Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

by Baxter Black

  Busby practiced flying around with the condor attached. He had to let it fly on its own and guide it like Ganymede goes around Jupiter. Each in a separate orbit.

  It was 10:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time by Busby’s chronometer. The hunters should be here anytime, he reassured himself.

  At 10:49 a.m. the Humvee stretch limo drove into section 43.

  “Stop the car, Santiago!” said Esubio to his driver. He invited Lagarto to step out and see the lay of the land.

  “There he is!” exclaimed Esubio, as if he had found Dr. Living-stone.

  “¡Ijuela!” exclaimed Lagarto. “Yus’ like you said.”

  They were a quarter mile away from the predetermined shooting spot in a small meadow. Beyond, the terrain sloped up toward some barren foothills. The buzzing noise of the prop and motor could be heard on this quiet morning. The ultralight itself seemed to be chasing the condor in a big circle. The men on the ground could not see the tether from their distance.

  “¡Ándale!” said Lagarto.

  “Walk on, brother!” said Esubio. “¡Ándale, pues!”

  Busby was relieved to see the arrival of the vehicles. It was getting progressively more difficult to control the situation. The condor was getting stronger and was dragging the ultralight, instead of the other way around. It was a battle to stay over the designated area.

  He could see the guide and a big man in a red coat getting out guns and talking to each other as they walked off the ridge down into the meadow. They were accompanied by another man, either a driver or a bodyguard, Busby guessed, and all three were looking up at him. He was still a hundred yards up and away.

  Suddenly he heard a staccato volley of shots and the whine of bullets close enough to make him jump! Looking down, Busby saw the guide pointing excitedly at the condor. He pulled back on the stick and went into a maneuver to circle the condor back across the hunter. As he swung around slowly, he noticed a dust storm sweeping across the Nevada desert from the south, heading his way.

  Lick and Cody had commandeered a brand-new ¾ T four-wheel-drive pickup that had been abandoned by Ponce’s retreating army. They were approaching section 43, the location of Busby’s Last Stand, from the southwest. Behind them were three older pickups, two Humvees, one dirt bike, and nine mounted cowboys they’d found along the way. They were in radio contact with the old man, who was riding shotgun with Hubie McCormick in one of the Humvees.

  The old man and Hubie were coming directly out of the south in the direction of section 43. They were being followed by a jeep, two pickups, and thirteen mounted cowboys. To the east of the old man’s group came eight horsemen, Teddie Arizona in the lead. They were accompanied by a two-ton army-surplus water truck driven by Pike and the darling Chrisantha. In the back of the truck were a full-grown panda and F. Rank Pantaker, both tied up.

  The three platoons of cowboys had cleared the area of all the invited guests and their sherpas, save this last group.

  “My gosh,” said Busby out loud . . . to himself, “the entire hunting party is coming to watch.” It was not the best news. Busby felt a small bubble of panic rise in his stomach. The condor was leading him farther away from the target area. Busby had the little gas-powered 15-horsepower engine at full throttle and was losing ground with every circle. The condor was migrating to Bakersfield.

  One by one, the trucks, Humvees, pickups, armored cars, motorcycles, and mounted cavalry began to line up along the ridge looking down over Stinkwater Meadow. The passengers debouched or stood on the vehicles. The riders stayed mounted.

  The old man and Hubie drove up beside Lick and Cody. They all got out. Cody had found a set of binoculars in their truck and he was sighted in on the airborne contraption. “It looks like one of those ultralight airplanes but there’s a big bird flying along with it,” reported Cody.

  “Lemme see there, Cody,” said the old man, taking the binocs. “I believe he’s takin’ the bird for a walk. I can’t see no leash but they’re flyin’ like they was connected.” He aimed the binoculars down to the three men in the meadow. They were loping across it, stopping occasionally to point their rifles to the sky and shoot. The ultralight kept moving farther away.

  Busby heard bullets tear through the cloth fabric of the wing. He was in full panic now. The condor had caught an updraft with his ten-foot wingspan and they were climbing. Either those guys on the ground were bad shots or they were shooting at him!

