T. Parker - The Triggerman Dance

The man knelt over his dog, running a hand along its lifeless flank. He had set his hat on the ground, and placed his revolver in the crown.

Vann Holt ran past the Olie's waitress, standing on the wooden deck of the restaurant, then disappeared through the swinging doors.

Valerie stood just a few feet away, looking through a dusty window, with a huge kitchen knife in her hand. The color had drained from her face, which was splattered with Skinny's blood. To Holt, it looked like ink on snow. Her hair was drenched in sweat.

"Oh, God, honey," said Holt, wrapping his big arms around her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm okay, Daddy. I'm okay." The knife hit the floor.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Who is he?"

"You're sure, absolutely sure you're not hurt?"

"The second I pushed that pig away, he shot him."

"Let's go outside. Can you walk outside?"

"I told you I'm okay, Daddy. I just feel kind of… sticky."

The cook emerged from the kitchen with a. 30/06 rifle and a wild look on his face. He was a fat man with a rim of gray hair around his face and head, florid cheeks, and a clean white apron

"What the hell?"

"It's over," said Holt. "Put the gun down."

"I'll call the Sheriffs."

"We already did-the CB," Holt lied. It was a given for him that the police would confuse rather than clarify things.

"Ambulance?"

"Nobody's hurt."

"She's not hurt? She's bleeding, you know."

Holt gave the chef a withering look. All of his native authority, not to mention his frustration, fear and anger, came rushing back now, and he saw by the cook's eager nod that he had no intention of calling an ambulance.

He eased Valerie back into the bright October sunlight where he ordered the waitress, forcefully, to get some coffee ready for the sherrifs. Only now did he register the frantic yapping from the Land Rovers-three springers vaulted into excitement by the gunshots.

Titisi and Randell had gathered themselves to stare, somewhat bewildered, at the man and his dog.

Lane Fargo stood midway between the fallen hero and the restaurant, his pistol drawn. A consuming selfconsciousness emanated from him: his face was bright red, his eyes uncertain. He watched Holt and Valerie descend the steps to the parking lot unwilling to look either his boss or his boss's daughter in the eye as they approached.

"Mr. Holt, I think we could run them down in the Rovers.'

"No."

"There's not much out there but clean highway."

"No. Settle the dogs down, Lane. See if those bullet wrecked my gas tank."

"I'm thinking we should get off stage before the cops come.'

"Check the dogs and trucks, Lane."

"Yes, sir."

Valerie left her father's side to approach the man still kneeling in the dust beside his dog.

"Can I help you put him in your truck?"

He didn't look at her. "Sure. Thanks."

"Thank you. Oh, Jesus in heaven-thank you."

Holt approached, somehow larger now than he was a few moments earlier, and offered his hand to the kneeling man. "My name is Vann Holt."

The man finally rose, slipping his revolver into the pocket of his duster and slapping the hat against his leg, but still looking down at the dead shepherd. He shook Holt's hand without enthusiasm.

"John," he said, looking down again at the dog. "That was Rusty."

Holt contemplated John's slender, stunned face. He saw a trustworthy but uncertain face, a face hollowed with fear and revulsion, the face of a man who has acted and now must live with the consequences. For just a brief moment, the eyes reminded Holt, of his own. "You all right, son?"

"Pretty much."

"This is my daughter, Valerie."

John looked at her while he shook her offered hand, his eyes lingering on her face, perhaps on the blood that flecked it.

"I've never seen anything quite like that," said Holt.

"I haven't either, to tell you the truth, Mr. Holt."

"You know those guys?"

"Seen them around. I live out here."

"They know where?"

"I don't see how they could."

Valerie looked down at Rusty. "You train that dog?"

John looked down at Rusty, too, and Holt saw on his face an expression of tragic surprise. "To sit and stay. When he saw that guy choking you, he started growling like I'd never heard. He was just a stray when I got him, so he must have learned from someone else. He was a real good dog. Shit, now he's dead."

"I'd like to give you another one," said Valerie.

"Well…" said John. "Uh… I need to use the sandbox. Excuse me. "Holt gathered with his party while John went to the bathroom in Olie's. Titisi examined the red inflammation across his stomach and felt for broken ribs, then pronounced himself unhurt. Fargo was still checking the trucks, down under the red one for a look at the gas tank. Randell sat in the shade with Holt; Valerie and the Ugandan.

Ten minutes passed before John returned. To Holt's eye, face had become more ruddy, his movements were no Ionger quite so slow, there was a quickness in his glance. He went to truck, removed the revolver and appeared to stash it under seat. Then he started up the reluctant old Ford and pulled it into the shade of a pepper tree. Holt could see a big chocolate labrador licking John's face as he reached across to roll the wind down a little more.

When John approached, he held his hat in his hand. "What, exactly, was happening here?" he asked.

"That's a story we might want to tell somewhere else," said Holt. "Let me ask you something, John-are you clean with law?"

"So far."

"Because we'd like to get out of here without filing any statements. Those bikers won't be talking-no reason we should, either. Unless you want to explain that revolver in your coat."

"Yeah… I mean, no. You're right."

"Can we take you home?"

"I've got the truck."

"I mean, can we escort you home? We all need somewhere to settle our nerves. You close to here?"

"Just a few miles. But really, I-"

"I insist," said Holt. "It's the right thing to do."

"Well, okay, then."

Holt threw a set of truck keys to Randell, then helped Valerie and John lift the big dog into the bed of John's old pickup lay there will all the innocence of the dead, a helpless mass held together by skin. The labrador watched through the rear cab widow, puzzled.

"Lead the way," Holt said. "We'll follow."

A few miles out Highway 371, Holt noticed that John's pickup truck was accelerating, fast. The Land Rover kept up easily, though doing seventy miles an hour on the narrow, winding two lane seemed foolhardy. He checked the rearview to find Lane Fargo right on his tail, a senselessly aggressive act wholly indicative of Lane's shame at being overcome by lowly motorcycle thugs. Holt lowered his window and waved Fargo off.

He didn't even notice it until rounding a gentle bend, where John's right-turn signal began to flash. Holt saw the brake lights, the abrupt slowing of the Ford, the turnoff to a dirt road leading back into the hills, and, only then, the column of deep black smoke rising from somewhere in the middle distance.

"No," he said.

Keeping up with John on the rutted dirt road wasn't easy. The Ford threw up clouds of dust as it skidded around the turns and braked heavily before the drops. Lewis, Clark and Sally bounced savagely in the back of the Rover-at one point Holt glanced back to see all three of them suspended between floor and roof, twelve legs scrambling for a purchase that wasn't there. The road snaked on, twist upon turn, cutback upon rise upon dip. Then it widened into a straight-away that banked into a steep climb. The Ford's back end slid left and right as it raced up the hill and disappeared over the crest. Holt laid back a little, then punched the Rover up and over the ridge, where before him lay a gentle meadow marked with a few trailers, a cinderblock building, and what must have been a house trailer, far on the perimeter of the place, flaring up like a struck match, gushing black smoke into the blue desert sky.