The Territory A Novel - By Tricia Fields Page 0,99
mind my own business, but I wondered if you couldn’t drive by sometime and check it out?”
“Is the camper on your land?”
“No. It’s on government property. You know where we live? Out behind the mudflats?”
Josie nodded.
“There’s maybe half a dozen houses back in there, but the land across from us is all federal grazing. I don’t want some squatter setting up camp for good. Now there’s a trailer set up there, too.”
“Doesn’t your land bump up against Red Goff’s place?”
Vie pursed her lips and squinted. “Sort of. There are a couple miles of federal land that separate our place from Red’s land. Smokey always said we were either the safest people in Texas, or the stupidest for living next to that guy.”
“Do you know if the person is a local?”
Vie squinted, her expression uncertain. “No clue. I’ve never actually seen the person staying back there. I don’t know if someone’s living there or just storing something.”
Otto finally walked over to the table, and Vie stood.
“You two be careful out there.”
Otto took her place at the table and reached into his shirt pocket. He pulled out a little plastic bottle of Visine and pushed it across the table. “Better take a shot,” he said.
Josie let the drops fill her eyes and sighed, wiping the tears from her face with a napkin. She filled Otto in on her conversation with Vie.
“Let’s run out there after supper and check it out,” Otto said.
She also told Otto about her visit with Kenny Winning.
“You think he might be the camper?” he asked.
“It would put him right behind his own trailer and Pegasus. He could make it through there with four-wheel drive easy. If he were walking, I’m guessing it’s a little over a mile from where Vie was talking about.”
“Why not stay at his own trailer, then?”
She shrugged. “He’s been here for a week and we didn’t know it. Sounds like a pretty good plan. There wasn’t a vehicle at the trailer today, other than Pegasus’s Eldorado. I wish I’d thought to ask him where he was staying, and where his car was, but it didn’t click with me until just now.”
After a massive burrito, coffee, Coke, and two doses of Visine, Josie felt as if she might survive the shift. The waitress cleared the plates away and Otto paid the bill while Josie started the jeep to get the air conditioner blowing cool. Otto finally got into the passenger seat carrying chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
The mudflats were located north of Sauly Magson’s property about three miles from the river. The land around Sauly’s and up into the mudflats was the greenest area in Artemis. Prairie grasses covered the ground, not just in clumps as in the rest of Artemis, but in thick swaths of green that rustled in the never-ending wind. Natural springs and mountain runoff kept the area green most of the year, a nice change of pace in the desert. Vie and Smokey’s place was located on a road that wound through the hills and the grass. A house dotted the road every half mile or so. Red’s place and Winning’s trailer were north of the mudflats by another mile, where the land turned suddenly barren and bereft of color.
Josie pulled her jeep along the edge of the road and looked across the field. Otto pointed out a camper set up a half mile away, barely noticeable down the slight embankment. Viewed from a distance, the grass was silken and feathery and moved in gentle waves in response to the breeze. But walking through the three-foot-high blades of grass left thin cuts along any exposed skin, which burned for hours. Josie knew that fact was moving through Otto’s brain at that very moment.
She pointed toward the camper. “No tire tracks. If the owner of the camper approached from this road, the grass would still be mashed down in places. He had to have come in from behind Red’s place.” Josie looked over and found Otto staring out his side window, drumming his fingers on his thighs. “Feel like taking a walk?”
“Not really.” Otto opened his car door and affixed his radio to his gun belt. “You owe me a Coke when we’re done.”
“Deal,” she said, and got out to follow him.
The temperature had dropped into the eighties, and while Josie thought the light breeze and temperature were ideal, she knew Otto would be sweating. The sunset to their right was still high, but the reds and oranges were already spreading out