Tyranny

by William W. Johnstone

  “Go down and get ’em,” G. W. told Kyle. “Let’s see who we’re dealin’ with here.” He added as Kyle started to stand up, “Just don’t get in the line of fire.”

  Chapter 19

  Kyle started to get up, then paused and asked quietly, “Do I take my rifle with me?”

  G.W. didn’t answer for a second. Kyle assumed he was thinking it over. Then he said, “No, leave it here. Wouldn’t want one of those fellas jumpin’ you and takin’ it away from you.”

  Kyle felt a flash of annoyance. Both of the men revealed in the spotlight beam appeared to be in pretty good shape, but Kyle could take care of himself in a fight. In fact, he was pretty damned handy in one, he thought, as he had proven with Vern Hummel most recently and in any number of earlier scrapes.

  But he wasn’t going to argue with his grandfather, so he said, “Fine,” and left the rifle lying on the rock beside G.W.

  Kyle hadn’t forgotten about the danger of rattlesnakes. He was careful to make some noise as he climbed down the slope. Once he was on the flat, he circled the pool and headed for the wallets lying on the ground.

  The spotlight was focused on the men in the water, but the glare from it reached out to where Kyle was as he picked up the wallets. The man who had driven the rod into the ground said, “Hey, this one’s just a kid.”

  “I’m older than you think, mister,” Kyle snapped. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Maybe you should be,” the other man said. “Not of us, so much, but who we work for. And by the way, you’re breaking the law here. You’re just as guilty as that old man up there.”

  Kyle didn’t volunteer that the old man was his grandfather. Instead he opened one of the wallets and looked at the contents, figuring that was what G. W. would want him to do. There was some cash, but he didn’t disturb that. He was no thief. The driver’s license was what interested him.

  The picture on the license matched up with the man who’d been collecting water samples. Kyle nodded toward him and called to G.W., “This one’s name is Warren Finley. Got a Virginia driver’s license.”

  Another laminated card caught Kyle’s attention and made him take a sharply indrawn breath.

  “He works for the Bureau of Land Management.” Kyle looked up at the rock where his grandfather was, even though he couldn’t see G.W. because of the light. “That’s the federal government.”

  “I know damned good and well what the BLM is,” G.W. replied. “What about the other one?”

  Kyle checked the other wallet and found the man’s driver’s license and ID card.

  “Woodrow Todd, also from Virginia, also works for the Bureau of Land Management.”

  “All right.” G.W.’s voice was flat and hard with anger. “Question is, what are a couple o’ BLM flunkies doin’ sneakin’ around on my land?”

  “As I tried to explain to you, Mr. Brannock,” Warren Finley said, “this isn’t actually your land.”

  “The hell it’s not! This valley has been in my family for close to a hundred and fifty years. My great-grandfather bought it from some Mexican hacendado with a spread below the border. His family’s original land grant from the King of Spain ran all the way up here.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that, and that’s the problem. It’s been discovered recently that a clause in the original grant should have reverted ownership of the land to the Spanish government in Mexico following the death of the grantee. Therefore ownership of the property should have passed to Mexico when it won its independence from Spain, and following that to the Republic of Texas after 1836, and finally to the United States government after Texas was annexed in 1845.”

  “I didn’t come out here for a damn history lesson in the middle of the night,” G. W. snapped.

  “Then let me boil it down for you,” Finley said. “The man who sold this valley to your great-grandfather had no legal right to do so, because he didn’t actually own it. By that time, the actual rights to the land belonged solely to the government of the United States. This ranch is federal property, Mr. Brannock.”

  Silence from the top of the rock. Kyle figured G.W. was stunned, because he was pretty thunderstruck himself.

  Finally, G.W. said, “That’s crazy. Like I told you, my family’s owned this valley for more than a century.”

  “Your family was in illegal possession of it.”

  “Nobody ever told me anything about that! We’ve paid taxes on the land, worked it, turned it into something good. . . .”

