CHAPTER FORTY
“All things come to those who wait.” Archie liked all the things white people said about patience.
“Little drops of water wear away big stones.”
“All fruits do not ripen in a single season.”
“An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains.”
Slogans for children who wanted things they didn’t have and adults who had things they didn’t want.
“To lose patience is to lose the battle.” This one worked for Archie. Apache patience is an act of war, as different from its white-mainstream-cultural counterpart as a sword is different from a butter knife. Wait and watch, like a spider in its web. Wide open eyes. Blank mind. Pounce quickly before opportunity wriggles free. The trick is being ready when the moment comes—not a simple task when the wait runs long.
Vanity license plates were Archie’s downfall. Trite, inscrutable, easy to remember, written under the bumper hitches of almost every car on the Durant casino parking lot. The row of tags in front of Archie formed a sentence. 2MNY SHY1S WNT2B MAMAS LUVR. It had the feel of a cosmic message. Something a warrior shouldn’t ignore.
Archie was caught off guard when Hashilli Maytubby ran out of the Durant Casino. Several seconds passed before he processed what was happening. An amazing stroke of luck, almost turned sour by the curse of literacy.
Hashilli jumped into to his black SUV and jolted its engine into action. There were many black SUVs on the parking lot, most of them with Choctaw tags. Archie had taken notice, but had done no more than that. One flat tire on each of them would have done the trick.
Too late now. By the time Archie had his car in motion, Marie’s abductor was on Highway 70.
Heading east. The direction of the rising sun. A slow speed chase was
what Archie had in mind, like the LA police trailing O.J. Simpson to his Brentwood mansion, but without the lights, sirens, and helicopters. Archie was in prison when that happened. He watched the whole case unfold on Court TV along with dozens of other inmates doing time in Western New Mexico Correctional Facility.
An ounce of patience is worth a gallon of high-octane gasoline. Hashilli Maytubby would have a valid driver’s license. If he were pulled over for speeding, the police would issue him a ticket and send him on his way. Not so for Archie Chatto, wanted felon driving a stolen automobile. It was almost enough to make a man rethink his life of crime.
The highways of southeastern Oklahoma were riddled with speed traps, every one a reliable source of police department income. Hashilli drove less than five miles an hour over the speed limit, but Archie wouldn’t risk even that minimal violation of the law. He fell behind a half mile every thirty minutes. He hoped to catch up when they passed through Hugo, but Hashilli surprised him by taking the Indian Nation Turnpike.
Finally, a lucky break. Archie’s stolen vehicle had a Pike Pass. It paid the toll electronically, shaving minutes off his time. Hashilli did not make use of this modern commuter’s convenience. He pulled through the toll road’s cash lanes and tossed quarters into an automated basket, sacrificing efficiency for the sake of anonymity. A Pike Pass would document the route he traveled to anyone with the authority and the incentive to check the records.
When Hashilli exited onto Highway 2, Archie was a hundred yards behind him. No hesitation swerves or last minute turn indicators. This was a familiar route to a well-known destination, not a deceptive run for cover.
Beware the fury of a patient man.
By the time Archie reached Clayton, he knew he had a problem. A Pushmataha County police car pulled out from its hiding place behind a stand of red cedar, and followed him at about the same distance he maintained between himself and Hashilli.
Archie didn’t really believe the cop’s presence was an inconvenient coincidence, but he had to act as if it were. If he lost Hashilli’s trail at this point, he might never find it again.
Archie closed the distance between himself and the black SUV when Hashilli followed the 271 junction toward Tuskahoma. He considered sounding his horn, or even nudging the SUV with his bumper, something to scare Marie’s kidnapper into a rash action, but the policeman activated the bar of lights on top of his car and motioned for Archie to pull over.
Only one cop. Archie took a little longer than necessary to ease his vehicle onto the shoulder. The car was freshly stolen earlier this morning. It was just plain rotten luck the owner had noticed so quickly and the cops processed the report and alerted the mobile units to be on the lookout. Police efficiency—go figure.
Hashilli’s black SUV crested a hill as Archie pulled to a stop. In a matter of seconds it would be lost from sight. Escaping from a lone county cop shouldn’t require much effort, but the cop held a microphone in his hand. Brother cops would be here soon. Time to act like a warrior.
It is a good day to die. Did the policeman think so too? Archie drew his pistol and fired three shots through his rear windshield into the radiator of the police cruiser, then sped after Hashilli. He watched the policeman in the rearview mirror.
Objects may be closer than they appear.
The deputy opened his car door and rolled out onto the highway. He assumed a belly-to-the-ground, double-handed firing position he learned in CLEET firearm training, but Archie’s car was already too far for a pistol shot. A warrior-cop would have fired through the police car windshield, maintenance cost be damned.
Bravery and abandon only go so far. Disabling a police car was like the Lakota/Cheyenne victory at Little Big Horn. More troops would be on the way soon; they would overwhelm the Indians with sheer numbers. Hopefully the Choctaw witch would lead Archie to Marie’s hiding place before the cops regrouped and pressed their pursuit in earnest. Next time, they wouldn’t be so careful. Archie had fired his weapon at an officer of the law. That brought on a whole new set of police procedures. Taking him alive would be way down on the list.
Archie caught a glimpse of Hashilli’s SUV as it turned into what appeared to be a dense growth of blackjack trees. Unfortunately a second Pushmataha County Cruiser made an appearance at the same time, dead ahead, just beyond the hidden turnoff.
