Wild Country

Chapter Ten

Quantrill alerted the old-girl with the buzzer as she neared the turnout to the north gate of Wild Country Safari; heard the whine of regenerators as she slowed her big rig expertly. In common courtesy, he climbed down and hit the macadam running so that she would not waste precious energy stopping and accelerating from rest. He turned away from her dusty wake, walked to the untended gatehouse, placed his left thumb against the printmatcher. Then he went inside and selected a surfer. Safari management did not let its help get stranded forty klicks from their work stations.

The enormous spread of Wild Country Safari had begun, a century before, as the "Y O" Ranch, an arid region where the pioneering Schreiner family dug wells to water their stock. By the time Ted Quantrill was born, the Y O brand was famous — not so much for the blooded stock as for the wild game and endangered species that generations of Schreiners brought in. The list ran from addax to zebu; you could find oryx, tiny gemsbok, towering giraffe, shambling bison, and velvet-hided sable for photographs.

After the Sinolnd War, Schreiners bowed to necessity and leased the entire spread to LockLever. The giant corporation added nearby lands and now had a spread that covered parts of three counties. A nearby LOS tower sent narrowcast power into the spread, but it took only a little of that power to pump water from deep wells. Much more was needed to run the weird assortment of entertainments LockLever built, and all of it together was world-renowned as Wild Country Safari. LockLever's huge investment was paying off already.

Highrollers floated in a converted delta dirigible from DalWorth to a pad just over the hill from Faro; but they clattered and bounced the last few klicks by stagecoach.

Wearing a rented costume, you could easily forget that Faro's plank sidewalks and clapboard saloons were all parts of a careful reconstruction. You could win a pile at faro, monte, poker, craps, or roulette — though more often you lost a small bundle. You bathed, if at all, in a high-backed zinc tub. You slept, if at all, on a cornshuck mattress that rustled louder than coal down a chute, in a room with a pitcher and bowl. If you wore a sidearm, you submitted to a company peacebonder strap that shrilled a microwave alert if broken.

In the past year, more Americans had made enough money to visit the little sin city. This was one good sign of America's slow economic rise from global disaster. Still, many of the moneyed visitors spoke Arabic or French or Spanish, and Faro boasted too many obvious foreigners gawking at each other for Quantrill's comfort. He seldom had business in Faro and rarely went there even for the cheap honest redeye at the Long Branch Saloon. The north road led to Faro, and Quantrill ignored it. The west fork arrowed over rolling lands and out of sight toward the Battle of Britain and Thrillkiller sites. He ignored that road, too, and turned toward the south.

Separated by great distance on the vast spread, connected by macadam ribbon, were other sites of very different entertainment. To the south was the old ranch complex where Quantrill lived. Here, big-game hunters found their cruel sport, and the ranch staff bred cattle: Herefords and Brangalo for beef, Longhorns for show. Quantrill mounted his fat-wheeled little surfer, extended its sissy handle and seat, then urged it along the macadam.

For short runs, he sometimes rode a surfer as he had ridden ordinary skateboards before the war. But only a dunce would tire himself by standing up for an hour, creating extra wind resistance, while the energy cells drove him whirring crosscountry. He used the surfer in its scooter mode and wondered if he were getting old.

On downhill stretches he nudged its toe plate, wedging it for maximum speed, hoping to arrive at Marrow's office before midafternoon. Jess Marrow rarely complained about Quantrill's absences, but he could be testy as a bull in fly-time when his assistant wasn't on hand to keep tabs on the experimental animals.

Marrow's office was empty but, stowing the surfer on a rack, Quantrill could hear familiar curses floating out from a nearby barn. It sounded like the grizzled veterinarian was not overly pleased. Sure enough, the usually unflappable Marrow was venting his ire at a cranky squeeze chute. Quantrill ran to help.

"About goddam time," Marrow grunted. He paused to reach a hand between metal bars to soothe the panicky Brangalo bull inside the squeeze chute. The Brangalo, a cross between Brahma, Angus, and bison, was in a snorting rage. "The limit switch has come loose on this godless damnable machine's hydraulic ram, an' I can't reach it without lettin' go the chute lever."

Quantrill tried not to grin, noting the bright red sheen that spread back from Marrow's forehead to his receding hairline. While Jess Marrow showed great patience with his animals, he could — as now — lose all patience with rickety old machinery. The squeeze chute allowed a vet to shoo an animal from its corral to the elevated platform where, with adjustable sides and ends on the chute, something as pesky as a Brangalo bull could be lightly squeezed into immobility.

But Marrow's equipment was old, and he knew better than to work a bull in that chute without help. He knew better, and yet… Jess Marrow was not a man to let his schedules slip, without installing a graze monitor on that bull, he couldn't round out his profile of this new hybrid. So Marrow put himself in a bind where he needed three hands. His plight looked comical to Quantrill, but Quantrill was outvoted two to one. The bull was madder, if possible, than Marrow.

