Michael McGarity - Mexican Hat

The sound of hard pounding at the motel door brought Kerney out of a deep sleep. He fumbled for the light, got up, peered out the window, and saw Jim Stiles. He unlocked the door and Stiles slipped inside, a worried look plastered on his face.

"I've been looking for you since midnight," Stiles said snappishly.

Kerney wore only boxer shorts, and the scar on his stomach, a long surgical incision with a puckered entry hole from a bullet, caught Jim's attention. It was a nasty-looking wound.

"What time is it?" Kerney asked groggily.

"Four in the morning," Jim answered.

"What the hell is going on?"

"You tell me." Kerney struggled into his jeans, sank down on the end of the bed, and pulled on his boots.

"What's up?"

"Steve Lujan's been shot dead, and Gatewood's got an APB out on you. A city cop came by Molly's house looking for you."

Kerney tugged his arms through the shirt-sleeves and buttoned up.

"What the hell for?"

"I called Omar and asked him the same question. He's prepared an arrest warrant on you for Steve's murder."

Kerney rubbed the sleep from his eyes, snorted, and stood up.

"Based on what?"

"He said you were seen at Lujan's house earlier in the day, and Alan Begay told him about the phone call you had him make to Steve."

"That's it?" Kerney replied, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Gatewood doesn't have a clue, does he? I think the man has just redefined the meaning of probable cause. Will Karen sign off on the warrant?"

"I don't know," Jim replied.

"I called her after I spoke with Gatewood. She didn't know a damn thing about it." Jim paused and made a frustrated face.

"Are you going to tell me what happened, or not?"

"Oh. Sure. I saw Steve get whacked."

"By who?"

"I'm not absolutely certain, but he matches the description I got from two different sources. He goes by the name of Leon Spence."

"Who told you about him?"

"Alan Begay and a BLM officer in Deming."

"I know Alan. He's solid. Do you know how to find Spence?"

"Not really. But I know where he's been. Begay saw him at a private ranch on the Negrito Creek. It's owned by some millionaire from back east who Hies in. According to Alan, the ranch has a landing strip.

Does that ring any bells?"

Jim nodded.

"The old Double Zero."

"Can you get me there without any fanfare?"

"I think you should talk to Karen first," Jim countered.

"That can wait," Kerney replied.

"First, we pay a quiet visit to the Double Zero. What's the most unobtrusive way in?"

"Horseback."

Kerney eyed the sling holding Jim's left arm.

"Are you game?"

Jim flapped the sling against his side.

"Give me a break. This itty-bitty scratch won't slow me down.

Saddle me up and I'll take you there."

"What a guy," Kerney responded with a grin.

Jim smiled back.

"Stuff it, Kerney. How did you get into this pile of shit?"

"It was easy: a little breaking and entering, a little criminal damage to property."

"Before or after your trailer got bombed?"

"After. I'll tell you about it on the way."

As they left the motel in Jim's truck, a police cruiser turned into the parking lot and started spotlighting vehicles.

The Stiles family ranch was directly across the river from Jim's house, where the Negrito Creek drained into the San Francisco. Stiles and Kerney arrived before dawn with the moon still full above the mountains.

Jim drove to the horse barn, parked the truck out of sight, and told Kerney to saddle two horses while he paid a visit to his father.

In the paddock were two fine stallions, both about ten years old and built along the same lines, with well-sloped shoulders that would generate a fluid stride. He got the gear out of the tack room, saddled the horses, and sat on the top rail of the paddock waiting for Jim's return. The first light of dawn revealed the ranch house. It was a territorial-style L-shaped adobe with thick wood lintels above the first-floor windows. The sloping roof had a series of dormer windows over a covered porch.

The porch light came on, and Jim hurried out with pistol belts looped over his shoulder, clutching two rifles.

"What did you tell your dad?" Kerney replied. He put the rifles in the gun boots and fastened a pistol belt around Jim's waist.

"I told him we were going after a predator," Jim answered.

"Did you tell him it was the two-legged kind?" Kerney asked, smiling.

He buckled on his own pistol belt and swung into the saddle.

"I left that part out," Jim answered.

They followed a sinuous creek bed through a moist, sandy wash into the mountains, cutting back and forth in hairpin turns through the shallow, fast running stream of a slot canyon. It was slow going as the horses picked their way over smooth, slippery cobblestones. Above them the early-morning sky turned blue, but the gloom of night still hung in the canyon, and rising mist from the stream created the feeling of a dreary winter's day.

At a fast-rushing pool they walked the horses up a steep bank past walnut trees stained dark by water, the limbs weighed down by moisture-laden leaves. Kerney remounted at the top of the bank and stopped to watch a Gila woodpecker light on an exposed rock in the pool.

It dipped down for a drink, and the red crown patch flashed at Kerney.

Then it dropped into the pool for a morning bath and flapped its striped wings.

Kerney rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked down at the wrinkled, sweat-stained, stinky shirt that badly needed washing. Reality hit: he was unemployed, under suspicion, and wearing all that he possessed. What little he owned had been blown up. Clothes could be replaced, but his grandfather's two Navajo saddle blankets and the pictures of his parents-the only mementos he had of his family-were gone forever. Even the championship rodeo buckle was probably nothing more than a lump of melted metal.

He looked ahead. Stiles had his eyes glued on Kerney's face. He forced a smile.

"Are you all right?" Jim asked.

"Fine and dandy."

"You look ready to pound the shit out of someone."

"That's a damn good idea," Kerney allowed.

"I just need to find the right someone."

Alan Begay stood in the ankle-deep Negrito Creek wearing waders and holding a portable pH meter with a probe. The high acidity reading wasn't a surprise, given the closeness of the tailings pile to the streambed. The return visit to the creek had been demanded by the landowner's lawyers as a delaying tactic. Alan already pretty much knew that the readings wouldn't change. He grunted and noted the result in his field book.

Begay's thoughts jumped ahead to the report he would write and the additional shit he would have to face from Sanderson's lawyers. The three mine sites along the creek on the Double Zero property were spewing contaminants into the water and threatening the fish downstream.

You'd think that a big-time Detroit millionaire who used the Double Zero as a retreat and hunting lodge wouldn't mind spending some spare change to clean up the pollution. No way. Sanderson was fighting the proposed sanction tooth and nail.

Alan heard a clattering of hooves and turned to find Jim Stiles and Kevin Kerney riding toward him.

They reined in and looked down at him.

"Hello, Alan," Jim said.

"Jim," Begay replied. He shifted his attention to Kerney. Kerney was a big man, and on horseback he looked even bigger. The expression on Kerney's face was grim. Alan braced himself for a chewing-out.

"I didn't mean to get you in trouble," he said.

"You didn't," Kerney replied gently, reading Alan's dismay, as he slipped out of the saddle.

"Tell me what happened between you and Gatewood."

"He came to see me at my room," Alan answered.