Shepherd's Crook (4 page)

nine

The first dog into
the arena for the instinct test was a very young blue merle Border Collie named Spring. April Bruce, her owner, had told me that she was seven months old and had never seen sheep before. Spring entered the ring calmly enough, and the tester told April to walk her closer to the sheep. As they approached, one of the ewes raised her head and turned to stare at the puppy. My heart was beginning to pound as I watched, but Spring stood still, one front foot a few inches in front of the other, shoulders slightly crouched, head thrust forward.

“Have her down,” the tester said. Spring lay down on April's command, and the tester said, “Take her leash and send her.”

As soon as she was released, Spring got to work. She ran a wide circle to get behind the three woollies and pushed them forward with her quiet presence.

Tom touched my arm and asked, “Did you say she's never seen sheep before?”

“That's what April told me.”

“Wow.”

Wow indeed. As her owner walked a serpentine path across the ring, Spring moved back and forth behind the trio to keep them moving. She stopped and backed up on command, working like a dog that had some training.

“She's a hard act to follow,” I said.

“You'll do fine.” Tom ran his hand over the top of Jay's skull and down the back of his neck. “Both of you.”

I took my attention off the action to smile at Tom. He grinned back, and then his gaze shifted to the arena and he gestured toward it with his chin.

Spring stood frozen, still focused on the three sheep. April walked backward a few more steps, and Spring glanced at her and back at the sheep. The dog's whole expression softened and she bowed at the sheep, inviting them to play. She sprang back up and bounced toward the lead ewe, who looked as confused by her
well-spoken
canine body language as an American tourist trying to make out a thick Highland brogue. Who could watch that and not laugh? I glanced at the tester, and she was practically doubled over. I looked back at the dog. She bowed once more, looked around as if to see who everyone found
so funny, and went back to work until the judge signaled the end of
the test.

My stomach went a bit gurgly as I took Jay's leash from Tom, but I sucked in a long breath and walked to the gate. Jay and I waited while Ray and Bonnie moved the first three sheep into a holding pen and brought three fresh ones out. Hutchinson stood about twenty feet away, talking to Summer. Her arms were crossed tight across her body, and even from that distance, I could see the rage that played across her face. She turned her head toward the arena, but I couldn't tell whether she was looking at something or away from Hutch.

“Come on in.”

The tester's voice brought me back to the task at hand and, as I stepped into the arena, all my saliva turned to dust. Jay pulled against the leash, but let up when I said, “Easy.” Like many Aussies, Jay can be quite the comedian, and I couldn't help wondering whether Spring's performance had inspired him to try something funny.

He didn't try anything funny, at least not on purpose, but he clearly thought his job was to keep the sheep very close to me. Two feet, max. And the sheep, a trio of Rambouillets, looked gigantic. And nervous. I was sure each one outweighed me, and that they wouldn't hesitate to throw that weight around to get away from a dog. Monty Python's famous “killer sheep” skit popped into my mind.

At the tester's direction, I released Jay and he sprinted around the little flock. Before he could get behind them, though, they took off toward the far end of the arena. Jay raced away on a parallel track, clearly planning to outrun them and turn them back. Which he did. The ewes turned away from him and came at me, shoulder to shoulder, full speed ahead. I ran to my left, trying to get out of the way, but the sheep adjusted their course. The one in the middle butted me in the belly, and I flew up and back and fell flat. I shut my eyes as they passed over me, landing a couple of good hoof strikes but missing vital organs.

“Get up!” I heard the words, but for a moment, my body wouldn't cooperate. More words filtered into my brain. The tester yelled at me. “Get up! Now!”

I picked myself up and turned around, expecting to see the sheep galloping away with Jay on their funny little tails.
Oh, shit
. They were coming straight at me again, my delighted dog right behind with a look on his face that seemed to say, “I got 'em, Mom! Here they are!”

And they knocked me flat again. I scrambled up, half expecting them to take another crack at me, but the sheep apparently had given up the notion that they could escape. They were coming toward me, but at a fast shuffling walk, and I managed to back away, follow instructions, and complete the test.

“Call your dog,” the tester said, and when I had him beside me and on leash, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Those were tough sheep for an instinct test.” She chuckled. “Flighty.” I was still trying to catch my breath, so I just nodded. “Your dog could use a bit more training, but he passed.”

Jay grinned at me, butt wiggling, and as soon as we left the arena, I knelt on the ground and hugged him. “You did great, Bubby.” He answered by leaning into me and sliding his body against mine until he was on the ground, paws in the air, for a belly rub, which, of course, he got.

