Wild Penance by Sandi Ault

him and almost ran him over because I didn’t see him there. He screamed, Redhead bucked, and I landed on my behind. The guy ran off. I tried to track him after I got back up but the ground up top was frozen, no tracks. He didn’t have any gear there except a flimsy canvas backpack. I didn’t get to look through it yet. The ashes from his fire looked to be a day old. Besides having an illegal campfire, something must have been up for him to run off like that.”
    “Huh,” he uttered. It was the kind of sound you make when you notice something curious and you can’t quite figure it out.
    “What?”
    “Oh, probably nothing.” He shifted into low. “Someone has definitely been going back in there for some reason. Last night, I saw Santiago Suazo’s pickup pulled over on the four-wheel track north of there in the national forest. The truck was down that track about two clicks. The road is impassable, so he must have gone in farther on foot. There was no one around, and I didn’t see anything in his truck I could hold against him, but of course I couldn’t get inside it to look around. It looked like there were several sets of ruts there that were fresh. Maybe someone with a good four-wheel drive met up with him, and they managed to get down that road. When I went back around dawn to check on it, Suazo’s truck was gone, and then it was time for me to come meet you. I don’t know what he’s up to this time. He can’t lift much firewood when the roads aren’t passable, but he could have been scoping out a site to cut from later, or he could even have been poaching. He’s been known to take elk out of season. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”
    “Oh, yeah. Everybody knows who Santiago Suazo is. He’ll sell you illegally cut firewood in the afternoon, then steal it from you that night and sell it to your neighbor the next day. One of ours busted him two years ago with three eagles that had been shot with a high-powered rifle, and he got off because the agent hadn’t followed procedure to the letter; the judge wouldn’t even allow the photographs of the birds to be used as evidence. Suazo has done probation for petty theft, a little lockup time for an assault with a deadly weapon conviction, but he’s gotten off on two different charges of possession of unlicensed firearms and one minor drug charge. He’s got a second or third cousin who’s a lawyer. Nobody has managed to nail him for illegal woodcutting yet, but almost every time we discover an area that’s been clear-cut, he’s been seen around. We get reports, the sheriff gets complaints, but we can’t prove anything. One of these times Suazo is going to steal somebody’s firewood and they’ll shoot him. We won’t hear about it, but they’ll find that pickup of his at the bottom of some arroyo the next spring.”
    He looked at me and chuckled. “You got it.”
    By this time, we had reached the Forest Service station. Kerry pulled the truck into the dirt lot and backed the trailer to the path in front of the stables.
    I began trying to untangle myself from my blanket cocoon, balancing the full mug of coffee carefully in one hand. “I’ll get Redhead—”
    “No.” He reached out a hand and pulled the blanket back over my shoulder, tucking me in. “You stay here and get warm. I’ll take care of your horse. I think she likes me better than you, anyway.” He winked and smiled.
    “Well, that’s probably true. But she needs to be brushed and her hooves . . .”
    “Look—here comes Peter. He would probably love to do it.”
    “Well, okay. Here.” I reached into my coat pocket. “Give her this.” I handed him the other half of the carrot. “And could you get my rifle and that backpack that’s tied to my saddlebag?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat playfully. “Anything else?”
    “Yeah, how long do I have to wait for this breakfast?”
    “We’ll just drop your royal steed at this here palace, Your Highness,