The Triggerman Dance (20 page)

He eased Valerie back into the bright October sunlight where he ordered the waitress, forcefully, to get some coffee ready for the sherrifs. Only now did he register the frantic yapping from the Land Rovers—three springers vaulted into excitement by the gunshots.

Titisi and Randell had gathered themselves to stare, somewhat bewildered, at the man and his dog.

Lane Fargo stood midway between the fallen hero and the restaurant, his pistol drawn. A consuming selfconsciousness emanated from him: his face was bright red, his eyes uncertain. He watched Holt and Valerie descend the steps to the parking lot unwilling to look either his boss or his boss's daughter in the eye as they approached.

"Mr. Holt, I think we could run them down in the Rovers.'

"No."

"There's not much out there but clean highway."

"No. Settle the dogs down, Lane. See if those bullet wrecked my gas tank."

"I'm thinking we should get off stage before the cops come.'

"Check the dogs and trucks, Lane."

"Yes, sir."

Valerie left her father's side to approach the man still kneeling in the dust beside his dog.

"Can I help you put him in your truck?"

He didn't look at her. "Sure. Thanks."

"Thank
you.
Oh, Jesus in heaven—thank you."

Holt approached, somehow larger now than he was a few moments earlier, and offered his hand to the kneeling man. "My name is Vann Holt."

The man finally rose, slipping his revolver into the pocket of his duster and slapping the hat against his leg, but still looking down at the dead shepherd. He shook Holt's hand without enthusiasm.

"John," he said, looking down again at the dog. "That was Rusty."

Holt contemplated John's slender, stunned face. He saw a trustworthy but uncertain face, a face hollowed with fear and revulsion, the face of a man who has acted and now must live with the consequences. For just a brief moment, the eyes reminded Holt, of his own. "You all right, son?"

"Pretty much."

"This is my daughter, Valerie."

John looked at her while he shook her offered hand, his eyes lingering on her face, perhaps on the blood that flecked it.

"I've never seen anything quite like that," said Holt.

"I haven't either, to tell you the truth, Mr. Holt."

"You know those guys?"

"Seen them around. I live out here."

"They know where?"

"I don't see how they could."

Valerie looked down at Rusty. "You train that dog?"

John looked down at Rusty, too, and Holt saw on his face an expression of tragic surprise. "To sit and stay. When he saw that guy choking you, he started growling like I'd never heard. He was just a stray when I got him, so he must have learned from someone else. He was a real good dog. Shit, now he's dead."

"I'd like to give you another one," said Valerie.

"Well . . ." said John. "Uh ... I need to use the sandbox. Excuse me. "Holt gathered with his party while John went to the bathroom in Olie's. Titisi examined the red inflammation across his stomach and felt for broken ribs, then pronounced himself unhurt. Fargo was still checking the trucks, down under the red one for a look at the gas tank. Randell sat in the shade with Holt; Valerie and the Ugandan.

Ten minutes passed before John returned. To Holt's eye, face had become more ruddy, his movements were no Ionger quite so slow, there was a quickness in his glance. He went to truck, removed the revolver and appeared to stash it under seat. Then he started up the reluctant old Ford and pulled it into the shade of a pepper tree. Holt could see a big chocolate labrador licking John's face as he reached across to roll the wind down a little more.

When John approached, he held his hat in his hand. "What, exactly, was happening here?" he asked.

"That's a story we might want to tell somewhere else," said Holt. "Let me ask you something, John—are you clean with law?"

"So far."

"Because we'd like to get out of here without filing any statements. Those bikers won't be talking—no reason we should, either. Unless you want to explain that revolver in your coat."

"Yeah ... I mean, no. You're right."

"Can we take you home?"

"I've got the truck."

"I mean, can we escort you home? We all need somewhere to settle our nerves. You close to here?"

"Just a few miles. But really,
I—"

"I insist," said Holt. "It's the right thing to do."

"Well, okay, then."

Holt threw a set of truck keys to Randell, then helped Valerie and John lift the big dog into the bed of John's old pickup lay there will all the innocence of the dead, a helpless mass held together by skin. The labrador watched through the rear cab widow, puzzled.

"Lead the way," Holt said. "We'll follow."

 

 

A few miles out Highway 371, Holt noticed that John's pickup truck was accelerating, fast. The Land Rover kept up easily, though doing seventy miles an hour on the narrow, winding two lane seemed foolhardy. He checked the rearview to find Lane Fargo right on his tail, a senselessly aggressive act wholly indicative of Lane's shame at being overcome by lowly motorcycle thugs. Holt lowered his window and waved Fargo off.

