The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

Joseph Hansen Survival from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

It was a long drive north, half of California, all of Oregon, most of Washington, and then inland to George Stubbs’s sister’s house in Norton’s Mill, Idaho, thirty miles from the Canadian border. And all the way, Stubbs’s trophy cups had rattled in their carton behind the seat. Bohannon had wrapped and cushioned them in newspaper, but somehow they’d managed to rattle anyway.

He hadn’t known what to do with them exactly. They had stood on the mantel of the boulder-built fireplace in his ranch house for eighteen or twenty years Stubbs had worked for him, lived side by side with him, been an interwoven part of his days. Those rodeo trophies for roping and bulldogging, for bronco busting and bull riding, had belonged on that mantel.

And it sure as hell had looked strange and naked once he’d taken them down and packed them for the trip, along with Stubbs’s body in its coffin, to where the old man had said he wanted to be buried. In the same graveyard as his mother (God knew where his father’s body lay), his brothers (who’d still been boys when they died), and his sister when her time came.

Norton’s Mill had proved no different from what Bohannon had pictured, a sleepy little town among towering white pines. More Midwestern than Western, its houses were mainly woodframe, and two storied, and getting on for a hundred years old. The house where Ada Tanner lived was one of these, white, four-square, with a wide, comfortable front porch but no fancy architectural furbelows. A wire mesh fence enclosed the yard and fruit trees in the yard and flowerbeds.

Ada Tanner looked like her brother, talked like him, was straight-forward and homey. Bohannon hadn’t known of her existence till Stubbs gave in to the idea that he was going to die. Then he told Bohannon about her and the man she had married. Stubbs and Luke Tanner could not agree on whether it was raining. That was why he’d stayed away from his boyhood town even at the height of his rodeo fame and money. When Luke died, he’d thought about a trip to see Ada, but there was always so much to do at Bohannon’s stables he’d put it off. And then he had become too arthritic, “stove up” as he put it, to travel.

So he did his traveling this October week in a pine box in the steel bed of Bohannon’s green pickup truck. His trip home. Bohannon stayed for the funeral, of course, and the burial in the cemetery with its tilted headstones and lawns going brown for the winter. Nobody much came. Stubbs’s glory days had gained him renown in Norton’s Mill, but those glory days were the 1930s and 1940s, and the graveyard had claimed most of the people who’d remembered George Stubbs as a boy, before he’d left for more exciting places.

Women outlive men, so it was mostly whitehaired neighbor ladies who came for lunch to Ada Tanner’s house following the ceremonies. There was one man, a skinny old geezer, who cornered Bohannon and talked about lunatics living in the woods up here, survivalists, anti-taxers, anti-blacks (there weren’t but one or two blacks in the whole county), trying to live on forage, starving their children, sometimes freezing in the winters.

At last an old woman led him away. When they’d all gone, Bohannon told Ada Tanner good-bye, and she handed him a Bible, with red page-edges and floppy covers, plastic meant to look like leather. Stocky, ruddy-cheeked, hair freshly set for the funeral, she smelled of lavender soap and starch.

“I want you to have this,” she said. “I wish it was a fine one, but I live on Social Security, and it’s what’s inside that counts. It’s been my guide and mainstay all my life, so it’s the gift I want to give you for being so good to George all those long years when he was past being able to do the strong, wild, crazy things he was so proud of.”

“He didn’t owe me,” Bohannon said. “I owed him. I’d never have been able to make it without him. I’m going to miss him.”

“I guess you don’t call yourself one,” she said, “but you’re a Christian. Never mind” — she patted his hands as they held the Bible — “you have that, and keep it near you. It won’t replace an old friend. But there’s comfort in it.”

“Thank you.” Bohannon put on his sweat-stained Stetson and stepped out the screen door, an old one with a long black spring to pull it closed. The spring twanged. The door swung loosely shut. He crossed the porch. “Take care of yourself, Miz Tanner.”

“Don’t grieve,” she said through the screen. “He’s in a happy place now.”

“If they have rodeos there,” Bohannon said, and crossed over to the driveway, where the green pickup waited.

Nothing was wrong with the motel room that wasn’t wrong with all motel rooms, but he slept badly and was up and showered and dressed by four-thirty and on his way home. In the dark. He had good sense, and most of the time he used it. But Stubbs’s death had shaken him. And he began fretting and making bad decisions. Leaving Deputy T. Hodges in charge of the stables was asking too much of her. He’d rung her up every day of this trip, and she’d always sounded cheerful and on top of things and teased him for worrying. There was a hired hand. She wasn’t alone, and she was young and strong, but she wasn’t very big, and accidents could happen. Horses were unpredictable. No harm must come to T. Hodges. Not now. He couldn’t take it.

So instead of returning to the coast and following the route that had brought him here, he took a state highway heading straight south, telling himself it would save time. Maybe it would have, but he wasn’t going to find out. The highway wasn’t much, and it soon entered a stand of giant Douglas firs that promised no end to itself. It was quiet, dim, and cold on that road. A little bit eerie. Soundless. He would have welcomed the rattling of those rodeo trophies now. He tried the radio, but reception was fitful and anyway he’d never much liked country and even less did he like gospel and that was all the music there was. The trip grew stranger by the hour. Where was everybody? Not another car, not another truck. The world could have ended for all he knew.

Then he had to stop. That famous tree we’ve all heard about — the one that falls in a forest where there’s no one to hear, and therefore can it be said for sure that it made a sound when it fell? — that tree had fallen across the road. A tremendous tree. As thick through as his truck. He couldn’t drive around it. The ditches beside the road were too deep. He got stiffly out of the truck, stretched, lit a cigarette, studied the tree, finished the cigarette, dropped it, put it out carefully under his worn boot, climbed back in the truck, and after some backing and filling, pointed it north again. He’d seen a turnoff a few miles back. It had had no signboard, but it would take hours to get back to Norton’s Mill and start the trip over. He’d try the side road, see where it led.

It was narrow, went crookedly through the trees, which grew denser here and were even older and thicker and taller than any he’d so far seen. Maybe the road had been graveled once. His tires threw up gravel now and then that rattled under the fenders. But before mankind had taken it over, he figured animals had laid it out and used it from the ancient start, deer, bear, puma. And when they came along, the Indians had seen no call to improve on it, and the Europeans when they got here hadn’t wasted much energy on it. Why they’d wasted even one load of gravel Bohannon couldn’t see. He saw no signs of human settlement.