I grinned at Tom, who gave me a
thumbs-up
. Still grinning, I walked Jay up the little roadway where we had found the tracks so that we could both unwind a bit. Thirty yards along, we veered onto a narrow lane—a narrow dirt track through grass, really—that ran between the back of the arena's holding pen and a field of corn stubble. We went only a short distance, but the lane ran on, apparently, to the back of the property, which I guesstimated to be a hundred acres or more. I stroked Jay's head and said, “Maybe we can take a longer walk later, Bub.”

As we turned around, the light caught a disturbed stretch of ground at the edge of the cornfield. I stopped for a closer look. Paw prints.
Big
paw prints, like the one we'd found earlier. There were only four of them, as if the dog had hopped off the grass momentarily as he headed for the pole barn at the end of the lane. I made a mental note to tell Hutchinson, but my attempts to think through what the prints might mean were cut short by the sound of a woman's voice. It was Summer Winslow, and although she was not yelling, her words slashed through the distance between us like a machete.

“How could he do that?”

I tried not to stare, or to draw her attention, but I couldn't resist a quick glance as I turned away from her toward the arena, aiming to rejoin Tom. She was talking into her phone, her whole body radiating emotion, but for a few seconds I could no longer hear what she was saying. Then her voice rose again and she made another threat. It hit me in the gut like the stampeding ewes.

“He'll pay for this.”

ten

Those huge paw prints
Tom and I had found came back to me six hours later as I stood in a hot shower and studied a hoof-shaped bruise above my knee. The paw prints were at least four and a half inches from heel to toenail. They were made by a humongous dog. Not only that, but they were oddly placed. Why would a dog be that close to the fence? Something must have forced him, or her, off the roadway. The print I saw later was just as big, and its placement also suggested that the dog had been nudged off the grassy edge of the lane, but only for a few steps. Maybe the dog was dodging a vehicle? Or a stampede? Could someone have used one of the bigger herding breeds to drive the sheep? Then again, maybe whoever owned the property had a big dog. Who
did
own the property? I had no sooner thought
I'll have to find out
when my inner Voice of Caution screamed
No you don't! No more snooping around!

Despite the questions whirling around my brain, I was enjoying my little bit of time alone in the house. Not really alone, but the cats were napping. Tom had left the event after Jay's instinct test, and he'd taken Jay and Drake to free me up to take photos. The upshot was several hundred images of dogs and sheep. I had also photographed those tracks we'd found, all the while reminding myself that I was not getting involved in any sort of investigation. I knew where that could lead. I also knew it was already too late.

When the clinic had wrapped up, I helped Evan secure the sheep in the larger holding pen. Evan said Summer was busy elsewhere, and Ray and Bonnie were nowhere to be seen. I wondered whether it was Ray who had prompted Summer's hissy fit on the phone earlier in the day. If so, had she fired him? Was that why he wasn't around to help wrap things up? Evan had been uncharacteristically silent, so I hadn't asked. I'd just pitched in and moved sheep. I had minimal contact with them, but sheep are a smelly lot, and by the time we finished, my hair and skin and clothes reeked of lanolin. I went straight for the shower when I got home and let water, steam, and speculation swirl around me for a good long time.

The paw prints had looked fresh, and they were much too big for any of the dogs at the instinct test or clinic. We often see Bouviers and Briards and other large breeds at herding events, but not today. I was stumped. I was also worried about the missing sheep. The thought of rustlers taking those sheep to slaughter made me ill, but who steals sheep for their wool? Then again, Summer had bought a half dozen new animals a few months earlier, and I thought I remembered that she paid four hundred a head, so they did have some monetary value.

Tom and the dogs rolled in around six, but I had my hair dryer on and didn't know they were back until I emerged from the bathroom with my arms full of towels and dirty clothes. Jay and Drake escorted me to the bedroom, where I piled my load into the clothes basket before lugging it through the kitchen to the laundry room.

“Pizza on the way,” said Tom, saluting me with a bottle of local brew. “Lie down, boys.”

I smiled, poured a hard lemonade, added a slosh of vodka, stepped over the dogs, and gave Tom a big smacker on the cheek. “No wonder I love you.”

“Are you sore?”

“A bit,” I said. “I think it will be worse tomorrow, but at least sheep are fairly light on their pointy little feet.” As an animal photographer, I'd been bitten and trampled, though never seriously injured. As a herding student, I'd been jostled and knocked flat more than a few times, but again, the bumps and bruises were all superficial.

The alcohol was just beginning to ooze through me when the pain center in my calf lit up. I jolted straight up and screeched as I reached for my leg. My hands found soft fur over adolescent lankiness, and once I made sure all needleclaws were out of my flesh, I lifted Pixel onto my lap. “You little demon.” I snuggled the kitten under my arm and gently pressed a paw until her stilettos poked out of their sheaths. I looked into her big green eyes. “Time for a trim.” She made an O of her mouth and wiggled as I opened my grooming drawer, snagged the nail clippers and my ratty old rooster towel, and sat back down. My handsome orange tabby Leo lets me trim his claws without fuss, but at five months old, Pixel is not so complacent. I swaddled her in the towel and got to work, one paw at a time.

