Counterplay

“I’ll take that as you wish to remain silent,” Fairbrother said.

The woman in the car peeked out. “Officer?” she asked timidly.

Fairbrother turned to see Amarie Stavros. “Yes, ma’am?” he replied.

“Am I under arrest too?”

“No, ma’am. In fact, we can probably let the limo driver take you back to the city or wherever you want to go.”

“Good,” she said getting out of the car and scurrying toward a clump of bushes. “ ’Cause I gotta tinkle…if you know what I mean. Emil wouldn’t let me stop at the rest area, and I’m about to wet my pants.”

18

The first sign of trouble for the young lovers had appeared as a growing cloud of dust beyond where the gravel road leading to the cabin disappeared over a hill five miles distant. Ned stood up in his stirrups to gain a few inches, the westering sun casting a bronze glow on his angular face.

He was such a picture of an Old West cowboy that Lucy felt like she should swoon or do something else ladylike. However, what she really wanted to do was to knock him out of his saddle and have at him on the prairie. Her conversion from vestal virgin to wanton woman shortly after meeting Ned, who’d also been a first-timer, had been sudden and complete. That was a year ago, she thought, and we’re stronger than ever. I wonder what that means?

“Someone’s in an awful big hurry,” he said sounding miffed. “They better have a good reason to be haulin’ ass like that on a private ranch road, stirring up the dust and risking hitting a steer. Guess we better wait here and see what’s up.”

Run! Lucy recognized the voice in her head as that of a martyred sixteenth-century saint named Teresa de Alhuma. Ever since childhood, St. Teresa had appeared to her in times of stress and danger with warnings and sage advice. The fact that she now no longer saw the saint but only sometimes heard her in her head, had convinced Lucy what she had suspected all along-and that was that the apparition was a figment of her imagination, a psychological response to traumatic events.

Run! The voice pleaded.

Why? Lucy asked herself. Ned doesn’t seem to be alarmed. She’d come to trust the rock steadiness of her lover, who when times got iffy remained as unperturbed as the rugged land he loved.

He doesn’t understand the danger, St. Teresa or her mind replied. And he won’t until it’s too late, unless you RUN!

“Ned,” Lucy said aloud, “I’d rather not meet whoever this is.”

Ned turned to her with a puzzled look. “Any particular reason, pardner?”

Lucy smiled. She loved it when he called her his pardner. It sounded so…together. Still, she didn’t want to sound crazy, even though she’d told him about her imaginary friend I’ve had since childhood…this sort of saint who got shot full of arrows in the fifteenth century. She’d appreciated that he listened without rolling his eyes or laughing out loud. She realized that tolerance came from living in a land where the native people, like their friend John Jojola, believed that the spirit world was just as real and part of their lives as the rising and setting of the sun. And Ned had been raised on a ranch where his playmates had mostly been Indian children in whose homes he’d spent a great deal of time, learning as much of their culture as the secretive Taos Pueblo Indians would allow.

“Just a feeling.” She shrugged.

Ned studied her with his steel-blue eyes. Life with Lucy was like riding a bucking bronc at the rodeo; one moment you’re sitting on top of the animal, all nice and peaceful in the chute, then the gate flies open and all hell breaks loose. Ever since he’d asked the stranger visiting from New York City to dance with him at the Sagebrush Inn bar, there’d been one adventure after another. If it wasn’t fighting what he thought of as the Morlocks, straight out of H. G. Wells’s Time Machine, one of the many books he’d read during the long winters he’d spent alone in the cabin, he was rescuing Lucy and her mother from a corrupt and murderous sheriff, or shooting it out with international terrorists. He’d once heard that love wasn’t easy, but this was ridiculous.

Especially after Kane’s escape, he took his role as Lucy’s protector seriously. He’d regularly carried a Winchester 30/30 rifle for varmints and “shooting stuff” as he rode the range, caring for the cattle. But only since Kane’s escape had he regularly carried his grandfather’s Colt.45 Peacemaker, the gun he used in his quick-draw contests, either on his hip, under a coat in a shoulder holster, or at the very least in the glove box of his truck.

Ned looked back in the direction of the dust cloud. “They must have stopped,” he said. “The dust is settling. Probably just some lost tourists. The Men in Black will get them turned around.”

Lucy giggled. Men in Black. Secret Agent Men. Dumb and Dumber. They were all pet names the couple had come up with for the federal agents who had obviously been assigned to watch out for them. Whenever Lucy and Ned were staying at the cabin, the feds had regularly parked on the road about five miles up the road. Or, if the couple was staying in Lucy’s room at the Sagebrush, they actually checked in and stayed at the same hotel, lurking around the bar and restaurant. They made no attempt to talk to Lucy or Ned, who returned the favor.

“The Secret Agent Men will get them even more lost,” Lucy said. “They’ll probably end up here-” Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by the distant crackling of gunfire. The shots were rapid and over quickly, but there was no denying what they were. Then in the distance, two vehicles appeared on the road heading for them at a high rate of speed as the rust-red dust again billowed into the shimmering New Mexican air.

Ned reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a pair of binoculars and trained them on the trucks. “I think we should go to the cabin,” he said.

“Why?” Lucy asked, fighting the fear that was rising like bile in her throat.

“Those are pickups with a bunch of guys in the back hanging on for dear life. They’re armed and something tells me they ain’t out here huntin’ coyotes. Now, no more jawin’ about it. Ride!” He leaned over and gave her horse a slap on the rear to jump-start her.

One of the benefits of having a ranchhand for a boyfriend was that Lucy had become a passable horsewoman and now leaned forward, her legs back and grabbed as much of the horse’s mane with her right hand as she could-a sure way, Ned had once told her, to stay in the saddle of a running horse. She knew Amos, the big bay gelding Ned had given her, would head for the barn behind the cabin, so she didn’t worry about trying to guide him.

Behind her, Ned rode in perfect harmony with his horse, turning every once in a while to judge the distance between themselves and the trucks, and themselves and the cabin. It was a half mile to the cabin and the trucks had four to go on a bumpy, rutted road; he figured they’d make it if they hurried. But two hundred yards from the cabin, Lucy’s horse planted a leg in a prairie dog hole and tumbled, throwing Lucy, who rolled like a denim-clad ball across the alkali flats.

Ned yanked his horse around to go back for her when the first bullet from the trucks kicked up a geyser of dirt ten yards from Lucy, who was already up and sprinting toward him.

“Keep running,” he yelled as he thundered past her heading for the trucks, which were now only a half mile away. His first thought had been to pick Lucy up, but he didn’t think there’d be time unless he could slow the pursuit down.

Placing the reins in his teeth, he pulled the Winchester from its scabbard and stood forward in the stirrups, his legs pumping like shock absorbers and his horse responding to the pressure of his knees. His upper body hardly moved as he aimed at the first truck, fired, and missed. The men in the trucks fired back, bullets sending up geysers of dirt all around him but generally inaccurate due to the bouncing of the trucks until something hummed by his head like a giant bee.

They were only separated by a hundred yards. He fired again and saw the windshield of the truck shatter. The truck swerved, then veered off the road until it flipped and rolled, throwing the men in the back. The second truck braked to a stop, the men piling out to run to their fallen comrades, some shooting in his direction but ineffectively.

Ned reined his horse in. The men from the second truck were shouting in a foreign language. Some helped