by Baxter Black
“You know what money. I won’t even dignify your question. I would appreciate it if you would not take me for a complete fool. Now. Where is it?”
She stared into his eyes unblinkingly. “Does Ponce know it’s missing?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“He doesn’t, does he?” She smiled.
He returned the smile, then drew his hand back to smack her.
She leaped at him like a striking snake! Her fist mashed his nose to one side. He swung wildly, missing. She ducked under his arm, came up with a bedside stool, and cracked him on the back of the head. He crashed over the bed, unconscious.
“Everything all right in there?” asked Busby tentatively through the closed door.
“Don’t hit me again,” T.A. cried loudly. “Ungh,” she grunted. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell.”
Busby winced and sat back down. He hadn’t exactly hired on to be a kidnapper and accomplice to assault. But he knew these guys were pretty touchy, so it wasn’t the time to ask for a leave of absence.
T.A. nervously studied the situation. She searched F. Rank. No gun . . . dang it. Not even a pocketknife. She did take his wallet, though, and his car keys. She knew that F. Rank wouldn’t remain down long. She edged to the curtain and spotted Cargill, the ranch caretaker, under a tree, staring at her window.
A plan, a plan . . . , she thought.
In the ceiling of the closet was a trapdoor. She pulled a chair from the bedroom, pushed the trapdoor up, and pulled herself into the attic. During the remodeling of this old ranch house, the contractors had installed air-conditioning ducts in the ceiling. Lots of blown insulation covered the attic floor. There was an attic fan in the wall at the north end of the house.
Stepping on the trusses, T.A. made it to the attic fan. She managed to bend one blade back and poke a hole in the outside screen. Soon she was out on the porch roof and moving to the side away from Cargill’s outpost. The pitch was steep. She eased to the edge, lay belly down, and peeked back under the roof. The porch was deserted.
T.A. carefully hung down till her feet touched the porch rail, then she dropped down to the dirt. There wasn’t much cover between her and F. Rank’s big Lincoln parked out front.
Then she heard F. Rank’s voice from inside the house: “She’s climbed through the attic, you morons! Check out front!”
She broke from cover like a jackrabbit in front of a speeding car’s headlights. She was opening the car door when the shouting became louder.
Jump in the seat. Hit the electric lock. Turn the ignition. Step on the gas.
The car was still pointed toward the house when it moved out smartly. She wheeled hard to the left, sending Valter skittering sideways. He was waving his gun and screaming something.
Suddenly an arm shot across her left shoulder and grabbed the front of her pullover! The cloth knotted up in the big fist. She pulled back, simultaneously bowing her head and swinging her arms toward her attacker. The pullover peeled off slick as a whistle! F. Rank flew backwards, landing hard on the loose gravel, his gun coming loose and sailing into the brush.
T.A. grabbed the steering wheel, regained control, and turned hard to the right in the big dusty driveway. She stomped the gas, fishtailed, and threw gravel and sand all over Valter, Pike, Cargill, and F. Rank.
“Shoot the tires!” shouted F. Rank.
The volley sounded like the 13th Vermonters defending Cemetery Ridge from Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Bullet holes blossomed on the Lincoln’s trunk. The rear window shattered. The rearview mirror exploded inside the car.
T.A. ducked as low as she could, peeking up periodically as she drove to see if she was still in the ruts. She felt a sharp pain on her right cheek. When the speedometer hit sixty, she sat up straight and looked back through the damaged rear window. She could only make out jumping figures in front of the house.
It was four miles to the blacktop. T.A. kept the pedal to the metal, hitting seventy when she could, headin’ for the highway!
That means, by my calculations, she had less than three minutes to decide her course of action. To the right, Las Vegas; to the left, Death Valley. They’d be following, she knew. She wasn’t worried about losing her life. She knew where the money was buried, but . . . her pursuers could be intimidating. She couldn’t outrun them, so she had to outsmart them. Good plan. Famous last words.
43
DECEMBER 9: GAS, BAIT, AND GOSPEL
At the blacktop, T.A. swung the Lincoln hard to port. The road was a two-lane with the occasional dip that at 90 mph lifted the whole vehicle off the ground. A phone, she was thinking. I’ve got to call Sherrill.
