An American Outlaw (33 page)

“They were on a table,” Michael said. “They looked the same. Steven must've picked up yours, you got his...”

“I never would've fired that gun.”

Michael shook his head. He closed his eyes. Held his arm in the sling, against his chest.

I stared out along the green hood of the truck. Debris whipping past, shreds of creosote bush. Thin branches, lumps of dirt.

We were running close to a creek bed. Switchgrass growing below a bank of crushed stone. 

A group of buildings was up ahead.

I strained my eyes to make it out, in the failing light. I stopped the truck.

Michael looked at me. “That it? That the place?”

It was part stone built, part adobe. No vehicles, that I could see, no light showing.

“I think.”

I cut the motor—wind battering us, the pick-up rocking side to side.

“I'll take a look. I'm leaving the headlights on.”

The dust storm could worsen any moment. Once we got out, the lights could be the only way back. 

I picked the SIG off the seat. Pushed it deep inside my jacket to shield it from the sand in the air. I opened up the door, the wind snatching at it. 

I stepped out, eyes screwed into slits.

Michael climbed from the cab. He staggered in the wind.

No sense of space, no depth. Around us, just a dim hole—half lit.

We edged our way forward towards the buildings. Disoriented.

No sign of any life.

I felt the rip of sand biting against my skin. I put a hand over my eyes. 

Through my fingers I could see the front face of the building. Wooden slat door, rough timber frame. Higher up in the wall, between adobe bricks, small windows. Square and black.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Michael gripped my jacket. Pulled me back towards him.

“I don't like it...”

“Wait,” I told him. “Wait here, if you want.”

I took a few steps on toward the group of buildings. Thirty yards out. Searching, looking for any sign.

No cars. No vehicles. 

The house gave nothing, it was blank, faceless, adrift—an ark in a sea of dust. 

I stumbled on, choking, swamped. Eyes straining to make out detail; any movement.

There's a crack, in the air. Flat crack. A snapping sound.

I stopped.

Wind and sand. A swirling dust devil.

Another crack.

Something wrong.
Strange and wrong.

I threw myself flat, rolled on the ground.

I scrambled to shout back to Michael—he was laying on the ground, ten yards back. 

I ripped the SIG clear, raised it, sweeping for a target. Hands pressed together, wrists inching the barrel high.

Another crack. 

A muzzle flash in a dim square of window. 

Through the shifting light, a face was there. Long dark hair whipped by the wind.

“
Tennille...
”

The sound of my voice was gone, blown to nothing. I clamped my mouth against the suffocating air.

She had a rifle at her shoulder. Staring along its iron sights.

I turned to check for Michael—he was still down.

When I looked back to the house, she was gone.

I ran to Michael. 

His scarred lungs were heaving, he was choking on the dust, he couldn't breathe. 

I grabbed at him. He wasn't hit. I dragged him up off the ground, pistol in one hand, my free arm around him. Tripping, stumbling half-blind towards the house.

The wooden slat door juddered in the wind.

It was opening.

CHAPTER 34

Whicher leans all the way forward in his seat. 

 “Where the hell is this?”

Twenty yards. Twenty yards of dirt-brown desert and the next second, nothing, till the dust and sand clear again.

Varela's car is barely visible. Clouds of thick dust twist in every direction. 

Sergeant Baker slows the Ford Ranger. 

The Camaro's rolling down a hillside, slowing—steering between patches of guajalote. The car turning to left and right.

“That's the Alamito Creek,” says Baker. “I think.”

“We getting near this place?”

“Casa Piedra's just up ahead...”

Whicher draws the big frame revolver out of the shoulder holster. He feels his heart rate quicken.

The Camaro's slowed right down. It's stopping.

Baker hits the brakes.

“Stay back,” says Whicher, “let's see if he's getting out.”

Only strange shapes form beyond the windshield; Varela's red Camaro a glowing ember. He steps out of his car, a dark slash, head down, hand covering his mouth. 

He stoops in the dust storm, moves around to the trunk. Focused only on what's right in front of him. Not even glancing back up the hill.

He opens the flat-topped trunk of the Camaro. 

