by PAUL BENNETT
From there it was a connecting flight to El Paso, where we stood a chance of losing ourselves among the cowboy mentality of past times; just two guns for hire.
We collected our bags from the carousel and made our way to the main concourse. As in all airports, there were many more people than it had been designed for. We progressed as fast as we could among the throng. The exit was in view when a tall ginger-haired man of about fifty pushed his way past Bull.
‘Out of the way, boy,’ he said.
Anyone who addresses Bull as ‘boy’ had better watch out.
Bull dumped his bergan on the ground and started to move after the man. I caught his arm and pulled him back.
‘Easy, Bull. Easy,’ I said. ‘Let’s at least try to get out of the airport before we have a fight. If we meet him again, then you can treat him to a lesson in manners.’
There was a young woman and two girls standing just outside the exit doors. The woman was in her late teens or early twenties, long blonde hair, natural tan, wearing a maxi-length flowing dress in a large flower print: it was like watching a documentary about the swinging sixties. The two girls, only just teenagers it looked like, wore jeans, T-shirts and trainers. One was dark-skinned, the other had the milky white skin of an English rose. They were handing out leaflets.
Until the ginger-haired man strode past, that was.
He brushed the woman aside, knocking her and her leaflets to the floor, then he was gone.
Bull and I reached her and helped her get back on to her feet. The two girls picked up the leaflets.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
She brushed a little dirt from her long dress and rose to her full height. She was tall and slim and her natural beauty – bone structure, turned-up nose, high cheekbones – seemed to radiate out. You felt like standing back to take in the full view and then going ‘Wow!’.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘The senator doesn’t let anybody get in his way.’
‘The senator?’
‘Yes. Senator O’Hara. Hard not to recognize him with that mop of ginger hair. He’s one of our neighbours, too, though we don’t see much of him. He doesn’t agree with what we’re doing.’
‘And that is?’
‘Cameron,’ she said to the dark-skinned girl, ‘Lucy,’ to the other girl, ‘give the gentlemen a leaflet each.’
It was an amateur effort, text running over pictures in places, images askew, a few spelling mistakes; it had a homegrown quality about it, but a sense of pride seemed to go with it. The basic message was that you should go to the Alamo Retreat to rediscover yourself; to shed the burden of modern-day life and live as part of a self-supporting community. It didn’t mention anything about money – how much you would have to pay for such a rebirth, but my instinct told me that it wasn’t going to come cheap. Perhaps my cynicism would be proved wrong, but I doubted it. That’s the way of the world.
‘I’m Fey,’ the woman said, shaking our hands. ‘Are you here for business or pleasure?’
I looked at Bull and he grinned. ‘Pleasure,’ I said. ‘Always pleasure.’
‘Be sure to come and visit us. Maybe we can help you.’
‘I reckon we’re both beyond redemption,’ I said.
Outside the airport I saw Red leaning back on the door of a big utility vehicle. It looked solid and that, given Red’s driving, was reassuring. Red was a little under six foot with jet-black hair, a dark complexion, which came from his half Comanche roots, and big brown eyes. He was dressed like an extra in a John Wayne movie: denim jeans and cowboy boots, plaid shirt and a big hat. Even his glasses – round, wire-framed – looked authentic. He took a couple of strides towards us and gave each of us a hug.
‘Comanche warrior welcomes blood brothers,’ he said in his mock Native American voice.
‘Good to see you, too,’ I said. ‘Whatever the circumstances may prove to be.’
Bull opened the boot – the trunk, I suppose we had to say now – and we stowed our bergans. We looked at each other and Bull produced a coin. He tossed it in the air. I lost the call and got in the front seat, Bull was grinning as he got in the back and stretched out across the seats.
‘Where are we off to?’ I asked, hoping it wasn’t too far.
‘The foothills of the Pecos,’ Red said. ‘About an hour should do it.’
He kick-shifted the automatic box down a gear and overtook a sedan that was struggling to maintain momentum up a steep incline. I closed my eyes.
