Without a Trace Read online

  "Everything in its place," Frank said.

  Joe found himself lowering his voice. "He may not have a lot, but it feels so - peaceful - in here. Almost like a church."

  Frank nodded. "You're closer than you think. Those shelves over there must be Charlie's shrine," he said quietly. "Should we go in?"

  "Well, he invited us," Joe said. "And the door's open. Maybe he wanted us to see something."

  The boys stepped inside. The shelves were full of candles and handmade pottery bowls. The bowls held dried herbs, or colored sand and powders. A bundle wrapped in white goatskin took up the lowest shelf. Beside it lay a heap of rattlesnake fangs and a half-dozen snake rattles. A snakeskin hung beside the shelf.

  "Looks like old Charlie had a real thing for rattlesnakes," Joe said.

  "It may be a totem, or some kind of spirit guide," Frank said. "A lot of Native American beliefs deal with animals and how they can lend people their strength. Animal spirits can also teach people and protect them."

  Joe's curious gaze went from the rattler fangs to the goatskin bundle. "And this?"

  Frank shook his head. "That's Charlie's medicine bundle. I don't think we ought to mess with it. Whatever's in there is sacred to him."

  Joe pulled his hand back. "Thanks for telling me." He was about to turn away when he saw something else. "Hey, what do you make of this?" he asked excitedly.

  Behind the medicine bundle was an old pine board, painted with three sets of symbols. On the right was a circle with a C in the middle. Slightly above it were three squiggly lines, one on top of the other. On the left were three interlocking circles.

  Joe frowned and pointed to the three circles. "This looks a lot like the Olympic symbol."

  Frank leaned over, studying it. "If I remember my rules for naming brands, I'd say that's the Triple O."

  "And that's a Circle C!" Joe exclaimed. "And that stack of squiggles - "

  "They look like sound waves to me," Frank said.

  "I don't think that's what Charlie means," Joe said. "Maybe he's trying to show the conflict between the two ranches."

  Frank raised his eyebrows. "It's possible," he said. "I'd give a lot to know what Charlie really knows." He turned and started out the door. "Well, I guess there's no point in hanging out here any longer."

  Outside, the goat gave them another forlorn bleat as they climbed in the truck and drove off.

  ***

  At the bunkhouse on the caprock, Joe took a pizza out of the freezer and put it into the microwave, while Frank called Roy and went over the day's events. "We're going to spend the night at the bunkhouse," he said. "We've got a lot to do tomorrow."

  "We do?" Joe asked as Frank hung up the phone. "And I noticed you didn't ask Roy about those symbols."

  Frank shrugged as he sat down at the table for pizza. "So far, Roy hasn't been willing to say much about his relations with Oscar Owens and the Triple O. We know there are bad feelings between them." He took a bite and chewed. "I think we can find out why and how much by checking the records in the courthouse."

  ***

  At nine the next morning Frank and Joe were parked on the square in the center of Armstrong. Under the stately cottonwood trees were several granite memorials and war souvenirs, including an olive-drab artillery piece and a ship's anchor. The boys climbed the steps of the impressive dome-topped courthouse. Inside, there was a three-story rotunda with a mosaic floor. On the far side of the rotunda was a glass door with County Clerk on it in gold letters.

  Behind the marble counter of the county clerk's office, a grandmotherly woman greeted them. "May I help you?" Then she gave Joe a startled look. "You look just like my grandson," she said. "Isn't that a coincidence?"

  Joe ducked his head and gave her a shy, embarrassed grin. "Yes, ma'am," he said, sounding interested. "Does he live around here?"

  In a minute the woman had treated them to a description of her whole family. She had obviously taken a liking to Joe. Then, suddenly, she remembered that they might be there on business. "Now, what can I help you find this morning?"

  Frank leaned forward. "We'd like to examine the deeds to a couple of ranches up near Caprock - the Circle C and the Triple O. We'd also like to see copies of their grazing leases."

  "Mineral leases as well?" the woman asked helpfully.

  "What? Oh, yes, please," Frank replied.