Then he came around a bend and sawhorses stood across the road and beyond them a parked van. He braked the green pickup and stared. The sawhorses were old, unpainted. Unlike his truck, with its horsehead logo on the door, the van had no markings. Oh, a sign had one time been lettered on its side but then painted over. Maybe it had been white once, but it was gray now, mud-stained below, rain-spotted and dusty above, and crusty on its roof with bird droppings and brown pine needles. Its sliding door opened, and two young men jumped out of it wearing army camouflage fatigues and floppy camouflage hats. Each had a gun. One was a .357 Magnum. The other was an AK-47.

Bohannon had not brought his Winchester. In California he was licensed to keep it on its rack over the back window of the truck. But for getting without hassle from state to state he figured he’d better leave it at home. He jammed the truck into reverse and began backing as fast as he could. But not fast enough. The man with the AK-47 fired shots. Not at him. Not at the truck. Over the truck roof. Warning shots.

Bohannon braked, one rear wheel in the ditch. They came jogging up the road. He put up his hands. “Just a mistake,” he said. “I got lost.”

“You shoulda picked someplace else.” Both boys had beard stubble and blue eyes and hair too long for their hats to conceal. “Get out of there.”

“He don’t look like no FBI,” the boy with the handgun said.

“He looks like a goddamn Indian,” the other one said. “Get out.”

Bohannon got out. “My folks were Irish, if that’s any help.”

“You say,” the AK-47 boy said. “Turn around. Hands on the hood there. Spread your legs.”

“Who are you? What gives you the right to—”

“You’re in Ninth Amendment America now.” The boy held on to the gun but patted Bohannon down with his free hand. “We don’t go by Jew York D.C. laws here. We got Christian laws, God’s laws. Question isn’t who we are.” He straightened up and looked through the wallet he had taken from Bohannon’s hip pocket. “It’s who you are and what you’re doing here. Oh my!” He turned to his partner. “Lookee here, Hadley. This man is a private investigator.”

He grabbed Bohannon’s arm and swung him around. “Who sent you? Who you working for? FBI? Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? Who tipped you off to find us here? Nobody knows. Nobody.”

“Including me,” said Bohannon. “I just stumbled in here. The state road is blocked. A fallen tree. I was looking for a way to keep going south without—”

“You’re lying.” The boy slapped him.

“Don’t be nervous,” Bohannon said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The boy slapped him again, and Bohannon punched him in the face, and he fell on his butt on the road and the gun went off. A chatter of fire into the air. He scrambled up. “Hell, it don’t really matter who you are or why you come.” He wiped his bloody mouth with a hand, looked at the hand, glared at Bohannon. “I’m going to shoot you dead one way or the other. ’Cause I can’t let you go back and tell where we are.” He jerked the gun barrel. “Go on. Walk into the trees. I’ll be right behind you.”

Bohannon didn’t move. He heard footsteps. Someone was coming through the trees opposite. The boy took hold of him again, yanked him, shoved him toward the ditch, and a man appeared on the other side of the road. A middle-aged man, camouflage pants and jacket, also with long hair with a camouflage cap on it. Only his hair was gray. He wore Desert Storm dark glasses and a big old .45 revolver in a holster.

“Ford?” he said. “Hadley? What’s all the ruckus? Anybody could have heard that gunfire. The whole damned U.S. Army could be down on us.”

“Niggers,” Ford jeered. “Mud people. Who cares?”

The middle-aged man walked up to Bohannon. “Who are you?”

“Bohannon is my name.” Close up he recognized the man. His picture was in the files at the sheriff’s substation in Madrone. Bohannon checked those files out now and then. Cunningham? Yes, Chester Cunningham. U.S. Marine Corps, retired. Something about stockpiling firearms, altering firearms, transporting firearms across state borders. “What’s yours?”

Cunningham ignored that. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s an investigator licensed by the State of California,” Ford said. “You think he’s going to tell us what he’s doing here?”

“I think you should remember who you’re talking to,” Cunningham said, “and correct your tone.” And to Bohannon, “Where did you learn I was here?”

Bohannon told his story again.

“I guess not,” the man said.

“Captain?” The Hadley boy had been rummaging in the truck. “He might not be lying.”

Cunningham and Ford looked at him. Bohannon looked, too. Hadley came bringing Ada Tanner’s Bible. He said, “This man’s a Christian.”

“That right?” Cunningham held out a hand for the book, and the boy gave it to him. He looked at it thoughtfully for a minute, lifting it a little, weighing it in his hand. He blinked at Bohannon. “That a fact?”

Bohannon didn’t answer.

Cunningham opened the truck door, laid the Bible on the seat, and turned on the radio. Staticky music played. A lush orchestra backed a sincere-sounding baritone who crooned, “ ‘I am satisfied with Jesus, He has meant so much to me-e-e...’ ” The music ceased. Cunningham slammed the door of the truck and said to Bohannon, “Come with me,” motioned with the revolver for Bohannon to go ahead of him across the road and into the trees. Bohannon went.

“Don’t mean nothing,” Ford called. “About all you can get on the radio up here.”

Cunningham stopped. “What do you want, Ford — rock and roll? Rap? Hip-hop?”

“No, sir,” Ford said quickly, turning red. “’Course not.”

Cunningham grunted. “Bring that truck to the compound.” Then he nodded Bohannon into the trees. The walk was a long one. Then there was a small settlement of rough shacks set at odd angles to one another, a large open space between. At a guess the planks and two-by-fours had been sawn here out of trees felled illegally. With gas-powered saws: there were no power lines. He glimpsed crude outhouses set back in the brush. That meant no running water, didn’t it? What then: a well, or maybe a spring or stream near enough to walk to with buckets? The old geezer at Ada Tanner’s had been right: life here was primitive. Vehicles stood around, a sad assortment of rusty pickup trucks, vans, RVs, a once-racy red sportscar layered with dead pine needles, its cloth top hanging in tatters.

Two buildings rose up bigger than the rest, one living quarters, the other for storage, a warehouse. Or was it a barn? The pine smell that dropped from the huge trees was strong in the growing warmth of the day, but still he detected a whiff of horse. Cunningham pushed open the plank door into the house and motioned Bohannon through, went in after him, and closed the door.

Inside, in a wash of greenish daylight through dirty window-panes, sagged sorry old furniture, not much of it, a sofa, a greasy overstuffed armchair, side chairs with threadbare seats. On the mantel a row of smoky kerosene lanterns. Over them a big American flag. A case to hold rifles, the pane of one glass door cracked. A round dining table from fifty years ago or more. Some rickety unmatched chairs. A battered library table on one wall was heaped with papers, magazines, typewritten stuff. Tacked to the wall above it was a map of the eleven western states with colored push-pins stuck in it. A marked-up street map of some town was held by one of them.

