“What’s that?” Andy asked.
“A special place.”
The foursome piled into Sara’s vehicle. Kerney drove up the hill past the spot were he’d buried Soldier, wound through the rolling grassland and into a draw bracketed by a low, rocky ridgeline, and pulled to a stop where marsh grass and cattails encircled a pond at the foot of a hillock.
“My God,” Andy said, climbing out of the SUV, “you’ve got live water.”
“Which has never run dry,” Kerney said, following Andy to the edge of the pool.
“Unbelievable,” Andy said. Any constant source of live water away from the rivers and streams was a rarity to be treasured in arid New Mexico.
“A hacienda stood here two hundred years ago,” Kerney said, pointing to the rubble of the rock footings. “For a long time, it was the main stop on the cartage road from Galisteo to Santa Fe.”
“And it’s on your land?” Andy asked.
Kerney nodded and pointed at animal tracks in the soft earth at the edge of the water. “Yep, and it comes with a resident bobcat, who hunts rabbits here at night. I’ve found fresh tracks and kill sites just about every time I’ve come out here.”
He watched Gloria and Sara kneel down to examine pieces of partially exposed petrified wood scattered under the base of an ancient willow tree on the other side of the pond.
Suddenly, Sara stood upright and looked at Kerney with a serene smile on her face. “It’s time to go,” she said.
“We’ve got a good twenty minutes before sunset,” Kerney replied, glancing at the sky.
“It’s time to go to the hospital,” she said as she patted her belly and moved toward the SUV.
“Right now?”
“I think so.”
Kerney gave his cell phone to Andy and raced to Sara’s side. “Call the doctor. Press speed dial, then nine. Tell her we’re on the way.”
Sara laughed. “Slow down, cowboy. I don’t need you four-wheeling me over hill and dale. We’ve got time.”
“Let’s go,” Kerney said, easing Sara into the vehicle, not realizing that both Andy and Gloria were already on board.
He ground the gears putting the vehicle into motion, and Andy laughed at him from the backseat.
Samuel Green left his car on a point beside the railroad tracks where the sand looked too deep to pull through, checked his watch to time himself, and started walking at a fast pace in the direction of Kerney’s property. He ducked through the barbed-wire fence, scrambled to the top of the ridgeline, saw the outline of a pickup truck at the construction site, and dropped quickly to the ground.
He slipped off the backpack, took out a pair of binoculars and carefully scanned the vehicle. It wasn’t Kerney’s truck. He wondered if security had been hired to watch the place at night after the crew went home. That would put his plan in jeopardy.
After making sure the truck was unoccupied, Green scanned the building site and horse barn several times for movement before deciding the pickup had probably been left behind by one of the workers.
He waited a few more minutes before he moved quickly off the ridgeline, loosening small rocks that cascaded down the slope in front of him. At the base of the incline he zigzagged in a lope across the rangeland, using small stands of pinon trees for cover, keeping his eyes fixed on the truck and house just in case someone came into view.
Green stopped at the last grove of trees about two hundred yards from the truck and used the binoculars again to search for activity before moving into the open pasture. The dry grass cracked under his feet. It would burn nicely.
Halfway across the field he heard the sound of a train clattering over the tracks, followed by the blast of its horn. Over his right shoulder the headlights of a car appeared at the top of the hill behind the horse barn. Green wheeled and ran back for the cover of the trees, cursing his bad luck and hoping he hadn’t been spotted.
“Oh, the sound of a train,” Gloria Baca said from the backseat as they passed Soldier’s grave again. “How lovely.”
At the top of the hill, Kerney saw the figure of a man freeze in the pasture, turn, and start running for the trees. He pressed the accelerator.
“He’ll make the trees before we can reach him,” Sara said, reaching for her camera. “Stop the car.”
“We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“Stop the damn car, Kerney,” Sara said as she set the camera on automatic zoom.
Kerney hit the brakes. From the backseat he heard Andy calling out his troops on the cell phone. Sara leaned out the passenger window and took pictures just before the man reached the cover of some trees.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said pulling her head back into the car.
“Drop me off at my truck,” Andy said, as Kerney drove down the hill.
“Don’t chase him,” Kerney said.
“I’ve got units rolling code three,” Andy said. “I’ll head for the highway and coordinate from there.”
“Have someone meet the train in Santa Fe,” Kerney said.
“Why the train?” Andy asked as he jumped out of the SUV.
Kerney watched in frustration as the distant figure of the running man disappeared over the ridgeline. “There’s no reason for the engineer to sound his horn.
The nearest railroad crossing is several miles from here. Something caught his attention, and the runner is heading for the tracks.”
“Consider it done,” Andy said, as he held out his hand. “Give me the camera, so I can get the film developed.”
Sara passed it through the open window. “Don’t you dare lose my pictures of the house.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Andy said as he gave her Kerney’s cell phone and reached for his own. “Gloria will stay with you.”
“Good,” Sara replied, reaching back for Gloria’s hand to give it a squeeze. “At least I’ll have someone with me who knows what I’m going through.”
A contraction made her catch her breath and let go of Gloria’s hand. “Start driving, Kerney,” she said. “And this time, please go a little faster.”
“Catch this guy, Andy,” Kerney said as he hit the gas, leaving Baca standing by his pickup, choking on the dust thrown up by the rear tires.
Three squad cars with flashing emergency lights sped by as Samuel Green impatiently waited at a traffic light near the Interstate that would take him back to Santa Fe. It wasn’t the cops that worried him; he’d ripped a gash in the palm of his hand climbing through the barbed wire fence to get to his car. A deep cut that bled freely, it had soaked through the rag he’d wrapped around it.
The light turned green and he drove to town with his hand throbbing in pain. At the hospital parking lot, he inspected the wound. It ran from just above the wrist to his forefinger, and he’d lost a patch of skin. He needed stitches and a tetanus shot for sure.
He clenched the rag in his hand to slow the bleeding and thought things through. The car at the ranch had been too far away for anyone in it to get a clear look at him. Besides that, the light had faded and he’d been running with his back to the vehicle, so nobody saw his face. Finally, the cops would be looking for Olsen anyway, not him.
But his plan to burn Kerney’s ranch and bring him out in the open was now off the table. He couldn’t risk going back. He’d have to find another way to learn where Kerney was hiding out.
He decided to calm down, stop thinking about Kerney, and get his hand fixed. He would use a fictitious name and pay cash for the hospital bill, so he couldn’t be traced.
Inside the urgent care center, a nurse looked at his hand and took him directly to an exam room. She cleaned and inspected the wound as he fed her a line of bull about cutting himself as he was taking down an old fence on his mother’s property.
She shook her head sympathetically, placed his hand in a bowl of peroxide solution, let it sit there for a few minutes, and then elevated it on a tray table. “When was your last tetanus shot?” she asked.