Out of Season

by Steven F Havill

  “You need to get some backup out here,” Neil Costace snapped, and I looked at him in surprise as he continued, “You’ve got some crazy man loose on a bulldozer. He’s already killed one man, and there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”

  Boyd half turned in angry response, and I grabbed him by the arm. “Listen, Johnny.” I jerked his arm hard, pulling him toward me. I lowered my voice. “Enough’s enough. If we’re going to help your brother through this, then you’ve got to tell me what you know. Goddam it, trust me just this once. Ride with us.”

  “We’ll go on ahead and cut him off,” Costace said, and his words were in that “Let’s lynch him, boys” tone that riled the crowds in old western films into action.

  “The hell you will,” I said, and the ludicrous image of our new county Bronco being crushed like an aluminum can by the bulldozer ran through my mind. That was all the prompting Johnny Boyd needed.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and pulled loose from my grip.

  “Get in front,” I said after him, and as the lanky rancher slid into the front passenger seat and yanked the door closed, I turned on Neil Costace.

  Before I could get two words out, he held up a hand and in the dim light, I could see a half grin. “That’s one that’s safe,” he said. “We’ll follow you on out—wherever it is that you’re going.”

  “Thanks,” I said. As I walked to the car, I saw Maxine Boyd standing alone, hands held in front of her as if in prayer. I detoured over to her and wrapped her in a bear hug. “Stay near the phone,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  She murmured something, and I gave her a final squeeze and then walked to the car. I’d forgotten how difficult it was to contort into the back seat, but I managed.

  I knew we didn’t have much time, and I leaned forward, Boyd’s left ear just inches away. “Did you know where Edwin was going this evening?”

  For several seconds, he didn’t say anything, and when the nod came, it was just the faintest of movements, just a little tick of the head. “Jesus H. Christ,” he murmured. I wasn’t sure if he was responding to our launching over the cattle guard behind the barn or to my question. He half turned in the seat, using one hand against the dashboard to brace himself, with his left arm hooked over the seat back.

  “He said he was going to get something for his knee. Every now and then, he likes to wrap himself around a glass, and the Pierpoint…that’s his favorite watering hole over in Posadas. Now what?”

  “He and Finnegan had an argument about something. We’re not sure about what, and we certainly don’t know who provoked it. The other deputies are down there now, and they’ll take statements from everyone who saw anything. Right now, we don’t know what the hell happened.”

  Yeany Boyd said distantly. “Well, I can guess what happened.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, I pulled myself forward on the seat, practically talking right in his ear. I could smell the cloying aroma of beer and cigarette smoke. Estelle drove almost sedately, which was fine with me. I didn’t relish being tossed through the roof. And it didn’t take hell-bent-for-leather to beat a bulldozer.

  “I want your help,” I said. “I don’t want him hurt, or anyone else hurt either. And neither do you. But he’s the only one with all the answers.”

  Boyd took his time lighting a cigarette, the smoke curling up and out the side window.

  “Johnny,” I went on, “when I told you that it looked like your brother and Finnegan had an argument, you didn’t seem surprised. You want to tell me about it?”

  “It won’t be the first time,” he said and pushed himself back in the seat, wedging himself against the door. “My brother and Dick Finnegan haven’t seen eye to eye on a lot of things over the years.” He sighed. “I don’t know what it is, ’cause my brother is about the gentlest man on the planet. He minds his own business and just asks that the rest of the world do the same.”

  “Did he and Finnegan argue over something recently?”

  “The damn antelope,” Boyd said, and he shut his mouth tight after those three words and turned to watch the road as Estelle negotiated a turn where the ruts had been cut deep into the prairie. She bridged the deepest portions, keeping the big sedan’s undercarriage out of the dirt. The lights of the dashboard were just enough to outline Boyd’s features, and by the set of his jaw, I could only guess at the struggle he was having.

