The Influence(53)

“Si,” Jorge said, straightening up, but even that word was spoken in a snide, insolent manner.

Cameron would have beat the shit out of the fucking wetback then and there, but Jack and the others were coming, and he needed help. “Get all the men together,” he ordered. “Now. I want them out here guarding the smokehouse. Jack and Cal and Joe are coming over and I think they might want to do something. You have to stop them if they try.”

For once, the two of them were on the same page. Jorge’s insolence disappeared, replaced by a determination so fierce that it took Cameron aback. He was glad to see such resolve, but it frightened him a little, and he wondered for the first time if that Catholic priest was right, if maybe they should bury the body instead of keeping it in the smokehouse. The feeling passed as quickly as it had arrived, though, and Jorge nodded his compliance before heading toward the barn, shouting orders in Spanish.

Cameron went back into the house to finish off his beer, then stood on the porch, waiting. He could track the arrival of the other ranchers by the moving cloud of dust kicked up by their trucks, and he walked down the steps to meet the men as they got out of their vehicles, slamming the doors.

It was Jack who spoke first. “Six more head last night, Cameron. Half my herd is gone.”

“I know. Same thing’s happening to me.”

“We’re going broke here!”

“I told you, we need to find out—”

Joe interrupted him. “We all know what’s causing it, Cameron. It’s that thing.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Bullshit!” Joe said.

“Even my men are scared,” Jack continued. “I’m losing as many hands as cattle. Two more ran off yesterday.”

All of them had lost workers, it turned out.

Cameron said nothing. Looking toward the smokehouse at his own men gathered there, he realized that there were several hands he didn’t recognize. Jorge was talking to one of them, and he was pretty sure it was Cal’s foreman.

Their workers were coming to his ranch.

He wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t need any more hands, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to pay any wages for additional men.

Jack must have seen where he was looking. Squinting, he peered at the area in front of the smokehouse. “Holy shit. Is that Pepe? And Julio?”

“I guess they’re not that scared,” Cameron said drily.

“You’re stealing our workers!”

“I’m not stealing anything. I didn’t even know they were there until now, and I don’t want ’em. Take ’em back, they’re all yours.”

Cal spoke for the first time. His voice was low and grim. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but our workers are defecting to you, our cattle are dying—”

“Mine are, too,” Cameron pointed out.

“—and we’re losing money by the minute. At the same time, Lee Roberts—who had what? five or six head?—now has twenty. I don’t know where he got the money, but I saw the stock supplier’s truck over at his place, and when I asked him what was what, he said that he was expanding his herd and that he also had two out-of-season foals. Fucking Birkenstock Shane with his organic pea patch of land has made a deal with some sort of new age winery to supply grapes. All these little pissants are suddenly making money hand over fist.”

“And our herds are dropping like flies!” Joe said.

“They’re not just dying,” Jack said quietly, and all of them knew what he was talking about. Cameron thought of those bright red moths.

Joe glared at him. “So fuck you, Cameron. I don’t give a shit what you say. We need to destroy that thing.”

He’d been getting more alarmed and had actually been thinking the same thing. But he wasn’t about to concede the point to Joe Portis. Glancing back at the smokehouse and the men positioned protectively around it, his reservations disappeared. Somewhere in his brain, he thought dully that there was something wrong with that. All of his fears had suddenly been wiped clean, and that was not normal, not right. But he knew as well that it was evidence of tremendous power, power that could be harnessed and used—if he could only figure out how to do so.

He turned toward the other ranchers with renewed determination. “You’re not touching it,” he said.

Joe took a step forward. “The shit we’re not!”

Like a dictator general, Cameron held up his hand, snapped his fingers and pointed forward. Jorge and the men behind him started forward, threateningly. “The shit you are.”

Jack tried to appeal to reason. “It’s putting us in the poorhouse. You, too. It’s knocking everything out of whack. It was a mistake to keep it. We should have burned it or buried it that first night.”