I wanted to ask him when he was going to explain his distress call, but didn’t dare risk breaking his concentration.
‘If you don’t mind waiting,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you all about why I need you when we get to the ranch. Stan and Pieter arrived last night, but I said to them that I only wanted to go through it once. Too painful to have to cry for help.’
‘How are they keeping?’ I asked.
‘Stan the Man, Stan the Plan, tactician extraordinaire, is already getting the lie of the land and making a list of what we might need. And Pieter, well Pieter, he hasn’t got any slimmer. Been living too good a life now that he’s got money behind him.’
We’d each split, with our other comrades in arms, ten million euros that we’d taken from the Russians. It worked out at a million each. How they’d spent their share was anybody’s guess, but I hoped some of it was frivolously. When you lay your life on the line there needs to be some pleasure. Highs and lows – that was the mercenaries’ lot.
The scenery flashed by and the flatness of the plains began to give way to the gradual rise towards the Pecos. It was a long hour.
We drove through a small town which was like a facsimile from Clint Eastwood movies: clapboard fronts to the stores, boardwalk, bar with swinging doors. All it needed was tumbleweed rolling down the street.
‘This is O’Haraville,’ Red said. ‘Well, they might as well call it that. Senator O’Hara owns most of it. Is the mayor, too. And the mayor appoints the sheriff. What he doesn’t own, he keeps under his control.’
Red pulled off the country road and on to a dirt track. There was a sign saying ‘Lazy Z Ranch’. He stopped so that we could all marvel at the view – surely he’d never get tired of this.
‘Wow!’ Bull said.
‘Yeah, wow,’ Red said. ‘And it’s all mine.’
The track led on through green fields, stretching as far as the eye could see to the left and the right. Up ahead were the jagged peaks of the Pecos. The sun was starting to set and sink down behind the mountains. There was that blue tinge to the red glow of the sky that comes with sunset and it picked out the mountains in sharp relief, making them look as if you could reach out and touch them. Sitting beneath this spectacle was a two-storey wood-framed ranch house, painted a dazzling white, with a large porch running along the front of the building. To the left of the main house was a smaller wooden building, presumably the bunkhouse of old, a barn and a long row of stables.
‘This must have cost more than a million,’ I said. ‘How did you manage to afford it?’
‘I won it in a poker game,’ Red said. ‘Four queens to his full house.’ He sighed. ‘Go on, say it. Everyone does.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ Bull and I said together. ‘You bloody lucky bastard.’
‘Reckon so,’ he said, beaming a huge smile. ‘I reckon so.’
CHAPTER THREE
Stan and Pieter met us with cold beers and we sat on the porch playing catch-up. Red perched himself on the outside rail of the porch and the rest of us leaned back on chairs with the front legs off the floor and our feet on the rail, trying to outcool each other. Pieter, long blond hair slightly receding at the temples, vivid green eyes, looked embarrassed.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘but I wasn’t expecting another operation. OK, I’ve let myself get a bit out of shape, but the weight will soon come off.’
‘Not without some hard work,’ Bull said. ‘We’ll start on that in the morning.’
‘What have y
ou been doing since we last met?’ I asked.
‘I now run a safari business. Trips through Kruger. High class, mind. All the trimmings including gourmet food and wine.’
‘That makes sense,’ I said. ‘Been eating the profits?’
‘And knowing you,’ Bull said, ‘they’ll be some ladies around, too.’
Pieter was a ladies’ man – an incorrigible womanizer. I’d lost count of the number of fights he’d – we’d – been in with irate husbands or boyfriends.
‘Wealthy widows,’ he said, smiling. ‘What a life.’
‘And you, Stan?’ I asked.
Stan rocked his chair back a little more and stretched out his long legs to the full. He was wearing sand-coloured chinos with an immaculate crease. His shirt was dark blue and looked like it had just come out of the packaging. His shoes were brown leather and so highly polished you could have used them as a mirror. He produced a crisp white handkerchief to polish his sunglasses. Like always, Stan had covered every detail.
