A Mating of Hawks (27 page)

He ran his hand through short yellow hair. “Miss Benoit, there's nothing here I can go on. But I'll sure have a look around your property and see if I can pick up any clues.”

“Have some lunch first,” Tracy said. She felt discouraged. Terry Marks was a nice young man, but his job was undoable and he couldn't be blamed for thinking she was slightly paranoid.

When he returned two hours later, he didn't think that. He carried a dozen traps, all shiny new and unmarked. “A good trapper makes his rounds every day, not just to keep the animals from suffering but to keep scavengers from ruining pelts.” He shook his head. “Eight of these had something in them. Only one coon was alive and he was so far gone I clubbed him. These were all close to trails or places you'd likely go. I didn't find any traps back in the sort of places a poaching trapper would normally choose.”

Tracy didn't want to think about eight creatures dying slow agonizing deaths. “There's nothing you can do?”

“I'll take the traps in. We can check fingerprints but unless your poacher has a record, that won't do much good. I'll come around as much as I can but—”

“You have other problems. But if this is deliberate—”

“Why don't you phone the sheriff? If he's skeptical, tell him to check with me.”

After downing a beer cooled in the water trough, Marks departed. Tracy made a third trip to Sonoita and told her story to the sheriff. He was busy with a murder but promised to send a deputy over. “It's natural you'd be a mite jumpy after that bum kidnapped you,” he said soothingly. “Why don't you get one of your cousins to stay at your place awhile?”

“They're busy,” Tracy said briefly, but after she'd hung up, she tracked the suggestion a moment.

How stupid she was being! She'd ask Chuey Sanchez to locate a couple of reliable men to patrol her land. She wouldn't involve him or the ranch vaqueros, since that might bring Judd down on her, but she felt fairly certain of two things: Fricks had hired someone to harass her and that someone wouldn't keep up his little tricks if it was made difficult.

She turned off the highway and took the ranch road. Chuey was at the corral watching Roque halter-break a young gelding. When she told him her problem, the graying foreman frowned.

“
Doncellita
, this is a thing you should take to Don Shea.”

“I can't, Don Jesús.” She gave him the title of respect with his proper name.

He said stubbornly, “The men of your family should know this.”

She smiled coaxingly. “I'd much rather handle it myself. I don't think there's real danger. A couple of men around should discourage our trapper-hunter.”

“Tivi and Rogue will come tonight. If they can't persuade this
sangrón
to leave you in peace, I will send for a couple of my wife's cousins.”

Roque whistled. “Ay, papá! Those are real tough dudes!”

“That,” said Chuey, “is the idea.” He entered the corral and took the gelding's halter, speaking softly to the skittish animal before he turned to his rail-thin son. “You go right now with Teresita. I'll send your brother over after supper.”

Roque picked up his bedroll and told his wife and mother where he was going. He and Tracy reached Last Spring a few minutes ahead of Mary, who had used some of her inheritance to purchase a bright-red Datsun. The sheriff's deputy was right behind them, a tubby gap-toothed middle-aged man who made laborious notes of what Tracy said, scuffed around the clothesline, and said he'd sure tell the sheriff all about it. “Call us if you have any more trouble,” he invited.

“Maybe you could stick around and see that we don't,” Mary suggested. He looked pained.

“Ma'am, I got two more places to go tonight. No one's been hurt here, hasn't even been assault or robbery.” Tipping his hat, he drifted off.

Mary swore with color and feeling. “It probably is that sneaky Fricks bastard. But you can bet he won't be traipsing around where he might get hurt.”

“Tivi and I will camp by the crossing,” Roque planned. “No fire or light. Then if a stranger comes across, we'll cream him.”

“Try to get him to say who sent him,” Tracy urged. She rummaged around till she found her battery-powered tape recorder. “Keep this handy and start it if he's talking.”

“He'll talk,” said Roque. Tracy decided from his expression that he could be as mean a dude as his cousins once-removed when events warranted it.

After supper he went down to stand guard and wait for his brother. Tracy commanded Le Moyne to go with him.

