Time to Hunt Part 31

It began when Bob, at the insistence of a good young man who reminded him a bit of his wife's first husband, Donny Fenn, had urged him to return to Arkansas to look into the matter of the death of Earl Swagger, his father, in 1955. Things got complicated and hairy fast; some people tried to stop him and he had to shoot back. No indictments were ever handed down as no physical evidence could be located and n.o.body in Polk County would talk to outsiders. But some rag had gotten wind of it, linked him to another set of events that took place a few years before that, and taken a picture of him and his wife, Julie, as they'd walked out of church back in Arizona some months later. He woke up the next Wednesday to discover that he was AMERICA'S DEADLIEST MAN AMERICA'S DEADLIEST MAN and that he had and that he had STRUCK AGAIN STRUCK AGAIN. Wherever ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger hangs his hat, men die, it pointed out, relating his presence to a roadside shootout that left ten men, all felons, dead, and the mysterious deaths of three men, including an ex-Army sniper, in the remote forest, and recalling that some years earlier he had briefly been a famous suspect in the shooting of a Salvadorian archbishop in New Orleans, until the government dropped the charges for reasons that were to this day unclear. Why, he had even married the widow of a Vietnam buddy, the paper reported.

Time and and Newsweek Newsweek picked it up and for a few weeks there, Bob had the worst kind of fame his country could offer: he was hounded by reporters and cameras wherever he went. It seemed many people thought he held the keys to a fortune, that he knew things, that he was glamorous, s.e.xy, a natural-born killer, which, by some odd current loose in America, made him, in the argot, "hot." picked it up and for a few weeks there, Bob had the worst kind of fame his country could offer: he was hounded by reporters and cameras wherever he went. It seemed many people thought he held the keys to a fortune, that he knew things, that he was glamorous, s.e.xy, a natural-born killer, which, by some odd current loose in America, made him, in the argot, "hot."

So here he was, on a ranch that was owned by his wife's father's estate as an investment property, living essentially on charity, without a penny to his name except for a piddling pension and no way of making one. The future was unsettled and dark; the peace and quiet and good living he had achieved seemed all gone. Where am I going to get the money? My pension ain't enough, by a d.a.m.n sight Where am I going to get the money? My pension ain't enough, by a d.a.m.n sight. Though it had never been expressed, he had become convinced that his wife secretly wished he'd do something with the one a.s.set he owned, his "story," which many people believed was worth millions.

He walked toward the barn, watching the sun just begin to smear the sky over the mountains. The black dogs came upon him and overpowered him halfway between the structures. That was his name for them: the sense that he was a worthless failure, that everything he touched turned to s.h.i.t, that his presence hurt the two people he cared about the most, that everything he'd done had been a mistake, every decision wrong, and anybody who'd gone along with him had ended up dead.

The dogs came fast and hard. They got their teeth into him good, and in seconds, he was no longer in the barnyard under the mountains where a red sun was about to pull itself up and light the world with the hope of a new day, but in some other, dank, foul place, where his own failures seemed the most prominent landform, and the only mercy was bourbon.

"Well, Mister, nice of you to join us," called Julie.

He looked at his wife, at her smile, which continued to dazzle him if even now there seemed a layer of fear behind it. He had seen her first on a cellophane-wrapped photograph that a young man had carried in his boonie cap in Vietnam, and maybe he had fallen in love with her in that second. Or maybe he fell in love with her the second the young man died and she was the only part of him still alive. Still, it took long years, many of them soaked in bourbon, before he'd finally met her and, by the odd twists that his life seemed always to take, ended up being the lucky jerk she took as her second husband. Yet now ... was it falling apart on him?

"Daddy, Daddy," yelled Nikki, eight, running to meet him. She grabbed his blue-jeaned leg.

"Howdy, honey, how's my girl this morning?"

"Oh, Daddy, you know. We're going to ride up to Widow's Pa.s.s and watch the sun come across the valley."

"We do that every every morning. Maybe we ought to find a new place." morning. Maybe we ought to find a new place."

"Honey," said Julie. "She loves that view."

"I'm only saying," Bob said, "it might be nice to change. Forget it. It don't mean a thing."

