by George Wier
“We’ll handle breakfast on the way,” Hank said.
“On the way where?” Loraine asked.
“To Millie’s ranch,” I replied.
“Oh no you don’t,” Loraine said, rising up from her chair. “I’m not going out there. You couldn’t get me onto that place with a posse of deputies and any amount of rope.”
Gray Holland chuckled. “I think we can arrange both. Care to lay odds on it?” He grasped her shoulder gently, and pushed her back down into her seat.
I turned to Amos. “In a few minutes, Amos, I’m going to have Paul summon every deputy he has available to come in. What do you say we go out there in force to get Abner and bring him in.”
“I think I can get us a warrant pretty quick. One of the girls up front can type it up and I can take it down to the District Court and get Judge Wild to sign it.”
“Take Hank and Bee with you,” I said. “You all right with that, Hank?”
Hank looked at Bee, who had her arm wrapped around his, received a nod from her, then nodded to me.
“Okay,” I said. “Once we’ve got the warrant in hand, we’ll get a bite to eat. How does Ronson’s sound?”
“It’s fine,” Tanya said.
“We’ll get Paul to phone in an order, swing by and pick it up, and eat on the fly, if that’s okay with you.”
“Whatever,” Loraine said.
*****
It took thirty minutes for Amos and Hank to obtain the warrant and make it back to the CJ complex, and by that it time it was fully daylight out. Bee was waiting for them in the front waiting room when they came in. I looked up from Paul Simon’s desk, through the window and across the distant front counter and saw Amos waving the paper in his hand as he walked across the lobby.
I got quickly to my feet, and at that moment realized that I was tired and that I hadn’t slept a wink the night before. Not only that, but I was hungry, or, as the saying goes, hungrier than a she-wolf with a litter of pups.
Paul had already phoned in the food order. There was a whole posse of deputies milling about the station, and suddenly all eyes were on Amos and his magical, waving warrant.
“Let’s go, boys,” Paul’s voice boomed.
*****
There were around thirty of us in the lobby, including the three civilian women: Bee, Loraine, and Tanya.
Hank and Bee were having a discussion, and while it was civil, it was certainly contentious.
“No,” he said. “You aren’t going and that’s final. I won’t hear of it.”
I started to interject, but thought better of it. “Hank didn’t need my help.”
“You aren’t my daddy, Henry Sterling,” she said and crossed her arms over her bosom.
He bit his upper lip and his voice became no more than a whisper. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it seemed to mollify her. Her features softened, somewhat, but the lines of a frown remained on her face.
Hank kissed her forehead and turned to go.
Outside, I couldn’t help myself. “Everything okay, Romeo?”
“Shut up, Bill.”
“Let’s take my cruiser,” Paul Simon said to me. “You can drive.”
*****
Loraine and Tanya rode with us in the back seat, neither of them speaking.
We drove into downtown and to Ronson’s. Half a dozen deputy’s cruisers lined up behind us when I pulled around the building.
Paul looked at me. “Well?” he asked.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“I never kid.”
“You seriously want me to fetch their food?”
“Hurry up, Ranger Travis,” he said. “Time’s wasting, and we’re burning daylight.”
“Fine,” I said, put the car in park and got out.
*****
Inside Ronson’s the order was waiting for me: a stack of petroleum-based plastic cartons with plastic sacks around them. There were at least ten of them.
While I was waiting to pay, I recognized the lady at my elbow. Her pinkish hair and pink lipstick were unmistakable.
“I know you,” she said.
“That’s right. I walked into your bail bonds place a few days ago. I’m sorry if I don’t remember your name.”
“You insulted my husband, if I remember right, and you insulted my hair style.” She patted pushed up on her curls as if they were the embodiment of high class.
“Well,” I said. “I was in a hurry and wasn’t receiving the service I wanted. My apologies.”
“Accepted. Maybe.”
The cashier said the bill for the food was two hundred and ten bucks.
“What?”
“I’ll say it more slowly. Two...hundred...ten...dollars.”
I rolled my eyes, fished out a credit card and handed it to her.
“Serves you right,” the pink lipstick lady said, huffed, and turned away.
*****
When I got back out to the car, Paul told me to leave two of the packages for us, and distribute the remainder to the cars behind us.
Hank rode with Gray Holland. I came to them and handed Gray a package. There were two hamburgers per package, so I figured it would be enough for the two men.
In short order, I was out of hamburgers. I made my way back to the front of the line and climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“Well, are you ready?” I asked Paul.
He nodded.
I closed the door behind me and started up the car. And that’s how I became a fast food hamburger jockey in Carter, Texas.
*****
We ate hamburgers on the way to the Carswell ranch to serve a warrant on Abner, and I realized that I had forgotten his last name.
The Carswell place, as Paul explained as I drove us along, was five miles outside of town, and encompassed a large horse ranch operation. It had its own landing strip out back and a small phalanx of airplanes, fish ponds for differing varieties of fish, and enough pecan trees to qualify as an orchard. As the miles flashed past, I tuned Paul Simon out, rubbed my eyes, and began to wonder whether I’d ever make it back home. I was long overdue for a phone call to Julie, to Penny, and I longed dearly to hear the voices of my children.
