The Threepersons Hunt

The Volvo gnashed and whined before the engine caught. He spun a little gravel getting out of the lot; turned right to follow the other car and didn’t turn his headlights on until the red taillights of the car ahead of him had disappeared over a rise in the road.

It was Will Luxan driving that car and the passenger with him was old Rufus Limita, bare-chested with something glittery hanging around his neck. It had to be ceremonial gear and it could mean there was going to be a curing ceremony. Anything that would draw those two men out together at this hour of the night implied either urgency or a need for secrecy. It could be some old woman who’d had a sudden seizure. It could be something else. Angelina had said she thought Luxan knew where Joe was.

They were hustling northeast along the main road at a steady fifty-mile clip in Luxan’s Pontiac. Watchman closed the distance to a few hundred yards and hung there. They knew he was there but Luxan wouldn’t make anything of it unless he turned off the road and found he still had a tail.

The night air had a distinct bite to it but he kept the windows wide open; it helped keep him awake. He hit a little bounce in the road and the suspension banged ominously.

Victorio would be coming out and wondering what had happened to him but it couldn’t be helped, there hadn’t been time. Whatever Victorio found could wait.

The Pontiac led him almost due north along State Highway 73 until after ten miles or so Watchman saw the brake-lights flash. He took his foot off the gas. The Pontiac made a right turn onto some sort of dirt track and crawled off through the brush, jouncing.

Watchman drove past. He stayed on the highway until he’d gone over the next hill, switched off his headlights, made a U-turn in the road and slowly drove back over the hill with his eyes slowly adjusting to the night. The moon would be down in twenty minutes or half an hour but the stars provided a fair illumination in blacks and greys.

The Pontiac had gone not more than a quarter of a mile; it wasn’t built for rough travel. He saw the taillights heaving up and down and the frequent angry blare of the brakes. Watchman parked off the side of the highway, concealing the Volvo as well as he could in the bushes.

He took the flashlight and got out of the car, not switching the torch on. He tested the thumb-strap over the pistol in his small-of-the-back holster; he didn’t want it falling out.

Then he went after the Pontiac, on foot, jogging it.

Using the car would have been too risky. He had no idea how far they had to go but once they stopped they’d be able to hear the telltale clank of that busted shock absorber. He didn’t think they’d have used the Pontiac if they had far to go along this rutted track and he knew there were no other paved roads back in here. The only real risk was that they were being clever, doing a loop that would take them back to the main highway, to evade pursuit; but it wasn’t too likely.

He was out of shape from too much sitting and he settled in to a pace somewhat slower than he would have chosen five years ago, or ten. Cross-country ru

He had the flashlight in his left hand but he didn’t use it; there was enough light. He stayed on the tufted hump between the ruts because there was less chance of turning an ankle over an exposed stone. Bunches of piñon and scrub oak went by, close enough to scrape the sides of a car; it was a Jeep trail and it probably led back to an old-fashioned farm cluster, the kind of wickiups where you’d still find horses and a buckboard wagon. Some isolated clan still living in the old way.

The thing to concentrate on was the breathing; you had to keep the engines fueled with oxygen. Once you allowed yourself to start panting you were finished. Let everything out of the lungs and then whoosh in a deep long breath, as much as the chest could contain without bursting; hold it in long enough for the oxygen to get into the lung-linings and then shove it all out and collapse the lungs and start over, long and deep and slow, four footsteps to the breath. Elbows bent, fists up at chest level. A good arm swing from shoulder to elbow. Pick up the feet because you couldn’t afford to stumble or trip, you’d lose the rhythm. Saw it in, saw it out. Count miles, not feet.

The moon was down. He couldn’t see the old Pontiac any more but he could see the reflected glow of its headlights moving across the hill crests. Going up the slope he cut his pace by a third and finally a hundred yards below the top he walked it. His legs were wobbly; he’d run about seven miles.

At the top of the hill the rutted track divided. The left fork was the one still in use but the Pontiac was below him to his right, crawling across a little valley at a pedestrian’s pace. The ruts were overgrown and washed out; Watchman crossed the skyline quickly and low and skittered down the back of the hill on his bootheels. At the point where the old wagon track leveled out he began ru

It was all a thin hunch. It could turn out to be a child with whooping cough or an old lady with the miseries. But Will Luxan was in that car.…

He touched the pistol at his spine and jogged on.

CHAPTER SIX

1.

DAWN BROUGHT him awake. He eased out from behind the juniper and had his look downhill.

The smell of burning piñon drifted up at him. He could hear the chant of the medicine song, Rufus Limita’s voice. Two or three other male voices mumbled along with him.

He had slept three hours, confident that any sudden change in the Sing would have awakened him.

He couldn’t see any of them, they were inside the wickiup. The Pontiac was parked up on top of the ridge; they had taken a narrow foot track down to the place from there. There was a Jeep station wagon beside it and that was why he had not moved in during the night; he had no way of knowing how many there were or whether they had posted sentries.

He saw no one but that didn’t mean much; in country like this it was just like the old days, the only time you saw an Indian was when he moved. Watchman studied the scene with care as light flooded across the valley, scattering the shadows.

The place had been a farm but it had gone dry with erosion. There were three wickiups in various stages of decay and behind the corral was a broken latticework which once had been the base of a windmill tower; it looked like something that had been bombed.

The wickiups faced various directions; the Navajo always built his hogan with the doorway to the east but this was not so among the Apaches. One of the wickiups was very large but part of its thatch had caved in; there was the glint of light on metal through the broken roof of this big wickiup. He had a feeling that was the Land Cruiser, concealed inside.

Watchman moved around a little, working his legs and shoulders, flexing the ache from them.

The light gained strength; shades of violet and lilac suffused the distant peaks. He was still studying the hillsides and finally he decided to take the chance that they trusted their safety to isolation and hadn’t posted a watch. On his elbows he sculled across the slope to a lower point from which he could command a clear 180-degree field of view.