South of Buffalo, Wyoming
Wednesday, December 28, 1977, 2:00 p.m.
Patrick
Ice crystals tumbled through the air from the low-hanging clouds above the pickup, dancing to a landing on the windshield. For a moment, Patrick Flint stared at an oversized flake, mesmerized. It looked like a fancy Christmas tree ornament, only prettier, with an intricate pattern of branching arms radiating from a multi-faceted center. So white it was almost blue, so fresh and clean that it was hard to believe it had probably started its life as a particle of dust. But its beauty was fleeting. The heat of the defroster on the inside of the glass melted it, and it turned into a colorless blob that merged with other blobs and became water. Amazing. And to think millions more are landing all around us. The ground had been snow-free and the weather unseasonably warm until only a few hours ago. Which meant the snowflakes would be melting on the asphalt, too, then refreezing into something dangerous. He gave his head a shake and cut his eyes back to the road.
“Look at the branches on those plates. Dendrites, I’d say.” He drummed his hands on the steering wheel in time to “Frosty the Snowman” playing in his head, but didn’t sing it, sparing himself ridicule from his kids. “You get them when the humidity is high and the temperature is just perfect, like today. Five degrees. A little warmer, a little colder, and they’d be smaller. Less humidity, and we wouldn’t see all the arms.”
“It’s like a snow globe.” His son Perry leaned forward and peered upward. The boy’s football season crew cut was growing back in, a few shades darker than the snow.
“And every one of them unique.”
“Do they have different names?” Perry asked.
A heavy sigh vibrated from the lips of his daughter Trish. All he could see of her was her long, blonde braid. She was turned toward the window, but he doubted she was watching the snow. To call her moody and morose right now was downplaying the situation. Her boyfriend Ben was leaving for college at the University of Wyoming in Laramie the next day. It was an early departure for the spring semester, but he was starting a work-study program and had to report to his job.
Patrick played to his appreciative audience. “Well, there are names for the different types. Dendrites, plates, columns, needles, prisms. But even those have a bunch of names. Hollow columns, solid plates, stellar plates.” He grinned at his son. “Too many variations for me to remember them all.”
And Patrick had tried to remember them for the last few winters. He’d visited the Johnson County Library and studied up on the formation of snow during their first year in Wyoming. Living in Texas, he’d thought all snow was just snow. But now he’d quickly seen the diversity of it firsthand. Shoveling and plowing had driven the point home. Not all snowflakes—or snowdrifts—are created the same. From tiny pellets to large flakes. Heavy and dense to light and fluffy. Pill-like and differentiated to lacy and seemingly interlocking. He loved them all, until about March fifteenth or so, when he and the rest of the state were ready for sunshine and green grass.
The big dendrite flakes falling today were his favorite.
And they were coming down thick and fast, obscuring the view of the palisades of Crazy Woman Canyon and the greater Bighorn Mountains to their west. Already, a thin, white blanket had settled over Trabing Road. Off the asphalt—its dark color drawing heat from the sun that was augmented by the friction of warm tires—the ground was cooler, and snow was accumulating around the leafless buck brush, rocks, and fence posts. No dilly dallying at the ranch. These roads are gonna get slicker than goose poop.
“All I care about is how good they’ll be to snowmobile on.” Perry’s wide smile showed off a slightly undersized temporary fake tooth held in place by a retainer.
Patrick grinned back. Perry was over the moon about their weekend trip. Dr. John, Patrick’s boss at the hospital, had invited them to join a group of his friends from around the world—fellow Yale alumni, real movers and shakers—up at a mountain lodge, for guy time and winter sports. Not just snowmobiling, either. Dr. John had promised snow shoeing and cross-country skiing. They might even go ice fishing on Meadowlark Lake if the conditions were right.
Perry’s voice cracked as he joined in with a song on the radio. “You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel.”
“It’s Lucille, not loose wheel.” His sister shot him the type of cutting look teenage girls do better than anyone, her blue eyes like diamonds.