  In a few minutes she returned with a pile of folders. The deed to the Triple O was a simple document, certifying that the land had been deeded to the Owens family eighty years ago by the government. The other files concerned the Circle C. Roy had begun purchasing the land about twenty years ago. There were some grazing and mineral leases dating back before that time, but many were much more recent.

  "It looks kind of complicated," Joe remarked, while Frank began to copy the dates of the leases.

  "But that's the way people around here acquire land." The woman smiled at Joe. "In fact, Mr. Carlson has been very successful with his ranching operations."

  "What about these mineral rights?" Frank asked. "Are they worth anything?"

  The woman shrugged. "Not much, probably. Nobody's located anything in that area. Mr. Carlson probably picked them up to prevent exploration, which can be pretty destructive. The oil companies have to pay damages, but some ranchers don't think it's enough."

  Joe smiled at her willingness to answer questions. "I'll bet you get all the land gossip," he said. "Have you heard anything about the Circle C and the Triple O - you know, problems, anything like that?"

  The woman hesitated. "Well, of course, it's not a matter of public record, and I probably shouldn't say anything. But I heard that Mr. Carlson and Mr. Owens banged heads a few years back, when they shared some leased pasture where the two ranches join." She smiled. "My husband worked at the auction barn that spring, and he said that everybody was talking about how many Circle C mama cows had calves with Triple O brands."

  "You mean, Owens put his brand on Circle C calves?" Joe asked, sounding shocked.

  "Of course it wasn't ever proven," she added hastily. "But I know for a fact that after that, Mr. Carlson wouldn't have anything to do with Mr. Owens."

  Frank closed the folders. "Is any of the land around here owned by Native Americans?"

  The woman shook her head. "No, the reservations are all west and north of here."

  "We heard that some of them consider part of the caprock to be their sacred territory," Joe said.

  "Oh, you probably mean Lawson's Bluff." She turned to the topographic map on the wall behind her and pointed to a section that jutted out from the ridge of the caprock. "Actually, it's on the Circle C, just north of the boundary with the Triple O. It's called Lawson's Bluff because the Lawson family was killed there in an Indian raid." She shook her head. "But the Indians don't have any legal claim to it."

  Frank folded his notes and put them in his pocket. "Thanks for your help," he said.

  Joe leaned forward, giving her a special smile. "Tell your grandson 'hi' for me," he said.

  "I'll do that," the woman promised.

  ***

  "Why don't you give Barbara a call," Frank said to Joe as they left the courthouse. "See if she can join us for a cup of coffee."

  Joe frowned. "You still think she might have had something to do with that booby trap, huh?"

  "You've got to admit that it was quite a coincidence." Frank watched the annoyed expression on his brother's face. Joe liked to trust pretty girls. Sometimes that got him - and Frank - into trouble. "At least she can explain some of this stuff about land leases and dirty tricks. We could use a clue or two."

  With a sharp nod, Joe agreed and headed for a pay phone. Joe reported that Barbara would meet them in an hour. The two boys walked down the street to the express package depot to pick up the cable for the ultralight.

  They strolled into a clothing store and each of them bought new boots and a western hat.

  "We've still got some time to kill," Frank said after they left and were passin
g a combination pawn shop and sporting goods store. "Let's take a look in here."

  "Hey," Joe said as they stepped inside, "this place could arm a banana republic." The shelves were filled with surplus military equipment.

  Frank went to the counter. "Do you handle army surplus ammo?" he asked the clerk.

  "Got some M-sixteen and some forty-five." The man opened a glass case. "What are you looking for?"

  "Just trying to identify some empties I found," Frank said, scanning the case. The M16 ammo was a .223 caliber, much smaller than the casings he'd found at the stock tank. Then he spotted some larger, tarnished, bottleneck cartridges. The bullet tips were painted black.

  "Armor-piercing three-oh-three British," the clerk said, following Frank's glance. He took one out and handed it to him. On the base was the number forty-three.

  Joe looked over Frank's shoulder. "Seems to me that the shells we saw were tapered like this, but the shoulder was shorter," he said.

