Before Weber could reply, Dolan Reed called out, “Jimmy, we’ve got movement. Somebody’s coming out.”
“Stay here! And for God’s sake, don’t shoot anybody,” Weber ordered as he trotted back to where Dolan and Chad waited. Behind him, Wyatt Earp settled back into the bushes.
***
Sylvia Willits was arguing over her shoulder at her husband as she walked out the front door and down off the porch toward her minivan that was parked in the driveway.
“But you can’t go to bingo today,” Weber heard Harley yelling from inside the house. “Are you blind? Can’t you see we’ve got a situation here, woman?”
“No, you’ve got a situation,” Sylvia shouted back. “You know that Margaret and I go to bingo every Tuesday afternoon. You could have had your situation any day of the week, but you chose Tuesday. Now, whose fault is that, Harley? You tell me.”
Sylvia was a large, round woman who favored colorful stretch pants and print tops, and today’s ensemble consisted of hot pink pants and a red, white, and yellow striped blouse. As her husband continued to cajole her from the house, she climbed inside her Toyota minivan and shifted her considerable bulk around to get settled behind the wheel.
As she did, her sister Margaret, who was two years younger and thirty pounds heavier, waddled across the yard and laboriously crawled into the passenger side.
Weber was waiting at the end of the driveway and stopped Sylvia as she backed out. She looked at him with irritation and lowered her window.
“What is it, Jimmy?”
“What’s going on inside the house, Sylvia?”
“What do you think? Harley has finally gone off his rocker. I’ve been telling him for over a month to get that damned tooth fixed, but you know how stubborn he is. Now I think the infection has spread to his brain.”
“Is there anyone else inside with him?”
“Of course not, Jimmy. Who else would put up with him but me? And what does that say about me anyway? I must be even crazier than he is!”
Margaret looked at her watch and interrupted to tell Sylvia, “If we go right now, we can still drive through the Dairy Queen on the way, but we’re running out of time.”
Apparently her husband’s injuries and an armed standoff in the neighborhood took a backseat to bingo and Dilly Bars.
“If Harley doesn’t come out peacefully, I’m going to have to go in after him,” Weber said.
“Suit yourself. But don’t you go messing up my house, Jimmy! It hard enough picking up after Harley. Now get out of the way or I’ll miss bingo.”
And with that she pushed the button to power the window back up and backed out into the street, driving past the police cars that filled Rawhide Trail. Weber looked back toward Chad and Dolan, then toward the Willits’ house. He shrugged and walked up the driveway to the house.
“Don’t you come a step closer,” Harley warned from behind the screen door when Weber reached the bottom of the three wooden steps that led up to the porch. “I’m warning you, Jimmy! I’ve had it!”
Weber stopped and held his hands out to his sides. “You’re not gonna shoot me, are you Harley?”
“I sure don’t want to,” Harley said. “I just might shoot that damned dog of Arnold’s, but nobody else.”
“Well, that’s good, Harley, because I really don’t feel like getting shot this afternoon. Can I come up there and get out of the sun?”
“You’re not going to do anything tricky are you, Jimmy? Pull out a hidden gun or something like that?”
“No, Harley. You know I wouldn’t do that. I’ve got my gun on me. Do you want me to set it down here on the steps?”
“Yeah. That’s probably best,” Harley said.
Moving slowly, Weber pulled his Colt .45 out of its holster and set it carefully down on the bottom step and asked, “Can I come up there now?”
Harley nodded, and Weber climbed the stairs and sat down in the wooden porch swing. “You got any iced tea or lemonade in there, Harley?”
“Yeah, there’s some lemonade, but Sylvia made it so it ain’t worth drinking. Tastes like cat piss. You still want some?”
“I’ll pass,” Weber said. “But how about you put that damned scattergun down? You’re making me nervous.”
“I told you I wasn’t going to shoot you, Jimmy. Christ, do ya’ think I’ve gone nuts?”
