Adam glanced at Spud, who was admittedly balding but otherwise slim and fit. Good looking, too, especially compared to the cigar-chomping, mustachioed Long John Dunn. Or, for that matter, Agent Dan, whose height and muscular build suggested the kind of male beauty Adam would normally consider attractive, but whose businesslike manner struck Adam as both cold and calculating. Spud on the other hand was always thoughtful and warm. Adam loved it when Spud tilted back his chair, lit his pipe, and quoted from whatever he had been reading. Or writing. Spud’s poems and essays were nothing a boy might write, Adam smiled to himself. And Spud’s Laughing Horse was one of the boldest, most experimental magazines in this country. Had Agent Dan read it, he would never call Spud a boy.
Spud took the back seat next to Adam. Once John Dunn put the car in gear, they lurched forward and slipped into a brisk pace. Tony’s car backfired behind them in its attempt to keep up. Sounded exactly like a gunshot. Spud and Adam jumped in unison. Calm down, Spud told himself. No need to be afraid now. Later, yes, but not now. He glanced at Adam, who seemed to be telling himself the same thing, settling his back deeper into his seat.
Spud had never held a gun and was shocked when Tony handed them rifles. “Load them later,” Tony said. Load them later? Neither Spud nor Adam knew how to load a gun, let alone shoot one. Agent Dan assured them there was nothing difficult about it and he would show them how when they got closer to the ranch.
Not a good idea to ride in the car with a loaded gun. Spud agreed. And he hoped Agent Dan was right when he guessed they wouldn’t actually have to use them. They just needed to look like they could. It was all a charade, really. The three women in the car behind them had no guns and wouldn’t even get out of the car, though each of them had a man’s hat to don once they got close and had been instructed to look fierce. “No problem there,” Willa laughed at her own joke.
When they reached the turn-off toward the ranch, Spud spotted Old Man Manby standing in his stirrups, his horse in a fast trot toward Taos. People said Manby was crazy and joked about the way he sat a horse. Spud thought Manby’s style of riding had more to do with the fact that he was British than with his mental faculties. Crazy like a fox was more like it. Spud had heard a lot of rumors about Manby, including some about how he murdered his partners at the Mystic Mine. Killed and beheaded them, that’s what people said. But after thirty years, no one had been able to prove that Manby had committed even one crime. Maybe just a matter of a little more time, Spud grinned. Manby might even have had something to do with the murders at the ranch.
The sound of Mabel’s voice shouting “Wahoo” floated out from Tony’s car as they turned a corner. The cold steel of the rifle barrel against Spud’s leg quelled his own excitement. He no longer felt fear, but what they were planning to do was no game. He preferred to sit still, very still, and think about all things other than what they might encounter.
“You okay?” Adam’s brow was furrowed.
“I think so.” Spud tried a smile that felt more like a grimace. “This is not my idea of a pleasant outing.”
“No,” Adam chuckled, “but we should be all right. If those men are back at the ranch, we’ll have the element of surprise on our side, to say nothing of numbers and guns.”
“If only we knew how to use the guns.”
“Well, yes,” Adam nodded. “I’m just hoping we don’t actually have to use them.”
“Probably won’t,” Agent Dan assured them from the front seat. “Just follow my lead. From what Mabel said, Long John Dunn here has had plenty of experience with guns and thugs. The rest of you will just be window dressing. But I’m guessing Mabel’s right. Our numbers alone should scare these guys into submission.”
Edith remembered the drive to the Lawrence ranch last year as being much shorter. They were travelling at the highest speed Tony could coax from his Cadillac, fast enough to stay in the midst of the large cloud of dust John Dunn’s Ford raised. But until they began to climb the narrow, rutted mountain road to the ranch, Edith felt as though time spread out around them like sand, their wheels slipping and spinning deep without propelling them forward. An illusion, of course. Just an illusion, though the dust was quite real. And once they began the climb, the ruts were real, too. Willa’s grasp on her arm felt reassuring, a solid presence securing her in place.
