McKee chipped the following two targets, then settled in and got his head straight and proceeded to inkball ninety-five straight disks in a row. He walked off the line to hoots and applause.
The smith grinned like a happy dog. He pointed to a cluster of well-dressed gents nearby. “That young fella over there, on the left? He just won a thousand dollars on you. Wants to talk to you.”
“Me?” The fellow in question was not much older than his brother Samuel, but with an air about him even young McKee could see in a glance. Straight as a ramrod, with a haircut and suit that may as well have been commissioned by God the Father.
“Know who it is?”
McKee shook his head, wondered if it could possibly be one of his supposed Ogden relations.
“That’s Val Browning. John Moses’s son.”
For the first time possibly ever, or at least that he could remember, Enos McKee went weak in the knees, because he may as well have just won the match on behalf of God the Father’s only begotten Son. Every sturdy boy in Utah and many in the rest of the world knew the name and the legend of John Moses Browning, the most ascendant arms designer in the history of the world. Inventor of about half of Winchester’s current sporting line and nearly every practical automatic weapon in existence, holder of hundreds of patents and a certified titan in the pantheon of Franklin and Edison and Ford. Ogden native, Latter-day Saint. Died at his design bench just about three years ago to the day, still innovating at seventy or thereabouts.
“John Moses’s son,” said McKee. He looked off to the towering wall of the Wasatch, let his eyes scan upward from the blushing bleed of sage and snow across the foothills, through white bands and whipped drifts on the granite above. “Thought Val lived in Belgium.”
“He does. Mostly. But they keep a shop here in Ogden, too. That’s why he wants to talk to you.”
McKee clutched the barrels of the Parker like the rail of a ship in a heaving chop. Despite the brisk autumn air, he felt the lingering warmth from a hundred exploded shells. “This all part of your big plan?”
The smith again put his big mitt on the kid’s slim shoulder. Gave the usual shake. “Got a few tricks up my old sleeve yet, little hoss.”
“I apprenticed in that Ogden shop for four years. That’s where I really learned guns, same time I was learning machine work. We had lathes, milling machines, power hammers . . .”
“You are so lucky that’s the way it went for you. All things considered. It could have gone so much worse.”
He brooded for a moment, breathing there against her, and when he finally spoke, she realized he was circling back into his own tale, after the missing and fractured parts, the parts he’d avoided or misplaced in the original telling. “She knew I had to go, is the thing. Of course she did. She knew I had to go, and she never could.”
Annelise held him tight, stroked the muscle of his arm, kissed his hair, his cheek. His voice had choked and cracked more than once, and more than once he’d had to stop and collect himself, and she could sense the gale of old grief, racking inside him yet. “All it was, was circumstances. She didn’t choose them, any more than you did. Otherwise, she’d have chosen differently.”
When he had his voice, he said, “I tried to talk her into leaving with me. That last time I saw her, in the smithy. Guess it sounds ridiculous, but it seemed reasonable at the time. Seemed possible.”
“Oh Lord, honey. I can’t imagine that would have ended well. They would’ve tracked you both down.”
He sort of shrugged, wound up as he was in her arms. “Don’t know if they would have or not. But yeah, probably. That ain’t what stopped her, though.” He took a deep breath. “She didn’t only come to say goodbye. She come to tell me she finally had a baby inside her.”
“Oh. Oh my.” She stared at the bulb in the ceiling, the hammering moths. “So she—passed it off as your brother’s, I guess?”
He didn’t even bother to answer.
“None of that was easy on her, I promise you. Those circumstances were not easy on her.”
“Well. She did have some fire to her, I can say that. I got to glimpse it, at least.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Always. Never won’t. That okay?”
“God, of course. How could it not be?”
They lay there in silence.
“Do you know what happened to her?” she finally asked, and an eerie shiver passed through her even as the words came from her lips, the fine down on her forearms standing straight up like hoarfrost.
He eyed her sudden gooseflesh, ran a finger up her arm where it lay on the sheet. “No. Not beyond what I can imagine, and I imagine she’s still right where I left her.” He shifted around a little. “But once you’re gone from a place like that, there really ain’t a way to go back. Not if you leave the way I did. It’s like being cast out of the garden, or something.”
She looked at him aslant. “Yak. That was no Eden in the first place.”
Juno II
Huck settled back with his spyglass in the limber pines atop the rim above the county road and scanned the country in the rising light. Horsethief Creek burbled yet, although barely, little more than a drought-choked trifle on the other side of the roadway. He panned the reef on the far side of the creek. Yak was forted up in there somewhere, although Huck couldn’t pick him out after twenty minutes of glassing.
He’d saddled the horses out back of the barn at five o’clock, and he and Annelise had cantered down the two-track and along the greened-up wheat in the rising light. The moon floated like an apparition in the west, mysterious as a silent veiled girl.
He moved up alongside her. “Think Yak’s already set?”
“I’m sure he is.” He’d wanted to get into position early, in case the other conniving bastards had the same idea.
