Juan shook his head and said to Parker, “I hear this story before. Many times about the plane and the antelopes.”
Parker decided to keep quiet. There was no point in arguing. Clint spoke with the deranged fervor of a true believer, despite the outlandishness of the tale.
Clint said, “Look around you. There are thousands of antelope on this ranch, just like there were in 1936. Engler used the plane to herd antelope into a box canyon, where he bound them up. Grandpa showed me where he done it. Engler loaded them into the Ryan and started east, selling them all along the way. He had connections with Hitler because he was German! His family was still over there. They were a bunch of fucking Nazis just like Engler. He knew who to call.
“He sold those fawns for a hundred to two hundred dollars each because they were so rare outside Wyoming at the time. He could load up to forty in the plane for each trip. He made enough cash money to buy airplane fuel all the way to New Jersey and back and still had enough to pay off Wendell Oaks’s loan. He did the whole thing in a plane co-owned by my grandpa, but never cut him in on a damned thing!
“Then he started buying other ranches,” Clint said, speaking fast, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. “Then they found that damned oil. Engler was rich enough to spend thousands on lawyers and thugs to keep my grandpa and my dad away from him all those years. Our last shot was contesting that old Nazi’s estate — and you shut us out.”
Parker sighed and closed his eyes. He’d grown up in Cody. He despised men who blamed their current circumstances on past events as if their lives were preordained. Didn’t Clint know that in the West you simply reinvented yourself? That family legacies meant next to nothing?
“I can’t take this ranch with me,” Clint said. “I can’t take enough cattle or vehicles or sagebrush to make things right. But I sure as hell can take that damned book collection of his. I’ve heard it’s worth hundreds of thousands. Ain’t that right, Parker?”
“I don’t know,” Parker said. “I’m not a collector.”
“But you’ve seen it, right? You’ve been in that secret room of his?”
“Once.” Parker recalled the big dark room with floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves that smelled of paper and age. Fritz liked to sit in a red-leather chair under the soft yellow light of a Tiffany lamp and read, careful not to fully open or damage the books in any way. It had taken him sixty years to amass his collection of mostly leather-bound first editions. The collection was comprised primarily of books about the American West and the Third Reich in original German. While Parker browsed the shelves he had noted both volumes of Mein Kampf with alarm but had said nothing to the old man.
“And what was in there?” Clint said. “Did you see some of the books I’ve heard about? Lewis and Clark’s original journals? Catlin’s books about Indians? A first edition of Irwin Wister?”
“Owen Wister,” Parker corrected. “The Virginian. Yes, I saw them.”
“Ha!” Clint said with triumph. “I heard Engler brag that the Indian book was worth a half million.”
Parker realized two things at once. They were close enough to the imposing old ranch house they could see its Gothic outline emerge from the white. And Juan had stopped the pickup.
“Books!” Juan said, biting off the word. “We’re here for fucking books? You said we would be getting his treasure.”
“Juan,” Clint said, “his books are his treasure. That’s why we brought the stock trailer.”
“I don’t want no books!” Juan growled. “I thought it was jewelry or guns. You know, rare things. I don’t know nothing about old books.”
“It’ll all work out,” Clint said, patting Juan on the shoulder. “Trust me. People spend a fortune collecting them.”
“Then they’re fools,” Juan said, shaking his head.
“Drive right across the lawn,” Clint instructed Juan. “Pull the trailer up as close as you can get to the front doors so we don’t have to walk so far with the—”
“So we can fill it with shitty old books,” Juan said, showing his teeth.
“Calm down, amigo,” Clint said to Juan. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“About a thousand times, amigo.”
Clint huffed a laugh, and Parker watched Juan carefully. He didn’t seem to be playing along.
Clint said, “Keep an eye on the lawyer while I open the front door.” To Parker, he said, “Give me those keys.”
Parker handed them over and he watched Clint fight the blizzard on his way up the porch steps. The wind was ferocious and Clint kept one hand clamped down on his hat. A gust nearly drove him off the porch. If anything, it was snowing even harder.
“Books,” Juan said under his breath. “He tricked me.”
The massive double front doors to the Engler home filled a gabled stone archway and were eight feet high and studded with iron bolt heads. Engler had a passion for security, and Parker remembered noting the thickness of the open door when he’d visited. They were over two inches thick. He watched Clint brush snow away from the keyhole and fumble with the key ring with gloved fingers.
“Books are not treasure,” Juan said.
Parker sensed an opening. “No, they’re not. You’ll have to somehow find rich collectors who will overlook the fact that they’ve been stolen. Clint doesn’t realize each one of those books has an ex libris mark.”
When Juan looked over puzzled, Parker said, “It’s a stamp of ownership. Fritz didn’t collect so he could sell the books. He collected because he loved them. They’ll be harder than hell to sell on the open market. Book collectors are a small world.”
Juan cursed.
Parker said, “It’s just like his crazy story about the antelope and the Hindenburg. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“He’s crazy.”
“I’m afraid so,” Parker said. “And he sucked you into this.”
“I didn’t kill your dog.”
“What?”
“I didn’t kill it. I shot by its head and it yelped. I couldn’t shoot an old dog like that. I like dogs, if they don’t want to bite me.”
“Thank you, Juan.” Parker hoped the storm wasn’t as violent in town and that Champ would find a place to get out of it.
They both watched Clint try to get the door open. The side of his coat was already covered with snow.
“A man could die just being outside in a storm like this,” Parker said. Then he took a long breath and held it.
“Clint, he’s crazy,” Juan said. “He wants to fix his family. He don’t know how to move on.”
“Well said. There’s no reason why you should be in trouble for Clint’s craziness,” Parker said.
“Mister, I know what you’re doing.”
“But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Juan said nothing.
“My wife…” Parker said. “We’re having some problems. I need to talk to her and set things right. I can’t imagine never talking to her again. For Christ’s sake, my last words to her were ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’”
Juan snorted.
“Please…”
“He wants you to help him,” Juan said, chinning toward the windshield. Beyond it, Clint was gesticulating at them on the porch.
“We can just back away,” Parker said. “We can go home.”
“You mean just leave him here?”
“Yes,” Parker said. “I’ll never breathe a word about this to anyone. I swear it.”
Juan seemed to be thinking about it. On the porch, Clint was getting angrier and more frantic. Horizontal snow and wind made his coat sleeves and pant legs flap. A gust whipped his hat off, and Clint flailed in the air for it but it was gone.