The Sinister Pig

Winsor found himself thinking of this immigrant Latino as a man of his own class, just as he thought of the top people with whom he dined, and partied, and competed with in the economic and political world. That sort of thinking surprised him. He never felt that way about his employees. On one level, he felt good about this. On another, it made him uneasy. It undercut his trust. He no longer felt totally safe in presuming, as he had been doing, that Budge was simply a highly competent lackey, happy to be serving in a job that paid him well. Now Budge seemed more than that. Perhaps he wasn’t—as Haret had always seemed to be—one of those little suckerfish that connects itself to sharks. Maybe Budge had his own predatory talents. Worse, maybe Budge had his own personal agenda.

At the airport he found Budge waiting in the lounge for private aircraft crews. He was reading a magazine, looking comfortable.

“We’ll probably have to spend a night or two out where we won’t find hotel accommodations,” Winsor said. “Are you prepared for that?”

“Always am,” Budge said. “Bed roll in the storage space and some U.S. Army canned rations. How about you? Will I be sharing my food?”

“I’ll make other arrangements,” Winsor said. “I’ll be meeting some associates.”

Budge considered that, nodded.

“I’ll sit up front with you,” he told Budge as they boarded the jet. “I want to talk to you.”

“Why?” Budge asked.

“Just curious,” Winsor said. “I’m paying your salary. I’m putting some confidence in you. So I need to know more about you.”

“You know the rule,” Budge said. “Passengers will please refrain from talking to the driver.”

“I make the rules,” Winsor said.

Budge studied him, expressionless. He nodded. “When we get to altitude and we get into the flight pattern, then we will talk,” he said. “Until then, I’ll be talking only to the tower. You can listen.”

Judging from what Winsor was seeing of the landscape, they were over West Virginia before Budge turned toward him.- “All right. Now what do you want to know.”

“We could start with your biography,” Winsor said. “All I know about you is what the congressman told me. You flew for the government in that messy rebellion in Guatemala. You got in some sort of trouble. You had connections in the CIA down there and they got you to Washington. That about right?”

Budge considered, said: “That’s about it.”

“I’m not even sure I know your real name. ‘Robert Budge’ doesn’t sound like you. That doesn’t seem to fit what you look like.”

Budge thought about this. “That does sound a little pale for me, I guess. How about Sylvanius Roberto C. de Baca. That sound right?”

“ ‘Sylvanius’? That sounds Greek. But that ‘C. de Baca’ sounds Spanish.”

“It is Spanish,” Budge said. “Or technically Basque, I guess. It’s my father’s name. He was one of those freedom fighters who gave Franco and his fascists troubles.”

“What’s the ‘C’? Maybe Carlos?”

“ ‘C’ is short for ‘Cabeza.’ Cabeza de Baca.”

“I had a high school course in Spanish. Doesn’t cabeza mean ‘head’? Is that ‘Head of Baca’?” Winsor snorted. “And ‘Baca.’ What’s that? Come on, Budge, get with it. I don’t have time to play games with you.”

“When you studied Spanish, they didn’t get into history much, I guess. Anyway, back in the fifteenth century, when the Castilians were fighting that long civil war to drive the Moors out of Spain, the king gave my family that name. A grandfather of mine, six centuries removed, led a scouting party to find a way the Spanish army”—Budge paused, looked at Winsor—“you familiar with Spanish geography, lay of the land?”

Winsor felt himself flushing. He wasn’t accustomed to this.

“I’ve never had a reason to be,” he said.

“I’ll make it simple then. He found a way for the army of the king to get a column of cavalry across a river where they could outflank the Moors. That won the war for our side. According to the legend, my ancestor marked the ford with the skull of a cow stuck up on the end of a pole. After the Moors surrendered, the king had a ceremonial banquet in the palace and made this very distant granddad of mine Duke of Cabeza de Baca.”

Winsor laughed. “Maybe they ate the beef from the historic baca’s cabeza.”

Budge cut off what he was about to say to that, paused, adjusted something on the instrument panel.

“That was fourteen hundred and thirteen. Long, long ago,” he said, and laughed. “About when the early Winsors would have still been gathering roots and berries, eating with their fingers and killing each other with clubs.”

Winsor took a deep breath, held it, and stared out the windshield. “Interesting,” he said after a long silence. “About all I know about the Spanish culture is from Cervante’s novels, and the plays the Spanish dramatists were writing about that time and the stuff we got in the world lit classes at Harvard. Now, tell me what brought the Cabeza de Baca family to the Americas.”

“Spirit of adventure. Lust for gold. Hard times in Europe. The same old story. I think my ancestors had a habit of being on the wrong side of too many political battles.”

“What did you do for the CIA?” Winsor’s question produced a long silence.

“One thing I would have been required to do, if I ever did work for the Central Intelligence Agency, was put my hand on a Bible and take an oath of secrecy. So if I did that, I can’t talk about it. And if I didn’t do that, then there’d be nothing to tell you. Right?”

A long silence ensued.

“When we get about an hour from El Paso, I’m making some calls,” Winsor said. “You take care of dealing with getting my plane parked. I’ll meet a man I need to talk to at the administration building. You brought your cell phone?”

“Always. And the pager.”

“Stay close to the plane. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Sure,” Budge said.

They crossed the American midlands in silence. Over the flatness of West Texas Winsor extracted his cell phone and dialed. He waited, looking impatient.

“Ruben? ... Yes, yes. Did our lawyer show up? ... Yes, at the airport. You talk to the people at Rancho Corralitos? ... Yes ... yes, but that means the stuff hasn’t actually arrived there yet. ... True? But when? ... That sounds all right. But you make damn sure nothing holds it up. Tell me how you’re checking on it.”

The answer to that took time. Winsor glanced at Budge, who seemed to be absorbed with reading his instrument panel.

“All right then. But call me as soon as it’s there. And I’m thinking now that we’ll be coming right on in from El Paso this afternoon. Make damn sure that landing strip is cleaned off better than it was the last time. And I’ll probably have to spend the night. Where we’re going next we can’t land in the dark. And did those Corralitos people have anything new to say about that woman?”

A brief pause. “What woman? The snoopy Navajo gal that was nosing around at the Pig Trap site, taking pictures. We had her picture spread around.”

Winsor listened. Said: “Son of a bitch! Did you ask Ed Henry about that?” Listened again. Shook his head, said: “How did Henry know the man was a Navajo.” Said: “I mean, how did he know he was a Navajo Tribal Police cop. They don’t have any jurisdiction down there. None at all.” He listened again, said: “All right,” and clicked off without saying good-bye. He put the phone back in his jacket pocket and glanced at Budge.

“You need to be ready to fly on to the smelter. Take care of refueling if you need to, as soon as we get landed.”

Budge nodded.

“We need to get there before dark,” Budge said. “I’m not going to fly in on that strip by starlight.”

While he was saying that, Winsor was staring at him, expression thoughtful.

“Budge,” he said. “You sort of enjoyed that assignment I gave you with Chrissy, didn’t you? I mean, manhandling that pretty little girl like that.”

Budge kept his eyes on the instrument panel, shrugged.

“I think I’m going to have another one of those for you,” Winsor said.

Budge considered that a moment. “Who?”

Winsor chuckled. “It may not be so easy this time. She’s some sort of cop.”

19

The young woman who answered Leaphorn’s call to Jim Chee’s Shiprock office recognized neither his voice nor his name, making him aware of the passage of time, how old he was getting, how long he had been retired, how quickly one is forgotten, and other sad truths. But when he identified himself more clearly and told her the call was important, she said that while Sergeant Chee had indeed left for the day and wasn’t in his office, he still might be out in the parking lot. She went out to see.

A minute later, Chee was on the phone and asking what was up.

“Get comfortable, Jim,” Leaphorn said. “This takes a while to tell.”

Being Leaphorn, he had his thoughts about as well organized as this peculiar and disconnected affair allowed. He started with Mrs. Garza’s call.

“I think we know from the photo Henry took of Bernie Manuelito that all is not totally well with Customs operations down there,” Leaphorn said. “How else would the photograph get into the hands of the drug people down in Sonora? But why would they consider Miss Manuelito dangerous? It seems obvious, at least to me, that it had to do with her photographing whatever they’re building on the Tuttle Ranch. What do you think about it?”

“I don’t have any ideas,” Chee said. “I’m going down there and get her out of it.”

Leaphorn laughed. “Better take along a court order and your handcuffs. It always seemed to me that Bernie Manuelito pretty much made her own decisions.”

“Well, yes,” Chee said. “She does. But if I tell her—”

“There’s more I want to explain,” Leaphorn said. “I want you to take a look at an old map I dug up.”

Now Chee snorted. “A map! Have I ever discussed anything with you when you didn’t pull a map on me?”

“It’s a different one this time,” Leaphorn said. “I think the U.S. Geological Survey did it back in 1950 on the national energy distribution system. Pipelines and electrical transmission grids, all that.”

“Pipelines,” Chee said. “Ah. Are we getting into what happened to the Indian Trust Fund oil and gas royalty money?”

“Possibly,” Leaphorn said. “Could we get together? And where would be a good place for you?”

“I need to go to Window Rock, anyway,” Chee said. “How about this evening?”

When Professor Louisa Bourbonette answered the doorbell and ushered him into the kitchen, Leaphorn was sitting at the table. Two maps spread across it and more were stacked on a chair.

Leaphorn waved Chee to sit.

“Need I ask if you’d like coffee,” said Louisa. The pot was already steaming, and she took three mugs from the cabinet.

“Part of this I haven’t been able to work out yet,” Leaphorn said, pointing to the larger of the maps. “But the southern end works out beautifully.”

“Meaning what?” Chee said, pulling his chair closer and leaning in for a look.

“Here we have the location of that abandoned Mexican copper smelter,” Leaphorn said, tapping the map with his pencil. “San Pedro de los Corralles on this old map, and this symbol is—I should say was—the Anaconda Copper Corporation’s San Pedro smelter when this map was drawn. The newer maps”—he indicated the maps on the chair beside him—“they don’t show either the village or the smelter. Nor the pipe that brought the smelter its fuel from the San Juan Basin fields. However, look at the old map. And remember, abandoned pipelines are normally just left where they were buried. Digging them up costs more than they’re worth.”

Leaphorn glanced up at Chee as he said this, and put the pencil tip on a line of dashes that ran northward from the smokestack symbol of the smelter. The line was labeled “EPNG,” the acronym for El Paso Natural Gas Company. It followed a narrow valley east of the Guadalupe Mountain range in Mexico’s state of Sonora and crossed the U.S. border into the Playas Valley of New Mexico. Leaphorn ran the pencil tip along the route, following it through the Hatchet Gap, which separated the Big Hatchet Mountains from the Little Hatchets. In the Hatchita Valley east of the gap he marked a tiny “X” and looked up at Chee.

“Does that just about mark the place on the Tuttle Ranch where Bernie took those pictures?”

Chee nodded. “I’d think that would be awfully close to where Bernie saw them working.”

“Anyway,” Leaphorn said, “if this old map is accurate and if the folks in the county courthouses in Luna and Hidalgo Counties gave me the correct legal description of the Tuttle Ranch property, then the old pipeline runs right through that ranch.”

“This is getting very interesting,” Chee said. “Do you know anything about the Tuttle family background?”

“The county clerk at Deming said the ownership changed three years ago. Now the owner of record is a Delaware Corporation. Some sort of holding company, I guess. A.G.H. Industries. Ever hear of it?”

“Never,” Chee said. “So you’re thinking the folks Bernie saw working there were digging down to the old pipeline. Making some sort of connection. It would be empty, now, wouldn’t it? What would be the purpose?”

“Before I give you my guess at that let’s shift over to my new and updated copy of that Triple A Indian Country map.” Leaphorn pulled it over on top of the USGS map. Chee noticed he’d already marked an “X” on the Tuttle Ranch and another “X” up at the edge of the Jicarilla Reservation about where the body of the so-called Carl Mankin had been found.

“I see you’ve made the connection,” Chee said. “From a junked copper smelter down in Sonora all the way up to our Four Corners homicide. Aren’t we stretching that old pipeline too far?”

“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe we are. Anyway, it probably stretched that far once. Anaconda was using San Juan Basin gas to fire that smelter.”

“I’m guessing you’ve already done some checking on that historic end of it.”

“Some,” Leaphorn said. “I called an old Anaconda man down in Silver City. He said that before he retired they were getting their gas from EPNG out of the San Juan field. And now I’m told some construction is going on there, but not involving smelting copper.”