They clipped fast where the track leveled south across the sage flat, past an old impoundment that hadn’t held a good reserve of water in ten years. The light came up steadily while they rode, the tattered edges of clouds limned with coral a half hour ahead of the strike of the sun.
They came up on the boundary fence and cut back to where the two-track exited the ranch through a poor man’s gate. Huck swung down and handed the reins to his cousin. He put his shoulder into the stave and took the tension off the keeper. He looked up at her. “This is a stupid idea, isn’t it?”
Her mouth twisted into a grimace, as though to acknowledge that he was only saying what she herself was thinking. She prodded the bay and passed through the gate with both horses. “Yeah, probably. Yak can be sort of . . . persuasive, I guess.”
“Maybe because he’s such a hand,” Huck mused. He left the gate open and swung back onto Pop’s sorrel. “I mean, the guy can do anything. He’s good at everything. Like some crazy genius.”
To his shock, Annelise leaned right off the starboard side of the bay and heaved a gush, straight at the ground. Mostly water, it looked like. She spat a few times, still leaning and also gripping the saddle horn. “Ugh,” she said, then retched and hacked again. Nothing else came up.
“Whoa. You okay?”
She nodded and gulped air. Finally she looked up at him. “He may be a genius, but that is no marker for basic good sense.” She spat again. “We should probably all have our heads examined.”
An hour later Huck found himself automatically reverting to the old Please, God, please from his perch on the rim. Please, God, please keep Annie safe. Please, God, please let this work. He hardly cared about the watch or the plane or anything else at the moment.
With the hour upon them he realized he’d had a sort of swashbuckling bravado over the past few days—like Annelise said, McKee’s general devil-may-care personality was nothing if not persuasive. Contagious, even. All that vanished like money once he watched her vomit from Wilbur’s back.
He wished he could at
least see her now, but she was down off the rim and up the road, around some calved-off boulders where McKee had stashed his rig earlier. Or not his rig exactly, but the REO.
“Shoot,” Huck had said. “Don’t tell me Pop’s here too.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Wonder why Yak brought the tow truck then.”
She leaned off the side of the horse and screwed her eyes shut against the ground. “There is no telling with him. I think I’m going to be sick again.”
She wasn’t, though, at least not while he was still there with her. He glassed the reef again, thought he caught movement back in the dappled light where the sun filtered through the trees. Maybe McKee, maybe just a jay or a dern chipmunk.
He heard the unmistakable sputter of a Model A Ford, carrying up the rim like the buzz of an insect. He trained his jittery spyglass down the county road. The roof of a sedan rose into view over the swell of the terrain, sunlight flashing like a strobe against the windshield.
The Ford downshifted and coasted to a stop. Huck couldn’t make out the interior with the sun on the glass, couldn’t see the driver or tell if he was alone. He yanked his eye from the telescope and whipped his head the other direction. Annelise clipped out to the roadway from the jumbled rocks.
She walked the horse toward the car and hadn’t gone far before Pop’s sorrel neighed out after her, tethered back in the boulders. Wilbur jerked his own head around and neighed in response, and Annelise reined him a bit and nudged him with her heels and loped forward.
She reined Houston’s little bay to a standstill fifty feet ahead of the car. At this span she could see the driver’s indeterminate form through the windscreen, and he did appear to be alone. She heard the pop of the door.
The same bastard from the fair, she was sure of it, even if she hadn’t gotten a great look at him that night. Same light-colored fedora, though, tipped almost jauntily on his head. He stood on the running board, looking at her above the V of the open door, forearm atop the window frame. “Howdy. Nice horse.”
“May I see my watch.”
He put his hand into the air. Blix’s Longines dangled like a military pendant. “And mine.”
She held up her left wrist. “I’m going to ride around you. Keep your distance.”
She tapped heels to Wilbur and steered him down off the roadway and along the creek bed. Fedora came around from the driver’s door and leaned casually against the grille between the headlamps. When she came alongside he said, “So where’s your cousin?”
“He’s watching you, through a telescoped rifle.” She forced and held a tight little smile.
He laughed. “Hold your fire, kid,” he shouted. “I already owe you one.”
“That was a really low play you all made,” she told him, swiveling her head to watch him while the horse gained ground. “You ought to be ashamed.”
“Oh, I ain’t proud exactly. There’s still honor among thieves. Sort of.”
“Could’ve fooled me. What would your mother think, I wonder.”
“She’d beat my ass. Send me to my room.”
“Good for her.” She held up her wrist again. “What’s so special about this particular watch?”
“It’s sentimental. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, Yak was right, you really don’t know me. I might not put sentiment above practicality, but I would put it above honor, in the right situation.”
He laughed again. “You are a pistol, darlin’. You ever want a life of crime, come find me.”
“Don’t tempt me. You can walk down the road now. Take twenty steps and stop.”
“You’re the boss.” He straightened up and stepped forward.
She cleared the sedan and turned Wilbur back up onto the road and went another couple of car lengths before wheeling around. Fedora had stopped where she’d told him to and was looking at her now with the watch trailing from his fingers. Annelise undid the buckle at her wrist. “I’m going to drop this. Put mine down at the same time.”
