Read Online Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: Fiction, General, detective, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery, Mystery Fiction, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, Fiction - Mystery, Texas, Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), Women park rangers, Detective and Mystery Stories; American, Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Tex.)
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Mrs.
Drury had gone to work as a secretary then at Minnegasco in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a good job. She still held it. During the drive from the Dark Canyon turnoff at Highway 62/180 to the Wildersens' goat farm six miles in, she listed the employee benefits.
At twenty-nine (Anna had been way off on Sheila's age. "She'd never use a decent night cream, though heaven knows I bought her enough jars-" Mrs.
Drury explained), Sheila had still been on the company's life insurance plan. 108,000 would now come to Mrs. Drury. Five years' salary.
Anna had agreed that Minnegasco had an excellent employee benefit plan and Mrs. Drury's monologue moved on to new subjects. Sheila was an only child. Mrs. Drury's second pregnancy had ended in miscarriage and she hadn't the heart to try again, though she'd often thought it might have been better for Sheila if she had. Sheila was an odd girl, headstrong and wayward.
From the scraps of information dropped amidst the drawn-out recitals of people whose names and indiscretions meant nothing to Anna, she came to believe that Sheila's "waywardness" consisted mostly of a refusal to get her hair foiled though it was ". . . impossibly dark-almost like a Jewish person's"; her nails manicured "-though I offered to pay for it, and in the Cities manicures aren't cheap-"; and her steadfast refusal to date
"nice boys."
By the time they reached the Queens Highway turnoff, Anna found she liked Sheila more in memoria that she would've guessed. For the first time since she'd stumbled across the body, she felt a personal sense of loss.
She wished she'd gotten to know the Dog Canyon Ranger better. They might have been friends.
As they drove down the miles of winding road cutting back west through the Lincoln National Forest, Mrs. Drury asked: "Are we in the park now?"
She was pointing to the fenceline on both sides of the road. It was the first time Anna had noticed the new fencing edging nearly all of the Paulsen Ranch. "That's Jerry Paulsen's property. He owns forty sections.
Not really a big place in this part of the country. It abuts the park on the northern boundary outside of Dog Canyon."
The fence cut down the middle of a lot of man-made divisions: it marked the border between Texas and New Mexico, between public and private lands. Deer jumped it, toads hopped under it, and birds and clouds floated over it without a downward glance. But in the petty depths of humanity it was an important line.
Paulsen had spared no expense: new green metal posts, shining silver wire with four-pronged barbs half an inch long and, every fifty or sixty feet, a brand-new sign reading NO TRESPASSING.
Paulsen was dead serious about private ownership. STAY OFF JERRY
PAULSEN'S LAND was xeroxed on every page of the Boundary Patrol Report Forms to remind rangers riding fenceline. Anna wished he'd return the favor. The next time he flew his shiny new helicopter over so much as one corner of the park she would go to the Federal Aviation Agency.
There'd been bad blood between the park and the local ranchers from the beginning. The Guadalupes had been their backyard for generations. They hunted and camped, drew water from the springs, grazed cattle and goats in the high country. Then suddenly in 1972 it was off-limits.
Though they had been quick enough to accept the sale money when the government bought it, some ranchers refused to accept that it was no longer their private preserve.
Anna knew Paulsen had been suspected on more than one occasion of shooting the park's elk.
"Paulsen," Mrs. Drury nursed the name between her lips as if it tasted familiar. "Oh. Sheila wrote of him. He sounded like a very nice man."
Anna blinked her surprise, but said nothing. It was possible Sheila had gotten along with him. More likely, Mrs. Drury said it to express her approval of the conservative way of life. To Anna's ears it sounded vaguely like a snipe at Sheila. Tired of the constant dripping of Mrs.
Drury's voice, she switched
Drury had gone to work as a secretary then at Minnegasco in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a good job. She still held it. During the drive from the Dark Canyon turnoff at Highway 62/180 to the Wildersens' goat farm six miles in, she listed the employee benefits.
At twenty-nine (Anna had been way off on Sheila's age. "She'd never use a decent night cream, though heaven knows I bought her enough jars-" Mrs.
Drury explained), Sheila had still been on the company's life insurance plan. 108,000 would now come to Mrs. Drury. Five years' salary.
Anna had agreed that Minnegasco had an excellent employee benefit plan and Mrs. Drury's monologue moved on to new subjects. Sheila was an only child. Mrs. Drury's second pregnancy had ended in miscarriage and she hadn't the heart to try again, though she'd often thought it might have been better for Sheila if she had. Sheila was an odd girl, headstrong and wayward.
From the scraps of information dropped amidst the drawn-out recitals of people whose names and indiscretions meant nothing to Anna, she came to believe that Sheila's "waywardness" consisted mostly of a refusal to get her hair foiled though it was ". . . impossibly dark-almost like a Jewish person's"; her nails manicured "-though I offered to pay for it, and in the Cities manicures aren't cheap-"; and her steadfast refusal to date
"nice boys."
By the time they reached the Queens Highway turnoff, Anna found she liked Sheila more in memoria that she would've guessed. For the first time since she'd stumbled across the body, she felt a personal sense of loss.
She wished she'd gotten to know the Dog Canyon Ranger better. They might have been friends.
As they drove down the miles of winding road cutting back west through the Lincoln National Forest, Mrs. Drury asked: "Are we in the park now?"
She was pointing to the fenceline on both sides of the road. It was the first time Anna had noticed the new fencing edging nearly all of the Paulsen Ranch. "That's Jerry Paulsen's property. He owns forty sections.
Not really a big place in this part of the country. It abuts the park on the northern boundary outside of Dog Canyon."
The fence cut down the middle of a lot of man-made divisions: it marked the border between Texas and New Mexico, between public and private lands. Deer jumped it, toads hopped under it, and birds and clouds floated over it without a downward glance. But in the petty depths of humanity it was an important line.
Paulsen had spared no expense: new green metal posts, shining silver wire with four-pronged barbs half an inch long and, every fifty or sixty feet, a brand-new sign reading NO TRESPASSING.
Paulsen was dead serious about private ownership. STAY OFF JERRY
PAULSEN'S LAND was xeroxed on every page of the Boundary Patrol Report Forms to remind rangers riding fenceline. Anna wished he'd return the favor. The next time he flew his shiny new helicopter over so much as one corner of the park she would go to the Federal Aviation Agency.
There'd been bad blood between the park and the local ranchers from the beginning. The Guadalupes had been their backyard for generations. They hunted and camped, drew water from the springs, grazed cattle and goats in the high country. Then suddenly in 1972 it was off-limits.
Though they had been quick enough to accept the sale money when the government bought it, some ranchers refused to accept that it was no longer their private preserve.
Anna knew Paulsen had been suspected on more than one occasion of shooting the park's elk.
"Paulsen," Mrs. Drury nursed the name between her lips as if it tasted familiar. "Oh. Sheila wrote of him. He sounded like a very nice man."
Anna blinked her surprise, but said nothing. It was possible Sheila had gotten along with him. More likely, Mrs. Drury said it to express her approval of the conservative way of life. To Anna's ears it sounded vaguely like a snipe at Sheila. Tired of the constant dripping of Mrs.
Drury's voice, she switched
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