“How long now?” Willa sounded anxious.
“Not frightened, are you?” Mabel turned to address them directly.
“No more than we were when John Dunn treated us to the vision of a scarecrow hanging from a dead tree. His idea of a joke.” Edith smiled.
“What scarecrow?” Mabel frowned.
“Oh, just an effigy he said some boys dangled from a dead cottonwood near the gorge to scare the tourists coming in from Taos Junction.” Willa waved her hand in the air as if to dismiss the image.
“Some joke,” Mabel shrugged. “Those boys have too much time on their hands, I’d say.”
“Well, we’re not frightened, and this is no joke.” Edith’s voice was firm.
“No joke and this time real danger.” Tony removed one hand from the steering wheel long enough to smooth his braids against his chest. Edith thought the gesture was meant to be calming.
Tony glanced at Edith and Willa in the back seat before turning to Mabel, who sat with her hands folded in her lap with such ladylike composure, Tony paused to regard her. “I have been doing other things and do not know all that has happened.”
“We’re still trying to put all the pieces together,” Mabel assured him. “What we know for sure is that the man Blade is in jail now, telling what he knows. Trouble is, he knows the two thugs but doesn’t seem to know much about what they’re actually doing.”
“He did know their names,” Willa interrupted, “or maybe just their nicknames. Nick and …,” she paused.
“Nick and Dick,” Edith filled in the missing name.
“Yes, that’s right!” Mabel almost shouted, throwing her hands in the air. “Sounds like some kind of silly practical joke their parents played with names. But they’re no joke. We think they are the two who shot Agent Dan.”
“The men I tracked toward Red River?”
“The very ones,” Mabel nodded. “When I talked John Dunn into coming with us today, he told me he had seen them a time or two at The Hole in Red River.”
“The Watering Hole?” Willa exclaimed.
“We were just there,” Edith couldn’t contain her excitement. “They might have been there, too, but we had no idea what they looked like.”
“Nothing much to look at, according to John Dunn. Mean, too, he said.”
“Certainly are mean,” Edith found herself thinking out loud. “If they beheaded those women and shot Agent Dan.”
“Yes.” Mabel turned to look at Edith. “And according to John Dunn they are hardscrabble brothers from the Texas Panhandle just like he is, except he never turned mean. Claimed he shot a man once but left his head on.”
“Agent Dan needs to hear what John Dunn knows about them,” Willa leaned forward to emphasize the urgency of her message.
“They’re probably talking about that right now. But Agent Dan said the plan is to stop when we’re about a mile below the ranch. We can be sure he knows all about this then.”
“Good,” Willa settled back with a chuckle. “And then we can talk about how we’ll make our approach look more like a social call than a raid.”
“When I told John Dunn this was to look like a social call,” Mabel said, “he shook with laughter and his voice climbed a whole octave. ‘A social call to Nick and Dick,’ he shouted. ‘Now that’s rich!”’
Adam found it difficult to get comfortable. His shoulder ached and he had forgotten to unclench his jaw during their slow, bumpy progress up the mountain. Maybe he had even been grinding his teeth. It felt like he might have a toothache.
When John Dunn pulled off on the side of the road to let Tony ease alongside so they could finalize their plans, Adam breathed a si
gh of relief.
“Should work okay, this social visit thing,” John Dunn grinned. He looked past Agent Dan to include Tony and Mabel, who were sitting quietly in their own front seat. “They won’t expect us, and we’ll be armed.”
“Right,” Agent Dan agreed. “Tony and the ladies need to hang back out of sight, and we need you guys,” he glanced at Adam and Spud in the back seat, “we need you to stay in the car. But everyone needs to come running if you hear gunshots.”
Gunshots. Adam flinched.
“Wait a minute,” Willa interrupted, leaning forward from the back seat of Tony’s car to single out Agent Dan. “They’ve seen you, remember?”
Agent Dan’s eyes widened. Mabel gasped, “Of course they have.”
