Wild Country (25 page)

Jerome Garner howled like something trapped in a cave; drew another breath.

In that intake of breath Quantrill said, "Give it up."

Garner, in a crying rage: "Fuckyouman," but he was no longer slugging against Quantrill's skull.

Quantrill, pierced in a hundred places by thorns, felt as if attacked by hornets, though it hurt worse to grasp that inch-thick rose stalk. He knew Garner must be feeling the same agonies, but, "Call it quits," Quantrill said between clenched teeth, "or I'll saw your god-damned head off."

It was exactly the kind of wild exaggeration needed for a man of Jerome Garner's excesses. His hoarse sobs might have been two-thirds fury, but through them he said, "I quit, then get off me yougoddamsumbitch, YOU HEAR?"

Quantrill released the thick stalk with some difficulty; it had driven thorns into his hand in a dozen places. Silently, letting young Garner make enough noise for the both of them, he half crawled, half tumbled onto packed dirt that had once been covered with grass. He pulled at Jerome's shirt, saw his friends hurrying near, and stepped back saying, "Help yourself, the hell with it."

Cam Concannon had moved to the steps to monitor the fight's last moments. Old Mul Garner still stood near the doorway without expression until Jerome began his litany as his waddies moved in.

"Little fucker's a trained killer,
lookoutformyface
!"

Mumbling: "Let go my hair, Jer."

"I know when I'm suckered into a fight. Just wait. Now pull,
no don't, shitfire anyhow
!"

Quantrill hobbled farther into the glow of the porch light, trying to extract thorns from his palms with his teeth.

From the old rancher on the porch: "Cam, take the man wherever he needs to go. Rocksprings clinic, if need be. I'll pay, but I don't want to see him again. Ever."

But by now Jerome was extracted from the rose thicket, and his tears were one hundred percent pustulating fury.

"Cocksuckin' deputy tried to plain
kill
me, gonna saw my head off! No knee-high pissant does that to me on my own land. Fill my hand, Billy Ray," he said, hobbling as badly as Quantrill and spitting blood.

The cowpoke hesitated, his hand on his sidearm.

"
Fill my hand
, damn you!"

Mul Garner, from the porch, only said, "Cam," and held out his hand. The foreman drew his old-fashioned peacemaker, held it by the barrel, tossed it to the rancher at the same moment Billy Ray handed his own handgun over to Jerome. Then, in a voice that had once ruled a million acres, the rancher called, "That's not how I raised you, boy."

A stream of ropy crimson spit whacked the ground from Jerome's mouth as he raised the pistol. Quantrill whirled, saw Longo menacing him from the side with a medium-caliber automatic, and waited. Jerome: "I'm not anybody's boy. Not for a long time now."

"No, I guess you're not. But you're dogmeat if you pull that trigger." Mul Garner kept his elbow cocked so that the old Colt pointed aloft but did it in a practiced and familiar way. "I taught you fairness. I never saw a sign of it tonight."

Jerome's anguish was turning him into something half man, half child. Turning to face his father, the weapon pointing downward, staring up wet-faced onto the light, he all but bawled, "You're protecting a goddamn enemy of mine, Daddy!"

"I had to. Maybe because I protected
you
too long."

Jerome, chest heaving, stared at Quantrill. "Daddy, you have to give him to me. You have to!"

"I promised him his walking papers, Jer. I'm backing it as far as I have to. That's final."

His last phrase took something out of Jerome. "It's the same as disowning me," he snarled.

"Not you, son. But I'll always disown plain murder." Mul Garner nodded toward the distant bunkhouse and lowered the handgun. "Take your men. Come back alone and we can talk when you've calmed down in an hour. Or tomorrow."

Jerome began to limp away, handing the weapon back to its owner, spitting again, speaking loudly without looking toward the porch. "Tomorrow's too late. Goddamn you, old man, got in my way once too often. You and your lickspit Concannon." he said, and spat again, flanked by his men.

Mulvihill Garner shaded his eyes, watching them retreat, the pistol hanging in his other hand. He seemed unaware of the tears that dampened his cheeks. "I wonder if I could've done it. Cam take this little cougar off my land right now." he said, and handed the weapon back to his foreman.