At the far end of the room a kitchen housed a cast-iron cook-stove, shelves holding mismatched china, battered pots and pans hanging up, sooty skillets. Stacked on the floor were supplies, sacks of flour and rice, restaurant-size cans of baked beans, vegetable soup, sliced peaches, applesauce. Boxes of crackers and cold cereals, dehydrated milk and mashed potatoes. Great big cans of coffee. COFFEE. No brand name. Stairs fashioned of half logs climbed to a loft that bracketed the room below. He glimpsed tousled bedding.

“Sit down,” Cunningham said. “Care for some coffee?”

“I’d like to buy it at a diner in the next town,” Bohannon said.

“We can’t always have what we’d like,” Cunningham said with a thin smile. “Sit down.” He raised his voice. “Selina?” The kitchen door opened. A thin woman in her mid-thirties came in, shut the door, set down a bucket of coal. Blond hair combed out long and straight. No makeup, but good features, good bones. She wore glasses, jeans, an unbuttoned lumberjack shirt, under it a black T-shirt with 9TH AMENDMENT stenciled on it, old workboots. But something about her said breeding, education. “Coffee,” Cunningham told her, and sat down himself. In the overstuffed chair.

“Who’s that?” she said, staring.

“Name’s Bohannon.”

“Do we know him?” She tilted her head. Then she gave it a shake. “No. We don’t know him. So what’s he doing here?”

Bohannon took off his hat and nodded to her. “I strayed in by accident.”

“Bad luck,” she said as if she sympathized. “And bad timing.”

“Will you just get the coffee?” Cunningham said.

Her expression of alertness changed to one of wooden obedience. “Yes, sir,” she said and turned to the stove.

“Do you know who I am?” Cunningham asked Bohannon.

“Is that captain a real rank or honorary?”

“Real. Vietnam. Actually” — the thin smile came back — “I’m the general, field marshal, chief of staff.”

“President,” the woman said and set down the coffee mugs, one beside the captain’s chair, one beside Bohannon’s. “Of Ninth Amendment America.”

“You know what that means?” Cunningham asked.

“I get the feeling you’re going to tell me,” Bohannon said.

“ ‘The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.’ ”

“What others?”

“Those are the words the Founding Fathers wrote. That is the whole sum and substance of the Ninth Amendment. Every word of it.” He gave a patronizing smile. “Good question, though. Gets to the heart of it. Most of the laws the overlords have passed since it was written deny and disparage the rights of the people. Taxes, licenses, building regulations, zoning regulations, speed limits, fishing rights, grazing rights, hunting rights, compulsory insurance, can’t do this, can’t do that, can’t do the other thing... Those elected so-called representatives in D.C. say what Ninth Amendment? What unnamed rights? We’re the ones who make the laws. Can’t run a country without laws. Can’t run a country without taxes. You paid yours?”

“I see.” Bohannon had put his hat on the floor. He picked it up and got out of the chair. Cunningham with surprising quickness pulled the .45 from its holster and pointed it at him. He didn’t say anything, he just looked mean. Bohannon asked, “What about my rights? I’d like to leave here. I have horses to look after, a business to run. I have to get back to California.”

“Sit down.” He waited, with the gun pointed, and Bohannon sat down again. “You don’t know my face? You never heard of Chester Cunningham?”

“In what connection?” Bohannon looked out the window beside the fireplace. “Politics? Run for office on the Ninth Amendment ticket, did you?”

“Don’t play games,” Cunningham said. “TV, radio, the newspapers. You’re not a monk. Of course you’ve heard of me.”

Bohannon judged the man needed for him to say yes, to light up with excitement if possible — even better, to fall down and worship. “I stable horses up in a canyon where TV doesn’t reach any better than it probably reaches here.” He looked around pointedly. “I don’t see any TV set here. As to the radio, I check the weather reports. In my line of work you get up before sunrise, work all day, and you’re ready for bed directly after supper. No, I don’t read newspapers. No time.”

“Well said.” Cunningham nodded, holstered the gun, stood up. “I guess they school you in your identity so you’ve got a background all ready to spill when you get questioned.”

“You can check it out. Phone down there. The San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs substation in Madrone. They’ll back it up.”

“I don’t have a phone, but I expect they would. They’re standing by waiting for me to call. With all the answers.” He watched out the window as Ford and Hadley brought the green pickup into the compound and parked it. He turned back and said almost pleadingly, “Look, if you hadn’t carried that private investigator’s license, I wouldn’t keep you. I mean, Ford and Hadley aren’t out there to take prisoners, just to keep strangers off, and without that darn license, I’d’ve let you go. But you’re law enforcement. And law enforcement means only one thing to me: trouble, and worse than trouble.” He glanced toward the map on the wall. “The end of all my plans for America.” He wagged his head sorrowfully. “I can’t take a chance with you.”

“If I was here on government assignment, do you think I’d’ve carried that license? I left my gun at home. Why wouldn’t I have left the license?”

“Don’t know, but it would have been prudent.”

“And would I have come alone?”

That got Cunningham’s attention. He took off the dark glasses and narrowed his eyes. “Somebody out there, counting the minutes you’re here, waiting to move in?”

Bohannon gave a small laugh. “Would I say so if there were?”

Cunningham sighed and pulled the gun again. He motioned with it, meaning Bohannon was supposed to go out the door. Bohannon went out the door. Cunningham followed him and closed the door and pointed with the gun at one of the small buildings. “Keep you there,” he said, “until I can decide what to do with you. Move.”

Bohannon moved. Another blond youngster in camouflage pants, jacket, and combat boots came out of the storage building. He stopped, saluted Cunningham, and stared at Bohannon. “Who the hell is that?”

“Don’t curse, Elroy, remember?”

“Forgot, captain, sir.” He frowned hard at Bohannon. “He from the bank? I thought you said no prisoners.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cunningham said. “And neither do you. Shut up, Elroy. You finished that mimeographing yet?”

“Yes, sir,” Elroy said, not looking away from Bohannon, plainly puzzled and worried by him. “But that fuck — I mean, that lousy Addressograph. That’s real old, sir. Them cardboard stencils — they jam all the time. Can’t we get a new one?”

“Get a rifle,” said Cunningham, “see that it’s loaded, and stand guard over this man until you’re relieved. K building.” And to Bohannon, “Over there, in the corner. March.”

Elroy saluted and went back into the storage building, and out of the woods and into the open hardpan between the shacks came a teenage girl riding a tall, elegant, sorrel mare. The girl had long straight blond hair, wore a camouflage coverall too big for her and a floppy-brimmed camouflage hat. The mare was pregnant. On sighting the girl, Cunningham holstered the gun again and looked at his watch.