“I don’t know, Harley, you tell me. First you whack Arnold upside of his head with a shovel, and then you shoot at my deputies. That doesn’t sound too sane to me. And Sylvia thinks you’ve flipped your lid.”
“Sylvia don’t know crazy from strawberries,” Harley declared. “Living with that woman would make any man crazy though. And I didn’t shoot at your deputies! I was aiming up in the air and using number nine shot. Wouldn’t have ruffled the hairs on a squirrel’s ass.”
“Still, I’d feel a lot better if you’d put the gun down.”
“Okay, but I’m telling you right now, Jimmy, I’ve had it with Arnold and that damned dog of his! You going to run me in now?”
“Well, I kind of have to,” Weber told him. “But I’ll get you in to see Judge Ryman this afternoon and you should be able to make bond and be back home by suppertime.”
“Ah shit, Sheriff, can’t ya’ keep me until past feeding time? Tuesday’s bingo day and that means Sylvia will thaw out one of those damn tuna casseroles of hers and throw it in the microwave. I’d rather eat library paste and sawdust. It’d sure taste better.”
***
As Weber led Harley across the yard to Chad’s car, Wyatt Earp emerged from the bushes that edged the yard, his assault rifle held at port arms. Harley looked at the apparition that had appeared beside them, noting the camouflage face paint and the branches stuck into the netting around Wyatt’s Kevlar combat helmet, and the old man wasn’t impressed.
“What the hell’s this, Jimmy? Kind of looks like GI Joe and Johnny Appleseed had a kid together!”
Weber tried to hide his grin as he opened the back door of the car and helped Harley slide inside, but it was difficult to do with Chad and Dolan laughing so hard in the background. For his part, Wyatt didn’t seem to realize that he was the object of ridicule, and only slung his rifle over his shoulder as Weber closed the car’s door, with Harley inside.
Chapter 3
As he followed Chad’s car down the hill into town, past more summer cabins and two bed and breakfasts that had opened in the last year, Weber was once again reminded of how much the little town of Big Lake had changed in the last few years.
Hidden in the deep Ponderosa pine forest of the Mogollon Rim, a massive shelf of mountain country that stretches nearly 200 miles from Prescott in the central part of the state east into New Mexico, for nearly 100 years Big Lake sat undiscovered on the shore of the 450 surface acre lake from which it took its name. Most of the visitors who stumbled that far off the beaten path were fishermen in pursuit of the lake’s bountiful supply of rainbow and brown trout.
But sometime in the mid-1980s, developers began to take notice and life changed forever. Summer cabins, many of them larger and more elaborate than the homes of the year-round residents, began appearing on the mountainsides above the town. First one or two, and then by the dozens. Where once Big Lake’s few restaurants and stores served a handful of anglers on summer weekends, now they were busy all season long. While the town’s business owners were grateful for the added revenue the new summer residents brought with them, many of the local people complained about the crowds and looked forward to the slower pace of life once the season ended.
However, that respite was short-lived. A few years later those same developers bulldozed a wide swath down the slope of Cat Mountain, which towered over Main Street, and built ski runs and a huge, rustic, three story log lodge. Many of the affluent people who came for a ski weekend or a summer away from the big city, liked what they saw. So instead of summer cabins, they built more elaborate retreats and homes suited for year-round living, but only used during
the summer and for long ski weekends. Big Lake’s year-round tourist industry was born and the old-timers grumbled even louder about the traffic, the rude flatlanders, and the loss of their quiet way of life.
What wasn’t mentioned often was that before tourism became the town’s major industry, most people in the town made a living by working low paying, often dangerous jobs with logging outfits or the few ranching operations that had managed to hang on in the face of ever more restrictive government regulations and shrinking profits. Welfare and foods stamps were a very real part of life for many, facts that were often overlooked by those who complained the loudest about the changes.
