148 On The Trail Of Trouble Read online

  rest of the herd so that Kincaid could raise the little

  one and groom it for the 4-H circuit. Had a pen and

  shelter for them out by Cloud Mesa. Now they're gone,

  the shelter's destroyed, and my daughter's heart is

  broken. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Calm down, Bill,” the sheriff said. “It's not going to

  do any good to yell at me. I'm not going to find the

  culprits any faster that way.”

  “These are friends of Kincaid,” Melissa Turner said.

  She gently put a hand on her husband's arm while she

  introduced Nancy, Bess, and George. “Girls, this is

  Sheriff Matt Switzer. He's an old friend of ours and a

  real good lawman. Tell him what you found.”

  Nancy told the sheriff about the site and then

  showed him the clay tire track models dried on the

  pieces of board.

  “Well, now,” Sheriff Switzer said. “Looks like we

  have some amateur detectives helping us.”

  “Nancy is not exactly an amateur,” Bess said,

  proudly. “She has solved many crimes and has been a

  big help to law enforcement officials all over the

  country.”

  “And beyond,” George added. “Show him what else

  we found, Nancy.”

  Nancy unwrapped the hubcap and offered it to the

  sheriff.

  “So, what do we have here?” he asked, leaning in to

  check it out more closely. “A hubcap, hmmmm?”

  Nancy told him where she had found it and showed

  him her pencil rubbing of it.

  “Doesn't really look like much of anything, does it?”

  he said, squinting at the smeary picture. “It's pretty

  rusty. It could have been up there for ages and could

  be anybody's.”

  The sheriff dropped the hubcap back in the bag.

  “But I'll take it along with me, just in case. These tire

  tracks, now,” he said, peering closely at the models

  Nancy and George had made. “These are something

  else. They're real clear. Could be a big help. Thanks,

  you two. This is good work.” He smiled at Nancy and

  George.

  “Look, Matt,” Mr. Turner said. “Do you have any

  clues? This makes over ten percent of our herd rustled

  now, and we don't seem to be any closer to getting it

  stopped. Have you checked out Badger Brady again?”

  “I told you before, we've decided it's being done by

  outsiders,” the sheriff replied. “There's a gang been

  coming down from Canada and rustling cattle and

  horses from upper Minnesota and North Dakota.

  Seems reasonable they could be coming farther south

  and picking off your herd, too.”

  “Well, let's get whoever's doing this,” Mr. Turner

  said. “I want someone to pay for this.” His dark brown

  eyes flashed with anger.

  “We're working on it, we're working on it,” the

  sheriff said. “But it's not that simple. They're pretty

  slippery. Bout the time we get close, they've hopped

  back across the border.”

  Nancy could see Mr. Turner's lips tighten in fury

  and frustration.

  “I know it's hard to be patient, Bill,” the sheriff said.

  “But we're going to get them. We've got the law in

  three states working on this—and even the Royal

  Canadian Mounted Police are helping us out.” Nancy

  felt a chill as a cool breeze kicked up the dust in the

  drive.

  He turned to Kincaid. “Don't worry, little lady,” he

  said. “With the Canadian Mounties helping us, we're

  bound to get your calf back.” He smiled at Nancy and

  the others and nodded at the cloth-wrapped hubcap in

  his hand. “And with you three working on the case, too,

  we can't fail.” He got into his pickup and backed

  around, then waved as he took off down the drive.

  “He's so calm about this, he makes me crazy,” Mr.

  Turner said, his hands clenched into tight fists.

  “I know, honey,” Mrs. Turner said. “But you and

  Matt have been friends since grade school. You know

  how he is. He's slow and methodical. Likes to get

  everything in place before he acts. Not like you,” she

  added with a small smile.

  “Dad's a man of action,” Kincaid told her friends.

  Nancy recognized the pride in the young woman's

  voice.

  “Oh, goodness—my pies!” Mrs. Turner suddenly

  yelled. She ran toward the house, followed closely by

  Kincaid and Bess.

  “I'm going to do some chores,” Mr. Turner said, his

  long legs striding toward the barn. “When's dinner?”

  “Half an hour,” Mrs. Turner called as she disap-

  peared into the kitchen.

  “You two want to help?” Mr. Turner called back to

  Nancy and George.

  “Love to,” George said, following him.

  “I'll be right there,” Nancy said. “I want to get a

  drink of water.” She walked into the ranch house just

  as the phone rang. She could hear laughter from the

  kitchen as Mrs. Turner, Kincaid, and Bess appeared to

  be rescuing the pies.

  The phone rang again, and Kincaid yelled from the

  kitchen with a shriek of laughter. “Someone get that.

  Our hands are full.”

  Nancy walked to the old-fashioned phone table in

  the hallway and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello,” she said. “This is the M-Bar-B—”

  “I know who it is,” hissed the low voice through the

  receiver. “I was hoping you'd answer.”

