“Awright, June-bug. I’ll be there directly. We’ll have an overnight guest most likely, so turn the cot down and leave a light on at the inn.”
Franklin sat back and pushed both boots hard against the floorboard, stretching his long legs. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat on a horse, he thought, rubbing his eyes. He was at a funny place in his life. Weary all the time, seemed like. Worried when he woke up in the morning. He didn’t used to be like that. Used to wake up with a smile on his face. Well, what were you going to do? Third generation lawman. Maybe law genes could only stand so much law-breaking, is what Daisy had told him one night he couldn’t sleep.
It was the border. His granddaddy, back when he was sheriff, had said something to him once and it stuck. He was talking about a rancher shot dead for moving a fence six feet. Laws were fences he said. That’s all they were.
“A border ain’t nothin’ but a law drawn in the sand.”
A minute later, Homer was back. All by himself and shaking his head in disbelief. He put his hands on the roof and leaned down to speak through the driver’s side window.
“You won’t believe this one, Sheriff.”
“Try me.”
“Nobody home up front.”
“Say again.”
“Wasn’t anybody up in the darn cab.”
“Homer.”
“Sheriff, I swear I ain’t lying. Nobody there.”
“He run?”
“Shoot, I guess. Doors closed, headlights on, transmission in Park. Empty.”
“Let’s take a look.”
Dixon shoved his door open with his boot and climbed out. He stretched, pulling his shoulders backward, his eyes on the far hills to the south. Smoke was curling up from the chimney of a ranch house. Ben Nevis’s place.
He’d allowed a posse to ride south out of there two days ago. A dozen of desperate young fellas from town who wanted to go find their sisters and girlfriends. Idea was, they’d ride down to Nuevo Laredo and see what they could find out about all these missing girls. They were due back yesterday evening and so far nobody had heard word one. Worrisome, to say the least.
The Peterbilt was hissing and steaming when he climbed up on the passenger side running board and tried to look through the windshield. Black glass, like it had mirror inside it. He pulled out his flashlight and put it right on the glass. Couldn’t see a thing. He stuck his head inside the driver’s window and saw Homer’s frowning face on the other side.
“Well, well, well,” Dixon said.
“That’s what I told you, Sheriff.”
“You look back there in his bunk compartment? Maybe he’s just watching a racy video in there and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yessir, I did check.”
“And he didn’t go out either door.”
“We’d have seen him, Sheriff.”
Dixon removed his hat and ran his fingers through his thinning brown hair.
“There was a lot of dust when he pulled over.”
“I guess he could have run, Sheriff.”
Franklin told Homer to have a look in the glove box. Get his registration. Jot down all the numbers on the VIN plate screwed into the door-jamb.
“Well. He must have run,” the sheriff said to Homer and jumped to the ground. “I’ll go have a look around.”
Dixon did a three-sixty, bending down to look under the trailer a few times, between the axles, and shook his head. Then he walked away from the truck, a few hundred yards into the desert. There was a rocky mound rising to about thirty feet high where he could see the plains better. The wind had come up, and there were scattered tumbleweeds blowing across the highway. There was a sound on the wind, too, but it wasn’t any speed-freak trucker beating feet through the desert.
No. It was horses. Maybe a dozen of them.
Franklin looked up, squinting his eyes, and saw a cloud of dust rising out on the plain.
His posse?
He moved quickly to the top of the hill.
The riders were tightly bunched about a half-mile away. Headed right at him at full gallop. Ben’s ranch, where they’d left from, the stables were just up the road a piece. Well. The boys were a full day late but at least it looked like they’d all come back safely. When he’d sent them off, he hadn’t so sure about the thing at all. It was dangerous down there, real dangerous. All he knew was, he had to do something for those girls.
He’d have ridden down with them if he hadn’t been so worried about his town.
There was a full-blown war raging on this border. An invasion. Illegals and drugs both. All hell had broken loose down in the little border town of Nuevo Laredo. Lots of people on both sides had died in the crossfire. Two Border Patrol Agents had been gunned down here in the last six months. Couple of tourists, too, who’d gotten lost after crossing over the International bridge at Laredo. Pretty bad. He’d heard a rumor they were sending some fellas down from Washington to look into it. Well, it was about time.
Way past time.
Apparently Laredo PD had found a stash of IEDs under the bridge. Improvised explosive devices, just like the ones used in Iraq to kill Marines. Al-Qaeda on the border? He’d heard crazier things in his life.
The Mexican border was flat broken. And nobody had a clue how to fix it. Ranchers and Minutemen wanted to put up a 2,000-mile-long fence. Money was pouring in, people wanting to put fences on their property. Nothing made sense any more. A border was a border. Any fool knew that. Folks in Washington just looked the other way. Didn’t want to upset anybody. Give Texas back to the Mexicans without firing a shot. That’s what was happening to his state.
But not to his town. Not if he could help it.
He had no idea if it was Mexican narco-gangbangers or even dirty Federales behind all these abductions. Or, even if the young ladies had been spirited away to Nuevo Laredo bordellos. But Nuevo wasn’t a bad place to start looking, he knew that for sure. It was the most lawless town on either side of a lawless border. Not that that was saying much these days.
Something had spooked the horses. Maybe one of the riders had seen him standing up here on a hill. Anyway, they’d changed direction and now the posse was headed right for him.
He couldn’t understand why they were riding so bunched up like that. He strained his eyes, trying to see. Even in the cold moonlight they were still just a tight black mass kicking up a single dust-cloud behind them.
“Sheriff? I hear horses.”
He’d been concentrating so hard on the strange spectacle he hadn’t even heard Homer coming up the hill behind him.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Dixon said, turning back to the horses. Homer looked and a wide grin broke out on his face.
“The posse! Sheriff, if it ain’t about time!”
“They look funny to you, Homer?”
“What do you mean, Sheriff?”
“I don’t rightly know. They’re riding all bunched up.”
“I see that. Something else is wrong.”
“Something sure is strange, isn’t it? No, I got it. They ain’t got their hats on, Sheriff.”
“I reckon that’s it, all right. No hats. I knew something was wrong.”
The posse had galloped to within a thousand yards.
“Sheriff, you know—something really ain’t right here. I’m gonna tell you that right now. It just ain’t natural the way they’re riding those horses—”
Homer raced down the hill, fast as he could, and his words were lost in the wind along with his hat. He was
