“Why can’t I stay here?” Kerry demanded.
“You can,” Clayton replied, “if you want me to forget we weren’t going to bust you for that DWI.”
“You said I didn’t have to go to jail.”
Clayton nodded at Kerney. “He said that, not me. Go with the officer.”
After the officer and Kerry moved away, Clayton said, “That’s twice we’ve come up empty.”
“But now we’re only hours behind him,” Kerney said. “Let’s take a look around the cottage.”
Shining his flashlight on the ground, Clayton took the lead as they walked down the lane. When he got to the parking area in front of the cottage, he squatted down, looked closely at some tread marks and hoofprints, and quickly stood up.
“What is it?” Kerney asked.
“Ten-to-one odds our man is on horseback,” Clayton said. “There are hoofprints on top of Kerry Larson’s tire tracks, and they’re very recent.”
He followed the tracks up the backside of the hill with Kerney following. “Two horses,” he said.
Vanmeter’s voice came over Kerney’s handheld radio. “The chopper pilot has spotted a vehicle under a grove of trees. Says it looks like the stolen Buick. I’m going in with SWAT.”
“Ten-four,” Kerney replied as he kept pace with Clayton, who continued to move up the hill in the direction of the horse barn. “It’s likely Larson left the ranch on horseback, trailing another animal. Have Kerry brought to us at the barn.”
“Will do.”
At the barn, they found ten tidy, clean stalls, only eight horses, and empty spaces in the tack room for a saddle and a pack frame. Kerney met Kerry at the barn door and asked how many horses were stabled inside.
“Ten,” Kerry answered.
“Two are missing,” Clayton said, “along with some tack.”
Kerry stepped past them. “Let me see.”
Clayton pulled him back by the arm. “Only if you tell us what else is missing here and at your house.”
“No jail?” Kerry asked, looking at Kerney.
“No jail,” Kerney replied with a smile.
“Okay.”
After a quick tour, Kerry told Kerney and Clayton that the best riding horse and pack animal were gone, along with the necessary tack to load up and travel cross-country. At his cottage, a pillowcase had been removed from his bed, and the venison steaks he’d taken out of the freezer were gone, along with a bunch of food from his pantry and refrigerator.
After reassuring Kerry once again that he wouldn’t go to jail, Kerney turned him over to a uniform, got on his handheld, and asked Vanmeter what was happening at the Buick.
“The Buick is empty and it looks like you were right about the horses. He took whatever he had in the vehicle and left. The tracks head west as far as we can tell.”
“Frank, we need eyes in the sky at daybreak,” Kerney said. “As many as we can get. State Police aircraft, Civil Air Patrol, State Forestry, Game and Fish—whoever’s willing. Have Andy ask the governor for Air National Guard assistance. If Larson gets to the mountains before we find him, it’s going to be a hell of a lot tougher to track him. Let every rancher in the area know that Larson may be traversing their property. Tell them to hunker down overnight and stay close to home tomorrow.”
“I’ve got a lieutenant making those calls right now,” Vanmeter replied.
“Can you get Kerry’s boss to outfit Clayton and me with good horses and enough gear and supplies to stay on Larson’s trail for a week, minimum?”
“Starting when?”
“Right now,” Kerney replied. “But we want good, sturdy, endurance trail horses, not the ones for the tenderfoots that are stabled here at this barn.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Vanmeter said.
“Better have your lieutenant tell the folks at the scout ranch that they should mother hen all their Boy Scouts for a day or two.”
“Affirmative.”
“Thanks.” Kerney keyed off his handheld and looked at Clayton. “Are you ready for a midnight trail ride?”
Clayton nodded. “More than ready.”
When Larson reached Miami Lake, he checked the time on the nice Omega wristwatch he’d taken off Carter Pettibone’s pudgy dead body. It was just coming up on midnight and he was a little behind schedule, slowed down by the darkness, broken terrain, and a few locked gates he’d been forced to skirt. As he watered the horses, he kept an ear tuned to the sound of any traffic along the two-lane highway that passed by the lake, but all was quiet.
A little west of the lake, the dim outline of Kit Carson Mesa jutted into the night sky, barely lit by the Milky Way. Behind it stood the Cimarron Range, an inky black swath that Larson could feel more than see. But that would soon change, for in the east, the first hint of a rising three-quarter moon broke over the horizon. With it, Larson would have enough light to pick up the pace. He’d have to be careful of badger holes, but figuring six to eight miles per hour riding at a steady trot, he should be across Rayado Creek, beyond Hagerdon Lake, past Coyote Mesa, and entering Dawson Canyon well before dawn.
He decided to throw any trackers off by crossing the highway and heading in the opposite direction, toward the mesa south of the farming settlement of Miami before correcting course. Hopefully, if a search for him was mounted at first light, it would be concentrated there, while he would be a good twenty miles away, about to enter the high country.
Larson mounted up and spurred his horse into a trot, the pack horse following behind. For a time he’d actually be riding in the ruts of the Old Santa Fe Trail, crossing some of the most famous ranching land in the West.
He thought about the Clay Allison plaque in the St. James Hotel in Cimarron. If he remembered it correctly, along with the names of the men Allison had killed, it listed a number of unnamed Negro soldiers he’d gunned down.
While there weren’t any more Buffalo Soldiers around to kill, the idea of riding over to Philmont Scout Ranch and shooting a parcel of Boy Scouts held a certain appeal. But Larson dropped the idea. He’d already racked up one kill down at that Bible-thumping church camp in Lincoln County, and he didn’t like the notion of repeating himself by shooting more clean-cut all-American boys. Besides, his true calling now was to kill more cops.
All he had to do was find the perfect place and then draw them in.
Chapter Ten
Arranging for the horses and gathering all their supplies and equipment held Kerney and Clayton up well past midnight. They delayed pushing off for another twenty minutes while a just-arrived state game and fish officer briefed them on the major trails into the mountains, the best places to find good water and forage for the horses, and the location of several line camps and old cabins to use in case of severe bad weather. He gave them a set of clearly labeled keys that would get them through locked gates on private and public land, some Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps to guide them, and a global positioning system receiver loaded with more maps.
“The GPS should keep you from getting lost,” the officer said with a smile. “Watch out for the black bears. It’s the tail end of their mating season, and they get seriously irritated when interrupted.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Clayton said, throwing a leg over the saddle of the roan gelding he’d picked out to ride.
Kerney mounted a buckskin quarter horse and took the reins of the two packhorses from Frank Vanmeter’s outstretched hand.
“I’ll have aircraft in the air before first light,” Vanmeter said.
Clayton looked skyward. “Maybe not.”
Both Vanmeter and Kerney looked at the clear night sky and then glanced at Clayton questioningly.
“The wind has shifted, the pressure is dropping, and we’re in for a blow,” he explained.
