Lone Calder Star (21 page)

No time was wasted acknowledging his instructions. All knew time was the fire's ally, not theirs.

While Dallas ran to get the blankets, Quint vaulted the corral fence and shoved open the double doors to the barn where the tractor was housed. Empty hauled himself onto the tractor seat and cranked up the engine. Quint climbed on behind him, holding tight to the seat as the tractor lurched out of the barn and roared over to the'plow that sat next to the building. With an expert swing of the wheel, Empty backed the tractor up to the plow and Quint hopped down to secure the ball hitch. The instant he was back on board, Empty took off.

The entire process took only scant minutes. And in that same period of time, the flames had advanced another fifty yards across the tinder-dry grass. Fanned by its own powerful draft, the fire was picking up speed.

It was like a living thing, leaping to devour anything in its path, its appetite never satisfied.

Smoke rolled ahead of it, lit by flying embers that looked like so many devil-red eyes in the darkness.

As the tractor chugged out of the ranch yard at full throttle, the plow rattling behind it, Quint caught a glimpse of Dallas sprinting from the house, bundled cloth clasped in her arms. Then the tractor was shooting onto the ranch lane, taking advantage of the natural firebreak it provided on the east side to skirt the racing flames and charge ahead of them into the obscuring wall of smoke.

Empty kept his foot to the pedal, never slackening the tractor's headlong pace through the smoke. At last the sting of it was no longer in their eyes.

Holding on tightly, Quint leaned close and shouted in the old man's ear, "The dry wash up here on the right-we'll try to stop it there."

Empty's answer was a short nod that signaled he had heard and understood.

The shallow wash was one that nature had carved near the base of a hill to handle the runoff from heavy rains. At its widest point it was no more than three feet across, its bed a mix of bare soil and stones of varying sizes. The wash itself didn't reach all the way to the ranch lane, but rather started at a point some one hundred feet from it.

As the trarIor approached the imaginary point of intersection, Empty slowed its speed and braked to a stop with its nose pointed at the fence. He pulled a pair of wire cutters out of his jacket pocket and passed them to Quint.

Cutters in hand, Quint swung down from the tractor and hurried to the fence post on his right.

Standing to one side to avoid the whip of the wire, he cut through the top strand, heard the sharp whang of its release, and moved to the second, then the third. Careful to avoid the barbed points, he dragged all three strands out of the way, clearing a path for the tractor.

"I'll wait here for Dallas," he shouted to make himself heard above the revving of the tractor's motor.

Empty waved an acknowledging hand and started through the gap in the fence, lowering the plow blades when he was nearly through.

Quint observed the struggle of the blades to dig into the hardpacked ground. The first smoke
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was already showing above the hilltop. For a moment he doubted that he had picked an area far enoughh in advance of the flames to give them a chance of stopping them. He'd know soon enough.

By the time Dallas arrived in the pickup, the tractor's headlight beams were past the midway point in the wide swale between the two hills, and a black line of smoke showed above the rise of the first one. Once the fire crested the hill, Quint knew the wind would whip it down the slope at lightning speed.

Off in the distance, he caught the wail of the fire trucks. The sound offered confirmation that help was on the way, but he couldn't wait for it to arrive, not with the smoke smell growing stronger every minute. As soon as the pickup rolled to a stop alongside him, Quint opened the door and hustled Dallas out of the cab.

"Did you bring some gas?" he asked as he slid behind the wheel.

"There's a two-gallon can in the back. It was all I could find."

"It'll have to do." He handed her thr flashlight that he kept stowed under the front seat and directed her to wait there for the fire trucks.

He pulled the door shut, effectively cutting off any objections before Dallas could make them, and drove off into the pasture. She stood alone on the darkened ranch lane, conscious of the steadily advancing smoke cloud.

Soon the black pickup blended into the night shapes, its form no longer distinguishable. She had only its red taillights and the outward sweep of its headlight beams to track its passage. Her grandfather was out there somewhere. She could hear the growl of the tractor, but she couldn't see it.