‘I have a small hotel with a restaurant on one of our lakes,’ he said. ‘Good business. I am happy and settled. All I need is a good woman to share my life with, and I’m working on that.’
‘Bet you’ve got a spreadsheet of all the eligible females?’
He blushed. ‘Someone’s got to look after the detail.’
It was time for the crunch question. I turned towards Red.
‘So, Red, what have you got in store for the four of us contented people? Beautiful though this country is, it wouldn’t be to admire the sunsets, I guess. What have you got all of us into?’
‘It all started a couple of weeks after I moved in. The men – I have about a dozen cowhands here, or did, I should say – all think I’m a jinx. The first thing that happened was that we lost some steers; seems that one of the waterholes had got polluted somehow.’
‘Might it have been an accident? I asked. ‘Some natural reason? Or do you think it was deliberate?’
‘At the time I thought I’d just been unlucky – I was still learning the trade of ranching. Then other things started to occur.’
Slowly our chair legs went back down to the floor and we all leaned forward.
‘My cook disappears without trace and without collecting the pay that is due. Then my foreman got injured in a hit and run – might not walk again. Looking back now, I don’t think it was an accident, because just a few days later some of the men went into town to let off some steam on pay day and got into a fight – got pretty badly beaten up. The guys who did it – bikers – said they didn’t like our sort of people in town.’
‘Our sort of people?’ Bull asked.
‘I presume what he meant by that was my being half Comanche. Can’t think what else.’
Bull looked at me. I knew where he was going. We’d only been here five minutes before meeting one bigot. I raised my hand to still him for a while.
‘Did the guy from whom you won the ranch have any problems?’
‘The men say no. Just a regular ranch, ticking over nicely.’
‘And he was white?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Been here a while and never had any trouble.’
‘OK. Is that it or is there any more we need to know?’
‘One last incident. One of the jeeps we use to get around the place had a blowout on one of its tyres.’ He dug into his pocket. ‘I heard this rattling around inside when I was trying to mend the puncture.’
He threw something towards me. I caught it. It was a bullet. I rolled it beneath my fingers and assessed the weight. I thought it was Pieter’s territory. I passed it to him.
‘Hunting rifle,’ he said after a brief examination. ‘Good for accuracy and packs a punch.’
‘And pretty common around here, I guess,’ I said.
Red nodded. ‘It’s what kids are brought up on. Practise on squirrels and such. I’d reckon every home has one.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Someone doesn’t want you around. We have to find out who and why.’
‘Tell us about Senator O’Hara?’ Bull asked.
‘He’s one of my neighbours. Never met him in person, but seen him on the local TV station a lot. Why do you ask?’
‘We had a run in with him at the airport,’ I said. ‘Called Bull “boy”.’
‘Wow! And did he get away with it?’
‘For the time being,’ Bull said.
‘We need a plan,’ I said. ‘First, whom and what do we need to protect? Have you got a map of this area showing your ranch and the neighbouring countryside?
‘There’s one in the car,’ said Red. ‘You guys go inside and we’ll continue talking while we eat. I’ll be right back.’
We moved through a swing door and into a large living area. There was a pine table at one end that could seat a dozen hungry cowhands, at the other end of the room were a lot of armchairs and sofas, mostly old and worn.
‘Your inheritance from the previous owner, I presume?’ I said to Red when he arrived back from getting the map.
‘Signs of a bad poker player,’ he said. ‘Never enough left to spend on life’s little luxuries.’
‘Reckon so,’ I said, nodding.
‘The cook’s Chinese and she has made us a chilli,’ Stan said. ‘By the smell of it I need to give her some lessons in Western cooking.’
