Tamarack River Ghost Read Online Free

anybody that you’re screwin’ up or goofin’ off, you are outta here. You got that?” He looked Josh square in theeye. Amos had small, intense black eyes, sunk deep in his tanned, wrinkled face.
    “I got it,” Josh said, trying to keep his voice level and unafraid.
    With that, Amos turned his big horse and trotted off. That was the only conversation Josh had with the foreman that entire first week, so he assumed he was doing OK. Each evening, he returned to his little motel room covered with dust and grime and smelling more like the feedlot than the feedlot itself. After the first couple of days in the saddle, his behind was so raw in the evenings that he could hardly sit in the chair to work at his little Toshiba laptop, where he jotted down facts and impressions.
    Scarcely a day went by as he worked that he didn’t think about the young reporter who had been doing a story on the Lazy Z operation. He knew he’d better be careful and not ask any questions that went beyond what an employee needed to know to do his job and not go nosing around in places where he shouldn’t be.
    At the end of his first week, he filed a story for the Farm Country News using the name Jed Walker. He hoped that the folks at the Lazy Z would never put Jed Walker and Josh Wittmore together and figure out they were one and the same.
    Josh’s first story introduced his planned series, titled “Cattle Feedlot Situation USA.” He wrote: “American consumers like their beef tender and juicy—the kind of beef that is corn-fattened in a cattle feedlot where thousands of animals are crowded together, not a spear of grass in sight. One-third of the country’s beef is produced in feedlots like this, some of them with a capacity for more than a hundred thousand animals. If more people saw a feedlot, they wouldn’t enjoy their steaks so much.”
    A week later, when he stopped in the Lazy Z office to pick up his paycheck, he noticed a copy of the Farm Country News on the counter. His story, with a generic photo of some other feedlot, ran on the first page and was topped with a big bold headline: “Is This What American Consumers Want?”
    When Stephanie handed him his check, she pointed to the newspaper.
    “You see that article?”
    “Don’t do much reading,” Josh replied.
    “Well, you ought to read it. This guy, Jed Walker, ought to be strung up.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “He’s out to do places like this in, close us down. Look at all the people who’d lose their jobs.”
    Josh nodded in agreement and went back to work. His next week’s story was considerably edgier. He asked the occasional question around the feedlot, always carefully and never seeming to be nosey. And he had learned much. His article ran:
The Long-Term Dangers of Consuming Feedlot Beef
    By Jed Walker
    That juicy steak sizzling on your grill can be the worst thing you can feed your family, if it comes from an animal fattened at one of the nation’s major feedlots. Owners lace their cattle feed with antibiotics to prevent disease in the animals, something nearly inevitable when so many animals are crowded together in an outdoor environment where they wallow in mud and manure.
    Numerous medical studies warn that antibiotic residue remains in the meat that people consume. Over time, people with various infectious diseases no longer respond to standard antibiotic treatment. Medical doctors are increasingly seeing “super bugs,” requiring new, more powerful antibiotics to control them.
    Some feedlot owners also regularly feed anabolic steroids as growth promoters to their feedlot animals. Steroid residue has also been found in the muscle, fat, liver, kidneys, and other organ meats of treated animals. Studies are beginning to show links between these steroid residues and human reproductive problems. Knowing all of this, the European Union has banned the use of animal growth promoters since 1988.
    Next week’s story will examine in some detail the operation of the Lazy