Rope Burn
Escaping a troubled past, former Baltimore detective Nick DeNunzio hires on as a Wyoming stock detective to stop a brutal string of cattle thefts. Chasing rustlers ought to be a lark for a big city cop. When people begin turning up dead, however, Nick realizes it’s not just cows being led to slaughter.
To catch the rustler and stop the murders before he is the next victim, Nick must solve a seven-year-old crime, confront his own dark past . . . and become a cattle thief himself.
To catch the rustler and stop the murders before he is the next victim, Nick must solve a seven-year-old crime, confront his own dark past . . . and become a cattle thief himself.
Prologue
"It's time you paid up for your sins, Jack," said the man.
Jack Hooker tipped his tan cowboy hat toward the big blue Wyoming sky and laughed. Jesus, the pathetic excuse of a man standing a dozen feet away must have been watchin’ them money-sucking, Bible-thumpin’ TV preachers. Now them is folks who need to pay up for their sins.
“You planning on doin’ the collectin’?” Hooker taunted.
The rancher scanned the sea of sagebrush and cheatgrass. The man had come alone in his pickup. As far as Hooker could see – and from where he stood, mending barbed wire fence, he could see a damn sight in every direction – there weren’t another soul around. Just endless, treeless rangeland and scattered Herefords shimmering under ripples of heat. A place where a man breathed aloneness. That’s what he loved about this land . . . the pull of its solitude, endless space where the world lets you be. A place that tests a man, and where most men, like this mamma’s boy standing nervously in front of him, came up wanting.
“You’re hurtin’ a lot of folks, Jack. Good folks.”
Hooker could hear the fear in the man’s voice.
“You all think you got cause, don’t ya?” Hooker said. “You maybe more’n most of ’em. Truth is, some folks just don’t deserve what they don’t have.”
“You were warned. It’s time somebody put a stop to you.”
Weeks before, half a dozen men had come to Hooker's house, under cover of darkness, threatening him. Empty threats by empty men. He had laughed at them and chased them off with a shotgun.
“A bunchya couldn’t scare me before. What makes you think you’re up to doing it by yourself?”
Hooker scanned the landscape again, this time more cautiously. Tough to imagine this man had the guts to come alone. More likely they had sent him as a decoy, in broad daylight, when they thought he’d be least suspecting. They knew if they came again, like some kind of posse, he would snatch his hunting rifle and use them for target practice.
Hooker glanced at the man’s pickup twenty yards away. Extended cab. Room enough to hide two, three men. Or they could be lying in the truck bed under the tarp. Maybe their plan was for this decoy to get a jump on him so they could rush him before he could get to his rifle.
“How exactly this gonna happen?” Hooker baited, one eye warily on the pickup.
The man tried to put on a convincing show, clenching his gloved fists, his face filled with blood, his neck veins corded. But Hooker couldn’t see a gun or knife or anything else on him that could serve as a weapon. His fists alone would not be enough. Jack Hooker might be seventy-seven years old, but he was a leather-tough seventy-seven.
“Well, come on then.” Hooker did not even bother to brace himself. Just stood there slumped shouldered, like the man threatening him was not even there.
The coward didn’t move. Figures, thought Hooker. He could see the fear, the hesitancy in his eyes. The man had come full of fury, but no plan – no balls. Like the rest of them in this county. No balls to do what needs to be done.
That had never troubled him
“Knew you wasn’t man ’nough.” Hooker turned back to his work. Enough of these threats, as hot and empty as a westerly wind. It was getting on in the afternoon and he still had fence to fix. A man doesn’t survive out here less he works to the bone. And unlike most ranchers, he actually liked fixing fence. Liked replacing downed posts and rusty broke wire, stretching shiny new wire fiddle-string tight. Liked the rhythm of the work, the isolation, the satisfaction of fencing off what was his and letting others know where they wasn’t welcome.
He was reaching for a roll of barbed wire when he sensed movement. Sensed it too late. Saw a heavy yellow metal bar swinging against the sulfurous Wyoming sky. The fence stretcher he had used to string countless miles of fence.
Jack Hooker knew he was tough enough for a man-to-man fight, just not fast enough. Lifetime of ranching gets downright hard on the joints. Slows a man down.
He realized, as the fence stretcher caught the side of his skull, the thick serrated teeth taking a chunk out of his cowboy hat and his flesh and maybe bone, that perhaps he had underestimated this man, and the rest of them. That perhaps he had been just a tad too full of himself for his own good.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Hooker woke with a head that felt like the time a bull had danced on it at a rodeo in Kaycee.
He lay on his stomach, face down, each breath kicking up swirls of chalk-fine dust. He could taste blood in his mouth. Blood trickling down from his skull. Probably from where he felt the throbbing, intense pain.