Fifteen miles from the ranch turnoff, she spotted a service station on the right side of the road. There was a single-wide mobile home planted a short distance from its back door. Nary a tree lent ambience to the unpainted cinder block and gravel. A fading sign read GAS, BAIT, AND GOSPEL.
T.A. slowed and pulled around behind the station, hiding her car from the highway. She gently opened the car door and took a step toward the back porch step, which was a reincarnated forklift pallet.
A cold gust of wind sent goose bumps up her arms. With a start she realized that she was nearly topless; her flimsy bra didn’t offer much in the way of thermal protection or modesty. She turned back to the car and searched the backseat. She even looked in the trunk. Nothing but a greasy gunnysack with snow chains inside.
Shivering, she tried the back door. It clicked open and T.A. peered through the crack. A rough-hewn but handsome rancher stood at the counter talking to a man behind the cash register.
“Velbert,” the rancher was saying, “you need to get some new pumps. That Civil War model you have out there takes half a day to fill up my tank.”
“Well,” the gas man replied, “then I’d have to charge you more and you already gripe ’bout the price.”
“You gotta admit you’re a dang sight higher than Las Vegas.”
“So is Paris, but you don’t see them tryin’ to keep up with Sin City.”
“Okay,” said the rancher, “could you just come out and unlock the nozzle? That’s a pain, too.”
“Just self-defense against them ne’er-do-wells that gas up and leave without payin’,” the gas man explained.
“I know, I know, but I gotta get goin’. I’ve got a cow in the back.”
The two men walked out through the front door toward the pickup and stock trailer parked by the gas pump.
T.A. didn’t waste a second. She quickly slipped inside, found the phone, and dialed Sherrill’s number. The answering machine picked up after five rings. T.A. spoke quickly. “Sherrill, please get in touch with Lick and Al. I need their help. Have them check in at Pharaoh’s Hotel in Las Vegas as soon as they get here. I’ll be checking with the registrar every hour on the hour. They can register under the name of—” The answering machine clicked off.
The two men were walking back toward the station. T.A. quietly replaced the receiver. She grabbed a stained white butcher’s apron from the wall and let herself out the back door.
She suspected her former captors were going both directions from the ranch in hot pursuit. They would surely spot her in the big Lincoln. She made a decision and ran around the side of the gas station closest to the parked pickup and trailer.
The trailer, a sixteen-footer, was divided crossways into two eight-foot sections by a swinging cross gate. A half Bramer, half Hereford horned cow, barren and big as a bull elk, stood in the front section. T.A. unfastened one of the tailgate doors and slipped inside the back section. Her presence did not please the cow, who banged into the steel sides and spewed a stream of green soup tail-high on the inside trailer walls and, of course, T.A.’s apron. None too soon T.A. heard the rancher and the gas man coming her way.
“Thanks, Velbert. I’ll see ya next time.”
“Okay. Take care.”
T.A. shrank back into the corner of the trailer as the rancher checked the hitch and peered in at the co
w. “Okay, mama,” he said. “Yer gonna like where I’m takin’ you.”
T.A. heard the pickup door open, close, and the engine crank. They pulled out on the highway headed south toward Las Vegas. She was very uncomfortable and very cold, but convinced she was on her way to putting Ponce and F. Rank Scumbag in jail, or at least on notice. It gave her strength and she began plotting her next move.
Dear Reader,
I have come to believe, not in fate, but in forks in the road: choices we make with no knowledge of the outcome. You step off the curb in one direction, you get run over. You step off in the other direction and you meet someone who changes your life.
And in spite of all our effort to make the right decisions, they are often out of our hands. Like now, in Teddie Arizona’s case. She thinks she has outwitted her foes and is now in control. But wait . . .
“Pull over there,” pointed Valter to Pike when they spotted Velbert’s GAS, BAIT, AND GOSPEL. “Circle the station. Yeah, around here. . . . Well, if it doesn’t look like our little butterfly has landed.”
Pike stopped the car. The two men got out quietly. Valter pulled his pistol and gave a quick glance into F. Rank’s big Lincoln. It was deserted.
