Wild Country

by Dean Ing

  He crossed the boulevard, walking slowly enough to hide his slight limp, whistling an old familiar tune. Of the pair that walked ahead, the tall blond with the big shoulders seemed to be doing most of the talking. San Antonio Rose proceeded with caution; no telling how many men in Austin would fit Jerome Garner's description.

  The men took seats at a bus stop. San Antonio Rose spent ten minutes with a cigarette, idly observing construction work on the stadium. He felt more sure of his job when the two men passed up a Congress Avenue bus. He felt almost certain when, as the big earthmovers began to whirr toward their compound, the smaller of the men crossed alone to the opposite side of the broad thoroughfare and took up a vigil, a broad-brim Stetson pulled low over his brow.

  Jer Garner was watching for a ramscoop driver who looked like Ted Quantrill and scarcely glanced at the lean fellow in coveralls who sat down, whistling softly, on the other end of his bench. Until the man quit repeating his tune and asked for a light. Jer pulled a lighter from his jacket pocket without a word. Flicking the lighter, he shared the gaze of a man whose coloring and face suggested a tough latino. A day laborer, from the look of him.

  The laborer drew on his cigarette, said, "Thanks," and whistled a tenth repetition of the tune. It irritated Jer, who looked away. "Bet you can't name that tune," said the laborer casually.

  "I've heard enough of it," Jer replied.

  "But can you name it?" the laborer persisted.

  "'Rose of San Antone,' " said Jer, not making the connection.

  "Guilty as charged," said the laborer.

  Jer swiveled his head around, made a connection, then dismissed it too soon. "I'm busy, greaseball. Get my drift?"

  "I do if your initials are J. G.," said the laborer.

  Now Jer turned his full attention to the man. "And what if they aren't?"

  "I'll be disappointed, and J. G. won't live to ride his sorrel much longer." The laborer still spoke casually, but his hand rested in his jacket. "If I were the law, which I'm not, J. G. would be candy. You agree?"

  Jer swallowed hard, imagining a snub-nosed weapon in that pocket. "I guess so."

  "So I'll give you one name and you give me the other; fair enough?" A nod. "Jerome."

  "Garner," said Jer. "You're San Antonio Rose?"

  "I said I was guilty," said the man, enjoying it. "You jus' keep watching and don' bring your backup overhere, I'm takin' a chance for you Anglos as it is."

  Jer brought out a pack of cigarettes, lit up, and kept his eyes peeled on the street, feeling sweat form in his armpits as his informant continued to talk. The story was short, its moral bitter: Jerome Garner was unlikely to find his quarry in Austin. He was more likely to find some very rough dudes authorized to carry sawed-off scatterguns, the kind of welcome you could expect if you were a known killer.

  San Antonio Rose saw beads of perspiration on Jer's forehead as he finished: "Too many bounty hunters here for your health. You think this man you're after isn' bait to get you now, wherever he is? Think again. An' if I found you, who'll find you next?"

  Jer spat at the gutter. "Seems like everybody knows my business before I do. It was that little cunt set me up, sure as hell!"

  San Antonio Rose donated a look of puzzlement. "You're way off. Garner. Go home an' think about it."

  The word "home" had more implications than he had intended. "If it wasn't that girl, I know goddamn well who it has to be," Jer raged.

  "Thought you might," said San Antonio Rose, without any clear idea who the rancher had in mind. "My channels say you're settin' yourself up for a spell in the slammer. Don' expect any more help from me. You're trouble stuck up on a long pole, man. Now do us all a favor; go get your backup an' fuck off while I catch this bus."

  Jer Garner got up as if the bench were a hot stove lid and hurried across the boulevard without a backward look. San Antonio Rose caught the bus, wondering whether young Garner would continue his search for the ex-deputy. He did not wonder about the slender fellow with the scarred face who sat in a rented Chevy near a street corner two blocks down Red River from that bus stop.

  San Antonio Rose checked himself often for passive di-poles and radio-frequency bugs, with a good Mantis bug-finder. Because he never found evidence of tracer bugs, he assumed that he was free to pursue his business without himself being followed. He had never heard of a pheromone tracker, a hand-held device that was almost as sensitive as moth antennae in locating stray molecules of an exact type.