  Nancy's heart pounded, and the hairs on the back of

  her neck stood at attention. The voice sounded as if it

  were from another world—eerie and hushed.

  “Don't try to find your little calf or you'll be very

  sorry,” the caller continued. “I'm only going to warn

  you once.”

  4. The Jawbone Talks

  Nancy shuddered as a chill rippled across her

  shoulders. This time it was not caused by the South

  Dakota breeze. The threatening words of the anon-

  ymous phone call still echoed in her mind—even after

  the caller had hung up and she walked into the kitchen.

  “Nancy?” Bess's cheery voice interrupted Nancy's

  thoughts. “What's the matter?”

  Nancy told Bess, Kincaid, and Mrs. Turner about

  the phone call. “He must have thought I was you,

  Kincaid. It was hard to tell because the voice was so

  low and whispery, but the person may have an accent.”

  “What kind of accent?” Kincaid asked.

  “I'm not sure,” Nancy said, going over the words in

  her head. “A sort of jumbled German, maybe. Or he

  might have been trying to disguise his voice and made

  it sound strange.”

  “Oh my,” Melissa Turner said. “What a horrible

  thing to do—call and scare us like that. This has to

  stop. I am not going to allow my family to be bullied

  any longer! We've got to get to the bottom of this.”

  “You're right, Mom,” Kincaid said, slamming a

  spoon back into a pot of chili on the countertop. Drops

  of reddish brown sauce sizzled on the pale green tile.
/>   “I'm tired of being robbed and threatened.”

  Kincaid yanked off the apron she had loosely tied

  around her waist and threw it onto a chair. “Mom, you

  call Matt and tell him about the call,” she said. “Bess,

  you and I will go to the barn to tell Dad. Then we're

  going to eat. An army needs food to fight a war.” She

  stormed out of the kitchen, and Bess ran out the door

  after her.

  Over dinner Nancy, Bess, George, and the Turners

  talked about the rustling.

  “Matt said he'd put a tracer on our phone in case we

  get another call,” Mr. Turner said.

  As Nancy buttered a large chunk of Melissa Turner's

  homemade corn bread, she felt another shudder at the

  memory of that low, eerie voice.

  “What proof do you have that Badger Brady might

  be the rustler, Mr. Turner?” Nancy asked.

  “He's the logical suspect,” Mr. Turner replied, his

  lips tightly drawn in a narrow smile.

  Nancy could tell he really didn't want to talk about

  Badger Brady with his visitors, so she decided to drop

  the subject.

  No one spoke for a few minutes, each lost in

  thought. Finally George broke the silence. “What

  about that hubcap?” she asked. “Don't you think that

  could be a clue?”

  “Matt says it's so old and rusty, it could have been

  up there for ages,” Mrs. Turner said. “Or, it could have

  been lost by somebody driving around there, not

  necessarily the rustlers.”

  “But I don't understand,” George said. “How could

  someone just drive out there to the shelter? Your ranch

  is fenced, right?”

  “Sure, but it's a thousand acres,” Mr. Turner said.

  “We can't monitor the entire perimeter all the time.

  We make regular fence and barbed-wire checks, but

  there's not someone watching every yard of fence every

  day.”

  “And a lot of stuff can disturb a ranch fence,”

  Melissa Turner added. “A charging animal, a high

  prairie wind—”

  “A pair of wire cutters,” Kincaid grumbled.

  “Once a fence is breached, an intruder has pretty

  much free rein,” Mr. Turner said. “There are no roads,

  so you need a pretty good vehicle.”

  “But everybody out here has one of those,” Mrs.

  Turner pointed out.

  “But just anybody still shouldn't be driving around

  there, Mom,” Kincaid said. “That's our property.”

  “Yes, but people do wander off the road sometimes

  and get lost,” Mrs. Turner said. “When there are no

  road markers or houses or anything—nothing but miles

  and miles of open land—it's hard to find your way back

  to civilization.”

  After dinner Nancy, Bess, and George helped

  Kincaid clean up; then all four went to the guest cabin

  to talk.

  George put the petrified wood fragments and the

  prehistoric tiger tooth on the windowsill. “These are so

  cool,” she said. She held up the tooth, turning it so it

  shimmered in the moonlight. “Did you say you find a

  lot of this stud around here?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Kincaid answered. “This whole area

  attracts archaeologists and paleontologists from all over

  the world.”

  “Tell them about your national science project,”

  Bess urged. “Go on—don't be modest.”

  “Well,” Kincaid said, “I worked at the geology

  museum as a summer intern. I'd found a baby

  mammoth jawbone on the west end of the ranch.”

  “You're kidding!” George said.

  “Nope. I studied it to determine what it ate. You can

  tell a lot about the diet of a fossilized jawbone by the

  shape the teeth are in.”

  “Got her to the national finals,” Bess said proudly.

  “Very cool,” George said, studying the tooth.

