The Milagro Beanfield War (75 page)

“What, just because one guy tried to kill another guy for bumping off his pig and the other guy shot him and ran away? As far as they know down there, everything is almost hunky-dory. And anyway, Trucho don't care if we all get killed.”

Granny Smith pulled onto the road and cruised slowly away from the green Chevy. “Watch behind,” he said. “See if that lawyer comes out and talks to them.”

“Not so far.”

“We should of got a warrant, I guess, and gone in and tipped over a little furniture.”

“Shit, man, they were scared. He was so scared he could hardly talk. But she didn't seem that scared to me.”

“
I
was scared,” Granny said. “When your old man's truck pulled up I thought those bastards were gonna open fire. I'm forty-six years old, Bruno, and I never pulled a gun on anybody in my life.”

“I shot a junkie once,” Bruno said. “Down in the capital. He was running away from an arrest.”

“What happened?”

“I killed him. I didn't mean to kill him. It was gonna be a warning shot, only I was so pissed-off I hit him in the back of the head. That was—shit—ten, eleven years ago, I guess, before you came into the state.”

“Texas is a tea party compared to around here,” Granny complained. “The Mexicans in Texas are different. These goddam people of yours are weird. They're crazy.”

“Yeah,” Bruno said. “They're weird, alright. Should we drop in on José's wife?”

“I dunno, I don't really feel like it right now. I heard everybody and his brother, except the lawyer, bought guns the other day—Nick Rael told me. Not to mention the gun robbery at Nick's Bernabé did such a wonderful investigation on. Nobody ever shot at me before, you know? I wish to Christ we could get out of here before these people jump right out of their pants and start butchering each other. Screw Ladd Devine and all the rest of 'em. Why should I get killed so he can make another fifty million dollars?”

“What'll happen if they kill José up there, I wonder?” Bruno said.

“They'll have to call in the National Guard, I shit thee not.”

“I'm getting an ulcer,” Bruno whined. “If I could find another job at the same pay, I'd quit tomorrow.”

*   *   *

Crouched behind, and hugging tightly to, his rock, Kyril Montana waited for a moment without budging. His rifle was ten yards above him, leaning against the rock up there, useless. The field glasses were on the ground three yards to the right of the gun. His hat was lying on the ground midway between the rifle and his present position. And he dared not move.

Although the agent felt some sharp pains, in his legs, in one hip, and under his ribs, he could not tell immediately if he'd been hit or not. Probably, he figured—as soon as his mind jammed back into gear after the shock of being fired upon had receded slightly—his pain came from the rocks he had bumped against diving out of the way and frantically heading for cover. But now he forced himself, without moving, to turn his mind inward, to trace physical patterns along his limbs and torso, to ascertain what, if any, damage had been done, and within a minute he realized that no bullets had touched him.

After that, Kyril Montana swiveled his head slightly, checking out the immediate terrain to see what cover it offered. There were larger rocks and some scraggly bushes eight or nine yards to one side of him; it was all open on the other side. And the first real cover up the slope was the rock against which he had originally been leaning.

Suddenly his wide-brimmed, khaki-colored hat popped about two feet into the air, and as it came down he heard another gunshot, and he thought: Very funny, you bastard! Several seconds later a piece of the rock against which his gun was leaning exploded inches from the rifle, and then, as he heard the report from that shot, the rifle went haywire, kicking up with a sharp jerk and bouncing sideways off the rock, a useless weapon when it hit the ground; the scope also splintered, and another gunshot echoed across the valley.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispered tightly. “You miserable God damn son of a bitch.” Now he was in more trouble than he had ever been in before.

Kyril Montana needed to get in a position from which he could see. But sure as hell whoever was doing the sharpshooting from over there had sized up his situation and knew which way he would be breaking. So the bastard must just be sitting over there with his telescopic sight trained between the agent's rock and the larger cluster to the north, waiting for him to make a dash for it.

But the gunman would tire, the agent knew. His eye would blur, he'd have to go off the hold for a minute. His arm would ache; he'd relax it for a few seconds at a time. Hence, the longer the agent sat tight, the better chance he had. He shifted his weight slowly, trying—without exposing any piece of himself beyond the outline of his small rock—to work into a position, into a crouch from which he could spring. Once in position he waited a full two minutes, then suddenly broke, lunging up and forward; legs driving hard, he dived behind the big cluster of rocks, in the process bashing the knuckles on one hand so hard he cried out, but no gunshot carried over to him; the man had not even fired.