“Liberty,” he said, “you’ve been gone too long. That means too far. That means you could have been seen. You want me to ground you?”

“No, Daddy,” she said, patting the horse’s neck, “we didn’t go far.”

“I doubt you know where you went,” he said. “All right, you sponge her down now, clean her hooves, give her some oats, be sure she has water. Having your own horse means responsibility, hard work.”

“I love looking after her,” she said, and tilted her head at Bohannon. “Who are you? Is that your truck? With the horsehead on it?”

Bohannon said it was. “I keep a dozen horses on my place. She’s about ready to foal, you know. You don’t want to go too far with her. She could need help when her time comes.”

“Help?” Cunningham snorted. “She’s an animal. Instinct will—”

“She’s not a cayuse,” Bohannon said. “She’s a Thoroughbred. Centuries of breeding. They can’t survive without human help.”

The girl said, “I know what to do. My horse book has got a whole chapter about it.”

“Just the same,” Bohannon said, “I’d keep her in her stall from here on out. With plenty of fresh dry straw.”

“I know what to do,” the girl repeated sulkily, reached down from the saddle, swung open a wide door, and rode the mare into the storage building. Looking after her, Bohannon glimpsed fifty-pound sacks of fertilizer, a truckload of them. Not to grow food. Not around here. They were labeled AMMONIUM NITRATE. He got a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. There must be a ton of it. What was Cunningham going to blow up? The entire state?

“How did you come by a horse like that?” he said.

“Liberty wanted a horse, wouldn’t leave me alone about it. You know how they nag.” Cunningham grunted. “I took her in payment for a debt. No bargain. She’d never won a race.”

Bohannon shrugged. “Maybe her foal will be a winner.”

Cunningham’s laugh was brief. “Another mouth to feed,” he said. “Move.”

The K building held a cot with a rolled-up sleeping bag on it, a tubular patio chair whose webbing a sun in a different climate had long ago bleached to gray and whose metal time and weather had pitted.

A set of battered veneered bookshelves had new-looking books on them. The Turner Diaries, The Anarchist Cookbook, Christian Identity, Edible Wild Plants of the West, The Improvised Munitions Handbook. Multiple copies. And brown-wrapped parcels, probably of the same books. A kerosene lantern with a smoke-smudged chimney, a single window with a huge tree trunk right up against it. No way out. Bohannon stood studying the room. Cunningham, from the open doorway, studied him. “Think I ought to chain you up?” he said.

Bohannon smiled. “Save yourself the trouble. Let me go.”

Cunningham ignored that. “No, I don’t think, with Elroy outside with his Uzi, you’ll try to make a break. Anyway, the woods are full of my troops. You wouldn’t get far.”

“All night?” Bohannon said.

“All night, all day. Don’t give it another thought. Read.” Cunningham nodded at the bookcase. “The Turner Diaries. It will open your mind.” He backed down the two short steps that led up to the door, began to close the door, and then said, “Anyway, you won’t be here long. Just till I see if you’re useful. If not, you won’t be here at all.”

Bohannon’s brows went up. “In what way useful?”

“As a bargaining chip,” Cunningham said and closed the door. It had a heavy slide bolt; Bohannon heard him rattle it into place. Cunningham said through the door, “If nature calls, just ask Elroy to take you. Elroy?”

“Sir,” Elroy said.

Lunch when Elroy brought it was a wiener sandwich and a glass of milk. He wasn’t sure what the milk tasted like but not milk. Powdered milk. He remembered the boxes stacked on the kitchen floor. The meat tasted like a hot dog, any hot dog. Mustard. Ketchup. Sweet relish. And the bread itself was good, fresh-baked, still a little warm. A treat. And he was hungry and finished the sandwich off in gulps, and the chocolate bar that lay beside it on the plate. A half hour afterward, when the bolt slid and the door opened, it was Cunningham’s woman, Selina, who came to collect the plate and glass.

“That was good.” Bohannon stood to hand them to her.

“You’ll get damn tired of hot dogs,” she said.

“Don’t you mean darn?” he said with a little smile.

“Yes, I mean darn,” she said and smiled back.

“And what did you mean when you said bad timing?”

“I meant sometimes we’re busy around here.” She wasn’t going to stay and chat. She opened the door. “Tomorrow will be one of those times.”

“All the more reason to let me go my way,” Bohannon said.

“A sane person would think so.” She went out and bolted the door.

And Bohannon lay on his bunk and read The Turner Diaries, which made clear on page after sneering, blustering, bloodthirsty page what the woman had meant. No admirer of this book could possibly be sane. If she knew that, why did she stay?

Elroy knocked at five and woke him. While reading he had drifted into a troubled sleep filled with murder, mayhem, bombings, and by contrast the quiet of the compound under its enormous trees was almost welcome. The blond kid brought in a battered old cafeteria tray. On it was a plate with beans and franks, a ketchup bottle, two slices of buttered bread on a side plate, another glass of milk, and a bowl of red Jell-O. Bohannon sat up on the edge of the bed, and Elroy handed him the tray. He studied him.

“You all right?”

“Nightmares.” Bohannon set the tray on his knees and ran his fingers through his hair. “You know what the psychology books say about nightmares?”

“No, sir,” Elroy said.

“The only ones who have them are children and artists.”

“That right? I never did hear that. Which one are you?”

Elroy was brighter than Bohannon had expected. “Neither one, so I guess that makes the psychology books wrong, doesn’t it?” He was hungry again and tilted ketchup over the beans and franks and filled his mouth. “What’s this mimeographing you’re doing for the captain?”

“Ninth Amendment Bulletin,” Elroy said. “The captain writes it; Miz Cunningham, she types the stencils; and I make the copies.”

“And address the envelopes?” Bohannon took a bite of the bread. It was good again. “You complained about the Addressograph.”

“I address ’em and stuff ’em,” Elroy said wearily. “Takes forever.”

“Big mailing list, is it?” Bohannon took a swallow of milk.

“I guess I better not tell you that.” The boy wandered to the open door and, rifle cradled in his arms, stood there gazing out at the dying daylight through the trees. “Even if they are going to kill you.”

Bohannon blinked. “I thought they were going to trade me off.”

“Trade you off?” Elroy turned around. “For what? For who?”

Bohannon shrugged. “A bargaining chip, that’s what the captain called me. Where do you mail all these copies of your bulletin? Coeur d’Alene?”

“Hell, no. That would give away where we’re at, here.”

“I guess it might at that.” Bohannon continued to down the beans and franks and bread. “So what do you do about that?”