  F. Rank had explained to Busby that this part of the hunt was very important, since the hunter had paid an additional two million dollars to shoot the condor and there was a significant bonus to the pilot if all went well. Ponce had added that there would also be a significant equal and opposite reaction, should the job be flummoxed.

  Busby was nearing the point where neither offer was going to matter. He made one last attempt to circle, but the condor was now above his nose and rising, always drifting westerly. Bullets whizzed by. One richocheted off the aluminum engine housing. Making the decision to “cut bait,” Busby dug his Leatherman out of his pocket. He clumsily retracted the scissors appendage from the knife. Then, grasping the fishing line that connected him to the condor, he reached forward to snip it.

  Lagarto had been aiming at the pilot. When Busby leaned forward, the bullet zinged through the tangle of wire, aluminum pipe, rubber hoses, and cloth skin, just missing his helmet. He dropped the handy-dandy pocketknife.

  One thousand feet below, Lagarto was still firing into the sky. “Shoot the——” (he made an adjectival reference in Spanish to the lineage of the pilot, insinuating bestiality had played a part). “Blow the——” (this time it was a Spanish noun inferring the pilot was the product of the coupling of small vermin). “¡Traigame el Uzi! ¡Voy a disparar éste (he inserted a brief description of a carrion eater) del cielo! ¡Ándele, ellos se fue!”

  “¡Como esta usted!” shouted Esubio, enthusiastically injecting some phrases from his limited second-language vocabulary. “¡Muy bien, gracias!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. He was smiling and urging Lagarto on.

  Lagarto’s rifle emptied. He turned a cold eye on Esubio.

  “Keep shooting!” urged Esubio.

  “Too far, you goat offspring, you slobber of a baby. Even if I had more bullets he has quito de aqui. But if I had one more bullet, I would save it to make chure I would get my moneys back.”

  The army of cowboys lined up on the ridge, watching the play unfold before them. They could hear the shouted conversation and the gunshots, but only dimly; the wind had dispersed the words. They could no longer hear the buzzing of the ultralight. Matter of fact, it was getting harder to see it and its bird-on-a-leash. They were no longer circling, but gaining altitude and heading in the direction of eleven-thousand-foot Charleston Peak in the Spring Mountains.

  “Guess the show’s over,” said Lick. They climbed in the pickup, with Cody behind the wheel. Teddie Arizona rode up beside them on a horse.

  “I don’t know,” worried Lick. “Nobody’s seen Ponce.”

  One hour later the airport controllers in Las Vegas received a report of a strange sighting from a commuter-airline pilot on a flight between Las Vegas and Reno. When pressed for a description, they said it looked like a big bird had gotten tangled in some kite string.

  69

  DECEMBER 13: HAFIZ AND THE GORILLA

  “I have killed many men in my life . . . in the line of duty, but rarely has it been a fair fight,” explained Hafiz I. Coca, former assassin for the Iraqi secret police. “That is why it has been my dream to fight an equal. It does my heart good work that you can furnish of me this opportunity. You were able to locate such a beast, I am glad to hear.”

  “Absolutely,” affirmed Ponce in his best Middle Eastern accent, which sounded more like a Hindu graduate student. “I have spared no expenses to deliver you the dream you wish to attain. He is a twentyfive-year-old silverback weighing three hundred ninety-five pounds. He was captured only recently, with great difficulty. Secrecy to secure
such a beast so rare and magnificent is very hard to guarantee. He is everything you can imagine. I know you will be pleased. I also understood that you don’t want to see him until you meet him in the ring.”

  “In the cage,” corrected Hafiz. “The fight should take place in a cage so that he may not get away. Hand-to-hand combat. I shall meet him carrying the sword and sacred dagger of my father’s father.”

  “Mano a mano, as you say. It is all prepared as you asked,” said Ponce. “May I say you are a man of great courage and honor, Sayyed I. Coca. I, too, understand the need to prove oneself. It is part of the reason that I continue to stay in the cages. It is the ultimate affirmation of one’s character. Very few would understand your desire to battle a gorilla barehanded, but I do. You have brought the additional two million?”

  “It will be delivered when you open the door to the cage when I meet the true king of the jungle, my worthy foe. Please show me to my dressing room.”

