Hunters who ignored his fences and no-trespassing warning signs were a constant source of irritation to Keegan. Less than two months back a stray shot had dropped one of his herd’s calves. The hunter had fired at a six-point buck and missed, his bullet carrying over a slight rise and striking the calf almost two kilometers distant. Since then, Keegan wanted no part of hunters. They could just damn well shoot on somebody else’s property.
Keegan followed a trail that ran along Hanging Woman Creek. He never knew where the name came from. The only woman he recalled being hanged in Wyoming was Ella Watson, known as “Cattle Kate.” Prominent ranchers under the guise of vigilantes had strung her up for rustling in 1889. But that event occurred along the Sweetwater River, three hundred kilometers to the southwest.
The rays of the setting sun were intensified by the biting cold air, painting the surrounding hills in glowing yellow-orange tones. He came out onto a flat plain and began studying the ground. Keegan quickly picked up the tire tracks, following them from a spent shell casing to a rash of booted footprints and a pool of blood soaking the sandy soil. The hunters and their fallen game were gone.
He was too late and mad as hell. To drive a car on his range, the trespassers must have either cut his fence or shot off the lock on the gate across his private road leading to the highway. It would be dark soon. He decided to wait until morning to send one of his ranch hands to ride fence and check the gate. He mounted up and turned the horse for home.
After riding a short distance, he reined up.
The wind carried the faint sound of an automobile engine. He cupped one ear and listened. Instead of retreating as he thought the hunters had done, the sound grew louder. Someone was approaching. He urged the horse up the slope of a small mesa and scanned the flatland below. A vehicle was speeding up the road, trailing a cloud of dust.
He expected to see a pickup truck or a four-wheel-drive emerge from the brush bordering the road. When it finally came close enough to recognize, Keegan was surprised to see it was an ordinary car, a brown four-door sedan, a Japanese make.
The driver soon braked and stopped at an open spot in the road. The car sat there for a few moments as the dust drifted over the roof and settled onto the range grass. The driver slipped from behind the wheel and opened the hood and leaned under for a few moments. Next he walked around to the rear of the car, raised the trunk lid, and lifted out a surveyor’s transit. Keegan watched in curiosity as the intruder set the transit on a tripod and aimed the lens at several prominent landmarks, jotting down the distance readings on a clipboard and comparing them on a geological map that he spread on the ground.
Keegan was experienced with a transit himself, and he’d never seen a survey conducted like this. The stranger seemed more interested in merely confirming his location than in establishing a baseline. He watched as the man casually tossed the clipboard into the underbrush and stepped to the front of the car and stared at the engine again as if hypnotized by it. Only when he seemed to shake himself from his thoughts did he reach inside the car and pull out a rifle.
Keegan had seen enough to know the trespasser was acting too strange for a county surveyor who was out to shoot a little game on the side, and certainly not while dressed in a business suit and knotted tie. He rode his horse closer, coming up quietly behind the stranger, who was intent on trying to insert a shell into the rifle, an act that seemed foreign to him. He didn’t hear Keegan approach from his rear. Any sound from the hooves of the horse was muffled by the soft earth and dry grass. Keegan reined in when he was only eight meters away and eased the Mauser from a leather case tied to his saddle.
“You know you’re trespassin’, mister?” he said, resting the gun in the crook of one arm.
The driver of the brown car jumped and wheeled around, dropping a shell and banging the gun barrel on the door. Only then did Keegan recognize him as an Asian.
“What do you want?” the startled man demanded.
“You’re on my property. How did you get in here?”
“The gate was open.”
It was as Keegan thought. The hunters he’d missed had forced the gate. “What are you doin’ with a surveyor’s transit? Who do you work for? You with the government?”
“No… I’m an engineer with Miyata Communications.” The English was heavily Japanese-accented. “We’re scouting a site to set up a relay station.”
“Don’t you fellas ever get permission before you run around private property? How in hell do you know I’ll let you build one?”
“My superiors should have contacted you.”
“Damn right,” Keegan muttered. He was anxious to return home for supper before daylight faded. “Now you better move along, mister. And the next time you want to drive on my land, you ask first.”
“I deeply regret any inconvenience.”
Keegan was a pretty good judge of character and could tell by the man’s voice he wasn’t the least bit sorry. His eyes warily kept focusing on Keegan’s Mauser, and he seemed edgy.
“You plan on doing any shootin’?” Keegan nodded at the highpowered rifle the man still awkwardly gripped in one hand, muzzle wavering toward the darkening sky,
“Target shooting only.”
“Well, I can’t allow that. I have cattle roamin’ this section. I’d appreciate it if you’d pack up your gear and leave by the way you came in.”
The intruder acted agreeable. He quickly broke down the surveyor’s transit and tripod, placing them in the trunk of the car. The rifle he placed in the back seat. Then he came around to the front of the car and peered under the open hood.
“The engine is not running properly.”
“Will it start?” Keegan asked.
“I believe so.” The Japanese surveyor leaned in the window and turned the ignition key. The engine fired and idled smoothly. “I go,” he announced.
Keegan failed to notice the hood was lowered but not latched. “Do me a favor and close and wrap the chain around the gate behind you.”
“I will gladly do so.”
Keegan threw him a wave, slipped the Mauser back in its case, and began riding off toward his ranch house, a good four kilometers away.
Suburo Miwa gunned the engine, turned the car around, and headed down the road. Meeting up with the rancher in such desolate country was unforeseen, but in no way jeopardized his mission. As soon as he put two hundred meters between the car and Keegan, Miwa suddenly slammed on the brakes, leaped out, snatched the gun from the back seat and raised the hood.
Keegan heard the engine revolutions die and he turned and stared over his shoulder, wondering why the car had abruptly halted.
Miwa held the gun tightly in sweating palms and aimed the muzzle until it was only a few centimeters from the compressor of the air conditioner. He had volunteered for this suicidal mission without reservation when asked because he felt it was an honor to give his life for the new empire. Other considerations were his loyalty to the Gold Dragons, the promise made by Korori Yoshishu himself that his wife would be well taken care of financially for the rest of her life, and the guarantee his three sons would be accepted and funded through the finest university of their choice. The inspiring words of Yoshishu as Miwa departed for the United States ran through his mind one last time.
“You are sacrificing for the future of a hundred million of your country’s men and women. Your family will honor you for untold generations. Your success is their success.”
Miwa pulled the trigger.
64