The Veteran (40 page)

Craig watched from deep cover. Just after midday the preacher arrived, followed by the musicians.

Another column of catering vans and the rodeo performers came through a different gate, but they were out of sight.

Shortly after one, the musicians began tuning up. Craig heard the sound and saddled up.

He turned Rosebud’s head towards the open prairie and rode round the perimeter fence until the guardhouse dropped out of sight. Then he headed for the white rails, moving from a trot to a canter. Rosebud saw the rails approaching, adjusted her stride and sailed over. The scout found himself in a large paddock, a quarter-mile from the outlying barns. A herd of prize longhorn steers grazed.

At the far side of the field Craig found the gate to the barn complex, opened it and left it that way. As he moved through the barns and across flagstoned courtyards two patrolling guards hailed him.

“You must be part of the cabaret?”

Craig stared and nodded.

“You’re in the wrong place. Go down there and you’ll see the rest of them at the back of the house.”

Craig headed down the alley, waited till they had moved on, then turned back. He headed for the music. He could not recognize the Bridal March.

At the altar Kevin Braddock stood with his best man, immaculate in white tuxedo. Eight inches shorter than his father and fifty pounds lighter, he had narrow shoulders and wide hips. Several zits, to which he was prone, adorned his cheeks, partly masked by dabs of his mother’s face powder.

Mrs. Pickett and the Braddock parents sat in the front row, separated by the aisle. At the far end of that aisle Linda Pickett appeared on the arm of her father. She was ethereally beautiful in a white silk wedding gown flown from Balenciaga in Paris. Her face was pale and set. She stared ahead with no smile.

A thousand heads turned to look as she began the walk down the aisle to the altar. Behind the rows of guests serried ranks of waiters and waitresses stood watching. Behind them appeared a lone rider.

Michael Pickett delivered his daughter to stand beside Kevin Braddock, then seated himself beside his wife. She was dabbing her eyes. The preacher raised his eyes and voice.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here this day to join this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony,” he said when the music of the march had faded. If he saw the rider facing him fifty yards down the aisle he may have been puzzled but gave no sign. A dozen waiters were nudged aside as the horse moved forward several paces. Even the dozen bodyguards round the perimeter of the lawn were staring at the couple facing the preacher.

The preacher went on.

“… into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.”

Mrs. Pickett was sobbing openly. Braddock glared across at her. The preacher was surprised to see a slow tear well from each of the bride’s eyes and flow down her cheeks. He presumed she too was overcome with joy.

“Therefore, if any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.” He raised his eyes from the text and beamed at his congregation.

“I so speak. She is betrothed to me.”

The voice was young and strong, and it carried to every corner of the lawn as the horse surged forward. Waiters were knocked flying. Two bodyguards launched themselves at the horseman. Each took a flying kick in the face and went backwards among the last two rows of guests. Men shouted, women screamed, the preacher’s mouth was a perfect O.

Rosebud moved from trot to canter to gallop in seconds. Her rider reined her back in and hauled the bridle to his left. With his right arm he reached down, encircled the slim, silk-clad waist and pulled the girl up. For a second she swung across the front of his body, then slipped behind, threw a leg over the buffalo roll, clamped her arms around him and hung on.

The horse charged past the front row, cleared the white rail fence and galloped away through the belly-high grass of the prairie beyond. The scene on the lawn degenerated into utter chaos.

The guests were all upright, screaming and shouting. The longhorn herd trotted round the corner and onto the trim grass. One of Braddock’s four men, seated far down the row from his master, ran past the preacher, drew a handgun and took careful aim at the disappearing horse. Michael Pickett let out a shout of ‘No-o-o-o’, threw himself at the gunman, seized his arm and jerked it upwards. The gun fired three shots as they wrestled.

That was enough for the congregation, and the steers. All stampeded. Chairs crumbled, salvers of lobster and crab were tossed aside to spill on the lawn. A local mayor was thrown through a pyramid of Stuart crystal and went down in an expensive shower of trash. The preacher dived under the altar, where he met the bridegroom.