Perry deflected it in the way thirteen-year-old boys do better than anyone. “I know you are, but what am I?”
“That doesn’t even make sense. And you stink like rotten meat. Learn to take a shower like the rest of us, shrimp.”
He chanted, “So, so suck your toe, all the way to Mexico.”
“Dad, tell him to stop.”
Patrick tightened his lips to keep from laughing. “That’s enough, Perry.” The freckle-faced boy delighted in getting under his sister’s skin. Patrick was just happy to see Perry showing some spirit. Since the death of his best friend and football buddy John the previous September, he’d been in and out of a deep, blue funk. Lately, he was showing signs he might have escaped it.
A new-model, mint-green sedan appeared, driving in the opposite direction from the Flints, toward town. Not the usual type of vehicle Patrick saw out on these roads, and not one he recognized as belonging to a local. Most of those were gas guzzlers like his own truck. As it drew closer, Patrick identified it as an Impala with unimpressive tires. The driver was a dark-haired fellow, and the passenger, too, Patrick thought, from the brief glimpse he got of him. He didn’t envy them their drive. The roads already didn’t favor low clearance and city treads, although the vast distances between filling stations were an advantage of the Impala. Patrick still remembered a few years back, in Texas, when he had to hold off filling his tank more than a time or two because of gasoline shortages. It was hard to believe things happening all the way on the other side of the world could impact him at a gas pump in Wyoming, but they could, if it happened again. How much worse might it be here? Maybe he should get a smaller vehicle . . . except then he’d be in the same boat as these poor saps the whole long winter. He hoped he didn’t find the Impala and its occupants stranded later.
A gate and a new wooden O — M sign over it appeared on their left. The recently renamed O Bar M Ranch—previously known simply as the Ochoa homestead—was now jointly owned by the Ochoa and Mendoza families, descendants of Basque that had moved to the area in the early 1900s to herd sheep. Patrick clicked on a last second blinker and made a careful turn, pumping the brakes gently without sliding. The snow was deeper on the dirt entrance road. The depth wasn’t a problem yet, though.
The storm had made early afternoon seem like dusk, but visibility was better as they headed east, and he even got a decent glimpse of the property before them. Rugged hills and gullies without a tree in sight, except around the house and ranch buildings fifty feet ahead, where a herd of deer had clustered, foraging behind a wind break. Mostly does and their spring fawns, but also a few bucks of various sizes, including one with a trophy-size set of antlers. Something was running in the field behind them. At first, he thought it was a man, then he decided it had to be a deer. No one would be out there on foot in this weather.
“I can’t believe you drug us out here, three days after Christmas. It’s not even civilized.” Trish pulled her puffy blue coat tighter around herself but didn’t zip it.
“Your mom needs a horse.”
Cindy—his wife Susanne’s horse—had died over a year ago. Been murdered, actually, if that’s what you called it when someone intentionally killed a horse for no good reason. She hadn’t joined them on any rides since then, even when friends offered her their horses. Patrick’s friend, Mayor Martin Ochoa, was looking to sell his father’s horse now that the older Ochoa had retired to town with his wife, to be nearer to medical care and their son. Hence Patrick’s trip out to the O Bar M.
“She hates horses.”
“She doesn’t hate them. They make her nervous. But if we find her the right horse, she’ll get over that. She’s missing out on some great adventures.”
“And some not so great. Or have you already forgotten about our ride up to Highland Park?”
The ride where mobsters from Chicago had killed Perry’s friend John. No, he hadn’t forgotten that one, and he hated that Trish had brought it up in front of her brother, but Perry didn’t flinch. “Different adventures than that one.”
“Like the one to Walker Prairie?” Perry said.
The ride where Trish had been kidnapped by the sons of a patient Patrick had been unable to save. Of all the risks of practicing medicine, it was one he’d never anticipated. “Or that one. We’ve had plenty of other fun trail rides.” He pulled the pickup to a stop next to a blue and white Ramcharger, one he often saw parked in front of City Hall in Buffalo.
