Blood Sport

Chapter Seventeen

I had cramp right down both legs. Matt came out of the house and I woke up to find that the shade patch had moved round while I hadn’t. When he went into the barn I started to shift the necessary two yards and found my muscles in knots.

The shade wasn’t much cooler, but much better cover. I sat in it waiting for Matt to come out of the barn and for my legs to unlock. What they needed was for me to get to my feet and stamp about: but if Matt caught sight of anyone moving so close to him the whole project would lie in ruins.

He fetched water for the horses, for the calves, and for the hens. I looked at my watch, and was horribly startled to see it was nearly six. It couldn’t be, I thought; but it was. Four hours since I last checked. Four hours. I shivered in the roasting air.

Matt brought the empty muck barrow around and into the barn, and came out with it filled. For the whole afternoon I’d fallen down on the surveillance, but looking back I was fairly sure nothing had changed at the farm. Certainly at this point things were as they had been: Matt had no helpers and no visitors, and when he left for Las Vegas the horses would be alone. For that piece of certainty I had been prepared to watch all day, and a poor job I’d made of it.

Matt shut the barn door and went into the house. Half an hour later he came out in a cream-coloured jacket and dark trousers, a transformation from his habitual jeans and a checked shirt. He opened the doors of the shed containing the car, went inside, started up, and drove out across the yard, round the bend on to the road, and away over the desert towards Kingman.

Satisfied, I finally got to my feet. The cramps had gone. I plodded tiredly off to the two-mile distant hidden car, and wished the night was over, not beginning. I hadn’t enough energy to lick a stamp.

Matt’s dust had settled when I followed him along the empty road, but when I got into Kingman he was still there. With shock I saw him standing outside a garage I was passing, and I drew into the kerb fifty yards on and looked back. The black saloon he had hired and his own blue Ford were both standing there in the forecourt. An overalled girl attendant was filling the Ford’s tank from the pump, and Matt was looking in snatches at his watch and exhibiting impatience. Seven-twenty; and a hundred miles to Las Vegas. He would be a few minutes late for his appointment with Walt.

Slumping down in my seat I fixed the driving mirror so that I could watch him. He paid the girl for the petrol and hopped into his car over the top, without opening the door. Then he pulled out on to the road, turned in my direction, and went past me with his foot impressively on the accelerator. I gently followed for a while at a respectable distance, content to keep him only just in sight, and turned back to the town once he was conclusively topping the speed limit on Route 93 to Las Vegas.

Outside the unprosperous looking Mojave Motel Sam Hengelman’s horse van took up a sixth of the parking space. Inside, they told me that he had arrived at four-thirty and was along in Room 6, sleeping. I left him to it, because we couldn’t move anyway until I’d phoned Walt at eight, and went into the bus station for some coffee. It came in a plastic carton out of an automat, black but weak. I drank it without tasting and thought about some food, but I wasn’t really hungry enough to bother, and I was too dirty and unshaven for anywhere good. Until after eight I sat on the bus station bench staring into space, and then used the bus station telephone to get through to Walt.

He came on the line with little delay.

‘How’s things?’ he said.

‘Matt left Kingman for Las Vegas at seven-thirty, so he will be a little late.’

‘Left Kingman?’ Walt sounded surprised.

I explained about Matt changing cars.

‘I suppose his Ford wasn’t quite ready when he got there. Anyway, he’s coming in that, not the hired one.’

Are you all right?’ Walt said hesitantly.

‘Of course.’

‘You don’t sound it.’

‘Sam Hengelman’s here,’ I said, ignoring him. ‘He’s asleep along at the Mojave Motel. We’ll start as soon as I get back there and wake him up.’

‘It’s all safe at the farm?’ He seemed anxious.

‘Deserted,’ I assured him. ‘Has been all yesterday, all last night, and all today. No one around but Matt. Stop worrying. You just see Matt and put on your act, and then head straight back to Santa Barbara. As soon as Sam’s clear of the area I’ll follow you. See you for breakfast about twelve hours from now.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well... keep your nose clean.’

‘You too.’

‘Sure thing. It’s not me that’s nuts.’

The line clicked clear before I found an answer, and it left me with a vague feeling that there was more I should have said, though I didn’t know what.

I knocked on Sam’s door at the motel, and he came sleepily stretching to switch on the light and let me in.

‘With you in a minute,’ he said, reaching for his shoes and looking round for his tie.

