“ Where we going?” Kip asked. “I was just about to pin the Mountain Man.”
“ We’re going to visit a cowboy.”
“ Oh, the one who stole your babe.”
“ I beg your pardon.”
“ Granny told me. When you were spaced out on the medicine, Granny told me about the lady lawyer you’ve got the hots for, but this dude swooped her away. So, when you said we were coming out here and you were going to switch courses, I knew the babe figured into it.”
“ You’re a pretty bright kid, aren’t you?” I asked, as we reached our car, parked in front of a shop where mannequins in mink coats smiled regally at us from the display window.
“ It runs in the family,” he said.
No wonder I liked this kid.
We got in, and I aimed the rental convertible northwest on Route 82. The air was cool and dry. The sun was shining, plump white clouds were scudding by, and the meadows were filled with bright wildflowers. It seemed like a fine day to see if Mr. K.C. Cimarron was as good as his word.
CHAPTER 16
There were red bluffs along the winding dirt road that led ^k from the entrance to the ranch house. There were rolling fields of scrawny cattle. Along the road, a narrow stream gurgled and tumbled over black and brown boulders. But as far as I could tell, there was no canyon at the Red Canyon Ranch.
A short, swarthy woman in a starched white dress and a red apron opened the door. She was wiping flour from her hands onto the apron. “?Lo puedo ajudar?”
“ Por favor se encuentra el Se n or Cimarron,” I said, exhausting my extensive Spanish vocabulary.
Behind her, I could see a foyer of red Mexican tile. A buffalo head was mounted on the far wall, and beneath it, two crossed rifles with a vaguely antique look were enclosed in a glass case. Just off the foyer was a living room with a brick fireplace and a bearskin rug in front of a sofa carved from heavy logs. A nice place if you’re into southwestern postmodern macho.
“ Se n or Cimarron, esta en el establo, ” she said, indicating the direction with a tilt of the head.
She spoke deliberately, either because she figured me for the gringo I was, or because Mexican Spanish is slower than what I’m used to in Little Havana.
I gave her my best gracias, then Kip and I walked along a flagstone path from the main house to the barn, a huge weathered structure up a small incline. Twenty yards away, I heard what sounded at first like a muffled gunshot. Instinctively, I moved in front of Kip, shielding him with my body. “Get real, Uncle Jake,” he said, darting by me.
Another muffled whomp, and then two more at regular intervals, maybe three seconds apart. A whinnying horse, then another whomp, whomp.
A door wide enough to accommodate a tractor trailer was open, and we walked in. Smells of moist hay and creosote, the tang of molasses feed mixed with manure. A buzz of horseflies, a bank of stalls, horses pawing the dirt floor, tails swishing. Weathered saddles, harnesses, and saddlebags hung from wooden pegs in the walls. Blankets and feed bags were stacked in neat piles. A ladder led to a loft sagging with bales of hay. And on a wooden stepladder against one wall, a man with his back to me, a man in boots, dirt-stained jeans, a wide leather belt, a red plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up the elbows. A man who, on the third step of the ladder, looked about ten feet tall and as wide…well, as wide as the broad side of a barn.
With his left hand, he was bracing a four-by-eight-foot piece of three-quarter-inch plywood against a window frame. With his right hand, he was holding a stud gun. Maybe it wasn’t as impressive a feat as say, tossing a shotput with one hand and dunking a basketball with another, but it showed strength and a certain agility. Whomp. Another nail jolted into the plywood and wall beneath. The stud gun did not seem to recoil, but stayed firmly planted in his meaty right hand.
With his back still to me, he said, “You’re Lassiter, aren’t you?”
“ Guilty as charged,” I said.
He turned around and we studied each other. He had a bushy mustache that reminded me of Buck Buchanan, an old defensive lineman for Kansas City. His hair was long and gray and swept straight back, falling over his ears, and curling up slightly at the nape of his neck. The overall impression was of a gunfighter from the old West, Kirk Douglas maybe, but twice as big.
Our chemistry was as immediate as the mongoose and the snake. We hated each other. He had inflicted a great deal of pain on me. This morning, in the early chill, my hand had been stiff, a reminder as sure as a dueling scar of the searing eternity of personal violence. This man, this towering menace of a man, had bruised and dented me.
Which was also why I was here, I now knew. Sure, clearing my name had something to do with it, and so did coming after Jo Jo. But there was something else too. I needed to prove to myself that he hadn’t broken me. So I stood there in khaki slacks and Top-Siders without socks and an old Penn State sweatshirt looking at this big galoot who happened to be holding a lethal weapon, making me wonder why I chose a day when he was nailing instead of painting.
“ Ever use a stud gun, Lassiter?”
“ Nah. I usually just drive nails with my forehead.”
“ I don’t doubt it.” He turned away and resumed working, but it didn’t keep him from talking. “When my daddy built this barn, he framed the first floor with concrete beams. Not concrete blocks, mind you, but solid poured concrete. That’s how my daddy was, and that’s how I am. Do you follow me?”
“ Sure, some guys got shit for brains. You got concrete.”
“ You trying to rile me?”
“ No, I’m trying to insult your intelligence, but it’s a daunting task.”
He was still on the ladder, so I couldn’t get a precise idea of his height, but he had to go six seven, maybe six eight. As for his weight, it probably wasn’t more than your average side of beef. If you want to judge a man’s mass, look at his wrists or ankles. It’ll tell you the size of the frame. I couldn’t see his ankles, but the wrists were telephone poles attached to forearms cabled with veins, forearms bigger than most men’s biceps. The shoulders were no larger than a double-wide mobile home, the chest a rain barrel. He had the look of brawny muscle built by hard work, not by pumping iron. The only thing that detracted from the look of complete physicality was his belly. It had grown over the top of his silver-and-turquoise belt buckle. Grown big, not soft. There is a difference.
If I were to guess, I would say that ten years ago, he was an extremely fit and dangerous two hundred eighty pounds, and now he was about three ten, and still dangerous.
Whomp.
“ Damn,” he muttered. “Out of bullets. Now, you got your stud guns that work off an air compressor and a clip that holds forty or fifty nails. But like I said, this is solid concrete, so I use the gun powered by, 27-caliber bullets. Clip only holds ten bullets, and you got to put each nail in separately, but I don’t mind. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, do the job right. That’s how I live my life, Lassiter. How do you live yours?”
“ One day at a time.”
He gestured in Kip’s direction. “Who’s this, your bodyguard?’ ‘
“ My nephew,” I said.
“ When you grow up, you gonna be a piss-ant lawyer like your uncle?” he asked.
“ No,” Kip answered, “I’m going to be an entertainment lawyer. Beats the hell out of being a shit-kicking cowboy.”
Now where did he learn to talk like that? I’d have to bring it up with Granny.
Cimarron slipped a clip of bullets into the stud gun, took a nail from his pocket and shoved it into the barrel. “Josefina told me I should be expecting you. Said you’d cause trouble but that I shouldn’t start anything. I promised her I wouldn’t unless you asked for it.”