  Marianne Placidas knew men's habits. They might wash their clothes daily but seldom washed the outsides of wallets and belts, nor the insides of footgear and holsters. Her pheromone spray was undetectable to human nostrils and it worked extremely well on leather, sinking into the pores and releasing a few molecules every second or so for a period of several weeks. Even in an air-conditioned metropolitan bus, enough trackable stuff found exit to make tracking possible. Upon learning where San Antonio Rose roomed, Marianne had wasted no time making purchases from her family contact, a retired detective who kept up with the latest investigative techniques. Within twenty-four hours, taking risks only a brilliant amateur would consider, she had gained illegal entry to San Antonio Rose's rooms and, wearing surgeon's gloves, sprayed all the belts, coats, and footgear he was not wearing at the time. His hair restorer, too, now had a little something extra that was noticeable only to that pheromone tracker.

  Now, Marianne put the Chevy in gear and cruised slowly past the two men who were hurrying toward their own rented car. At first she had felt a sick warmth, a tremor of intent, upon seeing the man who shared that bench with San Antonio Rose. He was tall enough to be Harley Slaughter. But her view from two blocks distant, even through a good telephoto lens, was not very persuasive. Only when she passed Jer Garner at a distance of five meters did she decide that neither of the men was of immediate interest to her. Marianne turned at the next corner and followed the bus downtown, holding the little chemical tracker at the windowsill. She had nothing better to do, might never have anything better to do, than follow San Antonio Rose. And to wait. Sooner or later, he would lead her to Felix Sorel. Perhaps even now he was hurrying toward that rendezvous. And if this tactic did not bear fruit soon, perhaps she would invest in the laser audio unit Sorel had mentioned in Oregon Territory.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  That Sorel would have one "Rose" and Wardrop another might have been odd coincidence anywhere but the American Southwest. In Texas, it was not so much coincidence as tradition. A thing of wonder or of beauty tended to be symbolically borrowed for names, and Texas was full of people named Delight, Sunshine, and Christmas. In part because the Tyler rose festival in the piney woods of East Texas was perhaps the most gorgeous display of color north of the Big Bend, the name "Rose" was one of the commonest in the state.

  Mounted on his gentle Rose, Wardrop began his hunt outside the northeast corner of Garner land and, in three patient days of search, worked his way north and west to the edge of the Grange spread. Here he found more sign of the boar, some of it very recent. Until the past few weeks, Sandy had never seriously imagined she would ever have the money to fence her land. So Alec Wardrop had no idea that he was trespassing when, on his fourth day out, he urged Rose over a ridge and onto Sandy's land. This was the only piece of real estate in Texas on which Ba'al had legal rights.

  And Ba'al was sticking close to home this week. He was not especially territorial, as half-ton boars go; but if Wardrop imagined that the boar gave a damn whether Rose weighed one ton or twenty, Wardrop was mistaken. The great horse sent delicate seismic tremors through the hardpan that Ba'al felt as he lay sunning himself and digesting a bellyful of rattlers, almost within whistling distance of the soddy. From that moment on, it was hard to say who was the hunter, and who the hunted.

  Wardrop and the mare were traversing a shallow, flat depression when she laid her ears back and, of her own accord, wheeled around. She had smelled something exotic and musky on the fitful breeze, and now she was hearing
faint swishings through the brush that Wardrop could not hear. Yet when she wheeled to face the disturbance, her rider was not long in doubt.

  Wardrop saw his quarry immediately; no wonder, with his eyes a full three meters from the ground as he sat on his own mobile Texas tower. He spoke calmly, soothingly, to the mare as she seemed for the first time to be near panic. Then he snugged the helmet down and unsnapped the lance from its lashings. This time he did not speak the name of Marianne; this quest was no longer for her, but for himself. With a cry that began low in his throat and expanded to echo across the little valley, he shouted, "Wohhhh jataaaa! . . ."

  Ba'al had heard this challenge before and saw the slender steel tusk lowered in his direction as the mare accelerated toward him. Something in her eyes said that she obeyed Wardrop against her best judgment. Ba'al did not much care; he cared very much that the rider with the huge gleaming head could look down on him from an arrogant height advantage. This was not to be borne with good grace. The mare was not his opponent, but merely a thing to be felled, just as a man might cut down a tree that gave safety to an opponent.

