting at me. You think I'm an idiot?”
Jeff and Charlie looked at each other, then shook their heads. Charlie surprised Rhodes by blowing a big pink bubble. First Chester Johnson with his Juicy Fruit and now Charlie with his Dubble Bubble. Or Bazooka. Whatever it was, it wasn't tobacco. Could it be that everyone in the world was on a health kick?
“All right, then,” Rhodes said after he got over his surprise.
“Now that we've got it settled about who you were shooting at, you two can pull up stakes and get out of here. The owner of this property doesn't want anybody trespassing, and if you come back, I'll have to arrest you.”
Charlie's bubble popped.
“What about the rest of the society?” Jeff said.
“What society?” Rhodes asked.
“The Bigfoot Hunters of Texas Society, that's what society. We're all meetin' tonight at some restaurant in town to plan our strategy.”
“The Round-Up,” Charlie said, having cleaned the gum off his chin. “That's the name of the restaurant.”
“You don't need a meeting,” Rhodes said. “I'll tell you what your strategy is. It's to stay away from these woods. I meant what I said about arresting you. Ask Bud if you don't believe me.”
Charlie and Jeff turned to Turley, who nodded. “He means it.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “But we're the ones with the guns.”
“I'm not worried about your guns,” Rhodes said.
“You must be crazy, then.”
“I'm not crazy,” Rhodes told him. “I'm just doing my job. And you need to get started. Bud will help you with the tents. Right, Bud?”
“I guess I will,” Bud said.
Jeff and Charlie stood there for a while. Charlie blew another bubble. Rhodes wondered if someone hiding in the woods would play the song from
Deliverance
on a banjo, but it didn't happen. Finally Jeff and Charlie looked at each other and nodded.
“We'll just put these rifles in the truck,” Jeff said.
“You do that,” Rhodes said.
They put the rifles in the big Dodge and slammed the door.
“I'll trust you to be gone when I check back here,” Rhodes said. “You be sure of it, Bud.”
He could feel their eyes on him as he walked to the county car. When he got there, he called in the license number of the truck to have Hack run it through the computer and check for any outstanding
warrants or traffic violations. There weren't any, which surprised Rhodes a little.
He looked over to see what Jeff and Charlie were doing. They were standing near their truck with Bud, watching him. Rhodes started the car, and by the time he pulled away, they'd begun taking down the tents.
 
 
Claudia and Jan were excited.
“This is even bigger than the murder,” Jan said when Rhodes walked up to the spot where she, Claudia, and Vance were standing under a tarp that now stretched from a tree on the creek bank to some poles that Vance had set up near the trickle of water in the creek itself. Rhodes didn't know what anchored the poles, but he figured Vance knew what he was doing.
“What she means,” Claudia said, “is that we have an assignment to write a separate story about the mammoth.”
“Congratulations,” Rhodes said. “How did you get it so soon?”
Claudia pulled a cell phone out of her backpack and held it up. “I can send pictures on this thing,” she said. “Isn't technology great?”
Rhodes wasn't so sure he agreed, so he made a noncommittal noise.
Claudia didn't seem to notice. She said, “When the editor saw the dig and heard what Dr. Vance had to say, we got the assignment with no trouble at all.”
“Won't the publicity cause a problem?” Rhodes asked Vance.
“Not by the time the article's published,” he said. “I'll be back in school, and we'll have this site covered up for the winter. I don't think anyone will bother it then.”
“Did you find anything today?”
“That's the best part,” Jan said. “We did find something.” She paused. “Well, Tom did.”
“Just another tooth,” Vance said, “but I think we can get to the jaw pretty easily, and I'm almost as sure that the tusks will be here somewhere. There could be a pretty complete skeleton. That would make this an excellent find.”
BOOK: A Mammoth Murder
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