As I drove, I wolfed down the hamburger that Paul thrust in front of my face, and as I tasted it—and was pleasantly surprised how good it was—a quiet expectancy settled down upon my shoulders. An impendingness of sorts, the nature of which I couldn’t for the life of me fathom.
I drove into the future, damning it as I carried on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
W hen the line of cars came to the Carswell ranch, I took the right hand dirt road that skirted the ranch to the east, as Paul Simon, riding next to me, suggested. I glanced in the rearview mirror and noted that one carload of deputies followed us. It felt good to have backup, just in case this particular excursion turned out to be somewhat more than the service of a warrant.
The road ahead had washed out sometime in the not-so-distant past, and I was very glad to have left the Mercedes back at the Sheriff’s office.
The majority of the cars behind us, including the one Amos was driving and Gray Holland’s Ranger vehicle, took the long lane leading up to the distant manor house, paralleling us but slightly behind us. The lane, to my left, was lined with pecan trees, and the morning sunlight flashed through the green leaves and high branchwork. The large boles of the pecans appeared close to a hundred years old, and it made me wonder exactly how long the property had been in the family.
To our right a large mound loomed.
“Caddo mound, right there,” Paul said. “I was climbing on that thing when I was knee-high to a...knee.”
“I wonder,” I said, “What the Caddo Indians would have thought about the big manor house on their holy land.”
Paul nodded. “Something doesn’t feel right,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “What doesn’t feel right?”
“For one thing, the fountain out in front of the house is
n’t spewing water into the air. I’ve never seen it not running, even during a thunderstorm.”
“Maybe someone turned it off.”
“Maybe. Everything is too quiet. I don’t see any groundskeepers mowing anything. No horse on the walker out back, nor any of the animals I usually see. None of the dogs, either.”
“Hmph. Okay.”
“Go around this wash-out, if you can. This car can get through it.”
The washout was past the Caddo mound where runoff to the heavily wooded creek that ran around the backside of the mound had backed up onto the roadway, then evulsively took a few tons of dirt with it. It appeared to be a private lane, and so the county wouldn’t have maintained it.
Also, the grass on the Carswell ranch appeared to be knee-high and uncut.
“Does it appear to anybody,” I began, “that the place is going to rack and ruin? I only ask because I’ve never been here before.”
Loraine, from the backseat, simply said, “Yes.”
“It’s been going downhill for the past year,” Tanya answered. “The Senator has been mostly in Washington. He’s only been back for the last couple of months.”
“That’s right,” Paul said. One could easily forget while riding along with them that Loraine and Paul were husband and wife. They were so completely different from one another that to wrap one’s mind around the fact took definite effort. But, then again, I’d known many couples like that.
I had to cozy up close to the fence to go around the washout, but got past it. As I did so, the last deputy cruiser passed behind the distant pecan trees and made their way up to the main house.
“This road,” Paul said, “is for the horse operation. “The horse trailers come in and out of the gate we’re going to go through.”
“Good to know,” I replied. “How do you know it’s unlocked?”
“Because I’ve never seen a lock on it. This is part of the ranch. All these woods to our right are owned by Carswell, all the way to the main highway. It’s over a thousand acres.”
“Some spread,” I said. “But I’ve seen West Texas cattle ranches in the tens of thousand. Money, land, all of it’s nice, but it impresses me about like the cube root of zero. Whether a person is any good for other people impresses me a hell of a lot more.”
“You’re a hard man, Bill Travis,” he said, and lapsed into silence.
*****
We found the gate, no more than three strands of barbed wire wrapped and stapled to a couple of old cedar posts. Paul got out and drug it aside.
When Paul got back in, I said, “You’re expecting action, aren’t you. That’s why we’re going in this way. What do you know that I don’t?”
“Abner,” Loraine said from the back seat.
“What if nobody’s home?” I asked. But no one answered.
*****
I started to drive through the gate, but Paul held up his hand.
“I’m having second thoughts,” he said. “Tell you what, pull forward and let’s leave the women here. You and I’ll get out and follow the deputies behind us on foot.”
“Fine by me,” I said, and did as he asked.
When we stopped and got out, I glanced in the back seat and into the eyes of the two women there—two thirds of the Trinity Trio—started to formulate a question, but it died on my lips before I could get it out. The looks in their eyes gave me the answer. They expected something bad to happen as well.
Paul motioned for the deputies behind us to come through the gate, and they eased past us. We followed, on foot, but left the gate down behind us.
*****
Stepping onto the Carswell place was essentially stepping from the forest onto the windswept plains. The manor house was to our left, and we could see the rear of it. There was a large deck in back, leading down to a swimming pool and pool house. Behind that was a shed. In between us and the house was a pasture with overgrown grass and tufts of weeds that brushed at our knees. To our right, several hundred yards away, was a large horses stables, complete with a mechanical horse-walker out in front of it. Back behind this I could see a couple of tied-down airplanes and a bit of landing strip.
