The Triggerman Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  What happens next occurs so quickly and chaotically that Vann Holt does little but watch.

  CHAPTER 15

  The driver's door of the stalled truck burst open and one of the dogs, a very large German shepherd, shot from the cab into the dust of the parking lot. Next came the cowardly Samaritan himself, still wearing the hat, his body cloaked in a long duster jacket. He landed deliberately, then walked around the front of his vehicle, as if going to lift the hood. Instead, he pulled from inside his coat a bright stainless steel revolver and very casually took a two handed shooter's stance, aiming the gun at Skinny and Valerie.

  "These bullets are a lot faster than that blade," he said. "Let her go."

  Shotgun Biker swiveled his sawed-off away from Holt and toward the Hat Man, but Holt registered a far more urgent motion, something swift and brutal and decisive. The dog was a blur already, just teeth and mouth, airborne toward Shotgun Bike who hip-pivoted his weapon and blasted twice before the torn and shredded dog even hit the ground. The sharp burned smell of gunpowder filled the air and a red mist lowered in the breeze Then Hat Man fired. Holt spun to see Valerie falling one way and Skinny the other, knife mid-air and about eye level, the top of his shoulder ripped apart in a jagged explosion of vest denim t-shirt and blood. Shotgun Biker was fumbling with his spent double-barrel as Hat Man pistol-whipped him to his knees, grabbed the tumbled shotgun and hurled it onto the saloon roof. Holt swirled instinctively to Valerie, who was fleeing into the cafe; then he turned to see Lane Fargo. Fargo was still backed against the truck with his hands up, but Giant was on his bike again, backing it away with his feet, pistol still trained on helpless Fargo, who had squatted, knees bent and ready for whatever it was he wanted to do. Giant fired two rounds just past Lane's side, pocking the red Land Rover with flat, metallic bangs, sending Fargo back against the truck hard, his eyes fierce and wide. Hat Man spun to his left and took aim at the biker with the chain, who was frantically trying to kick his Harley back to life. For a second it looked as if he would belly-shoot the grunting biker, but instead Hat Man took four long strides to Skinny and jammed the barrel of the revolver into his face, forcing him to his knees. He kicked away the big bowie knife. The dog hadn't moved but the pool of blood around it seeped leisurely into the sand. Suddenly, Giant boomed across the lot on his bike, one hand on the throttle and his other—without a firearm now— lifted in a placating gesture at Hat Man. Hat Man aimed his revolver at the Giant, then back at Skinny. "Enough, man—you got it," growled Giant. Hat Man gave him a curt nod but kept the gun pointed at him, letting him pass by and stop next to Skinny, who, clutching his shoulder and climbing onto the back of Giant's Harley, cast Hat Man a look of purest hatred. "You'll see me again, fancy faggot," he hissed, glancing down at the dog. "Enjoy dinner." Then, in a booming symphony, the three hogs and their drivers and one pale, bleeding passenger bounced onto the highway and accelerated away with a low-pitched moan of horsepower, fury and defeat.

  The man knelt over his dog, running a hand along its lifeless flank. He had set his hat on the ground, and placed his revolver in the crown.

  Vann Holt ran past the Olie's waitress, standing on the wooden deck of the restaurant, then disappeared through the swinging doors.

  Valerie stood just a few feet away, looking through a dusty window, with a huge kitchen knife in her hand. The color had drained from her face, which was splattered with Skinny's blood. To Holt, it looked like ink on snow. Her hair was drenched in sweat.

  "Oh, God, honey," said Holt, wrapping his big arms around her. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm okay, Daddy. I'm okay." The knife hit the floor.

  "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "Who is he?"

  "You're sure, absolutely sure you're not hurt?"

  "The second I pushed that pig away, he shot him."

  "Let's go outside. Can you walk outside?"

  "I told you I'm okay, Daddy. I just feel kind of . . . sticky."

  The cook emerged from the kitchen with a .30/06 rifle and a wild look on his face. He was a fat man with a rim of gray hair around his face and head, florid cheeks, and a clean white apron

  "What the hell?"

  "It's over," said Holt. "Put the gun down."

  "I'll call the Sheriffs."

  "We already did—the CB," Holt lied. It was a given for him that the police would confuse rather than clarify things.

  "Ambulance?"

  "Nobody's hurt."

  "She's not hurt? She's bleeding, you know."

  Holt gave the chef a withering look. All of his native authority, not to mention his frustration, fear and anger, came rushing back now, and he saw by the cook's eager nod that he had no intention of calling an ambulance.

  He eased Valerie back into the bright October sunlight where he ordered the waitress, forcefully, to get some coffee ready for the sherrifs. Only now did he register the frantic yapping from the Land Rovers—three springers vaulted into excitement by the gunshots.

  Titisi and Randell had gathered themselves to stare, somewhat bewildered, at the man and his dog.

  Lane Fargo stood midway between the fallen hero and the restaurant, his pistol drawn. A consuming selfconsciousness emanated from him: his face was bright red, his eyes uncertain. He watched Holt and Valerie descend the steps to the parking lot unwilling to look either his boss or his boss's daughter in the eye as they approached.

