The Homeplace: A Mystery by Kevin Wolf Read Free Book Online

antlers, he would fashion the handle for a new knife, and the deer’s tender meat would feed him through most of the winter.
    He decided to hang the buck from the low-slung branch of a cottonwood in the shady creek bottom. He wrapped the carcass in cheesecloth—to keep away the flies—and left it to cool.
    No hurry to head home. The lawmen had showed up at his house that morning. The yard dog let him know they were coming. Ray-Ray had slipped out the back, lay on his belly, and watched from a sage-covered hill not two hundred long steps from his house. The two fools in their shiny sunglasses and new cowboy hats had hollered his name and peeked in the windows but never so much as looked for tracks. They wouldn’t have found his even if they had. Ray-Ray took the time to be careful that way.
    Ray-Ray was sure that some judge from the next county had sent the lawmen. He knew he hadn’t shown up for court when he was supposed to, but that had been nearly a month ago, and he was hoping it had all been forgotten by now. Or maybe this had something to do with his run-in with the pretend cowboy who’d let his buffalo break down Ray-Ray’s fence. That one deserved all that he had coming. Ray-Ray leaned back against the trunk of the tree and watched the breeze rustle the edges of the cloth he’d wrapped around his buck.
    Damn lawmen. Damn sheriff. Damn politicians.
    Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? He kept to himself. Never bothered anybody who didn’t bother him first. Paid his property taxes in cash money over to the courthouse in Comanche Springs each April.
    Ray-Ray thought for a minute and then ground what was left of his front teeth together. It had to be. That little butterball of a woman game warden was after him.
    It was her, he was sure. Her that sent those lawmen out to check on him. Didn’t have the grit to come herself.
    Birdie Hawkins, what a bitch.
    Still, there was something about her that Ray-Ray liked. She was different than other women. Liked the outdoors. Worked hard. Cared about the deer and other wild things, like him. He thought of her thick body.
    Yeah, a woman like her might be nice. Shade to cool you in the summer and warm you when January nights got cold.
    A rifle shot cracked the stillness around him.
    Ray-Ray turned his face toward the faraway sound.
    That would be the city boys he saw earlier on the other side of the Notch. They’d hunt along the edges. Wouldn’t want to get into the thick stuff. Boys like that carried new scope-sighted deer rifles, not old Winchesters like his. They wanted to shoot at things out there a ways.
    Ray-Ray rubbed the worn metal and smooth wood on his forty-five-seventy.
    He liked to get close. Sneak through willows and tamaracks. Get in close enough to see the flies buzz around a deer’s nose. That’s when the forty-five-seventy did its job. Threw a bullet as big as a man’s thumb. Knock a deer flat.
    The shot from those city boys’ rifle might send the deer back his way. Best if he sat tight. He eyed the buck hung in the tree. But two deer would get him through the winter and leave him another cow to sell at auction house.
    Those deer ate his grass. Nibbled at the bales in his alfalfa fields. Drank from his stock tanks. It was only right. And it wouldn’t hurt anybody. He’d take another deer. Nobody would know. Not even Birdie Hawkins.
    Grass rustled along the creek bank. Not a stone’s throw away, two plump does slipped from the shadows. Ray-Ray lifted his rifle.
    Wait. Wait.
    He put the sights on the lead deer’s shoulder. The forty-five-seventy would do its job. A gun like his could knock a buffalo down in its tracks.
    *   *   *
    Through her binoculars, Birdie chuckled at a hunter in green camouflage pants and jacket. Men like that paid out a lot of money to buy clothes so the deer couldn’t see them. But the state said big-game hunters had to wear blaze-orange hats and have so many square inches of orange covering their chests. So, the