Blazer Drive (3 page)

“It
is
what I thought it was,” Dad said. “This isn't good. Coyotes aren't big enough to bring down cattle.”

My horse tried to turn away. It must have smelled the blood.

“Dad,” I said, “over there.”

I pointed at more dead cows, half hidden in the dips of the land.

Dad let out a deep breath. “Six,” he said after a long pause. “Six dead. This isn't the time of year for bear. I can't believe wolves are back in the valley. What is going on?”

He lowered himself from his horse and tied the reins to a tree branch. I did the same with my horse. We walked toward the first dead animal.

We didn't like what we saw. Someone had taken an ax and chopped at it. Blood and
bones and guts and cowhide were scattered everywhere.

“This is sick!” I half shouted. “Who would do this? And why?”

“Six thousand dollars,” Dad said quietly. “Each animal is worth a thousand dollars. Six dead. Six thousand dollars. That's what someone has cost us.”

Dad was wrong. It cost far more. Over the next hill, we found twelve more dead. That was another twelve thousand dollars.

Then, on the other side of the fence, we found Big Boy. Someone had chopped him up just as bad as the others. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of prize bull was now twenty dollars' worth of dog food.

Weird and terrible as it was to find the dead cattle, I still had to play hockey. Monday afternoon, I was back at the Riverside Coliseum for practice.

I didn't say much as I put on my hockey equipment in the dressing room. It really bothered me what someone had done to Big Boy and the other cattle.

Who? Why?

It worried me so much that I barely remembered getting dressed. I was leaning forward to tie my skates when Dougie Metcalf came over and sat beside me.

“Watch the telephone,” he whispered.

I didn't get it. Why was he whispering?

I looked around the dressing room. Guys looked back at me and grinned. That told me something was happening, but I couldn't guess what.

I watched the telephone. We had a big dressing room. Each of us had a place to hang our equipment between games and practices. At one end was the shower area. At the other a telephone hung on the wall. It was used mainly by Coach Price or the trainer or assistant coaches.

The telephone rang.

Gordie Penn jumped up. He already had his skates on, and he clunked toward the telephone. He answered it before Coach Price could reach it.

Gordie listened. He shook his head to let Coach Price know it wasn't for him.

Coach went out to the rink to get ready for practice.

“Hey, Luke,” Gordie said, “it's for you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Luke said from his corner of the dressing room. “If it's the Montreal Canadiens, tell them I can start tomorrow.”

“Fat chance,” Dougie whispered. “Luke's hurting our team more than he's helping. I wonder why Coach Price lets him keep playing.”

Luke walked over to the telephone and took it from Gordie.

“Hello?” Luke said. He frowned. “Hello?”

Dougie kept whispering to me. “Johnny Smith is calling from a pay phone down the hall. He's speaking soft, so Luke can barely hear him.”

“Why?” I whispered back. Johnny Smith was one of our defensemen. I noticed a lot of guys in the dressing room were trying to hide smiles as they watched Luke on the telephone.

“Hello?” Luke said again. He pressed the phone against his head. He was getting mad. “Hello?”

“Why is Johnny speaking softly on the other end?” Dougie said back to me. “So Luke will press the phone against his ear.”

“Well,” I said, “that explains it.”

Dougie could tell I didn't mean it, and he grinned at me. “Are you kidding? Before you got here, Gordie put heat rub on the phone.”

“Huh?”

“Heat rub. You know, the stuff that—”

“I know what it is,” I said. It was a thick lotion that you put on sore muscles. It smelled like spearmint and warmed up until it was hot. Sweat and water only made it feel hotter. If you could help it, you never put it on before a game. You used it after, when you needed the heat to help your muscles. “But why would he—”

I stopped myself from asking the rest of my question. I suddenly knew why.

“Hello? Hello? Speak up!” He pressed the phone against his head so hard it looked like he was trying to screw it on. “I can't hear you!”