He had more edge in his voice than he'd meant. Where had it come from? Julie shot him a hurt look at his harsh words, and he thought, Well, that's fine, I deserve that, and he had himself in control, everything was fine, he was fine, it was- "I do get tired of riding the same G.o.dd.a.m.n place every G.o.dd.a.m.n morning. You know, there are other other places to ride." places to ride."

"All right, Bob," she said.

"I mean, we can ride there, no problem. Is that where you want to ride, sweetie? If that's where you want to ride, that's fine."

"I don't care, Daddy."

"Good. That's where we'll ride."

Who was talking? He was talking. Why was he so mad? Where was this coming from? What was going on?

But then he had himself back and he was fine again and it would be- "And why the h.e.l.l is she riding English? You want her to be some fancy person? You want her to go to little shows where she wears some red jacket and helmet and jumps over fences and all the f.a.gs clap and the rich people come and drink champagne, and she learns her old man, who don't talk so good and swears a mite, he ain't up to them folks who ride English, he's just an old farm boy from s.h.i.t-apple Arkansas? Is that what you want?"

He was yelling. It had come on so fast, so ugly, it had just blown in, a squall of killing anger. Why was he so mad these days? It made him sick.

"Bob," his wife, Julie, said with slow, fake sweetness, "I just want to widen her horizons. Open up some possibilities."

"Daddy, I like like English. It's more leg than stirrup; it doesn't hurt the horse." English. It's more leg than stirrup; it doesn't hurt the horse."

"Well, I don't know nothing about English. I'm just a cop's kid from Hick Town, Arkansas, and I didn't go to no college, I went into the Marine Corps. n.o.body ever gave me nothing. When I see her riding like that-"

He bellowed for a while, as Julie got smaller and smaller, and Nikki began to cry and his hip hurt and his head ached and finally Junior spooked.

"Oh, f.u.c.k it!" he said. "What the h.e.l.l difference does it make?" and stormed back to the house.

He'd left the TV on, and sat before it, nursing his fury, angered by the terrible unfairness of it all. Why couldn't he support his family? What could he have done different? What could he do?

After a bit, he turned and watched the two of them ride out through the fence and head up toward Widow's Pa.s.s.

Good, that was fine. They could do that. He was better off alone. He knew where he wanted to go. He stood, raging with fury, and though it was early, turned and walked to the cellar door, went down into it. He'd meant to set up a shop here, where he could reload for next hunting season and work out some ideas he had for wildcat cartridges, new ways to get more pop out of some old standards. But somehow he'd never found the energy; he didn't know how long they'd be here, he didn't know if- He went instead to the workbench, where a previous occupant had left a set of old, rusty tools and nails and such, and reached around to grab what was stashed there. It was a bottle, a pint of Jim Beam, subtly curved like a Claymore, with its black label and white printing.

The bottle had weight and solidarity to it-it felt serious, like a gun. He hefted it, went to the steps and sat down. The cellar smelled of damp and rot, for this was wet country, snowy in the winter and ripe for floods in the spring. He'd been so long in dry country, this all seemed new. Its smell was unpleasant: mildew, perpetual moisture.

He held the bottle in his hand, examined it carefully. Shifting it ever so slightly sent the cargo inside sloshing this way and that, like the sea at China Beach, where he'd gone on R&R one time or another, but he couldn't say on which of his three tours.

His hand closed around the cap of the bottle, its seal still pristine. Just the slightest twist of his hand could open it, much less strength than that required to kill a man with a rifle, which he had done so many times.

He looked carefully at the thing. He waggled it just a bit, feeling the slosh of the fluid. Its brownness was clear and b.u.t.terscotchy; it beckoned him onward.

Yes, do it. One sip, just to take the edge off, to make the bad pictures go away, blunt the worries about money and prying reporters and TV cameras, to retreat to some sacred, private land of blur and wobble and laughter, where only good times are remembered.

Drink to the lost. Drink to the boys. Drink to the dead boys of Vietnam, drink to poor Donny. Drink to what happened to Donny and how Donny haunted him, how he had married Donny's wife and fathered Donny's child and done what could be done to resurrect Donny, to keep Donny still on this earth.

Yes, drink to Donny, and all the boys killed before their time for Veet Nam to stop commu-nism.

Oh, how the bottle called him.

f.u.c.k this, he thought.

I have a wife and a daughter and they are out on the range without me, and so I had best get to them. That is one thing left I can do.