“So you’ve used the old pipeline to get the Mankin killing connected to whatever goes on at Tuttle Ranch and whatever’s happening down in Sonora.” Chee shook his head. “I’m way behind you on that connection.”

Louisa had poured their coffee, a mug for herself, joined them at the table, but had politely refrained from getting into this discussion. Now she cleared her throat.

“Of course he’s behind, Joe. Who wouldn’t be? Tell him about your pig theory.” She smiled at Chee. “As Joe sees this situation these are very sinister pigs.”

Leaphorn looked slightly embarrassed.

“Pig is the name pipeline maintenance people use for a device they push through the pipes to clean them out. First they were simply a cylinder that fit the dimensions of the pipeline and was short enough, or flexible enough, to make it around corners and ups and downs in the line. They were covered with pig bristle to brush away rust and deposits. These days they’ve gotten much more high-tech. Computer chips in them, sensing devices and transmitters so they can measure wear, find cracks, let management know where repairs need be made, so forth.”

Chee was considering this, surveying what he knew about pipelines, which was virtually nothing. He’d heard that the major lines sometimes were moving several products at the same time, like miles of crude oil, followed by refined gasoline, followed by methane gas, or something else. He presumed some sort of barrier was used to separate the products. But how? And how were these products moved along, and taken out? If it wasn’t gravity-driven, it must require some sort of pumping. Putting pressure in the line to push whatever was in it along. But he’d never really given it any thought.

“So,” he said, “are you thinking they’re using the old pipeline to smuggle something in. Like dope, perhaps. Or nuclear devices for Al Qaeda’s terrorism campaign, to slip radioactive stuff past radiation detectors. Or maybe to smuggle something out of the country.”

“Take your pick,” Leaphorn said. “Whichever it is, I think something illegal must be involved. And it’s pretty clear some very big money is operating here. Buying the ranch, paying for that construction, making some investments here and there to make sure the Mexican police aren’t interfering.”

“And big money makes it dangerous,” Chee said. “I mean for anyone who interferes. Like Bernie. You remember how she tended to get involved in things without being told to.”

Leaphorn nodded. “And apparently someone believes our Miss Manuelito may be doing that now.”

Louisa exhaled abruptly, producing a sound that signaled frustrated impatience.

“I can’t believe this,” she said. “You two sitting here, perfectly calm, discussing the mechanics of pipelines, and convincing yourselves that Bernadette Manuelito is in danger of being killed.”

Leaphorn stared at her. So did Chee.

“Instead of doing what?” Leaphorn asked. “You want us to kidnap her and bring her home?”

Louisa’s expression was disapproving. “Well, you should do something. If you have it figured correctly, you think they—whoever they are—have already killed that man ... that homicide up by the Jicarilla Reservation.”

“Yes,” Chee said.

“Let’s see what we have,” Leaphorn said. “No evidence a crime is being committed. We have no jurisdiction if there is a crime. We have no—”

“No common sense either,” she said. “Sergeant Chee knows very well that if he went down there he could get Bernie out of that mess. Bring her home.”

Chee put down his coffee cup, leaned forward.

“Jurisdiction,” he said. “Isn’t most of that land down in the New Mexico boot heel public domain land? Government owned and just leased out to the ranchers?”

“Ah,” Leaphorn said. “I see what you’re thinking. I’ll call the county clerk at Deming. She’ll know how much of that ranch is under lease.”

“I don’t see what Jim’s thinking,” said Louisa. “Let me in on this.”

“He’s thinking that if that construction site Bernie photographed on the Tuttle Ranch is on public domain land, even a Bureau of Land Management enforcement officer would have a perfectly valid legal right to go in there and make an inspection. Right?”

“Right,” Chee said. “At least I think so.”

“If you can find one to do it for you,” Leaphorn said.

“You remember Cowboy Dashee, don’t you, Lieutenant. That Hopi friend of mine who was an Apache County deputy. Well, he’s now an officer with the BLM enforcement division.”

Leaphorn got out of his chair.

“I’ll call Deming,” he said. “You see if you can find Officer Dashee. And we’ll want to get Officer Bernadette Manuelito in on this, too.”

“If she’s already in on it, I want to get her out of it,” Chee said. “I’m going to find Cowboy. Get him involved in this business.”

20

Bureau of Land Management Enforcement Officer Cowboy Dashee’s schedule of duties for the next few days included investigating a controversy about overgrazing on the fringe of the Carson National Forest, reports of an unauthorized fence on another grazing lease, and illegal diversion of snowmelt runoff from a stream into a stock pond. All of these involved leased federal land along the New Mexico-Colorado border. As Cowboy was telling Jim Chee, that’s a hell of a long way from the Tuttle Ranch.

“I know,” Chee said. “But think of the glory you get if you break up some sort of smuggling scheme. Like diversion of our crude oil—or maybe natural gas—out of the country without taxes or royalties paid. Or smuggling in nuclear devices where radiation detectors can’t sense them. Or heroin. Or cocaine. Any of that stuff.”

“You think about that. I’ll think about the trouble I’ll have lying out of it if this just turns out to be a Navajo pipe dream. And here I am, marginal jurisdiction at best, no evidence, no clues, just this funny story about piping dope into the country through an abandoned gas line.”

“Tell ’em we had a tip that the Islamic terrorists were going to start sending nuclear bombs through the pipe to blow up the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington,” Chee said. “They’d like that.”

“In a rusty old pipeline?” Dashee said. “I don’t think those bombs would go off. And if they’re sending pot through, I don’t think I’d want to smoke it.” He laughed. “They couldn’t call the coke they shipped that way nose candy.”

“Those pipes don’t rust much,” Chee said. “Not in dry country they don’t. Built to last forever.”

Dashee considered this. They were standing beside his official federal vehicle—a Dodge Ram pickup wearing the BLM insignia—at his little stone house at the outskirts of Walpi on the Hopi Second Mesa. He was staring south as if, Chee thought, Cowboy could see two hundred or so miles south and east into New Mexico’s boot heel desert country to where he hoped Dashee would soon be taking them. Chee gave him some time to think, uneasy, but enjoying the view.

Walpi was on the high edge of the mesa, maybe seven thousand feet above sea level and a couple of thousand feet above the immensity of empty country below them. A truck was rolling down U.S. 264 far below their feet, ant-sized, and the thunderheads of the late-summer monsoon season were beginning to build over Tovar Mesa, and the Hopi Buttes, and the ragged spire of Montezuma’s Chair miles to the south. No lightning yet, and only one of the clouds was dragging a mist of vigara below it. As the cloud towers rose higher later in the morning some of them would make rain. Now they only produced a pattern of cloud shadows dappling the landscape dark blue as they drifted eastward.

Dashee sighed. “You’re sure about this photo of Bernie?” he asked. “It was taken by her boss, and it was handed around to some druggies in Sonora. I mean, right away after it was taken? And the word from there was that they think Bernie is dangerous?” He stared at Chee. “Is that true? Not just speculation?”

Chee nodded.

“You’re a hell of a lot of trouble. My folks always warned me about associating with you Head Breakers.”

“No more head breaking,” Chee said. “Now we Navajos kill folks with our kindness.”

“Head Breakers” was a pejorative Hopi term for Navajos, the traditional enemies of the Hopi since about the sixteenth century. It suggested Dashee’s tribe considered them too unsophisticated to invent bows and arrows.

“You’re telling me Lieutenant Leaphorn believes all this nonsense too,” Dashee said. “The Legendary Lieutenant is endorsing this.”

“He’s the one who figured it out. Found the pipeline on one of his maps.”

“Oh, well,” Dashee said. “We better take my truck then. If we’re going to be busting in on these people, we want to make it look official.”

“I’d say head east over to Gallup, then south through the Zuñi Reservation to Fence Lake, then State Road 36 through Quemado, and then down to Lordsburg. Get a motel there, be up early and ...”

Dashee was glowering at him.

“I see you already have my route all planned. You took ole Cowboy for granted again.” Dashee shifted into his copy of Chee’s voice: “ ‘Just go on over to Second Mesa and get Cowboy. He’s easy. He’ll believe whatever you tell him.’ ”

“Ah, come on Cowboy. You know—”

“Just kidding,” Cowboy said. “Let’s go.”

“I owe you one,” Chee said.

“One?” Cowboy said. “You already owe me about six.”

21

Budge got Winsor’s Falcon 10 jet ready to fly and reassured himself that arrangements had been properly made to clear this journey into Mexico. Then he found a comfortable chair in the transient flights waiting room and sat trying to decide what to do. Progress on that was slow. Memories of Chrissy kept intruding.

The first time he’d met her, almost the first moment in fact, she had made him aware that she was not the usual type of young woman Winsor sent him to collect. He’d been following his standard limo driver pattern, arriving about fifteen minutes early, waiting about ten minutes, and then ringing the bell and announcing that he was early but available at her convenience. But this time Chrissy had spoken first.

“Oh, my,” she had said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m late. I’ll hurry. I’ll be right down.”

The young women Winsor had previously collected had without any exceptions actually been late, had never apologized, had never hurried, and had never shown any interest in whether he minded waiting out in the frosty darkness. They were so far away on the upper side of the class barrier that limo drivers were invisible to them. They showed no more interest in who was driving the car than they would for the spare tire in the trunk. The first few times he’d done this chore, he had ventured a friendly welcome, or one of those “nice evening” remarks. The responses, if any, had been cool and terse, letting him know that it was pushy and intrusive of him to dare to speak to a debutante from whichever expensive and exclusive finishing school had finished them.

Chrissy had been different. She had hurried out of the apartment house entry and reached the car in such a rush that she’d had her hand on the door handle before he could get there to open it for her.

“Golly,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting. My dad taught us that being late is really rude. It tells the other person you think you’re more important than they are.”

“Actually, I was a little early,” Budge had said. And when they were en route he ventured a “nice evening” remark. This time it had touched off a conversation. Chrissy actually introduced herself to him. And so it had gone. During the dozens of times he’d been her driver since that day, they’d become friends in a strange sort of way, answering one another’s biographical questions, exchanging opinions of current Washingtonian uproars and controversies, agreeing that this city was interesting but had more than its share of people way, way too driven by greed and ambition. And gradually it became more and more personal.

“I guess I’m one of those greedy ones, too,” Chrissy had said one day. “I came here to try to get into law school at George Washington University, and I did, so now I’m in it, and making good grades, and I’m surrounded by lawyers. And by law students. And all they seem to think about is either getting money or getting power. And I’m not sure anymore I want to be one.”

“Yeah,” Budge had said. “I used to be a political activist. ‘Power to the People,’ you know. Or, as we used to shout over in Catalonia when I was a kid, ‘A la pared por los ricos’—‘Firing squad for the rich folks.’ Dreamed of being the czar of the universe. I was going to reform everything, start with the soccer rules, work up to the United Nations, and then see what I could do with human nature.”

“But no more?” she asked. “Did you give up on all that?” Her voice sounded sad, but maybe that was just to play along with his joke.

“It was just a dream,” he said. “My family was always on the wrong side, from the fight against Franco and the fascists to running to South America and getting with the losing side down there.”

“Well, now you’re a success. You’re making a lot of money,” she said. “I know you’re not just getting paid to drive the limo. You’re sort of an aide to Mr. Winsor. I’ve heard him talking about you.”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, once I heard him tell Mr. Haret, the man who works with Congress for him, he told him that you were the only one he had he could absolutely count on. And on the telephone once, he was telling someone that when things get out of control he turns it over to Budge, and he knows Budge will fix it.”

“Did he mention why he can depend on me?”

“No,” she said, then hesitated. “Unless he said you owed him a great big favor. Maybe that was it.”

“It was.”

“So what was the favor?”

“Let’s see,” Budge said. “How can I explain it. It gets very complicated. But I guess the bottom line is he keeps me from being deported, and that keeps me out of jail.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “How does he do that?”

He sighed. “Here’s where the complexity comes in. In Guatemala, and other places like that, the Central Intelligence Agency uses people like me, sort of off the record, and when things go wrong they get some of them out, somewhere safe, or maybe even into the United States. Arrange papers for them so they can get lost in the crowd. All quietly, no papers signed, nobody admitting anything. So if I started telling my story—not that it’s very interesting—to the newspapers, or if someone else did and some committee called me to testify about what happened down there, the CIA would swear they never heard of me, and nobody could prove otherwise.”

“Oh,” Chrissy said, sounding thoughtful. “But how does Mr. Winsor keep you from being deported?”

“By keeping his mouth shut,” Budge said.

Chrissy produced one of those “what do you mean by that” looks.

