Wild Country

Two minutes later, the driver said, 'So far, so good. Blacktop starts up ahead; we can really make some time then.' He slid the pickup around a bend, saw the mound of brush piled in the road just ahead. 'Goddamn; that's new,' he said, braking hard, starting to go around it.

An instant later, all of Cameron Concannon's worst suspicions were confirmed. Quantrill saw the muzzle flashes to their left; ducked below the doorsill expecting more from the right.

Concannon was slammed sideways against his passenger with the impact of the slug that passed under his left arm and into his lungs. Quantrill felt the pickup decelerate; heard the impacts of more slugs drum against the pickup body; thrust his foot against the accelerator and grabbed the steering wheel.

The pickup slewed sideways, wheels churning hard as the automatic kickdown engaged, and burst through the mound of heavy brush as Quantrill edged up to see where he was going. Now they were dragging a cedar branch under the chassis, sweeping up a great cloud of dust as the brittle cedar disintegrated beneath them.

A corner of Quantrill's mind was tallying facts, providing guesses, even while he tried to steer the pickup with Concannon slumped against him. Mul Garner had mentioned Rocksprings, but his foreman had several other options — for that matter, had taken an unlikely direction. This ambush meant that perhaps all the options were covered.

Counting those that had escorted him earlier, Quantrill had seen five cycles in the equipment barn. There might be at least five paths for a pickup truck across Garner Ranch, so these cimarrones might have only one cycle to cover each route. And if you wanted top speed from a hovercycle. cutting cross- country, you didn't load it down with two men.

That checked with the lack of fire from his right: there was probably only one man covering this unlikely exit from the ranch. Quantrill kept his head low anyway, steered the vehicle one-handed, and saw his headlights sweep across a smooth wide ribbon a hundred meters ahead. The grinding rush of foliage beneath the chassis suddenly ceased; too bad, for it had been laying down a fine dust screen to cover them, even against a nightscope. Quantrill was lucky, covering the distance to the blacktop road without decapitating a tree or sliding into a dry wash.

Quantrill pressed the accelerator as hard as he dared, sliding up to check the rearview. He saw no lights behind them and, without lights, a cycle could not be driven hard through darkness in such country. He felt Concannon's weak struggles to sit up. 'I can't tell where you're hit,' he said.

Concannon managed to sit up, his head flung back as he twisted to get his hand inside his shirt. 'Left side. Up high.'

'Is it very bad?'

'It'll do,' Concannon admitted.

Quantrill unsnapped his safety belt; felt for Concannon's Colt without taking his eyes from the road. 'Can you hit the brakes?'

In reply, Concannon did so. Quantrill was out of the pickup before it stopped, the old Colt ready for action, racing to the driver's side. Concannon needed help to get his safety belt loose and slide across the bench seat, cursing softly. Then Quantrill had them in motion again, relieved that he had seen no more distant muzzle flashes.

As much to monitor the man's alertness as for any other reason, Quantrill asked about their route: how far, where was the Leakey clinic, was there a VHP set somewhere under the dash. Concannon replied each time, using few words. The upshot of it was that they were a half hour from help. The two-way radio had long since been removed after it had given up under the merciless pounding of Wild Country roads.

Then Quantrill saw what could be a distant glow of lights on the horizon. Concannon sat up straight, swallowed hard. 'Dizzy as hell,' he said; then, 'Call the ole man, Quantrill. Tell him about Jer's stash.'

'What about it?' They were talking louder over the thunder of the engine, hurtling down a straight incline now.

'I seen it. Tell him. Tell him, faithful, under a ledge at the fig tree. Got it?'

Quantrill repeated it. 'You can call him yourself,' he promised, and turned right onto a good two-lane road at the edge of the little town of Leakey. It was one promise he could not make good.

Chapter Forty-Four

Leakey's little clinic had seen many a gunshot wound. 'I'm sorry,' said the sad-faced little doctor, removing old-fashioned glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. 'Maybe if I'd got to him a little earlier…' He waved a hand and let it fall. 'From the angle I'd say the bullet nicked his heart. I'll know more, ah, later. Your friend simply bled to death internally, Mr. Coulter. I'll have to have a statement, of course.'

The young man with the blood-caked shirt sighed. While still in his teens, Quantrill had learned the trick of divorcing himself from the dead, no matter how dear. The more you mourned, the less you were able to avenge. 'You still go by the book out here, huh?'

The little doctor elevated his chin. 'This country won't be wild forever,' he said stolidly. He could not have known that he was endorsing Quantrill's goals.

Quantrill stared over the man's green-smocked shoulder at the body of Cameron Concannon, naked to the waist and grayish against cold, impersonal sheets. The wound had bled so little outside that Quantrill had maintained an irrational hope. 'Right. But right now I need a VHP set.' He saw what he took for a negative look as the doctor opened his mouth. 'It may be life or death.'

The doctor shrugged and led him to the front desk, where a grandmotherly woman sat dozing. Moments later, Quantrill had Mulvihill Garner's call code from the Del Rio exchange.

The old rancher did not answer for so long that Quantrill was already imagining him dead. When he did answer, Quantrill identified himself as Sam Coulter and said, straight off, that he bore the worst kind of news.

'Seems to be your specialty.' Mul Garner yawned. 'Put Cam on.'

'I can't,' Quantrill replied, and told him why. He ended the account with, 'You may need some help there, Mr. Garner. Are you speaking freely?'

'Nobody in the house but me. And don't worry about me. I'll take care of my own. Always have.'

'Concannon told me to say' — he paused, glancing at the physician—'that the man I fought has a big pile of hard money stashed away. He implied it was from illegal dealings.' Quantrill repeated the location as the foreman had gasped it out to him. 'I don't know if that means anything to you.'

'Yes, but mostly it means it's dirty money, so it's not Jerome's and it's not mine. It's nobody's.' Mul Garner's voice in the earpiece was old now. 'I've lost my best friend, and I guess I've lost my son. You have anything else to keep me awake with?'

Quantrill denied it. He was in the act of apologizing when Mul Garner killed the connection.

He was turning away from the radiophone when he made a mental connection and wheeled back, punching a code he knew by heart, feeling icy tentacles constrict around his chest. He relaxed when Sandy Grange answered.

He told her there had been a shooting scrape without giving details. 'No, I'm fine… well, as good as you could expect,' he amended, seeing the doctor's eyebrows rise. There was no telling what the physician might make of the conversation, and he took no chances. 'I had a minor accident or two while looking for our livestock.' Pause. 'I'm really okay, honey, will you shut the hell up and listen? Okay, you recall that neighbor of yours who used to try shaking me up at Saturday dances. Yeah, him; and his friends, too. Somebody told me today to watch my back. I figure you two may be the only unprotected back I have, so stay healthy 'til I get there.'

A longer pause, and the doctor saw the young man's face split in a grin. He would never have guessed that young man had just been told that a wandering Russian boar had come ambling home. Ba'al had a deep cut in his underlip, but blue ointment was Sandy's sovereign remedy. He was near the soddy, so if she needed any help, she could whistle it up in seconds. Childe, she said, reported that Ba'al actually looked forward to his next encounter with the English lieutenant.

Quantrill: 'The hell of it is, so does Wardrop.' Pause, then a lopsided smile. 'What can I do? If they're gonna fight like this, why don't they just get married?'

Her reply was unprintable. Quantrill put down the headset still smiling guiltily, then followed the physician to give Sam Coulter's version of the night's violence. At least half of his statement was true.