  The clerk nodded. "Yep, it was a three-oh- three. Looks that way after it's fired. Packs quite a punch, too - armor-piercing bullets have a steel core." He smacked his fist hard into his open palm. "Designed to smash right through armor plate. It fits the Lee-Enfield rifles the British used in World War Two." He pointed to a heavy-looking, old warhorse of a rifle hanging on the wall. The unfinished wooden hand guard and stock extended almost to the end of the barrel, while the magazine was sharply tapered.

  Frank handed back the cartridge. "Sell many of these?" he asked casually.

  "Not a whole lot," the guy said, putting it back. "But a fella came in the other day and bought a couple of boxes." He shut the case.

  "Somebody you knew?" Joe asked.

  The clerk shook his head. "Never saw him before." He studied the boys. "Got a reason for asking?"

  "Just curious," Frank said. He lifted his hand in a wave, and they left.

  "Well, now that we know the gun we're looking for," Joe said with satisfaction, "it shouldn't be too hard to find."

  Frank gave a short laugh and pointed to the dusty pickups parked in a row along the curb. Each one had a gun rack in the back window, and every rack held at least one rifle. "Knowing what we're looking for is one thing," he said. "Finding it is another."

  ***

  They'd been at the restaurant only a few minutes when Barbara came in. She'd pinned her hair up and traded her jeans for a denim skirt.

  "Hi, guys," she greeted them, sliding into the booth beside Joe. "What's new?"

  Joe smiled at her quick laugh and easy, open western way. He wouldn't mind making friends with her, but what they needed right then was information. Barbara grinned at him, her eyes crinkling when she smiled. No way could Joe believe she had anything to do with the bomb in the truck.

  Frank started leading the conversation, telling Barbara about their visit to Caprock Charlie's place.

  "I'm jealous," she told him. "Charlie's always friendly to me but never talks much. Too bad. He'd be a term paper in anthropology. I've heard that he's the last of his tribe, and it would be a shame to lose the knowledge he has."

  "Do you think he's angry at the people around here?" Frank asked. "Maybe he thinks Roy Carlson shouldn't be ranching around the holy place on Lawson's Bluff."

  "You don't mean you think he's behind all the trouble on the Circle C?" Barbara showed that she knew about the Carlsons' problems. But she mentioned no more than she might have heard on the county grapevine. Joe breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then Frank changed the subject abruptly. "We were over at the courthouse this morning, looking at the mineral leases," he said. "Do you suppose that minerals - gold, oil, uranium - might have something to do with this?"

  Barbara's mouth tightened. "Maybe," she said guardedly. "And maybe not." She pushed her coffee cup away. "Time to get back to work." She glanced at Joe. "You're picking me up for the dance tonight, right?"

  "At eight," Joe said, but he didn't give her his usual grin. He didn't feel like grinning. Obviously, Barbara knew something. But what?

  When Barbara left, the boys headed out for the pickup. This time, they inspected it carefully before they opened the doors and climbed in.

  "Well," Frank said, eyeing Joe, "what do you think?"

  "I don't know," Joe said glumly. He'd still bet on his hunch that Barbara was okay, but maybe he wouldn't be willing to go with long odds. What did she know?

  The boys made a quick trip back to the ranch. Frank removed the damaged cable from the ultralight, while Joe went over the rest of the aircraft.

  Frank had pulled the cable out and was studying the broken end when Joe interrupted him. "Looks like you've lost a rivet here," he said.

  Frank turned. Joe was pointing to a perfectly round hole in the bottom of the tail strut tube, through which the control lines passed.

  "That's funny," Frank said. "There shouldn't be any rivets there."

  He explored the hole with his fingers and then reached around the tube. There was a matching hole on the other side. It was rough-edged and something was stuck in it. He worked it loose, then took it to the barn door, where he could examine it in the light. What he was holding was a small flake of copper.

  With a frown, he took another look at the tip of the cable he'd just removed. Then he turned to Joe, his face bleak.

  "This cable didn't break on its own," he said. "It was cut - by an armor-piercing bullet!"

