Strekker leered at him. Hansen was sizing him up as if Neal was a bull he was thinking about buying.
“You’re a fighter,” Hansen said.
“I don’t want to be,” Neal answered. “But if I’m pushed…”
“We’re all being pushed, son,” Hansen said. “But some of us have decided to push back.”
Neal just shrugged.
“I can check out your story, you know,” Hansen continued.
I’ll bet you can, Neal thought. “It’s not a story, Mr. Hansen. I wish it was.”
“And if it turns out you’re lying you’d best be long gone from this valley.”
Mister, Ed Levine will have this cover story locked down so tight that I would believe it if I checked it out.
“And if it turns out to be true?” Neal asked.
“Then maybe I could use a man like you,” answered Hansen.
And maybe I could use a man like you, Neal thought. But he said, “What for?”
Hansen smiled. “Depends. Let me ask you, Neal, what did you see from up here with those glasses?”
Do I lie? Do I bluff? If I he and they don’t buy it, I’m dead. But if I tell the truth and they don’t like it, I’m dead.
So Neal gave them his best “ink blot” look, an enigmatic expression that allowed the other person to read into Neal’s face whatever it was he wanted to read-lips curled into the slightest of smiles, eyes just a shade widened.
“Nothing,” he said.
Hansen smiled back at him. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. Then he signaled to his boys to follow him and headed off down the slope.
Strekker bumped into Neal.
“You and me still have a date, shithead,” he hissed as he walked away.
That is a distinct possibility, Neal thought.
He waited for a few minutes to let his heart slow down and started the hike back to the cabin.
Steve Mills was waiting for him with a gun.
“I forgot to give you this,” he said just as Neal was about to drop into a fetal ball on the ground.
Steve looked at the binoculars. “Sightseeing?”
Neal ignored the question and gestured at the rifle. “What do I need that for?”
“You’re a long way from the nearest policeman, Neal,” Steve answered. “And a lot closer to the nearest cougar. Not to mention coyotes.”
“Or goofball survivalists.”
“Or goofball survivalists.”
“I don’t want to shoot a cougar or a coyote.”
“Oh, hell, the noise will scare them away,” Steve said.
“In that case…” Neal reached for the rifle.
“You know how to shoot one of these things?” asked Steve.
“Something to do with pulling a trigger, right?”
The rifle, Neal learned, was a Marlin 336. It had a lever action, a ten-round magazine, and shot 30/30 ammo. It weighed six pounds but seemed a lot heavier when Neal shot it and it bucked back against his shoulder. And it did make one hell of a noise.
“But don’t you need this?” Neal asked through the sound of cathedral bells tolling in his ears.
“No,” Steve answered. “I’ve got a regular arsenal back at the house. You collect these things over the years. You saw the Winchester. I have a Remington, a Savage combination, an old H amp;R twelve-gauge pump, even a few old handguns until the fed decide to collect them all. I guess I can spare you this one.”
I guess you can.
“You oughta practice with this a little bit,” Steve advised. “You never know.”
“True enough,” Neal answered.
He watched as Steve loped back across the sagebrush toward his place.
You never know, Neal thought.
He went back into the cabin, took a half hour or so to get a fire started in the stove, then another forty-five minutes to figure out the intricacies of an old-fashioned coffee percolator. By the time he made a pot it was dusk, and he took his hard-won cup out onto the small porch and watched the hard desert edges turn a soft rose. The Shoshone Mountains across the valley turned into indistinct silhouettes, first charcoal gray and then black. The sun blazed red for a finale and then dropped behind the mountains.
A moment later the coyotes started to howl.
Ed Levine was bored.
He was gazing out his office window at Times Square. He was leaning back in his chair, his feet propped on his desk, a cigarette smoldering in a saucer on the desk.
The flashing lights below were doing nothing for him. Neither were the sounds of the taxi horns and buses, nor the vaguely human sounds that reached up from the streets. He leaned over, took a drag of the cigarette, and leaned back again as the man on the other end of the phone went on and on and on.
The office door opened and Joe Graham walked in.
“Can you hold on a minute?” Ed asked the man on the phone.
He pushed the hold button, looked at Graham, and raised his eyebrows.
“It’s all set up,” Graham answered the unasked question.
“Good,” Ed replied. He took a closer look at Graham. “You’re worried.”
“The kid hasn’t been undercover like this for a long time. It’s risky.”
Ed nodded. “It always is.”
Graham rubbed his artificial hand into the sweaty flesh of his real palm.
“I want to get closer,” he said.
“It’s too soon.”
“I don’t want it to be too late.”
Ed frowned and gestured at the phone.
Graham set himself down in the chair across from the desk.
Ed frowned more and said, “If we get too close now we might burn him. Just be ready to go.”
“I’m ready now.”
Ed gestured impatiently toward the phone again. Graham showed no sign of moving from the chair.
“Okay,” Ed said. “Start working out a cover for yourself. Now stop worrying and go have a couple of beers.”
Graham got up. “I’ll have the beers,” he said from the doorway, “but I won’t stop worrying.” He closed the door behind him.
It is definitely time for a change, Ed thought.
He pushed the hold button again and started speaking before the other guy could. “Let’s get down to business,” Levine said. “Just what is it you need, Reverend Carter?”
Back out on The High Lonely, Jory Hansen sat at the bottom of the ravine. He was watching the moon.
When it was high and full, Jory hopped onto his horse, gave the mare a gentle kick in the ribs, and started across the rabbit brush, dull silver in the moonlight.
He reached the spur of the mountain, stopped for a moment to stroke the horse’s neck, and then let the animal pick its way carefully up the slope.
From the brush beside the narrow trail, small eyes glowing red in the darkness watched him. An owl left its perch and flew slowly above and behind him, hoping that the horse would flush a rabbit or a squirrel out of the brush. On a shelf of rock a hundred or so yards above, a cougar flicked its ears as it caught the hated scent of the horse and retreated into a deep stand of cedar.
A half an hour later the cougar growled softly as the horse passed by, a rabbit squealed in terror as the owl sank its talons into its neck and lifted it into the dark sky, and far out on The High Lonely a coyote sniffed the night air for the distinctive scent of death.
Part Two
Outlaws
5
Neal picked up the heavy cast-iron skillet and poured the bacon grease into an old coffee can. He set the skillet back on top of the wood stove. As the thin layer of grease spattered and hissed, Neal broke two eggs on the edge of the skillet and opened them into the pan. He swirled the skillet gently until the eggs were set and put it back down on the cast-iron heater.
On the back burner, the bubbling of the old metal percolator slowed to a single blurp. Neal picked the coffee pot up with a hot pad and poured himself a mug. Prismatic residue floated on top, giving off that oily tang particular to old-fashioned perked coffee. Neal took a careful sip, scalding his lips only slightly as he stepped out onto the cabin porch.