  “Indeed, you have,” Finley said. “No one is claiming that you acted improperly, Mr. Brannock. You were only going by what you thought to be true. As I told you, the clause in the land grant was discovered only recently. Woody and I have been making some preliminary surveys—”

  “Sneakin’ around!”

  Finley shrugged and said, “Call it whatever you’d like. We’ve simply been doing our job and gathering information before the BLM moves to take possession of the property.”

  “Take possession? You mean steal the valley from me?”

  “It’s hardly stealing,” Finley said as he shook his head. “This is federal land, Mr. Brannock. Public land. And as soon as the proper paperwork is filed, that will be official. Someone will arrive to serve notice to you to vacate.”

  “Anybody who shows up tellin’ me to get off my land is liable to get a hot lead welcome!”

  Kyle winced. He understood that his grandfather was angry, and with good reason. But threatening federal agents with a shoot-out wasn’t a very good idea. They had gotten more and more trigger-happy over the past few decades.

  Finley said, “Now that you know who we are, is it all right for us to get out of this pool? The water from the springs that feed it is rather cold.”

  Again G. W. took his time about answering, but he finally said, “All right, you can get out.”

  “We’d like to have our wallets back, too.”

  “Fine. Then you can climb in that jeep and get the hell out of here.”

  “We were about to conduct some tests—”

  “Well, now you’re not goin’ to. You’re gonna leave and not come back, you understand me?”

  Finley said, “We can leave, but we’ll have to come back. Or someone else will. Nothing is going to change what’s about to happen, Mr. Brannock. You can’t stop the federal government. It would be like trying to hold back an avalanche with your bare hands.”

  “I’ve got more than my bare hands,” G.W. snapped. “Keep pushin’ me, and you’ll find out.”

  With water streaming from their lower legs, Finley and Todd waded out of the pool.

  “Kyle, put those billfolds down and back away,” G. W. ordered.

  Kyle dropped the wallets on the ground at his feet and started to back off to put some distance between himself and the two federal men. Todd stalked over to the wallets and bent down as if he were going to pick them up.

  Then, while his head was lowered, he lunged forward and tackled Kyle around the waist, knocking him backwards off his feet.

  Chapter 20

  This was the second time in as many days that Kyle had been attacked like this, and he didn’t like it.

  He managed to twist some as he fell, so he didn’t land flat on the ground with Todd’s weight on top of him. His hip took the brunt of the painful impact, but that was better than risking broken ribs and having the breath knocked out of him.

  Kyle whipped a punch to Todd’s left ear and drew a howl of pain from the man, who was a couple of inches taller and probably outweighed him by forty pounds. Because of that, Kyle had no intention of fighting fair. He rammed his right knee into Todd’s groin.

  Todd really yelled about that. But even though he was hurt, he lashed out with a fist that caromed off Kyle’s jaw and rocked his head back. For a second Kyle saw even more stars than there really were in the ebony sky overhead.

  While Kyle was momentarily helpless, Todd grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked him forward. The government man tried to
head butt him in the face, but Kyle writhed away just enough so that their heads scraped without any real impact. Kyle twisted his head and sunk his teeth into Todd’s ear.

  Todd screamed like a little girl.

  Kyle didn’t want to go full Tyson and rip the guy’s ear off, so he let go and shot a punch into Todd’s belly. While Todd was recovering from that, Kyle reared up on both knees, clubbed his hands together, and swung both arms in a roundhouse blow that crashed into Todd’s jaw with devastating force. Todd sprawled on the ground and lay there trembling, unable to get up or continue the fight.

  Kyle struggled to his feet and stood there with his chest heaving. From atop the giant slab of rock, G. W. said dryly, “If you two are through dancin’ down there, you can come back up here, son.”

  Warren Finley still stood near the pool with his hands held out to the sides and raised to elbow height, so they were in plain sight. Clearly, he thought there might be guns trained on him.