“You ease around front, I’ll go through the back,” ordered Valter. “Count to twenty-eight and I will, too. Synchronize our efforts. One . . . two . . . three . . .
“Twenty-eight—Go!” They burst through the doors of Velbert’s shop. Instinctively, the savvy proprieter pulled a sawed-off shotgun from beneath the cash register with a practiced movement.
Pike’s boot heel slipped on the greasy wood floor. His feet flew forward and his head flew backwards just as Velbert’s 12-gauge exploded a glass fixture just above the entrance. The glass showered down on Pike.
“Don’t move!” shouted Valter.
Not only did Velbert move, he pulled the trigger on the other barrel. The shot went into the ceiling, but one stray BB bounced a glancing trajectory off Valter’s thinning regulation flattop. Valter fell backwards, convinced he’d been hit. Which, of course, he had. Dry-wall and stucco rained down on him from the ceiling.
Velbert peered over the countertop, smoke rolling from his double-barreled baby.
Both invaders lay on their backs, groaning. Velbert grabbed two shotgun shells from the drawer and started reloading.
“Wait!” shouted Valter. “Don’t shoot! Here, look.” He raised his right hand and let the pistol drop from it.
“You, too,” said Velbert to Pike. Pike just groaned.
“Listen,” said Valter, “we work for F. Rank Pantaker, owner of the Pharaoh Casino. He’s also got the old Rancho Seco place back down the road. You know it. I’ve been in here before. That’s his Lincoln Town Car parked behind your building. The car was stolen. We assumed the thief was in here. That’s why we came charging in, so if you’ve seen her—the thief, I mean—”
“It’s a woman?” asked Velbert.
“Yes. We don’t mean her no harm, she just stole some stuff and we—”
“Her car’s out back?”
“His car, actually,” corrected Valter. “Go look for yourself. Did you see her?”
“In here?” asked Velbert.
“Well, her car, his car, the stolen car, I mean, is parked behind your place, so I thought she might be in here,” explained Valter, trying not to become impatient.
“No girl or woman came in here,” said Velbert.
“You mind if we take a look?” asked Valter.
“Well, you can pretty much see it all from where you’re layin’.” Valter sat up and gazed around the station. “How ’bout the house trailer out back?”
“I keep it locked. I doubt if she could get in,” said Velbert.
“Could my colleague take a look?” asked Valter, indicating Pike, who was now sitting up and rubbing the back of his head.
Pike gathered himself up and went out back. Valter was questioning Velbert when Pike returned to report that the trailer was empty.
“No one but Slake Radokovich,” Velbert was saying, “A local rancher. He was haulin’ a cow.”
“Could she have gone with him?”
“If she did, I didn’t see her. I was with him the whole time. Even walked him to his rig to relock the gas tank—ne’er-do-wells, ya know. Steal gas.”
“What kind of car was he driving?” asked Valter.
“Fairly new Chevy pickup, pullin’ a stock trailer.”
“What color?”
“The pickup, the trailer, or the cow?”
“All of ’em, and how long ago did they pull out?” asked Valter, exasperated.
“White truck with his brand on the side door. Looks kind of like a chicken foot to me. Three stickin’ up, one stickin’ down.”
“What?”
“The toes—stickin’ up, stickin’ down.” Velbert saw the quizzical look on Valter’s face. “The brand, I mean. Looks like a chicken foot to me.”
“A turkey track,” interjected Pike.
“I couldn’t see the cow,” said Velbert, “but you could be right.”
“How long was the trailer?” asked Pike.
“Long enough, I guess,” said Velbert, clueless.
“Okay, okay!” said Valter, raising his voice. “How long ago did he leave?”
“I was putting his twenty-dollar bill in the register here, when y’all came crashin’ in the door, so you must’uv passed him on the road if you were comin’ from the south,” said Velbert.
“I do vaguely remember a truck and trailer pass us. He was really crawlin’ and we were doin’ a hundred,” said Pike.
“Let’s go!” said Valter. “Sorry for the mess,” he told Velbert. “Send a bill to the ranch.”