“When they shot you. You didn’t see them, but they saw you, maybe even close up.”
“True.” Mabel was nodding now.
“Take me instead of Agent Dan,” Tony offered.
“No,” Spud leaned forward. “Take me or Adam. Leave Tony behind. He can drive John Dunn’s car if something bad happens. Never know what we may need.”
Adam wanted to say he would go instead, but his throat felt tight and his mouth refused to form the words. He had been brave enough in the ranch house at night, but he didn’t want to die and he had never fired a gun.
“Let me borrow your hat,” Agent Dan eyed Spud’s wide-brimmed straw hat. “We’ll trade. They won’t recognize me in that, and my face will be in shade. They probably won’t see the two of you in the back seat anyway.”
“True,” John Dunn agreed. “I think that might work.”
“It has to work,” Mabel declared with emphatic certainty.
As soon as Agent Dan hid his face under Spud’s straw brim, Long John Dunn drove on until Adam could no longer see or hear Tony’s car behind them. Tony had remained where they stopped but kept his engine running. They didn’t want the sound of his car to reach the ranch, but they did want him to be ready to drive on once he heard gunfire, either a single signal shot or many shots, which would mean serious trouble.
“Are you all right? You look pale.”
Adam could feel Spud’s concern and took a few seconds to do a mental inventory of his physical well being in order to report back.
“I’m fine. Just scared.”
Edith pulled the brim of her Stetson snug against her ears. It made her feel somehow safe. Of course nothing was safe now. She strained to hear a gunshot above the quiet sound of Tony’s engine, but only silence and the steady trickle of a nearby stream greeted her ears. She could feel Willa breathing next to her. Tony and Mabel seemed to have stopped breathing altogether. The wind picked up. She could hear it moving through the top of the pines around them. Aspen shimmered near the stream. Nothing else moved.
“Hear that?” Willa whispered.
Edith didn’t answer. She could see Tony’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel in front, but she heard nothing unusual.
“What?” Mabel turned to look at them.
“Thought I heard someone yell.”
“Maybe a raven cawing,” Mabel suggested.
“Maybe,” Edith whispered.
Tony drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. If Edith hadn’t noticed, she’d have thought she was hearing a herd of buffalo on the run. She squeezed her eyelids together.
“You two all right?” Mabel’s voice startled them. It was coming from outside the car. Edith stared. How had Mabel managed to slip out of her door and appear next to Willa’s window without their noticing? And she was practically shouting her question.
“Shhhh.” Edith leaned over and looked though the window on the passenger’s side.
Mabel stood next to Willa’s open window, arms akimbo. Edith closed her eyes again. Can’t stand not being in charge, Spud had told them, that’s Mabel for you. Love her or hate her, see her or not, she always has to be in control. But, of course, he conceded, that was one of her strengths. Edith guessed he was right on both counts.
“We’re fine,” Willa whispered. “You need to get back in the front seat. No way to tell when we’ll need to move up.”
“I can’t stand this not knowing.”
“None of us can,” Willa agreed.
Spud squeezed his hand around the door handle but didn’t push his door open. John Dunn and Agent Dan were just then stepping away from the car as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Nonchalant, the word came and went. That’s what they looked like. Nonchalant. Long John Dunn even paused to relight his cigar. Agent Dan paused with him, his straw hat shading his face. Then they moved toward the ranch house with a steady pace. Inexorable, the word slipped though Spud’s mind. Nonchalant and inexorable. Spud tightened his grip on the door handle but forced himself not to move.
Spud noticed that Adam’s grip on the other door handle was so taut that his knuckles turned white. Spud tried to think what to whisper to ease Adam’s tension until he realized that their tension served a purpose. They needed to be ready to spring out of the car at a moment’s notice and hold their rifles as if they intended to shoot.
Spud thought they could handle that part all right. Actual shooting would be considerably more difficult. And iffy.