“I’ll wait here,” Trish said.
“I need your opinion.”
“My opinion is that this is a bad idea.”
“About the horse.”
“My opinion about the horse is that it’s a bad idea.”
Patrick realized debating her was the bad idea. “Noted. And you’re coming. You, too, buddy.” He smiled at Perry.
A shaft of brilliant sunlight broke through the clouds over a little white ranch house. In its front yard, a nearly vertical shaft of snow rose from the ground and began to rotate.
“Snownado!” Perry shouted, pointing at it as he climbed out of the driver’s side after Patrick.
Or snow devil. Snow devils were rare, but less so in windy Wyoming than elsewhere in the world. Patrick had seen a generous handful of them in just a few years. Combine surface wind shear and cold air over a warmer, snowy surface—especially in sunny spots, and most especially before or under a snow squall—and, just as sure as Bob’s your uncle, a column of snow particles would whirl skyward. Perry ran toward the ranch house, chasing the snownado, which danced away from him and disappeared. He returned, laughing and pink cheeked.
The three Flints walked toward a weathered red barn, zipping jackets and shoving hands in gloves and hats on heads. The kids, wool caps. Patrick, a cowboy hat, which his ears were already complaining about. The cold wind had a bite to it.
A grizzle-haired woman with a bowed back and bare head waved to them from where she was standing at a hitching post by the barn. She was clad in a long oilskin jacket with the collar up around a black scarf. The get-up made her seem miniscule. She had her hand on a normal-sized dapple gray horse, saddled and ready. The woman stomped the ground with black rubber boots, swishing her wool skirt around her calves. The horse lowered its head, eyes closed, and blew steam from its nostrils.
Patrick lifted a hand. “I’m Patrick Flint. We’re supposed to be meeting Martin out here.”
She shook her head no.
“I thought that was his Ramcharger back there?”
“It is. It break down. He call earlier today. He not coming.”
“What happened?”
“He no say. I show you horse?” She smiled, wrinkling her face into the lines of a topographical map, with her nose a mountain peak.
“That would be great. What should we call you?”
Her lips parted. Her upper gum was bare of teeth. Unable to afford dental care when she was young? By the looks of her clothing, she still couldn’t. “Rosa Mendoza.”
Patrick hid his surprise. Rosa Mendoza was the new matriarch of the ranch, married to Stefano Mendoza. From what Martin had told Patrick, the Mendozas had bought a half interest in the Ochoa homestead, for cash, which had funded his parents’ retirement. Patrick had treated Stefano for bronchitis the previous winter, too, and knew him to be fifty-five years old. Rosa was not the destitute old woman Patrick had thought her to be at first sight. And, despite her diction, she wasn’t a newcomer to the state of Wyoming, either. It just went to show you couldn’t judge a book by its cover. Not completely, anyhow.
“Nice to meet you.” He put a hand on his son’s head. Perry ducked out from under it. “This is Perry.” He waved his hand at his daughter. “And this is Trish.”
“You the doctor?”
“I am one of the doctors from Buffalo.”
“You look at my sheeps, yes?”
“Uh . . .” Patrick had filled in for the vet, Joe Crumpton, on multiple occasions, but, so far, he hadn’t been pressed into treating any sheep. Sheep dogs, yes. Actual sheep, no.
“Ewes got babies on the way. Some not so good.”
“I’m not . . .”
“Come.” She motioned him to follow with her hand.
Trish raised her eyebrows at him. Perry snorted. Patrick shook his head and followed Rosa into the barn. Sheep. There’s a first time for everything. Patrick brushed snow off his face while his eyes adjusted. He looked back at the light streaming in the entrance. Dust motes spun in the air. The interior of the wooden structure was warmer, darker, and stinkier than outside had been. With a light sniff he identified dirty wool and droppings. Sheep weren’t known as the sweetest smelling of animals.
“This way,” Rosa said. She was standing beside a wooden-slatted stall with two wooly sheep in it, both of their heads down. Above her, stacks of hay in a loft reached to the peaked two-story ceiling. “Them sheeps.”
