Relentless

11

“Why in hell would they do a thing like that?” Stevens asked.

“Politics and money. The State Attorney General got to thinking it over. Decided in the first place it’s a criminal case-not a military matter-and in the second place it would cost five times as much to mobilize the Guard as the bank lost in the holdup.”

“And in the third place,” Watchman said, “they probably wouldn’t have done us much good in the first place.”

“You’re wrong about that, you know.”

“All right. We had that argument before.”

“Let’s get this horse out of here and get moving, all right?”

There were a lot of things Watchman felt like saying but he only waited while the rookie backed the saddlehorse out of Vickers’ trailer and tightened up the cinches. Vickers seemed to have bundled himself up in half a dozen mismatched layers of borrowed clothing. He danced around quite a bit with one foot on the ground and one foot in the stirrup before he got purchase on the saddlehorn and heaved himself aboard.

There was no point belaboring it with questions. Vickers was here because if he hadn’t come along he’d never be able to claim credit for the outcome, whatever it might prove to be. Obviously he had considered it from all angles and ended up with the judgment that Watchman’s chances for success, however dim they might be, were still the best chances anyone was offering.

Among police officers the FBI was notorious for its hunger to hog glory but Vickers’ decision had grown from something more basic than that: survival. He had already been on a kind of probation before this case had erupted; he’d been shipped to the boondocks and no doubt he was being watched by his superiors-one more foul-up and he’d likely be discharged; the Bureau wasn’t noted for forgiveness toward its agents. So to keep his job Vickers had to bring in a winning score on this one. That was why he’d overreacted, mobilized enough machinery to fight a medium-size war. Then they’d kicked his National Guard props out from under him and when that happened he must have realized that if Watchman didn’t nail the fugitives there was an excellent chance they wouldn’t get nailed at all. Watchman’s warning- You’ll come up with nothing in your hands but Mrs. Lansford’s corpse — must have gone around in his mind like a palmist’s ghastly prediction of doom and in the end Vickers had forsaken by-the-book caution and chosen to throw in with the only players left in the game. It was a long shot but when it was the only shot you had, you had to shoot it.

Watchman wasn’t going to argue: he needed another pair of eyes, another gun.

Watchman put the kitchen match between his teeth and went around to the front of Viewers’ truck. Lifted the hood, felt around for the distributor, unsnapped it and lifted out the rotor. He removed the power wagon’s rotor as well, closed both hoods and went to his horse, shoving the rotors in his pocket. They bunched up against the little velvet case that contained Lisa’s ring.

He gathered the reins in quick synchronization with his rise to the saddle and took the wooden match in his hand.

Vickers said, “Why the woodpile?”

“I didn’t have any neon signs handy.”

“For what?”

“To keep our friends up there from feeling too lonesome.” Watchman turned his horse along the slope just below the woodpile. “I don’t want you pitched off when the fire starts. You two ride up there a little. I’ll catch up.”

“Old Inyun trick,” Stevens said solemnly. “You betchum.”

“First you disable the trucks,” Vickers said, “and then you build a bonfire big enough to be seen from the moon. I don’t see your point.”

Watchman explained it for him because Vickers would be more help with his mind cleared of distracting mysteries. “I’m gambling the blizzard will hit them before they get to the top. When they’re hurting enough they’ll remember they saw these trucks down here and they’ll remember they saw us ride away from them. They’ll start to think about doubling back-circling down past us and getting to the trucks ahead of us.”

“So you’re sending out an invitation.”

“That’s about it.” Watchman waited for the two of them to gig their horses into the scrub oak. When they had ridden two hundred yards and almost been absorbed into the night he snugged a tight saddle grip with knees and left hand and said a few quiet words to the horse and scratched the wooden match across the steel saddlehorn.

It cracked alight and was still fizzing when he tossed it down into the little runnel of gasoline that had trickled downslope from the woodpile.

The spark caught with a sedate whump of sound and burst into a pale yellow-blue flame that ran uphill instantly into the pile of brush and logs. There was a louder thud of noise and Watchman kept one eye closed, the other slitted, guarding against night-blindness in the face of the sudden high daylight blaze, while the horse bunched itself and whickered in fear and went three feet straight up into the air and came down running.

He kept his seat. Clamped his free hand down on the pommel and fought the horse down to a semblance of control: reined down from dead run to gallop to canter and went crashing into the scrub, branches whipping at his legs.

Down to a trot by the time he caught up with the others. Behind them the fire was a magnificent beacon, showing up the two silent trucks in hard silhouette. Even at this distance the heat touched the back of his neck and his own shadow on horseback splashed out across the trees and earth ahead.

There was a little streak of grey-pink on the eastern horizon; opposite, toward the storm, the sky was dark and wild. Watchman tugged his hat down and pointed the horse toward the high country.