“Pack ’em all in a carton and truck ’em to Tacoma, and they forward the carton to Omaha or maybe El Paso or Enid, Oklahoma, and they take the envelopes out of the carton and mail ’em from there. Except sometimes it’s Columbus, Georgia. Or San Diego.”

“Must make getting contributions a little chancy,” Bohannon said.

“I don’t know. The captain — he’s the one worries about the mail. I just follow orders.” He sat down in the doorway, the rifle across his knees. Bohannon wondered if he could take the necessary six or eight steps silently enough to catch Elroy’s thin neck in the crook of his arm and render him unconscious but guessed that even if he could there might be someone in the compound, or looking out a window, who would see him and shoot him for his trouble. He finished off the Jell-O, the last inch of milk, set aside the tray, slid the spoon into his boot, and lit a cigarette.

Elroy turned. “Say, how did you get to keep those? The captain don’t allow smoking. No tobacco, no beer, no swearing...”

Bohannon held out the pack. “You want one?”

“I’m dyin’ for one.” Elroy came and got a cigarette and leaned for Bohannon to light it with a plastic throw-away lighter. “Oh, good,” the boy said, blowing smoke away with a deep, grateful sigh. “Oh, yes.”

“Not even rock and roll,” said Bohannon. “What does the Ninth Amendment Militia do for fun?”

“Fun?” Elroy stared at him with an odd half smile. “Oh, mister. We’re gonna have our fun tomorrow.” He went back to the doorway and stood leaning there, looking out, enjoying the cigarette and chuckling to himself. “Oh yeah. We’re gonna have real fun tomorrow.”

“You mentioned a bank.”

“Bank?” The boy turned, scowling. “Oh, you are for sure gonna be killed. You know way too much.”

Bohannon put out his cigarette on the floor. “You going to rob a bank? Is that your idea of fun?”

“You got it backward, like most everybody,” Elroy said. “It’s the banks that are the robbers.” He threw away his cigarette and turned. “Anyways, we ain’t about money. We’re about takin’ this country back from the Jews and lawyers and niggers and immigrant trash from Mexico and China and all them and givin’ it back to the white people the way God meant in the first place. And we ain’t a militia either. We’re a family.”

Bohannon smiled thinly. “That just happens to carry guns at all times.”

“We’re embattled,” Elroy said. “We tell the people of this country how things really are, and the rich and powerful don’t like it. They’ll kill us if they can. Them and their bought-and-paid-for army and FBI and all. We got to defend ourself, we got to defend the truth.” He reached out. “I’ll take that tray now. You need to go to the outhouse?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Bohannon said.

He lit the lamp and read about wild plants you could eat without poisoning yourself. It was more cheerful reading than The Turner Diaries, and he thought it might be useful if he could get away from here and past Cunningham’s circle of fire and make his way by shank’s mare to civilization, if there was civilization anywhere. He wasn’t going to be able to memorize all this stuff, so he guessed he would take the book along. It was not going to be that hard to get out of here after all. The floor planks were indifferently nailed down. Using the spoon with patience, persistence, and main strength, he could pry up one plank with difficulty and another without difficulty. There was two feet of crawlspace under the shack. From there under cover of darkness he could creep into the ferns and brush beneath the trees and, if he went carefully, get back to the main road. Then he—

The bolt on the door rattled, the door opened, Selina came in. She pointed a Browning 9mm pistol at him. In a worn and weary way, she was beautiful in the lamplight. “I’d like the spoon back,” she said.

“Shucks,” he said and reached into his boot for it. He stood up to hand it over to her. “A feller can’t have any fun around here.”

She took the spoon and put it into a pocket of her jeans. She assumed a Colonel Klink accent. “No vun escapes from Stalag Thirteen.”

“No one ever got shot at Stalag Thirteen either,” he said.

“Life is not television.” She backed to the door. Hand on the knob, she asked, “You need anything? Other than a crowbar?”

“How is Liberty’s mare?” he said. “Liberty your daughter?”

She gave a short laugh. “She was, when I carried her in my belly. Since then she has had only one parent. Strange but true. And he has had only one true love. If anything happened to me, I doubt he’d notice. If anything happened to Liberty — God help us all.”

“And if anything happened to him?” Bohannon asked.

Alarm flickered across her face, but she said stoutly, “He’s not the kind of man things happen to. He makes things happen.”

“That can be dangerous. Especially if you can’t think straight.”

“You’re not talking about Chet Cunningham,” she said.

“He’s crazy, and you know it,” Bohannon said.

“He’s the sanest man in America.” She pulled open the door.

“That’s not an answer, that’s a slogan. You’re too bright for that.”

“It’s the truth,” she said.

“He plans to shoot me,” Bohannon said. “You going to let him do that?”

“You’re not afraid,” she said scornfully. “You were never afraid in your life. I know your kind. I married one.”

“So you are going to let him shoot me?”

She took one step down. “That’s between the two of you.”

“Only if we both have guns.” Bohannon held out his hand for the 9mm.

She smiled faintly and shook her head. “You want him to shoot me, too? How would that help?”

Bohannon sat on the cot.

“What about the horse?”

“Still pregnant.”

She took the second step down, pulled the door shut, and bolted it.

Clattering and banging woke him. Through the cracks in the siding of the K building he saw light. He smelled gasoline. Young male voices called to each other. A starter mechanism whinnied, an engine clattered to life, died out, started up again. Another. The tailgate of a pickup truck banged shut, its chains rattling. More engines started. Cunningham barked orders and admonitions. There was a chorus of “Yessirs,” and there was also laughter. Everybody sounded keyed up. The large door of the storage building slammed shut. The cars, trucks, vans began driving out of the compound. Right past him.

He crawled out of the sleeping bag and, through the crack between door and frame, caught glimpses of jittering headlights, red taillights. He peered at his watch. Two-thirty A.M. That busy tomorrow he’d heard about from Elroy and Selina started early, didn’t it? A car braked, its door opened, someone came to his door, rattled the bolt, pushed the door open.

“You’re awake,” Cunningham said.

“It’s nice of you to invite me out,” Bohannon said, “but I’ll need time to choose a frock. What do you suggest?”

“I suggest you read this.” Cunningham held out Ada Tanner’s Bible. “And meditate on it. Try the Twenty-third Psalm. That’s the one the padre usually reads to condemned men. That and the part about ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ ”

Bohannon took the book. “Thoughtful of you,” he said. “Appreciate it.” He peered past the captain. “You taking my truck?”

“Spoils of war,” Cunningham said.

“As Mrs. Napoleon said before Waterloo, when will you be back?”

