Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

by Baxter Black

  “Did you say you went to college?” she asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Well, if you ask me, this job, I mean, living in a cow camp out here”—she swept her arm to imply the vast, empty landscape— “couldn’t have been what you were thinking about when you graduated . . . was it?”

  “There’s a lot more to life than what you plan,” he said. “Look at you.”

  She blushed. “Yes,” she said, “I guess you’re right.”

  Teddie Arizona didn’t know if she could even lay claim to a life plan. She’d been born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, to Lyal Mack, a veterinary pharmaceutical salesman, and his wife, June, a budding community activist and real estate agent. They’d named her Teddie Arizona as the result of a strenuous birth, a bit of maternal postnatal amnesia, and a birthmark in the shape of Arizona on the left shoulder blade of a pretty, pale-eyed baby girl.

  An only child, T.A., as they soon began referring to her, grew up wanting for very little. Dad bought her a horse when she was eleven years old and taught her to ride. She named the horse Superman. She participated in an all-girl equestrian drill team called the Muskogee County Rangerettes. The family didn’t have a horse trailer but lived close enough to the practice arena that T.A. could go there ahorseback. For out-of-town performances, other Rangerette parents with horse trailers hauled the have-nots.

  When T.A. turned fourteen, Lyal and June split the sheets. He took a job in Dodge City and remarried. The real estate market hit a slump and, although the child support payments continued on time, June was forced to tighten the purse strings. Superman had to go. To fill the void left by Superman and her father, T.A. discovered boys, beer, and pot her junior year in high school. At the same time, June fell in love with Hyram Himple, the husband of the middle school principal—a relationship that took up most of her time.

  T.A. had an inner core of responsibility but a lack of moral direction. She was smart enough to keep out of “official trouble,” but she was known to the local law enforcement as a party girl. She graduated with a B-minus average and a determination to have better than a B-minus life. She and a girlfriend moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, and became ski bunnies. Her girlfriend lasted there till Christmas, but T.A. loved it and stayed. She skied and waitressed in the winter and was a wrangler on a dude ranch in the summer. She soon graduated to men, tequila, and her faithful friend, marijuana. Not in excess, mind you, she rarely got out of hand, but she had a willingness to try most anything.

  Two years later, she moved to the ski resort community of Vail, Colorado. She celebrated her twenty-first birthday on February 28 with her leg in a cast, surrounded by like-minded ski bums and bunnies.

  That spring, her father died suddenly. T.A. borrowed money from her live-in boyfriend and drove to Lyal’s funeral. She didn’t stay for the wake. Her mother didn’t attend. Two years later, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. T.A. moved back to Muskogee to care for her. June lived another seven months. Any money left from the sale of the house was absorbed by the medical bills.

  At age twenty-five, T.A. moved to Aspen, Colorado, and became roommates with a couple named Jeroba and Joanne. They were socially active among the locals, the working class that bussed the tables, parked the cars, ran the lifts, and tended bar in the ritzy ski resort. Jeroba furnished her with joints when the party was on, but with her job tending bar, T.A. was able to pay her part of the rent and get by.

  In February of that year she’d met a big, tall Texan and a plan was hatched for her next two years. Maybe it wasn’t a life plan, but at the time it looked like a start.

  Alas, Robert Burns waited right around the corner.

  T.A.’s mind returned to the present, ahorseback on Pandora’s Thumb. She and Lick rode on in silence for a while. Eventually they reached the rim of the canyon. A vast panorama spread out at her horse’s feet. Below her, a rugged canyon wall sloped off to a winding river seven hundred feet down. It was so unexpected it literally took her breath away.

  Lick saw her reaction and smiled. “Not many people get to see this view,” he said.

  “Beautiful” was all she said.

  Lick picked his way along a trail that started down the canyon. She followed. There was a noticeable stillness out of the breeze. In ten short minutes, they reached a small, level clearing with a steep wall behind them and the magnificent view beneath.

  He hobbled their horses and they sat on a patch of dry grass.

