“Well, I guess I could help you with that.” Straw Hat was grinning at her, a tall, lanky, long-faced man. “Save you some time and bad roads to cross. He’s not transporting no wetbacks. Not a thing of any possible interest to you folks. Just a bunch of construction gear.”
“Well, thank you, sir,” Bernie said. “But my boss is going to insist that I should have gone on in and seen for myself.”
Straw Hat didn’t respond to that.
“Just doing my job,” Bernie added. She made a dismissive gesture. “United States Border Patrol.”
“My name’s O’day,” Straw Hat said. “Tom.” He raised his right hand in the “glad to meet you” gesture.
“Bernadette Manuelito—Officer Manuelito today, and while we’re talking, the man I want to see about is getting away.”
“Trouble is,” said Tom O’day, “I can’t let you in here.” He pointed to the No Trespassing sign mounted to the gate post with NO ADMISSION WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION printed under it. “You got to have a note from the fella that owns this place. That or get him to call out here and arrange to get the gate unlocked.”
“I’m an agent of the Border Patrol,” Bernie said. “Federal officer.”
“I noticed the uniform,” O’day said. “Noticed that decal on your truck.” O’day was grinning at her. “So if you will just show me your search warrant, or a note from my boss, then I’ll unlock the gate and in you go.”
Bernie considered this a moment. None of this was seeming very criminal to her. However—
“Hot pursuit,” she said. “How about that? Then I don’t need a search warrant.”
Now it became O’day’s time to ponder. “It didn’t seem much like hot pursuit from what I saw of it,” he said. “Except for the dust you was raising. Trouble is the owner of this spread is tough as hell about keeping people out.” He shrugged. “Had some vandalism.”
“Vandalism?” She gestured at the landscape. “You mean like tourists breaking off the cactus pods or the snake weed. Or getting off with some of the rocks?”
Tom O’day seemed to be enjoying this exchange. He chuckled. “Somebody did cut some of our fencing wire once,” he said, “but that was some years ago, back before Old Man Brockman decided to sell the place and Ralph Tuttle got it. Now it’s his boy, Jacob, running it. But I think maybe some corporation or such actually put up the money. And young Jacob, he’s always away somewhere or other enjoying himself.”
“Brockman?” Bernie said. “That the man they named that range of hills after?”
“I think that was his granddaddy,” O’day said.
Bernie had been staring through the windshield, nervously watching the last sign of dust left by the green pickup disappearing.
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’m going to declare that I am in hot pursuit of a subject suspected of smuggling illegal aliens—or maybe we’ll call it controlled substances— and I ordered you to unlock the gate or face the full force and majesty of federal law. Would that do it?”
O’day tilted back his hat. They stared at each other.
“Well, yes,” he said. “I think Mr. Jacob Tuttle would buy that. I may need you to swear that there were no ibexes or orxys or even pronghorn antelope in view, and that I confirmed you didn’t have a hunting rifle with you.”
O’day was unlocking the gate, swinging it open.
“Ibex?” Bernie asked. “The African antelope with the long horns? I thought the game department quit importing them.”
“That’s the oryx you were describing. The ibex is the goat out of the Morocco mountains. And, yeah, the Game Department decided importing them wasn’t worth the effort, but Tuttle wanted his friends to have African safaris without making the long trip. That’s what that big expensive fence is about.”
“To keep them in?”
O’day was grinning at her. “And keep you poachers out.”
Bernie drove her pickup through.
“Hold it a minute. I want to close this and then I’ll show you where he’ll be. It’s just about three miles but it’s easy to get lost.”
Bernie had no doubt of that. O’day locked the gate, climbed into his truck, and headed down the tracks the green pickup had left.
By Bernie’s odometer it was a fraction less than four miles before she passed a taller than usual cluster of cacti and saw the truck with the green trailer parked with two other trucks—a flatbed and one towing a horse trailer. She had lagged far enough behind O’day’s pickup to avoid breathing his dust, but close enough to see he had done some talking on his cell phone during the trip. Probably telling any illegals who might be where they were headed that a cop was coming.
Three men were standing by the trucks as O’day drove up, apparently waiting. Fat chance of her seeing anything they didn’t want her to see. But then if they were smuggling illegals, where could they have hidden them?
O’day opened her truck door, inviting her out.
“Here we are,” he said. “And here is your smuggler. Colonel Abraham Gonzales of Seamless Welds Incorporated. And Mr. Gonzales, this young lady is Officer Manuelito of the U.S. Border Patrol.”
Gonzales bowed, tipped his cap, said: “Con mucho gusto, Señorita,” and produced one of those smiles that men of Gonzales’s age often display when meeting appealing young women. The side flaps of the trailer behind him were down, and Bernie could see racks of tools, pipes, hoses, and something that she guessed might be a motor of some sort—perhaps an air compressor, pump, or something. Beyond the trailer stood a much-weathered shack, its single room roofed and sided with corrugated metal sheeting, and its door hanging open. Beside the shack was a metal watering tank, and past it three workmen stood beside a front-end loader parked beside the shack, occupied with looking at her. If she wanted to collect illegals, Bernie thought, at least two of those probably would qualify. Definitely the youngest one with the mustache now giving her a younger version of the Gonzales smile. His was the “come on, baby” leer.
Gonzales gestured toward the open side of his trailer. “No place in here to haul illegals,” he said. “But you’re welcome to take a look.”
“OK,” Bernie said. “But actually I misread your license plate. I thought it was a Canadian truck and maybe you were smuggling in maple syrup, or something like that.”
Gonzales considered that a moment and laughed. So did O’day, but his seemed genuine.
“I doubt if Mr. Gonzales has anything illegal in that trailer,” he said. “But maybe you ought to look. And I’ve got to get this crew back to work.”
“Doing what?” Bernie asked, walking to the trailer. “What are you building? Or digging?”
“We’re going to set up that windmill,” O’day said, pointing to a pile of framework beside the shack. “Going to have a little oasis here. Water tanks for the livestock and a place for Mr. Tuttle’s pets to get a drink.”
“Oryxs. Right? I’d like to see one of those.”
“Just take a look,” he said. “That’s a couple of them over yonder.” He pointed east toward the hills. “They’re waiting for us to go away so they can come in and see if there’s anything in the tank for them to drink. Trouble is, it’s about dry. We’re going to try to fix that.”
“Where are they?” Bernie said. “Oh, I see them now. Wow. Bigger than I expected. Aren’t they a kind of antelope?”
“African antelope,” O’day said. “One of Tuttle’s hunting buddies shot one out here last spring. Weighed over four hundred pounds.”
Bernie finished a cursory check of the tools on the trailer’s racks, the welding masks, propane tanks, compressor engine, and a lot of large machinery far beyond her comprehension. She nodded to Gonzales. “Thank you. I don’t often get a chance to meet colonels.”