As the man walked away, John Lourdes came around the truck. Rawbone said, "I hope me buying you a beer doesn't constitute a bribe."
"Get in the truck. We're rolling out of here now. You drive."
The truck rumbled out into the roadway and made for the east. John Lourdes crabbed through his duffel till he found binoculars.
"What's got you, Mr. Lourdes?"
"He was admiring the truck alright, but it was my shoulder holster and the weapons in the cab that clocked most of his interest."
The father glanced back toward the springs as the son focused his binoculars. Through the dazzling heat a tight pack of men on horseback and one on a motorcycle made the road and started their way. The motorcycle sped out and took the lead.
"At least four riders, one motorcycle."
"Was he one of them?"
"Too much dust."
"They could be road thugs."
"Or worse."
"Is there a weapon anywhere in my future, Mr. Lourdes?"
"I'm no fortuneteller."
"Well, I guess I'll have a beer then."
THE MOTORCYCLE WAS far in advance of the horsemen but not so far back it could not keep the truck in sight. A stand would have to be made. That was becoming more obvious with the failing light. John Lourdes decided it should be the place where the weapons had been cached away. They ascended the windswept remains of a cart path into the Huecos. The rocks hulked up in the paling light on all sides to become brooding silhouettes. The silence deepened till there was only the sound of that laboring engine.
On a plat of ground surrounded by shaly hills were the crumbling walls of a village. A single block of adobes led to a roofless meeting hall of two stories. The wind had begun to rise up and that barren range became engulfed in a deepening sense of isolation and emptiness. The sun on a far promontory burned with the last of the day. John Lourdes traced that cart path down through the hills as best he could with his binoculars for any sign of their pursuers.
"It'll be two hours yet," said Rawbone, "before those horsemen catch up with the one on the motorcycle. And that long again to sneak their way up here."
"Where are the weapons?"
"Why, Mr. Lourdes, they're in plain sight."
And they were, in a manner of speaking. The father had the son follow him beyond the meeting house to a sandy incline scarred with crevasses. Then he waved the son to keep step behind as he scaled that crag following a plumb line of fist-sized stones and upon reaching the last near the apex, squatted down.
"Notice the line of rocks. They mark the spot. Now. Stand close, Mr. Lourdes, and watch the magic."
The father reached into the sand and his arms vanished near up to the elbows. As he pulled the sand began to ribbon and twill and the hill face moved like the back of some hidden monster coming to life.
"Kneel down here and light a match."
A vein of light fell upon the stacked crates hidden there in a recess beneath a tarp that had been covered by sand.
"What all is down there?"
"Your garden-variety arsenal. Carbines, ammunition, hand grenades, dynamite and detonators, and a .50 caliber machine gun. Mr. Lourdes, you could hold off the Holy Roman Empire with all that firepower."
John Lourdes blew out the match.
JOHN LOURDES HAD Rawbone move the truck far back of the meeting house and away from where the weapons were cached. He swung the shotgun strap over his shoulder. He carried rifle and binoculars loose. While he ran to a place from where he would watch the road Rawbone, alone now, slipped down under the chassis.
Before arriving in El Paso, Rawbone had hammered a strip of flap leather to the underside of the chassis housing. He'd nailed it into the wood on three sides, leaving the fourth open to form a sort of pocket or pouch where he stashed away an automatic. When that was done he'd hammered the last side closed so the weapon wouldn't shake loose.
TEN
"You have any idea how you intend to make this fight?"
John Lourdes was staring up that street of crumbling foundations to the meeting house. "What was this place? Do you know?"
Rawbone ran the back of his fingers along his cheek. "You never heard and you're from El Paso?" He set the derby back. "It was one of those ... utopias. You know what they are, right? Well ... this one was different. There was only women. Women from all over the world. Anglo women, Mexican. Women from India. China. Even Africa. They lived like a tribe. And they had ceremonies where they went about naked. Naked, Mr. Lourdes."
The son now looked upon those forgotten remains and tried to imagine—
The father threw his head back laughing. "Mr. Lourdes, if ever I saw an expression of pure and ridiculous gullibility." He shook his head in comedic despair.
The son was forced to accept the moment and he took it stoically, but not without a smile that he was had. "By the way," John Lourdes asked, "did you retrieve the gun?"
Rawbone cocked his head. "Excuse me?"
"The automatic stashed under the chassis. I checked the damn vehicle early this morning."
Rawbone pulled up his shirt where the gun had been tucked away. "Mr. Lourdes, the tide of opinion about you has just risen some." He pulled the weapon and held the black .32 just so in his palm and, mocking, added, "Bat Masterson swears by this gun. Or so says the ad. And another promises ... it's a housewife's best friend against burglars." He tucked the shirt back in his pants and slipped the weapon down into his belt sash. He paused to set his derby right. "Mr. Lourdes, it's a right-thinking world when they start running ads with guns and women in nightgowns."
The son went back to considering how a fight was to be made. The father stood watch. And so the night went about its workings.
"Mr. Lourdes, do you come from a good Christian family?"
The son looked up at the father and in a pointed quiet said, "In part."
"Well, you better pack that good Christian part away for a while ... because they're here."
John Lourdes rose. He looked down into that banded decline of shadows but saw nothing. Rawbone stepped behind him and pointed, his arm resting just over the rim of the son's shoulders. There was a narrow slit of brightness, not even really a light, for one moment. "Far, far down the canyon. There! Did you see it?"
"No."
"I believe it's one of those flashlights with the sliding bridge slip. You know. And they're keeping it near to the ground so all you see is a bit of wash from the light."
The father was so close now the son could feel the weapon he had tucked away pressing against his back.
"You can't look right at a thing at night that far to see it, Mr. Lourdes. The trick is you have to look off just a bit. Use the outer ring of your eye."
The son did as the father said and in the space of a minute there was a singular emanation so minute as to be barely made out.
"Yes," said John Lourdes, "I see it. You're right."
"That's a trick you learn from years of being on the hunt."
The son turned. "You mean being hunted, don't you?"
"That too, Mr. Lourdes. But when they're as close as you and I are now, hunter and hunted, it's all the same."
John Lourdes studied the man he was born of. "Is that a threat, or a word of advice?"
"I leave it to your good judgment, sir. But either way, the clock is about to expire on the quiet around here."