He put the bottle back and climbed the stairs. His hip hurt, but what the f.u.c.k. He headed for the barn, his horse, and his wife and daughter.

CHAPTER T TWENTY-SIX.

They rode up through the meadow, found the track through the pines and followed that, always trending upward. The air was cool, though not really cold, and the sun's presence in the east, over the mountains, gave the prospect of warmth.

Julie nuzzled her coat closer, tried to cleanse her thoughts of trouble and put her anger at her husband and what had happened to their life behind her. Her daughter, the better rider, galloped ahead merrily, the ugliness of the scene in the barn seemingly forgotten. Nikki rode so well; she had a gift for it, a natural affinity for the horses, and was never happier than when she was out in the barn with the animals, tending them, feeding them, washing them.

But Nikki's happiness was also somewhat illusory. As they neared the treeline and the ride across the high desert toward Widow's Pa.s.s and the trip to overlook the far valley, she drifted back to her mother.

"Mommy," she said, "is Daddy sick?"

"Yes, he is," said Julie.

"Is he going to be all right?"

"Your father is as strong as ten horses and he has faced and beaten many enemies in his long and hard life. He'll beat this one, too."

"What is it, Mommy?" Nikki asked.

"It's a terrible disease called post-traumatic stress disorder. It has to do with the war he was in. He was in heavy fighting and many of his very close friends were killed. He was strong enough to put that behind him and build us a very fine and happy life. But sometimes there are things that just can't be kept away. It's like a little black dog has escaped from the secret part of his brain and come out. It barks, it bites, it attacks. His old wounds are hurting, but also his memory keeps recalling things he thought it had forgotten. He has trouble sleeping. He is angry all the time and doesn't know why. He loves you very, very much, though. No matter what happens and how he acts, he loves you very much."

"I hope he's all right."

"He will be. He needs our help, though, and he needs the help of a doctor or something. He'll understand that eventually and get some help, and then he'll be better again. But you know what a stubborn man he is."

The two rode on in silence.

"I don't like it when he yells at you. It scares me."

"He's not really yelling at me, honey. He's yelling at the men who killed his friends and the men who sent him over there to fight that war and then walked away from it. He's yelling for all the poor boys who got killed and never came back to the lives they deserved and were forgotten."

"He loves you, Mommy."

"I know he does, honey. But sometimes that's not enough."

"He'll be all right."

"I believe he will be, too. He needs our help, but he needs mostly to help himself, get some medication, find a way to take advantage of his very special skills and knowledge."

"I can ride Western. I don't mind."

"I know. It's not about that, really. It's about how mad he is at things he can't stop. We just have to love him and hope that he sees how important it is to get some help."

They were out of the trees. The high chaparral was desolate, rock strewn, cl.u.s.tered with primitive forms of vegetation. Ahead, in the shadow of the snowcaps, the cut in the earth between mountains that was called Widow's Pa.s.s beckoned, and beyond it, after a course on a shelf of dirty rock and broken slope, a precipice from which could be seen as much beauty as has been put on earth. Julie loved it and so did Nikki. Bob loved it too. They rode here nearly every morning; it got the day off to a fine start.

"Oh, here we go, baby. Be careful."

The track was tricky, and Julie was speaking more to herself than to her nimble daughter or to her daughter's horse, the better athlete of the two animals.

She felt the tension come into her; this was delicate work and she wished her husband were here. How had they ended up like this?

Nikki laughed.

When the noise came, it didn't shock or surprise the sniper. He had waited in the dawn for targets before. He knew it had to come, sooner or later, and it did. It didn't fill him with doubt or regret or anything. It simply meant: time to work.

The noise was a peal of laughter, girlish and bright. It bounced off the stone walls of the canyon, from the shadow of a draw onto this high plain from close to a thousand yards off, whizzing through the thin air.

The sniper wiggled his fingers, finding the warmth in them. His concentration cranked up a notch or so. He pulled the rifle to him in a fluid motion, well practiced from hundreds of thousands of shots in practice or on missions.

Its stock rose naturally to his cheek as he pulled it in, and as one hand flew to the comb, the other set up beneath the forearm, taking the weight of his slightly lifted body, building a bone bridge to the stone below. He found the spot weld, the one placement of cheek to stock where the scope relief would be perfect and the circle of the scope would throw up its image as brightly as a movie screen. He c.o.c.ked one knee halfway up toward his torso to build a muscular tension into his position, as he had been trained to do.

