The Adventures of Slim & Howdy (21 page)

Grady dutifully wrote “Link” and “Brushfire” and the other names on the pad. Then he said, “What did the ransom note say other than the amount?”

“Said Jodie was unharmed and they’d be in touch,” Slim said. “Mr. Hobbs asked us to be involved in the exchange, however it goes down.”

“Well, be careful,” Grady said. “I wouldn’t trust Roy Hobbs farther than I could comfortably spit a rat.”

50

THE SECOND NOTE CAME IN THAT DAY’S MAIL. A PLAIN
white envelope, postmarked Eagle Pass, Texas, just across the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras.

Another cut-and-paste job. It said,

Roy gimped over to his computer and typed in the URL. The browser linked to a page, somewhere out there in the World Wide Web. The page was black except for a white rectangle in the middle of the screen.

Inside the rectangle it said, “Click here.”

The moment Roy clicked the button, his printer began spooling up and the Web page blinked out, replaced a moment later by a standard error message. “Page Not Found. Permanent Fatal Error.” He tried it again but the page had disappeared.

By now, the printer had spit out a page of instructions.

“Horseback only,” it read. “No vehicles. Have GPS.”

There were two sets of numbers that Roy recognized as longitude and latitude, right down to the minutes and seconds. Somewhere in Mexico.

According to the instructions, he had two days to reach the location.

He was to leave the money at the site, in a shack. There he would find directions to Jodie’s location.

If the money wasn’t right, the kidnapper would move Jodie before Roy reached her. The price would go up and they would start over.

If the money was right, the deal was complete, hostage would be waiting, unharmed.

Clock starts at sunrise tomorrow.

Roy went to his safe and removed $150,000. It was a lot of money but he didn’t mind. He stuffed it into an old saddle bag, then he called Slim and Howdy. Told them to meet him at a ranch outside Ciudad Acuna at dawn the next day.

51

SLIM AND HOWDY CROSSED THE BORDER BEFORE FIRST LIGHT
and found their way to the ranch, which turned out to be one of the many properties Roy Hobbs owned on both sides of the river. This was ten acres with a barn, corral, and a caretaker’s house.

They found Roy cinching the girth on a buckskin mustang, about fifteen hands high, its mane, tail, and lower legs black as molasses. Roy looked up, squinting as the cigarette smoke curled into his eyes. “All right, boys,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road.” He gestured at three other horses, tied up nearby, saddled and outfitted with everything they’d need for two days and nights in the desert. Sleeping bags, cook gear, food, water, two-way radios, maps, and GPS receivers all around, in case they got separated.

There were two quarter horses, one was a bay, the other a buckskin. Slim turned to Howdy and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take that bay.” As if it reminded him of something or someone.

“Fine by me.” Howdy liked the looks of the buckskin anyway.

Neither Slim nor Howdy recognized the other breed. “That’s a Cayuse Indian pony,” Roy said. “Comes out of a strain of Spanish mustang. Helluva horse. That one’s Jodie’s favorite. Named him Chulo. Figured she’d like to ride him back after we get her.”

“Yes, sir,” Slim said, as he adjusted the stirrups to accommodate his long legs. “I bet you’re right.”

Howdy went over to the buckskin, rubbed his muzzle, let his hand glide down his strong neck, then he started taking off the saddle.

“What’re you doin’?” Roy asked.

“Got my own saddle,” Howdy said. “All broke in.” Which he soon pulled from the bed of the truck. “Might as well use it.”

When they were all ready, Roy swung himself up on that mustang like a man half his age. Slim and Howdy followed suit and somebody asked where they were going.

Roy pointed southwest. “Serranias del Burro,” he said. “An old mining area out in the desert.” He glanced over his shoulder and said, “You boys ready?”

They nodded, so Roy gave that mustang a little leg, went “Tch,” and off they rode into the Mexican wilderness.

The plan was: ride till noon, give the horses a break, eat lunch, then get in a couple more hours before they stopped to camp. In the morning, they’d zero in on this shack, where—assuming the kidnapper was being straight with them—they were to leave the money and find directions to Jodie’s location.

It was a fine day with skies bright as diamonds. Riding into a quarter million square miles of mountainous desert colored by the morning light was enough to make Slim and Howdy forget, however briefly, the circumstances that brought them there. It had been too long since either one of them had been on top of a horse without a fence or a power line or a phone pole in sight, and there was something powerful about that for both of them.

At first they rode in silence, as if they were in the world’s largest chapel, a place where talk seemed sacrilegious. Believers simply soaked in the unflinching beauty of it all. Creosote bush and tobosa grass, tall spiky ocotillos and candy barrel cactus. The ubiquitous shades of gray, green, and brown interrupted now and then by a slash of yellow from the blooms of tarbush and zinnias, or the red throat of a whiptail lizard, or the dark end of a black tailed jackrabbit. All you needed was to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.

And for a while that’s what they did.

