favored by locals and tourists alike. Up the street, he passed by the old courthouse, which had been turned into a museum and contained as a main attraction the only electric chair ever used in New Mexico—or something like that.
It reminded him of old gangster flicks he’d seen on television where James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, or some other screen villain called their guns gats and their women molls and vowed never to let the screws fry them.
Murderers on death row in the state pen didn’t get fried anymore. Instead, they got injected with a lethal cocktail, which was supposedly a more humane way to die. Larson thought forcing the cops to gun him down by shooting some of their own would be a far better way to go.
Even though there were no cops in view, he stayed just under the speed limit as he continued down the main drag. There was one other back way to Kerry’s place, but to use it he’d have to trespass across part of one of the biggest spreads in the state. He’d also have to drive right by the prison and skirt an artificial lake fed by the Cimarron River that supplied the town with water and also served as a recreation area for fishing.
There was some risk, but he was armed and dangerous like the television reporters said, so why not?
He made the turn onto the prison road, and within a few minutes the high, double chain-link fences topped with concertina wire came into view. He gave the prison the bird as he drove past, at the same time silently thanking the nameless, dumb-shit guard at the Bernalillo County lockup who’d mistakenly scheduled him to be transported to Springer in the first place.
Where the pavement gave out, the road swung toward the lake, and soon Larson was clunking over a rocky surface that wasn’t much better than the route he’d abandoned earlier. With no other alternative, he pressed on. Only a few people were at the lake, two elderly couples and a family of four, all fishing from the shore. They paid little attention as he drove by. After the lake, the dirt road smoothed out some, and Larson relaxed a bit as he drove deep into lush rangeland that stretched for miles, right up to the foothill canyons and mountains beyond.
If he remembered correctly, a ranch road up ahead paralleled the wagon-wheel ruts of the historic Santa Fe Trail for a time, and then turned east toward Kerry’s place. Larson doubted the pasture gates would be locked, but if they were, he would bust his way through them one way or another.
He turned on the radio when he reached the ranch road, just in time to catch a news bulletin from a Raton AM station that reported police were investigating a crime scene at a ranch in the Springer area. No other information was available.
Larson wondered if the cops were at the Lazy Z or the other place on the Canadian River, and decided he really didn’t give a shit. It had been another hell of a day and he hadn’t even killed anybody yet.
Kerry Larson finished installing a rebuilt starter in the ranch manager’s three-quarter-ton truck and cranked the engine. It started up fine, just like he knew it would. He would drive it over to ranch headquarters in the morning and catch a ride back to his garage from one of the manager’s two sons, who were home from college for the summer.
Kerry had changed the engine and transmission oil, drained and flushed the radiator, lubricated the chassis, and rotated the tires. Although the three-quarter-ton had seventy-five thousand hard miles on it, Kerry kept it running in tip-top condition, just like he did with all the ranch vehicles.
Following his normal routine, Kerry carefully cleaned the tools he’d used, cleared the debris off his workbench, and washed his hands at the small laundry sink. He stepped out of his stained and greasy overalls, hung them on a wall peg next to the barn doors, and looked up the ranch road that led to the state highway, where a police car was parked under one of the old shade trees.
He’d told the police that he didn’t know where Craig was, but it didn’t seem to matter. They’d sent a head doctor to talk to him, and Chief Dorsey had come around again asking a lot of questions. And now cops were up there on the road watching day and night, just in case Craig showed up. They’d never catch his older brother like that.
Kerry’s last chore of the day was the one he enjoyed the most, feeding and caring for a small herd of riding and pack horses the ranch used to take paying sportsmen out on camping hunts. The herd was made up of mostly geldings and a few mares, all of them gentle and suited for inexperienced riders.
On his way to the horse barn in the bone-dry, calm early dusk, he waved at the officer in the police car, thinking that when the day was done he could do with a meal at the diner on the outskirts of town. Maybe chicken- fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, a big slice of apple pie, and a cup of fresh, hot coffee.
He thought about it hard as he put out feed, filled water troughs, cleaned up the manure, and spread fresh straw in the stalls. Going to town was no fun anymore. People he’d known all his life had started looking at him funny after Craig started shooting people and killing cops. It got worse when Chief Dorsey kept telling folks that Kerry had told Craig about Lenny Hampson’s tipping off the cops on his whereabouts. All of a sudden it seemed like Kerry had done something bad, when he hadn’t even known that Lenny had told the cops where to find Craig in California.
He’d explained to Everett Dorsey that he didn’t have cause to see Lenny hurt, and didn’t know when Craig came by the house that he’d escaped from a prison guard. But that part of the story didn’t come out, and now he was getting the cold shoulder from just about everybody. Even folks at the ranch headquarters, who’d always treated him with respect, weren’t looking him in the eye anymore.
Kerry finished up with the horses, said good night to every one of them, and walked down the hill to his house. Inside, he grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator, sat at the kitchen table, and took a long swallow. The old, squeaky plank floor in the front room made him look up just as Craig stepped into view.
Kerry took in his brother’s shaved head, his beard that looked like barbwire, and his grimy, dirt-crusted face. “How come you look like that?” he asked. “What happened to you?”
Craig pulled his brother to his feet, gave him a hug, and laughed. “I did it so people can finally tell us apart. You got any more beer in the fridge?”
“That’s a joke, right?” Kerry grinned and got Craig a brew. “You look like you’ve been rolling around in a manure pile.”
“Not quite.” Larson popped the top and took a swig.
“There’s a cop up on the ranch road.”
“I know that, little brother,” Craig replied.
“People have been asking me to help find you.”
“What people?”
“A head doctor that came up from Santa Fe, and Everett Dorsey, the town police chief.”
“And what did you tell them?”
Kerry crossed his heart. “Nothing. I swear. I said if you didn’t want to be found, to just forget it.”
“What did the head doctor ask you?”
“He wanted to know about all the places we liked to go to when we were kids. Secret or special places.”
“What else?”
“Folks you liked that maybe you would go and visit.”
“Was that it?”
“Yeah, except for telling me that I’d be helping you if I told him what he wanted to know. But I didn’t, because I didn’t like him much. Did you really kill all those people?”
Craig smiled and nodded. “I surely did. Want to help me kill some more?”
Kerry twisted his mouth into a grimace and shook his head. “That’s a bad thing to ask me. The police want to catch you for shooting all those people, and blowing up places in Texas, like they showed on the TV news.”
Larson chuckled. “Tell me about it. I thought my baby brother liked to go hunting.”
Kerry’s expression brightened at the thought. “Yeah, but nothing’s in season right now unless you want to go plunk at some jackrabbits. We could do that.”
“People are always in season.”
“That’s not hunting.”
Larson shook his head in dismay. “Damn, you’re no fun, baby brother. I thought we’d be like Frank and Jesse James. Maybe become mountain men and live up in the high country, like we used to dream about doing when we
