The Owlhoot

by J. T. Edson

  So, after being compelled to listen in silence to Kochek during the drive, the big blond’s normally even temper was close to boiling point. At that moment, however, McCall was less interested in Brad’s views of the game of ‘fast draw’ than in his comments on the man they had brought in.

  ‘Is he the Owlhoot?’ the Deputy demanded.

  ‘If he is, he’s the coolest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever come across,’ Brad replied. ‘And if his alibi checks out and that “partial" doesn’t match him, I’d be inclined to say “no”.’

  ‘Under those conditions,’ McCall commented dryly, looking to where the Latent Prints specialist worked with Kochek at Alice’s desk, ‘I’d say you’d be wise. I hope you handled him easily.’

  ‘He came of his own free will. Alice saw to that.’

  ‘Aye. The lass has her uses.’

  ‘There’s no similarity, Alice,’ the specialist stated, after making the comparison of the fingerprints.

  At that moment Alice’s telephone rang. She picked up the receiver, listened, thanked the caller and hung up. Asking the specialist to let Kochek see his fingerprint card destroyed, she joined her partner and McCall.

  ‘That was Doug Smith from Gusher City South,’ she told them. ‘He’s been to the diner. Kochek was there last night, Wednesday and Tuesday, right up to midnight and never away for longer than it took him to visit the men’s room. Which, taken with the prints not matching, means that we haven’t got the Owlhoot.’

  ‘I thought we’d been a mite too lucky,’ McCall commented. ‘We haven’t heard of him making any hits tonight.’

  ‘Maybe the rolling stake-outs scared him off,’ Brad said, sounding unconvinced. ‘How about Kochek, Alice?’

  ‘I’ll get the addresses of his buddies so that we can check them out, and the feller’s who’s making the gunbelts for them,’ the girl replied. ‘It’s not much of a lead, but it’s all we have to go on. Then I’d like a car to run him over to Gusher City South. His trail-bike’s at the House there, so it’s all we can do.’

  ‘Aye,’ McCall agreed.

  ‘It is.’

  The main doors opened and Sheriff Jack Tragg entered. One look at his face told the three deputies that he was not making a purely social or routine visit. A flicker of relief passed across Jack’s tanned features as he saw Alice and Brad standing with McCall.

  ‘Stay around for a spell, Ben,’ Jack requested, looking at the Latent Prints specialist. ‘Alice, Brad, you’re free now, aren’t you?’

  ‘The “psycho-tail’s” wrapped up, so we should be,’ Alice replied and McCall nodded his confirmation. ‘Is it the Owlhoot?’

  ‘Sure, Alice,’ Jack agreed. ‘Leon Fortuna was prowling the Hoseville road area and saw a car with all its lights on standing up a side-trail—’

  ‘The tricky bastard’s changed his location again!’ Brad spat out, knowing that Deputy Fortuna worked out of the Hoseville Sub-Office to the north-east of Gusher City.

  ‘He’s changed more than that,’ the sheriff growled. ‘Pistol whipped the man even worse than he hit Hoopler—made the girl let the air out of all four tires after he’d forced her to strip off every last stitch of her clothes.’

  ‘He raped her?’ Alice hissed.

  ‘Leon’s not sure. State she’s in, he’s not tried to get much out of her. What she’s said so far, it sounds like the hit was around nine-thirty. After he’d downed her boyfriend, the Owlhoot told her to undress. When she gets that far, she starts to get hysterical. Which’s why I want you to go, Alice.’

  ‘Huh huh,’ Alice grunted. ‘We’re on our way. Can you come with us, Ben?’

  Listening with open-mouthed interest, Kochek had watched a change come over Alice. No longer was she the warm, attractive young woman who had been so pleasant and charming while dealing with him. Instead she looked as cold, hard and grimly-purposeful as any of the hard-faced male peace officers. Kochek noticed that when she had said ‘can you’ to the specialist, it had still been an order she gave. The detective showed no objection, either to the request or the fact that a woman had made it.

  ‘I’ll be pleased to,’ the fingerprints expert answered grimly.