“Isn't this a note?” Mary shook her head as they barred the cabin door. “Here we are forted up like the good old days, except what the hell is an Apache doing on the inside?”

“Slow-ground justice.” Tracy laughed. She thought of the cruelly killed animals and lost her grim amusement. “This really is a pretty clever ploy. They're not hurting or threatening us, not even breaking in. If the trapper gets caught, he'll probably get off with a fine for killing a doe out of season and another for trespass.”

“And if he gets nailed, it sure won't be by the sheriff's department!” Mary pulled the curtains, though usually, with the cabin so secluded, they left them open at night. “No offense to Roque and Tivi, but I wish Geronimo and Shea were on lookout.”

“Not Shea!” said Tracy. She hadn't told Mary about his proposal. It still hurt too much, was too shaming. “He thinks I can't hang on to this place without his help. I'm going to show him!”

There was the sound of a motor, then a shutting door, and soon after, the faint sound of the Sanchez brothers calling to each other. “It's going to look like a parking lot across the stream,” Mary pointed out. “If our poacher's smart, he'll take one look and forget it.”

“Maybe for the night, but if Fricks would try such tactics, I doubt he'll fold up so easily.”

By ten o'clock, when they went to bed, there had still been no commotion. Tracy was divided between hoping her tormentor would be caught and the fragile chance that perhaps he'd decide it was too risky and quit. That was no real answer. Fricks or whoever was behind the harassment would just find another ploy.

She was absolutely determined not to appeal to Shea.

Tivi and Roque came up for breakfast. They had taken turns on watch. About midnight, Tivi had heard a truck coming and seen its lights, but it had turned around and retreated.

“Can't have much guts,” said Tivi, draining his third cup of black coffee. “Guess we won't have to call in Mama's mean cousins after all.”

“Don't be too sure,” cautioned Roque. “Sneaks are harder to handle than machos. Tracy, you want one of us to hang around today? Papa said it would be okay.”

Tracy looked at Mary, who chuckled. “I'll be here, boys.”

“Only at night,” said Tracy quickly, “please arrange that someone comes—and I'll be perfectly happy to pay your mother's cousins.”

“Don't worry about a thing,” Tivi grinned expansively.

“Nice guys,” said Mary as the women watched the brothers, one skinny, one plump, both bowlegged, head for their truck. “But I'd still rather have Geronimo.”

“You just want an excuse to see him without his thinking you've weakened,” Tracy accused.

Mary wrinkled her pretty brown nose. “It's a good excuse.”

“Too good.” Tracy shook her head apologetically. “I'm sorry, my friend, but there's no way to call in Geronimo without Shea's knowing.”

“You've had a fight,” Mary diagnosed.

“A doozey. You could put all the confidence that man has in women on the head of a pin and have room left over.”

“Geronimo says his wife gave him a raw deal.”

Tracy shrugged. “And his mother left him. But I happen to be neither of the above.”

“Men are devils,” Mary said with such a droll look of intrigued disgust that Tracy chortled.

“I think I'll go see if our feathered friend is still in his nest. One day soon those little rascals should start flopping out on branches and trying to fly.”

“Should make good pictures,” Mary nodded. “You deserve some exclusives after the way mom and pop almost scalped you.”

Tracy climbed the stilted blind, grateful that though her ankle was still tender, it was reasonably trustworthy again. She squinted through the eyehole. No valentine faces peered out of the hollow, nor could she see either parent roosting close by.

From all she had read and heard, it wasn't possible for the babies to have learned to fly and desert the nest so quickly.

Worried, she hurried down, froze as she noticed two bundles of feathers beneath the tree. Going slowly over, she nudged one body gently with her foot. It turned over; a half-devoured mouse in its claws.

One of the adults. Dead, but she could see no cause. The mate was equally lifeless. Some disease? If both parents were dead, the owlets would need food, and quickly.

Tracy scooted the blind's ladder over to the tree and climbed up. No wonder she hadn't been able to see the fluffy owlets. They were huddled in the bottom of the nest. They hadn't died of starvation. Mice, shrew and rabbit parts lay about.