Now Luke was really mad. He slammed the phone down and marched back to his
corner of the dressing room. He looked at all of us as he sat down. “You'd think a person would be able to raise his voice.”

“You'd think,” Gordie Penn agreed.

The rest of the guys tried to look innocent. They all knew about the heat rub. They knew what Luke didn't know. At least what Luke didn't know yet.

This wasn't a good sign for Luke. A year ago, no one would have dared to play a trick like this on him. Tricks were something you played on rookies to make them part of the team. Tricks were not something you played on the older guys. Not unless you were trying to tell the older guys they weren't part of the team.

I shot a quick look at Luke. Everyone else was waiting too.

It started with his shoulder. Luke jerked his shoulder up to rub it against his ear. A few seconds later, he frowned and rubbed his ear with his hand.

A few of the guys giggled.

Luke rubbed harder. His face was scrunched up.

“Hey!” Luke rubbed really, really hard. “This is hot!”

It busted up the team. Most of the guys started to howl with laughter.

Luke stood up and danced around, pressing his hand against his ear. The heat rub from the telephone must have been all over the tender skin of his ear. I couldn't imagine how hot it felt.

Everyone laughed as Luke ran toward the shower area for cold water. We knew it wouldn't help. Nothing got heat rub off once it was on.

“How'd you like that one?” Dougie asked me. “It was Gordie's idea.”

“Great,” I said. But I wasn't laughing much. Big Boy was dead, along with eighteen other cattle. Not even a telephone trick made me feel better.

Telephone!

I'd forgotten to call Stephanie Becker.

I wondered if she would understand.

I called her as soon as practice ended. She understood all too well how all those dead, chopped-up animals would make me forget
to call earlier. The same thing had happened on her ranch the month before.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to Stephanie. “Somebody did the same thing on your ranch? Killed cattle?”

“Just like I told you on the phone this afternoon,” Stephanie said. “About a month ago. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Only now it seems too late.”

It was Monday night. We were in the McDonald's restaurant along the Trans-Canada highway. Traffic outside was busy,
with big trucks gearing down and gearing up on their way in and out of Kamloops.

I had been a big spender, buying us four chocolate milkshakes. When she said she only wanted one, I had told her I'd better drink the other three so they didn't get wasted. That had made her smile.

I drank the first milkshake. I have this habit of staring into the distance when I think. I was thinking about our dead cattle and the dead cattle on her ranch. I stared at the wall behind her and thought about how weird it was.

She caught me staring. She thought I was staring at her, not past her. “I know,” she said, “you're wondering about my hair. Before we talk about the ranch, maybe there's something else we should talk about? Like an awards dinner last year?”

I felt my face turn red.

“Good milkshake, isn't it,” I said, finishing off the first one. “Maybe I'll have another.”

I grabbed the second one.

“Don't try to change the subject. Ever since the dinner, I've wanted to call you to say I was sorry.”

“You? Call me? Sorry?”

“I think it was worse for you,” she said. “Nobody noticed me with my program over my head. You—” she began to laugh. “You were on stage with a wig stuck in your fly.”

“Very funny,” I said. “The guys still tell me to check my zipper. Why were you wearing a wig, anyway?”

“A bad hair day. A real bad hair day.”

“Pardon me?”

“It's a girl thing. You see, my dad is a huge Blazers fan. He planned to take me and my mom to the dinner. I thought I would do something special and get my hair permed for it.”

Stephanie touched her hair. “Look how short it is now.”

“Yes?”

“The day before the dinner I went to a beauty salon. It was the worst thing that could have happened. To perm hair, they put it in curlers and soak it in chemicals.”

“You're right,” I said. “It's a girl thing. Guys would never do that.”

“But they'll stand in front of a television and yell at athletes and refs who can't hear them.”

“Your perm?” I said. “We don't need to talk about guys.”

“They had a new girl working at the salon. She mixed the wrong chemicals together. It became like an acid and burned off most of my hair.”

“Seriously?” I began to laugh.

