He packed the shovel back in the Jeep, rinsed his hands from a canteen, then took a sap, some zip ties, and a few other items from the seat and stuffed them all into his pockets. Leaving the grave site, he made his way through the dark ponderosa forest. The Paiute Creek Ranch lay at roughly eight thousand feet of altitude and, despite being summer, the night air was cool to the point of chilliness. He paused frequently to listen to the night sounds of the forest: the distant yipping of a pack of coyotes, the low bassoon of a great horned owl.
In half a mile he came to the chain-link fence surrounding the ranch settlement. Through the trees he could see the yellow glow of windows. Stopping at the fence, he listened intently, but no sound came from the compound. It was as he hoped: they were apparently on “ranch time,” to bed at sunset, up before dawn.
A careful inspection indicated that there were no sophisticated alarms or sensors along the fence. Taking out a pair of fencing pliers, Gideon began to snip the chain links, creating a large flap that he pulled back and wired open. He crawled through and made his way carefully through the darkness to the rear of the main ranch house. All was quiet. A few dim yellow lights glowed in the lower windows, but—because the outfit was run on solar power and batteries—there were no bright spotlights or area lights.
He was convinced there would be some sort of night patroclass="underline" these people were paranoid and they would have posted guards. Moving with enormous care through the darkness, he drew up to the building and peered in the window. There, in a rocking chair, sat the cowboy with the squared-off beard, quietly alert, reading a book. An M16 was propped up against the sofa next to him.
Gideon was convinced Willis occupied rooms on the top floor. It was clearly the most comfortable accommodation at the ranch. One room had been his office, and he recalled seeing through an open door to a sumptuous bedroom with whorehouse-velvet walls and a canopy bed. That would be Willis’s bedroom.
So he had to do something about the man downstairs.
He watched the man for a while. The man didn’t look sleepy, he wasn’t drinking, and—what unnerved Gideon most of all—he was reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. This man was no dumb hick cowboy. The outfit was all show. This was a sophisticated and intelligent person who would not be easily fooled.
Gideon had anticipated running into some problem or other, and he realized he’d done so already. At all costs, he had to prevent the man from raising an alarm. He couldn’t just go in and bash the man over the head. That would make too much noise and had a high probability of ending in a ruckus or fight. Besides, Ulysses had an assault rifle. He began to formulate a plan. It was high-risk, but he couldn’t think of a better way.
Plucking a piece of paper from his pocket, Gideon scrawled a short note. He took a deep breath, then tapped on the window. The man looked up, saw Gideon’s black face peering in, and rose abruptly from his chair, grabbing the rifle.
Quickly, Gideon put his finger to his lips and gestured for the man to come outside. But instead the man started for the stairs. Gideon rapped again, this time louder, and shook his head, again putting his finger over his mouth. Then he held up the note he had written.
DON’T WAKE WILLIS!!
MUST TALK TO YOU
IMPORTANT!!
The man hesitated. He could not identify Gideon through the blackface and, Gideon hoped, would assume that Gideon might be a ranch insider. Who else would knock on the window like that?
Gideon gestured again, nodding and waving the man outside.
Shouldering the gun, the man headed for the door.
Gideon backed away from the house, into the edge of the trees, as the man came around the corner, looking this way and that. Gideon flashed his light, and the man approached.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“Shhhh,” Gideon whispered. “You wake Willis, we’re in big trouble. This is important— realimportant.”
The man frowned in suspicion. “What’s this all about?” he asked, unshouldering the rifle. “Who are you and why the hell have you blacked your face?”
Gideon backed up a little, then shut off the light and moved rapidly and silently in a lateral direction.
The man stopped at the edge of the trees. “Lane, is that you?” He was looking around, still pointing the gun at where Gideon was no longer standing. “What do you want? Come out.”
Gideon darted out and whacked the man across the side of the head with the cosh. With a moan, he sagged heavily to the ground. Fortunately, the rifle did not fire.
Seizing the man under the arms, Gideon dragged him deeper into the forest, tied him to a tree, blindfolded and gagged him, and then—with a certain hesitation—whacked him a second time.
Picking up the M16, he returned to the house, snuck inside, and carefully propped it back against the sofa. He quickly wrote a second note, just in case anyone came by, and left it on the rocking chair:
BACK IN A MOMENT
DON’T WAKE WILLIS!!
That might not fool anyone for long, but it would at least delay things. It had always amazed Gideon how most people chose to obey as a default reaction, even if the command was illogical or stupid. It was a reaction he had relied on many times, to good effect.
He snuck up the stairs. Now he faced the second problem: what to do if Willis had a woman in his room? He didn’t believe for a moment the man was celibate.
He crept softly through Willis’s dark, empty office. The door to the bedroom was locked. Gideon knelt, took out his tools, and—with infinite care and excruciating slowness—unlocked the door.
The room had a night-light—cute—and Gideon saw, to his enormous relief, that Willis was alone.
He walked silently over to the bed, a piece of gaffing tape already unrolled and ready to go. He leaned over Willis, who was sleeping on his back—and then in one smooth motion laid a knee hard across his chest, pinning him, while simultaneously pressing the blade of the straight razor against the man’s neck.
“Cut your throat if you move or make a sound,” he whispered hoarsely into the man’s ear.
He had previously dulled the blade, but Willis didn’t know that. With the razor pressed to his neck, the struggle ended. Willis lay there, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness. His eyes went even wider as he recognized Gideon through the blackface.
Keeping the razor to the throat, Gideon said: “Open your mouth. Wide.”
The man opened his mouth. Gideon placed the muzzle of the Colt Python into it, then removed the razor. “You’re going to do as I say, right? Blink yes.”
After a moment, Willis blinked.
“Stand up nice and slow. Keep the barrel between your teeth.”
He eased himself off Willis and the man stood up, exactly as told.
“Hands behind your back.”
Willis put his hands behind his back and Gideon cuffed them together with the zip ties. He removed the barrel from the man’s mouth, took the roll of gaffing tape, and sealed his mouth.
“Now you and I are going to take a walk. I’m going to keep the muzzle of this gun pressed against the back of your head and I willpull the trigger if anything happens. We will walk out of the door, down the stairs, and off the ranch. I repeat: if anyone disturbs us, I shoot you in the head. So it’s up to you to make sure no one disturbs us. Nod if you agree.”
Nod.
“Is there anyone else sleeping up here?”
Nod.
“Point to the room.”
With cuffed hands, Willis indicated the room next door, where Gideon had previously seen the woman lolling on the bed.
“Okay. She wakes up, you die. Now walk down the stairs and out the side door.”