“Shooting—My God!” Her eyes widened even more, but she didn’t take them off the trail in front of the pickup. “Ramirez?”
“I don’t know,” Stark said grimly. He was afraid they were going to find out.
He saw smoke up ahead, on the other side of a bend in the creek. That was a sign of trouble, too. There shouldn’t be a fire up here. Elaine sent the pickup rocking around the bend.
“Stop!” Stark yelled.
On the way out here he had loaded both shotguns. He thrust one of them into Elaine’s hands now and said, “Anybody comes at you that you don’t know, don’t hesitate. Just shoot!”
With that he piled out the other side of the truck and started running toward the sprawled shapes beside the creek. Two of them were human, the third a butchered cow. As soon as Stark had seen the two men lying on the ground, not far from the small fire, he had known what he was going to find, even though a part of him rebelled at the very idea. The two horses, standing nervously nearby, were all the proof he needed, though. One of them was Biscuit, the other an animal that Chaco often rode.
His hands tightened on the shotgun as he saw the bloody ruin of Chaco’s chest. The old Mexican was dead, no doubt about that. Newt had been shot in the chest, too, but there wasn’t as much blood. That told Stark that Newt had been shot first—with the rifle Stark had heard—and then Chaco had been cut down by the shotgun blast when he ran to help his longtime friend.
Stark held out a bare hope that Newt might still be alive. He dropped to both knees beside his uncle and set the shotgun aside so that he could check for a pulse in Newt’s neck. The .45 was handy behind his belt if he needed a weapon in a hurry.
Stark’s fingers probed at the old man’s stringy neck. Newt’s eyes were closed, and he certainly looked dead. To Stark’s surprise, he found a tiny thread of a heartbeat pulsing feebly and raggedly through Newt’s arteries.
“Newt!” Stark said. “Newt, can you hear me?”
“John Howard,” Elaine said from behind him as she left the pickup and approached the bodies, “I think he must be dead—”
“No, he’s not! He’s got a pulse!”
Stark ripped Newt’s shirt open, exposing the red-rimmed bullet hole in his chest. The wound hadn’t bled much, but a wound in that area didn’t have to in order to be fatal, Stark recalled from Vietnam. Sometimes a man who had looked like he was barely injured had died from such a wound in a matter of minutes, while another man who appeared to have been shot to pieces survived. You just couldn’t tell.
“Get back to the house and call for help, Elaine.”
“I’ll do no such thing! The men who did this might come back.”
“All the more reason for you to go.”
“Forget it, John Howard. I’m here, and here I’ll stay as long as you do.”
“Damn it, at least go back to the truck and call nine-one-one!”
“Oh,” she said, remembering that there was a cell phone in the pickup. “Yes, I can do that.” She turned and ran to the truck.
“Are you two . . . gonna fuss all day?”
The raspy whisper took Stark by surprise. When he looked at Newt’s face, he saw that the old man’s rheumy eyes were open now. Open, and filled with pain.
“Hang on, Newt,” Stark said as he leaned over him. “We’ll get you some help, get you to the hospital.”
“Don’t be . . . a damn fool, boy . . . I’m too far gone.... Ain’t nobody who can . . . help me now.”
“You don’t know that,” Stark insisted.
Newt coughed, and his eyes closed for a moment. When they opened again, Stark saw even more pain there.
“I damn sure . . . do know it,” Newt said. “Listen . . . to me, boy.”
Stark leaned closer. “Who did this?”
“That’s what I’m . . . tryin’ to tell you. . . . El Bruitre . . . the Vulture . . . some o’ his men . . .”
“They told you who they were?”
“They was . . . proud of it.... Damn skunks . . . Wish I could’a . . . ventilated one or two of ’em. . . .”
“Take it easy now,” Stark said. “We’ll take care of you, Newt.”
“Chaco . . . see to Chaco!” The old man lifted his head as he spoke vehemently.
Stark took hold of his gnarled hand. “Of course. Don’t you worry about that, Newt. We’ll see to it.”
