Dead Soul (25 page)

MOON ADDRESSED
the chief of the hooligans. “Turn your bikes around—I don’t want to see nothing but your backsides getting smaller.”

Half-Ton snorted. “What—you gonna send us away just like that?”

“I’m in a charitable mood today. And so far, no harm’s been done.”

The leader of the pack laughed, his enormous belly shook. “That’s ’cause we just got here.”

Buford smiled, addressed the bikers in a folksy tone. “Here’s some helpful advice for you buncha half-wits—haul your sorry asses outta here while you still can.” He took a bead on the fat man.

Half-Ton exchanged a long look with the rough-looking fellow backing up the tall Indian. “Now, that ain’t very friendly.”

“You’re trespassing,” the Ute replied. “You fellas want to visit the Columbine, you’ll have to call ahead. Get an appointment.”

“Hey, don’t get your shorts all in a knot, Injun—we just come for a pow-wow.”

The Ute wondered where all his cowhands were. “Speak your piece.”

“You whooped me and Pie Eye in a fair scrap. We’re here for a rematch.”

Moon glanced at the blank-faced man in the sidecar. “Your friend don’t look ready for a fight.”

“You can start with me.” Half-Ton grunted as he unloaded his mammoth bulk from the machine.

Moon wondered how long he could keep the man talking. “Looks like you brought along a lot of help.”

“They’s just spectators. Anyways, you brought one of your buddies. He kin watch, too, if he’s got the stomach to see Injun brains and guts splattered all over the ground.”

Moon was watching a leather-coated thug who was darting furtive glances down at the sidecar where Pie Eye was deposited. He was muttering to his disabled passenger.

The huge man leaned back and bellowed. “Well, what is it—you gonna fight me?”

Moon kept his gaze focused on the sidecar. “If you got any teeth left in your head, I’d be more than happy to knock ’em out. But this is not the time. Or the place.”

Half-Ton turned to grin idiotically at his following of cheerful misfits. “Sounds to me like the big Injun’s scairt shitless.”

This produced the expected chorus of guffaws and jeers from his entusiastic comrades.

Moon, assuming they had come for the sole purpose of reducing the Columbine to a heap of smoldering ruins, dearly hoped that all they wanted was a fistfight. “You boys head back into town. Tomorrow—let’s say noon—I’ll meet your Ultimate Leader at the Mountain Man.”
And give his fifty-gallon ass a real kicking.

This suggestion brought a smirk to Half-Ton’s battered face. “Sure. And you’ll have all your copper friends there to arrest me and my buddies. I don’t think so. And don’t you think we’re scairt a your guns. Me’n alla my boys is packin’.” To demonstrate that this was not an empty bluff, the big biker pulled back his leather jacket. Holstered on the belt under his ample belly was an automatic pistol.

Moon watched the biker above the sidecar. “First one to touch his gun is a dead man.”

“There’s no need fer any shootin’. Come on out from behind your truck, Injun.” Half-Ton raised hamlike fists in an absurd parody of a prizefighter’s pose. “We’ll duke it out right here, just you’n me. An’ after I whoop your sorry ass real good, me’n my boys, we’ll go back to town and have us a beer party.” The leader of the pack pulled off a tentlike leather jacket. Flexed gigantic biceps.

Moon ground his teeth.
It’d be really stupid. But I am sorely tempted…
He noticed that Henry Buford had left the cover of the pickup. The Ute spoke softly. “Henry, don’t go out there—”

The heavy rifle cradled in the crook of his arm, the BoxCar ranch manager approached the leader of the pack.

Half-Ton’s mouth crinkled into the foolish grin. “Whatta we got here—this hotshot cowboy gonna fight fer his Injun boss?”

Buford smiled at the fat man. “You stupid shit—what do you think you’re doing, coming here? Does a slime-slug like you actually think he has a right to associate with human beings?”

The biker’s pale eyes widened. The lips curled.

Henry Buford planted the rifle stock on the side of Half-Ton’s head. The biker staggered sideways. Another deft swing—the stock landed squarely in the thug’s face. The huge man stumbled, fell to his knees, slobbered blood from the almost toothless mouth.

There was an angry murmur among the bikers, hands moved toward concealed weapons. Buford raised the rifle, pointed it at the nearest offender. His tone was deceptively congenial—like a kindly preacher addressing a backward congregation. “Now who among you does not understand the subtle elements of today’s message?”

Moon—amazed at this reckless display of courage—managed to find his voice. “Uh…Henry, why don’t you just come on back here and—”

Pete Bushman appeared at Moon’s shoulder. “Okay, boss, I got the big house covered. The Kyd an’ a truck fulla armed cowboys’ll be here in two minutes flat.” He squinted at the scene. “What’s goin’ on out there?”

“Looks like Henry Buford has taken charge of the situation.” The Ute rancher held a bead on the biker with the sidecar, who was muttering something to Pie Eye. “If this goes bad, Pete, take cover till our men get here. Don’t get yourself shot.”

