In all the excitement, Daisy had forgotten about her important mission. But, like P and D, it began to come back to her.
Let me see. Beechwood Road is the third stoplight, which is by the Walgreens. And I’ll have to make a right turn.
Which she did, but by then the road was four lanes and Daisy turned right from the left lane, directly in front of a FedEx van. Yes, driven by the very man whose windshield had been pitted by shotgun pellets fired by Nancy Yazzi as he’d passed by Hamlet’s Cowboy Saloon.
As the stalwart fellow jammed on the brakes, his heart did not miss a beat. Neither did he bat an eye. All in a day’s work.
How cool is that?
Thirty-Nine
Stupefied
That is what Sarah Frank was. Also speechless. But let us back up a minute.
The girl, who had put a gallon and a half of gas into the borrowed pickup, went looking for Aunt Daisy in the ladies’ room and emerged from that facility to hear a big commotion out front. She got to the door just in time to see the tribal elder back the pickup over the cowboy who was bellowing like an angry bull, and watched in stunned disbelief as the crusty old woman—apparently believing she’d done him in—roared away with her victim clinging to the rear bumper. Sarah watched in gaped-mouth horror as Butch was tossed aside like a used-up rag doll, screamed and wrung her hands when Daisy totaled the telephone booth and went bumpity-bumping across the prairie in a cloud of yellow dust. Sarah watched in awe as Butch got to his feet. “Oh-oh!” she yelped, and clapped her hands.
Having no idea that the Indian girl he’d been tailing had witnessed his humiliating ordeal (or that Daisy Perika was responsible for it!), the tough little fellow ignored the inquiries of sympathetic onlookers. In the best tradition of tough-as-boot-leather rodeo cowboys, he brushed himself off and walked away. All without uttering a word. Despite the fact that his body was screaming with pain. What a man.
WHAT ABOUT Sarah? Realizing that someone was going to have a heap of explaining to do, and having no plausible explanation for this bizarre event—even for Aunt Daisy, attempted vehicular homicide was somewhat over the top—the sensible girl opted for a tactical withdrawal, which took her through a throng of spectators to Hoke’s rear exit, outside, and into the borrowed pickup. With a cunning stealth that her Ute and Papago ancestors would have been proud of, the girl wove a circuitous route among the multitude of vehicles. As soon as she managed to get onto the highway without being seen by the ill-treated cowboy, Sarah’s single-minded objective was to catch up with Daisy Perika. She was, in a word, focused. What could have distracted the young lady from her duty—a sudden deluge of rain, wind-driven sleet? No. A blinding blizzard of snow, a low-flying UFO? Certainly not. How about the marvelous spectacle of a bewildered flock of escaped turkeys rushing about in search of who knows what? Not a chance. Our hardy pursuer of the runaway auntie glanced neither left nor right; neither did she slow. The silly birds strutting around on the highway were forced to flee and fly for their lives. What a girl.
BUTCH SUMMED up the day’s misfortunes: First, I lose Daisy Perika and that little Indian girl. Then, some thieving bastard steals my pickup in broad daylight. But not before he tries to run me down! Well, it wasn’t exactly my pickup. It belongs to Charlie Moon. Recalling how the Yazzi girl had absconded with Sarah’s shiny red birthday pickup, it occurred to him that truck stealing was getting to be a regular epidemic on the Columbine. This keeps up for another couple of weeks, we’ll be all out of motorized transportation. Which raised a prickly issue: How am I going to break the news to the boss? The brow furrowed. Behind the formidable forehead, billions and billions of neurons and synapses generated astonishingly complex patterns of electrochemical impulses. Quite a lot of activity for the meager result: I guess I could call Charlie up and say guess what, boss—while I was at Hoke’s keeping an eye on your aunt and the girl, well—you won’t believe this—but damned if some jackass didn’t steal my Columbine pickup and try to run over me with it. No, that wouldn’t quite do it. Charlie Moon was known for his sense of humor, but the loss of prime stock or motor vehicles was not likely to get a chuckle. Butch’s neurons and synapses had another go at it: Somehow, I’ve got to get that truck back without the boss ever knowing it was gone. Considering the fact that he was without transport and the murderous car thief had a good head start, this was a pretty tall assignment. But when there’s a job that needs doing your sure-enough American cowboy gets right at it. Butch pulled his hat brim down, hitched up his britches, limped over to the highway, and stuck his thumb out.
