High Desert Barbecue

by J. D. Tuccille

  It won’t do us any good if they come up behind us when we’re unprepared.” His voice softened. “And honestly, honey, we can’t always watch our backs.”

  Lani nodded.

  Scott reached out with his phone in his hand.

  “Here’s the video evidence. Remember to upload the file before sending the email. You OK with that?”

  Lani hesitated, staring at a spot on Scott’s chest. Champ picked up on the mood. He looked at Scott, then at Lani, and whined. Simultaneously, the two humans patted his head.

  Lani chuckled. “You’re a good doggy daddy.”

  “Yeah, well. He resembles your family more. That schnozz of his …”

  Lani hit him.

  Rollo cleared his throat.

  “I think you should get going. There may not be any more bad guys by the time you get that video delivered.”

  “You’re going to get them all with that .22?”

  Rollo shook his head.

  “Hell no. I got me a jen-you-wine battle rifle in that cache. With plenty of feed to keep it happy.”

  Lani looked straight up.

  “Way up there?”

  “Well … yeah.”

  Scott raised his eyes, visually scaling the nearby cliff, and gazed at the rim above. Crags, ledges, sharp ridges of rock and tough, gravity-defying vegetation rose to meet the sky. He shuddered.

  Rollo chuckled.

  Scott tore his eyes from the view above and began pulling at the velcro straps holding his pistol holster in place.

  “What are you doing?” Lani asked.

  “Giving you my gun. You remember how to use it, right?”

  “Uh … yeah … why?”

  Scott gave a last tug and freed the strap from his backpack’s hipbelt. He handed the pistol over to Lani, whose mouth hung slightly open as she accepted the gift.

  “Remember, use your thumb to disengage—”

  “Yeah, I know. Why?”

  “Just in case they sent someone to the trailhead. I don’t want you walking into trouble. You have three … no, four rounds in the magazine.”

  Lani stared at the gun, and then began weaving the strap through the loops on her own hipbelt. When it was finally fastened in place, the slab of Colt-manufactured steel wore her more than she wore it, but Scott grinned his satisfaction.

  “Do I look all right?”

  “You look dangerous, baby.”

  “Are you all set?”

  Lani nodded.

  “I am if everything is on that paper.”

  “I wrote it all down just in case. Go on ahead, baby.”

  “Here?”

  Scott glanced at Rollo, who looked back up at the cliff. Rollo shrugged.

  “We might as well climb here.”

  Scott took Lani’s hands.

  “Yep. Here.”

  Lani’s lip quivered.

  “Don’t get yourself hurt.”

  “Oh Christ,” Rollo muttered.

  “Shut up,” Scott said. “No, not you.” He squeezed Lani’s hands.

  “Be careful.”

  “You be careful too. Whoever these people are, they’re mean as snakes”

  A few feet distant, Rollo snorted.

  “Snakes ain’t so—”

  “Shut up,” Scott and Lani said in unison.

  Rollo muttered.

  Scott and Lani kissed, long and deep. Forcing himself to break the clinch, Scott pulled himself away. He dropped his pack to the ground and transferred some gear between his pack and Lani’s pack. Then he bent and rubbed Champ’s fur.

  “You watch out for her buddy.”

  Lani looked back over her shoulder as she walked away. She grinned and tugged at the fabric of her shirt.

  “I’ll have clean clothing before you!”

  Scott waved.

  “Don’t worry, baby. When we meet back up, you won’t need any clothing at all.”

  Rollo looked after the departing woman and shook his head.

  “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “Why?”

  “That got me all worked up. And now I want a hooker.”

  Chapter 38

  Some distance up the canyon—further than Scott and company had any right to hope—Jason was also all worked up. Obscene as his thoughts were, though, they didn’t involve hookers.

  “You fuckheads are not turning back!” His face bulged red and a vein throbbed in his temple. “We didn’t come this far to run away just because those bastards shot back at us!”