My phone rang as I nipped off the last nail point, so I handed the kitten to Tom and checked caller ID. My brother Bill. It was his day to visit my mother at Shadetree Retirement Home, so a panicky little bird fluttered around my head, chirping questions.
Has something happened? Is she sick? Has she blown the place up?

Mom's health, physical and mental, had been relatively good for several months, but that could change in the time it took to throw a trowel at another resident, which she had done a few weeks earlier. Granted, she had cause. He had uprooted a row of coleus she had just planted in the nursing home's therapy garden. Luckily her aim
was off, but the whole thing had upset her, and for two weeks she couldn't remember anyone except her new love, Anthony “Tony” Marconi. Then again, with Bill, a hangnail can be a medical emergency.

As I finished my phone call with Bill, Leo strolled into the kitchen and Pixel froze, then squirmed out of Tom's arms and leaped to the floor. She arched her skinny back, pointed her tail at the ceiling, and bounced sideways across Leo's path. He glared for two seconds, and the two of them raced down the hall toward the bedrooms. Jay cocked his head as he watched. He liked playing with kittens and puppies. Drake just wrinkled his brow as if he wasn't sure he wanted such an uncivilized creature disrupting his life.
Just wait, old man,
I thought,
just wait.

“Everything okay with your mom?” Tom asked.

“She asked Bill to buy her a pair of size thirteen slippers.” I sighed. “My dad's size.”

Daddy's been gone for years.

eleven

Sunday morning found me
wishing I had drunk one fewer vodka lemonades the night before. If I hadn't needed to get to the trial grounds by eight o'clock, I would have wrapped my throbbing head in an ice pack for an hour or two. As it was, Tom had snuck out early for a field training session with Drake, and I had slept through the alarm clock. I barely had time to get dressed, grab my dog and my camera, and hit the road. Thank the caffeine gods that my favorite java drive-through was on the way.

I parked my van just about where I had the day before, but there was no way Jay was staying there unattended. He trotted beside me as I crossed the part of the field roped off for parking, which was filling up with vans and trucks and other dogmobiles. In the distance, several people tossed discs for leaping dogs, including Kathy, the woman I had met the day before with Edith Ann. I made a mental note to try to get some good shots to send her as a thank you.

The arena and adjacent pens were still empty, so Jay and I headed up the
well-traveled
roadway toward the big corral. Evan was loading the hayrack with breakfast for the woollies, and the sweet scent of fresh hay wound around me as I approached. Jay stopped to sniff at a door in the side of the building, whining softly, but he came to me when I called.

“Good morning.”

Evan turned, brushing the front of his sweatshirt with his fingers. “Hi, Janet.”

“Any news?”

He shook his head.

“I'm sorry.”

He nodded, sniffed, and rubbed his cheek against his sleeve. “Damn hay dust gets me.”

Right
. The mental version of a photo I had taken of Evan holding a newborn lamb, still steaming, came to me. In the picture, he sat on the ground, his thigh pressed into the ewe's hip, the lamb cradled in his arms. The expression on his face would have done St. Francis proud.

“Ray usually does this.” He glanced around and added, “Usually beats me by an hour.”

Evan had no sooner stopped speaking than Summer's voice crackled behind me. “He's nowhere to be found. We'll have to make do.”
Okay, so she didn't fire him.
She stopped beside me, her mouth smiling with no collaboration from her eyes, and said, “Maybe Janet can help for a bit.”

My hand massaged the big
killer-sheep
bruise on my hip, but my mouth said, “Sure, happy to.”

Summer turned back the way she had come, and Evan picked up a galvanized bucket and said, “Be right back. I'll switch this out for a wheelbarrow.”

I stood close to the fence and breathed in the almost tangible fragrance of sheep and
half-chewed
hay. I like to watch animals eating. Unlike too many people, our nonhuman kin nearly always look deeply satisfied, no matter the fare. The sheep nearest the fence eyed Jay as she—or perhaps it was a wether—chewed, and I would be hard pressed to say whether the look was thoughtful or indifferent.

Something clanked behind me and the whole flock jumped away from the fence, snorting and baaing. Jay spun around; I flinched and turned. Evan stood just outside the door Jay had sniffed, not the big sliding door, but what looked to be the way into a storage room. He folded at the waist and stumbled away from the building. The bucket rocked back and forth on the narrow concrete apron. I crossed the roadway, my heart racing even before I looked into the room and wished I had not.

Ray Turnbull hung from a crossbeam, a length of rope knotted around his neck.