15
There was a bank of snow cloud resting on the distant peaks of the Rockies far off in the west, but out here on the edge of the Great Plains the air was hot and dry as Dalton wheeled his rented pickup into the haphazard little collection of shacks and trailers and bungalows at the end of a long arrow-straight gravel road. The wind stirred up a sea of long yellow grass, a great golden plain that reached out for miles in every direction, an ocean of rippling light as the day was closing. He parked the truck in front of a low wooden structure that had once been whitewashed but was now the color of bleached bone.
In the shade under the porch roof three ancient leathery-looking men, all in faded jeans and dusty boots and cowboy hats or rumpled ball caps, leaned back in their chairs, their hard, pinched faces closed and wary, watching grimly as Dalton climbed out of the truck, followed by Irene, who trotted off across the dusty hardpan to investigate a stand of stunted cottonwood trees.
A flag bearing the profile of a Plains Indian surrounded by rays of light and embroidered with the words “Comanche Station” flapped in the wind, and from inside the building came the sound of country music, a Dobro endlessly moaning as a woman with a drawling sensual voice lamented her taste in lovers as she lay fearfully awake in her double-wide listening to an angry drunk pounding on her door. Dalton climbed the withered old stair boards and stopped in front of the three old men, who looked up at him without any sign of life or interest.
“I’m looking for a boy named Wilson Horsecoat,” said Dalton. “I’m told he can be found here most evenings.”
“Who’s looking?” said the man on the far left. His skin was as dry and cracked as a Gila monster’s and he had small, sharp teeth stained golden brown. He seemed to have the power around here, and the other two looked blankly out at the sea of yellow grass as if Dalton had simply snapped out of existence.
“The name is Micah Dalton.”
“That she-wolf yours?”
Dalton looked back into the street. Irene was sitting a few yards away, on her haunches, staring up at the porch.
“She’s with me. But she’s not mine.”
“What’s her name?”
“Irene.”
“She looks snake-mean. I like a snake-mean dog. No use else they snake-mean. Buy her from you, if you want. I’m Bill Knife. This is my place. No whites allowed in here. No offense.”
“None taken, Mr. Knife. Is Wilson Horsecoat inside?”
“Might be. Might not. Can’t say. What you want with him?”
“Just some personal business.”
“You federal?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of federal?”
Dalton reached into his leather jacket and pulled out his Agency ID. He leaned down and held it out. Bill Knife leaned forward to squint at it, and then looked back up at Dalton.
“You ain’t a Goddam Feeber then?”
“No sir.”
“Hate the Feebers. Terrible folk. Deaf. No ears on ’em at all.”
“That’s been my experience.”
“Has it?”
“It has.”
“Well. What’s a spook from D.C. want with that young fool?”
“A talk. Nothing more.”
Bill Knife studied Dalton for a time, recognizing incoming trouble and mildly curious to discover its precise nature.
“Wilson is in there, if you want to go bring him out.”
“I can go inside?”
“My place, isn’t it? Watch his hands there, son.”
Dalton sketched a salute to Bill Knife, looked briefly at the other men, who continued to stare impassively out at the moving sea of grass, and then he called to Irene, who snapped her panting jaws shut and came racing up the steps to stop beside him, looking tense and eager.
He pushed open the screen door and held it for Irene, who padded into the cool dark of the interior. The broad wooden-walled room was filled with a scattering of couches and wooden chairs, facing every which way, with a few card tables here and there, an ancient fridge wheezing away in the corner.
The four lean, rangy young men inside — there were no women visible — had all fallen silent as Dalton and Irene came into the room. The radio had been turned off a while back so they could hear the conversation out on the porch. They were now leaning back in their chairs, staring at him, using the same slack-jawed hard-eyed war face that young men all over the world have copied from the movies.
They all looked range-hard and capable and frankly Dalton didn’t give a bucket of horse spit how they looked. In the center of their circle there was a low, rough-hewn table filled with empty beer bottles. The shabby room was thick with hanging smoke. It smelled of sweat, chili, and beans. Warm beer. Teenage testosterone.
“Afternoon,” said Dalton. “I’m looking for Wilson Horsecoat.”
“That your wolf bitch?” said one of them, a lean Comanche boy, rather horse-faced, with red-rimmed staring eyes, his long greasy black hair held back from his high pockmarked forehead by a silver conch.
“You Wilson Horsecoat?”
“Who the fuck is he?”
“You are.”
“Who says.”
“Mr. Knife.”
“Bill Knife can suck my cock.”
The other three hooted at this and the boy with the long black hair showed Dalton his teeth, fine and strong and vivid against his muddy brown skin. His eyes were twitchy and his pupils too small for a dark room but he seemed to be reasonably straight. Dalton looked at the boy’s hands, veined and knotted, and at the butt of the Ruger pistol they were resting on. Irene, who had been sitting near Dalton’s leg, got to her feet and started to emit a low purring growl. The laughter stopped.
“You leash that bitch,” said the boy, “or I’ll shoot her.”
“Get up.”
“What?”
“You’re Wilson Horsecoat. Get up.”
“So I’m Wilson Horsecoat. So fuck you.”
No one saw him move; it was as if Dalton’s Colt had just materialized in his right hand. He leveled it at Horsecoat’s nose.
“You,” he said, looking at one of the other boys. “Reach over and lift that Ruger out of his belt. Put it on the floor and kick it over.”
The boy leaned over, tugged the pistol loose, holding it with the tips of his fingers, set it down on the scarred floorboards, and shoved it across to Dalton, who had never taken his eyes off Horsecoat. Dalton picked the Ruger up and studied it for a moment.
“Where did you get this?”
“It’s mine, fuck-nuts. I had it for years.”
“This is a silenced Ruger Mark Two. It fires subsonic 22-caliber hollow-points. It’s a covert assassination weapon and simply being in possession of one will get you a federal twenty years. It can’t be bought anywhere in America.”
He hefted it, glancing at the slide.
“This particular weapon was modified for the CIA by a custom armorer in Alexandria, Virginia. This broad arrowhead is his personal trademark. This weapon was taken from an agent of the CIA and the fact that you have it opens you up to a charge of murdering an intelligence operative in a time of war. The penalty for that is death. And I have reason to believe that this weapon was used a couple of days ago to shoot a Special Forces soldier in the back of the head. Stand up.”
Horsecoat stood, knocking his chair over, trying for cold icy threat but barely reaching surly. The other three men stayed put, looking down at the table, hands in their laps. Dalton got the impression that Wilson Horsecoat had no friends in this room.
“Let’s go.”
“Go? Go where?”