Savage Run

37

It took twenty minutes for Joe Pickett to recover enough from the pepper spray to stand up. His eyes and throat still burned, and it seemed as though most of the liquid in his body had drained out of him in bitter streams through his nose, mouth, and eyes. He leaned against the wall in the hallway, next to the telephone that Stewie had ripped from the wall as he left, and tried to shake the fog from his head.

Slowly at first, he regained control of his legs and moved down the hall, clomping unsteadily like Frankenstein’s monster. He kept his left shoulder against the plaster for balance until he reached the door to the stairway. He descended the stairs one deliberate step at a time and held the rail with both tied hands. The building was empty; the black Ford truck still parked with both doors-and the toolbox-open.

Joe shouldered the overhead door open and stood outside, gasping damp fresh air and blinking back tears from the sting of the pepper spray. He turned toward the ranch house, where he presumed Stewie Woods had gone.

The front gate was open and so was the massive front door. Joe entered, stopped, tried to see in the gloom. On the floor was the writhing body of Buster the ranch hand. Buster’s hands were covering his face, and he was rolling from side to side, whimpering. Pepper spray, Joe thought. Probably a shot of it from Stewie on the way in and a second shot of it a few minutes ago, judging by the whiff of the spray still hanging in the air.

“If I were a snake I could have bitten you.” Her voice startled Joe, as it had the first time. She was in her chair, its back pushed up against the wall. Her face was cocked to the side and thrust forward at Joe, twisted as if she were confronting him.

“Did a crazy-looking man just come in here?” Joe asked, his voice still thick with mucus.

Ginger Finotta raised her thin arm, pointing a gnarled finger past Joe’s ear.

“They went outside together,” she said, her voice high and grating. “Tom Horn is in our bunkhouse!”

Joe stopped. Tom Horn?

“You mean Charlie Tibbs.”

“He’s in our bunkhouse!” she repeated. “Someone shot him!”

Joe tried to focus on her face, but couldn’t. Her face swam in his vision. “That was me,” Joe coughed. “I shot him.”

He wished he could see her face to gauge her reaction. But he heard it.

“Bravo, young man,” she squawked. “Hanging a man like Tom Horn would have been a waste of good rope.”

Back in the ranch yard, Joe heard a shout from a distance. “Hey Joe!” It was Stewie. Joe turned toward the voice. It came from beyond the corrals, over the tops of milling cattle. “I’m glad you’re okay, buddy!”

Joe walked toward the voice. His vision was still blurry. The cord bit into his wrists, but he didn’t want to take the time to try and unknot it. As he climbed the first fence he saw Stewie standing in the pasture beyond the corrals. Stewie and a lone cow.

“Don’t come any closer, Joe!” Stewie cautioned.

Joe ignored him, and pushed his way through the cattle. When he climbed the back fence he stopped, focused, and felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop.

At first, he thought that Jim Finotta was slumped over the back of the cow in the pasture next to Stewie. Then he realized that Finotta was strapped on, his hands tied under the cow’s belly, with another rope around the hips of his stretch Wranglers, securing him to the cow. Finotta’s face was pressed against the shoulders of the animal, looking out at Joe. Blue nylon webbing, loaded with full charges of C4 explosive from the toolbox in the black Ford, was lashed between Finotta and the cow. A single, spring-mounted antenna bobbed from one of the charges.

Stewie stood near the animal’s haunches holding a remote-control transmitter in one hand and Joe’s.357 Magnum in the other.

“Don’t come any closer, or the lawyer gets it!” Stewie hollered cheerfully. Then Stewie’s voice took on a more determined tone. “I’m serious, Joe. I’m sorry I sprayed you with pepper spray back there, but I knew you wouldn’t help me do what I needed to do.”

“Oh, Stewie,” Joe croaked.

“We were just having a chat,” Stewie explained. “Mister Jim was about to tell me the names of the executive board of the Stockman’s Trust, and why they voted to wipe out me and so many of my colleagues.”

Joe swung his other leg over the fence and now sat on top of it. The scene in the pasture was beyond comprehension. Stewie had maced Joe, gathered up the nylon webbing and the explosives from the truck, selected a cow from the corral, charged the house, maced Buster, marched Finotta at gunpoint to the pasture, and tied him and the explosives to the cow.

“Please help me,” Finotta called to Joe. “You are an officer of the law. Despite our earlier disagreements, you have a duty to protect me. Please. I’m friends with the governor. I can be of great influence on your behalf.”

Stewie snorted. “Up until that last bit, he was kind of convincing.” Stewie stepped forward so Finotta could see him, then raised the transmitter and took several steps backward. Finotta shrieked and buried his face in the hide of the cow. The cow continued to graze, and Stewie lowered the remote control, and winked at Joe.