What he knew for certain was he no longer was where he’d been fixin’ fence. The light was lower and the landmarks different. Not the features directly in front of his face – rocks, cheatgrass, prickly pear cactus. Them could be anywhere in this part of Wyoming. No, what was different was the small sandstone cliffs in the distance, forming the edges of a valley. The cliffs, pink from the lowering sun, looked familiar. He was still on his land. He had lived his entire life on this land, once his father’s land, his grandfather’s land before that. He had rode every inch of it, breathed its clean air, slept under its stars, soaked in its quiet, suffered its wind. He had shoved already deep family roots yet deeper into its parched soil.
Hard to imagine folks living without land they could call their own. Hard for ’em to understand its inescapable pull.
Antelope Valley – that was where he was. He always loved this valley. He had run cattle off and on in it for years. Dependable water. Good grass when you let it fallow. He remembered horseback riding in it with the woman he ended up not marrying. His only regret in life.
Suddenly a rare sense of fear rose in his throat. What the hell was he doing in Antelope Valley? He had no idea exactly where in the valley because his brain was too woozy to reckon exactly where he’d been dumped. He guessed the old homesteader’s hut might be close by. Falling in but still standing.
Kinda like him.
He tried raising his unsteady body to stand, but realized his hands were tied behind his back. Something scratchy laced his neck. Rope, it dawned on him, his gray cells running a tad slow at the moment.
He raised his head and yelled, “Hey, what the fuck’s goin’ …” but his words were strangled in his throat.
He dropped his head back down to the earth and tried to rein in the fear hammering his chest. He tried working the rope loose on his wrists, but it was tight. His fear began to curdle into anger. The sumbitch would pay for this. He listened for the man, but all he could hear was the soughing of the stiff wind stirring the thigh-high grass. His fear eased. He must be alone again. Like when he was fixin’ fence. The man …the cowards …whoever …must have left him for dead for the turkey vultures. They had no spine for death. A mistake. They did not reckon how tough a man like Jack Hooker could be. A man did not come this far in this harsh land without being tough. That was the cowboy way and he was tougher than most of them.
He heard a vehicle door slam. Moments later, a diesel engine rattled to life.
Fear returned with a vengeance. Hooker turned his throbbing head but the pickup was out of his range of vision. Only more rock and grass, though now he could glimpse the trunk of a large cottonwood tree only feet away.
Frantically he struggled to untie his hands. He heard the pickup shift into gear. Moments later the rope tightened unforgivingly around his neck.
Fear flashed to panic as the rope squeezed his windpipe shut and he felt himself hoisted to his feet. He could hear the creak of rope drawing across wood. As his body righted, he desperately fought to stand but he could not quite get the footing right, like a small child struggling to learn to walk, the ganglia of nerves not shooting the right messages to the right places.
"It's time you paid up for your sins, Jack," said the man.
Jack Hooker tipped his tan cowboy hat toward the big blue Wyoming sky and laughed. Jesus, the pathetic excuse of a man standing a dozen feet away must have been watchin’ them money-sucking, Bible-thumpin’ TV preachers. Now them is folks who need to pay up for their sins.
“You planning on doin’ the collectin’?” Hooker taunted.
The rancher scanned the sea of sagebrush and cheatgrass. The man had come alone in his pickup. As far as Hooker could see – and from where he stood, mending barbed wire fence, he could see a damn sight in every direction – there weren’t another soul around. Just endless, treeless rangeland and scattered Herefords shimmering under ripples of heat. A place where a man breathed aloneness. That’s what he loved about this land . . . the pull of its solitude, endless space where the world lets you be. A place that tests a man, and where most men, like this mamma’s boy standing nervously in front of him, came up wanting.
“You’re hurtin’ a lot of folks, Jack. Good folks.”
Hooker could hear the fear in the man’s voice.
“You all think you got cause, don’t ya?” Hooker said. “You maybe more’n most of ’em. Truth is, some folks just don’t deserve what they don’t have.”
“You were warned. It’s time somebody put a stop to you.”
Weeks before, half a dozen men had come to Hooker's house, under cover of darkness, threatening him. Empty threats by empty men. He had laughed at them and chased them off with a shotgun.
“A bunchya couldn’t scare me before. What makes you think you’re up to doing it by yourself?”
Hooker scanned the landscape again, this time more cautiously. Tough to imagine this man had the guts to come alone. More likely they had sent him as a decoy, in broad daylight, when they thought he’d be least suspecting. They knew if they came again, like some kind of posse, he would snatch his hunting rifle and use them for target practice.
Hooker glanced at the man’s pickup twenty yards away. Extended cab. Room enough to hide two, three men. Or they could be lying in the truck bed under the tarp. Maybe their plan was for this decoy to get a jump on him so they could rush him before he could get to his rifle.
“How exactly this gonna happen?” Hooker baited, one eye warily on the pickup.
The man tried to put on a convincing show, clenching his gloved fists, his face filled with blood, his neck veins corded. But Hooker couldn’t see a gun or knife or anything else on him that could serve as a weapon. His fists alone would not be enough. Jack Hooker might be seventy-seven years old, but he was a leather-tough seventy-seven.
