Watchman was close enough to see Joe’s terror. The starter was grinding and Joe’s shoulders moved with stress, willing it to turn over. Watchman reached the side of the wickiup and panted along it.
The engine caught. There was the grind of gears and the Land Cruiser lurched, almost stalled, revved up with the clutch in; it bucked and pitched and got itself rolling and when Watchman reached the road it was gathering speed away from him.
8.
Watchman jerked the door of the pickup truck open. Then he wheeled toward the black-hatted Indian.
“Where’s the keys to this thing?”
The Indian only watched him gravely.
Watchman strode to him and plucked the reins right out of the man’s hand. “I’ll bring him back.” He hauled himself into the saddle, using his arms because his legs wouldn’t lift him any more, and he put his heels to the horse’s flanks and neckreined savagely around.
The Land Cruiser had reached the first switchback and was coming back across below him. Watchman had wasted too much time getting on the horse and the Land Cruiser beat him to the point where their paths intersected: the road zigzagged along half-mile loops and Watchman was cutting straight across; he had to cover only a fraction of the Land Cruiser’s distance to reach the same points. There was a chance to intercept Joe on the third switchback unless the horse broke a leg first.
The Land Cruiser was four-wheel-drive. Joe could get off the road and make a straight run for it but his speed would be cut down both by the gearing and by the terrain, and on humpy slopes like this a horse could outrun the Land Cruiser. So Joe had to stick to the road where he could do fifty on the straightaways and hope to beat the horse to the bottom.
The wind slitted Watchman’s eyes and put tears in them. He leaned well back in the saddle to help balance the roan against the steep downward rush of the earth. He gripped the horse with what strength remained in his legs; he laced the reins around the fingers of his left hand and brought out the pistol.
The Land Cruiser flashed across in front of him and he was sure he saw the glisten of Joe’s eyes.
The Land Cruiser rushed away to the right and Watchman drummed across the road and kept going straight down toward the next piece of road. A patch of loose rock; the horse skidded a little and pebbles rattled downhill. The speed was too reckless but if he didn’t make that next switchback the game was lost because the road didn’t turn back this way again.
The Land Cruiser’s brake-lights flashed angrily as Joe went into the hairpin bend and the thing began to sway on its wheels; Watchman thought for a moment that Joe was going over but the Land Cruiser righted itself and he saw the spurt of exhaust smoke. The machine lurched precariously around the last of the turn, rumbled up on the rim of the road and then straightened out. Watchman heard the high whine of gears as Joe speed-shifted, flooring the accelerator; clots flew up from the back wheels and the Land Cruiser slid in the rain-muddled road, wheels bouncing side to side in the ruts.
Watchman flogged the pony with the pistol, yelling a cowboy’s “Hey-yaah!”
The horse flattened out into its dead run and it was like skiing down a fast slope.
It brought him into the road, angling away from Joe; he wheeled the horse and it responded so fast he knew it had to be a top-trained cutting horse. The Land Cruiser was bearing down and Watchman put the horse squarely across the road and lifted the pistol.
Joe had three seconds to make up his mind and through the windshield Watchman saw him thinking. Go around to one side: but that would give Watchman a perfect shot with the pistol. Go straight through: but that could wreck the Land Cruiser. Stop and use the rifle: but at this range the two weapons were equal and Watchman’s was already aimed.
Joe wrenched the wheel and the Land Cruiser plunged away to the right, skidding down along the grass. He was trying to bolt across the open country but Watchman had a good forty-yard shot and took it.
He scored on the fourth shot; it blew the front tire and the Land Cruiser lurched to the left.
Joe tried to keep it going on the rim but it was no good, the thing slowed to a crawl and Watchman came along on the horse, and finally the Land Cruiser stopped.
Watchman sat the saddle, training the pistol on Joe. Joe thought about the rifle but you couldn’t maneuver a rifle inside the cramped cab of a vehicle and finally Joe ran a hand through his hair, showing his desperation, and stepped out of the Land Cruiser bare-handed.
Watchman stepped down and handcuffed Joe’s wrists together, looping the cuffs through Joe’s belt.
“You made a pretty good run, Joe.”
“I sure did,” Joe screamed in a whisper.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a novel and all characters and events are fictitious. Principal locales are real but several specific places (like the settlement at Cuncon) do not exist in fact where this novel places them. There is a real White Mountain Apache Tribal Council and it has a real chairman but his name is not Frank Natagee and no resemblance is meant to be suggested. The same is true of officers of the Arizona Highway Patrol, the Indian Agency Police Force and the Arizona State Prison at Florence. The dispute over water rights described herein is suggested by recent events but in many particulars it is fictitious and should not be taken to represent actuality.
copyright © 1974 by Brian Garfield
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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