Newt lay back and closed his eyes again. A long sigh came from him, and for a second Stark thought that his soul had departed with that sigh. But Newt had one more thing to say, and his hand tightened on Stark’s hand as he did so.
“John Howard . . . avenge me.”
“I will, Newt,” Stark pledged. “You got my word on it.”
But now it really was too late. Newton Stark was gone. The withered chest fell, never to rise again.
“Oh, John Howard,” Elaine said, having returned from the truck. “I’m so sorry.”
Stark laid his uncle’s hand on his breast, then brought the other hand over to join it. “So am I,” he said with his head down in a prayerful attitude. Then, slowly, his head came up, and he said, “But not as sorry as the bastards who did this are going to be.”
He got to his feet. Elaine took a step toward him, her hand outstretched. “I’ve called nine-one-one,” she said. “Let the authorities handle this.”
Stark was looking around. He spotted tire tracks nearby and walked over to look at them. The tracks indicated good-sized tires. A pickup or an SUV, he thought. The men who had butchered the cow and then slaughtered Newt and Chaco must have driven off in it.
“The sheriff’s office will get the call,” he said. “You know what that means. Hammond will come out, and he’ll make the proper noises but nothing will really get done. He won’t even try to find the men who did this.”
“You don’t know that.”
Stark nodded. “Yes, I do, and you do, too. Wishing it was different won’t change anything.” He turned and started toward the pickup.
She caught hold of his arm as he went by, stopping him. “What are you going to do?” she asked tensely.
“Go after them.”
“They’ve been gone from here for at least fifteen or twenty minutes. You can’t catch up to them now.”
“I can try,” Stark said. “Stay here and wait for the sheriff.” Stark’s tone made it clear what he thought of Norval Lee Hammond.
“The hell with that,” Elaine said, looking up into his eyes. “I’m going with you.”
Stark opened his mouth to argue with her, but then he realized that she was probably right about not being able to catch up to the killers. In that case, she wouldn’t be putting herself in danger by going along. Even though he held out little hope of catching the men, Stark wanted to trail them and see where they had gone. It might help in identifying them later.
“All right,” he said with a nod. He glanced at the bodies of Newt and Chaco. He hated to leave them here unattended, but there seemed to be no choice. “Come on.”
They got into the pickup. Elaine had left the engine idling, so all she had to do was shift into gear and press the gas. The rugged old work truck took off, following the tire tracks alongside the creek.
The killers had gotten in here, so they shouldn’t have had any trouble finding their way back out. Stark peered through the windshield at the tracks and picked out two sets of them, one coming and one going. The killers had followed the creek for a while, then veered off to the southeast. Stark wondered if they had cut some fence or shot the lock off a gate in order to get onto the Diamond S. It didn’t really matter, of course, how they had gotten onto his range. What was important was what they had done once they were here.
They were going to pay for it, Stark vowed, just like the murderers of Tommy Carranza had paid for their crime.
As he looked out across the rolling, brush-covered hills that formed this part of his ranch, Stark’s eyes suddenly caught a flash of red where nothing that color should have been. He leaned forward excite
dly. “I think I saw them,” he said.
“Where?” Elaine asked.
“Over there not far from Espantosa Arroyo. Something must have happened to delay them.”
Elaine glanced over at him. “I can take a shortcut that’ll get us there quicker if you’re sure it’s them, John Howard. But it’ll mean abandoning these tracks.”
Stark considered rapidly. “The way the trail’s liable to wind around, they’d be gone by the time we got there if we keep following the tracks. Take the shortcut.”
“Damn straight,” Elaine said as she punched the gas. The truck lunged forward, picking up speed.
Stark’s fingers opened and closed on the stock of the shotgun in his lap. He hoped he had guessed right.
With Elaine at the wheel, the pickup roared along dry washes and climbed rocky ridges. A couple of times as it topped a rise, it came down hard, putting a strain on the shocks. Everything held together, though, and faster than most people would have thought possible, they were closing in on the spot where Stark had seen something. He leaned forward again and peered through the glass.
