Vengeance is Blind: Three Scott Drayco Short Mysteries Read Online Free PDF

that Natalie hadn’t been quite as happy to leave her
former life as Pichford had indicated.
    “It was a little over ten years ago.” She’d
shaken her head, seemingly amazed at the passage of time. “I was
touring in a rodeo.”
    “Were you a performer?”
    “You’re looking at a former IPRA barrel
racing champion, four years running.” She’d smiled briefly, then
quickly looked down at the leather purse she was making, a side
business of hers. “You probably can’t tell it now, though.”
    Twenty years younger than her husband, she
certainly wasn’t over the hill. She was a foot shorter than Drayco,
and her braided blond hair with wind-blown wisps falling down over
her forehead gave her a pixie look. And she always wore something
with the color purple.
    Drayco never felt suave enough to handle
female self-deprecation without getting himself into trouble, so
he’d settled for humor. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you could still
ride circles around Annie Oakley.”
    That had elicited a full-blown smile, and
she’d taken her hand away from her lacing needle long enough to
squeeze his hand, her thumb brushing across his knuckles. She’d
jumped back when Pichford and Kinlichee entered, although they
hadn’t seemed to notice.
    Kinlichee was another enigma. He’d been the
ranch foreman for three years and was good enough in his job that
others jokingly called him “the cattle whisperer.” Drayco hadn’t
seen him crack a smile once, and the man kept mostly to himself.
Kinlichee was rarely without a handful of pistachio nuts he cracked
one after the other.
    Drayco tried using his own one-eighth Navajo
ancestry to cut through Kinlichee’s reserve a bit, without success.
“It Pichford a good boss?” he’d asked, to which Kinlichee had
replied, “Good enough.” One pistachio, crack, then two.
    “You spend more time with the cattle than
anyone. Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary? Sounds of
distress, perhaps? I know the mutilations happened at night, but
your bungalow isn’t far from the pen.”
    “I’m a sound sleeper. Don’t hear much.”
Other than more pistachios being shelled and the husks thrown at
Drayco’s feet, that had been that.
    Pichford himself didn’t suspect his foreman.
“Nah, he’s a two-hundred-fifty pound teddy bear. He loves those
animals. He’s even a vegetarian, if you can believe it.”
    Drayco hadn’t, at first. “How could a
vegetarian possibly be happy working a ranch of cattle that are
raised to be slaughtered?”
    “I guess he figures it’s his way of assuring
they’re treated humanely beforehand. I mean, he can’t get the whole
world to stop eating beef, so this is the best he can do.”
    The more Drayco had gotten to know
Kinlichee, Pichford and Natalie, the more he liked them, and that
had made him worried. They were almost too good to be true.
    It’s funny how extreme stress has a way of
focusing the brain into a single moment of clarity. Now, as he
clung to the rock face, he could still recall the exact second he
realized he’d been set up. After Drayco had expressed an interest
in touring Antelope Canyon, Pichford suggested Kinlichee take him,
since tourists needed an authorized Navajo guide. And it just so
happened the foreman worked part-time for an outfitter providing
such tours.
    Then Pichford surprised Drayco at the last
minute by suggesting he himself tag along and was especially
adamant about the exact time they should take the tour. The local
resident collecting admission warned them of a storm in the area,
but Pichford, an amateur meteorologist, shrugged it off. “It won’t
be a problem.”
    Pichford also insisted they dawdle in a
section of the slot canyon where the walls of red, gold, and orange
sandstone were so narrow, hikers could touch both sides. He’d
goaded Kinlichee into giving Drayco the long, detailed history of
the canyons, even chipping in his own commentary—much to
Kinlichee’s annoyance, whenever it seemed like