  ‘Take a photographer,’ Jack ordered. ‘An ambulance has been dispatched.’

  ‘While you’re calling the cameraman, I’ll go fill the Olds’ tank with gas, Alice,’ Brad suggested. ‘I aimed to do it before I logged off.’

  ‘See to it now,’ Alice replied. Making an attempt to return to her soft-sell attitude, she smiled at Kochek. ‘Thanks for your help. While you’re waiting for the car, would you give First Deputy McCall here the names and addresses of your friends, including the leather-worker.’

  ‘Sure, Miss Fayde,’ the young man promised.

  ‘Anything else I can do, Alice?’ McCall wanted to know. ‘Have R. & I. run a make on Terry, or Teddy Telfer. White, male, American, age approximately twenty-three. Height around six foot, build slender, hair mousey brown,’ Alice rattled off briskly. ‘Speaks with a Texas drawl, claims to be from out of town. If they don’t make him, I’d like a priority make from I.C.R.’

  ‘I’ll tend to it,’ McCall stated. ‘Anything else on him?’

  ‘Only that he favors a long-barreled Colt Peacemaker and a Berns-Martin “Speed” rig,’ Alice replied and took up the telephone to make arrangements for a photographer to join them in the official vehicles’ parking lot.

  Accompanied by the two specialists, Alice and Brad took to their car and drove north-east through the streets of the city. None of them spoke much and the big blond soon had them speeding along the road to Hoseville. Suddenly, much to their surprise, Jack Tragg’s voice throbbed from the radio.

  ‘Sheriff Tragg to Unit S.O. 12!’

  ‘S.O. 12 by!’ Alice answered and with cold, sickening clairvoyance guessed what had brought the sheriff to Central Control so that he could address them in person.

  ‘Forget that hit, Leon will handle it,’ Jack Tragg ordered. ‘Go to the Stenton turn-off. About half a mile along it you’ll find two cars—’

  ‘The Owlhoot’s done it, has he?’ Alice asked bitterly, knowing only one thing would cause the sheriff to divert them at that moment.

  ‘He’s done it!’ Jack agreed, sounding savage and furious. ‘Shot a man and a girl. Alice, Brad, I want him found and nailed—pronto!’

  Thirteen

  Approaching the car of his next victims, the Owlhoot felt vaguely discontented. More so as he thought back to his first robbery—had it only been on the previous Tuesday night? That had been a hell of a sensation. Never had he known such a thrill of excitement and tension as when he moved in on the unsuspecting couple in the Cadillac. It came, he knew, from matching his wits, ability and strength against other people in a dangerous game; something he had never been allowed to do before that night, not even at second-hand.

  Not that he had been forbidden to do so, his parents were too ‘progressive’ to do anything so crude. Instead they had encouraged him to avoid competition of any kind, with its attendant risks of being beaten. His father was a member of the Socialist-Labor Organization and blamed his failure to rise, or gain promotion in the scholastic world on nepotism and political suppression. His mother, with similar beliefs, had helped to foster the idea that those reasons rather than a lack of ability prevented his father from rising higher on the social scale. Because most of the people they considered held him back enjoyed field sports, hunting, shooting, fishing, the Owlhoot’s father and mother had come to oppose those sports and from that to abhor all kinds of violence—unless, of course, it was left-wing inspired when it could be classed as necessary and acceptable.

  Their objection to violence had been extended to the Owlhoot. In their desire to shield him from its evils, they had kept comic books and ‘escapist’ literature from him, while his film-going had been restricted to movies with ‘social-conscience’ or a ‘message’.

  Although the Owlhoot had always believed that he could do well in various sports, his upb
ringing had instilled a fear of failure into him and kept him from competing. This had led to a lonely childhood, for the children his parents had considered socially acceptable had bored him. He had taken to roaming the country-side around the city and he had come to know it very well. For all his parents’ attempts to shield him from violence, he had been involved in many fights during those early days. Quick-tempered, swift to take offence, humorless, he rarely came off best in the youthful conflicts. His parents had hotly refuted any suggestion that he was the aggressor. How could a child who had never been sullied or mentally defiled by violent movies or literature be the one who started fights? Yet he knew that it had always been himself who had begun to throw punches when teased by his classmates.