Budge considered how to explain. “Let’s say I was no longer a true and faithful servant and became more trouble than I was worth. Mr. Winsor is now keeping me from being deported very simply. Just not tipping off the Immigration folks, or by refraining from telling one of his lawyer friends in the State Department that the people now running my former country have a warrant out for me under my former name. If he wanted me deported, he’d simply make a telephone call to the right person.”

Silence. Then she said: “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so nosey.”

“No offense taken,” Budge said.

“I can’t believe you did anything very wrong.”

“Well, I guess you could say I haven’t been a great benefactor for society,” Budge said, and laughed.

“Don’t laugh at yourself. Anyway, you’re fine now. Good job, good prospects. I get the impression that Mr. Winsor will be putting you in charge of things. There’d be a lot more money with that.”

“The Beatles taught us about money. Remember? It won’t buy you love.”

Her response to that sounded slightly angry.

“You like to make fun of money,” she said. “I have to tell you I don’t. I bet you’ve never been poor or you wouldn’t talk like that. I bet you’ve never had to watch your mother trying to borrow money, or been embarrassed in school because of the way you dressed. Or your shoes. Or hearing the other girls telling about what they did during the summer, and all you could do was listen. Things like that.”

“No,” Budge said. “Never anything like that.”

“Well, I have,” she said. “You dream of having money. Like dreaming of paradise. Having money like those people I see when I’m with Rawley.”

All the anger was out of her voice now. It sounded dreamy.

“Listening to them talking about the party in Tokyo. Or being on somebody’s yacht going up the Thames. Being introduced to the Queen. The view from somebody’s villa on the cliff in Sicily. The candlesticks. The silver.” She stopped, sighed. “Oh, well. Maybe someday.”

Winsor’s other young women had never talked like that. One sunny Saturday afternoon when he picked up Chrissy he’d been tempted to tell her about the very blond, very chic, very shapely girl he had delivered to the Winsor address two days earlier. Just make a casual remark about it. See how Chrissy would respond. To learn if she understood how she fit into Winsor’s scheme of things and knew what was happening to her. But he didn’t tell her. He told himself he didn’t tell her because it would have been cruel to tip her off if she didn’t know and insulting if she did. But the real reason he was silent was that he was afraid it would destroy this friendship. And he had come to treasure that.

Then the day came, about a month ago, just as he started the limo engine and was pulling away from the curb, when Chrissy clicked on the intercom and said:

“Budge. I think I’m pregnant.”

That surprised him. It shouldn’t have, perhaps. But it did. And he said nothing at all for a bit, and then he said, “Oh?”

“We’re going to get married. Rawley’s given me an engagement ring. It’s spectacular. I’d show it to you, but I can’t wear it yet. This is going to be secret until he can get his divorce finalized and the wedding arrangements made.”

And he’d said: “Well, Chrissy, I wish you a lot of happiness.” And he’d wondered why he hadn’t heard about this impending divorce. From what he’d been hearing, Winsor was still solidly married to a very socially prominent woman named Margo Lodge Winsor. He’d driven her out to Reagan Airport about two months ago on a flight to their vacation home in the Antilles. He’d never been sent out to pick her up, and Winsor had talked a time or two about his plans for joining her there.

He had no idea what, if anything, to say to Chrissy about that, and a damper fell on their friendly chats for a couple of their trips. But then came that terrible day that forced him to make some decisions.

Budge was remembering that day now, just as Winsor arrived and stood looking down at him.

“Up and at ’em,” Winsor said. “Get moving. You’ve got the plane ready, I trust. Everything all set?”

“For where?” he said, not moving.

“For the old smelter in Sonora,” Winsor said. “Come on. You’re wasting my time.”

Budge looked at his boot tips, then up at Winsor. “OK,” he said. “Away we go.”

The flight from El Paso’s Biggs Field to the old smelter is a mere hundred and fifty or so air miles over a stretch of the emptiest segment of Chihuahua to the emptiest part of Sonora. Dry country, relatively flat, and the pilot’s role complicated only by the chance of encountering the helicopters and radio-controlled drone surveillance aircraft the Border Patrol uses to watch the bottom edge of New Mexico and Arizona.

Winsor sat behind him now, silent, reading papers in a folder. Budge identified the bumpy shape of Sierra Alto Azul Mountain, his navigating mark for the smelter, adjusted his controls, and looked at the desert below him. Grim, dry, hungry, unhappy country, not intended for any life beyond javlina, cactus wrens, and reptiles. Too harsh and cruel for humans, and that returned his thoughts to the last time he’d seen Chrissy, the afternoon Winsor had summoned him into that luxurious office, asked him to sit down—a first for that—and offered him a cigar, which was another first.

“Budge,” he’d said, “I’ve been thinking of the things you’ve managed for me. Four years now, isn’t it, and you’ve never let me down.”

“Four years,” Budge said. “I guess that’s about right.”

“I’m going to give you a bonus,” Winsor said. He was smiling.

“A pay raise?”

“No. Better than that. Cash.” He opened a drawer, extracted a manila envelope, dropped it on the desktop.

“Well, thanks. That’s nice of you,” Budge said. The envelope looked rather thick, which meant probably quite a bit of money, which meant what Winsor now wanted him to do was probably either dangerous or something unusually nasty. The fact it was cash certainly meant Winsor was willing to give up the tax deduction he’d get by making it salary. Therefore, Winsor wanted to leave no way it could be tracked back to Winsor.

Winsor picked up the envelope and tossed it to Budge. He let it fall onto his lap.

“What have I done to deserve this?”

“I didn’t make a list,” Winsor said, smiling again. “But the first thing that comes to mind is that time we had the head shyster for Amareal Corporation over here. And I let you know that I really needed to get a look at what was on those papers he was carrying in his briefcase, you remember that, and that night after you hauled the wino bastard back to his hotel, you came back with copies for me.”

Budge nodded, remembering. The man had been drunk, but not as drunk as he wanted to be. When Winsor had sent Budge a scrawled note, telling him what was needed, he had remembered an all-night Kinko’s copy center around the corner from a convenient bar. He’d suggested his passenger might like a nightcap, stopped at a bar, explained limo drivers have to stay with their vehicle, and, when his passenger was on the bar stool, extracted the folder from the case, hurried it into Kinko’s, got the copies done, got the refilled folder back into the briefcase, and talked his tipsy passenger out of the bar, back into the limo, and turned him over to the hotel doorman.

Winsor had been waiting. “How’d you do that?”

Budge explained it.

Winsor laughed. “The son of a bitch never had a clue. Never guessed how we screwed him. And how about that time you got the Bible Belt congressman photographed with the bimbo. How’d you do that?”

Winsor already knew how that had been done. In fact, had outlined the plan himself. But Budge was patient. He explained it. With this much preparation, the next job Winsor intended to hand him must be something special. As he sat through two more examples of his undercover deeds, his sense of dread was growing.

Finally, Winsor got to it.

“One more problem I want you to handle for me,” he said. “This girl I’ve been having you drive here and there, she’s become a serious problem.”

Budge drew in his breath.

“Which one?”

“The feisty little brunette. Sorts out my lawyer paperwork, keeps it filed, thinks she’s going to be a lawyer. She’s copied off a bunch of very sensitive stuff. Letters, so forth. Confidential material. The little bitch wants to blackmail me with it.”

“What’s her name?” Budge knew the name. He wanted to make Winsor say it. He wanted a moment to think. He was sure Winsor was lying. But how could he deal with this?

“Chrissy something-or-other,” Winsor said. “Some sort of Wop last name.”

“Oh, yes,” Budge said. “She talks a lot.”

Winsor nodded. “Too damn much,” he said. “I want her to disappear.”

“Send her away somewhere, you mean? Different assignment at one of your companies?”

Winsor studied Budge a long moment. “You’re playing dumb, aren’t you? Didn’t I mention blackmail? This is dead-serious business.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want a permanent solution to this. I want this problem eliminated. Permanently, absolutely, and eternally.”

“Kill her?”

“That’s part of it. But there has to be a way we can do it so it won’t cause us any damage. I can help by setting her up for it.”

And with that, Winsor explained what he had in mind.

Now, behind Budge in the little jet, Winsor was fastening his seat belt. They were close enough now to see the smokestacks of the old smelter. Budge eased back on the throttle and began a slow pass over the graded earth landing strip to make certain it looked safe. He noticed a large panel truck parked beside the doors of the only new-looking building on the grounds—a slope-roofed box with metal walls. The only other vehicles visible were a black sports utility vehicle parked next to the strip, with a red convertible looking tiny beside it. But nothing on the strip itself made it look riskier than landing on dirt always is.

It turned out to be a smooth one. Budge rolled the jet up to the cars, shut off the engines, and watched the three men waiting with the vehicles.

Rawley Winsor climbed out of the plane and looked at Budge. “Stay in the plane,” Winsor said. “I’ll either be right back, or I’ll send someone for you.”

Two of the men stood by the door and greeted Winsor with bows and signs of respect. The other one—wearing a Mexican army fatigue uniform and the symbols of a colonel—stood aside, studying the Falcon 10. He grinned at Budge.

“Una Dessault,” he said, his tone full of approval. “Una Falcona Diez?”

“Exactamente,” Budge said, returning the grin. “En Ingles, una Falcon Ten. Quiere usted ver la enterior?”

The colonel’s grin widened. He did, indeed, wish to see the interior. But Winsor cut off the conversation, climbed into the SUV with his greeters, and they drove off to where the truck was parked near the smelter. Budge gave them time to get there, climbed out of the jet, stretched, yawned, made sure all was secured, and followed them at an unhurried walk.

A fourth man was sitting behind the wheel of the truck. He nodded to Budge, said, “Como esta?”

“Bien. Y usted?”

The driver shrugged.

Budge walked through the doorway into the new building.

There wasn’t much in it. Winsor and the two who had greeted him so warmly were clustered at an odd-looking structure mounted atop two pipes jutting from the floor. Each of these supporting legs was equipped with a wheel, which Budge guessed would open and close some sort of pressure valves. If that guess was right, he presumed those valves would control the flow of something—natural gas, air, fluids—that was being forced under pressure into the larger pipe that these two legs supported. Budge estimated the large pipe had an interior diameter of eighteen or twenty inches, and it had its own set of valve wheels. The butt end near Budge was closed with a stainless-steel screw-on cap with a plate on it that read PIG LAUNCHER, and, in smaller print, something that looked like MERICAM SPECIALTY PRODUCTS. From that terminal the pipe angled downward and disappeared out the back wall of the building.

Budge’s guess about the legs—literally “pipe stem legs”—being sources of pumped pressure was quickly confirmed. Air hoses from a new-looking gasoline engine and pressure pump were connected to them. The engine running, the pump was working, and one of Winsor’s greeters, clad in blue coveralls, seemed to be showing Winsor which levers opened which vents to deliver the pressurized air into the pipe.

Budge spent a moment trying to fathom what all this meant, decided he lacked any helpful knowledge, and looked around the room. The uniformed Mexican stood beside a wall, studying him. Behind the Mexican was an orderly stack of sacks, apparently of sturdy white plastic. Two other men, shirtless, wearing sandals and dusty overalls, had one of the sacks open and were spooning white stuff from one of the sacks into a cup. He weighed the cup on a scale sitting on the floor beside them and then poured it carefully into a funnel stuck in a hole in what looked to Budge like a slightly oversized soccer ball—bright yellow and seemingly equipped with a large screw-out cap. A long double row of such balls was lined against the wall. They adjoined a stack of tubes, metallic-looking but perhaps plastic. Each was about three feet long with their ends screwed on like bottle caps. Budge studied the balls and tubes, concluded they were about the size to fit inside the pipe.

For what purpose? It seemed likely to Budge that the white powder in the sack was cocaine, and the purpose was to fit the balls full of it into the pipe and use the air-pressure system to push them to wherever the pipe went. Which must be to that rich and self-indulgent North American dope market. Which must mean the pipe extended under the U.S. border and thus was invisible to the watchful scrutiny of the U.S. Border Patrol with its helicopters and drone aircraft patrols.

If that guess was right, it eliminated some of the uncertainty for Budge. That cocaine, even if it was cut with some sort of diluting powder, would be worth many, many millions. The last he’d read about the drug trade listed high-quality uncut coke at thirty thousand dollars a kilogram in New York. Maybe less now, or maybe more. With Rawley Winsor involved in this project, the stuff here was probably pure.

