Rattlesnake Crossing Read Free Page A

dated all the way back to Arizona's territorial days. Alton Hosfield, the fifty-three-year-old current owner, was waging a lonely war against what he called "enviro-nuts" and the federal government to keep his family's holdings all in one piece. Meanwhile, neighboring ranches had been split up into smaller parcels. Those breakups had caused a steady influx of what Alton Hosfield regarded as "Californicating riffraff." Most of the unwelcome newcomers were people the rancher could barely tolerate.
    "Does that mean the Cascabel range war is heating up all over again?" Joanna asked.
    Voland nodded. "It could be all those rattlers are getting ready to have another go at it."
    In high school Spanish classes Joanna had been taught that cascabel meant "little bell." But in Latin American Spanish it meant "rattlesnake." No doubt Voland wanted to impress Frank Montoya with his own knowledge of local Hispanic place-names.
    "Deputy Sandoval checked to see if maybe Hosfield's cattle had broken into Martin Scorsby's pecan orchard again," Voland continued. "As far as he could tell, the fence was intact, and both rattle were found on the Triple C side of the property line."
    Scorsby, Hosfield's nearest neighbor, was a former California insurance executive who had planted a forty-acre pecan orchard on prime river bottom pastureland Alton Hosfield had coveted for his own. During an estate sale, he had attempted to buy the parcel from the previous owner's widow. Years later, Hosfield still read collusion into the fact that Scorsby's offer had been accepted by the former owner's son—yet another Californian—in place of his. In addition, Joanna knew that on several previous occasions, when Triple C cattle had breached the fence and strayed into Scorsby's peccan orchard, Hosfield had been less than prompt in retrieving them.
    "It's not just that the cattle are dead," Voland added ominously. "It's how they got that way. This isn't in the report, because I just talked to deputy Sandoval about it a few minutes ago. He managed to recover a bullet from one of the dead cattle. He said he's never seen anything like it. The slug must be two inches long."
    "Two inches!" Joanna repeated. "That sounds like it came out of a cannon rather than a rifle."
    "Sniper rifle," Frank Montoya said at once. "Probably one of those fifty-caliber jobs."
    Both Joanna and Voland turned on the Chief Deputy for Administration. "You know something about these guns?" the sheriff asked.
    "A little," Montoya said. "There's a guy over in Pomerene named Clyde Philips. He's a registered gun dealer who operates out of his back room or garage or some such thing. He called me a couple of months ago wanting to set up an appointment for his salesman to come give us the whole sniper-rifle dog and pony show. He said that since the bad guys might have access to these things, our Emergency Response Team should, too. He sent me some info. After I looked it over, I called him back and told him thanks, but no thanks. Maybe the crooks can afford to buy guns at twenty-five hundred to seven thousand bucks apiece, but at that price they're way outside what the department can pay.”
    "What can fifty-calibers do?" Joanna asked.
    "Depends on who you ask. After I talked to Philips and looked over the info he sent me, I got on the Internet and researched it a little further. Fifty-calibers were first used as Browning automatic rifles long ago. Remember those, Dick? Then the military in Vietnam tried a sniper version. The farthest-known sniper kill is one point four-two miles, give or take. Not bad for what the industry calls a 'sporting rifle.' "
    "Sporting for whom?" Joanna asked.
    "Probably not for the cattle," Voland replied.
    "We'll be running forensic tests on the slug?"
    Voland nodded. "You bet."
    "I don't suppose there's any way to tell who some of Clyde Philips' other local customers might be," Joanna suggested.
    Montoya shrugged. "You could ask him, I suppose, but I don't know how much good