“First of all,” Jim said slowly as he stooped to pick up Joe’s shotgun, “I’m not taking sides. Second, I’m confiscating this gun until you prove you’re cooled down enough to handle it.”
“You got no right,” Joe protested.
Jim stared at him piercingly.
“You’d better get out of here now,” he said. “Before I change my mind and run you both in.”
Reluctantly, Joe and Charlie retreated to their truck, muttering an occasional profanity. The engine kicked over a few times, then caught, expelling an effluvium of dark, oil-laden exhaust. Joe popped the clutch, circled, and sped down the hill.
Jim watched them leave, then turned to me. I smiled.
“Sure glad you came along, Jim.”
“They meant you no serious harm,” he said. “But they might have roughed you up some. You’d best not come on reservation land anymore.”
“I think I got all the fossilized samples I need today. But this area’s still not officially reservation territory. At least not until the lawsuit’s settled.”
“And if McKitrick has his way, that’ll be never,” Jim said bitterly. “Just the same, you’d best stay away.” He pulled the slide on the shotgun back and a double-aught buck round snapped out.
“Thanks again,” I said as I watched him ascend the hill, his rifle in one hand, Joe’s shotgun in the other.
He turned back to me when he got to the top. “How’s Carol?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell her you said hello.”
He nodded and disappeared over the rim.
I scanned the mesa for the dust trail of Joe’s pickup. It seemed to be heading back toward the reservation. Or the official border anyway. If I rode Bolo along the top of the canyon, I could get to Carol’s without risking another confrontation. I swung up into the saddle and steered Bolo to the crown of the hill. Jim Buck’s brown four-wheel-drive Bronco was only about a hundred yards off, its light-bar and reservation police insignia reflecting the sunlight like mirrors. He was running a parallel course with me. Good old Jim, keeping a watchful eye on me even though I’d stolen the girl he loved.
Jim and Carol had been an item in college until her father, Paul McKitrick, found out she was dating an Indian and put a stop to it. He’d used his wealth and political connections to get Jim’s athletic scholarship revoked. Jim had no choice but to drop out. He enlisted in the army and spent three years in the military police. When he came back, Carol and I were engaged.
As Bolo trotted along at a slow pace I looked over the basin again and appreciated its beauty. Rows of cactus punctuated the dry brown landscape. Distant mountains with layers of shale separated by varying hues of red loomed majestically on the horizon. More than a hundred years ago, back when the plains Indians had signed a treaty with the U.S. government, the buffalo had roamed here alongside the nomadic Indian tribes. Back before the concept of land ownership became a pertinent issue. And long before anybody suspected that vast quantities of uranium lay beneath the shale. As I got farther from the basin, the more oppressive heat seemed to recede. Except for the hot dry wind, which the Indians say always precedes doom. They call it Viento del Diablo — Devil’s Wind.
As I came to the border of the McKitrick ranch, another rider approached me from the opposite direction. The horse, a huge white stallion, was as unmistakable as the broad, powerful shoulders of the rider. I eased Bolo to a stop as Paul McKitrick abruptly reined in his horse next to me.
“Rick,” he said with a forced grin. “I figured you were around when I saw that wreck of a Jeep and trailer parked in my drive.” I’d brought Bolo out from town in the trailer and parked it at his ranch. Mr. McKitrick took every opportunity to remind me that he always went first class.
“Why don’t you sell that old nag to the dog-food company and let me give you a real horse?” he said, glancing at Bolo. His own stallion stirred uneasily.
“He’s like a member of my family,” I said, trying to muster a smile. “Besides, he gets me where I’m going.”
McKitrick snorted, removed his brown cowboy hat, and wiped a sleeve over his artfully graying pompadour.
“Sentimentality doesn’t win the ball game,” he said. “You’d better learn that if you expect to make something of yourself.”
“I had some trouble with Charlie Onehorse and Joe Threestalks out by the basin earlier,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Jim Buck ran them off, but they still might be in the area.”
“I hope those bastards are,” he said, patting his belt. A pancake holster was strapped to his side, the black checkered grip of an automatic pistol sticking out from it. He pulled out the gun and held it up for me to see. “Have I shown you this beauty? It’s a German-made nine millimeter. A Sig Sauer.”
The gun was flat black, with a boxlike slide.
“This’ll take care of those freeloading troublemakers,” he said, re-holstering the weapon. “They mess with me and they won’t be around to get their free pickup truck from the government next year.”
He gave me a fractional nod and kicked the stallion’s sides, taking off at a fast gallop. As I watched him go, I thought that a hundred years ago he would have ridden with the Seventh Cavalry to fight the Indians. Now he carried a German-made automatic and used a high-priced lawyer to maintain a holding pattern in a courtroom where the legality of a disputed 1876 treaty was endlessly debated.
Bolo trotted the rest of the way in, as if he’d understood McKitrick’s disparaging remarks. When I dismounted, I patted him reassuringly. As I walked him into the trailer, Carol strolled out of the big white house. She was wearing a tan blouse, tight jeans, and a handsomely sculpted pair of boots.
“Hi, cowboy,” she said as she got close. I put out my arms to embrace her, but she took a quick step backwards. “Not till you shower.”
“Is that any way to talk to your betrothed?”
“Obviously you haven’t smelled yourself lately,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. “Want to shower upstairs?” she asked coyly.
“I can’t,” I said. “Got to get back to the lab. And Uncle Dede needs me to help out at the shop tonight.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come by the shop later and let you satisfy my craving for ice cream.”
“Craving? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Giggling, she shook her head. “No. Not yet, anyway. But I’ll let you know if it happens.”
“In that case, I think it’s totally appropriate for the beautiful heiress to buy the starving assistant professor the ice cream.”
“We’ll see,” she said alluringly as she turned and walked away with an exaggerated wiggle. “If you’re good.”
“I thought I was always good,” I called after her as I got into the Jeep.
Pulling out onto the main highway, I made the trip back to Pueblo in a fast ten minutes. I put Bolo in his stall in the barn at my uncle’s house and took a quick shower. With the desert dust washed out of my hair, I felt a bit more presentable. When I pulled into the parking lot of Uncle Dede’s gun shop, I noticed a dilapidated old pickup in the spot next to the door. There was something vaguely familiar about it. I pushed open the door and stepped into the air-conditioned comfort. Uncle Dede was sitting with his feet up on the counter and a cup of coffee in his hand. He showed me his lopsided grin as he straightened up.
“About damn time you got here,” he chided.
“I had to wash the desert dirt off me,” I said. “Whose pickup is that outside?”
“Oh, that’s Sonny’s,” Uncle Dede said. “He’s drifted back into town and stopped in. Wants to stay for a while this time and asked me for a job.”