  Ponce and I. Coca had reached the door to the Big Cat House beneath the tower. He opened it, allowing I. to enter first, then followed him in.

  70

  DECEMBER 13: GUINEVERE’S FINAL RIDE

  They’d left a battlefield of disrupted hunts in their wake. In addition to Cody’s surreptitious substitution and derailing of mysterious financier Anakra Nizm’s nefarious intentions, the old man’s one-two punch knocking out the sweet Ms. Narong and Sheik Number One, aka Riot Rock, then running Lancel Lott, the ath-elite, off the road, and T.A.’s intercession with Qpid d’Art (not to mention the self-disintegration of the sleek contrabandista Lagarto, shooting himself in the foot, so to speak), the remaining Old Timer Rodeo Reunioneers had also distinguished themselves.

  They swept across the hunting preserve like a swarm of arthritic locusts. This geriatric tornado struck with the ferocity of a rock slide. Trucks rolled over, names were called, horses went down, and nitroglycerin was taken. Casualties were loaded in the pickups. Enemy transportation was commandeered and enemy arms were expropriated.

  The Texas Oil Man had been afoot stalking a black panther when he was descended upon. The cowboys roped him, then tied him across the hood of a repossessed Humvee like a mule deer in hunting camp. When they caught up with the second Saudi sheik and he saw the trussed Texan, he threw his gun down, jumped from his vehicle, and ran for the far hills! The cowboys let him go.

  T. Rex Bunting, attorney to the celebrities and famous in his own right, had actually bagged his tiger. He had left his guides to do the skinning and was motorcycling the two miles back to headquarters. He would have made it scot-free except that both Leo Don Autry and Wildcat Willcox had taken a little longer in the men’s room and were left behind by the Old Timers’ army.

  The two departed camp to join the fray in a 1947 Willys Jeep CJ2, with a shovel and a thirty-five-foot rope Leo Don had won at Pharaoh’s yesterday as a door prize. They were puttering down the trail trying to see, steer, and talk simultaneously. Coming down the dusty track in their direction at a leisurely pace was T. Rex, who pulled up beside them.

  “Huntin’, are ye?” asked Wildcat.

  “Yessir, my fine gentlemen,” answered T. Rex expansively. “A Siberian tiger. Verry rare . . . verry, verry, rare. And what, might I ask, would you fine septuagenarians be doing out on such a brisk morning? Getting your exercise?” he joshed them a bit, nodding at the jeep.

  “Actually,” said Wildcat, “we were just fixin’ to have a nip.” He produced a bottle of Black Velvet blended whiskey from the floor of the jeep. “Care for a snap?”

  “How colloquial. How quaint. And why not! We could drink a toast to me and the conclusion of my great hunt!” T. Rex reached over, taking the bottle from Wildcat.

  “You got anything to dally to?” Wildcat asked Leo Don in a conversational tone.

  “I’ll find sumpthin’,” he said, and threw a loop that caught T. Rex and his handlebars around the waist. Leo Don popped the clutch, the rope tightened around T. Rex and his cycle, and off they went down the road just fast enough to keep T. Rex’s towrope tight and his cycle upright.

  Every time he shouted “I’ll sue, you old ba—” they would speed up and he would crash. After the third time he shut up.

  Meanwhile, out on the savannah, vehicles were burning and endangered wild animals were running loose. A cavalry of horsemen and assorted vehicles were mopping up the condor mess.

  “They said Ponce never left the headquarters. That he had a special client and was taking care of him personally,” said T.A. She spoke slowly but with intensity. “That’s something I would like to do. Take care of Ponce . . . personally.”

  T.A. was ahorseback looking down at Lick and Cody, who were in the front seat of the fancy pickup. They could tell something had come over her. Cody could only read confidence, but Lick read valor. A wave of pride in her rolled down his spine.

  “Are you coming with me?” she asked.

  Cody glanced over at Lick, then turned back to look up at T.A. “I didn’t come all this way to leave without cutting the head off the snake.”

  She looked down at the two cowboys in the pickup cab and a big grin smiled across her face. Lick caught her eye. He smiled up and asked with a theatrical leer, “Hey, Cowgirl, need a ride?”