Turning, Dallas threw a searching glance down the lane, her attention drawn to the full-throated cry of sirens. But the fire trucks had yet to roll into view.

Stars dotted the sky to the south. Their glitter was a contrast to the smoke-darkened sky above and behind her. But it was the low ominous sound the approaching fire made, a sound that reminded Dallas of a howling wind, that had her anxiety level rising.

The metallic slam of the pickup door had Dallas swinging back around to face the pasture. She quickly located the lights from the pickup, noticing they were no longer moving. Seconds later, Quint passed in front of the their beams, toting the red gasoline can, before the shadows swallowed him.

As she scanned the darkness in search of him, she became aware of a dim glow in her side vision.

It was from the fire, backlighting the hill. Dallas threw another anxious glance down the lane, focusing on the undulating sirens in an effort to judge how close they were.

In the next second, she was startled by the sudden whoosh of flames leaping to life very close to her. A long, yellow line of them ran along the entire base of the hill, stretching to a point well beyond it. The moment she saw them, Dallas realized that Quint had used the gasoline to start a backfire and slow the red flames that now crowned the hill. But it was traveling fast, so very fast.

The sirens loud wail almost drowned out the screech of brakes that came from the state road, but Dallas caught it and hastily turned on the flashlight as she ran forward to meet the arriving fire engines.

The wind was in the wrong direction to carry the smell of smoke to the Slash R Ranch, yet lights blazed from a half dozen windows in the main house. All shone from the private quarters of its occupants.

Clad in a burgundy silk robe, Max Rutledge shoved open the door to his son's bedroom and maneuvered his wheelchair through (he opening as the heirloom clock on the room's fireplace mantel struck the two o'clock hour. His black gaze skipped over his terryrobed manservant and personal nurse, Harold Barnett, and fastened on Boone, seated on a chair, his back to the door and the male nurse.

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"Just what in hell is going on here?" Max glowered at Boone as he rolled his chair closer.

Boone tossed him a backward glance. "Exactly what it looks like," he retorted in a hard, tight voice. "Barnett's digging buckshot out of my back."

"It's nothing serious," Barnett said with calm assurance. "Only one is lodged very deeply. The rest barely penetrated the skin." Using surgical tweezers, he plucked one out, drawing a wince from Boone, and added it to the three lead pellets already nestled on a saucer.

Max was close enough to see for himself the blood that lightly seeped from a dozen or so holes across the right side of Boone's muscled back. "Who did it?"

"I didn't hang around to see who was holding the shotgun," Boone answered with sarcasm and grimaced when Barnett probed another hole. "Probably old man. Garner. A shotgun's always been his weapon of choice."

Max leaned forward, nearly choking on the rage that reddened his face. "Good god are you telling me you were at the Cee Bar tonight?"

Boone nodded, unable to explain why he had chosen to go himself rather than send one of the ranch hands. At the time it had seemed a wise decision, eliminating any chance of loose talk. But that reasoning was now colored by the thrill of the almost overwhelming sense of power he'd experienced slipping through the night, setting the fire.

And when that shotgun had gone off and he'd felt the sting of the blast, there had been a rush unlike anything he'd ever known. But it wasn't something Boone could put into words, not the kind his father would understand. So he didn't try.

"That hay made the biggest bonfire you've ever seen," Boone said, still seeing it in his mind's eye.

"It was the slickest thing. I just walked along that row of big bales, touching the flame from the portable butane torch to each one until they were all on fire. I probably should have left it at that," he added. "But I saw a round bale over in the horse corral. So I went over and torched it, too. The fire spooked the horses, though. Old man Garner must have heard the fuss they raised and come out to see what was going on. Another couple of minutes and I would have been long gone."

"My God, what an utter fool you are," Max muttered thickly. "Don't you have enough brains to realize you could have been caught?"

Boone bristled at the anger and derision in his father's voice. "I could have been killed, too, but I wasn't. So quit your bitching and consider that you're getting off easy. You can bet if it was one of the ranch hands sitting here, he'd be squawking big time about getting peppered by a shotgun.

