His victim toddled purposefully toward the trap. The scene had an aura of super clarity
as if he were looking through powerful binoculars set too high. Every detail seared itself
on his brain like being burned onto a CD: the sky an impossible blue, shimmering with intense sunlight; newly unfolded leaves pristine in their bright spring green; where cattle grazed peacefully on fields that rolled up gradually into foothills dotted by the dark forms of juniper, their spicy scent carried down to him by a light breeze; in front of him patches of emerald
grass over which his victim ambled. Country quiet broken only by the rumble of a jet far overhead. Too beautiful a day to die.
At the thought of death a wave of fear swept through him—a nameless, amorphous dread. Wiping his hand across his forehead he found it damp, though not from the heat because May still remained relatively cool in the Arizona high country. Nonetheless his lips and throat were parched. Dizziness and nausea attacked him like persistent gnats swarming over his body. His legs threatened to give way. The shadow of a hawk passed silently by.
Just for a moment the scene blurred, then snapped into focus again as the little fellow, whose progress he was monitoring so closely, moved on toward the pile of fresh leaves and new-mown grass. Not actually little, he corrected himself, for the Hereford bull yearling probably already weighed in at around six hundred pounds. His hooves, dainty in comparison to his bulk, appeared to be topped by white bobby socks of the sort young girls wore in old movies from the Forties and Fifties. A white face, white chest, and dark red markings stood out against the deep russet of his shining coat.
Crouched behind a screen of scratchy scrub oak, the man watched in horrified fascination as the yearling picked up steam, heading for the bait. His tail twitched jauntily; with one ear he
flicked away a fly. Then he began to nibble away as nature had intended. This would lead to urination, the killer reminded himself, eventually some twenty pounds a day, defecation, perhaps as much as fifty pounds there, belching, and farting on a grand scale. Full-grown, this guy would emit quantities of methane gas, not up to the amount produced by rice paddies, but still significant in an ever warming world.
This is what the measured, mechanical voice on the phone had told him. At the Prescott Public Library, he’d found that the voice had been right. Only this particular yearling would do no such thing. Nor would he breed others who would similarly pollute the environment, breeding being this guy’s designated role in life. Men were so careless of the world they lived in, and even more careless of each other, he reflected with sorrow. Sure, you couldn’t prevent every source of pollution, or even every source of cruelty for that matter. But here was one significant blow for the environment. One polluter and his future progeny wiped off the map.
At last the little fellow came across the oleander. The voice had told him that he’d have to bring it up from Phoenix since oleander didn’t grow much above three thousand feet, and here they were a thousand feet higher. But as it happened, he hadn’t had to make the hour-and-a-half drive to the southeast. He’d found everything he’d needed around Wickenburg, including a pile of new-mown grass and fresh-cut leaves.
To the watcher the yearling, ears flicking, tail high, seemed ecstatic at the opportunity to try something new. He munched, swallowed, then staggered a few uneven steps, and dropped with a resounding thud. For a moment his hind legs kicked convulsively, hooves scraping the dirt. Then the body went limp.
Mission accomplished. The man should have felt elation. Instead he gasped for air, his lips and fingers went numb, his legs trembled. Shit, it was only a cow! But the lifeless form before him, so young and so alive a few minutes before, tugged at his heart.
Abby Taylor awakened between the two males she loved most in all the world.
She would have said “men,” but the implications would have been risqué and besides, she was too literal. One, after all, was distinctly canine—a small, soft, red and white mass with large ears up at the alert even with the body in repose, a long muzzle, stubby legs, and no tail. Francis. The other form beside her—very human, very masculine, very. . . . Here she gave up on adjectives.
She admired David Neale’s body as he slept, or at least what she could see of it; although he eschewed night clothes, the sheet and a light blanket were pulled up to his waist. Nor could she look into his blue eyes, closed as they were in sleep, protected by thick lashes and sheltered under dark brows. But she could appreciate the tousled shock of thick dark hair shot with gray, the high forehead and the even features of his face. A light morning stubble set off his full lips, which in turn called attention to a straight, rather smallish nose. Her eyes traveled downward to the dark strands which made his chest, if never quite as soft as Francis’s, so invitingly male. Reluctantly she restrained the temptation to run her fingers across it for fear of awakening him.
One arm was thrust over the blanket, an arm corded and firm with use from the sort of outdoor activity—hiking, backpacking, mountain climbing—which left much of his body lightly tanned the year around. Abby smiled as she remembered reading an article in People magazine about men who bulked up on steroids—a Mr. World–type approach to male beauty. Frankly, it did nothing for her. She wanted to see muscles that had been developed through real work, not pumped up by drugs and machines…
Her eyes slid back to the man beside her, so much a part of her life now, but for how much longer? Since her long-time lover had died many years ago there had been other men. But no one like David Neale. No one who made her ache like a teenager for his touch, no one whose kiss made her want to collapse with him on top of her. No one. . . . The images came thick and fast, more and more explicit. Not that the dialysis precluded physical intimacy. David had proved that to her most conclusively. Yet how long could an active, virile man commit himself to a woman who spent almost a third of her life connected to a machine to cleanse her system of its impurities and remove the excess liquid normally excreted in urine? Worse still, a woman who seemed to be drifting off into a never-never land, unable to face critical decisions?
“There is the magical realism of Sharlot Hall herself pulling the huge Bashford House down Gurley Street to be part of her museum campus. There is the painfully physical realism of polycystic kidney disease, suffered by the author and by her protagonist. There is the realism
of historic detail, as Abby Taylor weaves her sleuthing through the rough-and-tumble past of
Yavapai County and the Arizona Territory. Most of all, there is the literary realism of scratchy-as-barn-plank dialogue that adds a human dimension of suspense to the scenery. And that high-desert scenery, as Elizabeth Lewis conjures it so well, hides as much as it reveals.”
Richard Sims
Director, 1995-2006
Sharlot Hall Museum