Dazed, Tracy scrambled down and sat on a rock with her head in her hands, ignoring Le Moyne's snuffles of sympathy. She hadn't exactly loved the family of owls, but she'd admired them. Hours of patient watching and the rescue of the lost one had made them familiar, individuals who mattered.

It
must
be disease. Yet
all
of them? In such a short span? She stiffened at a horrible thought. Birds died from eating insects dosed with pesticides. It figured they could die from poisoned mice.

She shook off her baffled mourning, started to the house for a sack. Diseased or poisoned, the owls mustn't be left to feed and kill other creatures. She'd take them to town and get a veterinarian to determine what had killed them.

If they'd been poisoned—She fought back furious tears. She could call Fricks and tell him his campaign wasn't working, that if she had to, she'd get the sort of guards who'd maul his hirelings till he couldn't get any more. But he wouldn't care how many men were beaten up so long as he could get more, and for money there'd always be some.

Damn it! He could sit in his Phoenix office and claim innocence no matter what happened down here. Unless one of the poachers could be made to implicate him. Cagey as Fricks was, he probably had two or three middlemen between him and the actual pawns.

For a second Tracy thought of appealing to Judd. This should be right up his alley. But she didn't want to get involved with him again, and it went against her grain to ask for the protection she'd repudiated before things got touchy.

Explaining to Mary all that had happened and that she was taking the owls to town, Tracy asked if her friend wanted to go along.

“I'd better mind the store,” Mary said. “Leave me Le Moyne and I fear no man.” She added vehemently, “It's bad luck to kill owls and if someone did it, I hope they have all there is!”

Tracy got her purse and a bag. She was scooping the baby owls into it, grimaced as she realized she'd better take the dismembered mice, too, both for analysis and to keep them from being eaten. Holding her breath, she used a twig to roll the ugly bits into the sack. She was collecting the adults when Shea's pickup roared to a stop across the stream.

XIX

Her ridiculous heart lifted but she quelled it immediately. Damn it all, had the Sanchezes told him what was going on? Caught literally holding the bag, there wasn't much she could do but face him as he took the foot-log in a couple of pantherish strides. His gray eyes blazed as he caught her by the shoulders.

“Why didn't you come to me?”

“I can handle it myself.”

“Sure! You called in the game warden, the sheriff and the Sanchezes! Hell, if Inez hadn't had more sense than you or Chuey, I wouldn't know now!”

“Inez told you?”

“She sent Lupe over.” He sniffed in distaste. “What have you got in that stinking sack?”

Tracy showed him. “I'm taking them to the vet to see if the mice they ate were poisoned.”

He put the sack down. “I don't think you need to do that.”

“But—”

He grinned savagely. “When Lupe told me Tivi and Roque would be here, I decided to put off giving you hell and go give it to Hal Fricks.”

“You
what?”

“Routed him out of bed. Told him I knew he wasn't setting the traps and shooting, but if any more of it happened, he'd need plastic surgery, if not an undertaker.”

“Shea! What if it's not him?”

He shrugged. “Well, that's the chance we take, but he let enough slip to convince me.” Shea grinned down at her. “I scared him so bad that if there
are
any incidents, I'd hesitate to maul him without more proof. But I'm betting there'll be a swift end to trapping around these parts.”

“I didn't ask you to help,” Tracy muttered. “And we'd have handled it some way. So don't start thinking I can't manage without you!”

He shut off her words with his lips. Her indignant sputter faded into the sweet, aching delight of being in his arms, till she remembered his insulting proposal and tried to struggle free.

“
I
can't manage without you,” he said against her throat. “Marry me, Tracy.”

Her heart was pounding and her knees felt as if they had melted. “Because you want to be sure I don't sell out?”

“You've proved you won't.” He touched her hair, caressed her cheek. His eyes seemed almost black. “No, I guess I gave myself that reason, but it wasn't true, even before. I want you to marry me, honey, because I'm sick of reaching out in the night and finding you're not there.”

Almost unable to contain her joy, she answered with her kiss. “Oh, Shea!” Her voice was tremulous but now it didn't matter, she didn't have to pretend around him. “I thought you never would!”