No wonder this project now had such high priority for Winsor. And no wonder he seemed desperate to keep the War on Drugs alive and well. Legalizing marijuana, or any of the stuff Congress liked to call “controlled substances,” would eliminate the multibillion-dollar profits and quickly reduce the market size. Users would be buying in licensed government stores, with the profits and taxes going into rehabilitation programs. Even worse for the drug barons, the glamour of doing something illegal would be gone for the teenagers, and there’d be no reason left for the drug gangs to hire them to push the stuff in school yards and keep the list of customers multiplying.

Winsor was walking up, frowning.

“I told you to stay with the plane,” he said.

“I did,” Budge said. “Then I had to take a leak, get a little exercise, and I decided to see what was keeping you so long.”

“You stepped into something that you may wish you hadn’t. Sticky stuff,” Winsor said. He glanced at the uniformed Mexican. So did Budge. The Mexican, looking embarrassed, glanced away.

“What’s the difference,” Budge said. He waved across the floor. “This is interesting. What’s in the sacks? Something illegal, I’d bet. And what’s with the pipe gadget there?”

Winsor glared at him. Then he shook his head. “Nothing you want to talk about,” he said. “Not ever.”

“If somebody ever wanted to talk about it with me, all I could say is I’m no expert but it looks to me like Rawley Winsor has something going with the Mexicans to reopen that old smelter, reopen a pipeline to bring in the fuel, and start using the equipment for something or other. Get some engineer or geologist to find out what. Maybe Mr. Winsor’s going to be drilling for oil. Something like that.”

Winsor was grinning. “Budge,” he said. “You should know by now you can’t kid me. If I believed you’re as stupid as you want me to believe you wouldn’t be working for me.”

Budge considered that. “Fair enough,” he said. “But either you trust me all the way, or you don’t trust me at all, and if you don’t, then I quit. But the way it is, I’m working for you. What do you want me to do now?”

“Come on,” Winsor said, walking toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. The colonel serves as sort of an envoy for the Mexicans invested in this business. He and I are going to get some business done. I want you back at the plane. And I want you to be remembering what happens to you if you do decide to quit.”

He stopped at the door, stared at Budge.

“You understand what I’m saying?” Winsor asked.

“I do.”

“We still have most of that bundle of pesos in the plane and we don’t want anyone breaking in. Eat that lunch you brought. Get some sleep. We’re going over the border to the Tuttle Ranch bright and early tomorrow. Landing on another dirt strip. You’ll want to be fresh.”

“OK,” Budge said. “I’ll have to call the FAA folks and make sure they know we have clearance. Do you have any problem with that.”

“None,” Winsor said. He handed Budge a photograph. “Nice-looking girl there. Take a good look at her.”

Budge agreed. She was nice-looking. Great eyes. Nice-shaped face. And, he noticed, nice shape even in that uniform she was wearing.

“Who is she? And why am I supposed to get interested?”

“Well, ...” Winsor said. “Did I mention before we left that you might have to kill a cop? ... Well, this is her. The Mexicans in this business agree she looks like a serious problem. Some sort of an undercover agent planted in the Border Patrol. They said they dealt with one such problem for us. That fellow who ... that fellow who got himself shot in a hunting accident up in northern New Mexico. The colonel says they eliminated that problem for us and now it’s our turn.”

“Another Chrissy?”

“Different motives, but the same idea. And it may not be so simple for you this time. With a federal cop, you’ll damn sure want to make it slick as silk. Maybe you can arrange to get her on the Falcon and dump her off into those mountains down in Mexico.

22

Budge had consumed what was left in his coffee Thermos, used some water from his jug to give his face a wakeup scrub, and was watching the dawn turn high clouds on the western horizon red, and then pink, when the SUV rolled up beside the Falcon 10 and discharged Winsor and the Mexican colonel. Budge climbed out of the plane to meet them.

“Colonel,” Winsor said. “This is Mr. de Baca, my assistant. Budge de Baca. Colonel Diego de Vargas is representing our partner in this venture.”

Budge said, “How do you do,” and the colonel said, “Con mucho gusto.” They eyed each other and shook hands.

“Time to go,” Winsor said. “The colonel and I want to be there to see those deliveries arriving.”

“Ah, sí,” the colonel said, smiling broadly at the thought. “Los puercos muy ricos.”

Winsor was grinning, too. “Yep, very rich pigs indeed,” he said. “And it’s been a hell of a lot of work and worry to get them safely immigrated;”

Budge looked at Winsor. “You riding up front this time or with Colonel de Vargas?”

“The colonel’s a pilot,” Winsor said. “He’d said he’d like to fly the Falcon.”

“Are we going to that game ranch in New Mexico?” Budge asked. “You like the idea of a guy landing a strange airplane the first time he’s flown it, and having to put it down on a short dirt strip?”

Winsor grinned, shook his head. The colonel looked disappointed, and Budge noticed that.

“Why don’t you take the copilot’s seat, Colonel,” Budge said, motioning him toward it. “I’ll show you some of the gadgets the French built into this thing.”

“Oh, good,” the colonel said, smiling happily. “And people call me Diego.”

As a crow flies, or a pipeline runs, the trip from San Pedro de los Corralitos is short indeed, not much more than a hundred miles. As a Dessault Falcon 10 jet flies across the U.S. border from Mexico it’s more complicated. The colonel had explained some of those complications as they buckled in and prepared for takeoff, telling Budge, in Spanish, with a few technical terms mixed in, about where and when the Border Patrol flew its helicopters, where radar stations were and what they covered, and how flying too low involved a risk of encountering the pilotless drones and their cameras, which sent what they were viewing back to television screens in Border Patrol stations.

Budge took the Falcon toward El Paso, low, and far enough south to avoid radar, then gained altitude and crossed the border on a direct route toward Albuquerque until, fifty miles over New Mexico, he turned west as if headed for Tucson, explaining the little jet to Diego as he did.

The flight took time, and Budge needed time. He wanted to get acquainted with this Mexican who, he sensed, might be useful, might be subject to persuasion that killing a Border Patrol cop was not a wise idea. And he had to decide what to do about the cop herself, no matter what. And, finally, he couldn’t get Chrissy off his mind.

She had brought her luggage with her that black day—that last day he’d seen her—excited, nervous, happy as she watched him fitting the bags into the limo’s trunk.

“Did Rawley tell you where we’re going this morning?”

“He didn’t say,” Budge said. “And that’s very unusual. I want you to sit up front with me so we can talk about it.”

“Sure,” Chrissy said. “We’re going out to the airport. To his airplane, and we’re going to fly down to Mazatlan, down to that Mexican resort on the Pacific. And guess what?! Rawley and I are going to get married down there.”

Now, flying east toward El Paso and the morning sun, he remembered every second of that day. He had closed the limo door behind her, walked around the front, got in, started the engine, and rolled down the drive to the street, trying to collect his wits. Even though he’d known this was going to happen, had been trying to form a workable plan for dealing with it, this had left him speechless-enraged, engulfed in hatred for Rawley Winsor. It hadn’t occurred to him Winsor would use a ruse like this marriage idea. The man’s cruelty amazed him.

“Aren’t you excited for me?” Chrissy said. “I’ve never been to Mexico before. I’ve never even seen the Pacific Ocean.”

“Chrissy. What did he tell you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he must have said something about why he wasn’t flying down there with you. How did he explain that? Is he flying down later? Do I go back and get him? He’d told me he wants me ready to fly him down to El Paso, or maybe somewhere in New Mexico, and all on very short notice. What’s the plan here?”

“Budge. What’s wrong? You sound funny?”

He stopped for a red light, signaled a turn. How could he tell her what Winsor planned for her? How could he tell her so she would believe him. She would think he was jealous. Lying. He couldn’t just abduct her with force. If he did, what then. And if he told her, and she didn’t believe him, she’d call Winsor. And Winsor would pretend to believe her, assure her that Budge was just crazy jealous. Then Winsor would get him out of the picture and dispose of Chrissy another way. He’d have to find a way to show her the truth.

“Did Mr. Winsor tell you when he was coming down? Do you have a date for the wedding? Any of that?”

“He had a job he had to finish. Just another day he thought. He said you’d be bringing him down tomorrow.” She paused. “But I guess you already knew that. He must have mentioned it to you. Didn’t he?” Chrissy’s tone had wavered from angry to uncertain.

“Tomorrow? That’s not possible unless he changes his other plans. Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said. But now she didn’t sound sure. She sounded shaken.

“Is someone meeting you when we get to Mazatlan? At the airport. Maybe a hotel limo service? Which hotel?”

“He didn’t tell you that?” She reached into her purse, extracted a card, read from it: “Hotel la Maya, 172 Calle Obregon, Mazatlan.”

She stared at him. “I guess I go down there and check in, and when Rawley arrives tomorrow I’ll ask him when he gets there. But what do I ask him? Ask him why he forgot to tell you about this? You could ask him yourself when you’re flying him on the way down.”

He sighed. Said: “Chrissy—” But he cut it off. Her tone was stiff again. She didn’t want to know. He’d have to show her.

He’d expected to find that Winsor had not bothered to make a reservation at Hotel la Maya, and to use that solid, concrete evidence to add some credibility to what he had to say. Then he would explain that Winsor hadn’t expected her to reach Mazatlan, that Winsor had told him that she was blackmailing him, that she had copied confidential materials from his legal files, that she had evolved an extortion plot, and that he had ordered Budge to dispose of her. He imagined Chrissy hysterical, demanding to know why he was lying to her. He imagined her rushing to a telephone to call Winsor. What could he do to stop her? And what would happen next?

Winsor, however, proved to have been overconfident.

Chrissy sat in the passenger seat behind him on the flight down, silent. No hotel limo was awaiting them. He took the cab with her from the airport to the hotel, told the cabbie to wait, and surrendered her bags at the entry to the greeter.

“I’ll take care of things from here, Budge,” she said. “It was nice of you to worry about me, but go home now.”

“I’ll make sure your reservations are correct,” Budge said, and followed her in.

Of course they weren’t.

The desk clerk’s English was perfect. He looked puzzled. “We seem to have a mistake,” he said. “Some confusion, I think. Was there a second reservation? A Mr. Rawley Winsor, of Washington, D.C., often keeps a suite here and I believe he is here now.” He glanced down at his record again. “No, Mrs. Winsor is in occupation. She arrived last week. According to this, she will stay here until next Tuesday, I believe.”

“He reached for the telephone. “I will call Mrs. Winsor. Was she expecting you to join her?”

Budge glanced at Chrissy standing motionless and speechless beside him. She looked faint. He took her arm.

“No,” he said. “We’ve made a mistake.”

He recovered her luggage, ushered her out to the cab, and told the driver to take them to the airport. En route, he told her everything, how Winsor had ordered him to kill her and dispose of the body. She listened, wordless.

“That’s all of it,” he said, and noticed she was shaking. “Now, ask me any questions, and if you don’t have any, just tell me what you want to do.”

“I wonder why you are telling me all this.”

“Because it’s true, Chrissy,” he said. “And because no one should be treated like this. Certainly nobody like you. Do you believe me.”

“I don’t know. Some of it, I guess. Maybe a lot of it.”

He thought a moment. “Remember that day you showed me that ring? His grandmother’s ring he told you, with the huge diamond. Do you have it with you?”

“No,” she said.

“Where is it?”

“Do you want it?”

“No, Chrissy. I don’t want it. But why don’t you have your engagement ring with you? Why aren’t you wearing it.”

“He asked for it back. So he could have the jeweler clean it and fit it to my finger size.”

“When?”

“Tuesday afternoon.”

“It was Wednesday morning he told me to get rid of you. To dispose of you. Permanently.”

“Why are you—” She cut off the question, shuddered, and said, “Oh,” in something like a whisper.

He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him. “In a little while we’ll be at the airport. I don’t want to take you back to your apartment because if you go there, he will hear about it. He’ll know I didn’t follow my orders. He’ll still think you’re dangerous to him. I’m not sure you’d be safe there. But what do you want to do?”

“I don’t care,” Chrissy said, still in a whisper.

“If you still have some doubts about me, do you want to find a room here, and wait, and see if he comes to the Hotel la Maya?”

“No. No. No. Not that.”

“You could come home with me. Stay at my place. And call the Maya tomorrow to find out if he comes.”

“No.”

“Not stay at my place?”

“Not call. I would never call about that. But I think I would stay down here for a little while. I feel tired. And sort of sick. Could we find another hotel where I could stay a day or two?”

They did, and checked her in, and he took the cab back to the airport. Budge was remembering that return flight now. His relief, the feeling of the tension draining out him, a sort of jubilation. But the happy thought was interrupted. The colonel’s voice intruded in Spanish:

“You handled that very nicely,” Diego said.