  Unaccustomed to overt displays of anger—or, indeed, of any strong emotion—Jason aped the mannerisms of Chief Ranger Van Kamp to express his outrage at his wavering crew.

  Terry, Jason’s fellow ranger, recognized the familiar mannerisms. But even he didn’t realize that his colleague’s uncanny impression of their tiny boss was less an expression of rage than of gut-wrenching fear. Jason shook not with anger, but in terror of what Van Kamp and his co-conspirators would do to the bearer of bad news if the team returned empty-handed.

  “Hey, calm down,” Terry suggested. He backed off a judicious few paces. “We’re just saying that this all seems a little more serious than we anticipated.”

  Bob nodded.

  “I think that guy was actually trying to kill us.”

  Jason glared.

  “Were you or were you not trying to kill him? That’s why we’re here, right?”

  “Wait,” Terry said. “We’re actually trying to kill them?”

  Five pairs of eyes bored into the ranger. The moment stretched out in silence. A shadow flickered across the group from the passage of a hawk overhead. Terry glanced up at the bird, which was starkly outlined against a patch of blue sky. He winced as Ray slapped him in the back of the head.

  Bob shrugged.

  “Well, yeah. I’m just not used to people shooting back.”

  “They do that sometimes.”

  “I guess. Are you sure we shouldn’t turn back? Who would blame—”

  Ray growled. It was an animal noise that started low in his chest and erupted from his throat. His scraped, dirt-streaked body and metallic loincloth underlined the savagery in the sound.

  “Nobody turns back.” He gripped his rifle so the muzzle pointed at the ground between Bob and Terry. “I’ll be damned if I’m walking out of the forest looking like this without something to show for my trouble.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Jason said. Appalled as he was by Ray’s implied threat, he was thankful that somebody else shared his desire to go forward—and was willing to prod the others along. Still, he had the strong feeling that he had somehow become a passenger on the out-of-control rollercoaster of his own life. He shook it off. “Get your gear together. We’re heading out.”

  Lifting his depressingly light daypack, Jason felt someone brush up against him. He turned.

  “Hi,” Samantha whispered. She pulled a strap from his pack over his shoulder and eased it into place. “You were so forceful, just now.”

  “Oh, I—”

  “I really liked it.” She met his eyes. “Really.”

  A few yards away, Ray snorted and turned in disgust. He ran smack into Rena. She looked up at him with a smirk on her face.

  “You don’t look so bad to me.” She tugged at a tattered strand of his emergency blanket. “Really.”

  Ray shuddered.

  Chapter 39

  Scott reached for a handhold to pull himself to the ledge above and winced as a sharp pain stabbed through his finger.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He retrieved his hand and stared dolefully at the long thorn embedded in the last joint of his right index finger. A sharp yank removed the thorn, but it left behind a burning sensation out of proportion with the small wound and tiny drop of blood.

  “Watch out for cactus,” Rollo called from below. “They’re a bitch.”

  “Thanks.”

  Scott carefully chose another handhold and hauled himself to the ledge above. He cursed as h
is knee scraped across a rocky outcrop, drawing blood. Once safely atop the ledge, he kicked dirt fitfully at the prickly pear lurking just behind the edge, where he’d first placed his hand, but took care to avoid entangling his foot in the plant’s spines.

  “Gimme a hand,” Rollo called.

  Scott knelt and stretched out his arm. Rollo caught hold and scrambled as the younger man pulled. They sprawled together on the ledge, which was wider than it seemed from below.

  “You think we’re half way up?” Rollo gasped.

  Scott glanced up at the sky where a line of storm clouds threatened yet another Monsoon soaking. His eyes traveled to the rim, still far above.

  “No. We’re maybe a third of the way up. If it makes you feel any better, it looks easier from here on. You almost have a stair case for the next 50 feet or so.”

  Rollo sat up for a look, and then promptly lay back down.

  “Yeah. All we need are eight-foot legs to match and we’re all set.”

