The Widow's Revenge (37 page)

The startled B Team leader turned, instinctively fired the carbine at the slender, moonlit figure.

Sidearm drawn, Charlie Moon sprinted across the parlor to the porch door.

Special Agent Rose was right behind him, her 9-mm Glock ready for action.

Smith’s .44 Magnum in his hand, Scott Parris got a glimpse of the seminaked man at the window. He shot through the glass. Three times.

Call it overkill. The first of the plump slugs severed Asok’s spine at the base of his neck, the second took his left arm off at the shoulder, and number three punctured a lung and knocked him off the porch, facedown into the mud.

Call it coincidence. Chief of Police Scott Parris, aka
Marshal Scot Paris
, had shot his man . . .
in the back
.

IT’S OVER

Charlie Moon was kneeling beside Sarah.

The girl’s pretty party dress was soaked in blood that gleamed black in the silver moonlight.

Moon caressed her pinched face with his fingertips. “Hang on, now. Everything’s going to be . . .” The lie stuck in his throat. Everything was
not
going to be all right. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not
ever
.

Blood gurgled in the girl’s throat, trickled from the corner of her mouth. Sarah had no breath left for final words.

Never mind.

The Ute read her lips in the moonlight.

I love you, Charlie Moon
.

“I know.” He felt her slipping away. “I love you too.”

DID THE
seventeen-year-old hear these words she had yearned for for so long?

Only God and Sarah know.

He is silent
.

She is gone
.

CHARLIE MOON
embraced the limp, frail corpse against his chest. The husk she had left behind was like a bag of brittle sticks.

The stricken man was unable to move. Or to make a sound.

Not so Mr. Zig-Zag. Sarah’s spotted cat
screamed
.

The hound locked in Sarah’s pickup
howled
.

Scott Parris threw his head back and roared like a wounded cougar.

Stunned by this night’s final act of violence, Special Agent Rose stood as still as the trees, where there was not the least breath of breeze to stir a leaf. The woman listened. What did she hear?

THE COLUMBINE
is not entirely silent
.

Under the porch step, a fat black cricket chirps
.

In the ruins of the burned-out machine-shop shed, a few embers snap and crackle
.

Farther away, the rolling of the river can be heard
.

But what is that faint throbbing, rhythmic whump-whump?

It is not the B Team leader’s blood pump. Asok’s spirit has also departed, but to a different destination than Sarah’s
.

The whump-whumping is generated by the whirling rotors of an incoming FBI helicopter. Finally, the cavalry Special Agent Rose summoned is arriving
.

DAISY PERIKA
? She remains in the parked pickup truck.

OH GOD!
DAISY PERIKA MOANED IN IMPOTENT FURY
.
WHY COULDN’T IT have been me instead of that poor little girl whose life had barely got started?
All alone in the pickup cab, the tribal elder hung her head and wept.

But wait. Is Daisy alone?

No. It would appear that someone is sitting beside her.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder. “Why’re you crying, Aunt Daisy?”

The weeping woman turned to stare at the girl.
She’s alive
.

Very much so. And Sarah’s spotted cat was on the seat between them.

And then . . .
and then
. . .

Daisy looked up to see a lone raven gliding under the stars. Beyond all probability, the aged shaman believed this night visitor to be her special friend from
Cañón del Espíritu
. The winged creature circled a scraggly elm in the Bushmans’ yard before settling lightly on a twisted branch. The shiny black bird cocked its head, eyeballed the elder—and croaked twice as if to say,
They’re waiting
.

They were, of course.

Three ponies. Two riders. Just on the other side of the Too Late Creek bridge.

Like a cloud-shrouded sunrise, the truth dawned slowly on Daisy Perika.
It hasn’t happened yet
.

But it would.

That white horse intends to carry someone away
. The stubborn old woman shook her head.
But it won’t be this little girl
. Daisy’s dark face resembled chiseled obsidian.
Not if I have anything to say about it
. Seldom right, but never in doubt—Daisy knew exactly what to do. “Listen to what I tell you, Sarah. I want you to go into Pete Bushman’s house and
find the rusty old Colt pistol he keeps underneath that ugly little lamp stand beside his bed. It’s in a Redwing shoebox, and there’s a box of cartridges there too. Bring both of ’em to me.”

“But—”

“No back talk. Just go do it!”

Small details tend to give credence to a carefully constructed lie, and are especially enhancing to a hastily contrived falsehood. But we must not be quick to censure others who commit such offenses. The way Daisy Perika saw it, her story about Pete Bushman keeping a
rusty old Colt
pistol in a
Redwing
shoe box underneath the
ugly
little lamp stand by his bed was not an outright, deliberate, one-hundred-percent, barefaced fabrication. For all she knew, the Columbine foreman probably did have an unsightly lamp stand by his bedstead, and it would be just like Pete to stash a six-shooter and some cartridges in a shoe box, and put the shoe box underneath the lamp stand, and the shoe box might have once contained a Redwing product. Not that the practical old soul tended to give much thought to such ephemeral issues as truth and falsehood, particularly when there was urgent business to attend to.

TAKING CHARGE

Even before the girl was out of sight, Daisy had pushed the cat off the seat and positioned herself behind the steering wheel. The instant her fingers found the ignition switch, she twisted the key and held her breath. The warm engine stuttered, grumbled, then settled down to a reassuring rumble.
So far, so good
. But . . .
Now I’ve got to remember how to drive one of these things
. Searching her memory of past escapades in motor vehicles, Daisy took hold of the gearshift.
It must be in Park
. This wasn’t so hard.
It’s all coming back to me now
. She pulled the lever as far down as it would go.