And you'd end up paying him a fistful of money to keep his mouth shut. Just look how much I saved you."

"Don't talk to me about the money you saved!" Max exploded in temper. "Not when you could have cost us everything!"

" and just how could I have done that? " Boone taunted as another shotgun pellet plinked into the saucer.

Max stared at him for a long second, his expression a mixture of incredulity and rage. "My God, you really don't have the brains to fugure it out, do you?" There was a trace of loathing in the curl of his lip."it turns my stomach that I have to explain something obvious to my own son."

" Then don't bother," Boone jeered in retaliation, then grunted sharply in pain and jerked away from Barnett.

"Sorry, sir," Barnett offered in bland apology. "That one's embedded a bit deeper than I thought. It'll take some probing to reach it."

" Then do it," Boone ordered curtly. "But next time give a man more warning."

Coldly silent, Max Rutledge looked on while Barnett switched instruments and resumed his search for the buckshot buried in Boone's back. Sweat beaded on Boone's forehead, but it was the only outward indication of discomfort as he sat unmoving, not a sound coming from his throat, not a single muscle twitching in pain. Once the foreign object was extracted, Barnett was quick to press a gauze pad on the area and stanch the fresh flow of blood from the wound.

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"For your information," Max began in an icy-hot voice, "the use of a third party for such tasks as tonight's provides deniability if he should have the misfortune of being caught in the act. It makes it a matter of his word against ours."

"So you've said before." Boone's anger simmered closer to the surface as he lifted his head in challenge. "Have you ever considered how many third parties are out there, scattered over the country? If one starts talking, what's to stop the rest from speaking up? Suddenly it's their word against ours."

"Don't be stupid. That will never happen." Max dismissed the notion out of hand.

"Probably not," Boone agreed with reluctance. "If any tried, you'd just hire a bunch more third parties and harass then until they broke, just like you always do."

"Nobody will ever cross me and get away with it." The flat, hard statement was its own warning.

Boone knew it was true, but he felt nothing but disgust for the gutless methods employed by his father. He looked away and muttered, "Why don't you go back to bed and leave me alone? You got what you wanted tonight. The hay's been destroyed."

"I'll leave when I'm ready." The answer came back hot and quick. "In case you've forgotten, I own this house!"

"How can I forget when you constantly ram it down my throat?" Boone fired back, then muttered, more to himself, "Sometimes I wonder why I'm still here."

"You're here because you don't have the brains to make it on your own," Max retorted. "You'd fall flat on your face if you tried."

Goaded by the scathing rebuke, Boone challenged, "If that's true, then how come I know there's a quicker way to put the Cee Bar out of business than the way you're going about it?"

"And just what bright idea have you come up with?" The question was riddled with contempt for its answer.

"I certainly wouldn't waste my time setting fire to a bunch of hay," Boone sneered. "I'd burn the whole damned place down and poison the cattle-"

"And have it splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the state while you're at it.

There'd be reporters all over the place. Wouldn't that be an intelligent move?" Max declared in open disparagement. "Don't do any more thinking. Just do what I tell you. And only what I tell you," he added in emphasis. "And try not to screw that up."

With a flip of the controls, Max swung the wheelchair in a half circle and rolled out of the bedroom while Boone glared holes in his back. As soon as the door closed, he twisted his head around to throw an impatient glance at Barnett.

"Aren't you finished yet?" he muttered.

" I'll only be a few more minutes sir." The placid Barnett never looked up front his task as he methodically swabbed

antispectic on the first wound and placed a small bandage over it.

" Hurry it up," Boone grumbled and bowed his head once more, but he was smarting too much from his father's cutting remarks to notice the sting inflicted by the antiseptic solution Barnett used. "I'm tired of all his bitching. Every time I turn around he's crawling up my ass about something. It doesn't matter what I say or do, you can bet he'll find fault with it. And I'm getting damned tired of it."

Fully aware that no comment was expected, Barnett withheld any, although he was privately of the opinion that Max Rutledge's judgment of his son was an accurate one.