“What?”

“The turbulence back there. Neatly done. Where did you learn to fly? From your Spanish, I thought perhaps it would have been in Cuba.”

“Some of it was,” Budge said. “And you, Diego. Where did you learn the trade?”

“Some in Mexico. And later on, some in El Salvador.” He chuckled. “For that very generous Central Intelligence Agency, courtesy of the United States taxpayers. And some in Panama, when their presidente was the drug boss down there.” Diego laughed. “He was also on the CIA payroll at the time, but they were paying him a lot more than I got. Your boss told me we have that CIA experience in common.”

“Well, I flew some for the CIA.”

“Yes,” Diego de Vargas said. “Not very pleasant to work for. Nor reliable.” He chuckled. “I can say the same thing for my own present patron. Muy rico. And very, very willing to kill somebody if they seem inconvenient. Including me, I have no doubt.”

“He and my patron seem perfectly matched in this business,” Budge said. “Why did he have that man killed up in northern New Mexico? That seems a long way from this.”

Diego turned his head, glanced back at Winsor in the seat behind him, then looked at Budge.

“You’re dead certain he doesn’t understand Spanish?”

“His second language is bad French,” Budge said. “He once heard me talking to one of his Mexican cleaning ladies and said something about not wanting any of his friends to hear that low-down language in his house.”

“Low-down? He meant undignified?”

“Trashy,” Budge said. “Low class. He won’t understand you. So tell me why that man was killed way up there.”

“I think it was a mistake. He was asking a lot of questions about pipelines. And about products being shipped through the wrong ones. The chief thought he should be erased and they decided the Mexican end of their project should handle it.”

“How about your uniform?”

“I’m a former colonel. But now it’s more or less honorary. The Reform Party won the election, and the good old PIRG is out, and President Fox is in. The PIRG people are getting fired, especially in the police and the military. These days I get paid through some big shot in Banco de Mexico, and I think he takes his orders from somebody in the Colombian cartel, and I don’t think that’s going to last very long. I hear the Fox people are after him, too.”

Diego sighed, shook his head. “My boss, he’s a miserable bastard. But I hear even worse stuff about your chief.”

“Believe it.”

“I heard he is so connected he could get you deported by just saying the word,” Diego said. “I heard they’d like to lock you up in Guatemala. If your patron speaks to the right people they haul you off to jail.” Diego shook his head. “I’ve seen those Guatemala lockups, man. You want to avoid that experience.”

Budge didn’t respond. He adjusted something on the instrument panel.

“You never know about gossip,” Diego said. “They say bad things about me, too.” He shrugged. “Some of them are true. How about you?”

“Well, I know my patron could give me some serious trouble if he wanted to do it.”

“Maybe he’s doing that right now,” Diego said. “Getting us in serious trouble, I mean. He says that woman who has been snooping around here is probably in the Border Patrol just to find out what we’re doing. I mean the one in the picture they’ve been handing around. I think the plan is to have her killed.”

Budge made another slight flight instrument adjustment, thought a moment, made a decision.

“Diego, I’m going to get very serious now. And tell you some things. The first is, I think you’re right. The second is, you and I are going to be lucky if we get out of this situation like free men, alive and well. And the third is, if that woman gets killed by anybody, we’re going to be the ones hanged for it. Just us. Not anybody who told us to do it.”

Diego sat silent for a long moment. And when he spoke his voice was very low. “What are you telling me?”

“That man sitting behind us, he thinks he has had this all arranged to perfection. His cocaine comes flowing through the pipe from Mexico. No more Border Patrol problems. It gets unloaded very simply, goes from his ranch here right into Phoenix, and then into the big-city markets, pure profits. A flawless plan. Absolutely no way anything could possibly go wrong. But you and I, we have already seen it hasn’t been flawless.”

“You mean the man killed up north. That’s true. We hear now that was a mistake. I don’t like mistakes.”

“Especially, I don’t like mistakes that might get me in prison. Or get me killed.”

Diego stared straight ahead, thinking. Then he glanced at Budge, his expression wry.

“You’ve been in the U.S. of A. a long time. The patron”—he nodded toward Winsor behind him—“he seems to think you can kill this woman cop and get away with it. What do you think about that.”

“I don’t know what he thinks. But I think that if we kill her, he has it figured out so he’ll get away with it. But if he has it figured right, she is a federal cop. The federals will catch us, wherever we go. Not give up until they do. And then they either kill us or we die in a federal prison somewhere. And, of course, that’s exactly the way he hopes it will work out. He wouldn’t want us around anymore.”

Diego sighed. “Yes,” he said. “It would be true also among those where I’ve always worked.”

“The way it happens in Washington, my patron is rich and powerful, and his roomful of lawyers and very important friends let the police know that our rich and powerful boss is innocent. He just came out here to shoot an African antelope for his trophy room. And he had me put his special trophy hunting rifle back there in the storage place to show them evidence that that’s the truth. And then he says he was betrayed by two low-class scoundrels who already are wanted by the police.”

“Yes,” he said. “That sounds like it would be in Mexico too.”

“I think there is a way out of this for us,” Budge said.

“Tell me,” Diego said.

Winsor’s voice intruded:

“Hey, Budge,” Winsor said. “There’s the ranch up there ahead. You guys knock off that Mex gabbing and pay attention to business. You think that strip looks safe enough?”

“I’ll lose some altitude and circle,” Budge said. “Why take chances.” He flew over the Tuttle Ranch headquarters, the big tile-roofed ranch house, and the row of mobile homes where the hired hands lived, the barns, the stables, the horse pasture, the stock tank with its connected windmill. He studied the landing strip. It was a straight and narrow black band pointing into the prevailing winds. It looked blacker than he remembered, apparently recently stabilized by a fresh coating of oil. The windsock on the pole atop the little hanger reported a mild westerly breeze was blowing. He was low enough to see the nose of the ranch’s little Piper backed into the hanger and to recognize that the dark blue sports utility vehicle parked beside it was a Land Rover.

He turned to look at Winsor. “See anything there you don’t want to see?”

“No. How about you?”

“Looked good,” Budge said, and banked again, completing the circle, leveling off toward the southwest into the landing approach position.

“When we get on the ground, you can leave most of that luggage stowed away. We won’t be here more than a few hours. But I want you to get out that pet rifle of mine, and the gear that goes with it. We’ll take that along when we go out to the pig trap.”

“Pig trap?”

“Pipeliner lingo,” Winsor said. “The pig’s what they call the thing they push down through the pipeline to clean it out, or find leaks, so forth. That gadget you saw on the pipeline at the old smelter, that’s where they put the pig into the pipeline. It’s the pig launcher. When they get the pig where it’s going, they divert it out of the line into a pig trap.”

“Now you’re going to tell me why you’re taking your rifle to the pig trap,” Budge said.

“Going to shoot me a scimitar-horned oryx for my trophy room,” Winsor said. “And maybe I’ll also help you with that job I assigned to you.”

“Killing the cop?” Budge asked. “That woman in the picture? How are we going to find her?”

Winsor laughed. “That’s all arranged,” he said. “Her duty this morning is to drive out to the back gate of the Tuttle Ranch and go take another look at that construction site where she took all those photographs.”

“Oh,” Budge said. He felt sick. Stunned. He’d underestimated Winsor again. He’d thought there was no practical way he’d be expected to find that woman, and he’d dreamed up the scenario he’d been giving to Diego in the hope of forming some sort of alliance if he needed one. He’d thought Winsor was simply exercising his macho bravado. That this problem would go away. But Winsor had found a way to make the nightmare become real.

“When you’re working for me, Budge, you don’t leave things to chance. You arrange things. Like I had them put a big old tarp in the back of the Land Rover. Big enough to keep a trophy-sized oryx head from bleeding all over the upholstery. Plenty big to hold that little cop until we fly her back over the Mexican mountains and drop her off.”

23

Sergeant Jim Chee had no trouble awakening before dawn in the motel at Lordsburg. He had hardly slept. He couldn’t guide his self-conscious into any of those calm, relaxing reveries that bring on sleep. Instead he listened to Cowboy Dashee, comfortable in the adjoining bed, mixing his snoring with an occasional unfinished, undecipherable sleep-talker statement. Some of it was in English, but since he never finished a sentence, or even a phrase, that was as incomprehensible to Chee as when his muttering was in Hopi.

Before five a.m. they were dressed, checked out, and down at a truck stop beside Interstate 10. Cowboy ordered pancakes, sausage, and coffee. So did Chee. But he didn’t feel like eating. Cowboy did, and between bites, studied Chee.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked. “Worried, or is it love sick?”

“Worried,” Chee said. “How am I going to get Bernie to quit this damned Border Patrol job and come on home?”

“That’s easy,” Cowboy said.

“Like hell,” Chee said. “You just don’t understand how stubborn she is.”

“That’s not my problem, ole buddy. What I don’t understand is how you can stay so stupid so long.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full of pancake,” Chee said.

“If you want her to come home, you just say, ‘Bernie, my sweet, I love you dearly. Come home and marry me and we will live happily ever after.’ ”

“Yeah,” Chee said.

“Maybe you’d also have to tell her you’d get rid of that junky old trailer home of yours down by the river, and live in a regular house. Decent insulation, running water, regular beds instead of bunks, all that.”

“Come on, Cowboy. Be serious. I ask Bernie to marry me. She says, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Then what do I say?”

“You tell her, ‘Because I love you, and you love me, and when that happens, people get married.’ ”

“Dream on,” Chee said, and followed that with a dismissive snort and a brooding silence. Then: “You think so?”

“What?”

“That she likes me?”

“Damn it, Jim, she loves you.”

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t bet she even likes me.”

“Find out,” Cowboy said. “Ask her.”

Chee sighed. Shook his head.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Cowardice, I guess,” Chee said.

“Afraid she’ll hurt your feelings?”

“You know my record,” Chee said.

“You mean Janet Pete?” Cowboy said. “The way I read that affair, I figured you dumped her instead of vice versa.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Chee said. “But start with Mary Landon. Remember her. Beautiful blue-eyed blonde teacher at Crownpoint Middle School, and I wanted to marry her, and she liked the idea but she let me know that what she wanted was somebody to take back to her family’s big dairy farm in Wisconsin, and I’d be the male she rescued from the savages.”

“I didn’t know her,” Cowboy said. “I think that was before I disobeyed my family and friends and started associating with you Navajos.”

“You’d have loved her,” Chee said. “I sure thought I did, and it really hurt when I finally understood the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

“How about Janet? I still see her in federal court now and then when her Washington office sends her out on a case. A real classy lady.”

“Different version of the same story,” Chee said. “I was all set to propose to Janet. In fact, I sort of thought I had. Borrowed a videotape a fellow had made of his daughter’s traditional marriage, all that. But it turned out Janet was the perfect model of what the sociologists call assimilation. Dad a city Navajo. Mother a super-sophisticated, high-society Washingtonian socialite. Janet was all set to take me back as her trophy sheep camp Navajo. She had a socially acceptable job picked out for me. The whole package. She didn’t want Jim Chee. She wanted what she thought she could turn him into.”

Through this discourse, Cowboy was finishing his sausage and looking thoughtful. “Twice burned, you’re thinking. So triple cautious. But the Bernie I know, and the one you tell me about, is a bona fide Navajo. She’s not going to want to drag you off somewhere to try to civilize you.”

“I know,” Chee said. “I’ve just got a feeling that if I make a move on her, she’ll just tell me she’s not interested.”

Cowboy stared at him. Shook his head. “Well, I guess there’s lots of reasons she’d kiss you off. Total lack of romantic instincts, for example. Or maybe she’s spotted an abnormal level of stupidity and decided it’s incurable. I’m beginning to see that problem myself.”

With that Cowboy signaled for the waitress, reminded Chee the expenses on this trip were his responsibility, and handed him the breakfast bill.

“Well, anyway, let’s get on down to the Tuttle Ranch and take a look at that sinister construction project of theirs. Come on, Cowboy,” he said. “Eat. Choke it down, or wash it down with your coffee, or bring it along. Let’s go.”

Dashee grumbled but they went, and thus by the time the sun was rising over the Cedar Mountain range to the east, and turning the flat little cloud cap over Hat Top Mountain a glorious pink, they were exiting County Road 146, slowing a little for the sleeping village of Hachita, and creating clouds of dust along the gravel of County Road 81 down the great emptiness of the Hachita Valley.

“You sure you know where we’re going?” Cowboy asked.

“Yes,” Chee said, and he did. But he wasn’t exactly sure how to get there. And Dashee sensed that.