  T.A. eased her horse over next to the vehicle and stepped off into the bed of the pickup. She slid down through the rear window and over onto Lick’s lap. T.A. was burning with the cause. She was so full of accomplishment she couldn’t speak. Just one more mountain, she thought. I can’t lose.

  She held Lick in a hammerlock. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins. Her body was humming next to his. Every place their bodies touched it felt like she was being recharged. Her energy went through him, too, like an electric current. She was warm to the touch. She was Seattle Slew in the last furlong, Sir Edmund Hillary ten feet from the top, Babe Ruth in the bottom of the ninth.

  It took him right back to the tenth performance of the National Finals Rodeo two years ago, when he virtually blew into the arena like a rocket and wired himself to his destiny. Whatever he’d lost these last two years came back with a surprising intensity. He was with her. Oh, it felt good.

  He leaned in quickly and kissed the side of her face. She gave him a sideways look with a sharp-eyed twinkle and squeezed his neck harder. Then she turned to face him, pulled him to her, and planted a deep firm muscular kiss on his lips.

  Cody grabbed second high gear and the huge tires bit into the rocky ground. Guinevere rode off to slay the dragon.

  71

  DECEMBER 13: GORILLA SHOWDOWN

  Ponce had done a little redecorating at the tiger-training cage in preparation for this particular endangered-species hunter. The room was well lit by the late-morning sun shining through the high windows. He’d arranged to have a jungleful of potted palms, ferns, and plants from Pharaoh’s Casino spaced around the twelve-foot-high cage, the same one where he’d threatened T.A. with the tiger. A professional soundman was prepared to pipe in a tape of jungle sounds— birds calling, monkeys screeching, bugs buzzing, and the occasional distant growl—while a cameraman stood by to videotape the action. Hafiz I. Coca had insisted that no standby medical people would be necessary. Ponce had engaged a doctor anyway, but had him stationed over in the hotel, two buildings away.

  The moment had arrived. Ponce signaled the soundman, and he began with the theme song from Chariots of Fire. Hafiz I. Coca strode in alone. He was wearing a tight red doo-rag around his head, loose white pants that came to midcalf, and a black-and-gold sash around his waist. His black moustache glistened. He was bare-chested and barefoot. He looked like an orange-skinned pirate.

  Hafiz was powerfully built, his shoulders grown massive from regular exercise. He tried to keep in shape, getting in at least a hundred lashes a day when prisoners would cooperate. He’d lift prisoners by a rope tied to their ankles over a smooth beam and drop them, doing three sets of twelve reps each three days a week. He practiced throwing knives at cats and
rats in the prison yard. He decapitated sheep and goats with his scimitar at picnics and religious ceremonies. He practiced holding a dog’s attention with his mesmerizing stare by using intense concentration and a shock collar. He could go in and out of a Zen state as easily as most people can slam on the brakes. He often took hot baths in rusty water, thinking it would put iron in his skin. This explained his icteric appearance.

  Ponce grandly opened the door to the cage and spoke. “You, Hafiz I. Coca the Brave, have reached your apogee, your pinnacle, your peak, the height of your magnificence, the apex of your dominance, the climax of your life’s preparation—discipline, strength, self-esteem, determination, all seething to a white-hot point at the end of your warhead. You have become one with the blade, you are Orion personified!” Ponce took a breath. “Bring on the Challenger!”

  The back cage door that connected to the tiger tunnel slid up and the worthy opponent peeked up from his crouching position and knuckle-walked into the cage.

  “And in this corner,” bellowed Ponce, “weighing three hundred and ninety-five pounds, standing five feet four inches on his knuckles, twenty-four years old, with a reach of forty-seven inches, originally of Equatorial New Guinea, the pride of the Lowland, the Prince of Primates, undefeated in two hundred and forty bluffs, bellows, and skirmishes for food, females, and territory, Ponce Park’s own Gorilla gorilla, the one and only GAR-GAN-ZO!”

  The soundman affected wild applause with trumpets blaring. He then pulled it down to a percussive tension-making timbre.

  Hafiz slowly approached Garganzo. Garganzo watched him warily. There was something in his bearing that set the gorilla’s warning bells off.