Read Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] for Free Online

of stuff that would tell her that her husband was truly dead. Tell her, that is, unless she already knew—having killed him herself. Or arranged it. He’d worry about the Porsche later. The Breedlove mansion was now just across the fence.
    According to Finch, old Edgar Breedlove had built it as a second home—his first one being in Denver, from which he ran his mining operations. But he’d never lived in it. He’d bought the ranch because his prospectors had found a molybdenum deposit on the high end of the property. But the ore price fell after the war and somehow or other the place got left to a grandson, Harold. Hal had adopted his granddad’s policy of overgrazing it and letting it run down.
    “That ain’t happening now,” Finch had told him. “This place ain’t going to go to hell while Demott’s running it. He’s sort of a tree-hugger. That’s what people say. Say he never got married ’cause he’s in love with this place.”
    Chee parked under a tree a polite distance from the front entrance, turned off the ignition, and sat, killing the time needed by hosts to get decent before welcoming guests. Finch, another empty-country man, seemed to understand that. He yawned, stretched, and examined the half dozen cows in the feedlot beside the barn with a professional eye.
    “How do you know all this about the Breedlove ranch, and Demott and everything?” Chee asked. “This is Colorado. It’s not your territory.”
    “Ranching—and stealing cows off of ranches—don’t pay much attention to state lines,” Finch said, not taking his eyes off the cows. “The Lazy B has leases in New Mexico. Makes ’em my business.”
    Finch extracted a twenty-stick pack of chewing gum from his jacket pocket, offered it to Chee, extracted two sticks for himself, and started chewing them. “Besides,” he said, “you got to have something going to make the job interesting. I got one particular guy I keep looking for. Most of these cow thieves are ‘hungries.’ Folks run out of eating money, or got a payment due, and they go out and get themselves a cow or two to sell. Or, on the reservation, maybe they got somebody sick in the family, and they’re having a sing for the patient, and they need a steer to feed all the kinfolks coming in. I never worried too much about them. If they keep doing it, they get careless and they get caught and the neighbors talk to them about it. Get it straightened out. But then there’s some others who are in it for business. It’s easy money and it beats working.”
    “Who’s this one you’re specially after?”
    Finch laughed. “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be talking about it, now would we?”
    “I guess not,” Chee said, impressed with how insulting Finch could be even when he was acting friendly.
    “We’d just go out and get him then, wouldn’t we?” Finch concluded. “But all I know about him is the way he operates. Modus operandi, if you know your Latin. He always picks the spread-out ranches where a few head won’t be missed for a while. He always takes something that he can sell quick. No little calves that you have to wean, no big, expensive, easy-to-trace breeding bulls. Never messes with horses, ’cause some people get attached to a nag and go out looking for it. Has some other tricks, too. Like he finds a good place beside a back road where there wouldn’t be any traffic to bother him and he’ll put out feed. Usually good alfalfa hay. Do it several times so the cattle get in the habit of coming up and looking for it when they see his truck parking.”
    Finch stopped, looked at Chee, waited for a comment.
    “Pretty smart,” Chee said.
    “Yes, sir,” Finch agreed. “So far, he’s been smarter than me.”
    Chee had no comment on that. He glanced at his watch. Another three minutes and he’d go ring the doorbell and get this job over with.
    “Then I’ve found a place or two where he fixed up the fence so he could get ’em through it fast.” He paused