Victorio hurried in after him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“If he’s been gone eleven hours another five minutes won’t make much difference. Maybe you’d like to calm down and tell me what happened. Want a Coke?”
“Root beer.”
Watchman bought a couple of cans and they carried them outside. They talked in the car.
“Where’s this Limita’s place?”
“About six miles. Take the road down toward Fort Apache, hang a left where it says East Fork.”
“Anybody home right now?”
“I suppose so.”
Watchman got it started and pulled out of the lot. “Okay, what happened?”
“Why’d you send those dogs away?”
“You can’t track a car with dogs. You said he stole a car.”
“Toyota. One of those four-wheel-drive jobs.”
“Well then.” The road unwound through the trees and went past the silent rodeo grounds. The pavement was chipping away at the edges from frosts and flash floods. Watchman said, “Anybody actually see Joe to recognize him?”
“Pete Porvo saw him.”
“In the Land Cruiser?”
“Naw, it was before. He was on foot, lugging a rifle and a gunnysack. Pete says he was driving up this road here and he saw Joe plain as day going into those trees back there, the ones we just came through.”
“But he lost him in the dark.”
“Yes. This is where you turn left.”
Watchman downshifted for the corner and went hustling up into the hills on the dirt road. Bits of gravel thumped the undersides of the fenders like buckshot. The road followed the side of the creek, in and out of the line of trees. They passed the occasional wickiup, corrals, here and there a dusty house trailer up on chocks.
“Now that’s funny when you think about it,” Victorio said.
“What is?”
“If he already had a rifle why’d he steal one of Rufus’ guns?”
“Let’s find out what kind of rifle it was.” Watchman shot a quick sidewise glance at him. “Have you got a prescription for Seconal?”
“Huh?”
“It’d be easy to check,” Watchman warned.
“What the hell would I be doing with Seconal?”
“You paid a few visits to Maria while Joe was away, didn’t you.”
Victorio went silent for a while. There was a bit of pout on his face. Finally he said, “Yeah.”
“But you didn’t get anywhere with her.”
“She was trying to do a brother-and-sister number.”
“And you didn’t like that.”
“It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Victorio admitted. “But I had to settle for it, it was all she’d go for. The first time I went down there I really wanted to see what I could do to help. But I took one look at that place of hers and I could see she wasn’t the one who needed help.”
“Who was paying for that, Tom?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Somebody was grubstaking her.”
“Sure, I could see that. But every time I tried to ask questions she’d turn me off like a faucet.”
“You must have made a few guesses.”
“I figured she had a boyfriend she wasn’t talking about.”
“Is that a fact.”
Victorio’s face swiveled toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not the kind of guy who’d take it quietly if you thought she had some other man. It must have made you a little sore.”
“Sure I was sore. Who wouldn’t be?”
“You’d have tried to find out who the boyfriend was.”
Victorio’s lips peeled back from his teeth; it wasn’t a smile. “Matter of fact one time I spent a whole God damned two weeks driving down there every night after work and hanging around outside her place like some kind of peeping Tom. But nobody ever showed up.”
“So you just gave up?”
“I kept trying to worm it out of her. But it wasn’t easy to rattle Maria. She was one of those people, you know, sometimes they’re so damned self-confident they make you grit your teeth. There just wasn’t any way to shake her up. That was one of the things I guess I loved her for—she wasn’t your average hysterical female. This is the place, you drive in the gate here.”
Victorio pointed and Watchman turned off the dirt road into a narrow drive with tufts of grass growing on the ridge between the ruts. The suspension clanked once or twice.
It was one of those outfits that accrued structures over the generations. There must have been a half dozen ramshackle buildings—wickiups and shacks—and there were a windmill and two sagging corrals and a profusion of wheeled vehicles in various states of collapse. Chickens and dogs ran loose in the caked hardpan of the yard and five small children played in the trees under the guardianship of two obese women who sat in the shade gossiping.
Getting out of the car Watchman said, “Limita’s a medicine man, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.” Victorio turned to look at two of the shacks alternately and scowled. “I’ve only been here a couple times, I don’t remember which one he lives in.”
A butterfly chopped heavily across Watchman’s line of sight. A squat figure appeared at the larger shack, the one under the cottonwoods, came out and let the screen door flap shut behind him.
“That’s him.” Victorio waved and walked around the hood of the car. Watchman went up to the shack with him.
Rufus Limita wore mud-crusted boots and limp khaki pants and an old tee-shirt, its fabric strained by his outthrust belly. His face was almost a perfect square with a big triangular nose in the middle. He had a wide mouth and amiable eyes overhung by fierce shaggy brows. He was probably in his sixties and couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. His legs were bowed into parenthetical arcs and if the bones had been straight he might have been four inches taller.
Victorio made the introductions with the peculiar respect that elders like Limita commanded. Limita shook his hand and said, “Somebody sure made it bad luck for that boy Joe.”
“Did you see him yourself?”
“No, no. That boy is still a pretty good Innun, maybe you don’t see him unless he wants you to. But he set the dogs to ruckus, so I know somebody was here, I got up right away and look around. He got my good rifle I guess. Anyhow that time I heard the Land Cruiser start up. I went out but he went away in my Land Cruiser.”
Limita held the screen door open and followed them inside. There were good rugs on the floor and the furniture was old but sturdy, some of it handmade of lumber from the tribal sawmill. One wall had a tall gun rack on it and one of its slots was empty; the others were filled with expensive hunting rifles that had been taken care of with knowing attention: their steel gleamed with oil.
Watchman said, “Do you know how much gas was in the tank?”
“I keep them full, all times. Got my own tank pump out there in my yard.”
That was a bad break; a full tank would give Joe a hell of a working radius. Watchman approached the gun rack. “This rifle he took.”
“That boy sure knows guns. That sure was the best elk rifle I ever had.”
“Elk,” Watchman said and turned slowly to face him. “Big game rifle, then.”
“Sure. Three-seventy-five magnum.”
“Jesus,” Victorio said. “That’s a God damn elephant gun.”
Watchman had his notebook. “Weatherby?”
“No,” Limita said. “She’s a Winchester Model Seventy.”
Watchman knew the model. A precision-made bolt-action rifle, high-priced and worth it. “Any telescope?”
“You bet,” Limita said. “Eight power Bushnell.”
Victorio was standing there with his eyes squeezed shut as if in great pain. “Good God.”
If you knew the drill you could reach out and pluck the life from a man half a mile away from you with a rifle like that. And Watchman already had firsthand evidence of the quality of Joe’s marksmanship. The shooting last night had sounded like a medium caliber, probably a standard old .30-30 Joe must have swiped somewhere.