Concannon hurried off into the dark for a vehicle, and Quantrill sat down on the porch steps, holding a thumb against one nostril to stanch the blood that still flowed from his nose. "I owe you a warning, Mr. Garner." he said.

Garner tossed him a kerchief the size of a small parachute. "As a man, or a deputy?"

Wiping his face: "Same thing. I really was hunting that boar, but the Justice Department could send men after your son or some of your men. one of these days."

"I'm not an idiot. Quantrill. But I've let Jerome pretty much take over this spread, and if he's abused my trust, this is no place for a deputy to flaunt a badge. Most of the men aren't as much my men as they are his. Now it's come to a head, no thanks to you. I came within an inch of turning you over to my son, you know."

"Yessir." Quantrill hawked and spat.

Pause. Then, "You really serious about the Grange girl?"

Quantrill nodded and tried to smile. His face was numb. "Maybe 'hopeless' would be a better word."

"She's a good neighbor. Maybe you'll be one, in time. Just give Jerome plenty of room, it's all I ask."

"I will, sir." Quantrill turned, got up slowly as he heard the clatter of an old diesel four-wheel-drive vehicle. He placed the bloody kerchief on the steps.

"He just needs to grow up," Mul Garner called as Quantrill walked toward the pickup. It was as near an apology as the old man could muster, and it was offered hopefully. He would not have harbored that hope if he had heard the muffled hovercycles moving out from his equipment barn without lights, moments before Concannon drove off with Ted Quantrill.

The foreman had driven for ten minutes before either of the men spoke. "We're heading east," Quantrill said finally. "To Barksdale?"

"No clinic there now," Concannon grunted. "This old road will get us to Leakey." He pronounced it "Lakey" in the old way.

The pickup's lights swept a crest in the road, and for a moment they were airborne, then slamming down an incline. "You don't have to break an axle on my account," Quantrill said. His head was hurting, the nosebleed starting up again.

"Your account, hell. I'm tryin' to get us to the stretch of blacktop ahead so we can outrun a cycle. The Longo brothers got motion sensors, Quantrill." He powered the pickup through a sharp bend, expertly.

"Brothers?"

"Reeve and Clyde; Reeve was one of the two with Jer a while ago. He's a good hand. Clyde's not on the payroll; stays on the south end of the spread and don't show his face much where the old man can see him. Clyde ain't worth spit except where you get points for meanness. He's good with a gun. But so are some of the others. That's why I wanted better protection than a cycle," he said, patting the doorsill of the sturdy old pickup as it thundered through the night.

"These guys have nightscopes, too?"

"Damn right. By the way, I stuck that rifle and kit of yours into the lockbox behind us. Some of Jer's boys was takin' that in. I think L. J was tryin' to give me a signal, but he ain't just awful long on guts. You got me between a rock an' a hard place now."

"Sorry."

"Whatthehell. I knew I'd have to make a choice one day.

Knew it the day Jer whupped me the second time in a row. Only thing that kept Jer in check was knowin' the quirt was ready, an' that he'd feel it the minute he took the bit in his teeth. None of this 'maybe' shit, either. Hold on," he added. The pickup forded a brook in a great rush and splatter of gravel, then was scrambling up an incline again.

Concannon continued, "If Jer thinks
maybe
he can get away with a thing, he'll do it for the fun of that maybe. Right now, he prob'ly thinks maybe his daddy won't jerk his bank credit even if he puts a hole in you. If anybody could afford to risk that, it's Jer."

Quantrill spat blood out the window. "Mul Garner won't call him to account?"

"Don't matter a lot if he does. Jer's put a pile of hard cash aside the past few years. He's still doin' it. An' the way he gets it, he was purely fuckin'-A bound to get the law on him."

Quantrill grabbed for handholds as the pickup failed to stay on the road, but there was no shoulder and no ditch—and damned near no road, for that matter. Concannon seemed to know every step of the way and found the road again, headlights sweeping wildly across the range. "Somebody should tell Jerome that if he does a stretch in Huntsville. the Justice Department might attach every cent he has in every bank account. They do that, these days." Quantrill said.

