The girl sat up on the countertop, rocking her long tan legs against a cabinet.
Colvin nodded to Jones, a notebook in a loose hand. The girl didn’t turn around, staring at Colvin. She continued to stroke long brown hair over her right ear.
“You think you could identify the men who followed you?” Colvin asked.
“Maybe.”
“If we showed you a photo?”
“Are you married?”
“Ma’am?”
Jones coughed, and the girl turned to him. She wore a pin-striped linen dress and tall-heeled shoes adorned with pink bows. She had sleepy green eyes, and acknowledged Jones with a soft “Hello” while managing to keep her attention full on that bright-eyed college boy.
Jones grinned a bit when he noted the perspiration pop on the young agent’s forehead.
“Miss Slick, we’ll do everything we can to protect you.”
“Do you all carry guns?”
“Do we?” Jones asked.
“I target-shoot out at a pumpkin farm sometime,” Colvin said.
“You don’t say,” Jones said. “Those pumpkins move much?”
Betty Slick shot him a hot look and then turned back to Colvin with a big smile.
“Mother said there was nothing amateurish about these men. She said, ‘They knew just what they were doing.’ ”
IT WAS ABOUT DAYBREAK NOW, URSCHEL KNOWING THIS BECAUSE the light changed through the gaps in the hospital tape. A gray, dull light, the rumbling and bumping down the road making him nauseated but never sleepy, tucked and rolled in the womb of the floorboard, and for a while feeling like part of the machine, the gears and the brakes, the cluttering, spurting jumble of cranks and belts digesting the black gold that to Charlie Urschel would always remain hot as the core of the earth and always a welcome sight dripping off the hands and faces of riggers and geologists, always with big, wide grins, from tapping that vein.
The steady, graveling swoosh turned to rolling, piano-key clatter of wood that went on for a good bit-up a bridge and over a river-and then the tires found solid ground again, gears shifting to a purr, and, with a slap of foot on pedal, they were headed somewhere damn fast.
Hours later, Charlie heard clanging and a trunk slam. A man and a young-sounding woman talking. The woman promised to meet them at the ranch, and Charlie strained an ear. But then one of the men gripped him by the neck and pulled him from the car, heels dragging on the ground, and another car door opened, and he was pushed inside and onto a large leather backseat.
“Do you love me?” asked the young woman.
“You know it, baby. You just know it.”
“Oh, shit,” said the young woman. “Here she comes, sick with the religion, too.”
“Get them sonsabitches off my land,” said an old woman. “A hellfire abomination.”
“Just a minute,” said the man.
“They’re going,” said the young woman.
“Don’t think that I won’t shoot you,” the old woman screamed. “Don’t you doubt it, boys.”
Charlie twisted his head toward the noise.
“I prayed for you,” the old woman said. “I prayed for you both, and you bring this evil to my doorstep. Let us all pray.”
The old woman began to hum “Amazing Grace.”
“Why don’t you plug Urschel’s goddamn ears,” the man said. “This ain’t smart, listenin’ to this radio show.”
“Hush, you filthy evil man.”
They drove the new car faster and harder, and Charlie knew it was a bigger, steadier ride, with an engine as powerful as a truck. He was lulled to sleep for a moment and then awoke when he heard the men talking again, and figured the young woman hadn’t come along.
“Did that fella know which way?”
“Head back ten miles and then turn east.”
“I told you.”
“You didn’t say anything. You said you knew where you were. We’d still be traveling down that road if I hadn’t stopped.”
“What if he’s wrong?”
“Would you shut up and let me drive?”
“Go back and ask him again.”
“Hell I will.”
“Just turn around and let me ask him.”
“The son of a bitch will hear you.”
“Just let me out and I’ll ask.”
“I know where I’m going.”
“You don’t even know what state you’re in.”
“I’d tell you but then he’d hear me say.”
“Goddamn.”
“Just lean back and enjoy the ride.”
“That’s what they tell the bastards in the electric chair.”
AGENT COLVIN DROVE JONES AND DOC WHITE OUT TO THE CROSSROADS made famous in the afternoon papers, Jarrett riding with them and pointing them to the exact spot where the gunmen had stopped and the two villains pulled out his wallet and took his cash. Jarrett seemed a little theatrical about the whole ordeal, walking off the paces and acting out the parts as if Jones were interested in some kind of Passion play.
“If only I had a gun,” said the rich man.
“And then what?” Doc White asked.
Jarrett started to say something but thought better of it.
He was a well-dressed man with the beaten face and accent of a rough-neck. Jones figured he’d spent many a day in the heat with oil deep under his fingernails and sun burning his neck before people started calling him sir.
A full silver moon hung overhead. Big and fat, the way a moon can only look in the country, and Jones didn’t even need a flashlight as he found the tire tracks with ease and squatted down, studying the pattern. He found matches in his shirt pocket, filled his bowl with tobacco, and lit it.
He looked up at the long endless road when he got the pipe going, Doc studying the tracks over Jones’s shoulder.
“Firestone,” Doc said.
“New?”
“Last year’s make.”
“You boys can tell that just from the tracks?” Jarrett asked.
Jones stood and walked along the tracks, taking the exact direction the farmer had noted. He pulled a small leather notebook from his coat pocket and inked in a few passages.
“He’s headed south,” Jones said, pipe set hard in his teeth.
“But the tracks go to Tulsa,” Jarrett said.
“Yes, sir, they do,” Jones said.
“Dirty kidnappers,” White said. “Remember when we’d catch fellas like this and chain ’em to a mesquite tree like Christmas ornaments?”
“No, I don’t, Doc. You must’ve confused me with someone else.”
“Horseshit,” White said. “Those Mexes jumped us outside Harlington? Remember? They’d been running whores and cheating cards out of the Domingo Roach, and we got some of ’em and tracked the rest down a trail where’d they’d laid a fire. Those bastards ambushed us right there, and we shot three of ’em dead? That wasn’t that long ago.”
“Nineteen hundred and thirteen.”
“You said you don’t recall.”
“I just wanted to see if you remembered who shot who.”
“You boys were Rangers?” Jarrett asked.
“Did you know Jim Dunaway?”
“Sure,” White said. “He lasted two weeks before being mustered out for drunkenness and insubordination.”
The silence was broken by the grumble of a low-flying airplane, and the men craned their heads to watch it pass in the night.
They continued on, following the tracks, Colvin driving slow behind them, the engine ticking and their feet crunching on gravel, moonlight leading the way.
About a half mile down from the crossroads, Jarrett about jumped out of his britches at the sight of a coiled rattlesnake raising its head, ready to strike.
“Holy shit!”
Jones shined his light, and the snake slithered off into the ditch.
“Shoot it,” Jarrett yelled. “Shoot it!”
“I’m not gonna shoot it,” Jones said. “Has the same right bein’ out here as us.”
“You ever been bit?” Jarrett asked. “Nearly killed me one time.”
“They just actin’ according to their nature,” Jones said. “Can’t fault ’em for it.”