A hopeless gesture?
The first automobile to pull out of Hoke’s parking lot was an immaculately restored red 1967 Mustang convertible with the top down. It eased to a stop. The attractive lady behind the wheel, who had not witnessed the dazzling demonstration of Daisy Perika’s ability to use a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon, gazed over her sunglasses at the sorry spectacle. “Look’s like you’ve gotten bucked from the saddle and landed on a pile of rocks.” She looked around. “Where’s your pickup?”
Butch was not in the mood for small talk or explanations. The Columbine cowboy uttered something between a growl and a grumble.
The only phrase she managed to catch was “some trouble.” Men of few words appealed to the lady. He’s cute as a spotted puppy. “You need a lift into Granite Creek?”
The injured party nodded.
ONE MIGHT reasonably assume that Sarah would have a small chance of catching up with Daisy. Such assumption would be a mistake, but a natural one considering the fact that we have failed to mention that the old woman, who still had not figured out the significance of the 2 and 1 on the gearshift indicator, drove all the way into town in “1.” Even with the accelerator on the floorboard, running in low gear tends to severely limit a vehicle’s forward velocity. Which is why that, by the time Daisy made her alarming turn in front of the FedEx van, Sarah was barely a block behind Charlie Moon’s aunt. Cutting across the Walgreens parking lot, Sarah caught up with the aggressive motorist, and being too polite to honk the horn, she flashed the headlights.
Which was a good thing, because there’s no telling what Daisy might have done had she heard another loud noise behind her. When she noticed the headlights in the rearview mirror going on and off, and the fact that the truck behind her looked a lot like the one she was driving, and . . . That looks like Sarah behind the wheel! By this time, Daisy had recalled the concept of braking, and was able to pull over to the curb in front of Jerry’s Pawn Shop.
The excited girl ejected from the pickup like a jacqueline-in-the-box, and while running, waving her arms, and hyperventilating (Sarah was a multitasker), she shouted at Daisy, “What are you doing?”
The tribal elder considered this a peculiar query and the girl to be hysterical. She responded in a calm, reassuring tone, “I’m sitting here in this pickup truck.”
“No, I mean”—hand-wringing—“there are turkeys all over the road—”
“I know. One of ’em tooted his horn at me.”
“And back there at the barbecue place—” Sarah gasped, pointed, “You ran over that man—”
“Now that’s silly talk.” Daisy jutted her chin. “I didn’t run over nobody.”
Sarah banged her fist on the pickup door. “Yes you did!”
Oh. “Is he dead?”
“No. But he’s—”
“If he’s not dead, what’s all the fuss about?”
More hand-wringing, plus some jumping up and down. “You drove away in his truck!”
Oh, so that’s what happened. I got into the wrong pickup. Well, I guess the joke’s on me. “Who’d I run over?”
“I don’t know his name, but he’s that cowboy with the icky tattoo on his head.”
Oh, him. Daisy rolled her eyes. “That’s Butch Cassidy.” I bet Charlie Moon told him to look after me.
“Well he’s really mad about you taking his truck!”
She was determined to pacify this silly girl
. “Now calm down and listen to me. This old, beat-up old pickup—which is probably worth about thirty-five dollars—ain’t that sawed-off cowboy’s property. It belongs to my nephew.” The very thought of Butch annoyed her. “The little sneak must’ve followed us all the way from the ranch.” He’s a real pest.
Sarah had ceased jumping and her hand-wringing was gradually diminishing in amplitude. She raised a pressing question: “What should we do now?”
Kids nowadays don’t know how to think for themselves—you have to tell them everything. “We’ll head on down this road till we find the house where Hermann Wetzel lived before he was dead. But we don’t need both pickups, so I’ll leave this one here and ride the rest of the way with you.”