Something else that wasn’t mentioned often was that many of those who longed for the “good old days” were also quietly fattening their bank accounts with money earned from selling off parcels of land for summer homes, or from new businesses opened to meet the demands of the newcomers. As the building boom continued, property values increased and some people became wealthy. Many of the working class and young families were discovering that they could no longer afford to buy a home, and even rentals could be out of their reach.
While growth meant new job opportunities, the locals soon discovered that most of those jobs paid only minimum wage and that they were still barely making ends meet, forced to hold down two jobs if they could find them, and were still living at an economic level far below the newcomers. It wasn’t surprising that many of them resented it.
The changes brought new challenges to the Big Lake Sheriff’s Office. Crime was on the rise. Where once the biggest problems were drunken loggers and cowboys fighting at the Antler Inn, or occasional domestic violence calls, now Weber and his deputies were finding that drugs were an issue. Calls now ranged from theft and vandalism of the vacant summer homes, to violent crimes fueled by illegal drugs. The sheriff’s own sister was responsible for a triple murder case the winter before and during the early spring, three more people had died violent deaths, including a gay Apache Indian who had been lynched, a summer visitor murdered by his stepson, and Steve Rafferty, a violent young man that Weber himself had shot to death when he tried to escape after wounding Deputy Buz Carelton.
Weber pulled into the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Office and followed Chad and his prisoner inside. While Chad was booking Harley, Weber sat down at his desk and started sorting through the stack of pink telephone message slips that Mary Caitlin had left for him. He threw away three from Chet Wingate, Big Lake’s mayor and Weber’s personal nemesis, as soon as he saw who they were from. Those were followed by one from Phil McCree, who was concerned that electromagnetic fields from an overhead power line were causing his dogs to howl all night long, and another from an equipment salesman who wanted to tell him why the Sheriff’s Office needed to invest in new high tech night-vision binoculars. He was reaching for the telephone to call Gregory Page from the Forest Service office in Pinetop when Dolan Reed knocked on his open office door and asked, “Got a minute, Jimmy?”
Weber waved him in, and Dolan closed the door behind him and sat down in the chair next to the sheriff’s desk.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“We’ve got a lot of problems, Dolan. Which one do you want to talk about?”
“Wyatt Earp. The man’s an accident looking for a place to happen.”
“More like a stick of dynamite waiting to explode,” Weber said.
“He doesn’t fit in here, Jimmy. Not with this town and not with this department. He’s going to be trouble.”
“I know,” Weber agreed. “It was a mistake to hire him and it’s on me. My head wasn’t screwed on straight.”
“Who can blame you, Jimmy? It’s been a rough year.”
There was another knock on the door and Weber called for whomever it was to come in. Chad closed the door behind him and took a seat beside Dolan.
“You get Harley booked?” Weber asked him, and Chad nodded.
“Yeah, he’s fine. It’s not the first time him and Arnold have butted heads. And it won’t be the last.”
“But it’s the first time things got this physical or that a gun was used.”
“The judge and Bob Bennett can sort all that out,” Chad said. “We’ve got a bigger problem.”
“We were just talking about that,” Dolan told him, nodding.
“I don’t trust that idiot,” Chad said. “He’s just looking for somebody to gun down. You should have seen him out there today, Jimmy. He was running around waving that rifle of his, talking about making a tactical entry and fields of fire and all kinds of SWAT bullshit. All for something you or I could have handled by just talking to Harley. Something that you did settle just by talking to him!”
“Yeah, but we all know what could happen on a call like that,” Weber said, then raised his hand to cut off the protests both deputies started to make. “Guys, I don’t disagree with you and I’m not defending Wyatt. I’m just saying that not every call we get is going to be a Harley type of thing.”
“I’d rather deal with a thousand Harleys a week than to work with that guy one more shift,” Dolan said, and Chad nodded agreement.
Weber respected the opinion of his two deputies, both of whom had been with the organization longer than he had. He picked up his telephone and pushed a button and then said, “Mary, find Wyatt Earp and get him in here, will you?”
Looking back at the other men, Weber said, “You guys did good out there today. Thanks for keeping things under control until I got there.”
