The father looked out to where a cresset light rose over a day's run of hammered dust bordered by windless foothills.
'Take your choice, Mr. Lourdes.'
'I say we make them earn our blood.'
They pushed hard into an emptiness where the dark burned away and the earth reddened and the air choked you dry. Rawbone was in the back, mounting the .50 caliber on its tripod. He had rigged a tarp over part of the truckbed. Removing his derby, he wrapped a bandana around his head. John Lourdes whistled and the father turned.
To the west, thin ripples of smoke. A flare arrowed out toward where the truck was running. From behind them another. On their far flank another. The flares were gridding them and so the son looked back at the father. Their faces were harrowed and stained with red dust. It would be soon.
The first of them wheeled toward the truck. Three riders pitched forward in their saddles. Hard cases reeking with intent. Rawbone edged around the .50 caliber so the barrel sat over the sideboard with its AMERICAN PARTHENON streaked by the red clay of the desert floor.
Rawbone opened fire. A hail of dust and blood. The nightmare faces of the unsuspecting men, the horses wrenching sideways as they fell. The truck sped away, leaving this spot of earth looking as if it had vomited up death.
Spumes of dust in a closing arc. A flare missiled at the truck, struck the engine hood. Sparks everywhere burning John Lourdes's face and arms. He swapt at them with a hand and hat as if they were a swarm of torched bees.
The gunfire intensified. The .50 caliber shell casings spattered and dinged across the steel chassis. The riders closed in one surge. They pressed their mounts and fired at the tires. The truck zigged and straightened, then swerved and sent up rolling walls of gritted red that left the riders blind.
A punishing mile and the lathered mounts began to wane. The riders kept on but were falling back. Rawbone could just make out the dusty figures of Doctor Stallings and Jack B and he screamed to them over the barrel of that machine gun, 'I'll write you ladies when I get settled.'
They pressed on with the stencil of the truck long and sleek upon the earth. They were buying time for the hourglass when far ahead in the melting heat a floating illusion of water damn near shimmering like sunset. John Lourdes yelled to Rawbone to come about and he did ... and was sure of nothing that he saw.
It appeared to be some vast standing lake that would blink and disappear as the ground dipped, then it would liquid back up out of the desert clay as the truck wheels climbed some hardened dune.
It was there, then gone, and then it was—
The truck braked. The men got out. They walked to the edge of that still and seemingly endless body of blood-colored water.
'The storm that came in from the Gulf,' said John Lourdes.
'Dry lagoon ... this'll be nothing by tomorrow.'
Rawbone ran to the truck and grabbed the binoculars. John Lourdes looked up shore and then down. The damn thing stretched on for how far he could not tell. He stepped into the water to test its depth. Rawbone scanned the desert. That body of dust had broken into two widening wings.
'We've got just a couple of beers' worth of time before they get here.'
He turned to find the son near forty yards on into that glassy red muck.
'How deep do you think it is at the worst?'
The father understood. 'We get stuck out there-'
John Lourdes hurried to shore and hustled past the father and jumped into the truckbed.
'We're too heavy. And if the tires sink-'
John Lourdes was surveying what they carried. There were four drums of gasoline and a few crates of munitions. 'Look across that lagoon,' John Lourdes said. 'You can see slips of land. It wasn't more than a few inches where I walked.'
He'd grabbed a crate and spilled out its contents. He now tossed back in a few hand grenades, dynamite, a reel of cable, the detonator. He slid the crate to the father. 'Put that up front.'
He jumped from the truckbed and ran to the cab. He was on one side, the father the other.
'You're always one to throw around a remark,' said the son.