“What seems to be the matter with them?”
She lifted her arms and dropped them. “I think they got the lambing sickness. Yes?”
Patrick had talked to enough ranchers to know she was referring to pregnancy toxemia, which was incident to low blood sugar and occurred most frequently in late term pregnancy with ewes carrying multiple lambs. And that it was often fatal. “Is that what you think?”
She nodded. “I call the hands when I find them in here, but they no answer. It their job to take care of them. Lambs due soon. These ewes dull. Not eating.”
“I’m sorry about that.” A late term pregnant ewe dull and off her food sounded serious. He leaned into the pen and palpated their sides. Under their thick wool, he found taut pregnant bellies without the layer of fat ewes relied on to make it through their pregnancies. The animals needed nutrition. “I’d call Dr. Crumpton out, if I were you. But in the meantime, do you have corn syrup? We could feed them that with a syringe.” They needed electrolytes, too. “And Gatorade?”
She nodded. “I get syrup from the house. I know how to make the alligator drink. I bring it. And I call the lazy hands again. You ride the horse while I gone.”
He noted she didn’t respond to his suggestion to call the vet. It might be nearly 1978, but, when it came to ranchers, they were by and large old school, preferring to save the money and do their own veterinary work. Not because they didn’t care about the animals, but because vet care was an expense that might leave a rancher right side down on an investment. He couldn’t force her to do it, even if he thought it was the right thing.
“All right then,” he said.
She scurried out of the barn.
“These poor sheep.” Trish opened the stall and went inside. She knelt between the ewes and rubbed their heads. They didn’t resist her. “Will they die?”
“Maybe. They probably would have if they’d been left with the herd.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Mother Nature can be harsh.”
“I’ve got to stay with them.”
“I need you out with the horse and me.”
“But—”
“I’ll do it. I’ll stay with them.” Perry slipped into the stall.
Trish started to protest, but then she buttoned her lip. Patrick didn’t know what had gotten into her, but he appreciated the reprieve. The wind hit him like a sledgehammer as they exited the barn. The temperature had plummeted, and the sun had disappeared again. He popped the collar on his flannel jacket and wished he’d brought the down one instead. Ice pelted his face, sharp and stinging. Gone was the flaky snow of earlier.
“This isn’t very good weather for trying out a horse.” Trish walked to the animal’s head with her palm down. Its eyes were wide open, whites showing. The horse snorted and jerked back against its line. “He doesn’t think so, either.”
Patrick grinned. “This is Wyoming. We can’t buckle under at the first snowflake.”
“Wind makes horses crazy.”
Patrick rubbed circles in the rigid muscles of the gelding’s neck. “Hey, boy. Martin said you’re a big pussycat. We’re just going for a short ride. If all goes well, we could move you off this ranch and into our pasture where there’s a nice run-in shelter. Would you like that?”
The horse pawed at the ground.
“That didn’t seem like a yes,” Trish said, her voice dry.
Patrick untied the lead line from the post and led the horse a few steps away. Was it his imagination or had the temperature dropped five degrees since they’d been here? He pulled his hat further down his forehead. He just needed to get this over with. For everyone’s sake, including the horse. “Trish, can you hold his lead and unclip us when I’m up?”
She walked over and held the rope, leaning toward one of the horse’s ears. “I’m sorry. This will be over soon.”
Patrick gathered the reins in his leverage hand, grasped some mane, put his foot in the stirrup, and stepped up. He swung his leg over the saddle. The stirrups felt about the right length. The horse shifted its feet beneath him. “Feels like he’s about ready to go.”
Trish unclipped the lead rope. “Or something.”
A gust of wind rattled the eaves of the barn and sent Patrick’s hat flying from his head and past the horse’s nose. The horse reared up on its hind legs. Patrick was caught unawares, before he’d set his feet firmly in the stirrups. One of his feet slipped out and he grabbed the saddle horn.