‘Sam, you don’t have to come.’

‘Eh?’

‘Go back to sleep. I’ll go and fetch the horses. That way you won’t be so involved.’

He sat on the edge of the bed looking down at the floor. ‘I’m still driving them to Lexington?’

‘Unless you want out. Leave the van, and fly home.’

‘Nope.’ He shook his head. ‘A bargain’s a bargain. And I may as well come all the way. That van’s none too easy in reverse... don’t know that you could handle it.’

I half smiled and didn’t argue. I’d wanted him with me, but only willingly, and I’d got that. He knotted his tie and brushed his hair and then took a sidelong glance at my own appearance, which fell a ton short of his. He was a fleshy man of about fifty, bald, pale-skinned, and unexcitable. His nerves, I thought, were going to be at least equal to the evening’s requirements.

‘Let’s go, then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I paid in advance.’

I followed him across to the van and climbed up into the cab. Sam started the engine, told me he’d filled up with gas when he’d first reached Kingman, and rolled out south-east on the road to the farm. His broad face looked perfectly calm in the glow from the dashboard, and he handled his six-stall horsebox like a kiddicar. He went eight miles in silence, and then all he said was, ‘I’d sure hate to live this far from town, with nowhere to get a beer.’

We passed the third of the three side roads and started on the last ten uninhabited miles to the farm. Three miles farther on Sam gave an alarmed exclamation and braked from his cautious thirty to a full stop. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘That gauge.’ He pointed, and I looked. The needle on the temperature gauge was quivering on red.

‘Have to look see,’ he grunted, and switched off the engine. My thoughts as he disappeared out of the cab were one enormous curse. Of all hopeless, dangerous places for his van to break down.

He came back and opened the door my side. I jumped down beside him and he took me round to show me the exhaust.

‘Look,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Water.’

Several drops slid out, glistening in the light of his torch.

‘Gasket,’ he said, putting into one word the enormity of the disaster, and what he thought of fate for trapping us in it.

‘No water in the radiator,’ I said.

‘Right.’

‘And if we go on, the engine will seize up.’

‘Right again.’

‘I suppose you don’t carry any extra water in the van?’

‘We sure do,’ he said. ‘Never travel without it.’

‘Can’t we pour some in the radiator...?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We can. There’s two gallons. We can pour in a quarter, and go three miles maybe before it’s all leaked out, and then another quarter, another three miles. Four quarts, twelve miles. And that’s it.’

Thirteen miles out from Kingman. We could just about get back. Seven to the farm. We could refill the radiator at the farm, but Sam couldn’t set out on his two thousand mile journey with a stolen cargo in a van emptying like a dry dock.

‘There’s an extra gasket, of course,’ he said.

‘A spare one?’

‘Sure. Always carry a full set of spares. Never know where you’re going to need them. Universal joints, big ends, carburettors, I carry them all. Anyone with any sense does that.’

‘Well,’ I said in relief, ‘how long will it take you to fit the spare?’

He laid the engine bare and considered it in the torch light.

‘Cylinder head gasket. Say three hours.’

‘Three hours!’

‘Won’t take much less,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’

I looked at my watch. Eight-fifty. Three hours made eleven-fifty; and if we then went on to the farm and picked up the horses we couldn’t be back through Kingman until one-fifteen.

Matt would reach Pittsville Boulevard by nine-thirty, and finish his insurance business long before ten. If he drove straight home again he would be on the farm road at midnight. If Sam changed the gasket, so would we.

If Matt stopped to play the tables, he would be at least an hour later. His clothes had suggested he would stop. But whether for one hour or six, there was no way of telling.

‘Change the gasket,’ I said abruptly. ‘Then we’ll see.’

Sam nodded philosophically. It was what he would have done in any case if the van had broken down anywhere else, and without more ado he sorted out what he wanted and started unscrewing.

‘Can I help?’ I said.

He shook his head and clipped his torch on to a convenient spar to give a steady working light. There seemed to be little haste in his manner, but also no hesitation and a good deal of expertise. The heap of unplugged parts grew steadily on a square of canvas at his feet.

I walked away a few steps and felt for the cigarettes. Two left. I’d still forgotten to buy more. The smoke didn’t help much towards making the next decision: to go on, or to go back.

I’d already gambled on Matt staying to play. If it had been Yola, I would have felt surer that it would be for most of the night: but her brother might not have the fever, might only want a short break in his boring stint with the horses. How short? How long?