The child. The woman. The man.

"Hey, there!"

She turned at the voice to see her husband riding toward her and her heart soared.

But then it subsided: it was not Bob Lee Swagger but the neighboring rancher, an older widower named Dade Fellows, another tan, tall, leathery coot, on a chestnut roan he controlled exquisitely.

"Mr. Fellows!"

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Swagger. How're you this morning?"

"Well, we're just fine."

"h.e.l.lo there, honey."

"Hi, Dade," said Nikki. Dade was an occasional hanger-on at the ranch, welcome for his knowledge of the area, his sure way with animals and guns.

"Y'all haven't seen a dogie or two up this way? My fence is down and I'm a little short. They're so stupid, they might have come this way."

"No, it's been completely quiet. We're riding through the pa.s.s to see the sun come across the valley."

"That is a sight, isn't it?"

"Would you care to join us?"

"Well, ma'am, I've got a full day and I'd like to find my baby cows. But, h.e.l.l, why not? I ain't seen the sun rise in quite a while. I'm up too early."

"You work too hard, Mr. Fellows. You should slow down."

"If I slow down, I might notice how old I got," he laughed, "and what a shock that would be! Okay, there, Nikki, you lead the way. I'll follow your mother.

Nimble Nikki took her big chestnut along the climbing path, and it rose between the narrow canyon walls until they seemed to swallow her. Then she sunk into shadow where the pa.s.s was really deep. Julie was close behind, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw her daughter break clear, into the light. At the end of the enfilade was a shelf of land that ran along the mountainside for half a mile, gently trending upward, and then it reached a vantage point on the far valley.

Nikki laughed at the freedom she felt when she emerged, and in a second had freed her horse to find its own pace; it preferred speed and began to gallop. A fear rose in Julie's heart; she could never catch the girl, nor stay up with her if she had to, and she felt the urge to call out, but suppressed it as pointless, for there was no stopping Nikki, a natural-born hero like her father. The eight-year-old galloped ahead, the horse's bounding grace eating up the distance to the vantage point.

Julie then came into the light and saw that, safely, Nikki had slowed to a walk as she neared the precipice. She turned back and called, "Come on, Mr. Fellows! You'll miss it."

"I'm coming, ma'am," he yelled back at her.

She cantered ahead, feeling the rise of the mountains on either side but also the freedom of the open s.p.a.ce ahead of her. Its beauty lightened her burden and the mountains looked down solemn and dignified and implacable. She approached Nikki, even as she heard Fellows coming up behind her, driving his horse a bit harder.

"Look, Mommy!" Nikki cried, holding her horse tight between her strong thighs, leaning forward and pointing out.

Here, there was no downslope beyond the edge, just sheer drop, which afforded a vista of the valley beyond, the ridge of mountains beyond that as the sun crested them. The valley was green and undulating, thatched with pines, yet also open enough to show off, sparkling in the new sun, its creeks and streams. Across the way there was a falls, a spume of white feathery water that cascaded down a far cliff. Under the cloudless sky and in the pale power of the not yet fully risen sun, it had a kind of storybook quality to it that was, even if you'd seen it a hundred-odd times, breathtaking.

"Ain't that something?" said Fellows. "That is the true West, the one they write about, yes, sir."

Swagger had aged, as all men do, even as the sniper himself had aged. But he was still lean and watchful and there was a rifle in the scabbard under his saddle. He looked dangerous, like a special man who would never panic, who would react fast and shoot straight, which is exactly what he was. His eyes darted about under the hood of his cowboy hat. He rode like a gifted athlete, almost one with the animal, controlling it unconsciously with his thighs while his eyes scanned for signs of aggression.

He would not see the sniper. The sniper was too far out, the hide too carefully camouflaged, the spot chosen to put the sun in the victim's eyes at this hour so that he'd see only dazzle and blur if he looked.

The crosshairs rode up to Swagger, and stayed with the man as he galloped along, finding the same rhythm in the cadences, finding the same up-down plunge of the animal. The shooter's finger caressed the trigger, felt absorbed by its beckoning softness, but he did not fire. He knew the range perfectly: 742 meters.