He still had the radio. Kyril Montana worked his arms clear of the pack straps, but then, judging from the multiple rips and tears in the pack's fabric, he knew, even before opening the nylon cover to take it out, that the radio would be in bad shape. And he was right, of course: it was dented, smashed, useless.

Kyril Montana was panting; his heart beat rapidly, almost fibrillating, and he felt queasy, slightly nauseous. It took a strong effort of his will and a dozen steady deep breaths to quiet down his heart, and when it was quiet and his panting had stopped he ventured a look between two rocks and a tangle of dead gray branches toward the opposite valley rim. Squinting against the gray glare and against the cold and by now steady wind that made his eyes water, he searched the opposite timberline for the gunman, but could see nothing. He had good vision but that was a far distance, and it was difficult to pick out a figure among the gray rocks, scraggly pines, and greasy green bushes.

He needed his field glasses.

They were to his left, now, uphill, one lens glinting slightly. If he lunged for them he would be in the open all the way. He would have to snag them on the run and continue maybe ten more feet to the large rock against which he had been standing when the original shot had been fired.

As he was going over the terrain, planning exactly how to run it, memorizing the rocks and rotting logs that could trip him up, his mind abruptly veered away into the absolute and irrefutable realization that he had been caught in a trap. At the same instant this thought hit him, he realized the odds were much better than even that the gunman across the valley was not alone.

In fact—and this was only instinct, he had no way to prove it—there were probably at least four or five men in this vicinity or down in Deerhair Canyon hunting him now, determined to kill him. Kyril Montana shuddered.

Then he rubbed his eyes and refocused on the binoculars. Because of the wind, which would make the shooting much more difficult, he could probably afford to go slowly enough so as to assure snagging the glasses. Counting to five, then, he lunged into the open and ran exactly as he had planned to run, zigzagging slightly, hunched over, avoiding all obstacles, grabbing the glasses as he passed by, and swinging around the large rock. There he crouched, panting, waiting to hear the report of a gunshot for a good minute before deciding he'd better make use of the glasses, locate the gunman if he could, and decide how to get out of there.

The boulder was large, plenty wide, but its silhouette was smooth. There was no place, really, that he could poke his head out and not be conspicuous. In the end, stretched on his belly and inching ahead a little with his elbows, he peered out from behind the bottom upward-starting curve of the rock. The tree line leaped at him from across the way, but there was nobody over there. Slowly, very slowly, he inched the binoculars along the trees, probing among the lower-down rocks, finding nothing. The man must have descended into the forest, heading his way.

Swinging the glasses west, the agent focused on the highest Little Baldy Bear Lake where the two fishermen, about a mile upwind and thus probably deaf to the firing, were still drifting around on the silver surface, their parka hoods up now, casting lines into the water.

Kyril Montana brought his glasses swiftly down from that lake into the wide meadow directly below and onto a horseman progressing slowly around the eastern shore of the lake beside which the agent had eaten lunch. He thought he recognized the horse, a big dappled gray—had he noticed it in a Milagro field last night? Or on his other visit? The rider could have been any one of a hundred citizens from that town: small and wiry-looking, his face completely shadowed by a straw cowboy hat with the front brim bent down, he wore a faded denim jacket, Levi's, brown cowboy boots. And a gun belt. There was also a rifle in a saddle scabbard.

As the agent watched, this small man lifted a hand in greeting; swinging his glasses across the water and the meadow grass, he arrived at another figure—the man who'd been firing at him—just as that man emerged from the trees leading a small spotted pony. He waved back, then drew the reins over his animal's head and mounted up.

The two horsemen came together in the meadow at almost exactly the spot where the helicopter had been parked. They spoke briefly, then the bigger man fixed his binoculars on Kyril Montana's rock. He seemed to stare directly at the agent for almost a minute, then lowered the glasses, said something to his small partner, and, turning half-around, matter-of-factly removed his rifle from the saddle scabbard. Taking his time he raised the rifle, aiming directly at the agent, who was watching, for some reason mesmerized, who saw the white puff whipped away from the rifle by the wind but couldn't move. The rock shattered a foot above his head splashing pulverized dust and sharp slivers into his face and arm, and only then—howling with pain—did he jerk back sharply, incredulous at his own stupidity … and he never heard the report, it had been carried north into Deerhair Canyon on the wind.

