Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

by Baxter Black

  Lick came running from the kitchen to find the old man grappling with a mountain lion on the rug. With a resounding thump, the old man dispatched the imaginary lion, then staggered to his feet.

  “Yessir! Nearly tore off my nose. I had to sorta hold it straight with electrical tape but it grew back . . . just a little crooked but not so’s you’d ever notice.”

  Lick had always wondered why the old man’s face looked like Mount Rushmore after an earthquake. “Al, we got a first-aid kit,” he said. “Lemme see if I can find it.”

  Lick returned to hear the old man discussing the options with his patient. “We just sprinkle some pinkeye powder in the wound and throw in a couple of sutures. But we’re gonna have to shave yer head.” Teddie Arizona was now sitting upright, pressed tightly against the couch as the old man leaned over her.

  “Sit down, Al, lemme have a look.” After the examination Lick said, “It is deep and does need to be closed. It’s pretty nasty. I think I can clean it up with some alcohol and try to close it with these butterfly bandages. Might work. Short of goin’ to a doctor. That’s what I think. But we will need to clip part of your hair and shave the scalp to make the Band-Aid stick.”

  “Is it bleeding?” Teddie asked matter-of-factly.

  “No,” said Lick.

  “All right then, clean it up. Put on some medicine, but skip the sewing and the Band-Aids. We’re not cutting my hair.”

  There was a tube of triple-antibiotic ointment in the first-aid kit. Lick applied it liberally and pronounced her treated. “But,” he added, “if you’d let me, I’d give you a shot of penicillin for infection. Got some for the horses and cattle.”

  She considered the suggestion a moment and replied, “Let’s see if it gets infected. If it does we’ll do the shot.”

  The old man got them coffee all around. At Teddie’s request, he put a little Jim Beam in hers and, so she wouldn’t have to drink alone, laced his own.

  Lick pressed several questions on her: Where was she from? How did she get here? Should they try and get word to her folks? But she was evasive and very quickly learned to switch the conversation to the old man, who would ramble incessantly:

  LICK: “Where are you from?”

  T.A.: “Born in Oklahoma, but you guessed that. Al, have you ever been in Oklahoma?”

  AL: “Yup, Fort Sill. That was in the summer of ’42. Hot! You talk about hot. Had to be a jillion degrees doin’ basic training, marchin’ around like a bunch of puppets, but the humidity . . .” And he would carry on in this vein until Lick interrupted.

  At eight-thirty, Teddie asked for five aspirins and excused herself. When Lick heard the bedroom door close, he addressed the old man. “So, whattaya think? Did you notice she never answered a single question?”

  “Why, kid, we had a pretty good conversation. I guess she kinda warmed to me, bein’ from Oklahoma and all.”

  “Tomorra I’ll ride down Slippery and check out the plane,” said Lick.

  “You do what you want, kid. I’m goin’ to bed.” With that the old man fell back on the couch. “Oh, lend me one of yer blankets. The damsel in distress has mine.”

  Lick lay on the hard mattress in his six-by-eight room. He was thankful this night that the old man had seniority rights to the bigger room with the double bed. If it had been Lick’s double bed, he might be sharin’ it tonight with a man who slept like a two-year-old with the chicken pox.

  Lick conjured up possibilities for Teddie’s secrecy. He concluded that the most likely possibility was that she was smuggling drugs. Tomorrow he’d check out the plane. He dozed fitfully, engaging in gunfights with drug lords, women in space suits, and mountain lions. Too often his unconscious would flash back to a vision of Teddie standing in their little bathroom, steam rising around her as she leaned forward to test the water in the tub. Each time, his chest would tighten.

  Dawn was a long time coming.

  5

  NOVEMBER 30: F. RANK DISCOVERS T.A. IS MISSING

  “Whattaya mean, she’s gone!” sputtered F. Rank Pantaker, irritated husband, and co-owner of Pharaoh’s Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. He sat in his office suite, a complex complete with hot tub, exercise bicycle, and view of the strip from the top floor of the casino. Another man—tough, built like a goalie—stood nearby in the corner next to the wet bar. The woman took a small step backwards as F. Rank, six foot two, an ex-college football jock beginning to show signs of middle-age spread, stood and leaned over the desk toward her.