“You’ve given him a scare,” Joe said, his voice as steady and flat as he could make it, given the circumstances and his condition. “You’ve scared the hell out of him. Now let’s untie him and go have some lunch. Think about it, Stewie: Does Finotta seem like the kind of guy who wouldn’t rat out his buddies in a plea bargain? We’ll find out who the Stockman’s Trust is and we’ll put them all into prison. If Finotta ordered the killings, he may get the death sentence.”

Stewie listened, thought about it while he rubbed his chin and studied Finotta, then laughed.

“Like I believe that a great lawyer and butt-buddy with the governor will ever see the inside of a prison in this state,” Stewie said sarcastically.

Then Stewie turned to Finotta, waving the remote control in front of him like a wand. “Let me remind you, Jim Finotta, of some names,” he said. “These names are only names on a list to you. But to me they are real people-friends, lovers, colleagues.”

“Annabel Bellotti. Hayden Powell. Peter Sollito.” Stewie shouted each name. And with each, his face got redder, and he got angrier. “Emily Betts. Tod Marchand. Britney Earthshare. Even John Coble and Charlie Tibbs!”

Stewie was so enraged that Joe, even from a distance, could see Stewie shaking.

“You started the first fucking range war of the twenty-first century!” Stewie bellowed. “You waged that war in a vicious, cowardly way! And now you’re going to find out what it is like to be on the receiving end!”

Stewie backed away further from Finotta and the cow. There was now about one hundred feet between them. He again raised the remote control.

“The headlines about the environmental activist getting blown up were good ones, Jim. I bet they made you chuckle. But the headlines about the president of the Stockman’s Trust getting blown up by his own cow are even better!”

In his peripheral vision, Joe saw a stream of vehicles with flashing lights emerge from the cottonwoods on the ranch road from the highway. Joe turned. Sheriff Barnum’s Blazer was leading two other sheriff’s trucks. Trey Crump’s green Game and Fish pickup, lights flashing, followed. The vehicles drove straight across the ranch yard and braked at the first fence. Doors opened and officers poured out with rifles and shotguns. Joe saw Barnum, Trey Crump, Deputy McLanahan, and Robey Hersig. Marybeth jumped down from the passenger door of Trey Crump’s pickup. Joe didn’t recognize the armed deputies who spread out along the corral fence.

“Is that you, Mary?” Stewie called, working his way behind the cow in the distance so that Finotta and the cow were between him and the deputies. Joe heard the racketing pumps of the shotguns and the bolts being thrown on the rifles.

“It’s me, Stewie,” Marybeth answered. Her voice was strong. “Please don’t hurt anyone, and don’t hurt yourself.”

Joe felt a strange pang hearing the familiarity with which she addressed Stewie and he addressed her. For a moment he was buffeted with several emotions; jealousy, confusion, anger, and deep sadness.

Mary?

“Joe,” she cried, “you need to get back here with me.”

“You are still a beauty, Mary,” Stewie said, both admiring and wistful. “Joe is a lucky man. And Mary-Joe Pickett is a good man. That’s a very rare thing out in this cow pasture.”

Finotta swung his face toward the line of officers behind the corral fences. “Barnum, you need to take him out! Now!”

Joe heard Barnum hiss at his deputies not to fire.

Deputy McLanahan, farthest away from Barnum in the line, used the post of the fence for a rest, fitted the top half of Stewie Woods into the notch of his rear open sight, and squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The high crack of the shot snapped through the air.

Stewie jerked and sat back heavily in the wet grass. Marybeth screamed, and Barnum let loose a firecracker string of curses toward McLanahan.

Jim Finotta raised his head, saw Stewie sitting on the ground with the remote control and revolver in his lap, and yelled, “Hit him again! He’s still moving! Take him out!”

Joe slipped down from the fence into the pasture and took a few tentative steps. He locked eyes with Stewie across the field. Pain gripped Stewie’s face, making the edges of his mouth tug up in an inappropriate smile. How alone he is, Joe thought, feeling gut-wrenching pity. Practically everyone he cares about is gone. Joe thought about rushing Stewie and wrenching the transmitter away, but the look in Stewie’s eyes warned him not to. With a wistful shrug, Stewie pushed the button on his transmitter.

The force of the explosion hurled Joe back toward the corrals, where he smashed full force against the fence.

Through slitted eyes and with the dead silence of instant deafness, Joe watched as pieces of Jim Finotta, the cow, Stewie Woods, and bromegrass turf rained from the sky for what seemed like hours.