Someone, presumably the meticulous Stan, had laid the table with plates, cutlery and napkins, salt, pepper, crackers in the American style and various ketchups and sauces. There were water and wine glasses, beers and a couple of bottles of Californian Cabernet Sauvignon. Red made a space and spread the map out. We sat down and waited while the cook brought in a large bowl of chilli con carne and followed that with one of rice. She was an attractive, small, slim girl; Chinese, from the south of the country by the look of her eyes and the absence of the heavy Mongol features of the north. Looked like she needed a good meal, which didn’t bode well for her culinary skills.
‘This is Ho,’ Stan said, nodding at the girl.
‘Hi, Ho,’ said Pieter, laughing.
‘Thank you for very original greeting,’ she said, sighing.
Pieter gave her his winning smile. ‘Maybe I can teach you some tricks of the trade,’ he said.
‘I’ve already got that covered,’ said Stan defensively. ‘Things are going to change around here.’
‘Well, if you need my help, you know where to come,’ Pieter said to the girl.
‘That will not be necessary,’ Stan said, a little too quickly.
Ho put her hands together and bowed. She turned and left the room, Stan and Pieter watching her closely. I could smell trouble brewing. Made a mental note to rein in Pieter. I didn’t want any fighting in the ranks.
The bowls circulated round the table as we helped ourselves. I took a mouthful. My tongue exploded – this was seriously hot. So much so that it might have been declared a biological weapon by any government that needed an excuse to go to war. A glance round the table told me everyone else felt the same. The ranch hands can’t have liked it – I wouldn’t blame them if more left.
‘These are the Pecos mountains,’ Red said, pushing his plate away and pointing to a dark jagged line on the map. ‘My land runs up to the edge. Land’s not good for much at the foothills: too dry with all the rain coming down on the other side, but there’s good grazing on the plains.’ He got out a pen and drew a square on the map. ‘This is my spread. And adjoining me on the left is Senator O’Hara’s land. Much like mine – mostly suited for raising cattle.’
‘Put this in perspective,’ I said. ‘How big is it? How long to get from one side to another?’
‘We usually take the jeeps, although sometimes I ride one of the horses,’ – Red used to scratch a living by riding in rodeos – ‘and, I suppose, it would take about ten minutes to go round the perimeter.’
‘Ten minutes can be a long time when you’re waiting for the cavalry to arrive,’ Stan said.
Red drew two rectangles on the right, one above the
other. He pointed to the top one and said, ‘This is the Blenkensteins’ land – they’ve been here a long time, so I understand. Probably in their sixties, maybe seventies by now.’
‘And this?’ I pointed to the lower rectangle.
‘That’s the Alamo Retreat.’
Bull and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. Red caught the look.
‘Explain, please?’ he said.
‘We ran into them at the airport, too. Young woman called Fey and two teenage girls, Cameron and Lucy. Seemed harmless enough, although a little unconventional.’
‘It’s a sort of commune,’ Red said. ‘Self-supporting, live off the land, back to the garden, as they said for Woodstock. They’re vegetarians, so they plant crops rather than raising cattle. Fey came here once when I’d first moved in. Brought a cake as a welcome present and used it as an excuse to try to save my soul. Saw it was a losing battle and I’ve not seen her since.’
‘What are our resources?’ I asked Red.
Stan got up from the table and went across to the far side of the room where the light was poor and it was hard to see what he was carrying. When he returned, he dumped his load on the table and started to distribute it.
‘Red and I spent the day in town yesterday. Mobiles for all of us.’
He slid them across the table to each of us in turn.
‘Already programmed with all our numbers.’
Then the juicy stuff was dealt out.
‘Brownings for the four of us and a Magnum for Red.’
‘You’re not still using a Magnum, are you?’ Bull said. ‘Too few bullets for my liking.’
‘I only aim to need one,’ Red said.
‘Touché,’ said Bull.
‘And you’ll be taking a shotgun, too?’ I said.
Red’s eyesight wasn’t as good as in the old days. Even with his glasses it was more reassuring to know that Red could scatter the pellets anywhere and everywhere and didn’t need to aim straight in an emergency. We all had to rely on each other and that meant taking no chances.