Out on the main driveway two patrol cars from the local sheriff’s office were parked, with four troopers. They were there to guide traffic and had been invited in for a snack lunch. They heard the shots, glanced at each other, threw their burgers away and ran for the lawn.

At the edge of the lawn one of them cannoned into a fleeing waiter. He jerked the man upright by his white jacket.

“What the hell just happened here?” he demanded.

The other three stared open-mouthed at the bedlam. The senior deputy listened to the waiter and told one of his colleagues:

“Get back to the car and tell the sheriff we have a problem here.”

Sheriff Paul Lewis would not normally have been in his office on a Saturday afternoon, but he had paperwork he wanted to clear before starting the new week. It was twenty after two when the head of the duty deputy came round the office door.

“There’s a problem out at the Bar-T.”

He was holding a phone in his hand.

“You know, the Braddock wedding? Ed is on the line. Says the bride’s just been kidnapped.”

“Been WHAT? Put him on my line.”

The red light flashed as the transfer came through. He snatched the handset.

“Ed, Paul. What the hell are you talking about?”

He listened while his man at the ranch reported. Like all peace officers, he loathed the idea of kidnapping. For one thing it was a filthy crime, usually directed at the wives and children of the rich; for another it was a federal offence and that meant the Bureau would be all over him like a rash. In thirty years of service to Carbon County, ten of them as sheriff, he had known three takings of hostages, all resolved without fatalities, but never yet a kidnapping. He presumed a team of gangsters with fast cars, even a helicopter, were involved.

“A lone horseman? Are you out of your mind? Where did he go? ... over the fence and away across the prairie. OK, he must have hidden a car somewhere. I’ll call in some out-of-county help and block the main roads. Look, Ed, get statements from everyone who saw anything: how he got in, what he did, how he subdued the girl, how he got away. Call me back.”

He spent half an hour calling in reserves and arranging patrol cars on the main highways out of Carbon County, north, south, east and west. The Highway Patrol troopers were told to check every vehicle and every trunk. They were looking for a beautiful brunette in a white silk dress. It was just after three when Ed called back from his car at the Bar-T.

“This is getting very weird, chief. We have near twenty statements from eyewitnesses. The rider got in because everyone thought he was part of the Wild West rodeo show. He was dressed in buckskin, riding a big chestnut mare. He had a fur-trapper’s hat, a feather hanging from the back of his head and a bow.”

“A bow? What kind of a bow? Pink ribbon?”

“Not that kind of a bow, chief. A bow as in bow and arrow. It gets stranger.”

“It can’t. But go on.”

“All the witnesses say when he charged up to the altar and reached down for the girl, she reached up to him. They say she seemed to know him and wrapped her arms round him as they went over the fence. If she hadn’t she’d have fallen off and be here now.”

A huge weight lifted off the sheriff. With a bit of luck he did not have a kidnap, he had an elopement. He began to grin.

“Now are they all sure about that, Ed? He didn’t hit her, knock her cold, throw her over his saddlebow, hold her prisoner as he rode?”

“Apparently not. Mind you, he has caused an awesome amount of damage. The wedding ceremony was wrecked, the banquet pretty smashed up, the bridegroom pissed and the bride gone.”

The sheriff’s grin widened.

“Why, that’s terrible,” he said. “Do we know who he is?”

“Maybe. The bride’s father said his daughter had a kinda crush on one of those young actors they’ve had out at Fort Heritage all summer, posing as frontiersmen. You know?”

Lewis knew all about the fort. His daughter had taken his grandchildren out for a day and they had loved it.

“Anyway, she broke off her engagement to Kevin Braddock because of this. Her parents persuaded her she was crazy and the engagement resumed. They say he’s called Ben Craig.”

The deputy went back to his statement-taking, and Sheriff Lewis was about to try to contact Fort Heritage when Professor Ingles came on the line.

“This may be nothing,” he began, “but one of my young staff has quit and run. During the night.”

“Did he steal anything. Professor?”

