Bill Pronzini - Acts of Mercy
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- Название:Acts of Mercy
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He wheeled around, ran back toward the paddock. And to the north of the stable the horse and rider-Augustine, it could only be Augustine-came galloping into view, heading toward the east gate. Justice stopped, made an involuntary sound of his own that was almost a sob. Why? he thought. If he’s not guilty, why?
Then he began to run for the tack room.
The guard on the north gate came hurrying out of the small gatehouse as Augustine neck-reined Casey Jones to a halt. He stared open-mouthed and said, “Mr. President! What-”
“Open the gate,” Augustine shouted at him.
“But it’s almost nine o’clock, sir. You can’t go out riding alone at this time of-”
“Open the gate!” Stop me, don’t let me go. “That’s a direct order, mister. Open this goddamn gate!”
The guard hesitated, frowning, uncertain. And then nodded and said, “Yes sir, if you say so,” and went back into the gatehouse. A moment later the gate began electronically to swing open.
Augustine waited only until the opening was large enough for the horse to pass through; then he kicked Casey Jones again and sent him charging out onto the moonlit meadowland beyond.
Justice knew something about horses-he had taken riding lessons at one of the academies in Maryland during a long-ago summer-but he had little experience with outfitting one of the animals. Even though he had put on the stable lights, it took him long agonizing minutes to get the saddle and bridle into place on a small roan mare.
Can’t let him get away. Innocent or guilty I’ve got to stop him…
He swung finally into the saddle, heeled the mare through the stable doors and round the north side of the building and straight toward the east gate. The night was still quiet, empty; all this running, afoot and now on horseback, the noise and the tension like static electricity on the cool night air, and no one had been alerted. It was as if the world had diminished to a microcosm in which only the two of them had significance, in which only he and the President struggled toward truth and sanity.
When he neared the gate he saw that it still stood open, saw the guard standing there looking bewilderedly through it to the northeast. At the sound of the mare’s hoofbeats the guard turned, brought his legs and his boots together and raised one arm-an awkward request to stop that seemed more like a parody of a Nazi salute. But Justice slowed the mare only long enough to shout at him, “It’s all right, I’ll handle it, I’ll handle it,” and then he was past him and through the gate.
More than a hundred yards distant, silhouetted against the clear sky, he could see the black joined shapes of man and horse. He slapped the mare’s neck with the reins, pounded his heels into the animal’s sides, and went after the fleeing figure of the President as if it were life itself pelting away from him.
Seventeen
The wind whipped coldly at Augustine’s face, billowed his hair and Casey Jones’s mane, burned like ice on his bare fingers clutching the reins. But the wind was an ally, the wind and the night and the mountains and the horse. He was part of it, part of them all, and together they offered him freedom.
From what? From what?
The smells of dust and pine and horse sweat assailed his nostrils; the staccato beat of the bay’s hooves was like thunder in his ears. His heart skittered wildly. The sensation of speed was almost exhilarating: moon-drenched meadowland flashing past them, forest slopes rushing closer and beckoning sanctuary. Oh yes, he was in his element now; Justice couldn’t catch him now.
I want him to catch me, I didn’t do anything.
He twisted his head to look over his shoulder. And Justice was there, just coming through the gate on one of the smaller horses, coming after him. One-man posse. Relentless. Justice on the prod.
Augustine pulled his head around again, into the wind.
When the mare stretched out into full gallop Justice clung to the reins with one hand and to the saddle horn with the other; he had never ridden at this speed before; he was afraid of being jarred out of the saddle. More than a hundred yards still separated him from the President, and there were less than a hundred yards between Augustine and the northeast slope. The horse he was riding was Casey Jones, and Casey was bigger and faster than the mare: Justice knew there was no hope of catching up to him before he reached the trees.
And what would he do once he was into them? The trail forked halfway up the slope, Justice remembered; the main path went up along the river gorge to Lookout Point, and the branch hooked back to the south and eventually wound down again to the meadowland. There were no other trails up there-but the President was an expert horseman, he would probably be able to break a path through the trees if he chose to. And yet even then he would have nowhere to go. You couldn’t get from the ridge into the rangeland valleys farther east because of high rock walls and impassable undergrowth; the slope was a kind of mountain cul-de-sac.
Should he draw his gun, fire a warning shot? Surreality again. Law officer chasing a desperado on horseback, a scene from a thousand Western movies; only the desperado was the President, he could not fire a shot in pursuit of the President A new thought struck Justice: Suppose I catch him and he refuses to give up? Suppose he tries to fight me, forces me to use my weapon? No. I couldn’t do it. Even if he’s guilty, even in self-defense and the performance of my duty, I couldn’t shoot him.
How could I shoot the President of the United States?
At the base of the slope, where the trail began its climb into the trees, Augustine automatically slowed Casey Jones and gave the animal his head, letting him make the transition from level to ascending ground at a safe pace of his own. The horse surged upward, snorting, chest heaving. Augustine tightened the reins again then, used his heels-and they were into the woods, darkness and shadow closed around them and the moonshine was gone except for random beams glowing like spotlights on the forest floor.
Into the woods, but not out of the woods. We’re not out of the woods yet.
It was hushed in there, so still that the muffled rhythm of Casey Jones’s hooves seemed to echo from tree trunk to tree trunk: dull hollow axlike thuds. Low-hanging branches seemed to reach for him as he sped past; he saw them as fingers, the groping fingers of Justice, and ducked his head and flattened his body forward to avoid them, resting his cheek on the wet leather that had formed on the horse’s neck. Receding below, the trail appeared to him then as a tunnel, long and dark and unfamiliar, alien, leading him-where? Where?
For God’s sake help me.
He closed his eyes, but as soon as he did that he saw the blood residue on his hand, saw Harper’s shattered skull. He popped them open again, and they were wet with sweat-or was it tears? No. A President does not weep; he must never weep. Not even to mourn his dead. Not even to mourn himself.
The trail fork loomed ahead, but he did not slow Casey Jones this time, had no impulse at all to veer off onto the branch path. Lookout Point, that was where he was heading. Not by choice, by happenstance. Wasn’t it? Lookout Point. I was up there yesterday with Maxwell, but Maxwell is dead; somebody murdered him, but it wasn’t me. Lookout Point. High ground, the high place.
Why?
And there was bright moonlight ahead, and the trail began to curve out of the trees to parallel the rim of the gorge, and he heard the low rumbling voice of the river. Like a train, it sounded like a train. Faster! He kicked at Casey Jones’s lathered flanks, sent the animal through the curve to where he could see the high ground above. The horse began to balk, laboring near exhaustion. Don’t quit on me now, old engineer, we’re almost there, almost up the mountain. He held Casey’s head steady, heeled his flanks again, and they went up, up-out at last onto the grassy flat of Lookout Point.
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