Plunder Squad

Seven

Beaghler braked, and they jounced to a stop. “We’ll walk up from here,” he said. “The farmhouse is just the other side of that hill.”

They had been driving nearly an hour. Except for one five-minute period when they’d stumbled across an overgrown old dirt road and followed it for a while, they’d traveled exclusively cross-country—through meadows and open woods and an occasional rocky dry streambed. Their general trend had been upward, into mountains that looked wild at a distance and wilder up close. But there hadn’t been any heavy tangles of brush to get through, or thick woods to work their way around, or deep streams or canyons to avoid. The way had been fairly straight, the dashboard compass generally reading somewhere between northeast and southeast, and the rough ground hadn’t thrown them around as much as Parker had anticipated.

Now Beaghler had come to a stop where a shallow dry streambed they’d been following up a gradual slope split into a pair of narrow tributaries, each of them too small for the car to get into. One tributary came from a steep high heavily wooded slope to the right, the other from a more open and gentle incline straight ahead, where the trees and bushes were thinner and the ground had a loose sandy look to it.

Parker and Beaghler both stepped out onto the stony streambed and walked around to the back of the vehicle. Beaghler opened the tailgate, and Parker said, “I’ll borrow the Colt.”

Beaghler looked startled. “I was gonna offer you the rifle,” he said. “You’ll get a damn good shot down at him from the top of the hill.”

“I know handguns better,” Parker said. While Beaghler’s hands were still occupied with the tailgate, Parker reached in and took out the small box containing the revolver and its ammunition. He lifted the lid and picked up the gun, holding it pointed nowhere in particular. It was fully loaded; he could see the corners of the cartridges at the rear of the barrel. He put the box and the extra ammunition back in on the blankets.

Beaghler meanwhile had taken out the rifle and was unwrapping it from the pink baby blanket. He looked troubled, and a little confused. He said, “You sure you don’t want the rifle? It’s got a real easy action on it.”

“Don’t need it,” Parker said, and stepped backward a pace from the vehicle, where he stood watching Beaghler, waiting for his next move.

Beaghler gave the rifle an unhappy childish look, and then tossed the baby blanket into the vehicle with a fatalistic gesture, as though abandoning some idea. “Doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“You lead the way,” Parker said. “You know this territory.”

Beaghler nodded, as though he’d expected that answer, and went crunching off around the car, following the streambed. Parker followed, and the two of them headed up the tributary straight ahead, the one that climbed through dry semi-desert soil and thin trees and shrubbery toward a well-defined hilltop.

Partway up, the streambed angled off to the right. Beaghler stepped up onto the ground, and continued straight toward the top of the hill, Parker two paces back. Once Beaghler stopped and glanced around, as though he might say something. Parker stayed where he was and watched the rifle barrel, but the pause was only for a second; then Beaghler faced front and trudged uphill again.

It took about ten minutes to climb to the top. At a couple of spots, they had to pull themselves up by holding onto bushes, and each time Parker waited for Beaghler to move a few steps beyond before following; but most of the way the going was easy, the slope gradual and soft, the ground crumbly but not difficult to get a footing in.

At the top, Beaghler dropped to the ground and inched up the last foot or so until he could see over the ridge-line. Then he glanced down over his shoulder at Parker and said, “There it is. Come on and take a look.” He sounded tired, more tired than the climb should have made him, and the expression in his eyes was slightly disgusted.

Parker moved up on Beaghler’s right side, about four feet away, and looked over the top. What he saw was a humped and rocky treeless slope leading down to a flat plain below. The slope looked gutted and pockmarked, as though eroded by a million flash floods, and the plain contained only wild grass and small bushes. Hills were leftward, to the north, but the semi-desert plain extended away to the right, south.

Down below was a house. It looked as though it had been brought here intact from the Kansas wheatfields, like the house in The Wizard of Oz. Two stories high, clapboard, with small windows and a front porch and a couple of obvious later additions on the rear. The thin dusty line of a dirt road stretched away eastward across the plain.

It was the wrong house in the wrong place. But whoever had built it must have had a lot of different wrong ideas; what had he hoped to grow down there? Whatever it was he’d had in his mind, the country must have changed it for him; it had been a long time since anyone had lived in that house who cared about it. The exterior was weathered a silver-gray that was almost beautiful against the dun of the countryside. A part of the roof seemed to have caved in, and the porch didn’t look too secure. Several windows were broken, and an outside doorway on one of the rear additions gaped black and doorless.

But if no one who cared about the house had lived there for a long while, there was still someone in residence, at least at the moment. A green Ford station wagon was parked on the shadowed east side of the building, only the hood visible from up here.

Parker nodded toward the car. “Uhl?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s there,” Beaghler said. He sounded weary and angry, both together. “He’s there all right,” he said.

“Let’s wait awhile,” Parker said. He looked at Beaghler. “Wasn’t that what you were going to say now?”

“Until we see him,” Beaghler said. “I’m going to get out a cigarette.”