  It was possible, thought Kyle, although since G.W. still held the spotlight, he would have to fire the rifle one-handed if he needed to take a shot.

  “For what it’s worth,” Finley said to Kyle, “I didn’t tell Woody to attack you like that. I’d just as soon he hadn’t. There’s really no need for violence. The law is on the government’s side, so the outcome of this whole matter is inevitable.”

  “Inevitable . . . to you . . . maybe,” Kyle said, still a little breathless from the fight. “The British . . . probably felt the same way . . . back in 1776.”

  Finley’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened into a grim line. He said, “I wouldn’t have taken you for a student of history, young man. Are you advocating violent revolution against the United States government?”

  “Nope. Just saying people sometimes get tired of being stepped on. Especially when the ones doing the stepping are supposed to be working for the people.”

  “Clearly you don’t understand how things work in the modern world,” Finley snapped.

  “No, but I’ve read the Constitution. Figure that puts me one up on a lot of people in Washington these days.”

  G.W. sounded like he was trying not to chuckle as he said, “This ain’t a debatin’ society any more than it’s a cotillion. Finley, gather up your buddy and get out of here. Don’t let me catch you on my land again.”

  “It’s not—” Finley stopped and sighed, evidently realizing the futility of his argument. “I’ll need to get our equipment, too.”

  “Fine,” G.W. said. “I don’t want anything that belongs to the government on my ranch, anyway.”

  Finley helped Todd to his feet and led him, groaning, to the jeep. Todd slumped into the passenger seat and sat there glaring at Kyle while Finley went out to the half-buried rod, took hold of it, and worked it back and forth until he could pull it from the earth’s grip. He stowed it in the backseat with the water samples and some other gear Kyle couldn’t make out.

  When Finley got behind the wheel, he paused and said, “You’re making a big mistake, Mr. Brannock.”

  “So you keep tellin’ me,” G.W. said. “Now skedaddle.”

  Finley cranked the jeep’s engine and backed away from the pool until he had room to turn around. This time he turned the vehicle’s lights on as he drove away.

  The spotlight shining from above went out.

  The jeep’s taillights were like the red eyes of some malevolent beast, Kyle thought as he stood at the edge of the pool and watched them dwindle into the darkness.

  The scrape of boot leather on rock made him aware that G.W. had climbed down to join him. His eyes were starting to adjust now after the brilliance of the spotlight, and as he turned he saw his grandfather standing there with both rifles and sleeping bags. G. W. dumped the sleeping bags on the ground at his feet.

  “Government men,” Kyle said. “Were you expecting that, G.W.?”

  “I didn’t know what to expect. But I can’t say as I’m surprised. When you need somebody from the government, they’re nowhere to be found, but when there’s trouble to be caused for honest folks, they pop up like ants at a picnic.”

  “They’re crazy, right?” Kyle said. “There’s no way this valley belongs to them.”

  “They claim it does, and in this day and age, when the average citizen doesn’t have many rights anymore, that may be all that matters.” G.W. turned his head and spat. “They find a way to get what they want, and even if it’s not legal, more than half the country just flat doesn’t give a damn. All that matters to those folks is that they get their government handout.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, Miranda said she was going to El Paso first thing in the morning to get that injunction against the IRS. I reckon she’ll let us know when she gets back.”

  Kyle hoped so. He found himself wanting to see Miranda Stephens again.

  “And when she does,” G.W. said, “we’ll tell her about this. Maybe she’ll have some idea what to do. She’s a pretty smart little gal.”

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. He moved to pick up the sleeping bags and slung them over his shoulders again. G.W. still carried both rifles as they started hiking back toward the canyon where they had left the pickup.

  After they had gone a hundred yards or so, Kyle asked, “If that guy Todd had gotten the upper hand and looked like he was really going to hurt me . . . would you have shot him?”

