Free Hold of the Bone by Baxter Clare Trautman Page B

take her back to the main house and the comfort of the waiting squad car.
    But the trees are upon them. The wide sunny fields bow to the sudden shade of conjoined oak and sycamore. The quad jerks to a stop. It wobbles as Sal and Gomez step from it. Frank is dimly aware of them gatheringthe plastic bags. Gomez says something, but Frank stares straight ahead, at a bridge over a creek.
    She watches Sal walk onto it, boots knocking the wood. The bridge is wide enough for the quad, maybe even a truck, and Frank wonders why Sal hasn’t driven over. Dogs howl from behind the curtain of trees. A bird cries above Frank’s head, a shivery call, like a loon’s.
    Gomez stops just before stepping onto the bridge. She looks back at Frank. “I’m about to put you on a leash and drag you after me. You coming or you gonna sit there all day?”
    Frank is happy with the idea of spending the rest of the afternoon on the quad. Like the patrol car, its rubber and metal are all that stand between her and whatever lies on the other side of the bridge. She wants to go but doesn’t. She tries to remember if Marguerite or the tarot lady had said anything about a ranch, but what she remembers most clearly is that logic and reason wouldn’t help her where she was going.
    â€œCity! What the hell?”
    Frank loosens her grip and steps off carefully, like the ground might open and suck her down. She starts toward the bridge. A carpet of leaves muffle her tread. All she hears is her heart pounding. And the gurgle of the creek. She shoves the glasses up and walks onto the bridge. Halfway across, she stops to look over the side.
    The water flows clear and bubbly over mossy cobbles. The creek is not deep, only a foot or so, but sunless pools swirl along the bank under arched tree roots and she knows come evening that gold-flecked fish will rise from them to snatch at hatch flies too close to the water. Frank almost laughs. She was born and raised in New York, and her whole adult life has been spent in the tar and cinderblock heart of LA. What the hell can she possibly know about fish?
    Gomez and Sal are across the bridge and out of sight. Frank is alone with the chortling water. Unable to tell if it laughs with her or at her, she hurries to catch up. Just as she is about to step off onto the other bank she stops, foot frozen in mid-stride. A dog blocks the path through the trees. It’s not big as dogs go, but it’s black and it’s a dog. Frank instinctively covers the arm scarred by a pit bull during the Mother Love case. The beast lowers its head level with its shoulders. She remembers from somewhere that’s what bulls do just before they charge.
    Sal treads back down the path and stops. She takes in the standoff. “Bone,” she calls, but the dog doesn’t move. “Bone, come!”
    Reluctantly the dog gives way and trots to Sal, but keeps looking over its shoulder. Frank lets out the breath she’s been holding and follows from a reasonable distance. The trees open onto a sun-filled clearing. The pressure in Frank’s chest eases and she takes a deep breath of sky and sun. Gomez stands in a dirt yard next to a cabin and pets a leaping golden retriever. To Frank’s surprise, Sal is offering coffee.
    â€œI’d love some,” Gomez says. She looks from the retriever to Frank.
    â€œSure,” Frank adds, her voice swallowed by hill and tree and sky.
    Gomez settles at a stone fire pit, humoring the yellow dog. The black one, Bone, sits next to Gomez but stares at Frank like she’s dinner. Frank stays where she is, taking in her surroundings.
    The cabin looks like something a child would draw—peaked roof meeting a stone chimney bracketed by symmetrical windows. West of the cabin, an old barn sags inside a corral and yellow hills roll away to the foot of the mountains. The top of the dirt yard is delineated by a ragtag assortment of coops and sheds, and a cliff behind them