“Forget it,” Cunningham said. “This won’t be Waterloo.”

“If you were sure of that, you’d shoot me now.”

Cunningham drew a breath to answer and didn’t answer. He pulled the door shut, bolted it, and Bohannon listened to his footsteps cross the hardpan, heard the springs of the truck squeak slightly as the man climbed into it, heard the door slam, the parking brake let go, heard the gears grind because Cunningham didn’t know this vehicle, and heard it drive away.

After that the silence of the forest night came and settled on the place, and he felt the high mountain cold, laid the Bible on the bookcase, crawled back into the sleeping bag, and, when he had stopped shivering, went to sleep. In a dream George Stubbs sat at the round kitchen table in the ranch house with his big drawing pad. He drew well for a man with no training. But he rarely drew anything but horses, and Bohannon took his hobby for granted and wasn’t watching.

“Here it is,” Stubbs said. “This is what you want.” And he held up the pad for Bohannon to see. A horse’s head in silhouette. “Now, ain’t that just the ticket?”

And then Bohannon was awake in K building of Cunningham’s compound, hundreds of miles from that kitchen, wondering what woke him. “The ticket to what, George?” he said, and worked his way out of the sleeping bag again and went to the door. He stood by the door listening. It was unnaturally quiet. If a guard was out there, he wasn’t breathing. “Elroy?” he said. No answer.

Then he realized what he had heard that woke him. The bolt. He turned the knob and very gently pulled the door. It came open. His heart began thumping. He peered out. No Elroy. No light showed in the house across the way. She’d come in the dark, hadn’t she, and gone back in the dark, and if she was watching from over there, she was watching from the dark. He smiled to himself. He’d had her figured right, after all. She wasn’t going to let Cunningham kill him. Now, with all the longhaired boys with guns and grenades gone off with the sanest man in America, she was letting Bohannon walk away.

He put on his boots, jacket, hat, returned to the door, opened it, and stood with it open for a wary moment in the darkness and the silence and the cold. Then he took a step down. And waited. And another step. And waited. He wished to hell his truck was still here. He wished for a compass. For a map. For a flashlight. He made his way to the rear of K building and into the brooding, ancient darkness of the giant trees. He wanted to run. There wasn’t much in the way of undergrowth to impede that. Only ferns. But there was no safe way to go fast.

Hands held out in the hope of not running into low branches, he started off. Was he heading for the state highway? Did it matter? He was putting Cunningham’s camp behind him. Bark and sharp twigs kept scraping his hands. They’d be bloody before the night was out. Then they met something else. Fabric, and under the fabric, flesh and bone.

“Who the hell?” a voice said. A gun barrel poked his belly. A flashlight beam glared in his eyes. “Jesus Christ,” the voice said. “How did you get out?”

“Don’t you mean Judas Priest?” Bohannon said. “The door was open. I figured that meant I’d overstayed my welcome.”

“Turn around.” The gun barrel jabbed him again. “Go back.”

And he went back, and was pushed into K building so hard he lost his footing and fell. And the door slammed. And the boy bolted the door. Disgusted, Bohannon clambered to his feet. She’d miscounted, hadn’t she? Hadley had been left behind, cut out of the fun. Poor Hadley’d have to hear about Armageddon secondhand over breakfast.

But no one was back for breakfast. At six in the morning, the camp remained vacant and still. He heard the hooves of Liberty’s horse pass. Dimly from across the way he heard coal dumped into the old cookstove. Hadley was red-eyed when he came with an M-16 to escort Bohannon to the outhouse. “You should get some sleep,” Bohannon told him.

“If I’d slept last night,” Hadley said, “you’d be in Coeur d’Alene by now.”

“I don’t understand how the captain could have left my door unbolted.”

“He had a lot on his mind,” Hadley said.

Back at K building Bohannon said, “You can sleep now.”

“Not me,” Hadley said sourly. “Gotta watch you. You’re tricky.”

“Not if you remember the bolt,” Bohannon said.

Hadley closed the door and rammed the bolt to. “I got nothing on my mind. Just you.”

Selina brought his breakfast on another of those battered cafeteria trays. It was scrambled eggs and Spam, toast and jam, a mug of coffee.

“You tried to leave us last night,” she said. “I thought you’d get tired of hot dogs. But not so soon.” She held out the tray. “In contrition I’ve brought you something different. Not better, just different.”

He took the tray from her. “Appreciate the thought.”

“The eggs are powdered,” she said. “How did you get out?”

He looked at her. “You don’t know? Somebody forgot to bolt the door.”

“Hadley had stepped into the trees to relieve himself,” she said. “It’s lucky you happened to meet up with him.”

“Not for me.” Bohannon sat on the bed with the tray on his lap and began eating. The eggs had no taste at all, but they were hot and there was a good heap of them. The Spam tasted like salt. The jelly tasted like no known fruit or berry, but the bread was good and so was the coffee. She was still standing there. The Browning was tucked into her belt. He wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “I ought to have chosen a different way out, right?”

Her smile was bleak. “So it seems.”

“Hadley the only man left in the camp?”

“That would be telling,” she said. “Anyway, I saw you leave. I’m a very light sleeper when Chet’s away.”

“Meaning you’re worried.” Bohannon held out his pack of cigarettes and saw her eyes light up. “When’s he due back?”

She took a cigarette. “First, I am not worried. Chet knows what he’s doing and just how to do it. Second, he’ll be back when he’s done it.”

“And did you take aim at me from your window?” Bohannon held out his lighter, hoping she would bend close to take the light and he could get the Browning away from her. She didn’t bend. She took the lighter, backed off a couple steps, lit her cigarette, tossed the lighter back to him.

“Thank you. That’s good. A luxury we can’t afford. Among many.” She blew smoke away gratefully, watched Bohannon light his cigarette, and said, “No. I scrambled down from the loft, got my gun” — she touched the butt of the gun now — “and opened the front door. I was furious that Hadley had left his post. I wanted to run after you but” — she laughed at herself grimly — “I’d forgotten my boots. And while I dithered about that, Hadley brought you back.”

“To your enormous relief,” Bohannon said, watching her steadily.

She nodded. “Of course,” she said, but she flushed a little.

“I suggested to Liberty she keep the mare in her stall until she foals, but I heard her ride out earlier.”

“Liberty takes suggestions only from her father,” Selina said.

“I hope she’s back before the colt decides to arrive.” Bohannon stood up to pass the tray over.

Selina took it one-handed and backed off, her other hand on the butt of the Browning. “Why not the filly?”

“No reason.” Bohannon smiled. “What’s the dam’s name?”

“Paprika. For her color. She raced as a Nonstop-shopper.”