“That map you have there on your lap. Aren’t those the Big Hatchet Mountains over there to our left?”

“Um, yee-aaow, it looks like they ought to be,” Chee said, very slowly and reluctantly.

“Then from what you told me about where that Tuttle Ranch south gate is located, we seem to have missed a turn somewhere. Seems we might be going in the wrong direction.”

“Looks like it.”

“Then let’s stop the next place we get to and ask directions,” Dashee suggested.

“The next place we get to is Antelope Wells. That’s the port of entry on the Mexican border, and it’s about fifty miles south of here, and the last twenty or so, according to this map, are marked unimproved.”

Dashee pulled his BLM truck off the road, parked it among the scattered creosote bushes, and got out.

“Here’s my plan,” he said. “We turn around and head back toward where we came from. You do the driving and I’ll do the navigating. Give me your map. It is well known among us Hopis, and all other tribes, that Navajos aren’t to be relied upon when it comes to understanding maps.”

And so it happened, that it was late morning when Chee finally yelled, “Yes, this is it. I remember driving right past that bunch of mesquite over there. And that soaptree yucca. Take that little right turn there, and up that set of tracks, and up that hill, and from there we can see the Tuttle Ranch south gate.”

“Well, good,” Dashee said. “Getting there on Navajo Time, we other Indians say, means late. But better late than never.”

At the top of the hill they could indeed see the gate, and it was open.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have needed you,” Chee said. “I could have driven right in.”

“No, you’d still be lost. And you’d be asked for your jurisdiction credentials right away, and tossed right out again.”

“Anyway, through the gate and over two hills and then we’re there,” Chee said. “I measured it on my odometer. A fraction less than four miles to go.”

It proved to be 3.7 miles from the gate to the hilltop from which they could see the construction site. And the new building. A dark green Border Patrol pickup was parked behind it.

“Chee said: “Son of a bitch!”

Dashee gave Chee a wry look.

“Is that what she drives?” he asked. “You think Bernie’s there?”

“I hope not,” Chee said. She must be crazy. Why in God’s name would she come out here again. She knows the dopers have her picture. She knows they think she’s dangerous.”

“Let’s talk about that later,” Dashee said. “Now let’s get right on down there. Let’s hope this case of being late is going to be one of those better-than-never times.”

Dashee pulled the car back onto the track in a flurry of dirt-throwing wheel spinning and headed it down the hill.

24

That morning, Customs Patrol Officer Bernadette Manuelito had pulled her Border Patrol vehicle onto the dusty shoulder of Playas Road, stepped out, taken her jish out of her purse, extracted a little prescription bottle from it, and shook a pinch of corn pollen onto her left palm. She stood a moment, staring eastward toward the Big Hatchet Mountains. A streak of cloud hanging atop the mountain ridge was turned a brilliant yellow by the rising sun, then orange that faded into red. CPO Manuelito sang the chant greeting the sun. She blessed the dawning new day with a sprinkle of pollen and climbed back into the car.

Her prayer this morning, she was thinking, was a bit more fervent than usual. She had set her alarm for five a.m. and left her home in Rodeo very quietly, not wanting to awaken Eleanda, whose regular breathing she could hear in the adjoining bedroom. Ed Henry’s call had come last night just after she’d watched the weather report on the evening news and hit the sack.

The TV weatherman had sent along some hope that maybe tomorrow would be a rainout, and if the Border Patrol actually had such holidays she would certainly enjoy one. Yesterday had been long, tiring, and unproductive, spent with two other CPOs, both male and both experienced, following the tracks of ten or eleven people, presumed to be illegals, northward through the San Bernadino Valley in extreme southeastern Arizona into the edge of the Chiricahuc Mountains.

The afternoon had been hot, with a gusty wind blowing dust up her pant legs and stinging her face. The other officers, a Tohono O’odham local and a White Mountain Apache, had assumed the role of her teachers. They had laughed off her experience as a Navajo police officer and cast her as a green recruit who was probably teachable, but incurably a “girl.” They had explained why the group they were tracking were not merely illegals slipping into the U.S. in search of minimum-wage jobs but were mules carrying illegal products. They drew her attention to the short steps being taken—evidence of carrying heavy loads—and places where these loads were put down presumably when the mules needed rest, and how some of the loads had been the sort of sacks in which marijuana is often carried. Early on Bernie had pointed to the dents in the dirt that might have been caused by luggage, or a frying pan, or some equally logical cooking utensil, but after this had produced only amused looks, she had kept her opinions to herself.

It had been almost sundown before the tracks disappeared beyond hope of retrieval, erased by the increasing wind. The two males, in charge due to seniority—and their own ideas about gender—had decided that they could think of no reason dope importers would be climbing into these empty and roadless mountains. They decided everyone should go home for the evening and tomorrow they would all continue her education by tracking down four pack horses reported to have been seen in Guadalupe Canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains.

Thus Bernie had reached Rodeo exhausted, dusty, dehydrated, and disgruntled. Eleanda had saved some yogurt and a fruit salad for her, and they’d watched the evening news for a while. Bernie had taken her shower, climbed into pajamas and into bed. There she tried not to think of tomorrow’s chore, tried to remember why she had thought joining the Border Control Shadow Wolves unit was such a good idea, and finally comforted herself with a couple of her happier memories of Sergeant Jim Chee. She was just getting sleepy, and was hoping that the weatherman knew what he was talking about, that the already late monsoons might be starting tomorrow, and if it did rain, she wouldn’t be hunting pack horses in a mountain canyon.

That’s when the telephone rang.

“It’s for you,” Eleanda shouted. “The boss.”

Ed Henry, as always, was short and to the point. “Got a schedule change for you tomorrow,” he said. “Cancel that tracking job over in the Guadalupes. They’re predicting rain anyway. I want you to go out to that construction site on the Tuttle Ranch. Get there bright and early. Look around. See what’s happening and let me know.”

“You mean back to that gate? Do you think they’ll let me in this time?”

“They know now it was just a mistake when you followed that truck in there. You didn’t do no harm.”

Bernie spent a moment dealing with her surprise. Then she said a doubtful sounding “OK,” and asked Henry what he was expecting to find. “Am I supposed to be looking for something specific?”

“Bernie,” he said, “I sort of owe you an apology. I’ve been thinking about everything you told me, and it seemed to me that maybe something not quite right might be going on out there. So just go out and take another look around, and give me a call and let me know what you think.”

“Fine.”

“And use that cell phone number I gave you. I got some running around to do tomorrow so I won’t be in the office. In fact, I’ll be coming out to the Tuttle place myself later in the day. I’ll sort of serve as your backup.” With that, Henry chuckled.

Now, back on the road again with the morning sunlight flooding the valley and clouds beginning to build up over mountains in every direction, Bernie was remembering that chuckle instead of enjoying the vast expanse of beauty. Would it finally rain? That was no longer among the questions on her mind. What kind of thinking had Ed Henry been doing to cause him to reconsider the Tuttle Ranch? What did he think she might find? Why did Henry think the gate would be unlocked this time? That must be because he’d arranged for someone to let her in. Or to let him in. He’d said he was coining out himself a little later. That thought reminded her of the picture Henry had taken of her, and what Delos Vasquez had told her about seeing a copy of it held by one of the drug gangs in Mexico.

By the time she reached the hilltop from which she had first looked down upon the gate, she was feeling thoroughly uneasy about this assignment. She unsnapped the strap on her holster, took out her Border Patrol pistol, and confirmed that the magazine was filled with the official number of nine-millimeter rounds of ammunition. She had scored expert at the firing range test she’d taken after applying for this job, just as she’d scored expert on the range with the similar pistol used by the Navajo Tribal Police. But she’d been shooting at targets. She’d never shot at anything alive. Certainly not at a fellow human. Could she if she had to? Maybe, she thought. Probably she could do it. She checked the safety, put the pistol back in the holster, took her binoculars out of their case, and got out of the truck.

The gate was not only unlocked, it was standing open. No vehicles anywhere around it, none in sight in any direction. No humans either, no horses, and no oryx. She focused again on the gate. Wide open. Beckoning her. She found herself wishing to see Mr. O’day driving up, wishing he would tell her she absolutely could not come in without a personal invitation from the owner and he didn’t give a damn what her supervisor had told her. She gave Mr. O’day a few seconds to arrive at the gate. He didn’t. She climbed back into her vehicle, rolled it down the hill through the gate, and drove slowly up the hill beyond it, and over it to the top of the next hill. There she stopped again and looked at the construction site below. No sign of motion. She got out the binoculars, stood beside the car, and studied the place.

No vehicles there, either. The construction crew was gone but it was obvious it hadn’t been idle. The major change was the addition of a rectangular building, apparently a modified form of a mobile home. The small windmill that had been laying on the ground in sections on her first visit was now mounted atop the building, its blades turning slowly in the mild breeze. She scanned the surroundings carefully, changing the binocular’s focus as the circle widened. Off to her left she caught motion. Focused again. Four oryx, running down the slope into the playa, where, from what she’d been told, they found water. All the animals seemed to be either immatures or females. At least none was carrying that great curved horn, the declaration of male oryx machismo, like the one she’d photographed. No horn. No other sign of life. She drove down the trail to the construction site.

No apparent reason to worry. No apparent reason for Ed Henry to send her here. Despite that, she pulled her vehicle up beside the new building where it was partially concealed. When she got out to explore, she made sure her pistol was safely in its holster.

The front door that had been installed on the building was of heavy hardwood and secured by a substantial lock. Except for that, there wasn’t much remarkable about the building. It had been placed on a concrete foundation and the front and side windows covered with plywood panels. Bernie walked around behind it, looking for a back door. It had been boarded over too, but high windows on both sides of the door were still glassed. Bernie considered this, decided the need for security had been partly offset by the need to allow some fresh air and daylight to reach the interior. The slope of the land made the windows high enough to prove some safety from intruders.

She drove through the weeds and gravel to the back door and then parked with the front bumper as close as she could get it to the wall under a window. She climbed on the hood, clutched the window ledge, pulled herself up, and looked in. By the time her eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside her hands were aching from the strain, but she could see the building was a single room, mostly unfurnished. She lowered herself, rubbed her hands and wrists, kept her eyes tightly closed, and hoisted herself again.

The center of the room was occupied by an odd-looking structure made of pipes, some very large, others smaller. The purpose of this contraption seemed to Bernie to be support of a central pipe, which curved upward from the floor and terminated at a large diameter cap—reminding her of the screw-on cap of a huge peanut butter jar. This biggest pipe, and several smaller ones, were equipped with valves, perhaps to open or close them, and she could see faces of several dials. For what? She was considering that and thinking of the pain in her fingers and wrists when she heard a voice behind her.

A man’s voice. It said: “Young woman. What are you looking for?” And this was followed by a laugh.

Bernie, still clinging to the windowsill, looked over her shoulder. She saw a stocky man wearing a tan hat, sunglasses, an expensive-looking hunting jacket, and boots standing behind her car, looking up at her. He held a rifle with telescopic sight cradled on his arm and sort of pointing in her direction. Behind him and to the side stood two other men. One, still wearing a neatly trimmed mustache and the military fatigues in which she had first seen him, was the Mexican driver of the Seamless Weld truck. The other was bigger, taller, short-cut reddish hair, and a dark blue shirt, and was staring at her. And when their eyes met he smiled. It seemed somehow sympathetic.

The stocky man wearing the sunglasses gestured at her with the rifle barrel.

“Get on down from there now,” Sunglasses said. “If you’re looking for something, come on in the shed with us and we’ll show it to you.”

“I’m coming,” Bernie said. “Who are you? Are you Mr. Tuttle?” She lowered herself to the truck hood, jumped off in the direction away from the rifle, unsnapped her holster, saw the rifle barrel was now pointed exactly at her, and let her hand fall to her side.

“Good thinking,” the man said. “Diego,” he shouted, “get over here and help this young lady with her pistol.”

Bernie was certain now. He was the man with the Seamless Weld truck she had followed here. He walked around the car, lifted the pistol out of her holster, said, “Sorry, madam,” examined the pistol, and stuck it in his hip pocket.

“This is Mr. Diego de Vargas,” Sunglasses said, “and this man over here is Budge C. de Baca.” He laughed. “That ‘C. de Baca’ means ‘Head of a Cow.’ ” And I am the owner of Jacob Tuttle, which makes me owner of this ranch, which puts you in distinguished company. But we want to know what you are doing here, trespassing on my property. So we’ll all go inside and talk about it. Bring her along, Budge.”

“You’re the ranch owner?” Bernie asked. “I’d been hoping to meet you. I wanted to ask you about Mexican trucks coming in here.”