He's reaching in. Pulling out something—four feet, black and brown.

“That's a gun he's breaking out.”

Varela closes the trunk, his back still turned. He starts walking.

“Man makes a house call. With a long gun. In a dust storm...”

Baker nods. “It ain't going to be friendly.”

Varela walks on—a streak in a spirit world, disappearing in a fog of choking sand.

Whicher glances down at the big steel Ruger between his hands. “Alright, then. Let's move down, son.”

Baker shifts the truck into neutral. 

They free-wheel down the slope towards the creek bed. Reach the Camaro. Both men still watching Varela swinging the long gun in front of him. 

He's climbing up a bank of scrub towards a broken wall of stone. An outlying enclosure. Edge of a homestead.

The sergeant stops the truck. He turns off the motor. Opens the holster at his side. And takes out a 229 SIG

Whicher pushes down his tan Resistol hat. “Stay with the vehicle.”

“Really?”

“Anything happens, get on the radio...”

The marshal steps out. 

Dust is everywhere, he screws his eyes tight against it. He holds his jacket across his mouth in the choking haze, sand scattering, the ground shifting.

Like smoke beneath his boots.

Tennille's in the open doorway, Joe's lever-action Marlin in her hands. She's wearing the green hunter's jacket, buttoned to the throat.

We're staggering in the thick gray air.

She steps back—we stumble inside, Michael clutching at the wall.

I pulled the rough door closed behind us; bolted it.

We're standing in an out-room, just enough light to see. Bare walls, a pile of cut lumber in a corner—toolboxes, a laundry rack, rebozo cloth hanging down in long strips.

“The power's out,” she said. “The storm got it.”

“Are you alone?”

She glared at me. “Esteban left with Elaina. They can't be any part of this.”

“What about...”

“Maria's here. We're leaving, as soon as it's dark.”

I glanced at Michael. And back at her.

“Leon knows,” she says.

“He knows you're
here
?”

“I've got my truck. Out the back, inside a barn. It's ready to go.”

A door opened further in, at the far end of the darkened room. “Mama...”

“It's alright, baby. Go back up.”

I stashed the pistol out of sight in my jacket.

“I thought it was him.” Tennille looked at me. “I saw headlights...”

“Is Joe here?”

She shook her head. “He left me his rifle.”

She turned towards the doorway where Maria had been.

Michael leaned against the wall on his good arm—hacking; trying to clear his throat. 

I followed after Tennille.

Beyond the outer room was a kitchen—dark, the power out, the room lit with candles on a table. Maria sat on a rope-backed chair, by a dresser, in the shadows. Long hair loose. Holding her knees, her face afraid.

Tennille knelt to her. 

Maria turned the silver bracelets at her mother's wrist.

I watched from the shadows. Then turned back to Michael, still coughing in the outer room. 

His right arm's out of the sling. He's trying to rub the dust from his eyes.

“You okay?”

“Fuck, no.”

Tennille steps through the doorway from the kitchen.

“Can you show us how to cross?”

She didn't answer.

“Did you do it?” she says.

I knew she meant the bank. In Rocksprings. I nodded.

“Jesus, Gil.”

“I know, I know.”

“Joe told me Leon's been up to the ranch...”

For the first time since I met her she looked afraid.

“You need to cut the lights on that truck,” she said. “I don't want any sign out there.”

Maria was in the kitchen doorway now.

Michael smiled at her. She stared back, silent.

I grabbed a strip of rebozo cloth, pulled it from the laundry rack. “I'll move the pick-up.”

“Throw me one of them,” Michael says.

“No,” I told him. “Stay here.”

“Come on,” he says. “I'll watch your back.”

He steps forward, takes off a piece of fabric from the rack. He winks at Maria.

“Watch this...”

He winds the long strip of cloth around his head, across his face, his mouth. Leaving only a slit for his eyes. The way we learned, desert fighting. He ties off the ends of the cloth.

He turns to Maria. “Like an Arab man.”

She smiles.

I tied off my own scarf. Unbolted the outer door.

“Go on in the kitchen, baby,” says Tennille.

Maria turns away in the flickering candle light.

“Can you show us?”

