Steven Havill: Out of Season

I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It would have been almost impossible for Johnny Boyd to beat us to the ranch coming in from the county road to the east. That meant, with just a bit of luck, that we’d reach the ranch before he did, or before the two officers on his tail did. That was the only comforting thought just then.

We slid into the Boyds’ front yard, and the billows of dust drifted off like great ghosts, illuminated by the single arc light.

A figure materialized on the front step and before I could make out who it was, Estelle said, “Maxine.” The woman bustled across toward us, and I pulled myself out of the car. I could hear the roar of vehicle engines in the distance.

“Maxine,” I said, and she surprised me by catching me by both arms as if she wanted to be sure I would stay rooted in place. “Where’s Edwin?” I asked. “Did he come here?”

“Not five minutes ago,” she wailed, and then the words came out in a flood. “He’s so upset, and he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, just that he was in awful trouble somehow, something about Dick Finnegan being killed in town. And then he left. I’ve been trying and trying to get ahold of Johnny, but I don’t know where he is. And then I thought I should call Charlotte Finnegan…but I just couldn’t. Not until I knew for sure. I was just on the telephone with your office when I saw you drive in. Oh, Sheriff…”

“Where did Edwin go, do you know?” Estelle asked, her voice warm and gentle.

Maxine shook her head. “He just kept saying, ‘They’ll be along soon. They’ll be along.’ He didn’t say who. And when I tried to make sense out of what he was saying, he just said, ‘I’ve killed Dick Finnegan. They’ll be along directly. They know where I’ll be.’ What does all this mean, Sheriff?”

I didn’t try to shake loose from her grip, but I turned my head as Johnny Boyd’s pickup truck rounded the corner below the barn. “Which way did Edwin go, Maxine?”

“Oh, thank God he’s back,” she said, ignoring my question.

The pickup truck came in much too fast and slid to a stop in a shower of stones, narrowly missing the rear end of the patrol car and stopping within a hairsbreadth of the back wall of the house.

“Edwin was here, not more than five minutes ago,” I shouted as Johnny Boyd sprang from his truck. The rancher stopped as if I’d struck him. “He’s left already, so he must have passed you. He didn’t head out to the north.”

“He ain’t done that, or the law that’s behind me, either.” Even as he said that, the department Bronco idled into the yard with an astonishing display of self-restraint on its driver’s part. Pasquale pulled up so that his vehicle was almost touching Boyd’s back bumper. In order to leave, the rancher would have to either move the county vehicle or take the back bedroom off the ranch house.

Johnny strode toward me. “Maxine, where is he?” he snapped.

“Johnny, he wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He drove out just the way you came in. He said you all would know where he is. That’s all I know. That’s really all I know. That’s all he said. He was in such a state.”

“He drove right out there?” Boyd said in disbelief, looking at the east driveway.

“Right out there,” she said. “Not five minutes ago.”

“And he didn’t come back?” She shook her head. “Well, what the hell…” Boyd said. He swept off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “He ain’t gone far, then. And how the hell would we know where he was headed?”

“Estelle, turn off the car,” I said, and then shouted at Pasquale to do the same. “Now be still a minute.” One of the dogs in the house was yapping, and I heard the quiet thump of the door as Neil Costace got out of the Bronco. After that, the silence fell heavily. We all listened hard, and finally could hear it-the distant sound of an engine, laboring in low gear.

“Now that’s got to be-” Johnny started to say, and I held up a hand sharply. For another few seconds, the sound continued, but it was impossible to sense the direction from which it was coming. The sound floated this way and that across the prairie, and then abruptly ceased. “That’s over by the juniper drag,” Boyd said. “South of here.” He started back toward his truck.

“Johnny, wait,” I said. “What’s he doing?”

“Now how would I know that?” the rancher retorted without turning. He thumped a hand on the front fender of Pasquale’s Bronco. “You going to move that, sonny, or do you want me to drive through you?”

“Hold it,” I snapped. “Goddam it, just hold on. It doesn’t make sense for any of us to run into this blind. Your wife just told me that Edwin admitted killing a man and that he’s spooked. You don’t go charging after him.”

Johnny turned and took several steps toward Maxine. “He told you what ?”

Maxine reached out a hand to her husband. “Johnny, what’s happening? Edwin said he killed Dick Finnegan. That’s all he would say. And that you all would know where he’d be. Then he just drove off.”

A second engine note drifted to us then, the deep, guttural sound of a heavy diesel. “What’s that?” I asked.

Boyd listened, his brows knit. “That’s the dozer, Sheriff.”

“A bulldozer?”

He nodded.

“If that’s Edwin, what the hell is he doing?”

“There’s a pasture south of here where we’ve been chaining down juniper the past few days. Nobody’d be down there but him or me, so that’s got to be Edwin.” The diesel roar increased, and I could hear an occasional metallic clank of the tracks.

“Goddam,” Johnny Boyd muttered. “You can see some of that juniper where we’re workin’ from over behind the barn.” We followed him around the black hulk of the long, low three-sided structure, past the enormous framework of the windmill tower. I didn’t have my flashlight and walked like a flat-footed old drunk, trying to keep my balance.

“There,” Boyd said from some point in the darkness ahead of me. His ranch yard might have been second nature to him in the dark, but to me, it was a featureless black box. I looked in the general direction of where “there” might be and saw a faint wash of lights.

“That’s the dozer,” Boyd said. “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing. Or where the hell he’s going. That isn’t where we’ve been working. He’s headin’ off to the south and east.”

“William’s Tank,” Estelle said quietly, and she turned and made for the car.

“Ride with us,” I said to Johnny Boyd, and he hesitated. Maybe he was wondering what Estelle knew and he didn’t. If that was the case, he had company. But she had already reached the vehicle, and I knew better than to stand there and demand explanations from her. “Look,” I said, “your brother’s in deep trouble. There are some things I need to know before there’s any kind of confrontation, and I think you can help.”

“You need to get some backup out here,” Neil Costace snapped, and I looked at him in surprise as he continued, “You’ve got some crazy man loose on a bulldozer. He’s already killed one man, and there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”

Boyd half turned in angry response, and I grabbed him by the arm. “Listen, Johnny.” I jerked his arm hard, pulling him toward me. I lowered my voice. “Enough’s enough. If we’re going to help your brother through this, then you’ve got to tell me what you know. Goddam it, trust me just this once. Ride with us.”

“We’ll go on ahead and cut him off,” Costace said, and his words were in that “Let’s lynch him, boys” tone that riled the crowds in old western films into action.