  Scott wiped sweat from his face. His skin felt warm with sunburn. He had sunscreen in his pack but, as usual, he’d forgotten to grease up. He doffed his pack and set to rectifying that error now. While he smeared himself with white cream, he stared up the canyon, looking for movement.

  “I don’t see anything behind us yet.”

  Rollo propped himself up again to see for himself. He brought his hand to the brim of his hat, providing his eyes with a little extra shade.

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  “We’ll have to hustle if we’re going to get to the top and dig up that rifle of yours before the bad guys get passed us.”

  Rollo sighed and looked straight up at the long distance yet to be climbed.

  “Or …”

  “Yeah? I’m open to alternatives.”

  “Why don’t you tell me where you stashed your stuff. I’ll climb up and get it while you keep watch for the bad guys.”

  The older man looked hopeful for a moment, and then slumped.

  “It’s a good idea, but there’s no way I can tell you how to find the cache. It’s not like I can draw you a map.”

  Scott slapped his forehead.

  “Don’t you remember where you buried your stuff?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Mostly? What the hell does that mean?”

  Rollo sighed.

  “Well, it’s been a long time. And I hiked in to make the cache; I didn’t climb a cliff. When I get to the top, I’ll have to look around and orient myself before I can even start looking.”

  “Shit.”

  “Well … yeah.”

  “So we’ll go up together.”

  Rollo was silent for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat.

  “What happens if those bastards pass us while we’re up on top?”

  Scott looked down the canyon the way Lani and Champ had gone. He thought he saw movement that might have been them, but it might as easily have been an animal or his eyes playing tricks. He didn’t speak.

  “I’ll have to go up alone,” Rollo added.

  “And I’ll stay here with the .22.”

  “Yup.” Rollo sighed again. “Oh shit.” He slid his arms from the straps on his pack and rose to his feet. His arms stretched out before him, fingers laced together, palms facing outward. The knuckles cracked together with a noise like the breaking of a handful of dry sticks.

  “Wish me luck.”

  “If you bring back something more powerful than this popgun, I’ll give you more than good wishes.”

  Rollo squinted and cocked his head.

  “I don’t swing that—”

  “Cold beer, you asshole.”

  Rollo smiled.

  “You do love me after all. In a traditionally masculine way, that is.”

  “Get going.”

  Rollo set off, levering himself onto the first giant stair leading to the rim above. He made good time, and soon his figure dwindled in the distance, like a bug crawling up a wall.

  Chapter 40

  Rollo didn’t much mind making the climb alone; he’d lived alone by choice for years, after all. He wasn’t happy about splitting the tight little group three ways, though. As much of a loner as he was, he firmly believed that safety lay in numbers—though safety in well-armed numbers was better yet, and he had to admit that his .22 rifle and dwindling supply of ammunition wouldn’t keep them whole and happy forever.

  Besides, Scott had been his close buddy ever since that half-remembered encounter by the Flagstaff police car (Rollo had been drinking his way through town at the time, so he’d needed the details filled in after the fact).

  “We did what?”

  “We slashed the tires on a cop car. Don’t you remember? It was only half an hour ago.”

  “Well … that’s embarrassing. We didn’t get caught, did we?”

  “No. No, we didn’t get caught. Are you sure you want another beer?”

  He worried about Scott. His friend didn’t need to be in this situation and wouldn’t be at risk if Rollo hadn’t dragged him into his long-running feud with the Forest Service.

  As for Lani … the self-styled mountain man hated to admit it, but he enjoyed sparring with the little blonde firecracker. He didn’t exactly like her, but she kept him on his toes—and she wasn’t hard to look at either.

  Hopping from one rocky ledge to the next, Rollo bounded like a mountain goat on native terrain. Harried as he was, he still felt a bit of his usual exhilaration at being out-of-doors and beyond the reach of civilization with its rules and expectations. The air tasted cleaner, his mind seemed clearer, and he felt like dropping his shorts and wagging his sunburned—yes, sunburned—ass at the whole world of rangers, ex-wives, cops and debt collectors.