A slight tear in his jacket's forearm indicated where the largest sliver had entered, and when he pushed the sleeve up about eight inches from the wrist he discovered a blue and only slightly bloody hole where the sliver had punctured his skin. As there was nothing he could do about it, he pulled the sleeve down again and wiped what he thought was sweat off his forehead. His hand came away bloody. For a second, as he stared at his hand, something in his stomach squeezed in tight making him nauseous again—had the bullet hit him in the head? Was he right now starting to die?

Quickly he took off his jacket, then his shirt. Immediately, his skin prickling, he put the jacket back on, then gingerly pressed the flannel shirt against his face, holding it there gently, eyes stinging slightly from the blood, and when he felt that enough blood had soaked into the fabric he tenderly wiped his face, after which he patted himself carefully all over his features, half expecting to come upon some huge gaping hole, but there were only scattered small pockmarks from the stone fragments.

Cautiously, lowering forward onto his stomach, he checked on the two horsemen again. One, the smaller man, was heading up the ridge on his horse, but way off to the side safely beyond pistol range. As his horse picked its way quietly up through the rocks and low brush, the bigger man remained down below, dismounted, kneeling behind a rock with his rifle aimed directly up at Kyril Montana.

It didn't take a genius to figure out their plan. And without a rifle the agent was helpless. Advancing up the ridge out of pistol range the little man would eventually get a line on the back of Kyril Montana's rock. The agent would inch around the side of his rock as the little man climbed, but he had no room for maneuvering. Sooner or later his ass would become a target for the man down below, who obviously had a fine telescopic sight and a gun that was sighted in true and had been very accurate at a far greater distance than the one from which he now had a bead drawn on the cop.

The valley had darkened, grown gray and momentarily still; almost icy cold.

Kyril Montana could do one of two things. Make a dash for his second shelter, empty his pistol at the mounted man, and then, in hopes that this might create at least momentary confusion, he could run for the timberline which began about eighty yards below those rocks. Only a miracle, he knew, would get him to those trees.

Or he could break for the top of the ridge about fifty yards above. It was a steep climb through tough little foot-high bushes and a million small jagged stones. It would be slow and hellish going, and that would give both gunmen plenty of time to empty their rifles at him.

Which meant his chances that way, too, were nil.

His pistol was loaded, but he checked to make sure, nervously thumbing the hammer back and in a few times. He didn't know what to do; either way he was cooked. He whimpered, not believing that his mind was incapable of figuring a way out. To just sit there and wait for whatever might happen would be stupid. Those men meant to kill him, and if he didn't soon hit on something they would rub him out with consummate ease.

The agent flattened himself against the rock, thumbed back the hammer of his revolver, and waited for the horseman to show. When the rider did not appear within a minute he set the gun down and spent a moment removing the cartridges from his gun belt and putting them in his right-hand coat pocket where they could be more easily reached. He had eighteen extra cartridges, six in the gun. Then he put the binoculars' strap around his neck so that if he made a dash for it and somehow escaped he would be sure to have a pair of long-distance eyes; his survival might depend on it.

Almost by accident he glanced up the ridge, in time to see a third man not one hundred yards away, on foot and also carrying a rifle, rise into view. Even before he raised the glasses he knew it was a boy, a teen-ager, gangly, lanky, tall. Even with the binoculars, the agent could not see the boy's face, which was also nearly hidden by the downturned brim of a straw hat. But it was a kid, all right, maybe eighteen, dressed in a droopy old army jacket, dungarees, and boots. He was carrying a lever-action rifle without a scope, and he was close enough for the agent to hit with the pistol, though it would take one hell of a lucky shot. The kid obviously had not seen Kyril Montana: he stopped, silhouetted against the sky, and waved downhill at the horseman riding up and at the other man farther below. Fascinated, watching him close up, the agent saw the boy's lower features and posture change as the men below obviously gestured, pointing, and then the kid's head turned and he was staring at the agent.