“Don’t break it.”
“You either.” She gripped the saddle horn and leaned off Wilbur’s side as far as she could. The watch dangled within two feet of the gravel. She kept her eyes on him. “Put it on the ground.”
He set the watch down. “Now you.”
Annelise let hers go as well. She straightened up. “Walk forward.”
She let him get five steps from the watch and put Wilbur back off the shoulder and into a trot. She got ahead of the sedan and steered back onto the road and whoaed the horse above Blix’s watch, glinting in the dust. Key to a kingdom. She turned Wilbur again so she could watch Fedora. He’d just cleared the tail of the car.
McKee had given her a horseshoe magnet on a length of cord, coiled now like a miniature lariat from a latigo on the saddle. She freed it and lowered the magnet on its tether, prodded the horse a step forward and felt the irresistible pull of the thing seize the watch with a thud. She reeled it like a trotline and shoved watch and magnet and all right down the front of her shirt.
“Adios, amigo.”
Fedora looked back. He wasn’t quite to his watch. Annelise slapped the reins and launched like a cannonball.
The drumbeat of Wilbur’s hooves vanished, although the dust from his haste wafted like gun smoke. Huck snapped back to himself and looked to the opposing reef, just in time to see the flash and white bloom of actual gun smoke at the tree line, and not at all where he’d figured McKee to be earlier. He knew only one gun with such a belch.
He’d shot enough game animals to know the kugelschlag, the almost pneumatic thh-wapp! of a bullet searing through flesh, an instant behind the blast of the rifle itself.
From his vantage on the rim he heard a reverse of the phenomenon. The great lead slug ripped through the Ford’s iron wheel with the shriek of a train wreck, and the rear of the car collapsed in a burst of dust. The echoing boom rolled like thunder.
The goon jumped like a jabbed cat and bolted back for the Ford, apparently on impulse. He couldn’t have driven the thing in any case, but no matter—just about the time he had a hand on the latch, McKee let another one rip. The glass in both rear doors exploded in a hail of diamonds.
The goon hit the deck and covered his head, his fedora flipped into the dirt. Huck heard a mad whine and saw a second car coming fast over the rise, a newer five-window coupe hurtling through a comet of dust. The goon scrambled up again and tried to paw around inside the Ford while still crouching behind it, and yet another billow opened from McKee’s position on the reef.
The Ford rocked like a boat on a swell, though none of the remaining glass seemed to break. The man had evidently had enough, as he scrambled back out empty-handed and lit on a dead run for the coupe, which careened to a ragged halt.
The now-bareheaded goon jumped around like Harpo Marx out front of the second car. He appeared to be trying to communicate with the driver through the windshield, pointing underneath and waving his arms and gesticulating wildly toward the reef and its waft of highland haze.
Huck figured it out. The coupe had come to a stop directly atop the Lindbergh watch. McKee either reckoned the same thing himself or maybe just felt it best to keep slinging lead so long as these honyocks were inclined to stick around and present a target. He let another one fly at the idling coupe, a can opener of a bullet that tore a long gash across the convexity of the roof and also spiderwebbed the windshield. The man was a sharpshooter. Juno’s report rolled again.
The hatless goon let out a yelp and scrambled for the passenger door as the car lurched into reverse and started back the way it had come. He managed to get the door flung open and himself flung inside, and the driver poured the coals. Huck heard the laboring whine of the transmission. The open door bounced like a busted wing.
The coupe went into a skidding radius well up the way and jerked to a hard stop cros
swise to the road. The door slammed shut. Huck watched the car steer around the way it had come and roar back over the rise.
Now this was a turn. He realized he’d already jumped to his feet, spyglass dangling from his hand. He looked toward the reef and watched McKee emerge from the trees and start down toward the crippled Model A.
Five minutes later Huck came out of the limber pines and scrabbled down off the rim to the REO. Annelise still sat atop Wilbur, the reins to Pop’s sorrel in her right hand. She looked like she’d just heard a homicide through a hotel wall.
“What just happened? Is he all right?”
“He got us an engine, is what happened.” Huck opened the driver’s door and tossed his spyglass onto the seat. “He shot up the Ford with Juno. Gotta be why he brought the truck instead of his own rig.”
“Tell me you weren’t in on this.”
“No clue. Honest.”
“Please tell me the guy’s not dead.”
“They had another car over the hill, came and picked him up.” He hit the starter and the REO churned to life. “You all right?”
She let out a breath. “Remember what I said about common sense and genius?”
“Set tight. I’ll honk if it’s still clear.”
He drove up onto the road and around the bend. The Ford slumped on its rear fender, the wheel at a totally incoherent cant. McKee had come down from the reef with the Sharps.
Huck rolled up even with him and stopped while he picked his way across the creek and to the roadside. “Nice shootin’, Tex.”
“That last one was a hell of a gamble, I’ll admit. She okay?”
Huck blasted the REO’s horn. “Well, she ain’t hurt. A little dazed, maybe.”
Yak looked down the road to its vanishing point at the crest of the rise. “Wait right here a minute. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Cloudmaker Page 24