He hadn’t smoked on the way out. Parker said, “Go ahead.”

Beaghler reached into his denim jacket pocket and took out a small cardboard box that claimed to contain Sucrets cough lozenges. Parker watched his hands and his eyes. Beaghler opened the box and said, “Want one?” He extended the box toward Parker; it contained four small hand-rolled cigarettes with twisted ends.

“I don’t smoke.”

Beaghler shrugged and took one of the cigarettes and put it in his mouth. He put the box away and shifted around to reach into his trouser pocket for a match. Parker watched his movements. Beaghler lit a match and lit his cigarette and the musky smell lifted in the air.

Parker said, “Mind if I look at your rifle?”

“I don’t give one damn,” Beaghler said. He rolled over on his back and cupped his hand around the cigarette and inhaled for a long time, with a hissing sound as he let air into his mouth around the edges of the cigarette. Then he held his breath and closed his eyes.

Parker took the rifle, worked the bolt, and it ejected a cartridge. He picked it out of the dirt and studied it, and saw the small scratches around the casing. Inside, there would be no gunpowder.

Parker held the cartridge in the palm of his hand. “You do this yourself?”

Beaghler opened his eyes and glanced over at him. He took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled; very little smoke came out. “Friend of mine,” he said. “A good job.”

“Glad to hear it.” Beaghler shut his eyes, rolled his head back, and inhaled again, the same way as before.

Parker put the rifle on the ground so that he was between it and Beaghler, and glanced down again at the house. No one was in sight, nothing had changed.

For a few minutes nothing happened. Beaghler lay on his back, smoking his cigarette, sometimes with his eyes closed and sometimes with them open to stare at the clouds going by overhead. Parker lay on his side, facing Beaghler, propped up on one elbow so he could keep an eye on the house down below. There was no sound anywhere, except the occasional hiss of Beaghler inhaling on the cigarette. The sky was very large up here, and the ground in most directions very empty. Parker turned a couple of times to look back down the slope they’d come up, but there was no movement back there either. Far below, sun glinted on the chrome and glass of Beaghler’s ATV.

Beaghler smoked his cigarette down to a small stub; reluctantly, he rubbed it out in the ground beside him. Then he lay for a while with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest as though he were dead. Still lying like that, he started to talk. He said, “You were right with what you said about Sharon. I don’t know why she got her hooks in me like that. She didn’t even try, I won’t blame her for it, I was the one chased after her. Practically forced her to marry me. I don’t know, I just kept pushing it, like it was the one thing in this world I had to have. I kept trying to knock her up, but I never did. Not till after we were married, and I could make her lay off the pills.”

He kept on talking. He talked about his three children, and his cars, and the different places he had lived. Some of it rambled, with him talking about his parents and his childhood as though Parker already knew a lot about him and would understand all the references to people and places. The general trend of it was that he seemed to be trying to describe to Parker, or maybe to himself, his need to be tough, to be more masculine than anybody else. He never said so straight out, but all of the explanations and reminiscences seemed to be on that same theme.

Down below, there was still no sign of life from the house. Parker waited, letting Beaghler talk on, a quiet drone that disappeared toward the sky and couldn’t possibly be heard even halfway to the house. The sun was warm on his back, but not too hot, and still alternated with cooling periods of cloudiness. Except for the nose of the Ford around the edge of the house, and in the other direction the sun glinting from Beaghler’s ATV, there were no suggestions of the twentieth century anywhere in sight.

Beaghler began to pause between thoughts, and the pauses got longer, and then he stopped talking entirely. Parker looked over at him to see if he’d put himself to sleep, but his eyes were open, staring up at the sky. Parker said, “What’s the program?”

A small furrow showed in Beaghler’s forehead. He turned his head so he could look at Parker, and said, “What did it, anyway? What told you?”

“Does it matter?”

The furrow slowly smoothed out; Beaghler smiled. He seemed relieved of all care. “No, it doesn’t,” he said, and kept on smiling.

Parker gestured toward the house. “What happens now?”

“He’ll show himself after a while.”

“To prove he’s there?”

“Uh-huh. Then we’d head over to the left, where there’s a gully down the hill, where we could go down without being seen.”

“When do you make your move?”

“Whenever I can. The idea is, you won’t really trust me till you see him. But once he shows, he’s all you’ll think about.”

“But if you get a chance before that, you’ll take it.”

“Sure.”

Parker looked down toward the house again, frowning. Then he turned back to Beaghler: “You got any other weapons on you?”

“Knife in my hip pocket.”

“Take it out slow, and put it on the ground between us.”

The furrow came back to Beaghler’s brow again, but he did as he was told, depositing a closed switchblade on the dirt. Parker put it away in his own pocket, and said, “The keys to the car.”

They were in the denim jacket, the other pocket from the cigarettes. Beaghler took them out and put them on the ground where the knife had been, and Parker put them away. Then he said, “Take it easy now,” and aimed the revolver down the hill they’d come up. He fired twice, with a space in between. Beaghler twitched at both sounds, but otherwise didn’t move.