  “Señor, lo siento, pero la señora, she tole me she was going shopping. An’ she asked if I could pack her suitcase. It sounded funny to me, to take her suitcase shopping, but that was what she said, so . . . I deed it. An’ dat was Jueves, in Turzday mornin’,” answered Juana Sola Doce, personal maid of Mrs. Pantaker.

  “That was the day after I left for Houston. She’s been gone for— What time did she go?”

  “It was at the noonday, en la mediodía, en Jueves, como te dije, señor.”

  “She told me she was gonna go flyin’, get some hours in while I was gone, but she never said nuthin’ about an overnighter,” said F. Rank. “Okay, Juana, that’s all, unless you can remember some clue she might have left as to where she went.”

  “Bueno, señor. I can’t remember nuthin’ but I will tole you.” Juana excused herself and left the suite. F. Rank turned toward the man in the corner.

  “Call the airport, somebody. See if she’s . . . I don’t know. If she left Thursday, that was three days ago,” F. Rank mused aloud. “You’d think she’d keep me better informed. Not too much too ask, is it? I think I’ve treated that ol’ gal purty dang well. Don’t you think, Pike?”

  “You bet, boss. Better’n you treat me.” Although he was listed as an “Associate” on his W-2 form, Mothburn Pike was more accurately F. Rank’s bodyguard. Nobody called him Moth.

  “Well, you’re not her.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “I mean, Teddie was a ski bum. Didn’t have a pot to plant flowers in. Waitin’ tables on stuck-up tourists. Livin’ in a dump with drug dealers. I gave her a ring, a suite, a credit card, all my love . . .” Here F. Rank paused and considered. “Well, maybe not all . . .”

  “Not all, boss,” Pike agreed.

  “Hell, I made her Missus Pantaker! Put her on my personal insurance. ’Course, maybe I’m readin’ too much into this. Maybe she was kidnapped.”

  “With her bags packed, boss?”

  “Yeah, maybe not kidnapped. But abducted while she was shopping. Have we gotten any calls asking for a ransom?”

  “Not a one, boss.”

  F. Rank had returned in the early a.m. hours in a company plane from a three-day meeting with his father, S. Pry Pantaker, president of Pantaker Oil & Cattle Co.

  F. Rank was his father’s representative on location at Pharaoh’s, where Pantaker O & C held 33 percent of the ownership. He was thirty-three years old, the third and youngest Pantaker son. A spoiled son, doted on by his mother, Pamela Lou Pantaker, and his father’s sentimental favorite.

  S. Pry had actually taken him fishing—once. When he was seven years old. It was a seminal moment in their relationship. F. Rank had caught a two-pound bass on a worm and reeled him in almost unaided. S. Pry was already talking about having the fish mounted when F. Rank removed the hook and tossed him back in the water.

  S. Pry started in on a vehement lecture about starving children in China, waste-not-want-not, always watching your backside, hostile takeovers, how to use capital gains to avoid paying taxes, and hardball in general.

  F. Rank withstood the barrage and calmly said, “I caught him, he was mine. So I let him go.”

  S. Pry spoke not.

  “Besides,” continued F. Rank, “he was dead anyway.”

  F. Rank grew up getting his own way.

  “I can’t believe she hasn’t called,” he said now. “I’ll tell you this, Pike, I’ll tell her where the bear pooped in the buckwheat. She’s not getting
away with it, just disappearin’ like that. All I’ve done, I deserve some respect. Nobody pulls that kinda stuff on me.” F. Rank paused in mid-rant. “Then again, maybe she’s had engine problems and gone down somewhere between here and . . . Hell, which direction did she go?

  “Pike,” he said, “Get Valter up here right away. No, wait, call Allura. First I need a back rub.”

  6

  NOVEMBER 30: LICK FINDS AIRPLANE WRECKAGE IN CANYON

  Lick was on the trail at daylight headed east toward Slippery Canyon. It took an hour to reach the spot where they’d found Teddie and another forty-five minutes to find the red-rock bluff that hid the wrecked airplane. The sun was just reaching the bottom of the canyon when Lick rode up to the crash site, the rays glinting off something metallic.