  Wardrop heard the tremendous trumpeting squeal; saw the boar leap forward like a quarterhorse, covering ground faster than Rose within a second. Its huge head was down, and it stared forward like a furious Brahma as it charged with its vast twin scythes aimed at the breast of the mare. As Wardrop lodged the lance butt in its socket and leaned forward in the saddle, the boar made a near perfect target. Until the last split second.

  Then the boar leaped across in front of Rose, one tusk ripping across her kapton breastplate as he passed to Wardrop's left. A shiny rectangle of nylon flew spinning from the breastplate, but the tusk had wedged between the tough nylon plates long enough to make that tusk a lever. For the first time in his adult life, Ba'al was spun end for end by that leverage as the mare thundered past him. He found the experience—interesting. And a bit insulting; deserving of an insult in return.

  Wardrop felt his big platform wrench to the left, stumble, regain her stride. A rider of less ability would have gone flying into the brush, but Wardrop recovered his balance, wheeled the mare in a slow, ponderous maneuver, and tried again. Immediately, Wardrop saw that the beast kept moving to Wardrop's left, deliberately avoiding the lance. He grasped the lance shaft farther ahead, pulled its butt from the socket, then held the shaft under his right arm and swung the lancehead, a honed steel sliver as long as a man's arm, over Rose's head to menace the boar afresh.

  Ba'al had tried parrying a steel tusk once before and, while nicking his own ivory scimitars slightly, the maneuver had worked. He had also felt the razor-sharp thing in his mouth, and that had not worked well at all. He had plenty of time for the decision because, with her great mass, the mare simply could not manage the speed of an Arabian. He watched the long steel sliver, gauging it carefully, his own head up and watchful, and they closed with a clash. The lancehead slid up, diverted by his tusks, and then he was inside the danger zone. He slammed directly into the horse's left flank with a resounding head butt, caromed off with a slashing pass against the armoring blanket, actually between Wardrop's shin and the mare's flank.

  Rose grunted, nearly fell, and neighed in fear though the armor had prevented those honed tusks from touching her hide. Wardrop felt his left stirrup go, sliced cleanly away just inside his leg, and now only the foremost of the three special cinches held his saddle. Those two loose cinches now flailed about beneath the mare, frightening her. Rose kicked forward with a hind leg and then answered Wardrop's rein and knee pressure.

  Wardrop had never known perspiration to burst from him so suddenly. It streamed into his eyes and he raised the visor, blinking, once more facing the boar as Rose danced sideways, dust rising as high as a man's chest beneath her. Now the huge boar moved backward with yellow-red eyes gleaming and watchful, now sidling up the dry, hard ground, provoking Wardrop to urge the mare forward. Perhaps it was the sweat in his eyes, or perhaps the thrill of battle joined; Wardrop did not realize the boar was drawing them onto a rise where occasional rains carved crevices into dirt the color of dried blood, a crumbly composite of granite and poor soil. The boar turned suddenly and half fell on its side, scrambling up from a shallow crevice, then grunted angrily, making a great show of rage as it hobbled away. Wardrop saw his chance, kicked the flanks of Rose, and resettled the lance as she gave chase.

  They gained ground for two hundred meters before the boar's lame hindquarter was suddenly sound again as if by magic, Ba'al leaping a narrow crevice into a small plateau of stony rubble, Wardrop following. And now Wardrop saw that they occupied a mound invaded by deep crevices, as though Rose stood on the back of some great hand with its fingers splayed downward. The first and most elementary principle of engagement burst too late in Wardrop's mind: The tactic depends first on terrain. He was not mounted on a jumper that could leap clear of the problem. This demon boar had lured him into a trap.

  Wardrop wheeled the mare again, shouting to spook his enemy, but as Rose turned to retrace her steps, the great boar leaped like a deer; first to one of the finger prominences, then to the slope they craved. Wardrop had no time to wonder why the boar was not champing great flecks of foam as angry boars will do. He thrust the lance down and forward, letting it slide a bit for the extra reach, and cursed as the boar dodged with ease.

