Potshot

Chapter 40

WENT BACK to the house. On the front porch Hawk and Tedy Sapp were doing push-ups. It looked like an interesting contest, since both of them appeared able to do push-ups forever.

Bernard J. Fortunato had drinks set up on the table on the porch. There was Scotch and vodka and soda and tonic, a cooking pot full of ice, and some lemons sliced in wedges and a large soup bowl of peanuts. There were no napkins, but he had put out a number of neatly folded paper towels. Vinnie was drinking Scotch on the rocks. Chollo and Bobby Horse each had vodka and tonic.

"This is taking too long," Hawk said.

He and Sapp looked at each other and grinned and stood up at the same time.

"Not bad," I said to Tedy. "Not many people can stay with Hawk."

"Not good, either," Sapp said. "Nobody ever stayed with me before."

Sapp made a couple of Scotch and sodas and handed one to Hawk. I went in and got a can of beer and came out and sat on the porch railing with one foot hanging free.

"Chollo and Bobby Horse went off somewhere in the car," Bernard reported.

I looked at Chollo.

"I went up and reconnoitered the Dell," Chollo said, "with my faithful Indian companion."

"How'd it look?" I said.

"Hard to get to," Chollo said.

"I know."

"And they got sentries out all night."

"I assume you weren't spotted?"

"Spotted? Senor, I was with the great Kiowa scout, He-who-walks-everywhere-and-is-never-spotted."

Bobby Horse had no reaction. It was as if he didn't hear us.

"Silly question," I said.

"I maybe found a way to get above them and shoot down."

"Can you find it again?" I said.

Bobby Horse drank some vodka and tonic.

"I am a Native American," he said.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I forgot. Can you show me?"

"If you can walk as softly as I can," Bobby Horse said.

He never smiled. I never knew for sure how much of his white-man-speakum-with-forked-tongue Indian routine was schtick. I was pretty sure most of it was. I looked at his bare chest.

"Tomorrow you can take me and Hawk up there," I said.

He nodded. His upper body was bunched with muscle. There was a white scar that ran across the coppery skin of his chest, from near the left shoulder almost to his bottom rib on the right side.

"You been out all day with no shirt?" I said.

He nodded again.

"Don't Native Americans get sunburned?" I said.

"Use 'um sunblock."