Chump Change (20 page)

By six
P.M.
The Flying H was officially up and running. The hands had moved the bulk of the herd into a fresh pasture. Said it would last em at least a week. They cleared up a couple of water problems and fixed some holes in the fences. The one called Winslow took Keith around and showed him how the water system worked. How to get it going when it clogged up.

Herbert and I were sitting on the back steps as the Boys loaded their ATVs back onto the truck. “What do I owe them?” I asked.

“Hundred bucks apiece,” he said.

I peeled four bills from my roll and handed them to Herbert.

He thanked me and looked away.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Kids could probably put in one more day. There’s a few more things need to be done around the place.”

“But?”

He shook his head. “But I got a problem, Leo.”

“What’s that?”

“Word about this thing you got going with Roland Moon has made its way to the Tribal Council.”

“Figured it would,” I said.

“Council’s got its panties all in a wad over it. Called me half a dozen times this morning.”

“You figured that would happen.”

“Don’t want our boys over here as long as somebody might get hurt.”

I said I understood.

“Everything being equal, and Sarah Jane scales the operation back a bit, the Boys ought to be able to keep it running, comin over just a couple days a week. But . . . this thing with Moon . . . that’s gotta be settled.”

“I understand.”

“Too many of our boys leave the res one day and don’t nobody ever see them again.” He looked up at the sky. “It’s like they just disappear into the clouds.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “I thank you for your help,” I said. “I’m a lot of things, but a rancher isn’t one of them. I couldn’t have—”

I was interrupted by Cody yelling from the other side of the yard. They were ready to take off and wanted Herbert to get in the truck.

Herbert rose. “No moon next few nights,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said again.

I watched as he walked over to the truck and got in to ride shotgun. He gave me a worried smile and a two-fingered salute as they drove by and then disappeared around the side of the house.

It was the fifty-foot flames that first got my attention.

Keith and I had discussed our domestic options and decided that, when it came to bedding down for the night, discretion had best be the better part of valor. Since sleeping in the house was out of the question, and the barns were going to be the first place our disloyal opposition looked for us, we’d decided the best thing would be to steal back the element of surprise from the enemy. To that end, we each picked out one of the old cars dotting the backyard, evicted any and all previous tenants, and then cleaned them out as best we were able.

Keith chose an old Buick he found over by the fence. The one with the three portholes running along the side of the hood. Mid-fifties or sixties. Looked like nobody’d opened the door in half a century. Everything just the way Olley left it, back about when I was still nothing more than a gleam in my old man’s eye.

As for me, I found an old oxidized junker out in the middle of the yard. Not much to look at but solid as a rock. Wasn’t till I got inside that I saw it was a Hudson Hornet and that it used to be pea green. Probably mid-fifties. Solid steel and, by Seattle standards, the size of a studio apartment.

By the time night fell, we were both cozied into the backseats of our chosen land yachts, with a couple of sandwiches and a Diet Coke or two for company.

We’d also redistributed the arms and ammunition. I gave Keith the Glock 17 and all the ammo, then broke out the AX9 assault rifle for myself. I wasn’t, by nature, much of a gun guy, but I’d learned along the way that given a weapon I could spray like a garden hose, I was just as deadly as anybody else.

I was determined to stay awake, but you know how that goes. Especially at my age. Last thing I recalled was listening to a night bird song and trying to figure out what it was, and to whom it might be calling, so it’s not surprising that I first thought the sudden splash of heat on my face must be part of some bucolic dream I was having. Dawn on the meadow. That sort of thing.

Wasn’t till the blistering roar jerked my eyelids up that I realized what was going on. Somebody’d tipped over the fuel tank and set the gasoline on fire. Great curling waves of orange flame and black smoke rolled up into the night sky.

From my perch inside the Hudson, it looked like the bunkhouse barn was at least partially engulfed. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911.

“Lewiston Emergency,” the woman’s voice said. “What’s your emergency?”

“Got a barn on fire and a shooting out at The Flying H Ranch. U.S. Route ninety-three. Send everything you’ve got,” I shouted into the mouthpiece before stuffing the phone back into my pocket and kicking open the car door.

I squatted in the tall grass, found two more sixty-round banana clips where I’d left them on the floorboards, and jammed them in my coat pockets.

When I peeped up over the Hudson’s hood, first thing I saw was two guys coming out the back door of the Hardvigsen house. Both of them holding rifles.

I suppose I should have shouted a warning or something. Given them a chance to surrender, maybe. But I didn’t. I was scared shitless and running on adrenaline, so I sighted out over the hood and let em have it on full auto.

I walked the line of impacts up the ground until it got to them and watched as the one on the right threw up his hands and went down in an ass-over-teakettle heap. The guy on the left was hit somewhere down low, but somehow kept his feet. I could hear him hollering above the roar of the fire as he hopped toward the shelter of the far corner of the house.

I raised the rifle and was going to take him down when a sudden rustle of the grass pulled my attention behind me. I turned in time to find myself looking down the steel nostrils of a double-barreled shotgun. The guy was wearing a ski mask and a grin, and I knew, in that instant, that this was the last thing I was ever going to see.

An ear-shattering boom shook the night. I closed my eyes and waited for the pain and blackness to overwhelm me, but they didn’t come.

When I dared to look up, the ski-mask guy was dead on the ground, with a hole the size of a silver dollar decorating the side of his head. Keith threw himself onto the ground beside me.

“Guess Moon lied about waiting till Monday,” he said.

“Ya think?”

“What now?”

“I called the cops,” I said. “We just gotta hang in there till they arrive.”

He nodded.