“Not funny,” she said. “I was sitting under the hair dryer, and all of a sudden there was smoke everywhere. My hair was ruined, so I had to wear a wig until it grew long enough for a shorter style. That took a month. Even now, almost a year later, it's not nearly as long as it used to be.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I've been going nuts wondering why you had a wig on.”

“Why didn't you call and ask?”

I finished my second milkshake and reached for the third. “Afraid you might shoot me. Plus I didn't know your name.”

“I'll forgive you if you forgive me.” She reached across the table to shake my hand.

“It's a deal,” I said. I liked how warm her hand was. We held on long enough for both of us to know we had held on a little too long. I felt my face growing red again.

“So,” I said, coughing as I let go, “um, you live on a ranch.”

She explained that she lived about thirty miles northwest of Kamloops. Since our ranch was as far southeast of Kamloops, she lived nearly sixty miles away from me. That explained why I had not run into her during the last ten months.

She described how they had found their dead cattle. Fifteen had been killed, including their Limousin bull, Champion. All the cattle, and Champion, had been chopped up. She'd hated all the blood.

“The police think it might be people in a cult,” she said.

“Cult,” I echoed.

“You know, witches. People making sacrifices at night.”

I shivered. It wasn't just the cold milkshake. “Creepy.”

“It's real strange,” she said. “Is it easy to get to the area where Big Boy was killed?”

“Nope,” I said, “and that's something Dad and I can't figure out. There's no way to drive there. We're wondering how the killers got in and out. It would be hard to ride horses at night. And we didn't find any tracks.”

“Same with our ranch,” Stephanie said. “I can't see any city folks going to all that trouble.”

“If they were witches,” I said, grinning, “they could have flown in on broomsticks.”

She didn't grin back. “That would be the only way. We'd hear an airplane or helicopter if it flew into the valley.”

Since my little joke didn't work, I gave my attention to my third and last milkshake.

“Anyway,” Stephanie said, “I wanted to talk to you last week about this. It was so strange that I didn't want to just tell you over the telephone.”

I sucked so hard on my straw that it made a noise when I reached the bottom of the milkshake. Hoping Stephanie hadn't noticed, I said, “That's what I don't get. You wanted
to talk to me last week—before Big Boy and the other cattle died. How could you even guess?”

She looked around the restaurant and dropped her voice. “Bloodlines.”

“Bloodlines,” I repeated. I knew what she was talking about. Big Boy was a registered bull. We could trace his bloodline not only to his parents, but also to all four of his grandparents, all eight of his great-grandparents, and all sixteen of his great-great-grandparents. That was part of why Big Boy had been so expensive.

“Bloodlines. I'm guessing you know Big Boy wa s si red by a bu l l na med Locomotive.”

I wondered how she knew Locomotive was Big Boy's father. “I might play hockey,” I said, “but there's a reason my friends call me Cowboy. Ranching is important to me.”

“You might not know this,” she said. “Our bull, Champion, was also sired by Locomotive. Big Boy and Champion were half-brothers. They were both worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“That
is
strange,” I said. “Still, just because Champion was killed, why did you think it would happen to Big Boy? Why did you think you needed to warn me?”

“Why?” Stephanie's voice dropped even more. She leaned forward. “Because last week I found out this has also happened to two other bulls sired by Locomotive.”

“What!”

She nodded. “Yes, on a ranch in Alberta, and on another ranch in Montana. It's like someone is going around North America trying to kill the entire bloodline.”

As I fell asleep that night, I thought about what I had learned by the end of my evening with Stephanie Becker.

A week earlier, Stephanie had read in a cattle magazine that ranchers in southern Alberta were worried about their animals. There had been some strange killings. The cattle there had been chopped up the same way as Big Boy and Champion. When she'd read about a prize bull being
killed, she noticed Locomotive's name as the father.

That had made her start asking around. She had called the Canadian Limousin Association to get the names and owners of other bulls in the bloodline. That's when she found out about the killings in Montana.