He didn't even notice it until rounding a gentle bend, where John's right-turn signal began to flash. Holt saw the brake lights, the abrupt slowing of the Ford, the turnoff to a dirt road leading back into the hills, and, only then, the column of deep black smoke rising from somewhere in the middle distance.

"No," he said.

Keeping up with John on the rutted dirt road wasn't easy. The Ford threw up clouds of dust as it skidded around the turns and braked heavily before the drops. Lewis, Clark and Sally bounced savagely in the back of the Rover—at one point Holt glanced back to see all three of them suspended between floor and roof, twelve legs scrambling for a purchase that wasn't there. The road snaked on, twist upon turn, cutback upon rise upon dip. Then it widened into a straight-away that banked into a steep climb. The Ford's back end slid left and right as it raced up the hill and disappeared over the crest. Holt laid back a little, then punched the Rover up and over the ridge, where before him lay a gentle meadow marked with a few trailers, a cinderblock building, and what must have been a house trailer, far on the perimeter of the place, flaring up like a struck match, gushing black smoke into the blue desert sky.

A short heavyset man stood about thirty yards from the inferno, a water hose in both hands. The arc of water feebly vanished into the flames. The Ford skidded to a stop beside him and John jumped out, followed by the dog. Holt braked early and pulled in behind the Ford. He yanked his fire extinguisher free of the floorboard by the seat, but he could see that it was already too late: the trailer looked like a box of fireworks set on fire. The propane tank already had blown, judging by the gaping hole at one end. He saw the heavyset man nodding violently, taking one hand off the hose to point down the road.

"Those
pigs"
hissed Valerie. "Those absolute human swine."

Then, as Holt watched, John returned to his truck, threw forward the seat and pulled out a cloth case, from which he extracted what looked like a 12 gauge Remington automatic. He hurled the case back behind the seat and slammed it back. From somewhere in the cab he took a box of shells, pried open the top and grabbed three, which he loaded into the gun. Then he was back in the truck and the labrador had jumped in with him and the Ford fishtailed in a wide, gravel-throwing turn that threw up a cloud of dust as John gunned it back down hill toward the dirt road.

"Stay with him, Dad."

"I'm staying with him, Val. Hold on tight."

John must have known every foot of the miserable dirt road because he took it at an astonishing velocity. A mile from the trailers he shot up a wide, well-tended drive to a ranch house set in a meadow of grazing horses. By the time Holt caught up, John was talking with two men by a corral, then he jumped back into his truck and skidded back out in Holt's direction. John nodded at him as he flew past. Lane Fargo, Randell and Titisi had to swerve to miss him. Then another stop a half mile further down Again John was conferring with neighbors as Holt finally arrived and again the young man was in his truck and blasting back to the road by the time the dust cleared and Holt could make sense of what was going on. Another half mile down, the Ford skidded to a stop beside a run-down little batch of trailers. Three women sat in the shade, drinking beers and smoking. This time, Holt saw that John took his shotgun with him as he walked past the women and threw open the door of the largest trailer, a sun faded slum of a unit, slouching off-center and unshaded by a very large and very dead tree. John disappeared inside, then came out and pushed past the women, who appeared to be cussing him mightily. John snapped something back at them, but Holt was too far away to hear it. Beside him, Valerie was scanning the desert with her dark brown eyes. "He'll never find them out here They're miles away by now."

"He needs to play this out."

Two more miles of anguishing dirt road, three more fruitless stops, all transpiring under the growing desert heat. Finally the Ford slowed and grunted to a stop where the dirt road met the highway again, and the door flew open and John got out slammed it hard, took three steps to the wooden fence running alongside the road and kicked one of the dry twisted posts, his boot shattering it and the three strands of rusted barbed win shivering with the impact. He walked back to the truck and looked down into the bed. Then he opened the driver's side door Pulled out the gun and a small, six-pack sized cooler. He walked to the edge of the dirt road and hurled the cooler into the air

then raised the gun and blasted it three times before it landed, each shot reducing the thing to smaller pieces that threw off wobbling jets of dark liquid until the mangled former box landed in the sagebrush, bounced, and rolled off into the sand. John pitched his gun back into the truck cab, looked at Holt, then turned his back to them, shook his head, and lowered it.

"Righteous anger," said Holt. "It's the best thing he can have right now."

"Besides a home and a live dog."

"Well put."

"Poor man. It's my fault. It's all my fault. I'll make it up to him."

"We'll make it up to him, Valerie."