  "Mr. Holt, I think we could run them down in the Rovers.'

  "No."

  "There's not much out there but clean highway."

  "No. Settle the dogs down, Lane. See if those bullet wrecked my gas tank."

  "I'm thinking we should get off stage before the cops come.'

  "Check the dogs and trucks, Lane."

  "Yes, sir."

  Valerie left her father's side to approach the man still kneeling in the dust beside his dog.

  "Can I help you put him in your truck?"

  He didn't look at her. "Sure. Thanks."

  "Thank you. Oh, Jesus in heaven—thank you."

  Holt approached, somehow larger now than he was a few moments earlier, and offered his hand to the kneeling man. "My name is Vann Holt."

  The man finally rose, slipping his revolver into the pocket of his duster and slapping the hat against his leg, but still looking down at the dead shepherd. He shook Holt's hand without enthusiasm.

  "John," he said, looking down again at the dog. "That was Rusty."

  Holt contemplated John's slender, stunned face. He saw a trustworthy but uncertain face, a face hollowed with fear and revulsion, the face of a man who has acted and now must live with the consequences. For just a brief moment, the eyes reminded Holt, of his own. "You all right, son?"

  "Pretty much."

  "This is my daughter, Valerie."

  John looked at her while he shook her offered hand, his eyes lingering on her face, perhaps on the blood that flecked it.

  "I've never seen anything quite like that," said Holt.

  "I haven't either, to tell you the truth, Mr. Holt."

  "You know those guys?"

  "Seen them around. I live out here."

  "They know where?"

  "I don't see how they could."

  Valerie looked down at Rusty. "You train that dog?"

  John looked down at Rusty, too, and Holt saw on his face an expression of tragic surprise. "To sit and stay. When he saw that guy choking you, he started growling like I'd never heard. He was just a stray when I got him, so he must have learned from someone else. He was a real good dog. Shit, now he's dead."

  "I'd like to give you another one," said Valerie.

  "Well . . ." said John. "Uh ... I need to use the sandbox. Excuse me. "Holt gathered with his party while John went to the bathroom in Olie's. Titisi examined the red inflammation across his stomach and felt for broken ribs, then pronounced himself unhurt. Fargo was still checking the trucks, down under the red one for a look at the gas tank. Randell sat in the shade with Holt; Valerie and the U
gandan.

  Ten minutes passed before John returned. To Holt's eye, face had become more ruddy, his movements were no Ionger quite so slow, there was a quickness in his glance. He went to truck, removed the revolver and appeared to stash it under seat. Then he started up the reluctant old Ford and pulled it into the shade of a pepper tree. Holt could see a big chocolate labrador licking John's face as he reached across to roll the wind down a little more.

  When John approached, he held his hat in his hand. "What, exactly, was happening here?" he asked.

  "That's a story we might want to tell somewhere else," said Holt. "Let me ask you something, John—are you clean with law?"

  "So far."

  "Because we'd like to get out of here without filing any statements. Those bikers won't be talking—no reason we should, either. Unless you want to explain that revolver in your coat."

  "Yeah ... I mean, no. You're right."

  "Can we take you home?"

  "I've got the truck."

  "I mean, can we escort you home? We all need somewhere to settle our nerves. You close to here?"

  "Just a few miles. But really, I—"

  "I insist," said Holt. "It's the right thing to do."

  "Well, okay, then."

  Holt threw a set of truck keys to Randell, then helped Valerie and John lift the big dog into the bed of John's old pickup lay there will all the innocence of the dead, a helpless mass held together by skin. The labrador watched through the rear cab widow, puzzled.

  "Lead the way," Holt said. "We'll follow."

  A few miles out Highway 371, Holt noticed that John's pickup truck was accelerating, fast. The Land Rover kept up easily, though doing seventy miles an hour on the narrow, winding two lane seemed foolhardy. He checked the rearview to find Lane Fargo right on his tail, a senselessly aggressive act wholly indicative of Lane's shame at being overcome by lowly motorcycle thugs. Holt lowered his window and waved Fargo off.

  He didn't even notice it until rounding a gentle bend, where John's right-turn signal began to flash. Holt saw the brake lights, the abrupt slowing of the Ford, the turnoff to a dirt road leading back into the hills, and, only then, the column of deep black smoke rising from somewhere in the middle distance.

  "No," he said.

  Keeping up with John on the rutted dirt road wasn't easy. The Ford threw up clouds of dust as it skidded around the turns and braked heavily before the drops. Lewis, Clark and Sally bounced savagely in the back of the Rover—at one point Holt glanced back to see all three of them suspended between floor and roof, twelve legs scrambling for a purchase that wasn't there. The road snaked on, twist upon turn, cutback upon rise upon dip. Then it widened into a straight-away that banked into a steep climb. The Ford's back end slid left and right as it raced up the hill and disappeared over the crest. Holt laid back a little, then punched the Rover up and over the ridge, where before him lay a gentle meadow marked with a few trailers, a cinderblock building, and what must have been a house trailer, far on the perimeter of the place, flaring up like a struck match, gushing black smoke into the blue desert sky.