"Sau-u-ugh," Marrow gentled, holding the front-end lever, and, "Soo-o-o, pard," he said, watching Quantrill stretch toward the loose limit switch, and, "There, you stupid sonofa low-balled hellion," he growled as the hydraulic ram began to work. Quantrill busied himself with the rancher's machine shop — pliers and baling wire — to secure the switch while Marrow strapped the graze monitor under the bull's jaw. Quantrill could not help his amusement at the way man and bull stared at each other through the bars as Marrow worked.

Marrow would adjust a strap, eye the bull; pass a strap behind a wicked horn, eye the bull; and continue, talking to the brute as he worked. "Yep, you'd like to catch me nappin', wouldn't you? Run a horn plumb up my pore spavined ass. And me the only friend you got." Meanwhile. Quantrill leaned across the machinery only one pace away, a listener whether he liked or not.

Marrow paused, wiped his brow with a thick, hairy forearm, cocked his big round head with its halo of gray hair, and squatted as if listening to the bull. Then, speaking as if to the bull: Quantrill? Don't shit yoreself, stud. He ain't your friend, he'd make mountain oysters outa your nuts in a minute."

This was an obvious lie, for Quantrill often claimed guilt when using a castrating knife. "Don't believe the old fart, stud," Quantrill said. "He's the one with a taste for your cojones."

"Naw. Quantrill don't need your cojones. he's got enough of 'em for me and you both." Marrow went on. "Today, at least. If he keeps that deppity job, one of these days he'll show up needin' spares."

So that was the drift of it! "Sorry I'm late," Quantrill said.

Marrow stood up. exhaled heavily; operated the chute lever to release the bull back to the corral, slapped the bull's flank, and waited until the chute was empty. Only then did he turn to his assistant. "Late, schmate." growled the aging vet. whose rough cattleman's lingo masked an excellent education. "That ain't what puts the hole in my boot. Well, yes it is, too; every time you come strollin' in with that gawddam space-pirate sidearm" — Quantrill had completely forgotten to remove his Chiller—"I wonder if it's the last time before your number comes up." He turned, leading the way back, and gestured toward distant oaks and cedars. "There's not a bull on that range that won't one day find another 'un that can thrash his ass. if he keeps bellerin' and searchin' long enough. But they'll all do it. ever' one of the dumb bastards, and it must be catchin' because. Teddy boy, you've caught it!"

"That's what my lady friend says," Quantrill admitted.

"The Grange girl? I remember her; who wouldn't? Why in the world and three Jewish satellites don't you listen to her?"

Quantrill, trudging beside the burly vet. did not want a repeat of his argument with Sandy. He jogged Marrow's elbow and said, "Hey. Jess, tell me about Klamath Steamboat again, and how you owe all this to him."

"Go fuck a duck." Marrow chuckled and dropped the subject. Jess Marrow's rodeo career — like most Texans he pronounced it "rode-ee-oh" — had been ended in 1985 by an Oregon bronc that tucked its nose into its belly button and wound up on top of Jess, who had bone splinters poking through his jeans and blood pouring from his ear. As Jess later explained his switch to veterinary medicine: "I didn't need a house to fall on me to tell me I was past my prime. A horse, yes. A good man needs a good strong sign, an' Klamath Steamboat gave me all the sign I needed."

Marrow still walked with a slight limp. He could tell an outlaw horse or a mean bull just by eyeballing it. and he respected animals enough to treat them right. He respected humans a bit less, on the whole, but he'd known Ted Quantrill's background from the first and tried hard to keep his affection from showing. Now he scraped his boot heels before entering his office and repeated a snippet from his old monologue: "Okay, a good man needs a good strong sign. Ted. I just hope your sign ain't a skull an' crossbones."

The two men shared coffee while Marrow attacked his office computer terminal with stubby forefingers. By running his legs off. Quantrill could do a decent half day's work by quitting time, and knew Marrow would pay him for the half day.

An hour later, Quantrill returned to the offices with an ancient clipboard filled with notations on feed ingestion rates for their hybrid antelope. It would have been quicker to feed the information to the computer from a remote pocket terminal, but Marrow trusted pencil and polypaper more.

The vet nodded, completed his talk on the vidphone, then punched out and faced his helper. "You happen to know where — no. 'course you wouldn't. One of these days I'll put tracer bugs on every animal on the Safari preserve, swear to God I will. Well, Teddy, there's an Englishman in SanTone who's heard we've got those feral Russian boar runnin' loose down near the southeast corner. He's bringin' his own horses out tomorrow — must be filthy rich — to see if pigstickin' is the same here as it is in India."

"Pigsticking? You mean with darts, or what?"

"Lances." Marrow traded doubtful glances with Quantrill and admitted that the sport was more than half insane. Using short bamboo lances. English officers had developed the sport over a century before, riding down the wily boar from horse back. Lieutenant Alec Wardrop was one of the few who'd kept the sport alive during postwar occupation of India, and Russian boar were just as hard to bag in Wild Country as in Asia.

"Wardrop's experienced, and willin' to sign waivers. And he has political clout. In the old days, the Schreiners woulda told him to go piss up a lariat. It isn't a quick kill. But LockLever wants some of those big Muckna boars thinned out. I gotta go find where the singleton boars forage; goose 'em out a few miles, if I have to, for tomorrow."