  The Owlhoot had seen his first Western movie at the age of eighteen. Of course, he had always been aware of them. Never more so than after sitting through a double feature of ‘messages’ or ‘social conscience’, then hearing the other kids excitedly discussing what his parents had described as ‘escapist trash’ movies seen at some other theater. Always at the back of his mind had been a desire to discover what his schoolmates found so enjoyable and entertaining. Yet, equally, he had not wanted to go against his parents’ wishes by satisfying his curiosity.

  The chance had come almost by accident, shortly after his arrival in New York to complete his education. Gusher City’s Cardell University and other Texas colleges had been regarded by his parents as ‘right wing’ and unsuitable for him. He had accompanied a small group of ‘intellectuals’ who had planned to stage a demonstration against American participation in Vietnam’s affairs—no properly-constituted intellectual would protest against the Vietcong’s or Communist China’s participation—during the showing of the John Wayne movie The Green Berets.

  Despite the intellectuals’ honest, unbiased intentions, the demonstration had rapidly ended due to the presence of a number of large, tough neo-Fascists [xxi] in the audience. The opposition had stated in no uncertain terms that they would not have their enjoyment of the movie spoiled by a bunch of lousy college kids. While his companions had rapidly faded away, the Owlhoot had become separated from them. Not wishing to draw attention to himself, he had remained seated through the entire Wayne double-feature bill.

  It had been while watching the magnificent Western movie Hondo that the Owlhoot had come to realize why so many people enjoyed the genre. He felt his own worries ebbing away in the excitement and interest of the action on the screen, instead of having them increased as had happened with the kind of movies he usually attended.

  From that night, whenever the cares of life wearied him, the Owlhoot had attended a Western or some other form of action movie. He had also started to read and enjoy the relaxation of adventure stories, particularly those with the action based in the West. Wanting to know more of that period, he had read reference and history books. Ramon F. Adams’ excellent dictionary of old-West terms, Western Words, had become much-thumbed from frequent reading. Tiring of the unending bickering and grandiloquent discussion among the intellectuals, he had located and joined a club of Western devotees. It had been there that he had first tried a fast draw. To his delight and amazement, he found that he had a knack for doing it well. Like the other members of the club, he wore old-West style clothes at the meetings. One of them had sold him the pearl-handled Colt Cavalry Peacemaker and the Berns-Martin ‘Speed’ gunbelt. He had soothed his nagging twinges of conscience by telling himself that drawing and firing a revolver loaded with blank cartridges at an electronic timing device had nothing to do with the violent use of firearms.

  Not that he had stuck to blanks. Instead he had used wax-bulleted cartridges and, roaming the woods while on vacation in Gusher City, live rounds. Again he had been pleasantly surprised by the ease with which he could hit a target using instinctive alignment. The Colt Peacemaker had the most natural pointing handle-shape ever fitted to any hand-gun, which helped him achieve his hits. Naturally his parents had known nothing of his activities. He had never mentioned the Westerners club when writing home and kept his clothes, gunbelt, revolver and ammunition locked in his trunk during his vacations.

  Six months back, towards the end of a boring vacation, his parents had gone to a meeting and left him at a loose end. He had heard of the Fast Draw Club and decided to pay it a visit. Dressed in the outfit he wore in New York, he had attended the shoot-out and become the center of attention when he had defeated their current champion to the draw. Being the recipient of admiration had been a pleasant sensation, one of the few such he had experienced during the vacation. Caution had demanded that the members did not learn his identity and he had handled the situation satisfactorily. Of course, they had been more interested in his gun-rig than in learning where he lived.

  After graduation, the Owlhoot had returned to Gusher City and accepted a teaching post at a junior school in Jepson Division. Like many other young intellectuals, he had his treasured illusions of superiority shattered on coming into contact with real life. He had found that he commanded little respect from his pupils. Instead of trying to gain their confidence, he had grown daily more morose and bitter, remembering the only people who had ever been impressed by him. Unfortunately for him, his parents had always been vocal in public with their demands for firearms’ controls and restrictions. So he doubted if he would be welcomed by the members of the Fast Draw Club when they learned his identity.