Pike threw gravel as he wheeled out onto the road headed toward Las Vegas. They didn’t pass a car for ten minutes. Pike had the motor screaming and they were doing over 100 mph. Five miles beyond the ranch turnoff, they saw the back end of a stock trailer in the lane ahead of them. They were soon able to pull alongside, and they noticed the turkey-track brand painted on the side of the door. Pike slowed to 55 mph and maintained his position while Valter scoped out the inside of the pickup.
“I can’t see anybody in the cab with him,” said Valter. “Or in the bed of the pickup, but I can’t be sure. Make him pull over.”
Slake Radokovich had been loading his lip with a fresh pinch of Copenhagen when he noticed a white Suburban with tinted windows pull up beside him. The passenger was signaling for him to pull over. Slake thought about it for a second, gave Valter a little wave, and reached beneath the seat for his Ruger .357 Magnum.
Pike slowed down and pulled in behind the truck and trailer when it swung off onto the shoulder. “Get out your deputy sheriff’s badge,” Valter told Pike. “We’ll try and look official here.”
Slake opened the door and stepped out, standing beside the open cab. The .357 lay unsheathed and cocked on the seat beside him. He leaned against his truck.
“What can I do for you boys?” he asked.
Valter stood in front of him while Pike came to the other side of the pickup bed. Slake gave Pike the eye. “I’d be a lot more comfortable if you came over here with your pal.”
Pike pulled open his coat, showing his deputy sheriff’s badge.
“Where is she?” asked Valter.
Caught red-handed. This was the seventh of his neighbor’s cows Slake had hauled off into the boondocks. Montrose Galt’s spread bordered Slake’s for three miles. Montrose had a starve-out desert rancho. His cows were always hungry. Slake had some good pasture and he tried to save it, but Montrose’s cows regularly passed through the common fence and spent a good deal of time eating Slake’s grass. Each time Slake went to repair the break, he found that the fence had been mysteriously cut, pushed down, unstapled, or unwired.
Slake accused Montrose of deliberately letting his cows get onto his property, but Montrose claimed it was Slake’s fault for improving the pasture. But mostly he just stonewalled, k
nowing there was nothing Slake could do legally.
Taking matters into his own hands over the last two weeks, Slake had pulled his trailer out into his pasture and loaded up one or two of Montrose’s cows. Then he’d dropped them off at places like Death Valley, the municipal golf course in Las Vegas, Nellis Air Force Base, the Indian reservation, and the city park. Montrose’s brand was an MB on the left rib and easily readable. It didn’t take the local constabularies long, with the help of the State Livestock inspectors, to identify the owner and give him a call to retrieve his wandering cows. Montrose spent a lot of time driving long distances to retrieve his livestock.
This particular afternoon, Slake was on his way to a gated community in the swank part of town. He planned to drop this cow off and then go have a beer. But, Slake thought to himself, Montrose must have been waiting to nail him and called the Livestock office. It didn’t look good. Stealing cattle was a primo offense here in the Wild West. The cow had a big MB on her left rib.
“Where is she?” asked Valter again.
“Officer, can I explain?”
“There’s nothing to explain,” said Valter, hearing the guilt in the rancher’s voice. “Is she behind the seat?”
Slake raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Get her out here, right now, cowboy,” barked Valter.
“You mean right here on the road?” asked Slake.
“Right here, right now,” stated Valter.
“You got a rope or somethin’? She’s pretty wild. She ran me over tryin’ to load her,” said Slake.
“Here’s the deal. Hand her over, then you get in your truck and leave,” said Valter.
“You mean you’re not gonna arrest me?” asked Slake.
“Nope.”
“And you don’t need a rope or tranquilizer, or nuthin’?”
“Get her out here,” ordered Valter.
“She’s in the trailer. She’s all yours, Officers.”
Valter showed a small smile and nodded in acknowledgment of the cowboy’s clever thinking. He and Pike walked back alongside the stock trailer. Slake slid in behind the steering wheel, appreciating his good luck. He uncocked the pistol and pulled the pickup door shut. Either these two policemen were tougher than shark-hide boots or dumb as a cedar post. Regardless, Slake wasn’t going to give them time to change their minds. He started the truck and dropped it into D. Then he waited.