Relentless

“Never mind the recitation. I know my rights.”

“Then you’ve been through this before?”

Walker had turned sullen. “Nuts. I look at television.” Mrs. Lansford got up to take him his food and stayed there beside him, making a point of it, showing Vickers her defiance.

Walker ate slowly with the concentration of a monk attending his breviary. Watchman thought it was because Walker was in no frame of mind to take anything for granted just now: the feel and sight and taste of each morsel was reassurance that he was alive.

Vickers said, “You have information we need, Walker. There are four men up there—how are they armed? What are their plans?”

“I don’t know—I’m not sure. Things are screwed up, you know?”

“I won’t accept that for an answer.”

“You know what it’s like when you wake up and you know you’ve had a bad dream but you can’t remember the details?”

It had a counterfeit sound but Watchman thought it was probably true; you didn’t always remember clearly things that happened in panic. Walker said, “I’m just not thinking straight. It’s not that I’m trying to hide anthing.” He was no longer sullen; he wasn’t angry at all. His expression had the false serenity of withdrawal.

Vickers said, “Lansford said they’d taken some rifles. Are they all armed with rifles?”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

Mrs. Lansford’s eyes flashed. “Can’t you leave him alone?”

“Don’t waste your pity on this man, Mrs. Lansford.”

“He saved my life.”

“If it hadn’t been for him and his friends your life wouldn’t have needed saving.” Vickers had a nice neat way of drawing lines and putting people on one side or the other. Watchman saw the effect it had on Walker: it closed him up and he quit talking.

Vickers had a veneer of competent sophistication but underneath he was clumsy, insensitive. He let arrogance take the place of understanding. It wasn’t hard to guess the kind of mistake he must have made that had got him exiled to the boondocks; it was a wonder the Bureau had kept him on at all.

Vickers said, “I had a look in your pockets. You were their pilot.”

“Aeah.”

“The name on the license isn’t Walker.”

“Is that a fact.”

“Clamming up now won’t do your case any good, friend.”

“What will?”

“I will,” Mrs. Lansford said. “I’ll testify for him.”

Vickers said, “You’re not thinking straight. Think about the police officer they murdered in your house. Think about the bank guard they shotgu

“Walker didn’t kill them.”

“He did in the eyes of the law.” Vickers got to his feet “I can see he’s not in a mood to cooperate. That’ll go in my report. Now I suggest we saddle up and move in.”

Watchman was picking up the blankets he had slept in. He walked around the fire and draped the blankets around Walker’s shoulders. The pilot looked up at him, showing thanks, and murmured, “The Major and Baraclough. You want to look out. You’re Indian, aren’t you?”

What did that have to do with anything? “Yes.”

“Then maybe you know a little something about snares and traps and ambushes. But I’ll tell you this—Hargit maybe knows more than you do. And Baraclough. Maybe they’re better Indians than you are. You want to look out.”

Vickers, listening close, made a scoffing sound. “Don’t let them assume monolithic proportions, Trooper. They’re just soldiers gone bad.”

Walker looked up at him. “You go on thinking that way and I won’t have to worry about what you put in your report because you won’t live to write it.”

“All right, they’ve thrown a scare into you. But you’re imagining things. They’re on the run—they’re just as scared as you are.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Walker said.

Mrs. Lansford said, “He’s right.” She said it to Watchman as if she knew there was no point talking to the FBI agent. Vickers had a genius for tuning out what he didn’t want to hear.

Vickers was lifting his saddle off the lean-to. “Come on, Trooper. Your partner can stay here and watch the prisoner and look after Mrs. Lansford.”

“They can look after themselves,” Watchman said. “We’ll need Buck with us.”

“And let this man make a run for it as soon as we’re out of earshot? You know damn well Mrs. Lansford wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him. Hell she’d probably go with him.”

Mrs. Lansford’s face reddened; she didn’t speak. Walker said drily, “You could always handcuff me to a tree.”

“I thought of it,” Vickers said. “But there’s a chance we might not come back.”

“You mean a chance of getting killed.”

“Yes.” Vickers was stubborn about rules, about going by the book. It wasn’t his sense of humanity, it was his sense of reputation. It wouldn’t look good in his obituary to have it pointed out that he had left an unattended prisoner chained to a tree to die in a blizzard.

Watchman shook his head. “Trooper Stevens is under my orders, not yours. He comes with me. You can come or stay, that’s up to you.”

“I don’t like your implication, Trooper.”

“I’ll spell it out in short words then. I trust Buck not to make mistakes up here. He grew up in the Arizona hill country—he’s been hunting out here since he was ten years old. When his daddy gave him two cartridges he was supposed to bring back two cottontails and he did it.”

He caught the grin behind Stevens’ hand. Stevens didn’t make any comment but when Vickers replied, Stevens’ eyes sought inspiration from the sky: Good God.

“I’ve done my share of game hunting,” Vickers said. “I’ve told you that.”

“In New Jersey?” Watchman tried hard to keep the acid out of his voice. “You fellows have a very big crime-busting reputation and it’s probably deserved, mostly, but can you navigate these mountains in this weather? Can you make sense out of sign? Spot an ambush in the woods? You heard Walker, he knows these men. Hargit may be a better Indian than I am; he’s bound to be a lot better Indian than you are.”

Stevens drawled, “Better red than dead, Mr. Vickers.” His grin was amiable.

Vickers flashed an irritable glance toward the rookie. “Next you’re going to tell me he can smell a white man in a blizzard.”

Watchman said, “I also grunt and wear feathers and consider myself a member of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Now if we’re through with the ethnic discussions let’s get these horses saddled.”

4

Helping him rig the horses, Buck Stevens said mildly in a voice too low to reach Vickers, “And I don’t even have Medicare. Amigo, one of these days they’re going to come and get you with a butterfly net. I hope they don’t write this up as kemo sabe’s folly.”

“What’s the matter, white man, you fresh out of silver bullets?”

“Sam, the first time I ever laid eyes on you I knew you’d be one of those guys who had to do everything the hard way. You know damn well that story about me and the two cartridges and the two rabbits was as phony as a plastic flower. I wouldn’t be surprised if old Vickers is a hell of a lot better at it than I am.”

“The difference being, I can depend on you at my back.”

“You really think he’d cut out on you?”

Watchman shrugged. He doubted Vickers was a coward but he had no confidence in Vickers’ private idea of priorities. When you were in the middle of a play you didn’t want your pass receiver to change his mind and head for the wrong end of the field. Vickers might get that sort of wild-hair notion; Buck Stevens wouldn’t. He could be depended on to be where he said he’d be, when he said he’d be there, and to stay there until told to move.

Stevens smoothed the saddle blanket and heaved the saddle up. “You know Walker won’t be the only one gets reamed out in that report of his. The way you keep needling him you could end up unemployed.”

“I don’t want to lose these jokers on his account.”

“You’re making it into a crusade.”