Stevens zipped up his fly. “Those bastards shoot pretty damn good at night.”
Watchman took the first-aid kit over to Baraclough. Little pulsating jets of blood spurted out of his shoulder; when Watchman cut the coat away the broken bone ends showed white. Baraclough, half-conscious, stared down at the wound with bleak bitterness. Watchman said, “It’s vein blood, not artery.”
“Now that’s sensational.” Baraclough’s eyes lifted to his face. “You’re a God damned Indian, aren’t you. If the Major’d known that…”
“If the Major’d known that, what?”
“Nobody ever took us apart before. But he’ll be back for us. He knows how good you are now and he’ll take you next time. He’s a better Indian than you are.” Baraclough smiled with his teeth.
It reminded Watchman of something Keith Walker had said. A better Indian than you are.
“He’ll be back,” Baraclough said again.
“Don’t count on it.” Watchman dressed the wound as well as he could. While he was pasting the bandage over the sulfa powder Baraclough passed out.
He got Buck Stevens’ handcuffs and trussed Baraclough’s good hand to Eddie Burt’s wrist. When he walked back to Stevens he said, “You’re going to have to stay awake awhile, white man.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Vickers.”
“Oh yeah. Where’d he go?”
“I told him to stay put till we came after him.”
“Okay. I’ll watch them. They don’t look too dangerous right now. How the hell did you do it, Sam?”
“Nothing to it. Genius. A teaspoon after meals and at bedtime.”
“Conceited bastard.”
“Buck.”
“What?”
“Keep your eyes open and use your ears hard. Hargit may come back.”
Stevens’ face changed quickly. “Yeah. Hand me my rifle.”
10
Not knowing where Hargit was made it difficult: he didn’t want to sing out for Vickers and give himself away in the bargain. But if Vickers caught him creeping up Vickers would just as likely shoot him before making sure of his identity.
The thing to do was to make Vickers show himself first. He went up along the aspens on foot and kept close to the tree trunks, resenting the time this was taking; he didn’t like leaving Stevens back there alone with Hargit loose in the woods.
If Vickers had done as he’d been told he would be somewhere around here. Watchman stopped and groped in the ground-snow for a rock. When he found one big enough he gave it a heave. It made a bit of a racket crashing through the twigs and when it landed in the stream it crashed through a film of ice.
If Vickers was here it would draw his attention. But there was no sign of movement.
Twenty paces further he repeated the performance with another rock but it didn’t pull Vickers out of hiding. Watchman took a chance: he whispered Vickers’ name, loudly enough to carry a good distance.
No answer. He scowled at the creek. The grenade had made a mess of Hanratty’s body. Moonlight made a silver shine on the snow-blanketed shale slide. It was very cold now; ice was forming quickly on the surface of the creek. Probably going down below zero. He wasn’t sure of the altitude here but it was at least seven thousand feet. The top layer of ground snow was freezing hard; his feet cracked through it when he moved.
He tried to put himself in Vickers’ boots but it was hard to do, hard to figure how the man would think. Time was going by too fast and it would take too long to find Vickers’ tracks and follow them. He didn’t want to leave Buck alone that long. He stopped to concentrate his thinking.
Vickers wasn’t here; so he’d gone somewhere. Where would he go? Then Watchman had it. He turned around and went back downstream through the aspens, angling to the right away from the stream, toward the little hill where they’d left Vickers’ horse. That was where Vickers would go because that was where the walkie-talkie was.
11
The tracks showed that Vickers had stood around for a while, probably trying to get through to somebody on the walkie-talkie, and then had led the horse up toward the top of the hill, maybe hoping to get out of the dead spot and pick up a signal.
He found Vickers at the top with his ear against the walkie-talkie. Vickers had his rifle and looked quite alert; Watchman put himself against a tree and spoke his name.
Vickers came wheeling around with the rifle and Watchman said, “Take it easy. I’m coming in.”
“All right. What’s happened?”
“We took two of them. Hargit’s gone with the money.”
“Two of them, hey? Not bad, Trooper.”
“You raise anybody?”
“I just heard Cunningham talking. I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t know who might be around here in earshot.”
“You’re learning. Come on.”
Vickers was pleased to see the two prisoners. Watchman had a look at Buck Stevens and when Stevens grinned he said, “You’ll be all right, Buck.” Then he turned to Vickers: “Hargit might hide the money somewhere and think about coming back for these two, but he knows Baraclough’s been shot and he can’t drag an injured man with him. I can’t see him caring more about Burt than he cares about the money-I think he’ll try to get down in the foothills by morning. There are a lot of places he can disappear into. If he gets that far we may lose him for good.”
“Then you want us to go after him.”
“Not us. Buck can’t stay awake all night on guard with a hole in him. You’ll have to do that-and keep alert because Hargit may come back. I doubt it, but it could happen.”
“One against one? So far he’s slipped you every time.”
There was no point answering that. Vickers turned to stare past him at the prisoners. Baraclough had come to; he was looking on with a kind of self-disgusted bemusement Burt’s eyes glittered with steady anger. Without Hargit and the money the two of them weren’t much of a consolation prize: that was probably what Vickers was thinking when he turned back to Watchman. “We’ve played it your way so far and you’ve done a good job. All right, try it. In the meantime I think I can get through on the walkie-talkie. I’ll get helicopters up here first thing in the morning to pick up your partner and these two and the corpse up the stream there, and we’ll try to get another chopper up to the top to collect Mrs. Lansford and Walker. I’ll try to cordon the foothills north of here as well as I can, so that if Hargit gets down that far he may be driven back into your arms.”
“Fine.”
“Anything else?”
“You’re doing all right so far,” Watchman said.
“I’m beginning to learn my limitations.” Vickers smiled with white teeth, his features looking firm and frank and clean and fully in command, but underneath there was an absence of center: he had never found his own core. He was playing up to Watchman now because he saw Watchman as his only chance for redemption and if Watchman succeeded he wanted Watchman on his good side afterward. And if Watchman failed it wouldn’t have cost Vickers anything to cement relations beforehand. The rest was a lie: Vickers hadn’t learned anything; he didn’t have the capacity to learn. When this was over, if they nailed Hargit, Vickers was going to claim credit for the whole thing because he knew Watchman wouldn’t dispute him: Watchman didn’t care about glory.
It wasn’t very fair. But Watchman had stopped expecting things to be fair when he was eight years old. If he nailed Hargit all he’d get out of it would be another citation. There wouldn’t be any promotion in it for him; there was never going to be a promotion as long as the old-line hairbags cops had control of the HP. Vickers would come up smelling like roses with a new job as district director back East somewhere.
He’d already caught the man who’d killed Jasper, in a way at least: Hanratty was dead. Baraclough had killed the other cop and they had Baraclough too. The money was of no particular importance except to the men who stole it and the men from whom it had been stolen. Altogether, Watchman had very little to gain and a great deal to lose by going after Hargit, risking his neck when he didn’t have to, taking the chance when there were plenty of cops and FBI agents down on the Utah side of the mountains who could take the blame for losing Hargit if he got through.