Bag Limit

Chapter Twenty

Step into a crowd of people, and sometimes it takes a few seconds to sort out who’s who-and who’s doing what to whom. This time, it was easy.

Even from across the open spaces of what passed for a front yard, I could see Miles Waddell’s red hair. He, Mark Denton, and Ed Johns were standing by the front of Miles’ new truck. I pulled in immediately behind them, missing the back bumper by a hair breadth, and Johns turned slightly to see who had arrived. The others were riveted on the action and could have cared less.

In this case, the action was Herb Torrance and his son Dale…and one of their blue healer pups. Two dozen steps away from the three men, Dale was backed up against the side of the mobile home, pegged there by a father whose face was livid. The dog was frantic, darting this way and that, yapping his fool head off, unsure whether to leap into Herb’s arms, jump on Dale, or bite them both.

I got out of the car just in time to see Herb come up with his right hand, hard. The blow took Dale on the face, a crack that I could hear across the yard. The kid’s head snapped around and for a moment he lost his balance. His right hand swung out against the side of the trailer for support as his feet flailed, one of his boots catching the dog in the face. At the same time Herb’s hand flashed again, and this time Dale sprawled against the trailer’s skirting.

Waddell leaned against the grille of his truck, his arms folded in satisfaction over his chest. He glanced at me as I rounded the side of their truck, and then nodded at Cliff Larson.

“I thought I told you to stay away from here,” I snapped, and Waddell shrugged.

“You took your own fair time getting here,” he said. “And hell, we’re just watchin’.”

As I advanced on Herb and his son, I couldn’t hear what the older man was saying, even if the dog hadn’t been hysterical. It was no yelling match. Herb bent down and grabbed Dale by the shoulder, their faces no more than an inch apart, Herb’s voice a hoarse croak.

“Just hold on there,” I bellowed as I approached. Two strides separated me from Herb’s back when Dale’s foot lashed out and caught his father on the ankle. At the same time, the boy twisted, taking advantage of his father’s loss of balance. Using both hands and feet, Dale scrambled wildly out of his father’s grip. He flailed wildly for traction even as Herb slammed his hand against the trailer to stop his fall.

“Dale!” I shouted, but the boy was a human jackrabbit. He’d gotten his feet under him and sprinted along the side of the trailer, Father in pursuit, blue healer dancing around them. Lame as Herb was from years of winter knees and livestock kicks, he managed a credibly fast sideways lope, his left leg dragging stiffly.

“Eeee haw,” Waddell cried with delight.

I heard Bob Torrez’s vehicle pull in behind mine. If there was chasing to be done, better someone sure of step, fleet of foot, and strong of heart. Waddell and his buddies weren’t about to help, and Cliff Larson would cough himself to death before he ran twenty feet.

For whatever reason, Dale Torrance headed toward the paddock area and the complex of loading chutes. What good that was going to do him wasn’t clear, other than to put some railroad ties between him and his father. Just when he had his father beat in their foot race, something caught the toe of his left boot and he went flying, crashing into the bottom two-by-six face first. The rough wood caught him across the mouth. It must have hurt like hell if he’d been in the mood to notice. But his father was bearing down on him.

Herb slowed enough to scoop up a length of splintered fencing, a chunk of wood about four feet long and maybe two inches square-about twice the size of a broom handle. The dog made a grab for the other end and missed.

Within range of the boy, Herb let fly and I could hear the wood sing. Dale had scrambled to all fours, blood streaming from his mouth. The swat caught him solidly on the rump, a hard whack that raised dust from the seat of his pants.

“Sir?”

I turned and saw Tom Pasquale at my elbow. A few yards away, the undersheriff was moseying toward us, in no hurry. Years before, I had heard him tell another deputy that the best way to survive a career of being called to break up nasty bar fights was to “arrive late and arrest the loser.” As sound advice as that might have been, it wasn’t Pasquale’s style.

I held up a hand. “If he starts hitting him in the head,” I said. “Otherwise, they’re having a little family discussion on family property.”

Herb made pretty fair use of that chunk of board, driving his son across the small corral that fed the loading chute. He connected two or three times, and by the second time, the healer decided that if Herb was hitting the kid, it was okay to bite him, too. On the other side of the corral, the dog got a mouthful of jeans just above the boot, and that put Dale off balance. The kid took the opportunity to roll under the fence, dog still tussling.

The seven of us had gravitated toward the corral, and if the fight went on much longer, we’d look like seven spectators at a rodeo. All we needed was to hike boots up on the bottom rail, nestle our elbows on the top, and chew idly on a wisp of straw, observing the action, making sage commentary, and placing side bets on the winner.

Herb was running out of breath, and when Dale went under the fence, the older man hesitated, bent at the waist, heaving and puffing. His face was blotchy, and if he kept it up, somebody was going to be practicing CPR.

Dale, under the fence and with the dog deciding they were playing after all, hesitated long enough to suck in three lungfuls of dust and air. He staggered to his feet and once more set off running, this time around the back of the trailer.

