Buddy’s escape. The big man turned toward them at the sound of their oncoming truck, raising his gun.
June aimed the shotgun at him, leading him, and pulled both triggers almost simultaneously. The noise inside the truck was deafening.
“Don’t mess with Texas, asshole!” June had screamed over the blast.
Daisy was going way too fast now to concentrate on anything other than the road in front of her. The two remaining Mexicans leapt out of the road just in time to avoid being hit by the pickup. The moving van blurred by on her right. She no longer could see the one who’d been standing on the lift.
“Did you get him?” she asked June.
“Yeah,” she said, looking back. “Uh-oh. Keep going. The other two are climbing up into the cab.”
She saw the lights come on in her rear view mirror. “Here they come.”
The moving van was pulling quickly away from the curb in pursuit. It probably wasn’t all that speedy, but then neither were they. She mashed down the accelerator, fire-walling it.
“Take some more shells, June-bug,” Daisy said, eyes straight ahead and both hands on the wheel. “Take ’em all.”
“All my life I’ve been wondering what ‘riding shotgun’ meant,” June said, digging once more in Daisy’s robe for the cartridges.
Daisy smiled at her.
“There’s Buddy,” she said, “I think we’re gaining on him.”
They could see Buddy’s taillights now, disappearing around a bend in the highway and starting up a hill. They were outside the town limits, heading east into the desert over toward Kingsville. The headlights of the big van were still in her rear view, but the Mexicans were having a hard time catching up.
“Can you catch him?”
“He’s faster. I’m going to try.”
“Can’t you signal him to stop? With the lights, I mean?”
“We can’t stop, June. The two amigos are still on our butts.”
Daisy hit the gas and just stayed off the brakes. About three miles out of town she finally managed to get right up on Buddy’s tail and started flashing her high beams at him. He must have recognized her green Ford truck because he slowed down just enough for her to pull alongside. June pulled the shotgun back inside the cab and stuck her head out.
“Buddy, it’s us! It’s me, June!” she shouted and she saw his pale face at the window looking over at them. There was blood on Buddy’s face and down his front. A lot of it.
“What do you want?” he screamed above the wind. “I’m running a little late!”
“We got a FedEx package to go out!” June yelled. “Needs to be in tonight’s shipment. Extremely urgent!”
“Tell him it’s a matter of national security,” Daisy said.
“A matter of national security, Buddy!”
He nodded that he understood.
“Hand her on over,” Buddy cried back. “I’ll slow up.”
“Hold on a second,” June said, and turning to Daisy, “Slow down a little, will you please? And don’t swerve so much.”
Buddy decelerated to about fifty. Daisy matched his speed and eased her truck over till they were just neck and neck about three feet apart. She tried to maintain that exact separation but they were on a winding road and it was a whole lot harder than in looked in the movies.
“How’s this?” Daisy said.
“Pony Express?” June grinned at her, putting the gun between her knees and grabbing the FedEx envelope off the seat.
“Exactly.”
“Here you go, Buddy!” June said, extending her arm to the FedEx driver.
Buddy reached out and grabbed hold of the envelope in June’s hand.
“Got it?” June asked him before she let go.
“Got it!” Buddy yelled, pulling it inside. “Yessum, I’ll make sure she goes out tonight! Guaranteed.”
“Good! Are you hurt too bad?”
“No, ma’am. Just a scratch I believe.”
“Buddy, you get yourself over to Southwest Medical and have somebody stitch you up, okay?”
“Yessum, soon as I get my mail here delivered. Y’all have a good evening now!”
“G’night!”
June sat back and pushed her hair out of her eyes and they watched the little FedEx truck roar away and disappear over a hill.
“Well, that was fun,” June said, smiling over at Daisy. “Are the Mexicans still on our tail?”
“We lost ’em. They couldn’t keep up on the steep hills.”
“Roll your window up for starters. It’s cold as snow in here,” Daisy said.
“Whoopee,” June said, cranking her window up, “Hey. Look at the sky over there. To the south.”
“What is that?”
“Something’s burning, I reckon.”
“Looks like a lot of ‘somethings’ burning to me. Over toward Dolores.”
“Let’s go see.”
“I guess that’s where what’s left of our police force went. I was wondering who gave the looters the key to the city.”
Daisy took the first right she could. It was old state road #59 heading south. The sky on the horizon was aglow with a red haze as she crested a hill. A big eighteen wheeler passed her headed the other way, smoke pouring from its twin stacks as it chugged uphill. Then, about fifteen or so more trucks evenly spaced behind it. One after another, until she thought the line would never end. She counted: twelve trucks in all.
Before she could even digest that fact, she saw something else. Right behind the very last truck in the convoy, one of the two brand spanking new Crown Victorias newly acquired by the Prairie PD.
“That was Homer Prudhomme, I do believe,” June said, craning her head around to look. “Wonder where the heck he’s going. Following that big convoy?”
“Off on another wild goose chase, I reckon,” Daisy said, “It is his night off, I guess.”
“Prairie, Texas’s, very own Ghostbuster,” June said, shaking her head, and Daisy laughed until she cried.
59
H omer had just passed a battered pickup headed in the opposite direction on SR-59. Just a blur, the vehicle was going pretty fast, but it sure had looked an awful lot like Mrs. Dixon’s truck. He was too busy trying to stay on the semi convoys’ tail to look around and be sure. It had been an old pea-green Ford pickup. Out the corner of his eye, he’d seen a couple of ladies up front, laughing about something maybe.
He remembered it was Friday night. He hoped, whoever was in that truck wasn’t counting on whooping it up over in the border town of Dolores tonight.
Dolores, at least some of it, was on fire. In his rear view mirror he could still see the reddish glow above the town. Arson, he suspected, because it sure looked from here like it was more than one building. Time was, arson was an occasional thing. A destitute rancher burning his barn down hoping to collect the insurance. But that was then. Now, it seemed like the whole county was going crazy.
All of Texas, if you wanted to be honest with yourself. It was certainly not a good night for a couple of nice ladies to be running around out in the desert that was for sure. It was a bad night, Homer felt, and it was going to get worse before it got better.
Well, he thought, the sheriff was still down in Key West. Supposed to be coming home some time after his talk at the conference, whenever that was. So, maybe that had been Miz Dixon after all, going out to party with a friend, maybe. Like they say, while the cats away the mice will play.
He smiled and shook his head. It was a side of Mrs. Daisy Dixon that he’d never imagined. She was such a