  Chapter 9

  "A bullet?" Joe exclaimed, staring at the frayed steel strands with a smear of metal on the ends. "A bullet made of copper?"

  "That comes from the jacket of that armor-piercing bullet. The steel core, of course, passed through and kept on going."

  "Talk about a lucky shot." Joe's face grew grim. "This means that the guy who did this was on to us from the minute we got here."

  "That's what it looks like," Frank agreed. "Maybe the shot was meant as a warning - but if that's the case, they were wasting ammo. I couldn't have heard a shot over the racket that engine makes."

  Joe turned back to the ultralight. "I haven't spotted any other damage."

  Frank was looking at the hole. "And I don't think the shot did any structural damage to the strut. If you'll give me a hand, I'll route the new cable and take this thing for a test flight." His eyes narrowed. "And after that, I think we ought to give Oscar Owens a visit."

  The new cable worked perfectly, and the test flight was beautiful. The boys stopped at the ranch house to ask directions to the Triple O.

  Roy wasn't very enthusiastic about their plan to talk to Owens, but he finally agreed. "If you go a couple of miles past the old homestead," he told them, "you'll come to a fence and a cattle guard. That's the boundary with the Triple O."

  "So you can drive from one ranch to the other without going onto the highway," Joe mused.

  Roy shrugged. "The road's maintained by the county," he said. "Anybody's free to use it."

  "Then the tank truck could have been driven here through the Triple O," Frank said. "Or from there?"

  "I suppose," Roy replied. "But it could just as easily have come in from the highway, or down one of the old survey roads."

  The boys got into the yellow pickup and headed south. "Well, what do you make of all this?" Joe asked, steering to avoid a huge pothole in the road.

  "We have too many loose ends to suit me." Frank sounded frustrated. "But the worst of it is that we're still short of a motive. If it's revenge, the main suspect - Jake Grimes - is laid up with a broken leg. If it's greed, Oscar Owens is a good candidate. But what could he be after? Marginal grazing land and worthless mineral leases hardly justify kidnapping and three counts of attempted murder."

  He shook his head. "If it's a desire to get back a hunk of sacred territory, our suspect is an old man whose only weapon is a gourd rattle. To round things off, we've got a couple of suspects who don't seem to have any motive at all - an attractive young lady and a reliable ranch hand who might have engineered his own disappearance."

  "Speaking
of suspects," Joe said, "look over there." He pointed to a sand dune several hundred yards away. At the top of the dune stood a lone figure, wearing a straw sombrero. Between them and the figure was a sea of waist-high sagebrush. Joe pulled over and the Hardys got out and stood beside the truck. The figure on the dune didn't move.

  "Looks like Charlie's keeping tabs on us again," Joe remarked. "It's really weird how he always seems to be in the right place at the right time - like he knows what's going to happen."

  "The people who study ESP have a name for that," Frank told him. "They call it precognition."

  "Suppose we ought to hike over there and have a visit?"

  "I don't think there's much point in it. If Charlie wanted to talk to us, he'd make an effort to come down here by the road. Anyway, we'd never get the truck through that sagebrush, and he'd be long gone by the time we could get to him on foot." He grinned. "My guess is that he'll show up again - when he feels like it."

  As if to confirm Frank's guess, the figure vanished just then behind the dune.

  The boys got back in the truck. After another twenty minutes on the rough road, they came to a cattle guard, a metal grid buried in the ground that they had to drive over. Joe slowed. A white sign fastened to a post announced that they were entering the Triple O ranch, and that trespassers would be prosecuted.

  "We're not trespassing, we're visiting," Joe muttered, shoving the accelerator down. The truck leaped forward.

  Three or four miles beyond the Hardys could see a ranch complex up on a ridge. The main house was large and single storied, Spanish style. Its whitewashed walls gleamed in the afternoon sun, under the neat geometry of an orange clay tile roof. As they got closer, they could see a large man standing on the veranda, looking in their direction.

  "I guess they're expecting us," Joe said.

  By the time they pulled up the big man was standing in the front yard. Frank recognized him - Nat Wilkin, the foreman who'd helped search for Jerry.