“Some place,” I said.
The deputies angled off to our right and came to a stop in front of a fish pond ringed with cattails nearly eight feet tall, and a skim of duckweed covering it. At a glance, I could tell that the fish ponds had become neglected, just the like the rest of the place.
The deputies got out.
“I reckon,” Paul said, “that someone’s knocking on the front door about now. This is probably the best place for us to be. He turned to his deputies. “Why don’t you fellows go up to the back of the house and wait by the door, just in case someone tries to get out the back way. We’ll be here watching and waiting.”
The two deputies, a man and a woman, nodded, and started across the grass. They made two lines as they walked and collected so much dew on their pants legs that they were clearly damp by the time they got to the house.
I surveyed the property with an eye for detail as we waited for something to happen. Technically speaking, this wasn’t my manure pile. I had become, very much like Paul, just another fifth wheel. Across the field from us, I spied a shed with an open doorway. If there was going to be any trouble, it might prove a good place to go to ground.
The manor house itself—an overblown, three-story affair with white, stucco walls, lobster-tail red terra cotta shingles, and tall vine trellises that the vines hadn’t take to so well. Lower down, there were the trace skeletons of vines that hadn’t survived the climb, their bent bones truncated in places and left to hang in the summer sun.
“I wonder what’s taking so long,” Paul said.
It was quiet. From where I was standing, far too quiet.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Q uiet and stillness reined. It didn’t last long, however.
The distinct sound of a voice talking through a bullhorn carried to us from around the front of the house and across the open field.
“In the house. This is Texas Ranger Gray Holland. The whole place is surrounded. We’re here to serve a warrant for the arrest of Abner Welch. Come out with your hands on top of your head. Come out slow and easy, and no one is going to get hurt.”
There was a long, still moment of nothing, followed by the echoing report from a firearm.
After the single shot, no more than two seconds passed before there were fifty or more such pops. In the distance, I could see smoke belching in the direction of the house from behind hedges and pecan trees.
“Crap,” Paul said. “This may not be the best place to be after all.”
The two deputies near the back door ducked around the far corner of the house and disappeared from view.
The rear window on the third floor of the manor house shattered suddenly, and tufts of dirt and grass began flying around us.
“Somebody’s shooting at us!” Paul shouted.
From the side of the house, Amos came running towards us across the back forty, even as Paul and I sprinted towards the open shed door, fifty yards away.
Amos turned as he ran and began firing his revolver in the general direction of the window, but it’s awfully hard to achieve any accuracy in shooting somebody while running away from them.
The fire immediately tracked away from us and toward Amos.
Paul stopped and I very nearly ran into him from behind, then drew his own pistol and returned fire at the window.
There was a man there.
I caught a motion at the corner of my peripheral vision, from the direction we’d run from the cruiser. I looked that way, well over a hundred yards away across the field, and saw a figure settle down behind the relative safety of the cruiser. Whoever she was, I found myself hoping she didn’t do something stupid and got her head shot off. Hopefully she would stay down. In the instant I’d seen her, I couldn’t tell whether it was Loraine, or Tanya. All that I could see in that fleeting glimpse was that it appeared
to be a woman.
The three of us made it into the dark cover of the shed without getting our asses blown off. I took in the place in a twinkling—old, disused lawn equipment, including a large riding lawnmower, a collection of leaf blowers gathering dust, and little else of value. The dirt of the floor was so much powder.
“Fellahs, there’s a woman behind the cruiser,” I told Paul and Amos. “She’s going to get herself shot.”
“Is it Loraine?” Paul asked.
“I’m not sure. It could be Tanya.”
“Is either of them stupid enough to walk into a fire fight?” Amos asked. I looked at him and could see that he was breathing hard. His hands shook and he had the breach on his revolver open. He ejected the spent cartridge shells there and they tumbled into the dirt around his feet.
“Easy, cowboy,” Paul said. “Are you sure you want to be a law man?”
“Hell no I don’t,” Amos said. “But right now, we’re here and that dumb son of a bitch redneck is shooting at us.”
“I hope it’s not Loraine,” Paul said. “And I didn’t think Abner had it in him to pull a crazy-assed stunt like this. Surely he wouldn’t shoot Loraine.” Paul snapped a look toward the house through the open doorway, and a bullet whistled past him, followed by the report a second later.
“Shoot,” Paul said. “I think he’s switched guns. That was a much larger caliber. Military grade, I’d say.”
“Well, the Senator is on the Defense Appropriations Committee,” I replied.
“We haven’t seen the Senator yet,” Paul said. “I wonder what’s happened to him. Whatever happens here, there’s going to be some major hell to pay when it’s all done. Lots of media, investigators, congressional committees, affidavits and swearing-in and all that bullshit. This has to end, and it has to end now.”
“That was a woman shooting at us out front,” Amos said. “She’s got everybody pinned down behind their cars and behind the hedges.”