The decision I came to, if you could call it that, was to wait and see what time Sam restarted the engine.

The night, outside the bright pool by the van, was as dark as the one before. The stars glittered remotely, and the immensity of the American continent marked their indifference to the human race. Against such size, what did one man matter? A walk into the desert...

Carefully I pinched out the end of my cigarette and put the stub in my pocket. A good criminal, I thought wryly: I’d always been that. I had a job to do, and even when I’d finished it, I was going for no walks into the desert. I was going back to Santa Barbara, to have breakfast with Walt and Eunice and Lynnie. The prospect at that moment seemed totally unreal, so far were the Arizona hills from the lush coast, so far had I been into the wasteland inside me.

I went back to Sam and asked how it was going. He had the cylinder head off and was removing the cracked gasket.

‘So, so,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m breaking the record.’

I did my best at a smile. He grunted, and said he could do with a cup of coffee, and I said so could I. We hadn’t brought any.

He worked on. The air was still warmer than an English summer and he wiped sweat off his bald forehead with the back of a greasy hand. The light shone on his thick stubby fingers, and the click of his spanners echoed across the empty land. The hands on my watch went round in slow fractions. The gasket was wasting the night. And where was Matt?

After two hours Sam’s spanner slipped on a nut and he cursed. In spite of his calm, the tension wasn’t far from the surface. He stopped what he was doing, stretched upright, took three deep breaths and a look at the night sky, and waited for me to say something.

‘You’re doing fine,’ I said.

He sniffed. ‘What’ll happen if they catch us here?’

‘We won’t get the horses.’

He grimaced at my non-answer and went back to his task. ‘What have you been doing all day?’

‘Nothing. Sitting still.’

‘You look half dead,’ he commented. ‘Pass me those two washers, will you?’

I gave him the washers. ‘How much longer?’

‘Can’t say.’

I stifled the urge to tell him to hurry. He was going as fast as he could. But time was ticking away, and the postponed decision had got to be made. Turning my back on the tugging desert I climbed up to sit in the cab. Eleven-twenty. Matt could be a bare quarter of an hour out from Kingman. Or glued to the green baize and the tricky numbers in Las Vegas.

Which?

For a long half hour I looked out of the back windows while no helpful telepathic messages flowed through them. A straightforward gamble, I thought. Just decide if the winnings were worth the risk.

An easier decision if I’d come alone: but if I’d come alone I couldn’t have mended the gasket.

At eleven-forty Sam said gloomily that he was having to fix the water pump as well. It was sticking.

‘How long?’

‘Another twenty minutes.’

We stared at each other in dismay.

‘Go on then,’ I said in the end. There was nothing else to do.

I left the cab and walked restlessly a short way back along the road, fearing every second to see Matt’s headlights and wondering how best to deal with him if we had to. I was all for stealing from him what wasn’t his, but not for damaging his skin. He, however, would have no such inhibitions. There would certainly be blood. Not fair to make it Sam’s.

At two minutes past midnight he called out that he had finished, and I walked quickly back to join him. He was pouring water into the radiator, and screwed on the cap as I came up.

‘It should be OK now,’ he said. His hands were covered in grease and his big body hung tiredly from the shoulders. ‘Which way do we go?’

‘On.’

He nodded with a wide slicing grin. ‘I figured you’d say that. Well, I guess that’s OK by me.’

He swung up into the cab and I climbed in beside him. The engine started sweetly at first try, and switching on his headlights, he released the brake and eased away along the road.

‘If anyone catches us here from now on,’ I said, ‘duck.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Tell you something,’ he said comfortably. ‘I swing a mean left hook.’

‘The chap we’d be taking on goes for the head. But with a club of some sort in his fist.’

‘Nice guys you play with,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember that.’

We covered the remaining distance at a good speed and in silence. The horsebox crept round the last corner and its headlights flickered over the farm ahead. I put my hand on Sam’s arm, and he braked to a halt a short way from the yard.

‘Switch off, would you? Lights too,’ I said, and jumped quickly down from the cab to wait a few precious seconds until my eyes and ears got used to silence and dark.

No lights in the house. No sound anywhere except the ultra-faint ringing vibrations of limitless air. The calves and hens were asleep. The horses were quiet. I banged on the cab door and Sam switched his headlights on again before climbing down to join me. The bright shafts lit up the back of the house and wouldn’t shine straight into the horses’ eyes when I led them from the barn. Over on the shadowy side of the yard the open doors of the shed where Matt had kept his car yawned in a deep black square. The jumbled rubbish dump just in front of us threw surrealistic shadows across the dusty ground, and its smell of decay brushed by our noses.