Oscar “Bud” Yirty
By way of a reminder, Mr. Yirty is that Columbine employee who enjoys harmless little pranks. Such as pulling chairs from under fellow employees who are about to sit in them, putting salt in the sugar bowl, and stashing wriggly serpents in his comrades’ bunks—and convincing Lila Mae McTeague that Charlie Moon was such a cad as to go chasing other women the moment the lady he is practically engaged to looks the other way. Generally, this is not the sort of character who deserves much attention, but he should get what he does deserve, and at this very moment Mr. Yirty happens to be right on the well-known spot, which is to say that he is exiting Jerry’s Pawn Shop, where he has just purchased an absolutely spiffy Morgan silver-dollar bolo tie. By a most fortuitous coincidence, this is also where Charlie Moon’s aunt has abandoned Butch Cassidy’s Columbine pickup at the curb.
Unlike Daisy, Yirty did not mistake this vehicle for the truck he drove to town in, a big flat-bed that is parked a block away in the Miner’s Ball Park parking lot. But he did notice it. That looks like the pickup Butch drives when he runs errands for the boss. Wonder what Half-Pint Cassidy’s doin’ in this part of town.
Not the sort of man to approach anything directly, he sidled up to the old pickup, shot a sideways glance into the cab to make sure it was empty. Yirty, who had twenty-twenty vision, saw the key Daisy had left in the ignition and grinned like a Tennessee possum eating a ripe paw-paw. The reason why this particular opossum look-alike grinned was that he saw this apparent oversight on Butch’s part as an opportunity to have some good, innocent fun. Slipping into the pickup and behind the steering wheel, he removed the key from the ignition, stared hard at the brassy implement as he considered how a clever fellow such as himself might gain maximum satisfaction from the prank.
When Butch don’t find the key in the ignition, he’ll figger it must be in his pockets. When he don’t find it there, he’ll figger he must’ve lost it. So far, so good. But what to do with the key? I could put it in the ashtray—Butch don’t smoke, so he’d never think of lookin’ there. Or I could just take the key with me back to the ranch. Or I could toss it into a trash can. Yirty sighed. If I didn’t have me so danged much imagination, this kinda stuff would sure be lots easier. With so many excellent ideas, picking the best of the bunch certainly did strain a fellow’s brain. Which tended to make the same fellow less aware of what was going on in the immediate vicinity. Such as the fact that a red, 1967 Mustang convertible with the top down had stopped about a block away, at the intersection, and a very angry Butch Cassidy had gotten out of the classic car and was approaching at a pretty good pace for a man who ached all over.
THE COWBOY who had recently been the victim of a blatant hit-and-run was prepared to deal severely with the villain of the piece, whom he assumed to be a total stranger. Probably some dumb, vacant-eyed punk with a cigarette dangling from his lips. But when Butch got close enough to recognize Bud Yirty (whose dangerous pranks he had suffered on several occasions, including the time he woke up to find a viper wriggling in his undershirt), it is fair to say that that his temperature spiked. Mr. Cassidy, as the saying goes, had blood in his eye.
Which was why, though Yirty was twice Butch’s size and a fair-to-middling barroom brawler, he was caught completely by surprise when the angry man jerked the truck door open and snatched the keys from his hand. Yirty had just enough time to grin and say, “Hello, half-pint—urk!”
No, Yirty had not invented a new word right on the spot. The urk was due to the fact that Butch had grabbed the hated prankster by his brand-new bolo tie, yanked him clean out of the pickup, kneed him hard in the crotch, applied a crisp uppercut to the hairy chin, punched the bulbous nose flat, and, when Yirty fell onto his face, proceeded to jump up and down on his back. Which, when the fellow doing the jumping is wearing cowboy boots with pointy heels, is no Sunday picnic for his victim.
The lady in the Mustang, a marriage counselor with a master’s degree in sociology, had parked not far away. She observed the unprovoked attack in wide-eyed horror. Shocked is what she was. No, more than shocked: Her mental state might be fairly described as one of utter horror. Oh—I have never seen such mindless violence—that seemingly gentle little cowboy is a beast, a veritable mad dog! She felt strangely febrile (warm), giddy, and numb. All at the same time. Oh—I think I’m falling in love.
Now we understand more about the root cause of such events as schoolyard fistfights and world wars.