The pickup lurched forward like the favorite at Churchill Downs exploding from the gate.

HAVING BEEN
unable to find a shoe box anywhere in the Bushmans’ dark bedroom, Sarah Frank heard the sound of her F-150 roaring away
and realized that once again—she’d been
had
. The girl emerged from the foreman’s residence just in time to see her treasured pickup go careening across the Too Late Creek bridge, watch it bounce off the left railing, swerve to bump into the right one.
Oh, no!

Wringing her hands in dismay, the girl (as old-timers like to say)
took off after it
.

SAINT DAISY THE SELFLESS

Barreling along like the Night Train from Memphis, Daisy Perika was pleased to see the three spirit-ponies and two riders move aside at her approach.
That’s right, get outta my way before
I
run
you
down!
The tribal elder was absolutely delighted to spot the seminaked man with the carbine—who had not yet taken up his firing position at the parlor window.
Wa-hoo—I’m just in time!

ASOK THE REPROBATE

As he crossed the headquarters yard, the half-deaf Asok did not hear the approach of the pickup truck. He did hear Daisy toot the horn, and would have seen the headlights come on if the flustered driver had managed to find the appropriate switch. Diverted from his primary objective, which was to take a gander into the parted curtain on the headquarters porch, the man who had already survived several ordeals this evening turned to deal with his current problem. Seeing a vehicle without lights bearing down on him, it took no great stretch of Asok’s meager intellect to conclude that the driver (whom he assumed was a man) was not kindly disposed toward him.
He’s gonna run me down!

Prepared to die in Sarah’s place, Daisy muttered, “Go ahead, you twobit half-wit—shoot me dead.”

Asok did his level best, but the urgency of his situation called for a shooting that was more or less “from the hip.” No matter what we may’ve heard about the legendary accomplishments of Old West gunslingers, shooting a firearm without looking down the barrel tends to degrade a fellow’s marksmanship.

Bam!
The first slug penetrated the F-150’s radiator.

Bam!
Number two clipped off the radio antenna.

Bam!
The third lead projectile passed through the windshield to whistle past the driver’s right ear and spray her face with tiny shards of sharp glass.

HER BEATIFICATION IS PUT ON HOLD

This unpleasant experience did nothing to endear the shooter to the cantankerous old woman. Indeed, the sting of a sliver of glass in her eye tended to distract our heroine from her sacrificial mission. Daisy’s natural instincts (anger and aggression) took over. All the furious woman could think about was
getting even
. “Oh, I wish I had me a loaded pistol so I could shoot back!” The vengeful wish reminded the bloodthirsty woman that she did have a lethal weapon in her possession.

A model F, 150-caliber, V-8 projectile.

Mrs. Perika was no shooter-from-the-hip. Dead-eye Daisy got her target lined up with the chrome-cougar ornament Sarah had installed on the hood, and
stepped on the gas
.

Unnerved by this bold frontal attack, the terrified terrorist dropped his weapon and made a run for it.

DAISY’S REVENGE

About a half second after the firing of the third shot from Asok’s carbine, Charlie Moon burst through the west-porch door, pistol in hand.

Armed with the .44 Magnum he’d fired into the floor under Bill Smith’s chair, Scott Parris almost knocked his Ute friend over in his attempt to get out and get in on the action.

Special Agent Annie Rose was close behind, her recovered Glock 9-mm automatic at the ready.

Despite uncharitable rumors to the contrary, and that occasional exception that serves to prove the rule: Sworn officers of the law do not use their deadly weapons lightly. By training and temperament, these trusted guardians of our lives and property prefer to find out a little something about what’s going on before contributing to the carnage.

What the tribal, town, and federal cop witnessed in the moonlight did little to clarify the situation.

A white man—apparently of the semi-nudist persuasion—was being
pursued by a pickup truck whose punctured radiator was spewing steam in great, gray puffs. The chase-ee was sprinting toward the river as rapidly as his spindly legs would carry him, which was not quite fast enough.

With every stride of its intended victim, Mr. Pickup was gaining ground.

Asok made a hard left behind the new horse barn and disappeared from sight. So did the truck.

It was much like one of those tense periods at NASA’s Houston Control, where edgy technicians watch yard-wide computer terminals as a tiny spaceship passes behind the moon. While the capsule is on the far side, there is no way of knowing whether the astronauts are safe or have perished in some unforeseen disaster. One can only wait and drum one’s fingers on the console in front of the flat-panel display.

Having nothing handy to drum fingers on, Tribal Investigator Moon, Chief of Police Parris, and Special Agent Rose held on to their sidearms and waited for the situation to clarify itself.

From somewhere on the yonder side of the barn, there was a sound of wood splintering as the pickup smashed something or other to flinders. Almost simultaneously, a heartrending shriek from Asok, who imagined himself being flindered.

Moon leaned, mumbled to his buddy, “Twenty bucks on the truck.”

“You’re on.” Parris grinned. What a dandy night this had been.

The running man reappeared first, skinny legs and arms pumping like pistons.

“Here he comes.” Parris raised his fist. “Go for it!”

After losing some ground in a wide turn, the F-150 also completed the orbit—now spewing searing vapors like an enraged dragon.

Catching a glimpse of the driver, the Ute groaned.
I should’ve known
.

Sarah Frank showed up at about this time, to witness the wacky chase. It did not even occur to her to wonder,
What’s Aunt Daisy up to now?
Though the tribal elder’s behavior might seem somewhat peculiar to a person who was sane, Daisy always had her reasons—which she never bothered to explain.