Page 60 of Rocky Ride

Travis drove north alone to the border crossing—the Montana/Alberta line. He went inside and had a good chat to Mark Garson, the boss of the customs office on the U.S side.

“Sheriff Frost, nice to see you. Social visit or something else?”

“Possibly something else. Mostly to clear the path for me to take action, but first I wanted to ask if y’all had anything going on with Dan Darkers.”

Garson frowned. “I don’t recognize the name. What’s he been up to?”

“Possibly smuggling precursor in from Canada, but I’m not sure of it. If you haven’t been watching him, maybe I’m off track.”

“I’m sure you’re not. There’s a lot of that going on, Sheriff. You go ahead with whatever you have planned. If he does cross here in the meantime, I’ll have an extra close look at him.”

Travis smiled. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

Darkers Residence. Sweetgrass.

Passing Sweetgrass on his way back from the border, Travis took a slight detour and cruised by Darkers’ trailer. He parked down the road for a while and kept watch on the traffic in and out.

Not much going on. Guys carrying stuff into the building in cardboard cartons. Cartons of what? He had no way of knowing the boxes contained chemicals. Before he could pull off a raid, he had to be sure.

That meant more time spent on the project and a lot more man-hours of surveillance. Be great if he could get a tag inside the building or the trailer but there seemed to be a lot of workers around the clock.

Whatever was going on inside the building was highly organized. Maybe grabbing one of the workers and questioning him was the way to go.

Wild Stallion Ranch.

Sunday cooked pork chops and mashed potatoes for us for dinner and her cooking was pretty good. Thing was, she hardly talked at all, and she definitely wasn’t talking to Billy. Wouldn’t even turn her head to look in his direction.

Dad gave Billy a couple of looks and he shrugged it off like he had no idea what was up with Sunday—but he must have.

To break the tension, I said, “Hal Hoover was lying about delivering the fuckin suits to Bob Ellington. Virge is with me on this. The guy driving the Jag was there for a different reason.”

“Huh,” said Dad. “You guys came up with a good lead today. We’ll have to put a watch on the Jag driver and see what he’s up to.”

After dinner the dogs went nuts barking at the back door and Virge came running back saying he heard a bear growling out back.

“Oh, let me see if I can talk to him.” Sunday got her coat and hat on and headed outside.

“No,” hollered Billy, and he tried to run after her. “Don’t do that, Sunday. You can’t go out and confront a bear. That’s plain dangerous.”

“I’m not afraid of bears,” she called over her shoulder as she ran through the woodshed.

“You should be. Sunday, come back here.”

Sunday kept running and shot out the back door heading towards the barn where the growling was coming from.

“Don’t go near the barn,” hollered Billy.

Because of his bad leg Billy couldn’t run, and he yelled at me, “Harlan, go get her and drag her inside.”

I ran after Sunday, caught up with her as she ran by the woodpile at the side of the barn. I scooped her up—her yelling at me to leave her alone—and ran back to the house with her.

The big grizzly was only a few fuckin feet behind us snarling and running on all fours for more speed.

Sunday must’ve lost her fuckin mind.

Billy slammed the door and locked it as soon as I got inside with Sunday. Out of breath, I put her down and sat on the woodpile trying to suck in enough oxygen.

“Don’t you ever do that again, Sunday,” said Billy. “That was a suicide move. Just nuts. That’s what it was.”

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