Gideon's Corpse

“Get off my horse!”

A pair of Crown Vics were now coming after them, tearing down the disintegrating main street of the set, scattering cowboys and cameramen and spooking more horses. No way were they going to outrun those cars.

They galloped around the corner of the church, almost colliding with the huge pyro gasbag. Gideon saw the opportunity and took it—and jettisoned his burning shirt on top of the bag.

“Hang on!” he cried, gripping the edges of the saddle.

Almost instantly there was a tremendous whoosh and a wave of heat swept over them, a gigantic fireball engulfing the church. The edges of fire licked about them briefly as they raced on, singeing his hair with a crackle. The horse accelerated in a blind panic. The explosion triggered the rest of the F/X explosives, and World War III erupted behind them: terrific roars, bangs, blasts, flash-booms, soaring rockets. A glance backward from the galloping horse produced the tremendous sight of the entire town erupting in flames, balls of fire rising into the morning sky, buildings blasted into toothpicks, fireworks and rockets streaming up, people and horses knocked to the ground, the earth shaking.

Alida pulled one of her six-guns and began swinging it at him like a club, whacking him in the side of the head and bringing stars to his eyes. She prepared to swing again but Gideon grabbed her wrist and gave it a hard twist, sending the gun flying. And then, before she could stop him, he slapped the dangling, open end of the handcuff onto her wrist, shackling them together.

“You bastard!” she screamed, tugging at him.

“I fall, you fall. And we’re both dead.” He yanked the other six-gun out of her holster, disarming her, and shoved it into his belt.

“Bastard!” But the message had sunk in. She stopped trying to throw him off.

“Take us down the wash,” he said.

“No way. I’m turning the horse around! I’m delivering you to the cops!”

“Please,” he pleaded. “I’ve got to get away. I didn’t do anything.”

“Does it look like I give a shit? I’m taking you back, and I hope they lock up your ass and throw away the key!”

And then the FBI came to his rescue. He heard a volley of gunshots and a bullet whined past, others kicking up dust on either side. The damn idiots were shooting at them. They were going to kill them both rather than let him get away.

“What the hell?” Alida screamed.

“Keep going!” he cried. “They’re shooting at us! Can’t you see—?”

More shots.

“Holy shit, they really are,” she said.

As if by magic, she had the horse under control. The animal was now running smoothly, purposefully. She pointed his head toward the edge of the rimrock above the creek. More bullets whizzed past. The horse ran for the edge, gathering speed to leap into the arroyo.

She glanced back. “Hang on, motherfucker.”

33

Gideon desperately gripped the cantle of the saddle as the horse leapt off the rimrock and plunged down a steep, soft embankment, bounding down the slope in little more than a controlled fall. When the horse hit the bottom he staggered and skidded in the sand, throwing both riders forward, the three of them almost going down. But under Alida’s expert handling, the animal recovered and she brought him to a halt, covered with sweat and trembling.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Gideon said.

Ignoring him, Alida patted Sierra’s neck, leaning over murmuring soothing words into his ear. In the background, Gideon could hear approaching cars, roaring and bouncing along the prairie above and beyond the edge of the canyon, out of sight.

She straightened up. “I’m surrendering you.”

“They’re going to shoot both of us.”

“Not when they see me with a white flag.” She grabbed her shirt and with one violent motion ripped it off, the snaps popping.

“Oh my,” said Gideon.

“Fuck you.” She held up the shirt, waving it as a white flag. Gideon made a grab for it but she stood up in the stirrups, holding it beyond his reach.

Gideon looked over his shoulder. He could hear the cars approaching the edge of the canyon, the big V8s roaring. There were shouts, slamming doors, and a head appeared above the rimrock about three hundred yards from them.

“We surrender!” Alida cried, waving the shirt. “Don’t shoot!”

A shot rang out, kicking up sand in front of them.

“What the hell?” She waved the shirt frantically. “Are you blind? We give up!”

“They don’t get it,” Gideon said. “We’d better get out of here.”

The horse began prancing as bullets kicked up sand around them. Thank God, Gideon thought, they were shooting with handguns. “Go, damn it!”

“Shit,” Alida muttered, giving the horse her heels. Sierra took off. More heads began appearing along the south rim. They galloped along the dry bed of the wash, running the gauntlet as shots continued to ring out from above.

“Hang on.” She dodged and weaved the horse as they thundered along, making a more difficult target. Shots whined by and Gideon hunched his back, expecting at any moment to feel a bullet hit home.

And yet—almost miraculously—within minutes they had outrun the shooters and were still in one piece. Alida slowed the horse to a canter, put her shirt back on, and they continued up the dry bed of the wash as it narrowed into a ravine between two steep hills, which—Gideon noted—would block any advance by FBI agents in cars.

She dropped down into a trot.

“We need to keep up the pace,” Gideon said.

“I’m not killing my horse for you.”

“They’re shooting to kill, you realize.”

“Of course I realize it! What in hell did you do?”

“They seem to think I’m one of the terrorists, the ones with the nuke.”

“And are you?”

“Are you nuts? This investigation has been a balls-up from the beginning.”

“They seem pretty damn convinced.”

“You yourself said they were stupid.”

“I said you were stupid.”

“You never said I was stupid.”

“Yeah, but I was thinking it. And you keep proving it.”

The wash got steeper as it mounted the foothills of the Jemez Mountains, its bed strewn with black boulders. The horse picked his way among the rough terrain with care.

“Look, I’m no terrorist,” Gideon said.

“I’m so reassured.”

They rode in silence for half an hour as the wash climbed into the mountains, the terrain getting ever rougher, the pinon and juniper trees giving way to towering ponderosa pines. As the wash divided into tributaries, they took one after another, until they were in a maze of small ravines surrounded by slopes of heavy timber.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Alida said. “You’re going to release me. I’ll head back and you go on.”

“I can’t. We’re cuffed together—remember?”

“You can break the chain. Pound it off with a rock.”