  “Finnegan was impounding antelope,” I said. “We know that. We were out there just a little while ago. We saw the sections of sheep fencing. We went all the way over to the corner, by the abandoned well. That’s the one you called Williams Tank.”

  “Well, then,” Boyd said, and let it go at that, as if we knew all there was to know.

  “I don’t understand, though,” I pressed. “Sheep fencing isn’t cheap. Where’s the profit in a handful of antelope? I’d think you could sell a good steer for more money than you’d get for some critter about the size of a big German shepherd.”

  “First off, it ain’t no ‘handful,’ Sheriff. Dick’s workin’ on a pretty good herd. Hell, I counted thirty-four once, in just one clan. And it isn’t selling the animals for meat that it’s all about.” Boyd fell silent again.

  “Then what’s it for? Hunters?”

  “That’s right.”

  “There’s money in that?”

  Johnny Boyd snorted. “You’re kidding. Hell, some of the city boys will pay a thousand bucks a pop for a chance at an antelope with a good set of horns. Guaranteed success. A nice, private little hunt. Dick’s got about a section of land fenced in like what you saw, both to the south by the old windmill and another area north. You remember where that old stone house is?”

  “Sure.”

  “Up north of that.” Boyd crushed the remains of the cigarette out and dug another from his pocket.

  “So he sells hunts,” I said.

  Boyd nodded. “That’s where the money is. Ten hunts at a thousand bucks each will pay for a lot of ranching. Tax free, interest free. Any time of year that it’s convenient. My brother doesn’t think much of that,” Boyd said.

  “Finnegan gets hunters from out of town, then?”

  “Well, sure. Folks that don’t know better. See, he’s got this deal with some fella in Santa Fe. As a matter of fact, if I got it right, the guy is Finnegan’s former brother-in-law…or some squirrelly thing like that. Dick was boasting about it to me once, acting real coy, you know. He was pretty proud of himself. Anyway, this guy is in the business.”

  “What business?”

  “Travel, hunting. All that sort of stuff. There’s some big-game ranches up that way, legitimate ones. Rich folks come out and spend a week getting wined and dined and go home with a trophy elk or ram. Dick was hinting that every once in a while, his brother-in-law would send some hunters down this way for a quick trophy buck.”

  “It’s hard to believe anyone in his right mind would pay that much,” I said.

  Boyd laughed, a short, hacking chuckle. “They’ll pay even more for less, Sheriff,” he said. “Fifteen hundred or two thousand is petty cash to some folks. And the way things are going, open-country hunting is getting harder and harder. There’s less and less private land every year, and a good many landowners and ranchers don’t want hunters on the property…myself included. And the kicker is, Dick never cared much one way or another what season it was. Nobody was the wiser, so why inconvenience the payin’ customer by restricting him to one of the state’s seasons?”

  “And Edwin doesn’t approve of all this? Of what Finnegan was doing?”

  “He don’t think much of it. Neither do I, for that matter, but what Dick Finnegan does on his land is his business, long as it don’t get in my way.”

  “You never tipped off the Game and Fish Department?”

  “Nope. The thought crossed my mind once or twice. Guess I should have. But this is the way I figure it. The judge would hand a stiff fine on old Dick, and maybe he could pay it, and maybe he couldn’t. They might even st
ick him in jail for six months and leave old crazy Charlotte out there all by her lonesome. Maybe, maybe not. But then after a time, he’d be out of jail, and I’d still have him for a neighbor, still meet him now and then on some back road. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not afraid of too much, but I don’t need that. It’s his business, and I let it go at that.”

  “Johnny, did Dick Finnegan shoot at that airplane?”

  This time he didn’t hesitate, didn’t turn coy. “I don’t know, Sheriff,” he said and added, “If I knew, I’d tell you. He could have, and he could have hit it, too. I’ve seen him drop a coyote at five hundred yards, just resting the rifle over the hood of the truck. And that’s no small trick. But I don’t know.”