“Well, come on then.” Hooker did not even bother to brace himself. Just stood there slumped shouldered, like the man threatening him was not even there.
The coward didn’t move. Figures, thought Hooker. He could see the fear, the hesitancy in his eyes. The man had come full of fury, but no plan – no balls. Like the rest of them in this county. No balls to do what needs to be done.
That had never troubled him
“Knew you wasn’t man ’nough.” Hooker turned back to his work. Enough of these threats, as hot and empty as a westerly wind. It was getting on in the afternoon and he still had fence to fix. A man doesn’t survive out here less he works to the bone. And unlike most ranchers, he actually liked fixing fence. Liked replacing downed posts and rusty broke wire, stretching shiny new wire fiddle-string tight. Liked the rhythm of the work, the isolation, the satisfaction of fencing off what was his and letting others know where they wasn’t welcome.
He was reaching for a roll of barbed wire when he sensed movement. Sensed it too late. Saw a heavy yellow metal bar swinging against the sulfurous Wyoming sky. The fence stretcher he had used to string countless miles of fence.
Jack Hooker knew he was tough enough for a man-to-man fight, just not fast enough. Lifetime of ranching gets downright hard on the joints. Slows a man down.
He realized, as the fence stretcher caught the side of his skull, the thick serrated teeth taking a chunk out of his cowboy hat and his flesh and maybe bone, that perhaps he had underestimated this man, and the rest of them. That perhaps he had been just a tad too full of himself for his own good.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Hooker woke with a head that felt like the time a bull had danced on it at a rodeo in Kaycee.
He lay on his stomach, face down, each breath kicking up swirls of chalk-fine dust. He could taste blood in his mouth. Blood trickling down from his skull. Probably from where he felt the throbbing, intense pain.
What he knew for certain was he no longer was where he’d been fixin’ fence. The light was lower and the landmarks different. Not the features directly in front of his face – rocks, cheatgrass, prickly pear cactus. Them could be anywhere in this part of Wyoming. No, what was different was the small sandstone cliffs in the distance, forming the edges of a valley. The cliffs, pink from the lowering sun, looked familiar. He was still on his land. He had lived his entire life on this land, once his father’s land, his grandfather’s land before that. He had rode every inch of it, breathed its clean air, slept under its stars, soaked in its quiet, suffered its wind. He had shoved already deep family roots yet deeper into its parched soil.
Hard to imagine folks living without land they could call their own. Hard for ’em to understand its inescapable pull.
Antelope Valley – that was where he was. He always loved this valley. He had run cattle off and on in it for years. Dependable water. Good grass when you let it fallow. He remembered horseback riding in it with the woman he ended up not marrying. His only regret in life.
Suddenly a rare sense of fear rose in his throat. What the hell was he doing in Antelope Valley? He had no idea exactly where in the valley because his brain was too woozy to reckon exactly where he’d been dumped. He guessed the old homesteader’s hut might be close by. Falling in but still standing.
Kinda like him.
He tried raising his unsteady body to stand, but realized his hands were tied behind his back. Something scratchy laced his neck. Rope, it dawned on him, his gray cells running a tad slow at the moment.
He raised his head and yelled, “Hey, what the fuck’s goin’ …” but his words were strangled in his throat.
He dropped his head back down to the earth and tried to rein in the fear hammering his chest. He tried working the rope loose on his wrists, but it was tight. His fear began to curdle into anger. The sumbitch would pay for this. He listened for the man, but all he could hear was the soughing of the stiff wind stirring the thigh-high grass. His fear eased. He must be alone again. Like when he was fixin’ fence. The man …the cowards …whoever …must have left him for dead for the turkey vultures. They had no spine for death. A mistake. They did not reckon how tough a man like Jack Hooker could be. A man did not come this far in this harsh land without being tough. That was the cowboy way and he was tougher than most of them.
He heard a vehicle door slam. Moments later, a diesel engine rattled to life.
Fear returned with a vengeance. Hooker turned his throbbing head but the pickup was out of his range of vision. Only more rock and grass, though now he could glimpse the trunk of a large cottonwood tree only feet away.
Frantically he struggled to untie his hands. He heard the pickup shift into gear. Moments later the rope tightened unforgivingly around his neck.
Fear flashed to panic as the rope squeezed his windpipe shut and he felt himself hoisted to his feet. He could hear the creak of rope drawing across wood. As his body righted, he desperately fought to stand but he could not quite get the footing right, like a small child struggling to learn to walk, the ganglia of nerves not shooting the right messages to the right places.
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Then he left the earth, his boots no longer able to touch his beloved soil, his lungs no longer able to breathe the clean air. He kicked, scissoring his legs in a frantic attempt to snap the rope’s crushing grip on his throat.
He screamed, but only he heard it, inside his skull. His hat was gone and as he rose into the air, he could once again see the big Wyoming sky, deepening blue toward sunset. His body twisted in the wind, and he realized, with a final act of fear and defiance and not a sliver of remorse, that he finally was paying for his sins. |
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