  Wanting relaxation and an escape, he had told his parents that he planned to write a book on the evils of movie and literary violence. To do so, he would have to attend theaters showing such movies and read that kind of book. During the month he had been carrying out his deception, he had found himself growing more intrigued by the bad guys, the villains. At last he had an idea. He would commit a crime, gaining first-hand knowledge of how an outlaw felt during a robbery.

  Having decided to make his experiment, he had given considerable thought to how he might carry it out with the least risk of capture. Much as he hated to admit it, the local law enforcement departments were efficiently run. So, if he wished to avoid detection, he must take precautions. He knew of places where he could hide the pickup truck in which he carried his trail motorcycle out of the city. Both vehicles had been bought ostensibly for use on bird-watching trips, but really as a means of reaching out-of-the-way areas in which he could practice his shooting without being observed.

  There had been other matters to be taken into consideration, but he felt sure that he had dealt with them. The local peace officers would spare no effort to capture a man who used, or even only exposed, a gun to enforce his will while committing a crime. One of the places they were sure to think of, when the normal underworld sources yielded no results, would be the Fast Draw Club. If the Owlhoot duplicated the dress of—what was his name, Kochek or something like that—the investigating officers would waste time trying to prove that he had pulled the robberies. Not that Kochek would be in any danger, for he could easily establish an alibi. With that in mind, the Owlhoot had visited El Paso and bought the items he needed for his disguise.

  Scowling slightly, the Owlhoot remembered his first robbery. While he had made a mistake, his quick reactions had saved him. Nor would he ever forget the raw fear on the blonde’s face after he had pistol-whipped the man and turned on her. Nobody had looked at him in such a way before—or since. The other victims had been surprised, or angry at being robbed, but not particularly afraid. That had showed when they were interviewed by the news-media, especially those who had appeared on the television newscasts. The blonde had not appeared, nor her boyfriend. In fact it seemed that aspect of his career had been overlooked, ignored, and the rest of it was treated as a joke.

  While he had found his second method of committing the robberies to be safer, it lacked the surging excitement felt on the first occasion. So, he had reverted to the more risky method of making the victims leave their vehicles. Yet something had still been missing. By changing the area of his operations each night,
he had so far eluded the law. Nor did they seem to be doing much to try to hunt him down. Apparently the peace officers, like the news-media and, in retrospect if their comments when interviewed proved anything, his victims, regarded him as a harmless crank not to be taken seriously.

  One thing he promised himself as he approached the car. His future victims would not laugh at him if they should be interviewed.

  Reaching for the car’s right door, the Owlhoot glared furiously at the man and girl necking inside. After three nights of his depredations, the people of the County ought to be terrified of using the turn-offs as lovers’ lanes. By morning, they would not be so casual or dismiss him so lightly. Twisting the door’s handle, he jerked it open.

  ‘Come out, reaching for the moon!’ the Owlhoot commanded.

  Separating from their embrace, the couple turned their heads towards the intruder. For a moment both seemed shocked, then an expression of relief almost came to the girl’s face. Ivy Monoghan’s relief had stemmed from discovering the intruder was not a spy for her husband, the girl’s from finding herself faced by the Owlhoot. The man behind the steering wheel tensed slightly in his seat.

  ‘Get lost, you crazy ding-a-ling!’ he spat at the masked figure.

  A savage hiss broke from the Owlhoot’s lips at the casual dismissal. Catching her companion by the arm, the girl held him back as he tried to rise.

  ‘Barry!’ she croaked. ‘Don’t take any chances.’

  ‘She’s got the sense of a seam-squirrel [xxii] even if you ain’t,’ the Owlhoot growled, his voice throbbing with anger. As always when carrying out a hold-up, he dropped into the vernacular of the old West. ‘Now come out pronto, or I’ll put windows in your skull.’