Brandon stopped short, and the distance between them grew. He had to hurry to catch back up.

“I want to work for you. This is where I belong.”

“Grow up.”

The rancher was a pack rat. The mushrooms of snow seen from a distance turned out to be junk: dishwashers, farm implements, tires, car parts, tractor parts, furniture. It surrounded every building, looming mysteriously out of the snow.

“Damn,” Brandon said.

“You notice what’s missing?” Walt asked.

“Human beings?”

“Listen.”

The two men stopped. Absolute silence.

“It’s quiet enough,” Brandon admitted.

“And then some.” Walt led Brandon along one of the snowmobile paths to a fence line. The snow out in the pasture was rippled and dented by interconnecting seams, not flat and pristine. It reminded Walt of a brain. But there was no recent activity. All of the wandering seams connected into a single point down the fence line near yet another outbuilding.

“Those lines mark where the snow was trod down by livestock,” Walt said, pointing toward the shed. “Then a fresh snow covered them up.”

“So where’s the livestock?”

“That’s the point, Deputy. Moved ’em off the place.” Walt pointed to where all the paths connected. His eyes couldn’t make out a gate there, but he expected to find one. “I’d say it was probably to another field, but we’re not hearing them.”

“Who moves their livestock in winter?”

“It’s a pain,” Walt agreed. “Unless a water line froze or the snow got too dry. They might move them to make feeding easier.”

Walt started down the fence line through the knee-deep snow.

“What the hell?” Brandon called out, hesitating to join him.

“Check the trailer again. Another reason the livestock would be moved is if someone died.”

Brandon mulled that over. Walt kept on walking, trudging with difficulty through the snow.

“Are you mad at me, Sheriff? For what I said?” Brandon called out.

“Shut up and check the trailer.”

“Yes, sir.”

The farther down the fence line he went, the tougher it got for Walt, his legs growing weary from the deep snow. Sweat ran down his rib cage, despite the harsh cold that whipped his face, but there was something else he felt: an unease brought on by the utter stillness of the place, and the growing sensation he and Brandon were being watched.

As he drew closer to the shed, he picked out the outline of a feed trough, a double-hung gate, and a pair of automatic waterers. He arrived to the feed trough and saw it was filled with snow, suggesting the animals had been moved sometime between the two most recent snowstorms-in the last five to six days. He studied the sweep of the gate, the way it had pushed the prior snowfall ahead of it as it had been opened. This too confirmed his time line. Mark Aker had made a two-day trip to his cabin a few days earlier, just before the search and rescue that took his brother’s life. Had this ranch been a stop for him during those two days? What had he found? Why had the livestock been moved?

Fighting the deep snow, he wrestled open the shed’s large door far enough to squeeze through. It was dark inside, shafts of sunlight appearing as Walt kicked up dust from the dirt floor. A milking station and some stalls. A squeeze chute, used to isolate an animal for doctoring or branding.

He slipped back through the door to the outside. He might have missed it had he not visited the shed, for only now did he get a good look at the automatic waterers.

The waterers were clear of snow but dry. Warmed by a thermostat in winter months, with a float valve to control the water level, the devices were used to save the rancher from fighting ice and trying to keep his cows drinking. Walt studied the jerry rigging: on each device, baling wire had been twisted to hold the float valve up so the bowl wouldn’t refill.

He pulled off his glove and tested the metal bowl; it was warm to the touch. That explained the snow having not collected on it but not the floats being wired up.

Some kind of problem with the waterers would explain the livestock having been moved. A frozen line, or intermittent power.

Chicken or the egg: had the livestock been moved and then the water turned off or had the water been turned off and then the livestock moved?

The unexpected visit at his office from the CDC woman-what was her name?-replayed vividly. Danny Cutter’s employees, sick as dogs. Flown out in a private jet-literally, under the radar. Danny’s most recent enterprise was Trilogy Springs: spring water from a source “two miles deep.”

Maybe it wasn’t mad cow after all. Something to do with the water?

To his left, Walt noticed an area that had been blocked from view by the shed.

Walt plodded along, ten yards, twenty, thirty. A hundred. He climbed a fence, where a snow-covered trail led through a gate. He was soaked through with sweat now, his breathing heavy. But there was more to it: his nerves all ajangle.

Maybe it resulted from the frank talk with Brandon. Maybe those wounds weren’t meant to be reopened.

His thought was interrupted by the sound of animals-a sound so unique and, prior to that moment, missing.

As he crested the hill and looked down, he saw five hundred sheep-a half a band-spread out along the edge of a fog-shrouded creek. The fence crossed the creek in two places and rose to include another twenty acres on the far side. The sheep had been fed hay from the far side of the enclosed pasture. Some of the hay remained scattered. Mist rose from five holes in the creek ice, each hole roughly chopped open with an ax. The rancher had traded more difficult feeding conditions for easier access to water, explaining the empty pasture behind him.

But it drew his attention back to the condition of the water. The sheep were now being offered surface water in conditions that likely required grunt labor to keep the iced-over water holes open and accessible. If a line had frozen in the waterers behind him, then it made some sense to move the sheep.

He retraced his own tracks through the deep snow to the waterers. Slipped off his gloves. Began untwisting the wire used to keep the floats up.

If the waterers were broken, then moving the sheep made practical sense.

But if the waterers worked, then why had the rancher chosen labor-intensive surface water over automatic waterers? That might require an explanation.

The last twist freed the wire.

Walt released it and watched.

27

ROY COATS’S APRON AND BOOTS WERE COVERED IN BLOOD, as he returned to the cabin, sweat running down his face. Aker was asleep, his head slumped forward, the rest of him still tied to the ladder-back chair. His breathing sounded sharp and fast and shallow. As Coats shut the door, Aker lifted his head. His skin was sallow, his eyes bloodshot.

Coats hoisted the freezer-sized Ziploc bag. Inside it, Bess’s unborn calf’s pancreas slid around like a dead fish. “Now what?” he said.

Aker’s eyes rolled in his head.

Coats crossed the room, stiff-legged and fast, and took Mark Aker by the chin. “Do not pass out on me! I’ve done my part. Now, you tell me what’s next. You hear me?” He raised his voice. “Doc! You hear me!?”

Aker vomited into his own lap.

Coats stepped back, grumbling. “Jesus!”

“Not doing real well,” Aker managed to croak out.

“Shit!”

“Fluids,” he mumbled.

Coats cut him loose and poured him a glass of water. Aker gagged it down. But he shook his head, as he handed the empty glass back to Coats. “From here, I dehydrate. The vomiting won’t allow me to keep the water down. I’m going to lapse into a coma at some point. Be ready for that. You’ll have to do this on your own, Coats. Have some sugar water or juice ready, because you probably won’t get the dosage right.” His eyes bobbed. “You got all that?”