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“Monument Rock Ranch. It’s a tourist outfit—they run horseback pack trips and hunting safaris back into the mountains.”
“Safaris?”
“Mountain elk, antelope, mountain lions.”
“I gather you don’t approve.”
“Hunting a near-extinct animal with a telescope-sighted high-power rifle isn’t what I call a sport.”
“I see. What do you call it?”
Watchman flicked him a glance. “I guess you like to hunt, don’t you.”
“I’ve hunted deer a few times. In New Jersey.”
“That where you come from?”
“Leonia, New Jersey. You’d be surprised the deer population back there. If it wasn’t for the hunting season the damn deer would eat up every farm crop in the state.”
There was no point in starting an argument and Watchman thought he had let the subject die, but Vickers revived it: “I like venison, you see.”
“That’s more than you can say for most of the customers they get up here.”
“I get you. The type that wants a head of antlers to hang over the fireplace,”
“I don’t even think most of them care about that. They just like to shoot at something that moves.”
“Well that’s a primitive instinct in all of us, isn’t it,” Vickers said. “Most people work behind a desk all year and don’t get much chance to act like natural men. I guess that’s a pet theory of mine—man is a hunter-killer by nature, the paleontologists have proved that.”
Watchman tried to make his voice sound friendly. “Out here we get plenty of anthropologists full of theories about the nature of primitive man.”
“I didn’t mean to step on any sore corns.”
“Forget it.”
“A little bit to the right now. Try guiding on that sawtooth peak.” Vickers buried himself in the map. The jeep rattled and bounced; Watchman squinted, peering through the bad light for gopher holes and sudden cutbanks.
There was an X penciled on the map and Vickers’ fingertip was inching closer to it. Westward, over Watchman’s left shoulder, the storm obscured almost half the sky and great arms of cloud shot forward from its crest. The wind bucketed the canvas sides and top of the jeep. Vickers reached back for one of the walkie-talkies and got it going by his ear. “Cu
Watchman heard it squawk faintly and Vickers said, “Fine, I’m just testing it. Any word?”
There was more squawking and Vickers made a face. When he handed the instrument back to Stevens he said, “They’ve recalled the search planes on account of the storm. No sign of the fugitives.”
“Not likely there would be. If they’re on foot they’d hear an airplane coming—plenty of time to hide.”
“I thought they might be able to see tracks from the air. Footprints.”
“In this hardpan?”
“Well you know the country better than I do.” Vickers said it in a conciliatory voice but it was evident he felt stung by the mild reproof.
5
Far off in the eastward distance an Air Force jet made a sound like slowly ripping cloth. The silent engine of the jeep made a pinging sound, heat contraction in the cold air. Watchman stood rocking heel-to-toe, considering the crippled remains of the airplane. The landing gear had collapsed on one side and it left one wing sticking up in the air at a high angle. The wind whipped at dried remains of foam where they had used the pressurized extinguisher to put out a fire—the starboard engine nacelle was blackened along half its length. Vickers had already got on the walkie-talkie and directed Cu
Vickers came up from the jeep, new shoes creaking and squealing, and stood restlessly beside Watchman, bouncing on his arches like an athlete waiting to compete. After a while he cupped both hands around a match and hunched his shoulders to light a cigarette, blew smoke u
“You think they pla
Buck Stevens, ten feet away, got up from his haunches and came over. “What do you mean?”
“Look at it this way,” the FBI man said. “You get five or six professionals together and you lay out a plan to rob a bank. The bank itself is a pushover but there’s a hitch, there always. is—this time it’s the getaway route. Only one highway through town. So you lick that problem by using an airplane to make your getaway. But you also know the police are going to figure out that you used an airplane. You’re not going to have much more than half an hour before everybody in three states starts hunting for you in the sky. Radar, search planes, ground spotters—an airplane’s a very easy thing to spot and a very hard thing to hide, as long as it’s in the air.”
Buck Stevens said, “You’re saying they landed here on purpose. They pla
“It’s possible. Or take another possibility. Say this wasn’t the getaway plane at all.”
Stevens said, “No other planes have been reported missing. It’d be too coincidental.”
“Not if our bank robbers planted it here deliberately. Look, they knew we’d be looking for an airplane. So they’ve given us one. It’s possible they hired some out-of-work stunt pilot in California to crash-land here and make it look as if he had an engine fire. That fire could have been set after the plane landed, you know. Then the pilot walked away, knowing we’d find him sometime soon but knowing he wasn’t going to be in too much trouble—he was hired to do this, he doesn’t know any more than that. In the meantime while we’re chasing the son of a bitch the real fugitives are halfway to Mexico.”
Watchman said, “It’s a mite fanciful.”
“Sure it is. The whole caper showed imagination—making them all take off their pants.”
“I suppose you’ve just told Jace Cu
“That’s right. I admit it’s a long shot but it’s worth trying.” The polite smile rode smugly on Vickers’ satisfied face.
“It’s a cute theory,” Watchman said. “There’s only one hole in it”
Vickers’ smile coagulated. “Such as?”
“The way I read the signs, four or five men walked away from this plane. Probably five.”
6
The smile disappeared completely and instantly. Cigarette smoke trailed slowly from Vickers’ mouth and nostrils and whipped away in the cool wind. He said slowly, “You let me go all the way through with it before you stepped on it.”
“I always like to let a man say what’s on his mind.”
“I don’t like being made fun of, Trooper.”
“It’s an old habit. Hang around and you’ll get used to it.”
Buck Stevens said, “Wait, Sam.”
Vickers threw his cigarette down and ground it out under his toe, making the movement fierce and violent. “Trooper, let’s grant you’re clever, in your toe-in-the-dust way. Let’s grant you’ve got a sense of humor. I’ve seen all the movies where the Westerners let the dudes make jackasses out of themselves—maybe you think I’m that kind of dude. I’ve only been out here a few weeks, I’ve got things to learn. All right; but I’m a quick study and if I wasn’t capable of handling my job the Bureau would have replaced me with somebody who was.”