  The plane was a single-engine prop job with the wings below the cockpit, although in its present position, upside down, they were above it. It appeared to be a six-seater. Lick hobbled his horse and approached the wreckage. The windscreen was broken and the frame bent out of shape. There were scorch marks and the greasy soot of a flash fire. The right-hand, up-canyon door was sprung open. Lick ventured inside.

  Several magazines were scattered in the backseats along with assorted pop cans and candy wrappers. Lick found a backpack in the front of the cockpit. Maps and a logbook were strewn about. Around the back of the plane he found the baggage door and opened it. There were two matching suitcases, one big, one small. He extracted them.

  Lick managed to tie the suitcases on either side of his horse and walked clear back up the canyon rim, carrying the backpack himself. On top of the ridge, he mounted his horse and carried the big suitcase in front of him on the pommel. It was nearly four in the afternoon when he hit camp. The old man’s dogs welcomed him in. He unsaddled, then carried the bags to the trailer.

  “By gosh,” the old man said. “Where ya been, kid? Me and T.A.—that’s what she calls herself—been talkin’ over old times. She’s takin’ a break right now, restin’.” Al took the backpack from Lick’s arms. “Whatcha got there?” He opened it and peered in. “Buncha maps and books and stuff.”

  They heard the bedroom door open. The old man closed the backpack.

  “’Scuze me a minute,” Lick said to the old man, and walked directly to the bathroom to wash up. When he returned, the suitcases and backpack had disappeared into T.A.’s temporary quarters.

  “I guess those were her suitcases,” said Lick, commenting on the obvious.

  “She grabbed ’em like they had her insulin!” answered the old man. “I’d say they was hers.”

  “Makes sense, if she was in the plane when it went down. All sorta adds up. Except why she doesn’t want nobody to find her,” said Lick.

  “Maybe she’s a Rooshun spy . . . ,” mused the old man, his face taking on an espionogical glint.

  “Or a smuggler,” suggested Lick.

  “Or a suitcase salesman.” The old man brightened.

  “None of the above,” she answered from the living room entrance.

  The old man and Lick looked at T.A. She’d changed into a fashionable, midnight blue long-sleeved knit shirt and clean jeans. Her dark blonde hair, shot through with light streaks and cut in a spiky shag, was still wet and hanging tight to her head. Her left eye was still a bit bloodshot, her left temple and cheek were bluish and swollen, but she’d put on little turquoise earrings. She wasn’t the same woman Lick had run a shower for Saturday morning. He was developing a picture of her as more than just the “Venus in the Bathroom” image. It was her, all right, but a more solid version.

  Teddie Arizona Mack was twenty-eight years old and stood five foot six. Lick took in her athletic, outdoorsy figure with its broad shoulders and an ample rear end that would have looked good ahorseback on the horse in front of you goin’ down the trail.

  She had brown eyebrows, a strong chin, clear skin that took a tan, no freckles, expressive hands, wide feet, and surgical scars on both knees from skiing injuries—these, of course, Lick couldn’t see at the time. She also had, on her left shoulder blade, a birthmark the color of a coffee stain, which he had seen. Through her bruises and contusions he could see a large, pretty mouth with full lips that parted to expose her upper incisors and a slight overbite.

  But it was her eyes that drew Lick’s attention. When she smiled, they became less conspicuous, the color of old jeans, but when she looked at him directly and furrowed her brow, it was unsettling. The irises were so light they appeared silver, the color of a full moon. Each iris was edged with a dark ring.

  The combination of those Siberian husky eyes, tan skin, and blonde hair gave her the coloration of a piebald palomino horse, Lick thought. The other thing, he noted to himself, was that she didn’t look helpless.

  “By golly, ya clean up good, little lady,” observed the old man cheerily.

  The pilot light in Lick’s heart flared briefly. Nothing like the ventricle stopper of yesterday, but the interest was still there. The furnace didn’t kick on, but it was put on notice.

  Yup, he thought, ya clean up real nice.

  7

  DECEMBER 1: F7. RANK, VALTER, AND PIKE PLAN SEARCH FOR T.A.

  Paul Valter, head of security for Pharaoh’s Casino, sat on a big white couch in F. Rank Pantaker’s office suite. He held a thin manila folder. F. Rank sat opposite him on a matching couch, his handmade Lucchese boots resting on a glass-topped coffee table big enough to play hockey on.

