John Lourdes blew out the match.
JOHN LOURDES HAD Rawbone move the truck far back of the meeting house and away from where the weapons were cached. He swung the shotgun strap over his shoulder. He carried rifle and binoculars loose. While he ran to a place from where he would watch the road Rawbone, alone now, slipped down under the chassis.
Before arriving in El Paso, Rawbone had hammered a strip of flap leather to the underside of the chassis housing. He'd nailed it into the wood on three sides, leaving the fourth open to form a sort of pocket or pouch where he stashed away an automatic. When that was done he'd hammered the last side closed so the weapon wouldn't shake loose.
TEN
HE SKYLINE WAS settling out, the blue softening away till there was only the marked approach of nightfall. John Lourdes sat in silence near the headway of the plat. Rawbone approached and stood near, scanning the moonless world to the road below.
'You have any idea how you intend to make this fight?'
John Lourdes was staring up that street of crumbling foundations to the meeting house. 'What was this place? Do you know?'
Rawbone ran the back of his fingers along his cheek. 'You never heard and you're from El Paso?' He set the derby back. 'It was one of those ... utopias. You know what they are, right? Well ... this one was different. There was only women. Women from all over the world. Anglo women, Mexican. Women from India. China. Even Africa. They lived like a tribe. And they had ceremonies where they went about naked. Naked, Mr. Lourdes.'
The son now looked upon those forgotten remains and tried to imagine—
The father threw his head back laughing. 'Mr. Lourdes, if ever I saw an expression of pure and ridiculous gullibility.' He shook his head in comedic despair.
The son was forced to accept the moment and he took it stoically, but not without a smile that he was had. 'By the way,' John Lourdes asked, 'did you retrieve the gun?'
Rawbone cocked his head. 'Excuse me?'
'The automatic stashed under the chassis. I checked the damn vehicle early this morning.'
Rawbone pulled up his shirt where the gun had been tucked away. 'Mr. Lourdes, the tide of opinion about you has just risen some.' He pulled the weapon and held the black .32 just so in his palm and, mocking, added, 'Bat Masterson swears by this gun. Or so says the ad. And another promises ... it's a housewife's best friend against burglars.' He tucked the shirt back in his pants and slipped the weapon down into his belt sash. He paused to set his derby right. 'Mr. Lourdes, it's a right-thinking world when they start running ads with guns and women in nightgowns.'
The son went back to considering how a fight was to be made. The father stood watch. And so the night went about its workings.
'Mr. Lourdes, do you come from a good Christian family?'
The son looked up at the father and in a pointed quiet said, 'In part.'
'Well, you better pack that good Christian part away for a while ... because they're here.'
John Lourdes rose. He looked down into that banded decline of shadows but saw nothing. Rawbone stepped behind him and pointed, his arm resting just over the rim of the son's shoulders. There was a narrow slit of brightness, not even really a light, for one moment. 'Far, far down the canyon. There! Did you see it?'
'No.'
'I believe it's one of those flashlights with the sliding bridge slip. You know. And they're keeping it near to the ground so all you see is a bit of wash from the light.'
The father was so close now the son could feel the weapon he had tucked away pressing against his back.
'You can't look right at a thing at night that far to see it, Mr. Lourdes. The trick is you have to look off just a bit. Use the outer ring of your eye.'
The son did as the father said and in the space of a minute there was a singular emanation so minute as to be barely made out.
'Yes,' said John Lourdes, 'I see it. You're right.'
'That's a trick you learn from years of being on the hunt.'
The son turned. 'You mean being hunted, don't you?'
'That too, Mr. Lourdes. But when they're as close as you and I are now, hunter and hunted, it's all the same.'