Sam swept it all with a practised glance. ‘Not much of a place.’ His voice was as low as a whisper.

‘No... If you’ll unclip the ramp, I’ll go fetch the horses. One at a time, I think.’

‘OK.’ He was breathing faster and his big hands were clenched. Not used to it, after all.

I hurried down towards the barn. It wasn’t far; about forty yards. Now that we were totally committed my mind raced with urgency to be done, to be away, to be safely through Kingman before Matt came back. He could have been on the road behind us, be rushing at this moment across the desert to the farm...

What happened next happened very fast, in one terrifying cataclysmic blur.

There was an urgent shout behind me.

‘Gene!’

I turned, whirling. There were two sets of headlights where there should have been one.

Matt.

The voice again, yelling. ‘Gene! Look out.’ And a figure running down the yard towards me.

Then there was a roar behind me and I turned again and was met full in the eyes by the blinding glare of two more headlights, much closer. Much closer.

Moving.

I was dazzled and off balance and I’d never have got clear. The running figure threw himself at me in a rugger tackle with outstretched arms and knocked me over out of the way, and the roaring car crashed solidly into the flying body and left it crumpled and smashed and lying on top of my legs.

The car which had hit him turned in a wide sweep at the end of the yard and started back. The headlights lined themselves up like twin suns on their target and with a fraction of my mind I thought it ironic that now when I’d decided not to, I was going to die.

Half sitting, half kneeling, I jerked out the Luger and pumped all of its eight bullets towards the windscreen. I couldn’t see to aim straight... my eyes were hurting from the glare... Not that bullets would do any good... the angle was wrong... they’d miss the driver... By the time I fired the last one the left headlight was six feet away. I uselessly set my teeth against the mangling, tearing, pulping collision... and in the last tenth of a second the straight line wavered... the smooth side of the front wing hit the back of my shoulder, the front wheel ran over a fold of my shirt, and the rear wheel gave me a clear inch.

Almost before I realized it had missed me, the car crashed head on into one of the buildings at my back with a jolting screech of wood and metal. The bodywork crumpled and cracked. The stabbing lights went black. The engine stopped. Air hissed fiercely out of a punctured tyre.

Gasping, dreading what I would find, I leaned over the heavy figure lying on my legs. There were more running footsteps in the yard, and I looked up hopelessly, unable to do any more. I’d used all the bullets... none left.

‘You’re alive!’ The voice came from the level of my ear, the man kneeling. Sam Hengelman. I looked at him in a daze.

‘I thought...’ I said, with no breath, ‘... this was you.’

He shook his head. ‘No...’

He helped me raise and turn the man who’d saved me; and with sickness and unbearable regret I saw his face.

It was Walt.

We laid him on his back, in the dust.

‘Look in the car,’ I said.

Sam lumbered silently to his feet and went away. I heard his footsteps stop and then start back.

Walt opened his eyes, I leaned over him, lifting his hand, feeling with surging hope for his pulse.

‘Gene?’ his voice mumbled.

‘Yes.’

‘He didn’t come.’

‘Didn’t...?’

‘Came to help you...’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Walt...’

His eyes slid aimlessly away from my face.

‘Christ,’ he said distinctly. ‘This is it. This is... really... it.’

‘Walt...’ His hand was warm in mine, but it didn’t move.

‘Sod it,’ he said. ‘I wanted... I wanted...’

His voice stopped. There was no pulse. No heartbeat. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I put gently down on the ground the warm hand with the rounded fingertips, and stretched out my own, and shut his eyes. It should have been me lying there, not Walt. I shook with sudden impotent fury that it wasn’t me, that Walt had taken what I’d wanted, stolen my death... It would have mattered so little if it had been me. It wouldn’t have mattered at all.

Walt... Walt...

Sam Hengelman said, ‘Is he dead?’

I nodded without looking up.

‘There’s a young guy in the car,’ he said. ‘He’s dead too.’

I got slowly, achingly, to my feet, and went to look. The car was a blue Ford convertible, and the young guy was Matt.

Without caring, automatically, I took in that the car had smashed the right-hand door of the garage shed and ploughed into the wall behind it. Most of the windscreen was scattered in splintered fragments all over the inside of the car, but in one corner, where some still clung to the frame, there was a finger-sized hole.

