The stable yard was empty, but it was obvious that many horses and vehicles had been there only a day or so before. There was manure everywhere, trampled places in the grassy meadows where horses had been tied, truck and trailers parked alongside deep ruts where axles had been stuck.
Small men with red complexions, forks and wheelbarrows were cleaning up and in the outside arena, four girls on tall horses were floating over big jumps.
Jake and Matt watched as 100 lbs girls handled 1500 lbs animals with two thin leather straps. Jake drove around to the barns where he saw the sign ‘OFFICE’.
An older woman in jeans and half-boots wearing a Carharrt vest stood outside the screen door and stared at them. She made no move to approach the car window as all three disembarked. Jake stayed behind as the detective leaned on his cane. He held his badge out and she flicked it with a fierce gaze that missed nothing.
“I’m Detective Eachann, Matt,” he said. “NYPD.”
She had gray eyes with laugh lines and the windburned face of a woman who spent her life outdoors. Tall and thin, her demeanor was stripped to bare metal. An iron will. A ring on her finger said she was married. She had big hands that were well calloused.
“I’m Jane Lilly. Welcome to Lilly Farms. Are you here about the boy?” She took a step closer as Sanderson moved away, his gaze on the ground. After a few moments, he came back, his frustration evident on his face.
“No tracks I can read. There are too many on top of each other.”
“You’ve seen the boy? He was here?” Matt snapped.
She nodded, her tightly drawn hair escaping the bun with her vigorous head shaking. “I thought it was odd that a child that young was allowed to ride on his own. My barn manager didn’t say anything until yesterday afternoon. After the group had left hours earlier. Is he a runaway? He has his own horse and gear although he took some things from our old tack room.”
“What kind of things?” Matt asked.
“An old synthetic saddle, a blanket. Brushes. Nothing new or valuable. Stuff we would have thrown out eventually,” she returned with a shrug.
“Is he following the Wagon Train?”
She shrugged again, her shoulders bulky under the coat. Her arms flexed with muscles. “I don’t know for sure. I assume so. The barn manager – Sally said that he was heading home to a farm near Fair Play that was part of the itinerary. I think he was lying about that because I asked the Wagon Master and he said that no one had seen an unattended child of that age on the train. Certainly, no boy riding an uncut stud.”
“You called him? This Master?” Matt raised his eyebrows.
She snorted. “Yes. Ever hear of a cell phone, Detective? The Wagon Master has one just like 99% of the others with him. I can give you a list of the farms that they will be stopping over at and the route they will be following. My guess – he cut off the first chance he found and is heading cross-country. There are a million trails out here that he can ride and stay out of sight. Once he crosses the Interstate, he’s in wild country all the way to Florida.”
Matt handed her a card with his name and cell number, the seal of New York and the NYPD. He told her to call if she heard anything else. She told them to follow her inside the office where she printed out a map of the Wagon Train’s route, farm lay-overs and the names of the Wagon Master and train staff. It included EMTs, a nurse, doctor and security.
When they left the farm, none of the three noticed the pickup truck with the out-of-state plates and the tall man behind the wheel that was sitting at the crossroad before the driveway to the farm. He wore dark sunglasses and a straw Stetson, chewing on a toothpick. He noticed the trio, recognized another fellow cop and sneered at their attempt to find his son. He did not try to follow. Instead, he drove down the long driveway toward the farm, heading directly to the barn marked ‘office.’
Before he had a chance to open his truck door, a tall, weather-beaten woman around his own age emerged from the barn. She waited for Tempe to exit before she said anything. He looked her over as carefully as she did to him.
“Can I help you? You a... cop? Not an FBI agent, not with those boots. But you look like a cop,” she stated. “You with the NY Detectives?”
She introduced herself. “I’m Jane Lilly.”
“Tempe Neige. Deputy Sheriff out of Louisiana. No, ma’am,” he said in his soft drawl. “I’m looking to buy a trail horse. My son is the boy they’re all looking for. The way I figure it, I’ll have to catch him the same way — a horseback.”
“So, you really want to rent a horse? Can you ride and take care of one?”
“Yes, ma’am. Since I was four-years-old, but if the horse is good enough, I’ll keep it. My boy does love horses. I was fixing to get him one anyway.”
She stared him down. “Why is he running away?”
Tempe explained the circumstances (geared to his view) and that Cris did not remember him, only that he was desperate to go home. To go back to the last place where he had seen his Mom. He did not believe that she was dead.
“We were separated, estranged. She took my son and ran. She was killed in a major bus crash on the way north. He won’t admit that my ex-wife, his mother is dead. His momma is gone and he’s trying to find her. They put him in a foster home, a school and he ran away from there.”
“I have six good trail horses that I think you might like. Geldings. Quarter horses, Morgans and some Thoroughbreds. How much are you willing to spend?”
“Up to three thousand, including tack,” he calculated.
She nodded. Taking him to the barn, she showed him all six and he chose three to try out. There were other riders and owners in the arena, and they watched him as he put the animals through their paces. When she was certain that he knew what he was doing and how to handle the horses, she made a few suggestions on which might be acceptable for what he wanted to do with them. His final choice was a rugged TB gelding that stood a stocky 15.3 and weighed 1200 lbs. Large enough to carry the 6’4” Deputy Sheriff. The horse had great gaits, his trot was a comfortable jog that covered ground, the canter smooth and easy to sit. He neck-reined, backed up, stood ground-tied and was not flighty like the typical TB reputation for being hot and high-strung.
Dark bay in color, he had one white boot on the off-rear and a small blaze between his eyes and down to his lip. Seven-years-old, he was three years off the track and muscled up like a QH. He had recently been shod all around and the shoes were tight.