Bohannon grunted. “Racing people drink too much.”

Selina shrugged. “She never did stop. She just didn’t run very fast.”

“Why should she?” Bohannon said. “Every horse is not a fool.”

The compound was still empty at noon. “Bohannon,” Selina called. “Sit on the cot and stay there.” Her boots knocked the steps. She slid back the bolt and pushed open the door. She set the tray on the floor to one side. “Wait,” she said, “until you hear me bolt the door before you come for that.”

“Where’s Hadley?” Bohannon asked.

She shut the door and bolted it. “Don’t worry. You’re under guard.”

Bohannon went and picked up the tray. “You mean by you? Where did Hadley go? Why did Hadley go?”

Maybe she stood there in the pine-splintered sunlight, thinking about answering, but she didn’t answer. In a moment he heard her boots crossing the compound away from him. “They are late, aren’t they?” he shouted. “Something went wrong.”

It didn’t provoke her. Not to speech. And he sat on the cot and ate canned chili not quite heated through. No fresh home-baked bread this time. A few stale soda crackers, that was all. And the usual glass of watery milk. He didn’t hear the door to the house. He heard the door to the warehouse cum stable. And then in the hush, the startup of an automobile engine. Muffled. He had noticed on his brief escape attempt last night that all the junkyard vans, pickups, RVs had gone off with Cunningham’s expeditionary forces. Except for the red runabout, of course. That would never go anywhere again. So the car he was hearing had been stored out of sight, indoors, hadn’t it? He knocked with the handle of the spoon hard on a knothole. The knot fell out. He knelt and put his eye to the hole. And saw the car roll out of the warehouse. It looked new. Then it was out of his line of vision.

But his ears told him it had come this way. Moving too fast. It braked hard, the tires squealing on the hardpan. They kicked up dust. He smelled the dust. The horn blared. “Liberty!” Selina shouted. “Liberty! Come home.” The horn blared again. “Damn,” she said, and, leaving the motor idling, got out of the car, and he knew from the sound of her steps she was running. Into the house, out again, opening and closing the doors of the van, throwing things into the van, stopping for a moment with each load to lean on the horn. It trumpeted into the somber forest and echoed back. She shouted each time, “Liberty! Come home.” And her voice echoed also and sounded lonely.

He called, “Shall I go fetch her?”

“I can’t trust you,” she said. But she came and opened the door and looked at him. She was holding the Browning. “You’re the enemy.”

He shrugged. “Hostilities are over. Aren’t they?”

“Never,” she said. “I’ll find her myself, thanks.”

But it wasn’t necessary. Liberty had heard. And Liberty had come. Not riding her beloved Paprika. Leading her. And Bohannon saw why. The foal had shifted inside her. She looked twice as pregnant as before. Her bag was swollen. “She’s going to foal, Mama.” Liberty was pale. “Any minute now.”

Bohannon asked, “Is her stall cleaned out? No junk on the floor? How big is it? She’ll need room to walk around. No cracks the baby can put his legs through? Plenty of fresh straw?” He stepped forward. “I’d better look it over.”

“Stay where you are,” Selina said. And to Liberty, “Take her inside. I’ll be along in a minute.” Jerking the pistol at him, she told Bohannon, “Back off. Way back. That’s it.” And she pulled the door shut and bolted it.

Through the planks he called: “How many foals have you delivered?”

She didn’t answer. The engine of the van quit. The huge, primeval silence of the place was back. He stretched out on the cot. You never knew about brood mares. They could drop their young before you could catch your breath. Or they could keep you waiting for hours. He closed his eyes.

What woke him was so unexpected he didn’t open his eyes. He lay and held his breath, straining to hear because the sound was far off. The beat of helicopter rotors. He opened his eyes, lunged at the bookcase, and pawed the load of books off the first shelf. As he had thought, the shelf lay on pegs. It fit tightly, though, and he had to bang it with a fist from underneath to get it loose. He rammed with the end of it hard at the siding planks in the corner. The builders hadn’t spared nails. With all his strength he banged at them again. The whole of K building shuddered. But the planks didn’t give. He kept ramming at them with the bookshelf, in a sweat to get out where that chopper could see him.

“What are you doing?” He turned. Selina stood in the open doorway. With the Browning leveled at him. “Drop the board,” she said.

He laid the board on the cot. “I was getting worried about the foal.”

“The man who loves horses,” she said with a thin smile, “better than he loves freedom.”

“What’s happening?” he said.

“Nothing, but Liberty’s too stressed to be out there alone with her, and I have packing to do.”

Bohannon sat down and put on his boots.

“I noticed. Once she’s through delivery, you plan to leave the horse and colt?”

“Maybe before,” Selina said. “There are bigger issues at stake here than one little girl and her pet racehorse.”

“We won’t tell Elizabeth Taylor,” Bohannon said.

He stood with Liberty outside the box stall. He was relieved that it was roomy and clean and that good daylight came from overhead. At times like this you had to be able to see clearly. “She gets up,” Liberty said, “then she walks around. Then she lies down again. Now look. See her shudder? Look. She never holds her tail straight out like that. Look, Bohannon. She’s kicking at her belly.” The girl was trembling. He gave her a quick hug.

“It’s all right. It’s perfectly natural.”

With a heavy thump and a heavy sigh, the broody mother lay down again, then scrambled up, rolling her eyes, and there was a rush of amniotic fluid, gallons of it. From out in the compound Selina shouted, “What was that?”

“She broke her water,” Bohannon called. “Now the serious stuff begins.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Liberty said. But instead she cried.

One of the captain’s favorite accommodations, a wood and canvas collapsing cot, was in this cubby beside the horse’s stall, and Bohannon picked the weeping girl up and laid her on it. Whimpering, she curled tight, her face to the board wall. He covered her with an army blanket. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he told her.

Everything was fine. Eight or ten minutes later the mare was on her feet again and a long, slim leg stuck out beneath her tail, the blunt head of the foal with it. He breathed easier. The newborn’s hoof had pierced the amniotic sack. The rest of the sack would slip away with the mare’s contractions as they came. Or should. If not, he’d have to step in there and pull it off the nostrils so it could begin to breathe. An instant later the mare contracted again, the foal’s nostrils were free, and it began to struggle.

“Liberty, come on.” Bohannon turned, threw the blanket off, shook the girl awake. “You don’t want to miss this. It may be the only miracle you’ll ever see.” He got her to her feet. She was numb the way a child is, roughly roused from sleep. He steered her by the shoulders. “Here. Stand here. Look. Look.”