John Dunn reached the ranch house first and banged on the door. He called out Nick’s name, and the door cracked open. When John Dunn’s “Howdy” floated back toward the car, Spud began to relax. Then Nick’s “Howdy” turned into “What the Hell,” and both Spud and Adam bolted from the car, but before Spud could clear the running board, Agent Dan had snapped a pair of handcuffs on Nick. And within seconds he was snapping a second pair of handcuffs on Dick.
It was over. Just like that. John Dunn had grabbed Dick and knocked a rifle out of his hands the second he came tumbling out of the door behind Nick.
It really was over. Spud released breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Adam pounded on the side of the car and shouted in Spud’s ear. “They got them! They got them. And not a shot fired!”
Edith changed her position for the fourth time. Would this vigil never end? No gunshots, but no one to tell them it was over. It felt like they had been sitting on their hands for so long, waiting had become almost boring.
Edith drummed her fingers on the windowsill. She had rolled the window down, then up, and then down again. She was agitated, but she realized with a jolt that Willa was not. In fact, Willa was so quiet and her breathing so measured, Edith decided she must have slipped into silent meditation, something they had both learned from Achsah Brewster, Edith’s college roommate, and her husband Earl, whose Life of Gotama the Buddha was about to be published. No thinking when meditating, no anxiety, no fear, just stillness. The perfect way to be in moments like these, Edith thought.
Edith wished she could find that still point for herself, but her mind wouldn’t stop. Instead she began thinking about how Willa had given the experience of meditation to the archbishop in her new novel, placing him in an ancient Navajo hogan for an elemental transcendence, not as a single act but as a merging, fusing, embracing of all that is foreign, unknown, outside of the self he had been and become. No longer the French priest who civilized the American Southwest, he, his history, his culture, his beliefs all became fused in that moment with everything outside himself. And once that happened, the cathedral he built would represent a similar kind of transcendence and acceptance, a merging of beliefs, peoples, customs and even, as Willa described it, a fusing of earth and air.
Gerunds. That was Willa’s secret. The -ing ending that makes a verb into a permanent event with no beginning and no ending, a present forever becoming was Willa’s message of hope to a world torn asunder and fragmented by war. Edith sighed and shifted her position once more. As much as she wished she could meditate too, she knew meditation was an inside job and right now her own insides were in total turmoil.
Edith saw Mabel stumble on her way back to the car. Mabel hadn’t gone back to her seat as Willa had suggested but slipped into the woods and moved closer to the
ranch house. Now she kicked a rock that pinged against the car’s fender. Edith hoped the sound would not carry. She also hoped Mabel’s return meant she would tell them they could move on toward the ranch house. More than anything, she hoped that those two evil men were there and that Agent Dan had arrested them and would see to it that they were incarcerated for the rest of their lives. Men without empathy or understanding, Edith began an internal rant. Men of evil who killed those women as if they were not also human, who wreaked havoc not as soldiers trying to hold a broken world together, as Willa’s cousin and so many others had done on the battlefields in France, but as unfeeling monsters who cared nothing about the world or the lives of others in it. Nothing.
When Mabel reached the car, Edith stopped her rant without having said a word.
“What on earth is taking so long?” Willa opened her eyes.
Mabel slipped into the car, saying only that she never got close enough to the house to see anything.
“What shall we do? It feels like we must do something.” Willa sounded full of renewed energy.
“Wait.” Mabel shook her head. “That’s really all we can do.”
Adam paused briefly to catch his breath. He had run the full mile as fast as he could to reach Tony’s car. He had been sent alone to let the others know Agent Dan had the men in handcuffs.
“Adam, what is it?” Mabel cried out.
At the sound of Mabel’s voice, Adam shifted to a slower pace long enough to shout back, “It’s okay. You can come now.”
“Where are the others? Did they catch those men?”
“It’s okay,” Adam repeated. “They have them handcuffed. You can come.”
“Oh, thank heavens.” Mabel clapped her hands.
Thank heavens echoed though the car amid cheers and shouts. Tony pounded the steering wheel and Willa shouted, “Wow! Wow! Wow!”
Death Comes Page 21