Trish stumbled backward, away from the flailing hooves, and slipped down onto her rump.
After what seemed like an eternity but was only fractions of a second, the gelding leaped forward, landing halfway across the barnyard, then whirled and ran in the opposite direction, with Patrick barely hanging on. The horse half-galloped, half-bucked for a few steps. Patrick pushed his weight down into the seat with one hand and one foot, desperately searching for the bouncing stirrup with the other foot. After several failed attempts, he found it with his toe. Just as he was about to shove his foot in, the horse came to a stiff-legged full stop.
Patrick exhaled. “It’s okay. We’re good. Everything’s okay.”
The horse ducked its head and pumped its back legs skyward with a kick so powerful that Patrick shot out of the saddle like a cannon ball. He sailed into the air. The snowflakes. I can see them even better from up here.
Then he landed on his side with a crunch. His head came to rest in the snow, and he wasn’t thinking about snowflakes anymore.
***
Patrick heard moaning and screaming. For a moment he didn’t know where he was—who he was—what had happened to him—why his side hurt so bad—who was making all the darn racket.
“Dad! Dad! Are you okay?” A female voice. The source of the scream. His brain ground a few gears, then caught. Trish. His daughter.
But Trish wasn’t moaning. That was him. Ugh. Must stop it. Scaring Trish. Real men didn’t panic their kids. He slowed his breathing. His brain came up to speed, mostly. He opened his eyes and gasped a response. “I will be. Can you catch the horse?”
Trish was kneeling over him, wide-eyed, face drawn. “I don’t think I should leave you.”
“I’m fine.” He pushed up on an elbow. Pain knifed his ribs. Don’t let her see it. He clamped his mouth shut so tight it felt like the enamel on his teeth would break. Breathing was a struggle.
Perry’s face floated into view beside Trish’s. “Dad!”
It was hard to see his kids, not just because of the pain, but because snow was coming down straight sideways. The compact pellets stung his cheek.
Then he heard Rosa’s voice. And something else. Hoof beats on the snowy ground. “You okay, mister doctor? I bring the horse. You try again?”
Holding his side with one hand, he answered in spurts around grimaces. “Gotta . . . pass . . . on that.” He hadn’t even caught the horse’s name. Hell Cat. Or maybe Satan.
“You lose your hat. I think it blow away.”
The least of his worries. “Kids, grab me under each arm and help me up, all right?”
They did as he asked without further comment. Or if they did comment, he didn’t hear them, because the pain obliterated every sound except the scream inside his head. But it was just pain. Something to block out, to push through, to get stronger from.
“Thanks.” He tried to stand up straight and almost made it, but the excruciating catch in his left side had him seeing stars instead of snowflakes. Closing his eyes, he focused on the sound of his breath. In with the good air, out with the bad air. He ran his right hand along his side. Nothing felt out of place. He was as sure as he could be without an x-ray that he’d broken a rib in his seven to ten range—or several. But the break or breaks was closed. He pressed harder into the most painful area, feeling for broken edges, without finding any. Good. Either the fractures were partial or at least they were stable. His breathing sounded fine, if short. He’d hear it if he’d punctured a lung. Bottom line, he wasn’t dying. If things got worse, he’d get an x-ray. In the meantime, he just needed to suck it up.
Trish whispered into his ear. “Dad, Rosa asked you a question.”
“Sorry. What was that?” Patrick looked at the matriarch. Rosa held a plastic pitcher in one hand, a bottle of syrup under an arm, and the lead line of the mockingly docile-looking gray horse in her other hand.
She raised her voice. “I say I call the bunkhouse and they no answer. I knock. Same. Can you go ask them when they do their jobs?” Even yelling into the wind, her words and manner were prim. He understood. Walking into a bunkhouse for men wasn’t something he’d wish on most females. Not the mess, the smells, or the possible cursing and nudity.
“No problem.”
“Want me to come with you, Dad?” Perry’s face was tight, his eyes cloudy and worried.