Parker watched the house; nothing happened. “Stand up and show yourself,” he said. “Beaghler? You hear me?”

“Oh,” Beaghler said, and suddenly scrambled to his feet. He stood on the hilltop looking down at Parker. “I get you,” he said.

Parker was still watching the house. “Wave to him,” he said. “Look at the house, not at me.”

Beaghler obediently turned and waved both arms over his head, and George Uhl came out through the doorless doorway, crouched a bit, looking up.

Parker said, “Yell to him to come up here.”

“Come on up!”

Uhl’s voice came up, thinned by the distance: “Is he dead?”

“Sure! Come on up!”

“What for? You come down!”

Beaghler didn’t have a response for that one. Parker told him, “You want help carrying the body.”

“Help me carry the body!”

“What for? Leave the bastard where he is!”

“Damn,” Parker said. “Beaghler, start down the hill. But move slow.”

Beaghler obediently started to move. Parker said softly after him, “And I mean slow.”

Beaghler nodded. His whole manner was serious and slow, and his sense of balance didn’t seem very good. He inched his way down the slope.

Parker slid backwards a few feet down the opposite slope, then got to his feet and ran to his left, staying below the brow of the hill, out of sight of both Beaghler and Uhl. A gully over to the left—but how far? And would he be able to find it from this side?

He would; the ridge-line was swaybacked at one point, as though God’s hand had one day given it an idle karate chop. Parker moved upward through fairly large stones, his feet making little avalanches in his wake, and then he could see the gully snaking down the far slope. Off to his right he caught a glimpse of Beaghler, halfway down to the flat. Uhl wasn’t in his line of sight from here.

He hurried down the gully, half running and half sliding. It twisted and turned, but tended mostly to the right. Twice he caught glimpses of the house out on the flat, and once he saw Uhl, waiting with his hands on his hips about fifteen feet this side of the house, watching Beaghler.

The gully got broader and shallower near the bottom, reminiscent of the streambed they’d been following coming out here. Parker crouched as he hurried down, but now he could see Uhl clearly, ahead and to the right, with the house behind him. And Beaghler, almost to the bottom of the hill.

Movement must have caught Uhl’s eye. He had a gun in his hand, and all at once he was firing toward Parker. Three quick shots, and then he turned and raced for the house.

Beaghler had flung himself to the ground, and was lying there face down with both forearms over his head. Parker dropped to his right, half lying and half sitting against the side of the gully. He braced his arm against a boulder and fired twice at Uhl. The second shot, Uhl flipped forward, dug his left shoulder into the ground, rolled completely over, got to his feet still running, and ran off to the right on an angle away from the house for half a dozen strides before realizing he was going the wrong way. Parker was just squeezing off another shot at him when he veered back in the right direction, so that one missed.

There was no telling where the one bullet had hit, or how much longer Uhl could keep moving. Parker got to his feet again and ran down the rest of the gully and out across the flat toward the house.

Uhl reached the building, but didn’t go inside. Instead, he ran around the house toward the car. Parker ran across the flat, heading for the other corner of the house, which was nearest him.

The Ford engine roared. Parker reached the house, ran along the side and out to the front, and saw the Ford just starting to move, making a hard U-turn to come around toward the dirt road leading away from here.

Parker braced himself against the corner porch support. The Ford’s rear wheels were spinning in the dirt, Uhl apparently having the accelerator on the floor. The car was rocking, making its tight U, picking up speed. Parker fired two shots into the driver, and knew they’d both hit home.

The car was still moving, still accelerating, still on its tight curve; and now the horn was blowing. Uhl’s foot was on the accelerator, his chest was on the horn ring. The car was coming around in its circle, shooting up double spouts of dust in its wake, moving faster every second.

Parker ducked away to the left and the Ford smashed into the corner of the porch where he’d been standing. The roof support, old and dry, snapped like a pencil, and that whole end of the porch roof came down, crashing onto the car’s hood.

The horn was still blaring, the wheels were still spinning and gouging up dust storms, and now the engine could be heard laboring higher and higher, straining up toward the top of its scale with Uhl’s foot still pressed on the accelerator. Uhl was a dark slumped figure inside the car, unmoving, past worrying about.

Beaghler. Parker turned away from the straining Ford and hurried back down the side of the house toward the hill again. He could see Beaghler sitting on the ground back there, a few feet up the slope.

There wasn’t any more need to run. Parker strode away from the house and across the flat. Behind him, the horn brayed and the engine screamed.

He was halfway to Beaghler when the explosion came. It wasn’t very big, a flat crump sound that vibrated the ground slightly and faded at once in the surrounding emptiness. Parker looked over his shoulder and saw a line of greasy black smoke writing itself upward into the air.

Beaghler hadn’t moved. When Parker got to him, Beaghler grinned slightly, shakily, and said, “Well, you got him.”

“Yes.”

“I’m no trouble to you,” Beaghler said. “You don’t have to do anything about me.”

“That’s the mistake I made with Uhl,” Parker said.