After Butch wore himself out, he dragged Yirty behind the rear wheels of the stolen pickup. His firm intention was to back over the offender. Four or five times, if necessary. That’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.
He was prevented from these homicidal plans by the sensible lady, who trotted up on her high heels to advise him that he had accomplished enough for one day. Would he care to accompany her to her motel, where there was a fine restaurant and bar?
Butch stared at the pretty woman for long enough to catch his breath and remember who she was. After a glare at what was left of Oscar “Bud” Yirty, he said, “Yes ma’am, I could use a bite to eat. And something to drink.” A tall glass of cold lemonade sure would hit the spot.
Just as the battered prankster was regaining the first stirrings of consciousness, the lady pulled away in the Mustang, and the spunky little cowboy followed in his recovered Columbine pickup.
YIRTY, WHO was certain that every bone in his body was broken, every joint dislocated, wondered what had happened. Oooooh . . . I must’ve got run over by a freight train. Or maybe it was a stampede. After he rolled over onto his back, and saw several faces looking down at him, it took the disoriented fellow quite some time to string a few thoughts together and recall the gist of what had happened. Like many of life’s painful experiences, this one had been educational. As a result of today’s lesson, he arrived at this conclusion: I guess it ain’t such a good idea to mess with Butch’s truck keys.
BARELY THREE miles away, Daisy Perika was sitting placidly in the Columbine pickup that Sarah Frank was driving along Beechwood Road. The old woman was pleased that the nervous girl had finally settled down. The trouble with young people these days is they get all excited over nothing.
Forty
He Returns to the Scene of the Crime
After driving past the late Hermann Wetzel’s former residence three times and seeing no sign of the local police, Jake Harper had deposited the stolen Escape two blocks away, in a church parking lot. Now, crouched on a forested ridge behind the rental home, the burglar behind the pink shades grinned. The place looks dead as Nancy’s nasty stepdaddy.
After a stealthy approach, he used a pocketknife to slice through the POLICE tape on the back door, which he then opened with the key that Nancy had provided. Once inside the open doorway, Harper spliced the severed tape with a transparent Scotch product he had purchased for that very purpose. His intention, upon departing with a bag of cash, was to crawl under the tape. If Confucius did not say this, it was an oversight: In any enterprise, a successful outcome depends upon attention to details.
House Hunting
While Harper was making his unlawful entry, Sarah Frank was driving the borrowed Columbine pickup along Beech-wood Road practically at a crawl, so that Daisy Perika could read the house
numbers painted on mailboxes.
“Seven thirty-seven.” She muttered a few additional addresses. “It must be comin’ up pretty quick.” Daisy uttered an expletive in her native language, which is untranslatable. “We must’ve passed it—there’s seven fifty-one.”
“Seven fifty is right across the street.” Sarah pulled to the curb and turned off the engine. It was a serenely quiet neighborhood. She eyed the house. It’s a pretty place. I wonder if Mr. Wetzel’s ghost is haunting it. She enjoyed a delicious little shiver. If he is, I bet Aunt Daisy could see him. Maybe he’s in one of those upstairs windows. The shaman’s apprentice knew very well that haunts prefer upper floors. He could be looking down at us right now, wondering who we are and what we’re doing here. Sarah suddenly thought she saw the dead man’s face between the curtains in a downstairs window. A blink of her eyes and the face was gone.
Sarah’s follow-up shiver was anything but delicious.
A youthful fantasy? No.
BEFORE HE got down to the serious business of plundering the murdered man’s earthly treasure, Jake Harper, aka Onion Head, had gone from window to window, surveying the landscape for any sign of curious constables or nosy neighbors. The count in each instance was zero, but one item had piqued his interest—the pickup parked across the street, which was distinguished from other such vehicles by the blue-and-white Colorado state flower painted on the door. And just below the logo COLUMBINE RANCH. The skinny little girl from the restaurant was behind the wheel, which made it a cinch that the mean-mouthed old woman was with her. Harper was torn. Should I grab the money and get out of here? Or should I keep an eye on these two until I know what they’re up to? Unable to make up his mind, the burglar would withdraw to Hermann’s office for a moment, then—anxious about the prospect of unexpected visitors—he would hurry back to the front window.
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