“He’s Rawley Winsor,” Budge said, and motioned her forward. At the front of the structure, Winsor took off his sunglasses, unlocked the door, and gestured for them to follow him inside. Budge leaned against Bernie, whispered something. Bernie said, “What?”

“Do you understand Spanish?”

“Yes,” she said. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Wasn’t what she’d been dreading. Or maybe it was.

“Tell him you’re with the DEA,” Budge whispered. “Tell him you can be bought.”

Bernie nodded.

Winsor dusted off a wooden chair, sat himself on it.

“Set her down on the bench by the table,” Winsor said. “We need to ask her some questions.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “And we cut this awful short. Diego, get that trap set. It’s just about time for our precious pigs to begin arriving.”

De Vargas was standing beside the pipe contraption in the middle of the room. He spun a valve, causing a hissing sound, spun another. The sound this time was more like a sigh. He seized the handles on the round cap that closed the end of the master pipe, strained, turned it, and then spun it off. Bernie smelled a rush of stale air, and then de Vargas lifted what might have been a soccer ball from the pipe. It was a dirty yellow with two thick black rubber strips around it. Gaskets, perhaps, to make it fit tightly inside the pipe. Diego put the ball on the table behind Bernie, reclosed the pipe valve, and wiped his hands on the legs of his pants.

Winsor made an impatient gesture with his hands, said: “Get the cap off.”

Diego unscrewed a round cap, dropped it on the table, reached into the hole, began extracting transparent plastic sacks. He lined them on the tabletop, reached back, and brought out more. “I see they sacked it,” he said.

“That’d be enough for now,” Winsor said, and looked at Bernie.

“You’re Officer Bernadette Manuelito, now of the Customs Service Border Patrol. Used to be Navajo Tribal Police. But we don’t know why you made the switch. Explain that.”

“I don’t know myself,” Bernie said.

Winsor decided to let that drop. He pointed to the sacks beside her.

“Do you know what that is?”

Bernie cleared her throat, glanced at Budge. He was staring at her, frowning, looking tense.

“If I had to guess I’d say those little packages contain what we like to call one of the ‘uncontrollable substances.’ And since it’s a white powder, I’d guess it’s cocaine. If it’s good refined nose candy, uncut by cake sugar and the other stuff you mix it with, it should bring you something like twenty-five thousand dollars a kilo.”

Winsor showed no reaction to that.

“So what are your intentions?” he asked.

“Are you asking what is my duty, or what do I intend to do? My duty is to get my pistol back from that man over there and put you all under arrest for possession of an illegal substance. However, my intention is to try to calculate how many kilos you have there, and how many more of those yellow balls you have stored in that crazy-looking pipe, and multiply all those kilos by twenty-five thousand dollars, and then multiply that by ten percent. Then I will tell you that’s what my fee would be, just ten percent, for reporting to my superior that there was nothing in this shack but old furniture and rusty junk pipeline stuff.”

Winsor waved Diego out of the folding chair in which he had been sitting, moved it over in front of where Bernie sat on the table, and seated himself.

“Who is your superior? Name and position.”

Bernie managed a smile. “If you’re thinking of my Customs Patrol Officer uniform, thinking of the Border Patrol, then the name is Ed Henry, and he is supervisor of the unit I was loaned to, to do some checking into things—such as this. But if you’re thinking of my actual boss, my superior in the Drug Enforcement Agency, I don’t intend to tell you until we have some sort of arrangement.”

Winsor digested this a moment. Said: “Why not?”

She shook her head. “Hate to say this but I’m not sure either one of us could trust him. Henry either, for that matter.”

Winsor took a silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket, opened it, and leaned forward to offer one to Bernie, who shook her head.

He held out the case to Budge, then withdrew it, laughing. “Budge doesn’t smoke, either, but I keep trying to tempt him,” Winsor said. “He wants to live forever.” He took one himself, snapped on the lighter built into the case, inhaled deeply, and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“What do you think of what this young lady says, Budge? Does it make sense to you?”

Budge had been watching Diego, who had been watching Winsor, expecting to be offered a cigarette. When he wasn’t, his expression hardened.

“Sounds sensible,” Budge said.

“Why?”

“Because ninety percent is better than a hundred, if you have to go to prison to keep the hundred.”

Winsor stared at him. “I think you’re forgetting that assignment I gave you.”

The pig trap where Diego was standing began whistling. “What’s that?” Budge said, and got up from his chair.

“It’s the pig signal on top of the pipe there,” Diego said. “The pressure sets it off. It tells you another pig has arrived in the trap.”

“I’ve got to see how that works,” Budge said. He pressed in against Diego, who was turning the handle on a pipe marked “slowdown valve.” The whistling died away. Budge slipped the pistol from Diego’s pocket, felt Diego’s body stiffen, said, “Bueno, bueno, calm yourself,” into Diego’s ear. “Remember, we go together.”

He slid the pistol under his belt, hidden by his jacket flap.

“What are you doing?” Winsor asked.

“I guess we have another of our sinister pigs arriving,” Diego said.

“Budge turned to Winsor. “You want it taken out?”

“They’ll be coming along regularly now,” Winsor said. “Let Diego do it. I want to know if you’re ready to handle your job.”

“Just about,” Budge said.

“I don’t like the way your mind’s started working. All this hesitation. Is it because this is such a good-looking young lady? Maybe your macho brainlobe is heating up. If we let this woman out of here, even if she’s totally bought and paid for, how the hell can you ever rest easy again.”

After saying that, Winsor shifted in the chair. The rifle resting on his lap shifted with him, its barrel turned now toward where Budge stood, leaning against the table. “We turn her loose, then she’s just one more damned thing out of control. We buy her, how long does she stay bought?”

Bernie, who had been watching Budge as he walked back from the pig trap, had shifted her attention to Winsor. She sat now, pale and silent, with her eyes half closed.

“She’s a federal officer,” Budge said. “From what she told you, she must have been assigned to us, more or less. If we kill her, it’s going to be a top-priority case for the FBI and the DEA and everybody else. They’ll never stop coming after us until they get us.”

Winsor chuckled, shook his head. “Budge, there’s a lot of things you just don’t understand. The cops at the bottom do what the people on top tell them to do. You heard about that man shot up on the Navajo Reservation. Did I tell you that he became officially the unfortunate victim of a hunting accident.” Winsor was grinning. “I guess it was a hunting accident, in a way. The Mexicans shot him because they thought he was hunting this pipeline project of ours. Now our friends in Washington tell us he was actually trying to find out who’s been stealing all that Indian oil royalty money.”

“If you’re thinking of making Miss Manuelito a hunting accident it won’t work. She doesn’t look much like an oryx.”

Winsor’s face was flushed. “Knock it off, Budge,” he said. “We’re thinking of doing it just like you did Chrissy. Except you don’t have the chloroform this time, and you’ll drop her body out over the mountains instead of the ocean.”

Budge stared at Winsor, saying nothing, thinking of Chrissy, aware that Winsor was studying him, knowing what he would have to do, knowing it was absolutely inevitable.

“Well,” Winsor said, “let’s get with it. He turned toward Diego. “Diego. Bring me Officer Manuelito’s pistol.”

Diego looked rattled. “Ah, well, I don’t have it no more.”

“Where the hell is it then,” Winsor said. “We’re going to need it. Shoot her with it. Make it look like another accident. A woman who didn’t know how to handle a—”

Winsor’s mouth remained open, but a sudden, and apparently terrible, thought stopped the words. He jerked his head around. Stared at Budge. Shouted: “Son of a bitch!”

What was happening was a blur of action. Winsor was swiveling in his chair, snarling an obscenity, cocking the rifle, swinging the barrel toward Budge. Budge was snatching Bernie’s pistol from his belt, his expression saying that he knew he’d waited a fatal second too long.

Bernie screamed something that might have been “No!” and kicked frantically at Winsor’s rifle.

Winsor, still cursing, slammed the rifle barrel against her head, and then back at Budge as he pulled the trigger.

But now it was Winsor who was a fatal split second late.

25

Dashee’s racetrack-braking technique sent his pickup into a sideways slide and produced a fountain of dust over Bernie’s vehicle and the adjoining building.

“She’s in the car,” Chee said. “I can see the back of her head.” He was out of Dashee’s truck before it stopped, pulling on the handle of Bernie’s car door, shouting at her. She unlocked the door, looked up at him. One of those white medical-kit bandages was taped over her forehead, and below it there was blood on her face. She was crying.

“Bernie,” he said. “What happened. Are you all right?” He reached in for her, helped her out, pulled her to him in a crushing hug. “I’ve been scared to death,” Chee said. “I’ve been terrified.”

“Me too,” Bernie said, her voice muffled against his shirt. “I’m still shaking.”

“Oh, Bernie,” Chee said. “I was afraid I’d lost you. What happened to you here? Why are you crying.”

Bernie produced a sort of a choked-off laugh. “That will take a long time to explain,” she said. “And you’re about to crush me.”

He relaxed the hug, but just a little. “Who did that to you?” Chee said, voice grim. “Someone hit you. We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

“How did you find me here?” Bernie said. “And why were you looking for me.”

“Because I love you,” Chee said. “Because I want to take you home where you’ll be safe.”

“Oh,” Bernie said. She returned the hug, and then she was crying again.

Dashee’s voice interrupted this. “Hey,” he shouted. “We’ve got a dead man in here.”

Dashee was standing in the open doorway of the shed, pointing in. “He’s on his back on the floor. Looks like he fell off a chair.” He leaned through the doorway, looking inside. “Blood on the floor, too. And a rifle. Looks like I may have myself my very first homicide as a Federal Bureau of Land Management Security Officer.”

Bernie released her hold on Chee and slumped backward onto the car seat, shaking again.

“It’s all right, Bernie,” Chee said. “It’s OK. Take it easy for a while.”

Dashee was hurrying up. “Yeah, Bernie. And then tell us what happened.”

“It was awful,” Bernie said. “The man who was supposed to kill me, he didn’t want to do it, and he had gotten my pistol from the Seamless Weld man somehow, and so Mr. Winsor was going to shoot him, and—” She was crying again.

“Stay here with Bernie,” Chee said. “And call for some medical help. I’ll go in and take a look.”

What he saw was as Dashee had described it. A well-dressed, stocky, middle-aged man sprawled on his back beside an overturned chair. Chee squatted beside him. Shot in the chest, but the blood that had spread from under him obviously must have come from the exit wound. What he could see was already drying. He scanned the room quickly, noted the pipeline mechanism, noted the row of sacks filled with a white substance, noted the dirty yellow ball on one end, the screw cap beside it, and the white sacks still jammed inside.

Leaphorn had it right, Chee thought. Naturally, Leaphorn had it right. The contraption of pipes grown out of the floor was a trap for pipeline-cleaning pigs. And a pressure-release mechanism on its top was whistling— probably a signal another pig was arriving. The ball on the table must be a pig and its guts, now spilled, was probably cocaine. Enough to overdose a thousand users. Quite a pig.

Chee rushed out into the sunlight. “Did you contact anyone? Are they sending an ambulance?”

“Bernie had already called the New Mexico State Police,” Dashee said. “And she called her dispatcher. They said they’d sent a helicopter.”

“Who hit you?” Chee asked. “Was it that man in there?”

“Where’s his car?” Dashee asked. “What in the world happened?”

“Did you shoot him, Bernie? What happened to your pistol?”

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Bernie shouted. “If you two will just shut up, stop asking questions, and be quiet, I’ll try to tell you.”

And she did. Starting with climbing on the car hood to look through the window and being surprised by three men.

“Three men!” A loud exclamation, jointly emerging from Chee and Dashee, both of whom were leaning against the car, looking down at her.

“Three,” Bernie said. “The one in there. He’s the one who hit me. His name is Winson, or Winsor, or Willson, or something like that. Winsor I think it was. He was the boss of the other two. He’s the one who hit me and he’s the one who said I had to be killed. One of the others—a big tall man, looked like an athlete, sort of red hair, sort of looked like an Irishman, but he spoke Spanish, and Winsor said his name was Budge C. de Baca, like that old Spanish family in New Mexico—anyway, he worked directly for Winsor, and from what Winsor said, he had assigned Budge the job of killing me.”

“Killing you? Killing you?” Chee said.

Bernie ignored him. “The other one was wearing army fatigues and his name was Diego de Vargas and he spoke Spanish, too. And that bunch of pipes—”

“Bernie,” Dashee said, “where are those two men? Are they armed? Do they have your pistol? Did they drive away? Where did they go?”