"Bank? When I said hard cash. I meant it. Gold Mex coins. Krugerrands, them Mormon fifty-buck pieces the Navajos uprated with turquoise—hard money." Another excursion into the brush and a near miss from a cedar. Concannon cursed, reversed, set out again. "Jer's like a ole brown squirrel with a holler tree. Got a stash out here someplace, nobody knows where." He laughed then and spat a gob that was half dust from his window. "Says he couldn't leave a track to it if he wanted to." Concannon bent forward over the wheel, squinting into the hostile dark.

Quantrill let the silence grow for a time, thinking, before he said. "Sounds like he was right when he said he's not anybody's boy."

"Well, he sure-God ain't yours; he's a thirty-year-old badass kid. You want some good advice? From here on out, watch your back."

Two minutes later, the driver said, "So far, so good. Blacktop starts up ahead; we can really make some time then." He slid the pickup around a bend, saw the mound of brush piled in the road just ahead. "Goddamn; that's new," he said, braking hard, starting to go around it.

An instant later, all of Cameron Concannon's worst suspicions were confirmed. Quantrill saw the muzzle flashes to their left; ducked below the doorsill expecting more from the right.

Concannon was slammed sideways against his passenger with the impact of the slug that passed under his left arm and into his lungs. Quantrill felt the pickup decelerate; heard the impacts of more slugs drum against the pickup body; thrust his foot against the accelerator and grabbed the steering wheel.

The pickup slewed sideways, wheels churning hard as the automatic kickdown engaged, and burst through the mound of heavy brush as Quantrill edged up to see where he was going. Now they were dragging a cedar branch under the chassis, sweeping up a great cloud of dust as the brittle cedar disintegrated beneath them.

A corner of Quantrill's mind was tallying facts, providing guesses, even while he tried to steer the pickup with Concannon slumped against him. Mul Garner had mentioned Rocksprings, but his foreman had several other options—for that matter, had taken an unlikely direction. This ambush meant that perhaps
all
the options were covered.

Counting those that had escorted him earlier, Quantrill had seen five cycles in the equipment barn. There might be at least five paths for a pickup truck across Garner Ranch, so these
cimarrones
might have only one cycle to cover each route. And if you wanted top speed from a hovercycle. cutting cross-country, you didn't load it down with two men.

That checked with the lack of fire from his right: there was probably only one man covering this unlikely exit from the ranch. Quantrill kept his head low anyway, steered the vehicle one-handed, and saw his headlights sweep across a smooth wide ribbon a hundred meters ahead. The grinding rush of foliage beneath the chassis suddenly ceased; too bad, for it had been laying down a fine dust screen to cover them, even against a nightscope. Quantrill was lucky, covering the distance to the blacktop road without decapitating a tree or sliding into a dry wash.

Quantrill pressed the accelerator as hard as he dared, sliding up to check the rearview. He saw no lights behind them and, without lights, a cycle could not be driven hard through darkness in such country. He felt Concannon's weak struggles to sit up. "I can't tell where you're hit," he said.

Concannon managed to sit up, his head flung back as he twisted to get his hand inside his shirt. "Left side. Up high."

"Is it very bad?"

"It'll do," Concannon admitted.

Quantrill unsnapped his safety belt; felt for Concannon's Colt without taking his eyes from the road. "Can you hit the brakes?"

In reply, Concannon did so. Quantrill was out of the pickup before it stopped, the old Colt ready for action, racing to the driver's side. Concannon needed help to get his safety belt loose and slide across the bench seat, cursing softly. Then Quantrill had them in motion again, relieved that he had seen no more distant muzzle flashes.

As much to monitor the man's alertness as for any other reason, Quantrill asked about their route: how far, where was the Leakey clinic, was there a VHP set somewhere under the dash. Concannon replied each time, using few words. The upshot of it was that they were a half hour from help. The two-way radio had long since been removed after it had given up under the merciless pounding of Wild Country roads.

Then Quantrill saw what could be a distant glow of lights on the horizon. Concannon sat up straight, swallowed hard. "Dizzy as hell," he said; then, "Call the ole man, Quantrill. Tell him about Jer's stash."

"What about it?" They were talking louder over the thunder of the engine, hurtling down a straight incline now.

"I seen it. Tell him. Tell him, faithful, under a ledge at the fig tree. Got it?"

Quantrill repeated it. "You can call him yourself," he promised, and turned right onto a good two-lane road at the edge of the little town of Leakey. It was one promise he could not make good.