Tempe paid $3500 for him and was surprised when he was given the Jockey Club registration papers. His registered name was Pots of Gold on Fire and the barn called him Potter. He was a great-grandson of the immortal Secretariat. His racing record was mediocre, but he was tattooed on the upper lip, so he had been raced somewhere in his past.
“You mind if I leave my truck here until I find my son? When I do, I’ll rent a trailer and bring both horses back, do Coggins and a health certificate so I can bring them into Louisiana,” he said.
“You call me, and I’ll bring your truck down to you, along with a rental trailer. To your location so that you won’t have to backtrack,” she offered. “I can hitch a ride or a flight home myself.”
She had already transferred his Pay Pal account funds to her own and printed out a Bill of Sale. Tempe thanked her profusely for her help and promised to call her as soon as he found his son.
He saddled the horse, hung a rifle scabbard off the near side which he’d taken from the back seat of the truck. Tying a rolled-up sleeping bag on the cantle, he added a small two-person tent. She commented that he had come prepared and he told her that any self-respecting Cajun always had some camping and fishing gear handy.
The insulated saddle bags he packed with fishing line, parachute cord, fish hooks, bottled water and a fillet knife in its own sheath. It was wicked sharp. The last thing in the bag was five pounds of beef jerky and extra rounds for the rifle and clips for the matte black Glock, an ugly thing that oozed menace, but he treated it like a useful tool.
She made no comment as he removed his duty weapon from his side holster and placed it in the pommel bag in front, along with his ID, badge and license.
Checking his girth one last time before he mounted, he looked over the horse. Halter and lead rope tied around the horse’s neck in a cavalry knot, halter under the brow-band bridle with curb bit and seven-foot reins made of bio-thane. He had everything that he needed for a cross-country trip. She handed him a waterproof container with self-striking matches, he had a lighter and a flint in case both failed. A candle was also part of his outfit along with detailed topographical maps of the trails for the next two-hundred miles. He noted the abandoned train lines that ran parallel to the largest trail through the state forest. His phone had both a locator app and GPS, but Tempe wasn’t worried about getting lost.
Smashing his Stetson down on his head, he swung easily onto the saddle and thanked Miz Lilly. Trotting down the drive, he did not turn around nor wave as he followed her written directions. The evident passage of the Wagon Train was plain to see and the sign that he needed to follow.
To his surprise, he found himself enjoying the ride, the horse and the hunt. Something that he had given up when his wife had left him, he hadn’t realized that hunting and riding were that important to his life.
He pushed the horse for an hour at a slow jog, noting that although the gelding had barely broken a sweat, he moved easily and eagerly. When he passed the first hour mark by his Seiko, he let the horse walk for twenty minutes before he again picked up the pace. From the sign of the tracks he knew that he was getting closer to the actual riders of the Wagon Train, that he could close the gap in two or three hours, thus getting closer to finding Cris.
He kept his eyes out for sign of any animal leaving the main group and it wasn’t until he had done twenty miles that he picked up sign of a big, barefoot horse that had veered off in a totally different direction than the group. Tempe recognized the shape of the hoof-prints, large, round and with an impressive stride. It was the same mark that he’d seen at the auction barn, the campsite in New York and all along the highways. They belonged to the stolen stud horse.
“Horse is gonna get footsore, boy,” he spoke aloud as he dismounted to finger the marks in the sandy red dirt. From the hard crust of the prints, he guessed that Cris had passed that way no more than half a day earlier. Still a half day ahead of his father.
Cris had followed a major road, not an Interstate but the next thing down from it. A state highway named 357 and the tracks showed that he had cantered for a mile or more before the strides showed a shortening. He wasn’t sure if that meant the boy had pulled the horse up or it was showing signs of soreness.
Tempe found where his son had dismounted, had checked the stud’s front feet before he led the horse off. His small boot prints were next to the stallion and neither was moving at a fast pace. The boy was dragging his own feet, as if he too, were tired or footsore. He led the stud for miles before he took off down the road’s shoulder aiming for the fence that kept wildlife from crossing the four lanes. There, he tied the horse to the wire.
Tempe’s nose told him why as he uncovered a pile of spattered diarrhea. Cris was sick — his stool showed signs of either food poisoning, bad water or worse. There was blood on the buried wet-wipes, whole handfuls of them and several piles in a line of loose stools running down the fence line. He had found little evidence of his son’s meals, no buried cans or plastic wrap or empty soda bottles. If Cris had eaten, he would have buried or carried his trash out. Either way, he would have found some sign that the boy had eaten something.
Cris had left the fence and traveled the shoulder, staying near the trees until he had found a downed tree that had pushed the wire low enough that a tall horse could step over. He had led the stallion over and through the dead-falls until he had found a small clearing with a stump. There, he had mounted and rode out through the lines of planted pines. Tall, white pine over seventy feet tall. The ground underfoot was covered with needles and riding through was as quiet as the inside of a cathedral. It smelled good, too. Not like the earthy, musty smell of the swamp.
Tempe and the gelding climbed steep hills at a gradual pace so that it wasn’t so evident until he turned around and looked behind. They rode deeper into the Shenandoah Ridge, deep into the state forest where ATVs and motorized vehicles were not allowed. He saw no other sign of humans, just deer tracks. Big bucks, black bear scat and raccoon, fox, and turkey. He spooked gamecocks and a pheasant and wondered how it would be to hunt these woods. He saw that his son’s tracks no longer went straight but meandered as if the boy was no longer reining the horse but allowed the stallion to choose his own path. Which meant that there was something seriously wrong with the boy’s mind.
Tempe kicked his gelding into a fast trot, worried that he would find Cris in a bad way, or too late. He wanted to avoid a disaster, of which the boy seemed to be prone.