  In fact, he had dropped his pants to the world on many occasions; some of them by the light of a (he assumed) sympathetic moon shining above. But there had never before been an audience to appreciate his sentiments, and he didn’t have time to take advantage of the audience he had at hand.

  As his efforts took him close to the top, he slowed, briefly, to admire a cluster of stud-like projections from a slab of stone. He’d seen their like in the area before.

  “Fossils. Cool.”

  As Rollo knew from experience, the southwestern landscape, with its petrified forests and deep-cut canyons slicing through layers of rock, is like an unlabeled museum of Earth’s ancient history. You might never know for sure what you were looking at, but you could be certain there was a hell of a story behind it. Once again, he reminded himself to take the time someday to try to identify the long-dead things that had catalogued themselves here into the museum of nature’s permanent exhibit.

  If he ever made it to town again, that is. He decided not to dwell on that point.

  The top of the rim came up sooner than Rollo had any right to hope. He was drenched with sweat and bleeding from scratches on the palms of his hands when he pulled himself up on a final ledge, and then shimmied through a narrow gap that had him sucking in his gut.

  He looked around. The mesa top was dominated by juniper trees and well marked with cow pies left by local ranchers’ cattle.

  “Excellent,” he muttered. “Now, where the fuck did I bury that stuff?”

  Chapter 41

  With the men behind her, essentially guarding her back, Lani felt more secure than she had since the whole misbegotten adventure had started. The safer she felt, the more guilt nibbled at her conscience over feeling secure when Scott and … well … yeah, Rollo, too … were staying behind to face the lunatics dogging their tails.

  Within a few hundred yards, Lani had herself worked into a tearful frenzy. She would have turned back if she could figure out a way to get Champ to climb the canyon wall. But she couldn’t. So onward she went.

  Attuned to his owner’s moods, Champ whined and licked Lani’s hand. When she paused to look back the way she’d come, he pawed at her for attention. She ruffled the fur between his ears reassuringly. He rubbed his muzzle against her leg i
n response, leaving a small drool stain on the fabric of her shorts.

  Despite her doubts, she started walking again. She resigned herself to setting one foot in front of the other for as long as necessary. There was no point to what the men were doing if she didn’t get the video to somebody who could help.

  What form that help would take was anybody’s guess, and the uncertainty set Lani to fretting again. She removed Scott’s instructions from her pocket and glanced at the carefully printed text. She was no computer whiz, but her boyfriend knew that and had rendered the instructions as detailed as he could, and in plain English. It still looked like nonsense—a bit like asking somebody for driving directions and getting a monotone recitation of Jabberwocky in response.

  “Why couldn’t it have been literature, damn it? Or correcting papers? I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Scott had asked me to stop the firebugs by marking up some essays in red pen.”

  Champ gazed up at her sympathetically.

  “Well,” she added. “I’m also good at playing the guitar. Why couldn’t he have asked me to help out with some blues chords? There are things I’m good at, just not computers.”

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought Champ nodded in agreement.

  “Thanks, boy. I’m glad you’re with me.”

  The dog grinned back, and then lifted a leg to piss on a prickly pear.

  The sun shone overhead, with no clouds visible in the slice of sky revealed between the canyon walls. The sway of Lani’s pack and the rhythmic slosh from her water bladder set a cadence as she hiked along. It was easier to concentrate on the hike than on what lay behind or ahead, so she kept her mind on the trail and did her best to take pleasure in the scenery.

  Enjoyment came more easily than she’d anticipated. With Scott and Rollo laying for the firebugs, she no longer felt a need to look over her shoulder. She was finally able to appreciate the simple fact of being outdoors. Exploring the desert was one of her favorite activities, and she soaked up the details: the rapidly evaporating pools of water left by the rain, the flitting lizards evading her steps, the scrubby trees and brush. Refreshed by the monsoon rains, the vegetation showed an unusually vivid green that emphasized the natural beauty of the normally dry area. With an experienced eye she dodged sharp desert holly that lured with pretty leaves and tore at unsuspecting hikers’ skin.