Matt was lying over the steering wheel, his arms dangling, his eyes open. The skull above the left eyebrow was pierced and crumpled inwards, and there was blood and hair on the chromium upright which had held the windscreen. I didn’t touch him. After a while I went back to Walt.

‘What do we do?’ Sam Hengelman said.

‘Give me a moment...’

He waited without speaking until eventually I looked up and down the yard. Two sets of headlights still blazed at the way in.

‘That’s Walt’s car up there?’

‘Yeah. He drove up with the devil on his tail and jumped out and ran down after you...’

I turned the other way and looked at the dark garage.

‘The young guy must have been in there all the time, waiting for us,’ Sam said. ‘He came roaring out and drove straight at you. I couldn’t have stopped him... too far away. Walt was halfway down the yard...’

I nodded. Matt had been there all the time. Not in Las Vegas. Not on the road. Lying in ambush, waiting.

He hadn’t passed us on the road, and there was no other way to the farm. He must have gone back ahead of us. Turned round on the road to Las Vegas and driven back through Kingman while I was sitting in the bus station waiting to telephone to Walt.

But why? Why should he have gone back? He hadn’t seen me following him, I’d been much too far behind, and in any case I’d left him once he was safely on the highway.

It didn’t matter why. It only mattered that he had. Sam Hengelman looked down at Walt and summed up the mess we were entangled in.

‘Well... what the heck do we do now?’

I took a deep breath.

‘Will you fetch that torch of yours?’ I asked, and he nodded and brought it from his van. I went with it over to the Ford, and took a longer, closer look. There wasn’t much to see that I hadn’t seen before, except for a bottle of bourbon that had been smashed in the impact. The neck and jagged top half lay on the floor to Matt’s right, along with several smaller pieces and an uneven damp patch.

I walked into the garage and looked at the Ford from the front. It wouldn’t be driving anywhere any more.

The big torch lit up clearly the interior of the deep shadowy garage. Quite empty now, except for a scatter of cigarette stubs against the left-hand wall. Matt had been smoking and drinking while he waited. And he’d waited a very long time.

The bullet hole faced me in the windscreen and left me with the worst question unanswered.

I’d have to know.

I stood beside Matt and went over every inch of his body down to the waist. He’d taken off the cream-coloured jacket and was wearing the checked shirt he’d worked in. There were no holes in it: no punctures underneath. His head was heavy. I laid it gently on the steering wheel and stepped away.

None of the bullets had hit him. They’d only smashed the windscreen and blinded him, and he’d slewed a foot off course and run into the wall instead of me, and his head had gone forward hard against the slim metal post.

Slowly I returned to where Sam Hengelman stood beside Walt. He drooped with the utmost dejection and looked at me without hope.

‘Did you unclip the ramp?’ I asked abruptly.

He shook his head. ‘Didn’t have time.’

‘Go and do it now. We’re taking the horses.’

He was aghast. ‘We can’t!’

‘We’ve got to. For Walt’s sake, and your sake, and Dave Teller’s sake. And mine. What do you propose? That we call the police and explain what we were all doing here?’

‘We’ll have to,’ he said despairingly.

‘No. Definitely not. Go and let down the ramp.’

He hesitated unbelievingly for a few seconds, and then went and did as I asked. The horses stood peacefully in the barn, apparently undisturbed by the racket, the shots, and the crash. I untied the nearest, Showman, and led him quietly up the yard and into the van.

Sam watched me in silence while I tied him into one of the stalls.

‘We’ll never get away with it.’

‘Yes we will,’ I said, ‘as long as you take these horses safely back to Lexington and never tell anyone, anyone at all, what happened here tonight. Blot it out of your mind. I’ll let you know, when you get back, that you’ve nothing to worry about. And as long as you tell no one, you won’t have.’

The broad fleshy face was set in lines of anxiety.

‘You’ve collected two horses,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘An everyday job, collecting two horses. Forget the rest.’

I returned to the barn, fetched Allyx, and loaded him up. Sam still hadn’t moved.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ve... arranged... things before. There’s a rule where I come from — you take a risk, you get into a mess, you get out.’ He blinked. ‘Walt threw himself in the way of that car,’ I said. ‘Matt didn’t intend to kill him... You didn’t see a murder. Matt drove straight into the wall himself... and that too was an accident. Only two automobile accidents. You must have seen dozens. Forget it.’ He didn’t answer, and I added brusquely, ‘The water can’s empty. You can fill it over there.’

