while you was in Junction yesterday.' He turned to the Englishman. 'But we won't use ranch choppers to spot Ba'al for you. You'll just have to hire somebody else when you go lookin' for that widow-makin' hog.'
'This is all the help I expect,' said Wardrop, his jaw set. 'Hutcherson is not exactly keen on it, you know. I fully realize that you're all in this conspiracy, Mr. Marrow, but I am not a cadet. Taking this animal, Ba'al, at half face value, I consider him a world-class trophy.'
Quantrill picked up the lance with its weighted butt, walking with Wardrop as he led the barb outside. Looking steadily into Wardrop's face, he said, 'A good recipe for a messy suicide is to take Ba'al at anything less than two hundred percent face value. His tusks are longer than your lancehead, and as somebody once told me, he can beat you at checkers. Or any other game you have in mind, and if I knew a legal way to stop you, I would.'
'You've seen him, then.'
Marrow was near, listening; suspecting. 'Hutch has, and I've seen the pictures,' Quantrill said carefully. 'If you brought back a really big hog today, maybe Jess could get its head mounted so it'll look bigger. Marianne Placidas would never know the difference.'
'But I would, Quantrill. If you intended no insult, I will not ask you to kindly bugger off.' Wardrop was behaving like a gentleman beset by street urchins, holding in his temper while showing a flash of steel. Quantrill realized his error; shrugged; shook his head again.
Wardrop mounted, swinging up with the easy grace of a man who knew what he was doing. Quantrill handed over the lance without a word. With the best intentions, he had clearly pushed Alec Wardrop past any possibility of turning back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Quantrill offered the best possible reason to Jess Marrow for taking Thursday and Friday off: Sandy needed help with her cash crop. He said nothing about personally freighting that crop to the big export market at Corpus Christi. Sandy's special hybrid crop of red-pulp, chili-flavored popcorn would certainly bring top dollar around Corpus — but he would also pass very near the little town of Alice.
The fact was, Marrow took care to keep from showing too much pleasure in granting his assistant leave whenever the Grange girl was involved. If there was one thing that might tame this young hellion, it was a good woman. From what Marrow could see, Quantrill was showing signs of getting domestic. But Jess Marrow could not see
Late Thursday afternoon, Quantrill ran the stitcher across the last 'gunnysack' of Sandy's crimson-hulled popcorn and mopped sweat from his face. The old fiberglass pallets, roofed for the moment under Sandy's grungy chickenhouse, groaned under their loads. He had sacked three metric tons in all, a full load for any hovervan and then some, if the route covered much broken country.
The buzz of the stitcher clattered down into silence as he called toward the soddy: 'Hey, sis, how about some of that cold peach wine?'
Then he heard another machine, a big one with the whistling throb of a blown diesel with fans, in the near distance.
He walked out into autumn sunlight, stretching the kinks from his muscles, pulling off gauntlets and rolling up his sleeves, and saw the flaking paint on the door of the hovervan. Sandy hadn't told him she was renting the cargo vehicle from Garner Ranch.
Sandy and Childe greeted the driver, a lanky six-footer even without his scruffy boots, with no hips to speak of and a powerful beak of a nose between deep-set eyes. Quantrill considered withdrawing into the shed, saw the man glance in his direction, then resumed his walk. Nearing the trio, he heard the man's resonant basso: 'Old gentleman said tell you there's no hurry. He'd be obliged if your driver would pick up some parts from International Harvester, and he'll call it even.' But now he was standing beside them, looking toward Quantrill, and Sandy turned, too.
'That's more than fair. Cam — Oh, Ted, finished already? This is Cam Concannon, Mr. Garner's foreman. My driver, Ted Quantrill.' Her welcoming hug around Ted's waist said much more.
'Mr. Concannon,' said Quantrill, taking the scarred hand. The thinning sun-bleached hair suggested the foreman might be past forty, but still whipcord tough and lithe.
'Quantrill,' replied the man softly, with smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes as he sized up the smaller man. 'We heard Miz Grange had some hired help. God knows she can use it,' he added, nodding toward the acreage Sandy had not yet cleared.
'We have some iced peach wine. Cam,' Sandy offered, and Childe scampered to the soddy ahead of them. They sat inside, sipping chilled glasses of liquid the color and clarity of a partridge's eye, discussing common topics: the price of special crops, the merits of twelve-volt or 'house current' tools, their mutual hopes of a warming trend with less savage winters.
Finally, with a glance at his old-fashioned pocket watch, Concannon declined another refill. 'The old gentleman expects me back 'fore dark, and my old cycle ain't what she used to be.' He sighed, ducking as he passed the low doorway. 'Quantrill, let me get you that parts list and check you out on the van.'
The two men walked silently to the hovervan, parked where its air blast would not throw dust near the soddy. 'Ted Quantrill, hm?' Concannon's voice was friendly enough, but his message was something else again as he handed over a parts list from the cab. 'Ten years ago, we coulda gone to Rocksprings, you and me; knocked off a few beers with the old gentleman. I think Mr. Garner and you would hit it off. But times change. I wisht we could be friends, I really do. Sorry.'
'So am I. Is this a nice way of saying Mr. Garner wants me to keep clear of his fenceline?'
'Mul Garner ain't seen his fenceline in years, Quantrill. Pore old man is too sick to run things much. It's Jerome I'm talkin' about. Another year or so and I'm afraid he'll be the only Mr. Garner around.' A pause, looking across the hills with a lopsided and cheerless smile. 'Garner Ranch is my business. Mul Garner had his boy pretty late in his life, and never kept hobbles on him. Knowin' Jerome is my business, too.' The pale, deep-set eyes found Quantrill's again. 'He has his eye on this place and what's on it, if you get my drift. He's met you, and he don't like you one bit, and Jerome is mean as a pet coon.'
As though asking something of no consequence, Quantrill asked, 'Any suggestions?'
Conconnan spat. 'Shit, I never in my life told a neighbor to clear out. I won't start now.'
'But if Sandy Grange sticks with me, we'd best move on. Is that it?'
'It'd be healthier than stayin' put. For you, anyhow.'
Quantrill released a long breath. 'Did Jerome Garner tell you to say any of this?'
'No, goddammit! If he knew you was here, he'd of argued the old gentleman out of lendin' the van. Or worse. Hell, I said too much already. The Garners are like my family, and I don't sell my family out. But I can see trouble a long way off, Quantrill. You're trouble. Anybody in this country can tell you how Jerome deals with trouble, and that's about all I ever intend to say about it. I see you again, I nod. That's it.'
'Good enough.'
Concannon waved a hand across the dash of the van. 'Anything here that looks funny to you?'
'Nope. I figure it'll get me there and back. You think I figure right?'
'I wouldn't lend a man a lame horse, damn your hide!'
Quantrill slid back to the cargo section; began to guide a rickety old hovercycle to the loading ramp. 'I never thought you would, Concannon. Sorry it sounded that way. Let me help you with this.'
'No, you go on back to the soddy, I don't want your goddamm help.' Waving Quantrill from the cargo bay, muttering now as if to himself: 'Ain't right to take help from a man you can't be seen with. I just hope the old gent lives another fifty years. Keep most of the shit outa the fan…'
Quantrill partitioned this new knowledge off and wandered into the soddy asking about supper. He wasn't disappointed; Sandy was guiding Childe through the first steps of Sonofabitch Stew. They paused to watch Cam Concannon whirr off on his old cycle, and only then did Quantrill remember the Englishman who was training his
