a dirt bike or be lost altogether inside the wind. Yes, maybe this was an opportune moment. “You like tearing up the countryside, making lots of noise with your machines, smearing your scat on the morning? Look at me.”
“What for?”
“The man who snuffs your wick is always the one you least suspect. You’re tooling along, and you shoot off your mouth to the wrong fellow in the middle of a desert, and somebody stuffs a cactus plant up your ass. That’s what the crossroads is all about.”
“ You’re the wick snuffer?”
“Close your eyes and count to three and open them again. I have a surprise for you.”
“Screw you,” the biker said.
He turned his bike around and rode back down the slope, shooting Jack the finger just before heading across the flats, a fountain of gravel and silt flying from under his back wheel.
Jack let out his breath with a sigh. Just two more seconds, he thought. Oh well, maybe it was better that he kept his priorities straight. But before Jack could turn his attention to the hikers, the goggled, head-wrapped dirt biker had reconsidered and nullified his wise choice and spun his machine in a circle. He was headed back full-bore to the hillside, his thighs spread, his knees high, his shoulders humped, a simian throwback determined to teach a lesson to an unwashed, ignorant old man.
He veered north of Jack’s position and bounced onto a narrow trail that would take him to where Jack was standing behind a boulder. Jack temporarily lost sight of him, then heard the biker gun his engine and mount a steep grade, gravel splintering off his back wheel.
Jack waited, his Thompson hanging from his right hand, his coat fluttering open in the wind, a half-smile on his face. The biker had reached the top of the grade and was bouncing up and down with the roughness of the trail as he approached Jack’s position. Thirty feet below was a gully strewn with chunks of yellow chert and the dried and polished limbs of dead trees. Jack stepped out from behind the boulder and raised the muzzle of the Thompson at the biker’s chest.
“I cain’t blame you, pilgrim. Pride is my undoing, too,” he said.
He never got a chance to squeeze the trigger. The biker saw the Thompson and threw his hands in front of his face, then plummeted off the trail straight into the gully, upside down, his machine crashing on top of him.
Jack walked to the edge of the trail and peered down at the biker and the wrecked bike, its front tire still spinning. “Ouch,” he said.
The Sun was blinding when Caleb approached the butte where he thought he had seen one of the bikers split off from the pack and power up the hillside. His eyes were stinging with salt, his mouth dry, and he wanted to stop and take a drink from his canteen, but he felt a cautionary sense he couldn’t dispel. Why had the biker left his comrades? Who or what was up in the rocks where Caleb had seen book pages flipping in the wind? And why hadn’t the biker come back down the hill? He cupped his hands around the sides of his mouth. “Hello up there!” he yelled. “I’ve got an injured man on the trail and need some help!”
He heard his voice echo in an arroyo that twisted toward the crest and opened into a saddle green with trees. “I don’t have cell-phone service,” he called out. “I need somebody with a vehicle to go for help!”
Caleb began walking up the slope toward the boulder where he had seen the book. He heard slag sliding down the hill and clacking into a gully. A man appeared on a sandy patch of ground between a boulder and two pinon trees. He was wearing dark goggles and a bandanna on his head and a black leather vest that was discolored a sickly yellow under the armpits. The sun was shining in Caleb’s eyes, but he could see that the man’s face and arms and chest hair were streaked with blood.
“Did you spill your bike?” Caleb asked.
“I went off into the gully and busted my head. You say you got a hurt man with you?”
“He twisted his ankle.”
“Let’s take a look at him.”
“Where’s your dirt bike?”
“At the bottom of the gully.”
“You cain’t drive it?”
“No, it’s finished.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s broken.”
“Maybe we can fix it. I’m a fair mechanic.”
“I’m not?”
“We need your vehicle. I have to get my friend out of here. He’s not well, and the heat has been pretty hard on him.”
“That’s what I said. Let’s take a look at him.”
“Maybe you should sit down. You’ve got blood all over you.”
“It’s no problem. What’s your friend doing out here?”
“He’s an FBI agent.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Where are the guys you were riding with?”
“Gone.”
“They deserted you?”
“Are you a law dog, too, pilgrim?”
“Parks and Wildlife. I’m not sure I like the way you’re talking to me.”
“Don’t Parks and Wildlife people carry weapons? I would. This area is full of rattlers.”
“Where’s the cut on your head? I don’t see it.”
“You’re pretty damn inquisitive for a man asking other people’s he’p. How far back is your FBI friend?”
“Not far. Are the other bikers coming back or not?”
“You cain’t tell about a bunch like that. Y’all should know. They tear up the countryside wherever and whenever they want, and y’all don’t do squat about it.”
“They?”
The man in goggles pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth, as though his lip were split or his teeth had been broken or knocked out. Then Caleb realized there was nothing wrong with his mouth or teeth and that he was making a decision, one that would probably have irreversible implications for both of them.
“This is my neighborhood. You made your bed when you came into it,” the man in goggles said.
“This is public land. It belongs to the people of Texas. We’ll go wherever we please in it.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am.”
Caleb wet his lips and closed and opened his hands at his sides. “Give yourself up, Mr. Collins.”
“You’re honeymooning here?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Answer me.”
“I was recently married, if it’s any of your business.”
“Oh, it’s my business, all right. You should have stayed with your woman. You’ve spat in the soup, fellow.”
“I’m going to walk out of here now. When I come back, I hope you’re gone. If you’re not, you’re going to be in custody.”
Jack Collins thumbed the goggles off his face and threw them aside. He reached behind the boulder and lifted up the Thompson and pointed it at Caleb’s midsection. “Why’d you wander in here, boy? Why’d you let the FBI use you?”
Caleb felt the muscles in his face flex, but no words came out of his mouth.
“You have cuffs or ligatures on you?” Jack Collins said.
“No.”
“Where’s the agent?”
“In a cool place out of the sun. Let him be.”
“What’s his name?”
“Riser.”
“Ethan Riser?”