With something like a shudder he picked up the container and went where I pointed. Sighing, I checked that he had brought three days’ fodder for the stallions, which he had, and with his help on his return, shut the precious cargo up snugly for their long haul.

‘You don’t happen to have any gloves around?’ I asked.

‘Only an old cotton pair in the tool kit.’

He rooted about and finally produced them, two filthy objects covered with oil and grease which would leave marks on everything they touched, as tale-bearing as fingerprints. I turned them inside out and found they were thick enough to be clean on the inside. Sam watched wordlessly while I put them on, clean side out.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Will you turn the van, ready to go?’

He did it cautiously as far away from Walt as he could, and when he’d finished I stepped with equal care into the car Walt had come in, touching it as little and as lightly as possible, and drove it down into the yard, stopping a little short of the screen door to the house. There I switched off the engine and lights, put on the brake, and walked back to talk to Sam where he sat in his cab.

‘I’ve three jobs to do,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back as quick as I can. Why don’t you just shut your eyes for a couple of minutes and catch a nap?’

‘You’re kidding.’

I concocted a replica of a smile, and a fraction of the tension in his face unwound.

‘I won’t be long,’ I said, and he nodded, swallowing.

With his torch I surveyed the yard. The Luger was an automatic pistol, which meant it threw out the cartridge after each shot. No one would find the spent bullets, but eight shiny metal shells scattered near Walt’s body were something else. Seven of them winked in the light as I inched the torch carefully round, and I collected them into my pocket. The eighth remained obstinately invisible.

The ejection slot had been on the side of the gun away from Walt, but the cases sometimes shot out straight upwards instead of sideways, and I began to wonder if the eighth could possibly have travelled far enough over to be underneath him. I didn’t want to disturb him: but I had to find the little brass thimble.

Then, when I’d decided I had no choice, I saw it. Bent and dusty, partly flattened, no longer shining. I picked it up from the spot where I had been half-lying in the path of Matt’s car. He had run over it.

After that I attended to the ground itself. Tyre marks didn’t show on the rough dusty surface, but the hoof prints did to some extent. I fetched a broom of twigs from the barn and swept them out.

The garage was next. I punched through into the car the remaining corner of the windscreen with its significant bullet hole, and I picked up every one of the cigarette stubs which told where and how long Matt had waited. They went into a trash can standing a few yards along from the house door.

Matt hadn’t locked the house when he went out. I went in to look for one essential piece of information: the address of the place, and the name of its owner. The torchlight swept over the threadbare covers and elderly furniture, and in one drawer of a large dresser I found what the farmer used for an office. The jumble of bills and letters gave me what I wanted. Wilbur Bellman, Far Valley Farm, Kingman. On the scratch pad beside the telephone, Matt had written a bonus. In heavy black ballpoint were the simple words: ‘Insurance 9 PM.’

Before leaving I gave the big dilapidated living room a final circuit with the torch and the beam flickered over a photograph in a cardboard folder standing on a shelf. Something about the face in it struck me as familiar, and I swung the torch back for a second and closer look.

The patient passive face of Kiddo smiled out, as untroubled as it had been when he told Walt and me about Offen’s mares. Loopy unformed writing straggled over the lower half of the picture. ‘To Ma and Pa, from your loving son.’

If Offen had sent his stud groom to Miami to join his parents, Kiddo’s loyalty to his employer was a certainty. I almost admired Offen’s technique in furnishing himself in one throw with an obscure hideout for the horses and a non-talking employee.

After the house there remained only Walt. Nothing to do but to say goodbye.

I went down on my knees beside him in the dust, but the silent form was already subtly not Walt. Death showed. I took off one glove and touched his hand: still warm in the warm air, but without the firmness of life.

There was no point in saying to him what I felt. If his spirit was still hovering somewhere around, he would know.

I left him lying there in the dark, and went back to Sam.

He took one slow look at my face and said in an appalled voice, ‘You’re not leaving him there?’

I nodded, and climbed up beside him.

‘But you can’t...’

I simply nodded again, and gestured to him to start up and drive away. He did it with a viciousness that must have rocked the stallions on their feet, and we went back to Kingman without speaking. His revulsion at what I had done reached me in almost tangible waves.

I didn’t care. I felt only one grim engulfing ache for the man I’d left behind.