  Then Ba'al reared almost in the face of Rose, his head as high as her own, his sharp split hooves menacing her, and gave voice to his own challenge, a piercing squeal that unnerved the mare completely. She tossed her head, eyes rolling in terror, and backed quickly, almost rearing as she did so. Wardrop fought to keep his balance as the saddle slipped, and Rose tried valiantly to respond to his knee pressure. In an instant the great mare had slid into a crevice broad enough for her girth and easily a meter in depth. The boar chose this moment to bound to a small prominence, then leaped behind Rose before Wardrop could bring the lancehead around. The time had come to return that insult.

  For one transfixing moment, Wardrop thought the brute would climb the mare from behind to get to her rider. Rose was snorting like a warhorse, struggling mightily to gain purchase so those great mounded muscles of hers could thrust her out of a crevice that was almost a ravine. Wardrop made a decision then, not from panic but with premeditation; the damned saddle was about to go anyhow.

  He jammed the butt of his lance into dirt, kicked away, and hauled hard with both arms, vaulting clear of the mare; that lance shaft, after all. had been modified from a vaulting pole. He landed on both feet, squatting, whirling the lance to impale the savage brute if it charged him. And stared. The boar seemed to have no intention of charging; instead, it was poised like some great Dall ram on the edge of the ravine, well clear of Rose's frantic kicks. While Wardrop watched, it made a parody of mounting her, lurching with false thrusts, staring at Wardrop all the while. Alec Wardrop shouted a wordless battle cry and leaped toward the boar, the lancehead preceding him. It was probably the long moment arm of that lancehead, plus his heavy night-vision helmet, that sent him off-balance. Wardrop sprawled headlong, the lance clattering so that it spanned the crevice next to the one that held the mare entrapped.

  Alec Wardrop saw then that he'd never had a chance, and neither had Rose, weighed down with all that extra garbage as they were; and if he was any judge, that goddamned boar knew exactly how to diddle with the chinks in their armor. Before he could scramble forward to grasp the lance, the boar performed a prodigious leap over the linger prominence and into the crevice bridged by the lance. Wardrop ducked and rolled away, seeing the boar come down with the lance shaft crosswise in its mouth, hearing the dry, splintering crack as the shaft failed.

  Wardrop saw Rose heaving herself up as the boar almost disappeared; saw her stumble, one foreleg entering the mouth of a small burrow that might have been that of fox or armadillo. He abandoned any hope of remounting as the terror-stricken mare crashed to the ground, screaming. He began to run then and almost immediately fell hard, his helmet
bouncing away. With Rose's mortal screams keening in his ears, he did not lose consciousness, but he had taken a monumental wallop in falling on the uneven ground. Wardrop thanked God as he felt for the long-bladed dirk in its boot sheath; it hadn't come loose, and now he had something going for him again.

  The boar came up from the depression as though fired from a trench mortar, looking back toward Wardrop but trotting toward Rose. She was trying to rise, still screaming, her right foreleg thrashing, fractured terribly just above the pastern. Wardrop shambled off, running as hard as he could, searching for a scrub oak high enough to climb as the breath whistled in his windpipe. He did not realize exactly when Rose's screaming stopped. But when he risked a look backward, he knew why Rose would never scream again.

  The huge boar stood over her, staring in Wardrop's direction, making no attempt to run him down before he found something climbable. The upthrusting tusks ran crimson with blood from a huge rent torn in the mare's throat. Ba'al waited for the mare to die, now respectful of his victim, and Wardrop had the chilling sensation that the boar had acted honorably. Wardrop himself would have had to shoot Rose, had he brought a firearm. Severing the great artery in her throat was the only kindness possible under the circumstances. Without realizing that he did so, Wardrop paused fifty meters away—long enough to find that his eyes were now wet, not with perspiration, but with tears. Briefly, for perhaps five seconds, man and boar stood immobile in requiem for Rose.

  When Ba'al began to trot forward, Wardrop took flight again, the dirk flashing in his hand as he ran for the tallest of the scrubby little oaks nearby. He was in error to think Ba'al could not climb after him or cut down the little oak as he had been taught to remove mesquite from around the soddy. Wardrop soon saw that the boar would reach the oaks first, instead of simply running him down in a vicious charge. Well, maybe he could squeeze into one of those little ravines far enough to present only his steel dirk to the boar. Gasping, stumbling as he ran, Wardrop turned back. For some reason, the great boar was giving him time to do it, following at a leisurely trot.