The foal struggled. The mare slowly, a little stunned, bending her graceful neck, reached around to help. The foal wriggled mightily, then dropped with a thump into the straw, legs sprawling. It was always a shock, the unbelievable length of a newborn foal’s legs. Those were what a horse was all about, and this was the moment when that showed itself to the veriest fool. A horse was born for one thing only. A horse was born to run. The mare turned and bent to lick her newborn dry.

“She did it all herself.” Liberty looked up at Bohannon, wonder in her eyes. “Just like Daddy said.”

“Whatever happened to Daddy?” Bohannon said.

Liberty didn’t hear. “I have clean towels to help her clean him up and dry him off.” She turned away.

“She’s doing fine,” Bohannon said. “Let her do it. Come back. Watch.”

Cleanup over, the mare began nudging the gangly little horse to urge it to its feet. It put those sticklike legs out, this way, that way, and trembling, teetering, began to stand. The dam put her elegant nose under to help.

“Wonderful!” Liberty clapped in delight.

And the little creature collapsed. It took two more tries, then he was firmly footed and his mother was nudging his butt with its damp whisk of tail to point him along to where her milk was waiting for him.

“Excuse me.” Bohannon stepped out the big door into the golden sunlight slanting through the pines and, away from the hazards of straw and ammonium nitrate manure, lit a cigarette. Selina was across the way, setting a heavy cardboard storage file in the van. “You lose,” he shouted. “It’s a colt.”

“This is not a woman’s world.” Selina slammed the van doors, climbed behind the wheel, started the engine. “Come on, Liberty. Time to leave. Your father will be frantic.” She brought the van around in a quick circle to where Bohannon stood. Panic edged her voice. “Liberty, we have to go.”

Bohannon raised his eyes. The helicopter was back. From high up, its jittery shadow flickered across the compound. “Forget it,” he told her.

“What are you talking about? Liberty! Come out here. Right now.”

Liberty appeared in her floppy camouflage coverall and hat. “I’m not going. You go on without me. Mama — he’s just born. He can hardly walk. Anything could happen. And Paprika? After what she’s been through?” Liberty waved her arms. “I’m her friend. I can’t leave her. She trusts me.”

“There’s feed, there’s water.” Selina jumped down and came for the girl. “They’ll be all right till we can send for them. A day, two days. What can happen?” She grabbed Liberty’s wrist. “Come on now. Before it’s too late.”

Bohannon touched her, jerked his chin up. “It’s already too late.”

“Let me go!” Then she saw, and the starch went out of her. “Oh no.”

Bohannon opened his mouth to speak, and a pickup truck banged noisily into the compound and slurred to a halt on the hardpan, kicking up a cloud of dust. The green pickup with the horsehead on the door. Bohannon’s pickup. Ford jumped out of it clutching his AK-47. He came running toward them, wild with excitement and fear. “Where’s the captain?”

“That’s dried blood,” Selina said. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but a lot of other people are. Hell, they’re dead. I killed a lot of people, Miz Cunningham.” He began to cry. “I wasn’t supposed to. Nobody was supposed to kill anybody, just like hold them real quiet.” He shook his head in agony. “I didn’t mean it. But this nigger, this big security guard, he wouldn’t stand still like I said, and he ran at me and I shot him and the gun kept on running and everybody in the place fell down, and, oh—” He dropped to his knees in the dust, head bowed, sobbing. “God forgive me for what I done.” Then he was on his feet again, half crouched and staring all around. “Where’s the captain? Where’s everybody?”

“Not here,” Selina said. She was very pale, and she was hanging onto Liberty, frightened by this maniac, but her voice stayed calm, the voice of the captain’s lady. “You know what the orders were. If anything went wrong, no one was to return here. What’s the matter with you, Ford?”

“He said he’d protect me,” Ford said, “wouldn’t let nothin’ happen to me. Always promised us that. He’d look after us, all of us. And now look.” He waved upward wildly at the helicopter. “They’re after me, and they’re going to get me and where is he? Where’s the captain?”

“You stupid boy,” she cried, “don’t you understand? You’ve finished the captain. You’ve finished us all.”

He stared at her, slack-jawed. Then he saw Bohannon, and his eyes lit up. “Oh no. Not all. Not me.” Bohannon saw it coming, but he wasn’t quick enough. He was past fifty. He could no longer move with the speed of the boy, and the boy caught him. “They can’t take me. Not with a hostage. Come on.” And he yanked and booted and hoisted Bohannon toward the truck, the rifle barrel at Bohannon’s ear. It was awkward. He probably couldn’t fire it if he tried, but Bohannon remembered the other morning on that lost roadway. The gun had gone off on its own. He didn’t resist.

The boy slammed him against the cab.

“Open the door. Get in there.”

And Bohannon did these things, and the next moment the boy was on the seat beside him, still clutching the AK-47. The engine revved. He clashed the gears. The pickup backed and slewed, going too fast. It braked, and the dust rose around them, blocking off the anxious faces of the two women. Then the truck raced ahead, moving off through the great trees, heading along the crooked little access trail, back to that dismal road.

But not all the way. An official car came ambling along to meet them. It stopped with its bumper against the bumper of the green pickup, and Ford said, “Hell,” and two men in starchy tan uniforms got out of the car. It was a highway patrol car. They wore dark glasses, had their hair cropped tight around the ears, and looked about fifteen years old. Service revolvers were holstered on their hips, but they didn’t seem about to draw these. They came ambling forward looking as if they meant no harm.

One of them called, “Mr. Bohannon, is it? Mr. Hack Bohannon? Green pickup with the horsehead on it? We been looking for you. Your friends down in California. They haven’t heard from you. They’re worried about you. Sheriff’s department?”

“He don’t count.” Ford put his head out the window. “He’s just my hostage. Corporal Ford, Ninth Amendment Militia? I got a gun here.” He stuck it out the window and waved it. “See that? That’s what counts. Now, you get back in that gov’ mint car and get it the hell out of my way.”

The patrolmen stopped. One of them looked skyward. “Whatever you say, but they’re watching all this from up there. You won’t get far.”

“This thing can blow them right out of the sky,” Ford said, “after it blows you into the ground. I’ve already killed twenty people. What have I got to lose?”

The men put their hands up and backed submissively toward the patrol car. Hanging out the truck window, Ford watched them, grinning. “Way to go,” he said. He had forgotten Bohannon. And Bohannon struck him with a chop across the nape of his thin boy’s neck. There was a crack of vertebrae. The boy’s head drooped, and his cap fell off, and the AK-47 dropped to the roadway. Bohannon got out of the truck on the passenger side. He knew his smile was a little anemic, but he smiled it anyway.

“Good to see you,” he said.