He had come to understand killing in a new way. He no longer ate meat, and since there could be no joy in the work of the assassin, hunting animals for sport seemed beyond cruel to him. It was senseless.
People feeding their egos at the expense of innocent animals.
The shirt stopped moving. And Remo flicked the pellet.
This time, he waited until the last possible second. Whistling, the pellet struck the antelope on its hindquarters and it sprang away.
The rifle bullet sliced through the air exactly where the antelope's head had been, to kick up an eddy of dust yards beyond.
The man with the insignificant rifle cursed and jumped to his feet.
Remo slid off the tree branch to commiserate with the poor hunter who was having a bad day.
"That bastard of a buck did that on purpose!" Doyce Deek was raging. He wanted to break his rifle over his own knees. He wanted to kick a cactus. There were no cactus in this part of Wyoming. It was cattle country. Always had been.
The antelope was running in a ragged, bullet-eluding zigzag. It would be in the next county before long.
"Hell, there's other pronghorns," he said.
"Not for you," a confident voice said.
"Huh?" Doyce Deek brought his rifle down and around until he found the source of the voice.
It was a man. Coming from the south. He was not dressed for hunting. He wore tan chinos and a black T-shirt.
"Who in blazes are you?" Deek demanded, not lowering his weapon.
"The spirit of the hunt."
"Ha. You look more like the spirit of the pool hall."
"That's my night job," said the man. His eyes were set so deep in his head that the climbing sun threw them into skull-like shadow. He walked with an easy, confident lope. His wrists were freakish, like cartoon water mains about to burst under pressure.
"Did you see that buck! Consarned thing up and lit out on me!"
"Thunderation," said the man, coming on despite the threat of the Marlin rifle. His voice was thin, his accent eastern. His "thunderation" might have been an understated taunt.
On reflection, Doyce Deek decided it was a taunt. He decided that the moment he realized he was all alone out here with the man. The obviously unarmed man.
He grinned wolfishly. He brought his rifle up a hair.
"I don't cotton much to easterners," he said.
And he fired.
The shot was clean, sweet. The bullet should have gone exactly where the man's smile was. Maybe it did. Because the man didn't move, other than to keep approaching real casual-like.
Levering another shell into the chamber, Deek fired again.
He blinked. The powdersmoke was in his eyes. And the man was still coming on, like he had all the time in the world.
"You ain't really the spirit of the woods, are you?" he muttered in a weak, reedy voice.
"Nah," said the man who seemed impervious to bullets.
"Then I'm gonna keep shootin' you 'til you lay down and die!" snapped Doyce Deek, bringing his weapon up once more. This time, he saw something he hadn't before. He forced his scope eye to stay wide and not blink like before. He held his breath and fired. The bullet moved too fast for him to see where it did go, but the skinny easterner seemed to see it coming. He shifted his shoulders as if to let the bullet blow on past; it straightened again with such eye-defying speed that the action was a kind of after-image blur.
He was fast. Not magic. Just fast.
So Doyce Deek tried for a sucking chest wound. That always put the fear of God in a man.
He laid the scope to his cheek, sighted along the barrel-and nothing!
He switched the rifle's field of fire. The man was gone!
Doyce Deek never felt the rifle leave his hands. He didn't feel the bore jamming up his rectum, either, the gunsight ripping his dormant hemorrhoids til they bled.
But suddenly he was squatting on the ground, with the stock dangling between his legs and the skinny easterner was taking Doyce's own hands, helpless as a child, and making him take a good strong grip on the rifle. He forced Deek's own thumb into the trigger guard and held it there.
"I'm going to give you a choice, pardner."
"What kind of a consarn choice involves having a Marlin .444 jammed up my own ass?"
"A hard one."
"Uh-oh. "
"Option one," said the confident voice of the easterner. "You pull the trigger and kiss your butt hasta la vista."
"I'm kinda leaning toward option two."
"Confess to the murder that Roy Shortsleeve is doing time for."
"That ain't exactly a healthy option, either."
"Think you can handle the trigger by yourself-or do you want help?"
"I got a car phone in the pickup. Think you could fetch it here? I'd like to call Utah about a little misunderstanding."
"That's the option I was hoping for."
"Yeah, but it could have gone the other way."
"Never happened yet."
Doyce Deek made his eyes round. He squinted with the left one.
"You done this before?"
"This? I do this stuff all the time."
"I mighta guessed, on account of you done it all slicklike from the git-go."
Remo carried the man under his arm two solid miles through the open sagebrush wilderness to the waiting pickup. The dangling rifle bounced with every step, and with each bounce Doyce Deek made a funny little noise deep in his throat.
At the pickup, Remo set him carefully on the ground so the rifle wouldn't accidentally discharge. He dialed, waited for the ring, and held the phone receiver to Doyce Deck's unhappy face while he confessed in excruciating detail.
After he had hung up, Doyce Deck had a simple request.
"Separate me from this rifle, won't you?"
"Nope."
"I done what you said."
"So? Everybody does. I don't give points for cooperation."
"Oh."
And a hand-not a fist, but a hand-came up in Doyce Deek's long face and took consciousness away from him.
Remo left him in the pickup and walked back to Gillette, whistling. Satisfaction. There was no substitute for it.
Harold Smith received the report without comment. "Chalk up one for the good guys," Remo said. "Now how about Dr. Gregorian?"
"Perhaps later. I am still compiling information on him."
"How much information do you need to understand the guy is on a quasilegal killing spree?"
"Enough to be certain."
"I'm certain."
"I may need you for something else," said Smith.
"Yeah?"
"Last night, there was an incident involving the Apatosaur."
"Bronto," snapped Remo. "Get it right."
"My understanding is-"
"Look, which sounds more like a dinosaur? Apato or Bronto?"
"I will admit that I prefer the latter, but-"
"But nothing. Go with tradition. It's Brontosaur. So what happened?"
"I gained access to the Burger Triumph electronic mail system, which is buzzing about the creature's arrival," Smith said. "Information is sketchy. The corporation has evidently clamped a lid of secrecy on the entire incident, but it appears some terrorist organization attempted to hijack the animal en route to their corporate headquarters."
"It can't be the Congress for a Green Africa," Remo muttered.
"Why would it be or not be them?" Smith asked in a puzzled voice.
"Chiun and I chased them off back in Gondwanaland. They were upset about endangered species or something."
"Please hold, Remo." And through the earpiece the hollow, plasticky click of Harold Smith's long fingers working his computer keyboard came like castanets in spastic hands.
"The Congress for a Green Africa," Smith murmured. "A little-known African ecoterrorist group. Formerly known as the Congress for a Brown Africa in its nationalistic phase, and the Congress for a Black Africa in an earlier black power incarnation. It was founded in the late 1960s as the Congress for a Red Africa."