Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“I hope those bastards are,” he said, patting his belt. A pancake holster was strapped to his side, the black checkered grip of an automatic pistol sticking out from it. He pulled out the gun and held it up for me to see. “Have I shown you this beauty? It’s a German-made nine millimeter. A Sig Sauer.”

The gun was flat black, with a boxlike slide.

“This’ll take care of those freeloading troublemakers,” he said, re-holstering the weapon. “They mess with me and they won’t be around to get their free pickup truck from the government next year.”

He gave me a fractional nod and kicked the stallion’s sides, taking off at a fast gallop. As I watched him go, I thought that a hundred years ago he would have ridden with the Seventh Cavalry to fight the Indians. Now he carried a German-made automatic and used a high-priced lawyer to maintain a holding pattern in a courtroom where the legality of a disputed 1876 treaty was endlessly debated.

Bolo trotted the rest of the way in, as if he’d understood McKitrick’s disparaging remarks. When I dismounted, I patted him reassuringly. As I walked him into the trailer, Carol strolled out of the big white house. She was wearing a tan blouse, tight jeans, and a handsomely sculpted pair of boots.

“Hi, cowboy,” she said as she got close. I put out my arms to embrace her, but she took a quick step backwards. “Not till you shower.”

“Is that any way to talk to your betrothed?”

“Obviously you haven’t smelled yourself lately,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. “Want to shower upstairs?” she asked coyly.

“I can’t,” I said. “Got to get back to the lab. And Uncle Dede needs me to help out at the shop tonight.”

“Oh, okay,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come by the shop later and let you satisfy my craving for ice cream.”

“Craving? You’re not pregnant, are you?”

Giggling, she shook her head. “No. Not yet, anyway. But I’ll let you know if it happens.”

“In that case, I think it’s totally appropriate for the beautiful heiress to buy the starving assistant professor the ice cream.”

“We’ll see,” she said alluringly as she turned and walked away with an exaggerated wiggle. “If you’re good.”

“I thought I was always good,” I called after her as I got into the Jeep.

Pulling out onto the main highway, I made the trip back to Pueblo in a fast ten minutes. I put Bolo in his stall in the barn at my uncle’s house and took a quick shower. With the desert dust washed out of my hair, I felt a bit more presentable. When I pulled into the parking lot of Uncle Dede’s gun shop, I noticed a dilapidated old pickup in the spot next to the door. There was something vaguely familiar about it. I pushed open the door and stepped into the air-conditioned comfort. Uncle Dede was sitting with his feet up on the counter and a cup of coffee in his hand. He showed me his lopsided grin as he straightened up.

“About damn time you got here,” he chided.

“I had to wash the desert dirt off me,” I said. “Whose pickup is that outside?”

“Oh, that’s Sonny’s,” Uncle Dede said. “He’s drifted back into town and stopped in. Wants to stay for a while this time and asked me for a job.”

I raised my eyebrows. Uncle Dede and Sonny Lord had been friends for over thirty years. Sonny had been a local legend around these parts, having won the gold buckle on the rodeo circuit twenty-five years ago. Unfortunately, he’d spent much of the intervening time trying to crawl out of a bottle.

“What’d you tell him?” I asked.

Uncle Dede took a sip of his coffee. “I told him to put in applications over at the stables and the stores first,” he said. “But I guess I’ll carry him till he finds something better, or moves on again.”

“The latter’s probably more likely,” I said, withholding further comment on my uncle’s friend. Sonny’d been drifting back to Pueblo like a migrating falcon for as long as I could remember. He’d come back for a while and straighten up, then fall back off the wagon and vanish for a few more years. Usually he would work the rodeo circuit. But not as a champion anymore. Now he was only the clown or cleanup man.

“He says he’s taken the oath,” Uncle Dede said solemnly.

“Haven’t we both heard that one before?” I said sceptically.

“Heard what?” Sonny said, slipping up behind me. I turned, somewhat startled. He was tall and angular, and looked better than the last time I’d seen him. The grip of his rawhide hand felt strong and sure. He strolled over to the counter as Uncle Dede handed him a fresh cup of coffee. Despite all his problems with the bottle, Sonny still had a picturesque look about him. Sort of like Gary Cooper. And like Coop, he had a way with the ladies. The tales about his romantic prowess were virtually legendary. He nodded thanks to Uncle Dede for the coffee and struck a wooden kitchen match to light up a cigarette. Removing his hat, he sat down on a stack of boxes and swallowed some of the dark brew.

“Ah... Just the way I like it,” he said. “Nice and hot, just like a good woman.”

Uncle Dede handed a second cup to me, and I sat across from them and listened to their stories. It was hard not to like Sonny when you sat listening to him spinning a yarn. After about twenty minutes there was a lull in the conversation.

“Like I was telling Dede, Rick,” Sonny said. “I done took the oath. And this time I intend on keeping it.”

I nodded, swallowing the last bit of my coffee.

“I don’t blame you for being doubtful,” he said. “But there’s just one way for me to prove it. Say, you still going out with that pretty little gal Carol?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re engaged.”

“Well, congratulations,” he said, extending his hand. “You set the date yet?”

“No, that’s still a ways off,” I told him. “I gotta finish school first.”

“She’s gonna inherit a lotta money, I hear,” Sonny said slowly.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering how he knew so much. When she turned twenty-five, Carol would inherit control of the trust fund that had been set up in her mother’s will. I think it stuck in McKitrick’s craw that she’d be able to do what she wanted then. In the meantime, he could pretty much call the shots.

I pulled out my wallet and showed Sonny a snapshot of Carol and me. He grabbed the plastic case and paged through the folders, stopping when he found one of Carol’s graduation pictures.

“She sure is pretty,” he said, staring at the picture and shaking his head. Then, handing the wallet back to me: “You sure are a lucky man.”

“Thanks.”

“How you get along with old man McKitrick?” he asked.

“How does anyone get along with him?” I joked. At first McKitrick sort of approved of me. After all, I was white and pursuing a Ph.D. in a respectable field. But we’d had a minor falling out when I rejected a job with his company in favor of a teaching position at the university that would enable me to finish up my geology degree.

“I just saw him a little while ago.” I told Sonny. I related the brief encounter in the desert, and told them about his comment regarding the Indians.

“Damn,” Uncle Dede said. “I sold him that Sig Sauer. I hope he don’t go shooting nobody with it.”

“If he does, it better be in self-defense,” I said.

We chatted for about five minutes more. Long enough for Sonny to gulp down the rest of his coffee. He seemed suddenly agitated and said he had to take off. After he’d left I asked Uncle Dede if he really thought that Sonny had straightened himself out.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “He’s looking better than I’ve seen him in a long time, but it’s sorta like putting a cougar in a pen. He might be dying on the inside.”