Dead Horses (eBook)

Next morning, I called the FBI’s Albuquerque field office. My usual contact was on assignment, so I talked to an agent who was new and not enthusiastic about investigating a livestock killing. “I’ll get right on it,” he said, after consulting his boss.

I took that to mean later. Much later.

Then I called the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office in Bernalillo. Deputy Robert Bowditch was an old friend. More often than not, the sheriff would jump on livestock cases.

“Got a dead horse at Tent Rocks. FBI’s not enthusiastic, how about you?” I asked him.

“You mean that missing Arab stud from north of Santa Fe, what, Rancho Camino de Rincon?”

“The same.” I filled him in on the details.

He said, “Weird dump site. Why drive a horse all that way just to shoot it? Plenty of places for that up north. Why here?” he asked.

“Nothing comes to mind. Doesn’t even make sense to steal a horse like that. Can’t show it. Can’t breed it. Can’t even sell the sperm without papers. An Arab without registration is worth zip.”

“That all you got?” he asked.

“Questions is all I got.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything, but FBI and BLM is up each other’s ass more often than not. Sorry, I’m not jumping into that hornets’ nest. Enjoy.” Bowditch hung up, off to protect and serve.

The Bureau of Land Management’s Rio Puerco field office in Albuquerque had jurisdiction over wild mustangs, so I called. Special Agent Raphael Torres seemed interested until I gave details.

“This horse is wild or stray?” he asked.

“No.”

“Not my problem.”

“Okay, I’ll bury it.”

“Not at Tent Rocks, you won’t,” he said.

“You said it wasn’t your problem.”

“It is if you bury it in my national monument,” he huffed and hung up.

Great. I reported a crime, and nobody came.

Last, I punched in Rancho Camino de Rincon’s number. The ranch foreman, Tyler Richman, answered.

“Found your horse.” I told him when and where.

Richman exhaled. “You’re gonna tell me Al-Fadi is dead.”

“You knew?”

“Second one this month. A filly, Mahbouba. Found her up in Colorado a week ago. Shot in the head. Horrible thing. Fadi?”

“Same. What you want me to do with the carcass?”

“Damn. You got a trailer?” he asked.

The image of the stinking remains flashed in my mind. “Carcass is in bad shape.”

“Mr. Romero, the owner has great affection for that horse and wants him buried at the ranch. Believe me, he doesn’t take no for an answer. You will be well compensated for your time and any damages.”

“I’ll get back to you.” I hung up.

On the far wall of my office, my eyes caught sight of a framed photo I’d hung of me in my dress blues thirty years and that many pounds ago. For whatever reason, it grabbed my attention. Next to it used to hang our wedding picture. A rectangle of unfaded paint emphasized its absence. Costancia must’ve taken the photo with her; a gesture that meant maybe she didn’t think the whole marriage a disaster. There were good days, for sure, and we’d raised a fine son.

A picture of Costancia hung to the left of the bare spot. She was nineteen then, with long, thick hair; black and radiant. Her smile delighted everyone she’d ever met. Her voice calmed. Her eyes captivated. She had tried to make it work for twenty-five years. I did, too, but I fucked it up by putting more effort into my work than into our relationship.

I glanced at the divorce decree and pushed it to a far corner of my desk and hoped it’d disappear. Regret closed my throat and tightened my chest, so I directed my attention to a situation I might be able to fix. Dead horses.

I sat wondering why someone would kill a beauty like Al-Fadi. Not rustlers because those outlaws have connections and the Arabian would be in Mexico by now. People who knew horseflesh wouldn’t kill a pedigree stud that might bring in over a few hundred grand. Kidnap for ransom? The owner would’ve received demands and threats. And there’d be no missing livestock reports.

The murder of this beautiful animal bothered me more than I thought. Animals have souls and killing them without need pisses me off. An old man from my pueblo, had to be a hundred, told me something that stuck once.

“When our ancestors traded hunting for farming, they lost respect for animals once equal. To justify themselves, when Man enslaved the animals, they had to deny the animals’ intelligence, deny them their souls.”