“There!” he suddenly exclaimed, pointing. Three hundred yards away, across a shallow valley, a red SUV sat with its tailgate open and several men scurrying around it. “They had a flat! They’re just putting the bad tire in the back and getting ready to go!”
Sure enough, seconds later the men hurriedly got back into the SUV, and it took off with its tires skidding on the gravel and its rear end fishtailing. They had seen the pickup coming after them.
Elaine almost floored the accelerator as she started across the valley. “How can you be sure it’s them, John Howard?” she asked.
“Who else would be out here on our range, running away from us?” Stark replied. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
But far in the back of it, there was. The overwhelming likelihood was that the SUV belonged to the men who had killed Newt and Chaco. But that could be joyriding kids up there, or somebody else who didn’t belong on the Diamond S but wasn’t a killer. He couldn’t just start blazing away when he and Elaine caught up to the SUV, he told himself. He would have to make sure its occupants were really the men they were after.
But they would catch up, he told himself. Providence had given them this chance, and they weren’t going to blow it.
The SUV disappeared over the rim of the valley. The driver was forced to take it easy now. If another tire blew, they would be stuck. Elaine could afford to take a few more chances, even though if anything happened to the pickup, she and Stark would lose their chance to overtake the other vehicle.
Stark had confidence in his wife’s driving and in the sturdy old work truck. He took shotgun shells from the box of ammunition and stuffed them in his pockets.
They were nearing the boundaries of his ranch. Stark knew that and wanted to catch up to the SUV while they were still on Diamond S range. It was beginning to look like that would be impossible, though. The fence was less than half a mile away now. Elaine had cut the gap between the two vehicles down to about a hundred and fifty yards, but Stark didn’t think she would be able to catch the SUV before it reached the fence.
Suddenly he saw a flash from the back of the SUV, followed by a couple more. Something hit the roof of the pickup right over his head and ricocheted off. “Oh my God!” Elaine yelped. “They’re shooting at us!”
She didn’t let off on the gas, though. She kept the pickup rocketing after the SUV.
Stark bit back a curse. Now any doubts in his mind had been erased. Those men had high-powered rifles, just like the one he’d heard, the one that had taken his uncle’s life. Those were some of Ramirez’s drug runners and hired killers. Righteous anger filled Stark to overflowing.
He wasn’t so angry, though, that he forgot about his wife’s safety. “Slow down,” he said to Elaine. “We can describe their vehicle now. I was even able to make out some of the letters on the license plate. We’ll turn the information over to the law.”
“The hell with that!” she said. “Newt told you to get ’em, John Howard, and that’s just what we’re gonna do!”
He had never seen her this way before, as caught up in the rage and excitement of the moment as he was. He knew what happened to men in combat, the way chemicals flooded their bloodstream and made them forget all about fear, so that all they knew was forging straight ahead and taking the fight to the enemy. Obviously, women weren’t immune to that, either.
He thought about reaching over and stomping his own foot on the brake as he grabbed the wheel from her. But if he did, he knew she would never forgive him for letting the killers go just because he was worried about her safety. Stark couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Keep your head down as much as you can,” he said. “And get me close enough for a good shot at those sons of bitches.”
He saw the fence up ahead. Sure enough, there was a gap in it where the wire had been cut. The SUV careened through the opening and onto the two-lane blacktop of the river road. The pickup shot through the gap fifty yards behind the SUV.
Elaine spun the wheel and sent the truck sliding onto the highway. The SUV had a powerful engine and was pulling away, but as she pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor, the pickup began to cut the gap again. Pete Stark was as good a mechanic as could be found in Texas, and during his last leave he had tuned up all the vehicles on the ranch and gotten them in peak working condition, despite their battered exteriors. He had even rebuilt some of the engines.
The men in the SUV had opened the tailgate window and fired out of it again now. Stark saw sparks fly as a bullet spanged off the truck’s right front fender. So far the accuracy of the gunmen wasn’t very good. They outnumbered their pursuers, though. Stark and Elaine were close enough now so that Stark could count four men in the vehicle.