  “Oooh,” she groaned. “I’m sorer than I thought.” She stretched her legs out in front of her and lay flat on her back.

  The sun was strong on this protected ledge. Lick sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking out over the canyon to the high desert country that faded away to the other side of the world. He felt toasty, inside and out.

  “Lewis is coming tomorrow,” he said without looking back at her. “He can take you out. Get you to a phone or at least to a town.”

  Teddie Arizona was quiet a moment. “He’ll want to know how I got here. How come I’m so beat up.”

  “Yup, that he will. He’s a man to do the right thing. Report the plane, get you to a hospital, all that.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said as much to herself as to Lick.

  “Well, what do you figger on doin’? You got a plan?”

  “Not yet. But I will. I’m just not . . . it’s just that . . .” Her voice trailed off. In her mind she could see herself hiking out of here. She’d studied the topo maps at the camp and figured the route out to Highway 51 that led north to Mountain Home and Boise. She was a good outdoorsman. She could walk and shoot and ride. The hike to the highway and the hitchhike north held no fear for her.

  She had brought ten thousand dollars in cash with her. It was safely stowed in her boots as she spoke, keeping her calves warm. The other four million nine hundred ninety thousand was in a storage rental in Las Vegas. She hadn’t told anyone about taking the money and leaving. She wondered whether F. Rank knew it was missing. She’d charmed him the same way she’d charmed his family, his friends, and his business associates. She was charming. A charming, charming actress.

  “Lick,” she said, “would you mind rubbing my shoulders? Gently, please.”

  “Uh, sure,” said Lick, a little surprised.

  She got up stiffly and resettled herself in front of him, her shoulders pressing against his knees. It was warm enough to remove her heavy jacket, which she did.

  Although Lick was as dysfunctional as any normal divorced, burned-out, girl-in-every-port, no-hope-no-plans-no-future emotional derelict, he was quite comfortable with the primitive physical aspects of the male-female relationship. He placed his hands on T.A.’s shoulders and began to rub gently. The heavy sweater padded her sufficiently to afford some protection. He did pull the collar down so he could get skin to skin on her neck.

  She relaxed and he tried to think about baseball. Being pure of heart, he never suggested taking off her sweater or rubbing her calves—she was married, of course. But had she fed him just a little more line, he would have been on her like mud cat on stinkbait. Teddie Arizona knew these things and played him masterfully.

  She hummed a feline purr. He slipped another microstep into her control. I may need him, she thought. I’m not outta the woods yet.

  They had a nice ride back to the camp even though the wind had picked up.

  “Invigorating,” she said to Lick, with the first genuine smile of the trip.

  13

  STILL DECEMBER 2: VALTER AND PIKE REPORT

  F. Rank Pantaker felt a little more relaxed after Allura had given him a peach-juice rubdown. “Helps remove impurities from the system,” she explained after pouring a can of peach halves in heavy syrup over his back and spreading it around with a rock especially selected from the head of the Arkansas River in Climax, Colorado. Allura surely applied herself, but trying to remove impurities from F. Rank was like trying to remove the H from H2O. It would leave only hot air.

  As F. Rank enjoyed his room
service dinner of lamb chops and sweetbreads from the casino’s famed Basque restaurant, he mulled over his situation. The missing five million dollars was the combined down payments of five hundred thousand each from the ten participants he’d signed up for the Million-Dollar Hunt Club.

  The hunt had been so easy, such a good idea. He’d called them all personally. He’d sold them all on the ultimate thrill: the prospect of the rarest of rare trophies to display in their secluded, airtight, steel-walled galleries alongside their stolen Rembrandts, black market religious antiques, and compromising pictures of business competitors. If some of them didn’t have those galleries yet, they at least had a trophy room full of gold records or basketball statuettes and the hankerin’ for baubles only the rich could buy. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for those elite members of society who were able to make their own rules. Against the law? Whose? they might say. These were people used to making their own laws. They were only too eager to pay the high price that afforded them the ultimate protection from these laws. They knew that in his line of work, F. Rank had the contacts that could back it up.