  “Do you suppose Edwin knows?” Estelle asked. Her voice was quiet and husky, but it startled both Johnny Boyd and me.

  “I don’t see how he could,” Johnny said. “He’s so goddam lame he can’t do much more than hobble. And at the time that shooting happened, he wasn’t even in the county.”

  “That’s what he told us,” I said.

  “If that’s what he said, then that’s what’s true,” Johnny said vehemently. “My brother don’t waste a whole lot of words, but one thing he don’t do is lie.”

  “He hasn’t said anything recently that was out of the ordinary about Finnegan? They weren’t arguing about anything?”

  “If they were, he didn’t tell me anything about it.”

  I watched as we turned south on the narrow lane that would lead us to the first gate that marked Finnegan’s zoo. “When was the last time you talked with him?” I asked.

  “With Dick? Oh, we cross paths regular. We both use the same road, you know.”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “I saw him the day before yesterday.”

  “That was before the crash?”

  “Yes. That morning. We met at the intersection of the county road.”

  “He say anything?”

  “He said he was still thinking about running the pipe across that little spur of land I own. But he wasn’t sure of how much water there’d be.”

  “And that was it?”

  “And that was it. I told him that whatever he decided was fine with me. Just that if he was going to run pipe across my land, I could use some of the water a time or two.”

  “It would have cost him quite a bit to go around, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure. Some.” He chuckled that dry, hacking laugh again.

  “Half an antelope, maybe.”

  “What did Edwin think about that?”

  “Not much. He was pissed at Finnegan for borrowing our dozer to try digging his goddam pond and then turning around and being so goddam tight about the pipe deal. He stewed about that some. I figured it was just one of those things, you know. One of those things that gets sideways. To this day, I don’t know why Dick wanted to bother trying another pond. This country is mostly gravel. There’s no dirt tank in the county that will hold water unless you line it. Plastic or bentonite. But it’s his business. I told Edwin to just let it ride. Hell, it didn’t cost us anything except a couple gallons of diesel.”

  We pulled to an abrupt halt, our headlights illuminating the wire gate. In all the frenzy earlier, Tom Pasquale had actually paused long enough to make sure it was closed and the herd of evidence secured. Boyd didn’t seem in much of a hurry as he loosened the wire closure.

  “What do you think?” I said to Estelle. “You’re the only one of us who seems to have an idea of where Edwin’s headed.”

  She drove through the gate, pulling far enough ahead that the second vehicle could follow.

  “I don’t think Dick Finnegan was much interested in ponds,” she said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Estelle pulled the patrol car close to the fence and stopped with the headlights off. She opened the windows and killed the engine. Sand, gravel, and bunchgrass crunched as the Bronco pulled in behind us and halted. Pasquale switched it off, and for a few seconds, the five of us sat in the darkness.

  “Be kind of funny if he was going the other way,” Johnny Boyd said in a half whisper.

  “He’d be easy to track,” I replied, and the rancher hacked what could have been a chuckle.

  “I got to thank you,” he said after a moment. I didn’t see any cause to be thanked, so I didn’t reply. “You don’t exactly go chargin’ in on things, do you?”

  “We try not to,” I said. “You get as old and clumsy as I am, you learn to watch where you put your feet.”

  “I can see that the kid behind us gets a little squirrelly now and then.”

  “Yes, he does. As you say, he’s young. But Deputy Pasquale is a fast study. And he’s got a veteran riding with him.”

  Boyd coughed again. “Costace? That’s his name?” I nodded. “He seemed eager enough to ride on over here with the cavalry before you reined him in.”

  “He got you in the car, didn’t he?” I said, and Boyd chewed on that for a moment. The thinking would do him good.

  “And what are you going to do when Edwin gets here with that dozer? If this is where he’s headed?” he asked.

  “I plan to get out of this car, walk up to him and ask him what the hell happened. And maybe while I’m at it, I’ll ask him why the first thing he did was jump on a goddam Cat and drive it a mile or two in the dark.” Estelle stirred as if she wanted to say something, but then thought better of it.