“You okay, Jimmy?” Chad asked. “I mean with the shots fired and all?”
It was the first time Weber had been in any kind of potentially violent situation since the Rafferty shooting and he appreciated his friend’s concern.
“I’m good, Chad. Thanks. To tell you the truth, I was just like you guys. More afraid of Wyatt Earp than I was of old Harley.”
Mary Caitlin, Weber’s administrative assistant, knocked and then stuck her head in the door, “Wyatt’s on his way in. He said five to ten.”
“Thanks, Mary,” Weber told her, then nodded his head toward the door and told his deputies, “You guys get back to work. I’ll handle this.”
***
Six minutes later, Wyatt Trask presented himself in front of the sheriff, came to attention and saluted. “You wanted to see me, boss?”
“Don’t salute me, Wyatt. This isn’t the army.”
“Marines, sir.”
“Marines?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Marines what, Wyatt?”
“I was a Marine, sir. And once a Marine, always a Marine. Oorah!”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t the Marines either, okay? It’s a small town sheriff’s office. We don’t need to salute, we don’t need to be running around in camouflage clothes and face paint, and we don’t need anyone playing hero, okay? This situation today out on Rawhide Trail, you upset your fellow deputies and you could have turned what was just a grouchy old man getting a little crazy into a tragedy.”
“With all due respect, Sheriff, I believe I followed proper procedure. When I arrived, it was obvious that the deputies on the scene were in over their heads. I tried to implement a plan of action, but they didn’t seem to take the situation seriously. So I went to Plan B, which was to establish a position to deal with the armed subject if necessary.”
“Wyatt, Harley Willits is a fruitcake, alright? And him and Arnold have been feuding for at least thirty years. Last year he got mad because Arnold was burning pine needles and the smoke was coming in his windows and set off his smoke alarm. So he took his garden hose, put out the fire, and hosed Arnold down at the same time. At Christmas, Arnold called us because he said the lights on Harley’s house were so bright that they kept him awake all night long and Harley wouldn’t turn them off at bedtime. It never ends with those two.”
“Yes, sir. But that’s a lot different than an armed barricade situation.”
Weber couldn’t disagree, but he tried to search for a way to convince
his gung ho deputy that things in Big Lake could usually be handled without the use of firepower. The problem was, that given the events that had happened in the once quiet little town in the last year, the sheriff himself wasn’t totally convinced of his own position.
“Look Wyatt, this is a small department, and we all need to work together. Deputies Summers and Reed may not seem to be as uh… aggressive as officers you have worked with other places, but they are good men. I’ve worked with them for a long time, and I’d trust either of them with my life. You may be an experienced officer, but you’re still the new guy around here. So just try to fit in, okay? No more cammies, no more face paint, and keep that rifle in your vehicle, will you?”
Wyatt saluted again and said, “Yes, sir.”
“Okay, are you on duty now?
“Always on duty, sir, 24/7.”
Weber could feel a pain start just above his eyes, and while he knew he probably had not accomplished much in his conversation with Wyatt, he wasn’t in a mood to continue.
“Yeah, well, just ratchet it down a notch or two, will you, Wyatt?”
“Yes, sir,” Wyatt said, saluting a third time.
Weber waved him off, “Okay, go on back to work or whatever you were doing.”
The deputy saluted once again, said “Oorah” a final time, and left the office.
Mary Caitlin came in after Wyatt left, just as Weber was sticking a cigar in his mouth. “Uh uh, no you don’t, Jimmy. I swear, if you light that stinky thing in here, I’m going to pull the fire alarm.”
“Jeez, Mary, give a man a break, will you? I can’t drink, I don’t chase women, and it’s my day off. I need this cigar.”
“What you need is to get out of this office and go fishing. Like you said, it’s your day off,” Mary told him. “Now make yourself scarce, or else I’ve got a whole lot of paperwork for you to go through. Which did you want to start with? The acquisition requests, patrol reports, or the health insurance forms?”
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