“Well, no, not as such. He has his own horse and clothes. But he also has a rifle. I had confiscated it for the duration. He broke into the armoury and took it back.”

“What does he need it for?”

“Hunting, I hope. He’s a nice young man but a bit wild. He was born and raised in the Pry or Range. His folk seem to have been mountain people. He never even went to school.”

“Look, Professor, this could be serious. Could this young man turn dangerous?”

“Oh, I hope not.”

“What else is he carrying?”

“Well, he has a bowie knife, and a hand-axe is missing. Plus a Cheyenne bow and four arrows with flint heads.”

“He took your antiques?”

“No, he made them himself.”

The sheriff counted to five, slowly.

“Would this by chance be Ben Craig?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Just keep helping. Professor. Did he start a love affair with a pretty young schoolteacher from Billings who came out to the fort?”

He heard the academic conferring with someone in the background called Charlie.

“It seems he developed a deep affection for such a girl. He thought she accepted him, but I am informed she wrote him to break it all off. He took it badly. He even asked where and when her wedding would take place. I hope he hasn’t made a fool of himself.”

“Not quite. He’s just snatched her from the altar.”

“Oh my God.”

“Look, could he switch from horse to car?”

“Heavens, no. He can’t drive. Never been in one. He’ll stay on his beloved horse and camp out in the wild.”

“Where will he head?”

“Almost certainly south, to the Pryors. He’s hunted and trapped there all his life.”

“Thank you. Professor, you’ve been most helpful.”

He called off the roadblocks and telephoned the Carbon County helicopter pilot, asking him to get airborne and check in. Then he waited for the inevitable call from Big Bill Braddock.

Sheriff Paul Lewis was a good peace officer, unflappable, firm but kindly. He preferred to help people out rather than lock them up, but the law was the law and he had no hesitation in enforcing it.

His grandfather had been a soldier with the cavalry who had died on the plains, leaving a widow and baby son at Fort Lincoln. The war widow had married another soldier who had been posted west into Montana. His father had been raised in the state and married twice. By the first marriage in 1900 there had been two daughters. After his wife’s death he had married again and at the mature age of forty-five had sired his only son in 1920.

Sheriff Lewis was in his fifty-eighth year and would retire in two more. After that, he knew of certain lakes in Montana and Wyoming whose cut-throat trout would benefit from his personal attention.

He had not been invited to the wedding and entertained no sense of puzzlement as to why not. Four times over the years he or his men had investigated drunken brawls involving Kevin Braddock. In each case the bartenders had been well recompensed and had preferred no charges. The sheriff was pretty relaxed about young men in fist-fights, but less so when Braddock Junior beat up a bar girl who had refused his rather peculiar tastes.

The sheriff had thrown him in the slammer and would have proceeded with charges on his own, but the girl suddenly changed her mind and recalled that she had simply fallen downstairs.

There was another piece of information the sheriff had never divulged to anyone. Three years earlier he had had a call from a friend on the Helena City force. They had been at police college together.

The colleague related that his officers had raided a nightclub. It had been a drug bust. The names and addresses of all present had been taken. One was Kevin Braddock. If he had had any drugs he had got rid of his stash in time and had to be released. But the club had been exclusively gay.

The phone rang. It was Mr. Valentine, Big Bill Braddock’s personal lawyer.

“You may have heard what happened here this afternoon, Sheriff. Your deputies were present minutes later.”

“I heard not all went according to plan.”

“Please do not patronize, Sheriff Lewis. What happened was a case of brutal kidnap and the criminal must be caught.”

“I hear you. Counsellor. But I have a sheaf of statements from guests and catering staff to the effect that the young lady cooperated in mounting the horse and that she had had a love affair with this young man, the horse-rider, before. That looks to me more like an elopement.”

“Weasel words, Sheriff. If the girl had wished to break off her engagement there was nothing to stop her. This girl was snatched with physical force. The criminal committed trespass to get in here, kicked two of Mr. Braddock’s staff in the face and did an impressive amount of malicious damage to private property. Mr. Braddock intends to press charges. Will you bring this hooligan in, or shall we?”