Herb remained rooted, his hands on his knees. He looked over at me and shook his head in disgust.

“You better go after him,” I said to Pasquale, and the young deputy took off like a shot. Dale Torrance had the head start he needed, and he was on familiar territory. He cut around the mobile home and emerged at the other end, in the clear. Two more strides brought him to the door of his truck, and he snatched it open and dove inside.

The diesel lit on the first crank. He pulled it into gear just as Pasquale dashed around the end of the trailer. The old Dodge surged backward in a cloud of dust and exhaust. The back bumper was one of those stout black creations that ranchers weld up out of scrap iron-sharp corners and edges. The bumper slammed into the left front fender of Miles Waddell’s fancy truck, driving the shiny bodywork in until chrome, steel, and plastic molded themselves around the tire and suspension.

The sound of the crash hadn’t died away when the back tires spun another dust storm as Dale surged his truck forward. I saw and heard Tom Pasquale’s hand smack down on the hood, but the deputy could see what none of the rest of us could. He had a straight-on view of the kid’s face. He made the right decision and jumped sideways, the front tire of the Dodge narrowly missing his foot.

“Goddamn,” Waddell said, groping for something intelligent to say. “He backed into my truck.”

“Well, now,” the livestock inspector added. The dual rear tires spewed fountains of dust and gravel as Dale Torrance floored the accelerator, feeding that turbo-diesel for all it was worth. The Dodge spun half a donut and careened through a small knot of juniper sprouts, jouncing airborne as it crashed over the old parent stump.

Undersheriff Torrez had kicked himself into motion, and he sprinted to the idling unit parked behind mine. The Torrance boy drove a beeline for the gate, and Torrez spun the Expedition in its own length, avoiding my car as he did so. He paused just long enough for Deputy Pasquale to grab the door and yank it open.

“Where do you suppose he’s headed?” Mark Denton mused.

“Damn,” Waddell said, watching the chase in wonder.

By this time, Cliff Larson had walked back to the unmarked car, waiting for me. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when we come out here,” he said laconically as I yanked open the door. “You want Herb along?”

“No,” I said. As we shot back out the long driveway, I glanced in the rearview mirror. Herb Torrance was leaning against the fence. The other three were gathered around the front of Waddell’s truck, yanking on the bodywork in an attempt to free the front wheel.

Up ahead, young Torrance’s truck reached County Road 14 and tried to turn south. He was going so fast when he hit the gravel that the truck plowed across the road and into the barditch, bouncing hard enough that a piece of back fender flew off. Torrez had better luck, throwing the Expedition sideways before he hit the county road. He slid the vehicle onto the gravel facing in the right direction.

The two vehicles, a dust storm engulfing the Expedition, hurtled down County 14 nose to tail.

As I straightened the sedan out on the county road, I grabbed the mike off the dash.

“Back off, Robert,” I said, but the undersheriff had already lifted his foot. As the county road changed from gravel to red clay, Torrance’s pickup kicked a plume of dust thirty feet high, like a great vapor trail behind a jet. After a quarter of a mile he’d pulled far enough ahead that Torrez and Pasquale could breathe.

“Well, this ain’t good,” Cliff Larson drawled.

“No, it isn’t,” I said. Some fourteen miles of county road lay ahead of Dale Torrance before he jumped out on State 56. The first handful of miles were straight, relatively level, and fast. Then the road wound up the backside of San Patricio mesa, a narrow, rock-strewn cut not much more than one truck wide. The road snaked up through juniper and brush until it broke out on top, where the mesa was scarred by water-cut arroyos and massive, crumbling fissures in the rimrock. That was the good part of 14. If Dale managed that without crumpling his truck into a ball of tin foil, he still had the final six miles, where the road meandered down the face of San Patricio mesa, switchback after switchback, toward the state highway.

The radio crackled into life, and Torrez sounded as if he were asking for some more fried chicken at a summer Sunday picnic. He’d waited until he’d crested the backside of the mesa, within range of the repeater on the San Cristobals across the valley.

“Three oh four, three oh eight. Ten-twenty.”

“Three oh four is Abeyta,” I said, and Cliff Larson nodded. He’d pulled his seat belt tight, and for once left the cigarettes in his pocket.

“Three oh eight, three oh four is in Regal. Ten-eight,” Abeyta responded after a moment.

“Three oh four, we need you at the intersection of State Fifty-six and County Road Fourteen. Right at the cattle guard. A red and white Dodge dually is headed your way. Don’t let any traffic northbound on Fourteen, and if he makes it that far, don’t let him out on the highway.”

“Ten-four,” Abeyta said.

“How’s he going to do that?” Larson asked.

“Don’t know,” I said. “He can block the cattle guard easily enough.”

“You think you’ll have any cars left when this is all over?” Larson managed a nervous laugh.

“It’s not the cars I’m worried about,” I said.