The Hudson rocked on its springs as it began to absorb rounds from the direction of the house. High-caliber rounds that were traveling all the way through one side of the car and out the other. I grabbed Keith by the collar and pulled him forward, up behind the front wheel, where we had the engine block between us and the shooters.

“We stay here, they’re going to flank us sooner or later,” I shouted.

He looked at me like I was speaking in tongues.

“Let’s take it to them,” I yelled over the sound of shattering steel. “See if we can’t back em off a bit.”

“Have at it, man,” he said.

“Cover me.”

He held up a trembling finger, ejected the empty clip from the Glock and slapped in another. The Glock automatically chambered a round. Keith took it in both hands and then laid down next to the flat front tire. He waited for the next volley of muzzle flashes and then began to squeeze off rounds. The Hudson shook from the high-caliber impacts. The air was filled with pulverized glass. I could hear the metallic tinkle as bits of chrome began to fall from the car. Keith squeezed off two more rounds, and I heard someone cry out in pain. I took that as my cue.

I held the AX9 tight against my body as I sprinted across the yard. I was aiming for a rusty John Deere tractor very nearly buried in the weeds along the west fence line. As I ran, I snapped a glance at the burning barn. The whole west wall was engulfed in flames.

Backlit by the fire, three crouching figures, their outlines shimmering in the maelstrom of heat waves, duckwalked in my direction. Their intermittent muzzle flashes and the sound of metal bees zooming past my ears told me I had best do something, in a big hurry, so I threw myself to the ground next to an ancient apple tree, got as much of the trunk as I could between me and them, and then got up on one knee, so I could see over the grass.

I picked the guy in the middle and stitched a line of fire outward and upward until the first one hit him in the crotch, the second high in the chest, and the third restructured major portions of his head.

And then I was moving again. Crawling through the grass on my hands and knees, listening to the sounds of lead threshers ripping around me as I moved. I could just make out the top of the tractor about ten yards in front of me when my right foot took a terrific impact and suddenly went numb. I set my jaw and kept on crawling, expecting to die any second, until I pulled myself behind the massive rear wheel of the John Deere and resumed breathing.

I sat down and pulled my foot up toward my face. The entire back half of my boot was missing, heel, sole, and everything. I gingerly felt around on my foot, touching myself here and there, counting my toes, expecting my fingers to come away wet, or to slip into some gaping wound that would, once the shock wore off, reduce my nervous system to mint jelly. Didn’t happen, though. The foot was dry. All the slug had hit was my boot. I wanted to shout in elation, but restrained myself.

Above the din, I could hear Keith’s steady rate of fire keeping somebody pinned down. I scrambled to my feet, slid over to the middle of the tractor, rested my elbow on the old metal seat, and began to spray .223 rounds all over the field in front of me.

Took about five seconds to empty the clip. Another five to slap in a fresh sixty rounds, crawl up to the front of the tractor, and peep over the engine.

A solitary, hooded figure was in a full sprint across the yard. Firing an automatic weapon as he ran, directly toward the battered Hudson and Keith. I could see the Hudson disintegrating before my eyes. Looked like time-lapse photography of a car rotting into the ground. I raised the AX9 and sent a stream of metal out across the yard and then watched impassively as the sprinter ran into it.

The impact spun him in a complete circle. Sent his weapon pinwheeling up into the red sky. Almost looked like a high school baton twirler, until you saw the flaccidity of his final fall and knew intuitively that this guy was down for the count.

I looked over Keith’s way. His eyes were the size of saucers, but he was sporting a grin bigger than the Ritz as he slammed a fresh clip into the Glock.

And then the lights came roaring around the corner of the house, pulsing red, yellow, and blue, and I thought for a moment that salvation was at hand, until I saw who jumped out of the patrol car, riot gun in hand. Our old buddy Rockland Moon was shouting back and forth with people I couldn’t see, which, as far as I was concerned, made him the enemy, except that Rockland was a cop, and if you killed a cop, I don’t care what sort of asshole he is, or how much money you’ve got, you’re going to the big-boy jail for a long, long time. Period. End of story. So I settled myself onto my elbow, put my front sight on the first pulsing light on the left, and blew his light bar to screaming smithereens.

By the time the last of the colorful shredded plastic had found its way back to earth, Rockland Moon had given up trying to locate me in the yard, in favor of hugging the gravel next to his patrol car and hoping to God I didn’t kill him.

The spent clip burned my hand on the way out. I jammed my last clip into the slot and leaned back against the tractor. I took several deep breaths to clear my head and steady my shaking hands. That’s when I noticed the pulsing lights playing over the house and yard. Couldn’t be Moon’s lights. I was sure of that, so I took a peek.

Three Lewiston PD cruisers now decorated the Hardvigsens’ backyard. The cops were armed and aiming at Keith and me over the tops of the cars.

A bullhorn blared above the roaring of the fire.

“Put down your weapons and come forward with your hands up.”

He said it three times. So I figured he must be serious. Finally, I looked over at Keith and nodded. We stood up together, laced our fingers behind our heads, and began to shuffle toward the blinding lights.

“Get down! Get down! Get down!” the horn screamed.

We did as we were told. Flattened ourselves facedown in the grass, so a squadron of angry police officers could kneel on the backs of our necks and use about four times as much force as was necessary to handcuff us.

The air was filled with static and radio talk as they force-marched us over to the nearest police car and bent us over the hood. While they frisked us, I could hear Deputy Rockland Moon telling somebody that I’d tried to kill him.

A pair of Valley Hospital emergency vehicles swung around the corner of the house and kept on going, right out onto the middle of the lawn, a move that allowed the following fire truck full access to the raging barn.