And then I looked again. This was definitely not ragweed. The top end of the stalk was thickly studded with fist-sized clumps of fuzzy, purply-green-brown buds. Lots of buds. Lots and lots of buds. I bent over and took another look.
Was it? Yes, it was. Unmistakably.
“Tom?” Clearing my throat, I straightened. “Tom, come here.”
He finished loading the roosters into the back of his pickup and came around the truck toward me. “What’s up, China?”
“Weed,” I said, pointing to it.
“Yeah? Well, what of it? What’s to get excited about a stalk of rag—” He bent over and looked. “By damn,” he said softly. “It really is. Weed.”
Pot, in other words.
Marijuana.
Which opened a whole other can of worms. The Fourth Amendment gives every citizen protection against unreasonable and unwarranted searches. Tom’s search-and-seize warrant allowed him to look for the stolen chickens, and that was it. Anything else—say, stolen stereo equipment in the house, or a cache of money hidden in a tin can in the barn—was off limits, legally speaking. In other words, we didn’t have a license to hunt.
But the courts have recognized some searches as valid without warrants—for example, under what’s called the “plain view doctrine.” To apply “plain view” to this case, Tom had to be lawfully present here on the driveway (he was); he had to have a lawful right of access to the evidence in question (he did); and the incriminating character of the evidence had to be immediately apparent (it darn sure was). The guy who stole two chickens was all of a sudden in a heckuva lot more trouble.
Tom was taking a photo and I was bending over again to get another look when from somewhere near the barn, I heard somebody whistling. Tom straightened, grabbed my arm, and jerked me around.
“Leave it,” he said roughly. “Get in the truck and duck down under the dash.” He was already unsnapping his holster. “Do it now, China.”
I scrambled for the truck. Stolen chickens are one thing. Backcountry marijuana grows are something else. While Texas is preparing to license growers to produce low-THC medical cannabis, growing grass for the ordinary consumer is extremely illegal. If you’re caught in possession of anything between four ounces and five pounds—the goodies on that one plant lying on the driveway, for instance—you’re facing a fine of up to ten thousand dollars and six months to two years in prison. Plus additional charges if you’re marketing your crop.
But this little deterrent doesn’t stop the pot farmers. Just the month before, a hundred miles west of Pecan Springs, deputies on aerial patrol had looked down to see the mother of all marijuana farms: some forty thousand plants, growing in lovely green rows in a four-acre field. At the time I read the story, I had done the math. One outdoor plant, grown under good conditions, could yield a pound of salable cannabis. Street prices vary, but a quick Internet search told me that the average asking price for an ounce of medium-quality pot, at the time, was two hundred and eighty dollars. Which put the street value of that crop of cannabis at eleven million and change. The sheriff was still looking for the farmers, who (he believed) were members of a Mexican cartel, growing weed on our side of the border to save on trucking and avoid detection at the checkpoint.
Tom was right. What we had stumbled onto was bigger than a pair of stolen roosters. Bigger, potentially, than an amateur meth kitchen. It was time to get out of Dodge, and fast.
I was already in the truck when it happened. A man stepped out from behind the barn and yelled, “Who the hell are you? Get off my property!”
He was some thirty yards away from the truck, but even at that distance I could see that he had long hair and the general configuration of our chicken thief. Dana Gibbons, aka This Ain’t My First Rodeo. He was carrying a rifle.
Using the open truck door as a shield, Tom unholstered his sidearm and shouted, “Sheriff’s deputy. You’re under arrest for suspicion of cultivating marijuana. Drop that weapon and—”
Gibbons raised his rifle and squeezed off three shots, fast. One zinged off the hood. One smashed the windshield above the steering wheel. The glass exploded in flying splinters and I felt a sharp, burning pain above my left ear. One hit Tom. He went down.
I didn’t stop to think—you don’t, in a situation like this. Adrenaline takes over and you just do what you have to do, fast. I turned in the seat and jerked Tom’s Remington out of the gun rack. I shoved my door open and jumped out, crouching low. I snapped off the safety and levered a shell into the chamber. Using the Chevy as cover, I crept forward until I could see Gibbons, now advancing cautiously, raising the rifle to fire again, his gaze fixed on his target: the cop on the ground.
I stood up, locked the shotgun tight against my shoulder, and aimed, just as Gibbons caught sight of me and swung his gun around. Without a word, I pulled the trigger. The Remington blasted, and Gibbons flew backward.
Ears ringing, I chambered another shell, hard and fast, and aimed again. Gibbons was flat on his back. He was moving, so I knew he wasn’t dead—but he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Watching to see if anybody else would appear around the barn, I ran to him and retrieved his rifle, then back to Tom.
He had propped himself against the truck and was clutching his left upper