  “I’m not the sort of man who’d sit by and watch my grandson get hurt,” G.W. said. “It looked like you were handlin’ yourself pretty good, though, so I held off.”

  “I’m glad. We’re probably in enough trouble already without any shots being fired.” They walked on, and a minute later Kyle said, “You know, it’s sort of odd, this business about the old Spanish land grant coming up at the same time the IRS is trying to take the ranch away from you.”

  “Yeah,” G.W. said. “It is, isn’t it?”

  Chapter 21

  Slade Grayson had taken a room at the motel, a few units down from that IRS rabbit Barton Devlin.

  Grayson didn’t have anything against the IRS. It was just another federal agency, and he had worked for several of them, bringing his own special expertise to whatever problem they had at the time.

  He didn’t have any use for all the faceless, nameless bureaucrats he had encountered over the years, though, toiling away at whatever boring, menial task they had so they could keep suckling at Uncle Sam’s teat. Taking what little pleasure they could by making the lives of any citizens unfortunate enough to cross their path purely miserable.

  That was their problem. They were small men and women. They thought small, and they settled for petty vindictiveness.

  They had no idea how to rain down the holy hell of the federal government on any who transgressed. They didn’t know how to deliver that fiery vengeance from on high with all the destructive fury of an angry God!

  Not that there really was any god but the government, to Grayson’s way of thinking.

  No, men like Devlin didn’t know how to do that . . . but Slade Grayson did.

  Which made him a different sort of mortal than most, and so he was annoyed when someone knocked on the door of his motel room late that night just as he was getting ready to go to sleep.

  Grayson picked up the small, thin, but lethal automatic from the dresser where he had set it earlier and tucked it into the holster at the small of his back. He went to the door and looked through the peephole.

  Two men stood there, clearly visible in the light from the fixture mounted on the awning over the concrete walk. One was tall and rather burly, the other short and slender. Both were balding.

  Grayson had never seen them in person, but he recognized them from pictures in the files he had studied when he was given this assignment.

  He jerked the door open and snapped, “Finley, Todd, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Both visitors looked surprised when he addressed them by name. Finley, the smaller of the two, said, “Mr. Grayson, we
should introduce ourselves—”

  “Not necessary. Come in.”

  Grayson stepped back. The two men came into the room and looked around nervously.

  They had probably heard stories about him, thought Grayson. Rumors had spread through the various agencies in Washington. Nobody knew who Slade Grayson really worked for. He floated from job to job, showing up when there was a problem that couldn’t be handled by regular methods.

  As Grayson closed the door, he said, “I wasn’t supposed to meet with you two until tomorrow. What are you doing here tonight?”

  “Brannock knows,” Finley said.

  “Knows what? That he’s screwed?”

  “He knows that the BLM is going to take possession of his ranch.”

  Grayson leveled a cold stare at Finley and asked, “How did he find out about that?”

  Todd, the big, dumb-looking one, burst out, “We were just doing our job, okay? We were supposed to be out there finishing up our observations.”

  Finley added, “We had orders to that effect, yes.”

  Grayson shook his head and blew out his breath in an annoyed sigh.

  “You got caught, didn’t you?” he asked. “That old man got the drop on you and you spilled the whole thing.”

  “What does it matter?” Todd said defensively. “He would have known as soon as you showed up out there tomorrow, anyway.”

  Grayson resisted the urge to shoot the stupid son of a bitch. Instead, he said, “Never give an enemy any more warning than you have to. When it comes to tactics, you can’t get any more basic than that.”

  Finley said, “We’re talking about twelve hours’ difference. In circumstances like this, what effect could that have?”

  “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Grayson walked over to the dresser, took the gun from its holster, and set it down again. There was a bottle of whiskey on the dresser, too, along with one of the squat glasses from the motel bathroom with a couple of half-melted ice cubes in it. He splashed some of the liquor into the glass, picked it up, and turned back to the two flunkies. He didn’t offer them a drink.