“They went away,” Bernie said. “And I don’t know where my pistol is. And do you want to hear this or not?”

“Sorry,” Dashee said, and looked repentant.

So Bernie told them what happened in the shed, about the yellow round ball arriving, the sacks of cocaine taken out of it, and about the big man whispering to her that she should tell Winsor she was with the DEA and that she could be bribed. And all the rest of it, skipping back to report how de Vargas had taken her pistol but somehow Budge had gotten it.

“And then when Budge acted like he wasn’t going to kill me, and was telling Winsor they couldn’t get away with it, then Winsor told him to do it like, like ...” Here Bernie’s voice faltered. She paused a moment with her hands over her face. Then went on. “Like they had killed some woman named Chrissy, by throwing her out of an airplane into the ocean. Except they would throw me out over the mountains down in Mexico.” She paused again, then hurried through it. “Then Winsor cocked his rifle and swung it around at Budge, and I was sitting there on the table right beside his chair, and I kicked at his arm and he hit me with the rifle.”

Bernie stopped, looked at Chee and then at Dashee. Both seemed to be holding their breath, silent, waiting.

“Then, he shot, right beside my ear. Or maybe they both shot. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the table with one of those bags under my head, and Budge was using a handkerchief or something to stop the bleeding on my cheek and asking me how I felt, and it was then he said he didn’t kill Chrissy.” She stopped, looked at them, awaited the next question.

“Bernie,” Chee said. “I want you to stop being a policeman. I want you to do something safe. I want you to marry me. I’ll get rid of that trailer and we’ll find a nice house and—”

And Dashee said, “Damn it, Chee, hold that for later. Let Bernie tell us where those two bastards went. They’re getting away.”

And Bernie said: “Oh, Jim, I don’t want to be a policeman anymore.”

And Dashee said: “But where did they go? They’re driving off somewhere right now. Getting away.”

“I don’t know where they went,” Bernie said. “While Budge was getting the blood off of my face he was talking to Diego de Vargas. Talking about flying. They would fly down to some place in Mexico. He had left this woman down there. Chrissy. To keep her safe from Winsor. He said he was in love with this Chrissy, and would go down there and marry her, and then they would take her somewhere Budge had friends, and Vargas could sell the airplane and they would both start over. And, I don’t know, I was trying to listen but I was feeling dizzy, and I was still scared, and they were talking mostly in Spanish. It was confusing.”

“That airplane. Where is it?” Chee asked. “I guess this Budge must be the pilot for that man in the building, must be his personal pilot. There’s probably some sort of airport at the ranch. At least a landing strip.”

“Let’s go find that airplane,” Dashee said.

Chee was looking up. “I think we’re a little late again.”

The sleek white shape of the Dessault Falcon 10 appeared just over the ridge beyond the playa valley—trailing the sound little jet engines make when accelerating.

“Flying south,” Dashee said. “In ten minutes he’s over Mexico. Home free.”

“I heard him telling this Diego de Vargas guy about Chrissy. She was a law clerk for Winsor, and Winsor told her he would marry her, and she got pregnant, and he ordered Budge to kill her so she wouldn’t tell Winsor’s wife.”

“They’re getting away,” Dashee said, still staring toward the south where the Falcon had vanished.

“I hope so,” Bernie said, sounding slightly woozy. “He really was in love with this Chrissy. He was telling that other man, the Mexican, about her. About how the boss told him to kill her but instead he took her down to Mexico and just told the boss she was dead. He was going there to get her.”

“Hey!” Dashee said. “Going where?” He turned to Chee. “We can get him there. Where was he going?”

Bernie held her hand up to her forehead, touched the bandage over the bruise. “I don’t remember,” she said.

The diminishing whine of the jet’s engines was replaced by the thunking sound of the Border Patrol’s helicopter. It came in low, looking for the best landing spot. Only a moment later, that noise was joined by the siren of a State Police car bumping its way down the track toward the building site.

“They’ll take you to the hospital at Las Cruces, Bernie. It’s the nearest one. I may have to stay here with Cowboy to try to explain all this. He reached into the car and hugged her to him, gingerly. Stay there. I’ll come and get you.”

“I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for a while,” Bernie said. “I’m the only witness.”

26

Bernie was right. First to arrive was a New Mexico State Police sergeant with a patrolman. They were informed only with a secondhand, passed-along version of what Bernie had told her Border Patrol dispatcher. The sergeant wanted to know which one of them had done the shooting, where was the gun, who was the victim, was that stuff in the little packages some “controlled substance.” Chee’s efforts to add some clarity to this were interrupted by Dashee, who showed his credentials as a U.S. Bureau of Land Management enforcement officer. Dashee began an account of how the cocaine had arrived, which was interrupted by the arrival of a Guadalupe County Sheriff’s car, occupied by a deputy and an undersheriff. This produced a flurry of discussion of who had jurisdiction here, which reminded Bernie that she, as a Customs patrol officer of the U.S. Treasury Department, was actually the officer in charge. But Bernie’s head was still aching, and the bruise hurt. She wisely decided to stop resisting the orders of the paramedic who had arrived in the Border Control copter, to recline on the stretcher and take the pain pills he was pressing on her.

The undersheriff sent his deputy back to the Tuttle Ranch headquarters to confirm the plane was missing and to join the State Police patrolman in making sure roadblocks were at work in case the two unaccounted-for males had driven away in the victim’s missing Range Rover. About then, a dark blue Ford roared up and braked to a stop in a billowing cloud of dust.

Chee had been standing beside the copter, holding the hand of Bernie, who was looking very, very sleepy now. “Who’s that?” Bernie asked.

“Blue Ford sedan,” Chee said. “Two men getting out. Well dressed. Must be the FBI.”

A few minutes later, the taller of the two came hurrying over. He flashed his FBI shield, said he was Special Agent something-or-other, checked Chee’s identity, and looked at Bernie.

“Officer Manuelito? Right? You must have heard those two men talking after the shooting. Did you hear where they were going?”

“She’s in pretty bad shape,” Chee said. “Possible concussion. You should wait until—”

“Stand aside,” Special Agent said, motioning Chee away. “No time to wait. We want those men.”

But Bernie had drifted off into morphine-induced dreams. Or perhaps she was pretending. And thus the paramedic and the copter pilot flew her away to the hospital at Las Cruces, and she missed the arrival of an SUV occupied by Drug Enforcement Agents, and the resulting dispute over which of the agencies had jurisdiction, which was eventually resolved by the arrival of someone representing Homeland Security, who declared himself in charge of the FBI, the DEA, the Border Patrol, the Department of Land Management, and the Navajo Tribal Police.

Sergeant Chee didn’t argue. He was rushing Cowboy Dashee to the BLM vehicle to begin a high-speed journey to Las Cruces to make sure Bernie was being treated gently. And to take her home.

27

Some time passed before Chee could take Customs Patrol Officer Bernadette Manuelito anywhere. First there was an X ray, which showed no fractures, and then stitches to close the deep cut below her hairline, all of which led to two days of doctor-ordered bed rest in the hospital. There she was visited by an amiable FBI agent named Jenkins. He was black, middle-aged by Bernie’s standards, and delighted her by bringing up the same questions that had been troubling her. Why had she been sent to that Tuttle Ranch gate site? What had her supervisor told her she was looking for? How about the “special arrangement” to cooperate with the ranch? And how had the photograph Henry had taken of her, wearing her Big Thunder pin, gotten so quickly into the hands of Mexican drug dealers?

That, above all, stimulated Jenkins’s interest, turned him away from nagging her about where she thought Budge and Diego might have gone, or what their real names might be. It sent him out the room to use his cell phone where she couldn’t hear him. When he came back, he was in a hurry. Just asked Bernie if she had anything else to tell him, said: “Well, thank you then,” and was gone.

The nurse came through the door after him.

“There’s someone out in the hall waiting to see you. You ready for a visitor?”

Bernie was at the closet, getting her uniform on. “I’m ready to get out of here. Go home.” She stopped buttoning her shirt, made a wry face. “Is it another policeman?”

“It’s your young man.”

It was the first time Bernie had heard anyone call Jim Chee “her man.” But now, she thought, the nurse had it right. And it sounded fine.

“Give me a few minutes to get dressed and then send him in,” Bernie said.

EPILOGUE

And so it was. The Sinister Pig was dead, the Pig Trap end of the Sinister Pipeline was safely in the hands of the federals, with the FBI, the DEA, and the Customs Service pushing and shoving for media credit and TV time. Now the TV crews are gone from the south gate of Tuttle Ranch, and the scimitar-horned oryx are grazing there again and all the other players are gone.

First to go were Budge and Diego de Vargas in the Falcon 10, which seemed to belong to the late Rawley Winsor but which, officials of his A.G.H. Industries would be surprised to know, was actually on the A.G.H. inventory. The Falcon is now in the hanger of another of A.G.H. subsidiaries, refueled and refurbished, waiting for Diego to fly it to Jamaica where its paint job and license numbers will be suitably revised.

Budge had flown south too, serving as copilot and instructor, using the Falcon’s phone to call the Mazatlan hotel where Chrissy was installed, telling her what had happened and that he would be at her hotel in two hours.

When the Falcon pulled into the transient aircraft space, she was there waiting. A passionately romantic scene ensued. But who can tell what the future holds for such a pair.

Bureau of Land Management Security Officer Cowboy Dashee, having been the only officer left at the scene with even a hint of jurisdiction, was stuck at the south gate locale until sundown, answering the questions of various other federal officers and working on the explanation he would give his BLM boss for why he was involved in a drug bust more than two hundred miles south of where he was supposed to be.

Joe Leaphorn, the retired Legendary Lieutenant, who had been nowhere near the south gate, didn’t escape the aftermath. Professor Louisa Bourbonette, back from her oral history roamings, handed him the telephone.

“Joe,” she said, “it’s someone named Mary Goddard, and she sounds angry.”

She was. “Mr. Leaphorn, I remind you that when we exchanged information you promised me, a solemn promise, to tip me on any pertinent developments. I thought I could trust you.”

“Well,” said Joe, “ah—”

“Listen to this headline from my competitor’s front page: ‘Socialite Mogul Slain in Drug Raid.’ ”

“I know,” Leaphorn said. “But I wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t what?”

“Down there,” Leaphorn said. “Anyway, your story was the missing money from the tribal trust funds. All that royalty money that—”

“My story was why Stein was killed. The guy with the phony Carl Mankin credit card.”

“I still don’t know.”

“Well, your people out there do,” Goddard said. “Let me read it to you.”

Leaphorn heard the sound of paper rustling.

“Here it is: ‘Officer Manuelito said the conversations she overheard between Winsor and the two men working indicated Stein was killed because the drug dealers believed he was investigating their efforts to use pipeline cleaning devices to smuggle cocaine in from Mexico.’

“ ‘She said Winsor had come to believe that Stein was actually working for a prominent senator—seeking evidence of pipeline use to illegally divert oil or gas shipments in the Interior Department scandal.’ ” Goddard stopped. “What do you say to that?”

“My only excuse is ignorance.”

“Ignorance! I heard that you provided the tip that something funny was going on with that old pipeline.”

“Not exactly,” Leaphorn said.

“Well, no use yelling at you. What can you tell me now?”

“All I know is what I’ve been reading in the Farmington Times,” Leaphorn said. “Nobody cares about that Stein killing anymore. Maybe the next time we have a big story out here I can make it up to you.”

“Big story out there? Fat chance.”

Leaphorn should have said almost nobody cared about the Stein case. Sergeant Jim Chee still cared. He was now sitting at his desk staring at the computer screen in his crowded trailer home on the banks of the San Juan River. Stein had been murdered right in the territory he was responsible for. Even though the FBI had taken over and declared it a hunting accident he had to write a report on it. He was down to the concluding paragraph, and what could he say in conclusion?

He typed: “Evidence developed in a subsequent drug investigation strongly suggested”—someone was tapping at this screen door—“that Mexican interests in a drug-smuggling venture ordered Stein killed, believing he might reveal their plan.”

It was Bernie, a neat bandage protecting the stitches on her face and the remains of her bruises still visible.

He ushered her in, noticed she was eyeing the interior of his trailer with an unusually intent interest. He hugged her.

“Bernie,” he said, “you are absolutely beautiful, and if you’ll marry me, I will never let anyone hit you with a rifle again.”

Bernie returned the hug. “In that case, I’ll marry you, providing you help me push this trailer down into the river so we can build a real house here.”

About the e-Book

(JULY, 2003)—Scanned, proofed and formatted by Bibliophile.