The next day, I motored to Tent Rocks, this time with my Winchester lever-action, because he that is forewarned best be armed. I usually carried my Ruger Blackhawk .30 carbine revolver. A good piece in a frontal assault but it would be ineffective against a threat from the top of the cliffs, if it came to that. I felt for the shells on the seat for comfort.

The dead stallion lay as I’d left him. Coyote had visited during the night again and Buzzard sat on the cliff watching me. Nothing else had changed. Neck hairs under my braid tingled as I scoped the bluffs. My head felt naked to the likelihood of a riflescope, its crosshairs making pin pricks on my skin. Maybe this time it was just paranoia screwing with my head, but I still kept my rifle close.

I had work to do and couldn’t spend all day scanning the scenery. My thoughts turned to the carcass ahead of me. I love horses, always have, and wasn’t happy at the thought of desecrating such a beautiful animal, but I admit I was a little excited to use the new winch I’d installed last month. I flipped my braid over my shoulder and ran the cable through the hook then around the horse’s chest. God, it stunk.

When I’d almost winched the whole mess into the trailer, a hind leg snagged on the gate and tore off, landing in the dirt. I threw the leg inside, thinking I should’ve kicked myself in the ass with it. The image of this magnificent Arabian, trailing banners of long radiant hair, now minus a leg and jammed inside a small trailer, burned my gut. To destroy an animal like this, a man had to be twisted.

I headed north on Interstate 25. Ten miles south of Santa Fe, a hot sun shimmered the highway and the surrounding grasslands of La Bajada Mesa, the juniper-studded flat top where wagon tracks of 17th century travelers are etched into volcanic rock. Interstate 25, a modern overlay of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adento, the Royal Road of the Interior, obscured the original road, the principal trade route between Santa Fe and Mexico City. The route bustled with traders, thieves, and mercenaries for nearly three hundred years, but history enjoys little respect in the modern world.

I breathed in the story of this mesa as I motored up its slopes. La Bajada nurtured my people long before the Spanish came. Pre-contact footpaths, stone piles, and agricultural grids bore witness to settlers, farmers, and conquerors.

Anthropologists say my people arrived as early as twelve thousand years ago. The anthropologists are wrong, though. My people are not new arrivals. We have been here forever. I am not merely from this place; I am of it.

My awe of this land’s past was deflated by the thought of the regal animal, descendant from a line of horses five thousand years old, loaded in my trailer.

I glanced in my rearview and noticed a truck five hundred yards behind me. I watched him for twenty minutes in the rearview. It must have been amateur hour because when I slowed, he slowed. When I sped up, so did he. I shook him loose at the Cerillos exit with a quick off-and-on.

North of Santa Fe, up US-84 past Pojoaque and south of Nambe, I turned onto a road shaded by gnarled cottonwoods and marked by a timber arch that framed the Sangre de Cristo Range. At the end of the pasture-lined road, I spotted a two-hundred-year-old stucco hacienda built in traditional pueblo-style. I knew the inside without even seeing it: lots of fancy tile, fountains, twelve-inches-in-diameter vigas supporting the latillas crisscrossing the ceiling, and skull-cracking door frames built for shorter people who lived two centuries ago.

Ranch Foreman Tyler Richman greeted me under the shade of a hundred-year-old cottonwood canopy. A breeze rustled the leaves. I appreciated the opportunity to cool down. The day was a scorcher.

Richmond looked forty; a skinny horseman in his Wranglers and white, long-sleeve, snap-button. A sweat-ring soaked through his Stetson. Beat-up boots and a lame gait confirmed my opinion; anyone who’s ever broken horses ends up broken, too. Richmond had the used-up expression of the over-stressed on his thin, tanned face.

I told Richmond what I’d observed at the crime scene including the suspicious gawker.

Richmond said, “The weirdo gets his kicks watching crime scenes?”

“Who knows? Drives a ’72 Chevy C-10. Blue, patched and primed bomb. Beat to shit. Not smart enough to tail undetected. Couldn’t read the plate numbers, but it looked Colorado. Ya know, red and white. Veteran’s plate, maybe.”

Richmond nodded.

“How does something like this happen?” I asked.

Richmond dropped his eyebrows. “What do you mean by that?”

I’d stepped in it a little deeper than I wanted to. I had to sympathize with the guy because his job was threatened. “I mean, how do...