  A short heavyset man stood about thirty yards from the inferno, a water hose in both hands. The arc of water feebly vanished into the flames. The Ford skidded to a stop beside him and John jumped out, followed by the dog. Holt braked early and pulled in behind the Ford. He yanked his fire extinguisher free of the floorboard by the seat, but he could see that it was already too late: the trailer looked like a box of fireworks set on fire. The propane tank already had blown, judging by the gaping hole at one end. He saw the heavyset man nodding violently, taking one hand off the hose to point down the road.

  "Those pigs" hissed Valerie. "Those absolute human swine."

  Then, as Holt watched, John returned to his truck, threw forward the seat and pulled out a cloth case, from which he extracted what looked like a 12 gauge Remington automatic. He hurled the case back behind the seat and slammed it back. From somewhere in the cab he took a box of shells, pried open the top and grabbed three, which he loaded into the gun. Then he was back in the truck and the labrador had jumped in with him and the Ford fishtailed in a wide, gravel-throwing turn that threw up a cloud of dust as John gunned it back down hill toward the dirt road.

  "Stay with him, Dad."

  "I'm staying with him, Val. Hold on tight."

  John must have known every foot of the miserable dirt road because he took it at an astonishing velocity. A mile from the trailers he shot up a wide, well-tended drive to a ranch house set in a meadow of grazing horses. By the time Holt caught up, John was talking with two men by a corral, then he jumped back into his truck and skidded back out in Holt's direction. John nodded at him as he flew past. Lane Fargo, Randell and Titisi had to swerve to miss him. Then another stop a half mile further down Again John was conferring with neighbors as Holt finally arrived and again the young man was in his truck and blasting back to the road by the time the dust cleared and Holt could make sense of what was going on. Another half mile down, the Ford skidded to a stop beside a run-down little batch of trailers. Three women sat in the shade, drinking beers and smoking. This time, Holt saw that John took his shotgun with him as he walked past the women and threw open the door of the largest trailer, a sun faded slum of a unit, slouching off-center and unshaded by a very large and very dead tree. John disappeared inside, then came out and pushed past the women, who appeared to be cussing him mightily. John snapped something back at them, but Holt was too far away to hear it. Beside him, Valerie was scanning the desert with her dark brown eyes. "He'll never find them out here They're miles away by now."

  "He needs to play this out."

  Two more miles of anguishing dirt road, three more fruitless stops, all transpiring under the growing desert heat. Finally the Ford slowed and grunted to a stop where the dirt road met the highway again, and the door flew open and John got out slammed it hard, took three steps to the wooden fence running alongside the road and kicked one of the dry twisted posts, his boot shattering it and the three strands of rusted barbed win shivering with the impact. He walked back to the truck and looked down into the bed. Then he opened the driver's side door Pulled out the gun and a small, six-pack sized cooler. He walked to the edge of the dirt road and hurled the cooler into the air

  then raised the gun and blasted it three times before it landed, each shot reducing the thing to smaller pieces that threw off wobbling jets of dark liquid until the mangled former box landed in the sagebrush, bounced, and rolled off into the sand. John pitched his gun back into the truck cab, looked at Holt, then turned his back to them, shook his head, and lowered it. "Righteous anger," said Holt. "It's the best thing he can have right now."

  "Besides a home and a live dog."

  "Well put."

  "Poor man. It's my fault. It's all my fault. I'll make it up to him."

  "We'll make it up to him, Valerie."

  Then she looked at her father with an expression he had come to both love and fear. He loved the way it came so directly from Carolyn and himself, passed on like a gift, the way her pupils dilated and her wide lips formed a slight frown and the vertical lines between her eyebrows furrowed—all of her conviction gathering force, being brought to bear. He feared it because Valerie was intractable when she looked like this, ferociously stubborn. And he knew how that ungovernable determination had led to the best things in his life, and the worst. It was the Holt energy, passed from generation to generation, powerful as a runaway big-rig, and as difficult to stop.

  So he simply waited for his daughter to speak.

  "We're taking him home," she said.

  Holt's heart sank a little. "That's not a good idea for anyone," he said. "But maybe he could spend a few weeks here at the lake house—time to get a new trailer."

  Valerie continued to look at him, disbelief mounting in her dark brown eyes. Holt wondered how a twenty-two-year old woman could turn his logic to mush, make him feel idiotic.

  "So they can find him, and burn up o
ur house, too?" she asked. "No. He needs a home, a base to operate from. He needs safety and time to regroup. He saved my life. He's coming to Liberty Ridge, Dad."

  "Maybe he doesn't want to come to Liberty Ridge."

  "He does. Look, Dad, what did you say about thirty seconds ago?"

  "I said righteous anger—"

  "—You said 'we'll make it up to him.' So, this is how we make it up to him. Simple!"