But then, out of nowhere, Roy Hobbs just started talking. “Thing I hate most about this,” he said, “is that I brought it on myself.” He paused before continuing, “And what’s worse, I brought it on Jodie.” He shook his head like a man guilty of too many things. “I swear, anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.” He wasn’t saying this directly to Slim or Howdy, he was just saying it to get it off his chest.

“Mr. Hobbs, I think you’re mad at the wrong person,” Slim said. “The one you ought not be in a forgiving mood toward is whoever kidnapped Jodie.”

Roy didn’t seem to buy it, like that was just something to make him feel better, not something that absolved him of his culpability. He shook his head some more and said, “It’s all because of who I am, what I do.”

“No, sir,” Howdy said, “I don’t think so.”

“No? Then why?” Like you think you’re so smart.

“’Cause you’ve got the money to pay,” Howdy said. “That’s all. Doesn’t matter how you got it, you could’ve struck a well. I doubt a kidnapper cares one way or the other how clean or dirty somebody’s pile of money is, long as it’s a pile. They just want the dough.”

Roy Hobbs thought about that for a second, figured there was at least some truth to it. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I just can’t help but think that if I wasn’t who I am, or if I wasn’t afraid of what might happen if I called the FBI, we’d be in a better position to get Jodie back.”

“
If
this,
if
that,” Howdy said. “It’s like my dad used to say, Mr. Hobbs. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.”

Roy smiled at that. “Mine always said, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

“There you go,” Slim said. “Things are what they are and talking about ’em doesn’t change ’em.”

Howdy threw some extra optimism in his voice when he said, “I got a good feeling about this, Mr. Hobbs, I do. Don’t ask me why, I think they just want the money. I think Jodie’s fine and all we have to do is follow the instructions and we’ll get her back.”

“Yeah,” Roy said. “You may be right. They probably just want my money. And they can have it. Trouble for them.” They rode on for another moment before he said, “Course if you’re wrong, they’ll probably kill us all and leave our bones bleaching in the desert.”

Slim turned slowly, aiming his dark glasses at Roy Hobbs. “You’re just little Miss Sunshine, aren’t you?”

52

AROUND NOON, THEY CAME ACROSS A SMALL LAKE, DECIDED
it was a good place for lunch, let the horses get some water, rest a minute. Roy pulled out his map and his GPS receiver. Every now and then he looked around as if to get his bearings, then he’d return his attention to the map’s coordinates. “We’re making good time,” he said, holding a wary glance over his shoulder.

Howdy passed out some sandwiches and pulled his canteen from his saddle. They made small talk as they ate, a conscious effort all around not to think too much about Jodie. Where you from? How’s the horse riding? That sort of thing, until Howdy asked about what Roy did before he got into the saloon and truck stop business.

“Oh hell, I did my share of running cattle and mending fences,” Roy said. “Like everybody in Texas, I guess. Then I heard there was a better way to make a living, so I went to work in the midcontinent oil fields.”

This struck a chord with Slim, who said, “No kiddin’? Doin’ what?”

“You name it,” Roy replied with a casual shrug. “Roustabout, roughneck, mud logger, whatever kind of job I could get.”

Slim smiled and pointed at the older man, feeling a bond. He said, “You know, before my dad went in the air force, he was a pipeliner all around those fields.”

Now Howdy got a surprised look on his face. He turned to Slim all the sudden and said, “Get outta here! My dad was a pipeline engineer for a bunch of operators in that part of the country.” He shook his head and smiled at the coincidence. He tipped his sandwich toward Roy. “Dad used to say a man had to be crazy to work on those rigs back then.”

“Crazy or unemployed,” Roy said with a laugh. “But it’s true. It was some kind of dangerous.” Roy tapped a cigarette from his pack and lit it. “Like this one thing we did called ‘spuddin’ the pipe,’ where the driller’d lift it to the top of the derrick, drop it, and then jam the winch brakes on to shake that mud loose. Problem was sometimes those big steel mounts in the crown block would break and fall on the men below.”

Roy took a deep draw on the cigarette before continuing. “I saw this one kid, eighteen years old, got killed his first
hour
on the job.” Roy paused to exhale, and during that time he seemed to see the boy’s face. “That was tough to watch,” he said. “But things like that were more common then, I guess. We were all a little harder.” He shook his head, thinking about it. “Lucky to get out alive, I guess.”

“And with all your parts,” Howdy said.

“Yeah, that too,” Roy agreed. “But I tell ya, working the range and those rigs taught me something. Taught me that cowboys and oil-rig workers and truckers and farmers and most everybody else spends a fair cut of their paychecks just trying to enjoy themselves when their work’s done. And it seemed to me that providing the supply for that demand was a better way to make a living than getting kicked by a cow or having crown blocks dropped on your head.” Roy took another drag on his cigarette and said, “So that’s how I ended up doin’ what I do.”

Looking at old Roy Hobbs, listening to him tell stories out in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert made Slim and Howdy feel like they were in the company of the last of a dying breed at the tail end of a period of history. Roy was an authentic Texas archetype who, in
his
youth, had ridden with genuine old cowboys, men who had been part of the real Wild West back in
their
day. They told their stories to Roy, passing on whatever truth might be in them. And now, sitting here, Slim and Howdy felt like they were getting a little of that before it was lost to the world.