“Swerve into the other lane!” he called to Elaine over the roar of the engine. She twisted the wheel without hesitation, sending the truck over into the oncoming lane, which luckily was empty of traffic at the moment. Stark hadn’t seen another car on the road, which was a good thing considering what was about to happen.
He leaned out the passenger-side window and brought the shotgun to his shoulder. The SUV was about ten yards in front of the pickup. Stark fired one barrel and had the satisfaction of seeing the SUV’s left rear tire shred as the charge of buckshot tore into it. More sparks flew as the wheel rim hit the road. More muzzle flashes came from inside the SUV, but Stark didn’t think any of the bullets came close to the pickup. The SUV was jolting and weaving around too much for any sort of accurate aiming.
“Back over!” he shouted at Elaine, and as she instantly responded, the pickup moved toward the shoulder again. Stark fired the second barrel and took out the right rear tire. The rim hit the road with a scraping screech that was enough to put a man’s teeth on edge. The wildly fishtailing rear end drifted off the pavement, and the rim dug deep into the gravel shoulder. The rear end slid farther in that direction.
Stark knew what was going to happen if that kept up, and suddenly it did. The SUV was airborne, turning in the air as its high center of gravity caused it to flip. It slammed down on its roof, partially crumpling it, and bounced even higher in the air. Once, twice, three times the SUV rolled, doing more damage each time it landed for a split second between flips. With a shriek of brakes, Elaine brought the pickup to a stop so that she and Stark could watch the crash.
The SUV, bent and crumpled until it hardly resembled itself, came to rest upright on its wheels. Only a couple of seconds ticked by before flames burst out underneath it. Two of the doors opened, one of them kicked open desperately by the man who tumbled out through it. He and his companion stumbled away from the wreck, moving just fast enough to put a little distance between themselves and the SUV before the vehicle went up in a fiery explosion that threw the men facedown on the road.
Stark opened the passenger door and stepped out of the truck.
He heard Elaine calling his name
as he strode toward the two men, but he didn’t pause or look back. He had picked up the second shotgun and held it at his hip, ready to fire. The SUV was an inferno now, fierce flames shooting out of its windows. If the other two men had survived the rollover, they certainly hadn’t survived the gas tank blowing up. They would be well roasted by now.
The two on the road were burned and bloody and wracked by coughing, but they managed to struggle to their feet. One of them still held a pistol in his hand. The other man had been carrying a rifle. It had fallen beside him when the force of the blast knocked him down.
The man with the pistol looked up, saw Stark approaching, and brought the weapon up. Stark didn’t give him a chance to fire. He touched off the right barrel of the shotgun first. The buckshot smashed into the man, lifting him off his feet and tossing him backward . . . much like Chaco must have been killed, Stark thought.
The other man made a dive for the rifle. Stark fired the shotgun’s second barrel. The charge practically tore off the man’s right arm and sent him rolling across the ground, away from the rifle. Stark walked closer. As badly wounded as the second man was, he might live long enough to be questioned. Stark would insist on it, in fact. He wanted it on record that Ramirez was behind what had happened this morning. Maybe Hammond wouldn’t be able to ignore that.
The wounded man was still alive, all right, alive enough to use his left hand to grab the pistol his companion had dropped. The man came up on his knees and screamed curses in Spanish at Stark as he tried to bring the gun to bear.
Stark dropped the shotgun, which he hadn’t reloaded right away, an oversight that might cost him his life. He snatched the Colt Model 1911A from behind his belt, remembering that he hadn’t worked the slide, and racked a cartridge into the chamber. His right hand squeezed the checkered grip as his left grasped the slide and shoved it back. The surviving killer fired, the bullet kicking off the blacktop at Stark’s feet. Stark extended his arm, lined up the blade sight on the front of the barrel, and fired. The bullet caught the man just above the left eye. It shattered the skull and bored on through his brain before exploding out the back of his head. The man flopped backward, already dead even though the twitching nerves in his arms and legs didn’t know it yet.
Vengeance Is Mine Page 15