  “He’s going to be arrested?”

  “That depends on what he tells me.”

  “Odds are good, though, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “You’ll let me be there?” I had never heard Johnny Boyd’s voice so small.

  “I’m counting on it, Johnny.”

  He fell silent.

  “There it is,” Estelle said and pointed. Sure enough, off in the darkness to the west a couple of hundred yards, two bright lances of light appeared as the dozer clanked its way around a small outcropping that thrust up sharp limestone in the machine’s path.

  “Let’s go find out,” I said and started the process of hauling my tired self out of the car. Before I had pulled myself upright, I realized that Deputy Pasquale was holding the door open for me.

  “How are we going to stop that thing?” Pasquale asked, and I saw that he was holding a pump shotgun.

  “Before you do anything else, put that back in the unit,” I said. He hesitated. “You piece all this together in your mind and you’ll understand why I’m asking you to do that,” I said gently.

  Neil Costace stood in front of the Bronco, watching the approach of the ponderous machine, his hands thrust in his pockets. “Any man with even half his marbles doesn’t choose a bulldozer as an escape vehicle, Tom. The man wants to show us something,” he said.

  Edwin Boyd drove the machine straight toward our position, until the only thing between him and Dick Finnegan’s property was the tightly strung fence. The machine never slowed. The blade caught a fence post squarely. Standing a hundred yards away, I could hear the groan and twang of the wire.

  With enough tension stretching them over the sharp edges of the dozer’s blade, the barbed-wire strands finally parted and snapped away, their ends curling and snaking, lashing the dirt and tangling in the scant vegetation. The gridded sheep fencing was tougher, and it wrenched loose from the posts and followed on either side of the machine as it clanked across the flat toward the windmill.

  Just when it looked like he would crash into the old windmill tower, Edwin Boyd spun the dozer in its own length so that it was facing due north. The blade dropped into the prairie soil twenty yards from the windmill tower and the stack belched as he opened the throttle. From fifty yards away, I could smell the dirt as the bulldozer ripped open the earth.

  He pushed dirt for fifty feet, then raised the blade, drove over the mound he’d made and pivoted for what looked like a return run. Just as suddenly, the heavy growling of the diesel died, ticking into silence. T
he two headlights continued to stare at the freshly scarred ground, their beams softened with power only from the battery.

  “Now what the hell?” Johnny Boyd said, and he started toward the dozer. The rest of us followed.

  We had fifty yards to cover, but Edwin Boyd took that long to dismount. He managed to step to earth at the same time we reached the dozer. He leaned heavily against the massive tread of the old machine and tried to light a cigarette. I could see his hands shaking, and he was gulping air.

  “Just take it easy, Edwin,” I said. “We’re here now.” His chest was heaving, and for a moment, I thought he would pitch forward on his face, taking all his answers with him.

  He gave up finally, sitting on the cleats with lighter in one hand, cigarette in the other, staring at the ground. “Take your time,” Neil Costace said. “Just breathe deep and take your time.”

  Johnny Boyd reached out and took Edwin by the left shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, Ed. Talk to me now.”

  Edwin Boyd shrugged as if he had no idea of where to start, and it was Estelle Reyes-Guzman who helped him into gear. “Is this where it’s buried, Edwin?” she asked, and his immediate nod was one of relief.

  “You dig down three foot right here,” he said, swinging a finger to trace the rip he’d made, “and you’ll find one of them little foreign jobs. Roof’s caved in, and she’s kinda flat from having seven tons drove over her a few times, but it’s there.”

  “Are you talking about a car?” Johnny Boyd asked incredulously.

  Edwin nodded.

  “Well, shit, whose car is it?” Costace asked.

  “Belongs to a couple of hunters,” Edwin muttered.

  “And they’re still in the car,” Estelle added for him, and he nodded.

  “Sure as hell are. You dig down right here and you’ll find ’em.”