Half-Ton, still on his knees, shook his bloody head as if attempting to reconnect jumbled circuits in a scrambled-egg brain. He looked up, tried to focus bleary eyes on the man who had poleaxed him.

Henry Buford smiled down at his victim. “Hey, maggot, know what I think?”

Again, Half-Ton shook the massive head.

The BoxCar manager smiled. “I think you’re too stupid to live.”

The behemoth biker grinned blankly at the standing man. But while he was on his knees, Half-Ton had removed the automatic pistol from his belt holster. This stealthy action had been concealed by his massive belly.

In the sidecar, a blank-faced Pie Eye was fumbling with something wrapped in a red cloth. A charcoal-gray submachine gun.

The Ute squeezed one off from the Winchester carbine. A small hole appeared in Pie Eye’s forehead; he slumped. The biker at his side made a grab for the Uzi. Moon put a lump of lead through his chest, another through his neck. The thug tumbled off the machine, sprawling over Pie Eye.

While the BoxCar manager was momentarily distracted by Moon’s gunfire, Half-Ton raised his pistol to aim point-blank at Buford’s belt buckle.

Buford poked the rifle barrel into Half-Ton’s right eye; the top half of the biker’s head exploded.

As Pete Bushman would say later, that was when all hell broke loose.

Motorcycle engines roared to life.

Henry Buford dropped to one knee, calmly emptied the rifle into the nearest bikers. A screaming hoodlum fell off his bike; the riderless Harley went head-on into a large cottonwood at the stream’s edge. Another motorcycle sailed into Too Late Creek, the ice-cold water turned crimson with the rider’s blood. Discarding the 30.06 rifle, Buford drew his pistol, began picking off the remainders, one by one.

Moon wounded another thug, who was attempting to ride his big machine into the BoxCar ranch manager.

Pete Bushman—yowling like an ecstatic savage—fired grape-size shotgun slugs into the leather-clad crowd. The Columbine foreman crippled one fear-crazed biker, sent another lead sphere through a motorcycle gas tank, which exploded in a sphere of searing fire.

As Bushman had promised his boss, a flatbed truck arrived with a dozen Columbine cowboys—all loaded for bear and oozing adrenaline from every pore. There was not much left to shoot at. Of the bikers who had invaded the Columbine, three made it to the front gate. These were picked up by Colorado State Police, converging from two directions in five cruisers at speeds up to one hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Another thug, whose club name was Poppa Weasel, was lying flat on his back, blood oozing from a wound in his abdomen. He thought things just couldn’t get worse. He thought wrong. The unfortunate thug looked up to see the small, thin man standing over him.

Griego Santanna had a shiny revolver in one hand, a gigantic knife in the other. The bloodthirsty Mexican grinned to expose a scattering of steel incisors, canines, and bicuspids. “Don’t be afraid, señor. It is I, Griego, here to end your terrible suffering. So what do you want—a bullet between your eyes, or the blade across your throat?”

The gut-shot biker gurgled something incoherent. Blood bubbled up between blue lips.

Santanna slipped the bowie knife into its leather holster. “I cannot understand your words, gringo. I think I will shoot you in the heart—so your pretty face will be preserved for the
funerales
.” The Mexican cocked the pistol.

Charlie Moon clamped a heavy hand on Santanna’s shoulder. “Hey—what do think you’re doing?”

“Find yourself another one—this
hombre
is mine.” He closed his left eye, sighted down the barrel. “He will be the twelfth man I have killed.” Twelve was a lucky number.

“No he won’t,” the Ute said.

Annoyed and hurt by this rude intervention, the Mexican hesitated.

Charlie Moon spoke softly. “Here’s the deal, Santanna—you pull the trigger, I’ll pull your head off. And feed it to the coyotes.”

The bewildered man turned to look up at the Indian’s face. “You would do that to me, who is about to kill your enemy?”

“Without batting an eye. Now put the
pistola
away.”

Santanna grunted, stuck the heavy gun under his belt. “
Si
. You’re the
jefe.
” To express his disgust, he spat in the dust.

The biker gurgled at his dark, towering savior; tears of gratitude puddled in his bloodshot eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THE LAKE

UPON RECEIVING WORD THAT COLORADO
’
S SENIOR UNITED
STATES
senator was under siege at the Columbine, the National Guard dispatched a military helicopter carrying six grim-faced members of a Ranger contingent that had been training in hostage rescue procedures at an Air Force base thirty miles north of Granite Creek. These heavily armed men—much like Moon’s knife-wielding Mexican cowhand—were extremely disappointed to have no one to kill. “All dressed up and the party’s already over,” one of the dejected commandos mumbled. Along with the helicopter pilot, they were tasked by the governor of Colorado to provide air cover for a state police convoy that would escort Senator Davidson back to the security of his BoxCar Ranch.