Then it was time to go. They got back on their horses and kept riding toward the mountains in the distance. Roy, pleased at the chance to tell his stories, talked for a while about his cowboy days before he turned to Slim and said, “Son, I’m curious why you wanted that bay so bad instead of the buckskin.” Like he’d seen something in the choosing and wanted to know what it was.

Slim sliced off a little grin and nodded as if he’d been caught. “Just reminded me of a horse I had when I was a kid,” he said.

Howdy figured that was all the answer Roy was going to get for his question, but Slim surprised him by saying, “My dad was still in the air force there at Laughlin and he had this runnin’ buddy name of Spooner Pruet, this Texas Ranger–looking sheriff out of Port Isabel, Texas. Mom never liked him but, well, anyway, Dad and Spooner used to go down to Zaragoza, Mexico, to these illegal quarter-horse races. I was always buggin’ ’em to take me along, and this one time they did. And I swear I’ll never forget it.

“People came from out of nowhere for these races,” Slim said with a sweeping gesture. “Line these makeshift quarter-mile outlaw dirt road racetracks with flatbed Mexicali, melon farmer–style trucks. They had these beat-up metal speakers on the tops blaring mariachi music like something out of a Speedy Gonzales cartoon. Everybody walkin’ around eating churros and making bets and side bets on the next race. And then, somebody’d shoot a pistol and two horses would tear down the road with everybody hollerin’ and whistlin’ and jumpin’ up and down for the next thirty seconds. And then it started all over again. I swear, it was the most fun I can remember in a single day.”

As they loped along through the desert, Roy listened with a fond smile and a slow nod, as if he’d been to those very races and was just making sure Slim got his facts straight.

As for Howdy, he could see so clearly the picture Slim was painting that he stopped thinking about how he’d never heard Slim talk so much except when he was onstage or trying to worm his way into a woman’s loving embrace, or at least her panties.

Slim aimed his hand out in front of them and said, “There was a tall cornfield at the end of the track, barely past the finish line. And these horses with these crazy ‘weekend jockeys’ hanging on for dear life would make a mad dash down that quarter-mile track and disappear off into the cornstalks at a dead run.” Slim laughed a little thinking about it.

“So,” Slim said, “this one time, Dad and Spooner bought this broke-down old bay named Pitchfork.” He paused as if he felt the characterization wasn’t fair to the horse. “I guess he wasn’t really that broke-down,” Slim said, on second thought. “But you definitely weren’t going to see him in the Preakness, you know? Anyway, they must’ve been drunk or something, convinced they were going to get rich racing old Pitchfork at Zaragoza Downs, as they called it. So Dad’s job was to train him, which he didn’t have a clue about, but, anyway, come the big day, we all went down to Zaragoza to run Pitchfork. They agreed that Dad should be the jockey since he’d been the trainer, right?

“So, while Dad was getting ready for the race, Spooner was running up one side of that dirt track and down the other making bets. Back at the starting line Dad had a couple of shots of this hundred-and-fifty-proof liquor they make out of sugarcane, then he got in the saddle, and
bang!
Somebody fired the pistol and Pitchfork took off like he thought somebody was shooting at him. Dad’s eyes got wide as a belt buckle and I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life watching him try to keep one leg on each side of that horse.” Slim did an imitation of his dad heading down the track, all loosey-goosey like a rag doll on a wild animal.

Howdy was laughing, too, but he managed to ask, “Did he win?”

“Oh hell no,” Slim replied. “About three-fourths down the track, Pitchfork just slowed to a natural trot, didn’t matter how much leg or spur he got. Dad dog-cussed that horse all the way across the finish line, going so slow they didn’t even make it to the cornfield. I think if Dad had a gun, he’da shot Pitchfork right there,” Slim said. “He was kind of competitive. So afterwards, me and Dad were loading Pitchfork back into the trailer and Spooner showed up with the look of a man who’d lost an awful lot of money. Dad asked him how much he had bet, and Spooner said, ‘Five hundred dollars.’ Like it was the end of the world.

“Dad looked at the sky like he wanted the Lord to take him right then and there and the horse too as long as he was at it. Then he looked at Spooner and said, ‘I told you not to bet that kind of money on this nag.’

“Spooner jerked his head back in surprise and said, ‘Are you nuts? I was betting
against
you.’ Then he pulled out a wad of dollars and pesos and shook it at us, and we laughed about it the whole way back to Del Rio.”

Roy, glancing over his shoulder but not at Slim, said, “What happened to old Pitchfork?”

Slim nodded, like he was getting to that part of the story. “Dad and Spooner joked about putting him out to stud,” Slim said. “But they decided the fact he was a gelding was too much of a hurdle to overcome, so they gave him to me. And I kept him ’til we moved to New Mexico.”

Howdy thought of the air force base up in Albuquerque. “Your dad get transferred up to Kirtland?”

Slim’s smile sort of slipped away at the question, and after a moment, he said, “No. It was something else.”