Patrick wouldn’t wish the bunkhouse on his son, either. Some things couldn’t be unseen, and if the hands were involved in unsavory activities, well, best that it only be Patrick to roust them. “Why don’t you and Trish get some Gatorade and syrup in those ewes for me?”
Perry nodded and bounded back toward the barn. Trish eyed Patrick suspiciously. He thought she’d give him an argument, but she just frowned and shook her head at him.
“See if you can find a plastic syringe so you can squirt it on the back of their tongues.”
Rosa nodded at Trish. “In the metal cabinet. You see it in the barn. By the big doors.”
“Okay, thank you.” Trish ran to catch up with her brother.
Rosa motioned vaguely toward the outline of a long, narrow building, past the barn. “The bunkhouse.”
Patrick squinted. He could barely see it through the snowfall. “Back in a moment.”
Holding his side, Patrick leaned into the wind, setting his feet down as carefully as if he was walking on glass. Each step was a painful stab to the ribs. The cold was really getting into his bones, too, and he wished he’d worn heavier outerwear. It took him three times as long to reach the building as it should have, four times if there’d been no wind.
With the muscles in his torso and abdominals clenched as tight as he could knit them, he rapped on the door. The contact of his knuckles on the wood jolted his ribs like a high-speed collision with a concrete wall. He groaned and shivered. More high-speed collisions, a series of them. Gritting his teeth, he settled on a mantra, which he repeated to himself in rhythm with his breaths. Inhale. It’s only pain. Exhale. It won’t kill you. Inhale. It’s only pain. Exhale. It won’t kill you.
When no one answered after a minute, he tried the door. The knob turned easily in his hand. He raised his voice. “Anyone home?”
The interior was dark and quiet.
“Rosa—Mrs. Mendoza—sent me to fetch help for some sick ewes.” He paused. “Hello?”
He took a step backward, at first intending to return to Rosa and let her know the hands weren’t home. But he was inside already, along with a musty stink that made him think of wet socks in front of a fire and overripe garbage. He might as well get the complete picture. All he really knew was no one was answering. Someone could be lying in bed ill or hurt. Unconscious.
Or hiding, not wanting to go out in the storm.
But first he needed light. He groped along the wall, searching for a switch plate. He found one but flinched. It was sticky. In a bunkhouse of bachelors, especially bachelors who worked with livestock, he didn’t want to imagine what substance was now on his hand. He flipped a switch upward. No light came on. He fumbled around for another switch but found none. Burned out? Great. Now I’ll have to find one in another room. Running into furniture in the dark wouldn’t be fun with a broken rib or three. He put his left hand in front of him, moving it back and forth as he shuffled his feet. He could make out a dim glow in what he assumed was the kitchen. An oven clock? A refrigerator ajar? It gave him a target to aim for.
He was making steady progress until his foot bumped into something. Furniture? Maybe, but it didn’t feel that solid. He shifted to the left and moved forward. His foot hit the whatever-it-was again. He reached down in front of him but didn’t find a chair, a couch, a table, or anything except air.
Frowning, he pushed the object with his toe. It gave and shifted. He pushed harder, and it rolled away from him. What the heck? Not heavy enough to be a pillow. A rolled carpet, maybe? He definitely needed light. He scooted further to the left until he was around the obstruction and shuffled double time toward the glow. His eyes were adjusting to the gloom. Not much, but enough to confirm he’d found the kitchen and to see the switch plate. He flipped two switches to their on position. The kitchen was immediately bright as a summer afternoon. He squeezed his eyes shut, holding his hand up as a shield. Darn fluorescent bulbs.
Turning back toward the entrance to the bunkhouse, he craned his neck to see around a wooden dinette table and chairs he’d skirted, looking for whatever he’d bumped into on the floor, but without success. He stepped out of the galley kitchen for a more direct view. The living area he’d traversed was small. The furniture—a love seat, a threadbare armchair, and the dinette set—dingy. His eyes were drawn to an incongruity beyond them, on the wall by the front door. The switch plate wasn’t white like he would have expected. Or not much white, as it was nearly completely covered by a dark residue. His mind went to mammalian body fluids brought in by hands in need of a good washing.