  The down payments were made in cash and hand-delivered in private planes. The international list of hunters included a celebrity trial lawyer from Chicago with homes and ex-wives in Maui, Malibu, Miami, and Aspen; a couple of Saudi sheik brothers; a mysterious Wall Street financier; an Iraqi general who did assassinations on the side; a Colombian drug dealer; a Thai drug dealer; a Texas oilman; a Southern California golden-boy NFL first-draft pick; and a lady rock star from the Big Apple.

  Several people had declined F. Rank’s rather vague feelers. His intuition guided him on how much to tell each one. It did not let him down. The last interested parties to finally decline were a pompadoured televangelist, a union-boss embezzler, and a wonder-boy computer wizard who had never fired a gun but imagined it couldn’t be as much fun as video games. “After all,” he explained, “when you’ve killed millions of virtual people, killing a real animal would be a let-down.” So F. Rank quit at ten members, as he called them. Ponce had gotten excited and started planning the hunt right away. Each member was guaranteed a taxidermied trophy from the hunt on Ponce’s own wildlife preserve—and a shot at the million-dollar refund. Ponce was guaranteed prestige in a very exclusive club.

  Preparation had taken months. The only question now was, How was he going to get that money back?

  Paul Valter and Mothburn Pike pounded on the suite door. F. Rank let them in and sat back down on the bed next to the leavings of his meal.

  “So what did you find?” he asked.

  “One of the maintenance men helped her load her bags and brought the plane up last Thursday at noon,” said Valter. “Said she said something about flying to Houston with an overnight in Las Cruces. Said she did give him a nice tip, but that she usually did.”

  F. Rank grew impatient. “So, so? We know all that, where is she!”

  Pike stepped forward. “I tracked down that dealer bimbo your wife used to hang out with. Ladonna. Turns out her mother lives in Mountain Home, Idaho. So I call there and, lo and behold, the daughter, Lamkin, Ladonna Lamkin, picks up. I asked if she’d visited with your wife lately. She said no. Had your wife planned to come see her? She said no. She asked if something was wrong. I said no. I think we were both lying.

  “I checked the weather on the day that Mrs. Pantaker departed. Had she gone in the direction of Mountain Home, she’d have been caught in bad weather. However, Salt Lake and Boise Center are aware of no incomplete flight plans or pilot-in-distress signals. So I figure she either made it to Mountain Home or had trouble.” Pike paused, waiting for a reaction.

  F. Rank held a steak knife in his hand. He stared at Pike.

  “He means,” Valter put in cautiously, “it’s possible the plane went down in the storm.”

  “Okay,” said F. Rank, assuming a businesslike manner. “On the chance Ladonna is lying, call one of your security buddies in Boise and have him go to the residence immediately, reconnoiter, ask the neighbors, however you investigator people do it, and see if there’s been any sign of T.A. In the meantime, meaning RIGHT NOW, draw a line between Las Vegas and Mountain Home, get a helicopter, and do a little search and rescue. I want you to go personally. Take Pike. With a pilot that’s three. Surely you can find one little girl. It’s”— F. Rank looked at his watch—“nine-thirty. If you leave now, you can make Mountain Home by morning. You might be able to do a little looking along the route. If she went down in the storm, there’s a wild chance you might see the plane, but the odds are that she’s in Mountain Home.

  “I want her back unharmed, that is, of course, unless she was killed in a terrible plane crash, in which case, if you find THAT needle in the haystack, I want you to quarantine the wreckage. Regardless, when—and I said WHEN—you find her, get her isolated and call me. I want her unharmed, you understand? Or at least able to talk.”

  F. Rank stood up. Valter took a step back.

  “Paul,” F. Rank said, “this is life or death.”

  “Maybe she’s not hurt,” Pike ventured, touched by his boss’s concern.

  “Mine,” said F. Rank coldly. “Not hers.”

