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A lot.
Lucky almost never strayed far from her normal range. Sagebrush wandered more, but even she tended to return to familiar water. And now both had vanished from the reports while Luna had turned up in the same general area.
So go look yourself.
That was the answer.
“Excuse me.” Jodie got to her feet and went after Harold. She caught him near the gate to the holding area.
“Since the roundup is over for the day, can I search the western section, around where you spotted Luna?”
Harold’s expression tightened. “No.”
“We don’t need to bother Virgil. I just want to look for Sagebrush and Lucky.”
“Absolutely not. You have no evidence those horses are on his property, and I’m not authorizing a group of angry volunteers to trespass on a rancher’s land because somebody drew a circle on a map.”
That took her aback. “We’re not asking to confront him. We’re asking to look.”
“And I’m saying no.” Harold lowered his voice and glanced past her toward the volunteers gathered around the table. “For your safety and his. This is exactly why we have out-of-bounds areas. Virgil’s already being maligned enough.”
Jodie’s jaw tightened. “I’m not maligning him. I’m actually trying to save his reputation.”
True enough. Even though my focus is finding the horses.
“I know you aren’t.” Harold sounded tired more than anything else. “But not everybody over there is being as open-minded as you are.”
He had her there. Jodie looked back. People were still staring toward Virgil’s property. Then at her.
Harold continued, “Those sections are restricted for a reason. Nobody from FHDH crosses into them without permission. If you have a sighting from outside, you report it. You do not go investigating.”
She huffed in frustration. “Then who does investigate?”
“We will.”
“When?”
“As soon as I have people available.”
She almost pushed him to let her go anyway, as a favor for all she’d done to keep relations running as smoothly as possible between the BLM and FHDH. Then she looked at the horses behind the fencing, the BLM workers still sorting paperwork and checking animals, Rosie corralled to the side and waiting to be examined, everyone exhausted after a day that had gone on far too long.
He’s right about one thing.
They couldn’t turn Virgil into a criminal because they were scared.
Jodie nodded once. “Fine. But I want to know the second your people check that area.”
“You will.”
She walked back toward the table. Willow took one look at her face. “No?”
“No.” Jodie sat down and pulled the paperwork back in front of her.
Sagebrush and Lucky were still missing. But Luna was safe. One good thing, at least.
By the time they got back to camp, the sun was lower and the smoke was heavy enough to turn the dust hanging over the Basin orange. Jodie carried her binder and tablet to the folding table beneath the canopy and spent another twenty minutes entering what she could into the master file before the signal dropped again. Rosie had been checked by the vet. The limp looked like a strain, painful but nothing broken. Luna had been seen, alone, the day before. Sagebrush and Lucky had not been seen at all. And Echo had come down the funnel at four months old with a mare who wasn’t his mother but had taken him in, and was now standing in a quarantine pen waiting on a vet who had eleven other animals ahead of him. That was where the day stood.
Jodie saved the file, shut down the tablet, and closed the binder. For the first time since the helicopter appeared over the ridge that morning, there was nothing else she needed to do for the horses.