"Want me to fly the chopper while you search?"

"Nope. I'll fly it; you get the Nelson rifle and some orange markers, and I'll tell you what to shoot at."

Quantrill removed his Chiller and, from a lockable cabinet, took the coldgas rifle with a handful of paint pellets. The Nelson rifle fired a harmless plastic ball that splashed bright paint against the target. Big game was often marked this way to identify a "takeable" trophy particularly when the hunter was a newcomer who might otherwise draw a bead on a female, or even the wrong species. Marrow still cursed the time a hunter, hoping for an elk trophy, shot a Brahma heifer despite the letters "C O W" whitewashed on her flanks.

Quantrill stowed his gear in the four-place chopper, watching Jess Marrow's preflight check. "Seems to me," he said, speaking into his helmet comm set as Marrow brought the turbine up to speed, "if this guy Wardrop is so experienced, he won't need us to pick the trophies from the sows."

"He won't, but he's bringin' a friend along. I told you he has clout; well, he's bringin' Judge Anthony Placidas along."

"Old Tony Plass? I heard he's got more trophies than Teddy Roosevelt."

Now they were lifting, Marrow going high before swinging away to the southeast. "He's older'n I am, Ted. It ain't enough to be mean and crooked and a good shot when you're after a big hog with only a lance. Nobody over the age of thirty-five has any business at pigstickin'." Waivers or no waivers, he added, Placidas would have been refused if not for his importance and for the endorsement of Wild Country Safari's best guide, Cleve Hutcherson.

"I hope Hutch knows what he's doing," Quantrill murmured.

Marrow: "He's no genius, but he knows pig an' he's dead steady with a Colt. Before you came here. Hutch saved a whole group of easterners from that monster. Ba'al. You wouldn't know about it."

Quantrill knew, all right. He often shared confidences with Marrow, but Ba'al's home ground and relationships were items he kept to himself.

From a thousand meters up. the rocky, broken terrain seemed almost flat, with great clumps of prickly pear sharing the range with the water-cheated trees and brush. Twice they spotted wild pigs, flushing them with sudden swoops. Finding a pair of young boars and a sow with her brood of striped "squeakers." Piglets like these had flourished in South Texas for half a century and were already replacing the small native peccary as they grew to trophy size.

Ranging farther south. Marrow saw the seasonal sinkhole with its cattails and lush weeds. "Hog sign." he said, hovering near, pointing to the swath where some big animal had rooted up a room-sized area to get at the succulent cattail bulbs.

Quantrill saw the boar first, it was actually crawling through the cattails, its great shoulders heaving with the effort as the rushes lashed in the chopper's downdraft.

"Paint him." Marrow said. "He'll go two hundred kilos." Marrow had noted the big curling tusks of an adult boar. The animal would have barely come up to Ba'al's shoulder, but by any other standard it was a fine trophy.

Quantrill studied the animal, saw its intelligence in seeking better cover. "Back off and take a run from head-on. Jess." he said. "If he hunkers down in that mud. we'll never get him marked."

Marrow did it. The boar disappeared for a moment, then broke from cover, spurting toward distant brush. Marrow surged the chopper ahead and lower. Quantrill leaning the coldgas rifle from an open window and charging the Nelson's plenum. Then, with incredible swiftness, the harried boar spun on the hard ground, charged his pursuers, leaped as high as a man might reach. Both men felt the solid thunk as the boar struck their aluminum landing skid. The boar fell heavily, rolled, was up and running back to the cattails before Marrow could react.

Quantrill had used the Nelson before and knew its range with the big pellets. He fired once as soon as Marrow had the chopper turned, splattering orange paint ahead of the fleeing boar. It jinked abruptly and Quantrill fired twice more. The second round caught the boar halfway down its spine and must have stung because the saffron-splashed animal spun again, facing them, flanks heaving as Jess Marrow brought the chopper low again, backing away. The furious boar followed them for as long as Marrow estimated it would take for the paint to dry. Then they sought more altitude in search of other trophies.

"You realize that little devil leaped three meters high?" Quantrill was wondering how high Ba'al could soar.

"Yup. They'll attack anything, even Bengal tiger. You ask me, Ted, I think Tony Plass is out of his Latin mind."

Quantrill laughed then. Into Marrow's inquiring glance he quoted, "A good man needs a good strong sign."

"I reckon. Now keep an eye peeled, Teddy, we need to mark more trophies 'fore we knock off. Not much other game out here, it's a helluva long way from the central lodge, but it oughta serve Wardrop just fine."

They found only three more takeables in the next half hour, but Marrow was satisfied, radioing the position of the game for Cleve Hutcherson's benefit. Marrow and Hutch were old friends, and the vet basked in a sense of a job well done. Hutch had endorsed the idea of the hunt, in part, because despite all his experience with exotic game he had never seen Russian boar hunted with a short lance. It would be Hutch's job to protect the hunters, and it was the guide's boast that his forty-five-caliber six-gun hadn't failed him yet. Perhaps Hutch, too, needed a good strong sign.