  Outside in the hallway, Valter turned to Pike. “I’ve checked and if they were headed to Mountain Home, the only town on that flight path would have been Elko. We’ll fly there first and do some asking. Busby should have the helicopter checked out by now. I called him before we went to Mr. Pantaker’s office. He’s got some gadgets that might be useful hunting for a downed plane. We’ll leave at twenty-two hundred hours. Meet us at Pharaoh’s private hangar.”

  Pike was disappointed when he didn’t say, “Over and out!”

  14

  DECEMBER 3: VALTER, PIKE, AND BUSBY MEET DANIEL BOON

  Daylight was creeping west along I-80 and had just pushed back night’s blanket on the tough little town of Elko, Nevada. The casinos were at their quietest. The registration-desk clerks were passing the missing microfilm and other valuable data from the thick-tongued night shift to the caffeinated morning crew.

  Paul Valter and Mothburn Pike arrived by helicopter just after the day’s first scheduled commercial flight to Salt Lake City had departed. A short chat with the local airport munchkins revealed no knowledge of any plane answering to the description of Teddie Arizona’s passing through Elko the week before.

  Valter left Busby, the technofreak helicopter pilot, at the airport while he and Pike rented a car and drove the one mile to the Stockmen’s Casino. “We’ll ask around to see if anybody’s heard anything about a plane or a wreck or the woman,” Valter said. “Maybe some of the ranchers or miners have seen something. Gossip travels in these remote communities, ya know.”

  Pike, who’d grown up in these parts, knew.

  They coffeed up at the Stockmen’s, recoffeed at the Commercial, and then dropped into Capriola Saddlery.

  “Nice place,” said Valter, ingratiating himself with the lady behind the counter. He was a professional interrogater and knew how to schmooze.

  “Something I can help you with?” she asked. Valter was wearing a down coat, lace-up L. L. Beans, and a baseball cap that read LAKERS. He did not look like a local.

  “Yes,” he replied with an engaging smile. “We’re checking on a missing person. A woman, twenty-eight years old, medium height, medium build, sandy blonde hair, light blue eyes. She might have been in the area last week sometime. She’s a private pilot. Her name is Teddie Pantaker.”

  “Pantaker?” the clerk responded. “Odd name.”

  “Not that odd,” said Valter, a little defensive about his boss’s moniker. “What’s yours?” he asked.

  “Kianne Two Foot,” she answered.

  “And you think Teddie Pantaker’s odd!” he snorted. “Personally, I’ve never understood why so many folks name their children after towns in Wyoming: Cody, Douglas, Kaycee, Sheridan, Laramie, Jack-son, Casper, Powell, Cheyenne, even Upton Sinclair! Nevada didn’t do that. Do you know any kids
named Pahrump, Jarbidge, or Gerlach? No, only towns in Wyoming. Drives me crazy!” Valter took a deep breath and looked at her a little sheepishly.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I—”

  Pike broke in. “He has a medical condition called Rand’s McNally. It’s like Tourette’s syndrome, except he has the uncontrollable urge to inject geographical names into the conversation. It’s brought on by stress.”

  “I see,” the clerk said. “It’s Kianne, like pepper.”

  Valter and Pike stared at her blankly. “My name,” she said. “Kianne, not Cheyenne.”

  “Sorry,” offered Valter. “You’ve got a fine name, Pepper. What say we start over. We’re looking for a missing woman. We’re worried about her.”

  “Are you the police?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Private detectives?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “Wow, cool,” she said, impressed.

  “So, have you seen a woman answering her description? She flew out of Las Vegas in a private plane Thursday night last week. We think she was headed for Mountain Home,” Valter said.

  “If she was flying through here the middle of last week, she came through a heckuva storm. Rain, sleet, a little wet snow. But the wind was fierce! We were out of power four and a half hours,” Kianne said.

  “How about north of here?” pressed Valter.

  “I don’t know, but Daniel Boon was just in here and he’s from Mountain City. He could tell you ’bout up north.”

  “Daniel Boon?” asked Valter for clarification.

  “He’s prob’ly havin’ coffee at the Stockmen’s right now. He comes to town for a couple days, then heads back home. He said he was meeting somebody over there for coffee before he left.”