  Kincaid turned on the small television set. “It's

  almost time for the local news,” she said. “I want to see

  if they mention the rustling.”

  They watched for half an hour, but there was

  nothing said about Lulu and Justice.

  “I should have known,” Kincaid said as the weather

  forecaster began predicting a beautiful day for

  tomorrow. “What's the big deal about a couple of

  missing bison, right?”

  “Maybe it's intentional,” Bess said. “Maybe it is

  those guys from Canada who did it. Maybe the two

  countries are setting up a sting to catch them. If that's

  the case, the less said on the news about any of it, the

  better.”

  “There's one part that bothers me, though,” Nancy

  said.

  “What?” George asked, putting the tooth back on

  the windowsill and rejoining the group around the

  fireplace.

  “If we're dealing with an international ring of

  rustlers, why did they take Lulu and Justice?” Nancy

  pointed out. “How did they even know they were out

  there? Why not just keep on taking a few at a time

  from the main herd? And why make that threatening

  call? If these guys are two-country rustling

  professionals, I don't think they'd be phoning the

  victims personally.”

  “Come to think of it,” Bess said, “you're right. The

  caller said your little calf.' How did the person know

  Lulu and Justice were Kincaid's?”

  “Hey,” George said. “Are you saying you don't think

  this Canadian gang stole those two?”

  “I don't know what I'm saying exactly,” Nancy said.

  “It just doesn't seem to add up. The caller seemed to

  know who Kincaid was—or at least knew about her,

  and that Lulu and Justice were hers.”

  “Someone who knows me . . .” Kincaid murmured.

  “Or at least knows about you,” Nancy repeated.

  “You mean someone local,” Bess said. “You mean

  Badger Brady.”

  “Maybe,” Nancy said. “Kincaid, tell me more about

  him. What's his real name?”

  “He grew up around here,” Kincaid began. “Went to

  school with my dad and Matt as I told you. Dad always

  said he was called Badger because badgers have such

  nasty temperaments and they're such vicious animals

  when cornered.”

  “If he's so dangerous,” Nancy asked, “why did your

  dad go into business with him?”

  “Badger wasn't always so bad,” Kincaid continued.

  “His dad and uncle went to prison for cheating on their

  taxes and not paying their bills, and the whole family's

  been in trouble off and on forever. Badger got into

  some scrapes when he was younger, but he seemed to

  straighten up. Dad figured starting a ranch together

  might give Badger the chance he needed to turn out

  better than the rest of his family.”

  “After he and your dad broke up their business,”

  George said, “how did he start his own buffalo ranch?”

  “He left the area for a few years,” Kincaid answered.

  She stretched her legs, then draped them over the

  wooden arm of the worn leather chair. “Then back
he

  came, flashing a lot of money and buying up bison

  stock from Colorado. The next thing we knew, he had a

  herd big enough to give Dad some real competition.

  And then he was back to his old ways.”

  “What do you mean?” Nancy asked.

  “Well, we heard rumors that some of his stock was

  sick but he sells them as if they're healthy,” Kincaid

  said.

  “That's pretty unethical,” Bess said.

  “He falsifies records, swindles customers, and cheats

  on his federal inspections,” George said. “And now he's

  maybe a rustler to boot.”

  “Do you think the sheriff suspects him at all? I know

  he thinks a Canadian gang did it,” Nancy said to

  Kincaid.

  “Matt knows Badger from school,” Kincaid an-

  swered. “He agrees he could be a suspect, and has even

  checked out Badger's ranch. But there's no sign of any

  of our missing herd there—or anywhere. And you

  heard Matt. He seems to be leaning toward the gang

  from Canada.”

  “Do you brand the bison?” Nancy asked.

  “Sort of,” Kincaid answered. “We tattoo the inside of

  one ear.”

  “The phone call might be a beginning,” Nancy said.

  “I'd like to hear Badger Brady's voice— especially over

  the phone. Maybe we can work up a sting of our own.”

  In the background, the sports reporter finished up his

  story, and the station broke for a commercial.

  Kincaid reached over to turn up the set. “They

  always end the news show with a short feature about

  something local,” she said. “It's their last chance to

  mention Lulu and Justice.”

  As they watched, the program returned to the news

  desk. “And now for our final story,” the anchorwoman

  said. “Local personality Antoinette Francoeur has

  made the headlines again. You might recall that last

  year, she released all the parakeets and cockatiels from

  a pet shop.”

  “Why would she do that?” Bess asked.

  “She said she doesn't believe in confining animals

  for any reason,” Kincaid said.

  “Francoeur has scheduled a press conference for

  tomorrow morning at ten at Beauforêt, her estate in

  the Black Hills,” the anchorwoman continued. “She is

  expected to announce the formation of a new

  organization dedicated to liberating all animals.”

  “What happened to her last year after the pet shop

  incident?” Nancy asked.

  “She paid a fine, but that's all,” Kincaid answered.