The Columbine was the scene of carefully orchestrated chaos. Ambulances and state police units blocked the narrow ranch lane. Wounded bikers moaned, pleaded pitifully for help from the medics. The deathly silent were zippered into body bags. After the wild shoot-out, it seemed almost miraculous that only four of the intruders were dead.

In deference to the senator, the authorities agreed to take only brief, preliminary statements from the survivors of the shoot-out who had defended the ranch headquarters. Despite howling protests from those few bikers able to speak coherently, it was abundantly clear to the detail commander that Charles Moon, Henry Buford, and Pete Bushman had acted in self-defense while repelling an unprovoked invasion by a gang of armed, vicious thugs. But shootings are shootings, and there were procedures to be followed to the letter. The “incident area” was laced with yellow plastic ribbon, thus blocking all traffic between the Too Late Bridge and the Columbine headquarters. Officers wearing latex gloves gathered evidence from the scene of the shooting, placed said evidence in plastic bags, carefully labeled said bags, laser-scanned said labels to enter the graphics into a ruggedized laptop computer. A uniformed officer snapped almost three hundred shots of bodies, wreckage of expensive motorcycles, bullet holes in Moon’s F-150 pickup. As a backup, another trooper made videotapes of the scene. Other officers made precise reference measurements with steel tapes. “I make it seventeen feet, four inches from the right pickup headlight to Motorcycle Number One.” All firearms used in the shoot-out were collected, labeled, bagged. The process of sorting out who had shot who—and in what order—would take some time.

Finally, the curtain fell on Act One of the drama. The yellow tape was removed to allow the ill-humored senator to depart. As Henry Buford had not yet been interviewed, a state police officer was assigned to drive the powerful politician back to the BoxCar.

After Senator Davidson was seated in the black Lincoln, Henry Buford jammed the folding wheelchair into the trunk and said good-bye to his employer. He promised to get back to the ranch as soon as the cops turned him loose. The senator shook his loyal friend’s hand, thanked him for defending his person.

Responding to a nod from the politician, Moon approached the low-slung vehicle, leaned on the roof. The senator smiled up at the tribal investigator’s dark face. “Well, Charlie, this much must be said—you do know how to keep a luncheon guest from getting bored.”

The rancher shook his head. “Patch, I’m sorry about all this. It never occurred to me that those knot-heads would trespass on Columbine property, armed to the teeth. Especially in broad daylight.”

Davidson reached out to pat his friend’s arm. “Don’t give it a thought. And proceed with the business we discussed on the way over.”

The big car pulled away.

Henry Buford was seated on a cottonwood stump. As if nothing of note had interrupted his day, the BoxCar manager was paring his nails with a short-bladed folding knife.

Charlie Moon wondered whether his guest was as calm as appearances suggested. “How’re you doing, Henry?”

“Okay.” Buford wiped the glistening black blade on the cuff of his shirt. “But I need to be getting back to the BoxCar.” He squinted at a lemon-colored sun that was casting long shadows. “When d’you think these cops will get around to questioning me?”

Moon shrugged. “I don’t know. Want me to lean on ’em?”

“Nah.” He folded the blade into the handle, dropped the knife into his pocket. “But if they don’t get started soon, I may get belligerent.”

The rancher grinned. “I sure do appreciate you backing me up today. I had no idea what I was getting into with that wild bunch and—”

Buford raised a hand in protest. “Don’t mention it.” His leathery face crinkled into a smile. “Most fun I’ve had in years.”

“Well, I’d rather have been fishing.” Moon turned to survey the crowd. Miss James was on the headquarters porch, talking to a handsome young state police officer. The pretty woman was repeating her story for the third time while the dashing trooper made copious notes. When he saw the tall rancher approaching—and the look on Moon’s face—the young officer dismissed himself with a gallant tip of his hat.

The tall Ute smiled apologetically at his attractive guest. “I’ll drive you home.”

“Will they let you leave?”

“Sure. I’ve already been grilled.”

The senator’s personal assistant pulled a borrowed cotton shawl tightly around her shoulders. “I’m not ready to go back to the BoxCar just yet.” She looked south, toward a shallow basin in the valley between the mountain ranges. The pool of water could have been molten blue glass; the surface shimmered in the glow of a promised sunset. “That lake—does it have a name?”

Moon seemed not to have heard the question.

A smile played at the edge of her lips. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Sure. Soon as you tell me your name.”

She ignored this small impertinence. “Is it a very long walk to the lake?”

“About a mile.”

She looked wistfully toward the waters. “Someday, when you have the time, I hope you’ll take me out there.”

“I’ll take you now.” Someday might never come.

AS THEY
watched the waters glimmer and shimmer in the warm sunlight, a fragrant breeze moved across the surface to the shore, played with the lovely woman’s black hair.

Miss James seated herself on the white bark of a fallen aspen trunk, and began to work her long locks into a thick braid.

Charlie Moon sat down beside her. “That looks like an all-day job.”

“Not if you help me.”

And so he did. Until moonlight danced on the waters.