  Valter was a medium-size man, forty-six years old. He was wearing a custom-made suit, Gucci shoes, and a power tie. His light hair was thinning but he cut it short anyway. His head resembled a satellite view of a dirt path in the middle of a dead lawn. He was clean-shaven and had piercing blue eyes. Ex-military, obviously.

  “So, where is she, Paul?” F. Rank asked, leaning back against the couch and running a hand through his dark, long hair.

  As soon as Valter had received word from Pike that Teddie Arizona Pantaker had left town and not returned, he began a quick investigation. He questioned her personal driver and the manager and head pilot of Pharaoh’s personal fleet. He’d had to wait until this Monday morning to track down the airplane mechanic and the tower. It was noon when he’d arrived at F. Rank’s penthouse office suite to make his report.

  “According to the airport manager, Mrs. Pantaker departed North Las Vegas Airport in a private plane, an NC 1077 Cessna Cherokee.”

  “Is that one of ours?” asked F. Rank.

  “Yes,” answered Valter. “It’s the one she’s been using to get hours on her Instrument Flight Rating. Anyway, she left on Thursday afternoon at one-thirty. A flight plan was filed to Las Cruces, New Mexico. However, no plane of that description closed the flight plan in Las Cruces. We are also checking with Phoenix, El Paso, Albuquerque, DFW, Love Field, Oklahoma City, DIA, Salt Lake City, Reno, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The range of that aircraft is seven hundred fifty nautical miles. We’ve checked intermediate airports and asked about refueling.

  “Nothing so far. I’ve left my number in case they find anything. We also did a quick check to determine reported air crashes or Maydays. Nothing. Weather to the south was clear all the way to Texas the day she departed. To the north, northern Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming have been overcast, with storms and turbulence, especially over the mountains. There was a big storm in northern Nevada and southern Idaho Thursday evening.”

  “Well,” said F. Rank, “we have no reason to believe she went north. She’s a good pilot. I know she made a couple trips last summer to Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam, sightseeing. One, at night, to Elko, I remember, workin’ on her IFR.” Turning to Pike, who’d been standing over near the window, he asked, “Didn’t she take one of her bimbo friends with her sometimes?”

  “Seems like one of the dealers went with her. Lucy or Louise or somethin’ like that. It was Thanksgiving, though. I remember that, boss. ’Cause she told you she’d had turkey enchiladas.”

  F. Rank gathered his thoughts. He had an o
dd and annoying way, at least to Pike, of looking skyward and raising his upper lip when in thought. It made him look like a bull who’d just sniffed a cycling heifer. Pike had grown up on a ranch in northern Nevada and was qualified to make that observation.

  Regarding F. Rank, it would be fair to say that he was concerned about T.A., but not quite as much as he was leading others to believe. This was demonstrated by the fact that he hadn’t yet called the police.

  “Valter,” F. Rank said now, “maybe you and Pike can find this Lucy, Lucinda, or whoever that dealer was. She might have a clue which way T.A. headed.”

  Valter and Pike waited expectantly while F. Rank did a little mental arithmetic. She’d been gone, let’s see, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today. Where was she? Had she crashed the plane somewhere? Was she doubting their relationship? Had she forgotten their deal? F. Rank pondered all these things in his heart.

  His mind played back highlights of the last year and eight months. He couldn’t conceive that she was out-and-out leaving him. Not with four months left on their agreement and his own promotion due in January to the position of Vice President in charge of Western Operations of Pantaker Oil & Cattle Co. Her timing didn’t make sense.

  F. Rank had met T.A. twenty months ago when he was on a skiing trip to Aspen, Colorado, with three of his college fraternity brothers, one of whom was the local prosecuting attorney. They were aprèsskiing and she had been their cocktail waitress. F. Rank wasn’t quite handsome, not quite suave, but he was self-assured in a way that money allows one to be. He hit on her. She didn’t do much to defend herself. Her shift ended at one in the morning. He waited, due in part to her tacit encouragement. He invited her to his $350-a-night hotel suite. She accepted. That night she lit him up like God’s own weed burner!