The driver of the police car turned the cruiser into a hard skid completely blocking both lanes of traffic. Two county cops jumped out of the car and took up firing positions using their vehicle as cover.
Sometimes the most cautious thing a man can do is to take an outrageous risk. Archie slowed his stolen car just enough to let the policemen think their show of force might lead to his peaceful surrender. He sat up straight behind the wheel and made eye contact with each of the officers in turn. He read fear and ignorance in the faces of the two young men. They’d learned caution at the police academy instead of bravery, operational protocol instead of strategy. The rules they followed made them indecisive. The muzzles of their weapons dipped when they should be spitting fire. The men looking into Archie’s eyes knew he would not follow their rules, but training hijacked reason.
Without the slightest detectable change in posture or facial expression, Archie raised his pistol above the dashboard and fired three slugs through his windshield into a tight cluster over the police car’s right front wheel well. Oil and antifreeze puddled onto the road.
Archie still had three unspent cartridges in his magazine. Cochise would have used his firepower to slay his enemies. So would Victorio, Nana, and Geronimo, but times had changed. These officers would live. They would receive commendations for bravery. Their lack of heroism would be used as an example for other policemen to follow, ensuring the success of Archie’s tactics in the future.
He pulled his car into a hard right and slid down below the door panel as he accelerated into Hashilli’s hidden turnoff. A volley of slugs crashed through Archie’s side window and thumped against the body of the car. The electronic lock control popped off of the driver’s door and landed on the seat beside him.
The cops used Glaser Safety loads, bullets with civilized pre-fragmented slugs dressed in thin copper jack
ets with a soft polymer tips—maximum stopping power but minimum penetration. This kind of ammunition protected civilians from being killed in their homes by stray bullets and consequently confounded ballistics evaluations in cases of friendly fire casualties. These Pushmataha policemen had taken on the urban warfare constraints of their city cousins in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Thank God for civilized ammunition. A little glass and bodywork, and Archie’s stolen car would be as good as new. The owner wouldn’t have to wash bloodstains from the upholstery. Composite slugs put golf ball size dents in the left rear fender and the trunk as Archie steered his car through a barely visible space between the trees and aligned his tires along two ruts of dirty crushed weeds. Would the cops follow him on foot or wait for back up? It depended on how pissed off they were at the wild Apache car thief who wrecked the county police-car-budget.
Tree limbs slapped against the sides of the car. Broken branches bounced off the hood; some found their way onto the dashboard through gaps in the windshield left behind by gunfire. Broken limbs and a litter of green leaves marked Hashilli’s path, like the trail of a spring tornado that touched down in the forest. Easy to follow now, but in a few days evidence of the witch’s passage would be swept clean by the wind and hidden in the camouflage pattern of shadows cast by the tangle of hardwoods and conifers that crowded over the country lane.
Archie saw a bright spot just ahead, a meadow cleared by wildfire years ago, the fingerprint lightning leaves on the wilderness. He ducked under the dashboard once again. The clearing was a perfect ambush point.
He couldn’t slow the car too much or it would bog down in the weeds. Next time, he resolved to borrow a vehicle with four-wheel drive. He noticed with some degree of guilt a bag of half eaten M&Ms and a page of spelling homework had bounced out from under the front seat. The name, Melissa Haloka, was printed at the top of the page in the careful, quivering hand of a second grader. A smiley face was drawn in red ink at the bottom of the page with a word balloon containing the simple expression of praise, “Good Work!”
Daddy will be late picking you up from school today, Melissa. Archie Chatto is to blame.
The path of broken branches and fallen leaves spread out like a river delta as Archie reached the clearing. The forest did not filter the sunlight here. Archie’s eyes needed time to adjust before they could find the trail again, but the way ahead looked smooth and free of obstructions, so he did not wait for his pupils to limit the glare.
The next thing Archie felt was the front of his stolen car plunging into a narrow watercourse that formed a botanically camouflaged border between the meadow and the forest. He slammed against his shoulder harness hard enough to crack a rib, just before the air bag punched its way through the steering column and bloodied his nose. His pistol rattled onto the floor of the vehicle and landed on Melissa’s perfect spelling test. The seat belt did not release when Archie pressed the latch. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the Swiss Army Knife he’d purchased at an Ace Hardware store in Oklahoma City.
It took him several seconds to saw through the tough fibers of his seatbelt. By the time he retrieved his pistol, gasoline fumes and wisps of smoke found their way through the dash vents.
The doors were jammed, but lucky for Archie the back windshield had been weakened with bullet holes and offered the perfect emergency escape route.
Flames poked their way through ventilation holes created by the wrinkled sheet metal of the hood while Archie climbed out over the trunk. He made a careless leap onto the trail he’d followed into the creek as the front of the car exploded into a fireball.
As Archie bolted for the forest, the two county cops pushed their way through the underbrush. They opened fire without ordering him to halt. Fortunately for Archie, these two young men were accustomed to firing at stationary silhouettes of men with white circles drawn on their chests. An Apache running through the woods was a much more difficult target.
Archie could have ambushed the officers easily. He had three shots remaining in his side arm and that was one more than he needed to send their wives shopping for funeral dresses. But Archie ran from the police for the same reason grizzly bears run away from hikers in the wilderness. There were always more where these came from, and they would come in force to avenge a fallen brother.
So Archie Chatto did not fire a shot at the Pushmataha County policemen, and they did not chase him with any enthusiasm. Instead, they lagged back and jumped at shadows and sounds that always follow inexperienced men through the woods. In a few minutes the wild Indian they chased had been absorbed into the brush and trees.
Owl Dreams Page 42
