Wild Country

Chapter Thirty-Five

Felix Sorel checked the pace of his mare, frowning as he saw the way his companion mistreated a borrowed mount. This was supposed to be a pleasurable ride on his own turf, beyond the ears of his men. Yet it was difficult to enjoy with a companion like Jerome Garner. "Cuidado, careful," he called as the Anglo urged his big stallion down a talus slope.

Young Garner snapped the reins too hard, with the kind of overcontrol that could turn a good horse into a bad one. The Anglo sat a saddle well, but any fool could see that he had no respect for his mount. On shifting slopes, you didn't wheel your horse around if you gave a damn about broken legs — for horse and rider both.

But the Garner luck held, as it always seemed to hold. Somehow the big dun stallion obeyed with powerful lunges that brought Garner back to the promontory, where Sorel leaned on his saddle horn, patting the neck of his sorrel mare, enjoying his view.

Why lecture the cabrdn on the matter? Instead, Sorel smiled across at his guest. "A shame that you have no such mountains on Garner Ranch," he said. "We could move an army through here without detection."

"And it'd take a week," Garner replied. He swung down from the dun, snapping kinks from his legs, swinging his big shoulders so that his mount shied. "Whoa, goddammit," he barked, jerking the reins. Sorel judged the tall Anglo to be a couple of years under thirty. He wore his dark hair rather long, its curls falling over a broad forehead, almost to his brows. His deep-set eyes were a startling blue that seemed to skewer whatever they spotted. The nose was strong, the chin square: all he lacked, thought Sorel, was a dimple.

One day this strapping Anglo would probably grow soft with his excesses, but now he fairly hummed with vitality. It kept him trim, with the flat belly and tight buttocks of an athlete. Sorel, who worked hard to stay in shape, appreciated bodies like that; might have made a delicate proposal to the Anglo, but he knew better than to consider it seriously. For one thing, Jerome Garner saw other men only as opponents rather than friends — let alone potential lovers. For another, the man inside that charming body had no charm to speak of. Felix Sorel smiled again into the blue eyes: too bad, lo siento mucho, querido.

As if noting something sensuous in his host's glance, Garner nodded toward the small scatter of tile rooftops in the far distance. "How can you stand it here. Sorrel? There can't be much action in a dump like Mariposa."

"I bring the action," Sorel said. "I will shortly bring more action through your land than you have yet seen."

"That's what SanTone Rose promised, and that's why I'm here; you tryin' to spook me, Sorrel?"

Sorel maintained his calm. It was easy to ignore antagonism from a man he could outfight or outmaneuver at his whim. "Merely covering every base, Jerome. After our first few shipments, the border authorities may step up their surveillance. We cannot buy off all the federates in Wild Country. Do you have the manpower and the cover activities to handle five times the" traffic you have had in the past?"

Garner gave a silent whistle; scratched a bristly chin. He would have to make it look jake with the old man, but Mul Garner himself had often mentioned a private north-south road across the spread. It'd be stupid to build one, of course, since aerial recon might have the border cops sniffing around it. The existing route up through the Garner spread was useful only because it was not an obvious conduit. But with a few picked hands, he could pretend they were studying a route. The old man never left ranch headquarters anymore, so the ruse could be maintained. "I can hire more hands to guard your flanks. They're expensive people; shit, you oughta know, some of 'em have been on your payroll."

"I expected that. Who did you have in mind?"

"Longo, Slaughter; a few others that are coolin' off at the old south homestead."

Sorel knew the place: a frame house and barn with sheep pens and shearing shed, once served by chopper when fuel was cheap. It had fallen half to ruin since old Mul Garner's youth, but its well still pumped sweet water. The bam would hide several loaded hovervans if necessary. Sorel nodded. "If we travel at night, we must go slowly. Can we use ranch headquarters for a second stop?"

"No way," Garner replied quickly. "My old man would have more questions than a beef has ticks."

"A stopover toward the north border of your lands, then."

This time Garner thought about it longer. He knew a place all right, hardly more than a line shack and over a century old. It slumped near a small creek that Mul Garner had dubbed "Faithful" because, no matter how ferocious the summer, it always seeped a trickle of good water. Full of limestone minerals, it was "water so hard it'll bust your teeth out," but the shack was special for other reasons. Only a few people knew of its existence in a tree-choked ravine, and Jerome Garner did not intend to share its location with anybody else. Especially not with this slippery, smiling golden boy of a Mex soccer jock. "Nothin" but a few old deer blinds there. Half of those are in trees."

Sorel hated to show his ignorance of gringo habits, but he hunted in other ways. "Deer blinds?"

"Ol' board shacks you nail up near a deer trail or waterhole. Why freeze your ass in the rain when you can hunker down in a lean-to and wait? Come to think of it, we could knock down two or three of 'em and make you a shack from old gray lumber; big enough to hide a van, anyhow."

"Do that," Sorel agreed. "And then I shall make a test run to see that all is satisfactory."

But something in Sorel's tone had lodged in young Garner's craw. Drawled slowly: "Well, my, my, ain't you king shit."

"Perddnam!'"

"Ain't you just the top little turd in the bucket, though? Your Highness will inspect your fuckin' domain; as if I didn't know how to hide a hovervan on my own land."

Very cautiously, very gently: "Jerome, the shipment — all the way to Wichita Falls—is my responsibility." The sorrel mare was basically a polo pony and sensed disquiet in the man on her back. She became nervous enough to be a diversion for Sorel.

Watching him gentle the mare, Jerome Garner snarled, "Yeah, and on my land. Don't you ever forget that if it wasn't for me and damn few others, there wouldn't be any hiding places for brush-poppers to hole up in, and no passage of Mex goodies for long. And Wild Country would be tame in five years."

Now the voice of Felix Sorel was so soft and nonthreatening that he almost cooed. "Do you imagine that my… employers… would permit me to run tons of contraband at a time through any route I do not know in detail?" He had tried to defuse two hissing incendiaries at once by suggesting that, far from "king shit," he was only a hireling fan, which should gratify this great childish fool. And by implying that his inspection was an absolute requirement before Jerome Garner ever saw a single peso. He waited for results.

And got them: "Aw shit no, Sorrel, you can come up if you want. I just don't like folks talkin' like they owned my land."

"The lands have passed to you?"

"Might as well say that; I run the place. The old man'll check in his Justins any month, now, and until then he's happy because he thinks his foreman makes the decisions. But we have an understanding, me and Concannon."

Sorel cocked his head as if to ask the next question. And Jerome Garner was pleased to answer: "He understands that next time he crosses me, I kick the shit out of him and hand him his wages." His grin was as happy and innocent as that of a boy; perhaps a young prince who could do no wrong.

Sorel smiled back, guiding his Anglo guest back to the trail to the ruined villa, making small talk. From long experience, Felix Sorel had found that politeness was easiest granted to those he least respected. And anyhow, he only had to keep up this respectful sham until the next morning. Jerome Garner never stayed off his own turf a minute longer than he had to.