Then his eyes returned to the floor and the lump that had blocked his path. Suddenly, he wished he had listened to Trish. He’d been wrong to come to the O Bar M. Susanne didn’t want a horse. He’d busted up his ribs for no reason. And now . . . now he was staring at blood pooled near a head of short, sandy brown hair, with boot tracks leading straight to Patrick. His eyes cut to his feet. My boot tracks.
His medical training kicked in. Time would be of the essence in rendering aid. Patrick hurried toward the prone figure, ignoring the pain from his own injury. He found a young man, splayed out, a gaping incision across his throat. He’s been attacked. The wound didn’t look survivable, and the man’s chest wasn’t rising and falling. Patrick crouched, gasping, and reached for a wrist. He searched for a pulse. Didn’t find one. Kept trying. Eyed the blood on the floor. It was still liquid but lighter red than fresh blood. The process of coagulation had begun.
A thready voice called, “Help. Me.”
Patrick nearly fell over in surprise and cringed in pain from the sudden movement. He shot a look at the man, even though the sound seemed to come from someplace else, further in the bunkhouse. It wasn’t this man who had spoken. This man was dead.
“In. Here.” The words were a barely audible hiss. Patrick dropped the dead man’s wrist, stood, and spun in a circle, searching for the source of the voice. “Kitchen.”
But I didn’t see anyone in there. He retraced his tracks. A wide smear of blood, darkened but still wet-looking, led across the tiny kitchen floor to a door, which was open about a quarter of an inch with light seeping out around it. The glow from earlier. A pantry? A laundry room? A hallway?
Whatever was behind it, Patrick didn’t want to open that door. But he knew he had to.
He sucked in a shallow breath and wrenched the knob, pulling outwards to expose a surprisingly deep pantry. A bare bulb with a pull string hung from the ceiling. It illuminated cans of food and bags of rice, beans, sugar, and flour on the shelves, and a long-legged man with a boot missing from one foot slumped against the base of the wall. He held one hand on his bleeding head, hair color indeterminate. The other pressed into his round, oozing gut.
Patrick drew in a sharp breath. What had he stumbled into? “I’m here to help you. I’ll be right back after I call an ambulance.”
The man shook his head, revealing broken teeth in what may have been a smile. “Not. Gonna. Make. It.”
Patrick squatted to get a closer look at the gut injury. The man’s intestines had oozed out around his fingers. What seemed like half his body’s blood volume was seeping into gapped wooden floorboards. Patrick couldn’t be sure without moving the man’s hand, but it looked like he was dealing with another incision in addition to the traumatic head injury. Patrick gave the man a ten percent chance of survival, only because he’d toughed it out so far.
He said, “Just let me . . .”
“He. Got. Away.”
Patrick paused. Part of him wanted to discourage the man from wasting his energy on speech. But this was important information. The man in the other room had been murdered. In a few minutes, this fellow would likely meet the same end. Right now, he was a living witness to a homicide. Possibly the only one who could identify a killer. A killer who might attack someone else. Friends, neighbors. His wife. His kids. The murderer might even still be on the ranch, where he was a current threat.
“Who?” Patrick asked.
“Man. Dark hair. Dark . . . skin.”
“Indian?” The Wyoming population was by and large either light-skinned or, if dark-skinned, American Indian.
A slight headshake. “Ay-rab.”
Arab? Patrick didn’t know of a single person fitting that description in Johnson County. Nor all of northeastern Wyoming for that matter. “A man from the middle east did this to you?”
A barely perceptible nod. Then the man’s eyes closed.
“Stay with me, sir. I’m calling an ambulance.” Patrick heard the rattle of the man’s last breath before he’d even backed out of the pantry.
He was beyond any help that could be summoned, other than through prayer. Still, Patrick found a phone on the kitchen wall and made the emergency call. Then he hurried outside to give Rosa the bad news.
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