ranch house on a spread just outside of Fort Supply, in western Oklahoma.
“You better – ”
“You just smile, boy. This old man isn’t going to want to give up his information easy to strangers, but he knows more about what he knows about than any man alive. Come on, now.”
Bob got out of the truck. He wore a straw Stetson and had found a gray jacket to go over his denim shirt; suddenly he looked strangely like some kind of cowboy royalty.
“I still don’t – ”
“Button it, Pork. You’ll see.”
An old lady sat in a rocker on the porch at the top of the stairs. She just watched them come, made no gesture of welcome. She fanned herself; it was hot and dusty out and the sun lurked over the hills behind a gassy spread of clouds.
“Howdy, ma’am,” Bob sung out.
“Whachew want?” the old lady asked.
“See the colonel.”
“Colonel don’t see nobody these days.”
“Hell, I have me a line on a pre-’64 70 in.270 once owned by a famous bad boy. Thought he might be interested.”
“He’s got enough guns.”
“No such thing as enough guns, ma’am, I’ll beg your pardon for saying so.”
The woman eyed him suspiciously, then got her weary body up and yelled inside. “Rate? Rate, you in there? Fella out here says he gotta line on a 70.”
“Well, shoo him in, then, honey,” came the call from the dark interior.
Bob walked in and Nick followed.
The room was large. The man who owned it had at one time or other killed every creature large and dangerous that walked upon the earth, and now the heads of his victims looked down upon their slayer, who was a plump man in his seventies sitting in an Eames chair reading a copy of – Nick blinked, double-checked to make sure, but, yes –
He didn’t rise. The beasts stared from the walls. Most of the furniture was wooden and sleek and expensive, and Indian blankets and pottery were all over the place. And so were books, hundreds and hundreds of books. And rifles. Nick had never seen so many rifles and so many books in one place before.
“And who might you gentlemen be?” asked the fellow. He removed a blanket from his lap to reveal a six- shooter, high chromed, seven-and-a-half-inch barrel, and he had merry, clever eyes. There wasn’t a morsel of fear in him anywhere. Nick had never seen a man who had less fear.
“Name’s Bob Jennings, from over in Arkansas. Do some trading in fine firearms. This here’s my associate, named Nick.”
“Well, Mr. Jennings, I must say I know most of the fine gun dealers in this country, having spent much money in their abodes. Can’t say I’ve heard much of you.”
“I’m new to the business, sir,” said Bob. “Just starting my reputation. But you know that fellow the FBI killed, that Bob Swagger?”
“That bad boy took that shot at our president and hit a poor cleric instead?”
“That old boy, yep.”
“Heard of him.”
“Well, he had a pre-’64.270, rebarreled with a Douglas and restocked on a piece of English walnut by Loren Eccles of Chisholm, Wyoming. It was serial number 123453, which means it came off the line in about 1949. A fine rifle. He was a man who much loved fine rifles.”
“I just believe he was. Some say if he’d have meant to shoot the president, he’d have hit the president.”
“Well, who can say? Now, it so happens that his property will eventually come out of FBI impoundment and it so happens that his father, Earl, had a sister named Letitia who happened to be my mother. Bob Lee was my cousin, though I hadn’t seen him in years. An ornery soul, if I recall from childhood. Now as his only living relative, it so happens his guns will therefore come into my possession and knowing how you treasure the Model 70, I might be persuaded to see it come your way.”
The shrewd fellow looked Bob up and down and then lit out with a cackle and a yowl.
“I think I see a family resemblance,” he said. “My, ain’t life just full of surprises?”
“And since no man alive knows more about the Model 70, I can’t think of a better man to receive that rifle, sir, than Colonel Rathford Marin O’Brien, author of
“It sounds like a piece I’d be interested in. Lord knows, I’ve spent lots of foolish money on interesting rifles. If I didn’t have so many damn oil wells, I might not be such a spendthrift, but I’m too old for women and I tired of killing some years back, so interesting rifles and the folly of New York intellectuals are my last remaining vices. And what would the price be?”
“Sir, I’ll not insult you with talk of money,” said Bob. “I’ll trade you that damn rifle even up, for information. That’s all I want. Some talk.”
“They say a man who asks for little is always meaning to take a lot.”
“Maybe they say that, sir, and maybe it’s right. But I know Bob Lee Swagger thought you were a great American and he’d be pleased to have one of his rifles come to rest in your collection. And he’d consider it an even bargain and a good swap.”
“All right, then, boy. Ask your damn questions. What I know that could be worth that much – properly authenticated, that gun would easily go fifteen thousand dollars at the big Las Vegas show – is mighty interesting to me.”
“The Tenth Black King.”
O’Brien looked at him, his hard eyes gleaming with sudden insight.
He glanced briefly at Nick, found him uninteresting, then returned to Bob.
What the hell was going on? Nick was thinking.
“Hell, boy,” said Colonel O’Brien. “The Tenth Black King is a damned mystery.”
Dobbler could no longer stand his office. The walls seemed to press down on him and his mind had ceased to operate. He had sat there for hours, trying to think of ways to get at Bob and he had come up with nothing.
So now he was wandering around the RamDyne complex, ducking now and then when a 747 would scream in on the flight path to Dulles. He knew that sometimes his unconscious could solve a problem if he did not let his conscious deal with it directly. It just happened, under the surface, so to speak. He prayed for such a leap in insight now. But he only saw blue sky, airplanes and crummy buildings.
He’d come at last to a large corrugated shed toward the rear of the complex. It bore the sign, OPERATIONS MOTOR POOL/NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL.
Why did he enter? Because it was there. No one stopped him as he slid in and in the darkness he blinked to adjust his eyes. He found himself in a garagelike structure of some size, in the center of which a number of men were bent over benches, working intently. The odor of gasoline, grease and some kind of chemical solvent filled the air like a vapor. He heard the click and snap of metal parts. He smiled at one of the workers, who just worked away contemptuously.
He saw then they were working on guns. Machine guns or assault rifles, complicated, dangerous-looking. They were snapping them, assembling them, greasing them, goofing around with them. And there were bullets too, crates of bullets, and some of the men were fitting the bullets into magazines. They all looked like barbarians. They were wild boys, yardbirds, the same breed of tough, scary trash that had frightened Dobbler into Russell Isandhlwana’s comforting ministrations. Some had crew cuts, some ponytails, all had tattoos and bad teeth. And the guns: he could tell. They loved the damned guns.
There was so much electricity between the men and their weapons. It was like nothing he’d ever seen. How they adored them!
The guns, Dobbler thought.
“Well,” said Colonel O’Brien, “I’d guess you think you might find that damned rifle and make yourself a half a