“You shouldn't have come here.”

I pulled the SIG from my jacket.

She shook her head. “We have to just go...”

Varela's shotgun is feet away in the dirt. Whicher wrestles the younger man to the ground. He smashes the butt of the Ruger into his cheekbone.

Varela tries to roll, brings up a knee to strike at Whicher's kidney.

Pain whips through the marshal's side. He lashes out an elbow, feels the bone connect—anger starting to choke him, fast as the dust.

The young man's arms fly up, hands grabbing at Whicher's neck, fingers locking around his throat. 

The marshal presses the barrel of the revolver to the side of Varela's head. He cocks the hammer, pain surging through his windpipe.

A boot cracks into Varela's skull, it snaps sideways—Sergeant Baker, out of the truck. The squared-off SIG between his hands.

Whicher rips Varela's grip from his throat. Rolls away. Gets to his knees.

He picks his service badge out of the dirt. Holds it out. “
Look at this
. You son of a bitch.”

Varela's jaw is slack. He lays back in the dirt. Eyes the sergeant's 229 SIG inches from his face.

“I'm on say it again.” Whicher coughs. Spitting out dirt. “My name is Deputy Marshal John Whicher. US Marshals Service. You have the right to remain silent...”

“Cabrón...”

“Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law...”

“Hey, pendejo,” Varela juts his chin. “What do you want? What's the fucking charge?”

“Open-carry of a firearm, the state of Texas. Felony intimidation. Resisting arrest...”

“I'm out shooting coyote...”

Sergeant Baker leans in closer, steadying the black barreled pistol.

Whicher gets to his feet. “We find your ex-wife or your daughter up there in that house yonder—you're going on the God damn yard.”

Varela pushes himself up. He sits in the churning dust.

“I saw what happened,” says Baker. “You fired on a federal law enforcement agent.”

“Cuff him.” Whicher holds a hand to his side. The pain from the knee-strike is deep inside his body. Too deep, his age. 

He spits more sand from out of his mouth. 

“Get him back to the truck. Call it in.” 

He picks his battered Resistol from out of a creosote bush.

Baker reaches for the cuffs at his duty belt.

The marshal clutches the Ruger. He moves forward, wind lashing over the rough ground.

His throat is raw—from Varela's grip. The blood up, fighting like some bust-head in the dirt. Too old, all that shit. Makes him want to reach for the trigger.

He walks on, pulls the lapel of his jacket across his mouth. 

Ahead, at the far-edge of visibility is the outline of a group of buildings. Oblique shapes. Blurred out.

A homestead. Dark blocks in the half light. 

He picks his way, spines of cactus catching at his knees. He pulls his boot free from a clump of snakeweed.

He looks up. Stops in his tracks.

Through a cloud of dust, there's two columns of mud yellow light.

A shape, in profile. Twin beams of a vehicle's headlights, boring out in the swirling grit.

Whicher checks behind. 

Baker's nowhere. He's lost already in the sand-filled air. 

He should go back. Find him.

He holds out the Ruger revolver.

The pick-up's stationary, side on. Whicher stares at the cab. No sign of any occupant.

He can run back, find the sergeant.

It could be the stolen Ford pick-up.

Rear lights show dim on the license plate. He can check the tailgate, he'll recognize the plate, from the calls in the helo.

If it
is
them—then what?

From the left-hand edge of his vision, he sees a figure, walking.

His pulse races.

A man's walking towards the pick-up.

Sergeant Baker's too far back. He can't call out.

The man stumbles, swaying through the storm of dust. His head is wrapped, like a desert Arab.

Gilman James. Making for the pick-up. The Ford pick-up stolen six hours back, outside the bank. 

Whicher feels the adrenaline. He pushes himself forward, gun raised. 

He shouts out; “
US Marshal
...”

The wind whips away the sound—before it's out of his mouth.

But James stops. He pulls at a corner of the headscarf. Then turns to stare through the billowing dust. He puts a hand to a pocket.

Whicher fires once.

James staggers. Collapsing, backwards. Left hand clutching at his chest. 

He hits the ground. Lays still. Then drags himself towards the front end of the pick-up.