Ted Bell - Spy

“Let’s take a look.”

Dixon shoved his door open with his boot and climbed out. He stretched, pulling his shoulders backward, his eyes on the far hills to the south. Smoke was curling up from the chimney of a ranch house. Ben Nevis’s place.

He’d allowed a posse to ride south out of there two days ago. A dozen of desperate young fellas from town who wanted to go find their sisters and girlfriends. Idea was, they’d ride down to Nuevo Laredo and see what they could find out about all these missing girls. They were due back yesterday evening and so far nobody had heard word one. Worrisome, to say the least.

The Peterbilt was hissing and steaming when he climbed up on the passenger side running board and tried to look through the windshield. Black glass, like it had mirror inside it. He pulled out his flashlight and put it right on the glass. Couldn’t see a thing. He stuck his head inside the driver’s window and saw Homer’s frowning face on the other side.

“Well, well, well,” Dixon said.

“That’s what I told you, Sheriff.”

“You look back there in his bunk compartment? Maybe he’s just watching a racy video in there and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Yessir, I did check.”

“And he didn’t go out either door.”

“We’d have seen him, Sheriff.”

Dixon removed his hat and ran his fingers through his thinning brown hair.

“There was a lot of dust when he pulled over.”

“I guess he could have run, Sheriff.”

Franklin told Homer to have a look in the glove box. Get his registration. Jot down all the numbers on the VIN plate screwed into the door-jamb.

“Well. He must have run,” the sheriff said to Homer and jumped to the ground. “I’ll go have a look around.”

Dixon did a three-sixty, bending down to look under the trailer a few times, between the axles, and shook his head. Then he walked away from the truck, a few hundred yards into the desert. There was a rocky mound rising to about thirty feet high where he could see the plains better. The wind had come up, and there were scattered tumbleweeds blowing across the highway. There was a sound on the wind, too, but it wasn’t any speed-freak trucker beating feet through the desert.

No. It was horses. Maybe a dozen of them.

Franklin looked up, squinting his eyes, and saw a cloud of dust rising out on the plain.

His posse?

He moved quickly to the top of the hill.

The riders were tightly bunched about a half-mile away. Headed right at him at full gallop. Ben’s ranch, where they’d left from, the stables were just up the road a piece. Well. The boys were a full day late but at least it looked like they’d all come back safely. When he’d sent them off, he hadn’t so sure about the thing at all. It was dangerous down there, real dangerous. All he knew was, he had to do something for those girls.

He’d have ridden down with them if he hadn’t been so worried about his town.

There was a full-blown war raging on this border. An invasion. Illegals and drugs both. All hell had broken loose down in the little border town of Nuevo Laredo. Lots of people on both sides had died in the crossfire. Two Border Patrol Agents had been gunned down here in the last six months. Couple of tourists, too, who’d gotten lost after crossing over the International bridge at Laredo. Pretty bad. He’d heard a rumor they were sending some fellas down from Washington to look into it. Well, it was about time.

Way past time.

Apparently Laredo PD had found a stash of IEDs under the bridge. Improvised explosive devices, just like the ones used in Iraq to kill Marines. Al-Qaeda on the border? He’d heard crazier things in his life.

The Mexican border was flat broken. And nobody had a clue how to fix it. Ranchers and Minutemen wanted to put up a 2,000-mile-long fence. Money was pouring in, people wanting to put fences on their property. Nothing made sense any more. A border was a border. Any fool knew that. Folks in Washington just looked the other way. Didn’t want to upset anybody. Give Texas back to the Mexicans without firing a shot. That’s what was happening to his state.

But not to his town. Not if he could help it.

He had no idea if it was Mexican narco-gangbangers or even dirty Federales behind all these abductions. Or, even if the young ladies had been spirited away to Nuevo Laredo bordellos. But Nuevo wasn’t a bad place to start looking, he knew that for sure. It was the most lawless town on either side of a lawless border. Not that that was saying much these days.

Something had spooked the horses. Maybe one of the riders had seen him standing up here on a hill. Anyway, they’d changed direction and now the posse was headed right for him.

He couldn’t understand why they were riding so bunched up like that. He strained his eyes, trying to see. Even in the cold moonlight they were still just a tight black mass kicking up a single dust-cloud behind them.

“Sheriff? I hear horses.”

He’d been concentrating so hard on the strange spectacle he hadn’t even heard Homer coming up the hill behind him.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Dixon said, turning back to the horses. Homer looked and a wide grin broke out on his face.

“The posse! Sheriff, if it ain’t about time!”

“They look funny to you, Homer?”

“What do you mean, Sheriff?”

“I don’t rightly know. They’re riding all bunched up.”

“I see that. Something else is wrong.”

“Something sure is strange, isn’t it? No, I got it. They ain’t got their hats on, Sheriff.”

“I reckon that’s it, all right. No hats. I knew something was wrong.”

The posse had galloped to within a thousand yards.

“Sheriff, you know—something really ain’t right here. I’m gonna tell you that right now. It just ain’t natural the way they’re riding those horses—”

Homer raced down the hill, fast as he could, and his words were lost in the wind along with his hat. He was running hard on an angle that might bring him a little closer to the oncoming posse. Suddenly, the horses veered left, once again, now directly toward the sheriff up on the hill. Twelve horses galloped right by Homer flying flat out. The deputy turned his head, mouth wide open, watching ’em pass him by.

Franklin’s brain processed it before his eyes did. Why it was that his posse looked so strange in the moonlight. He stared after them until he couldn’t stand to look at them anymore. He turned away and gazed up at the moon, thinking about what he’d done, sending those boys down there like that.

The boys on those horses were all dead.

Ever last one of them he’d sworn in, all riding straight up in the saddle, deader than doornails.

How’d they stay up in the saddles? Their hands must have been tied to the pommels. Their boots lashed together tight under the girths to keep them all sitting bolt upright like that.

Homer was right. Not one of them was wearing his hat.

Because not one of them were wearing his head.

Homer was coming slowly back up the hill, his eyes on the ground in front of him. When he got to the top he stopped and looked up at Franklin. Tears he couldn’t hold back were streaming down his cheeks. Couldn’t blame him. Homer had gone to Prairie High with half the kids in that posse. Played football with most of them. Hell, he knew these boys and—

“Sweet Jesus, Sheriff.”

“Let’s go call this in, son. You come with me. We’ll do what we can for them. I don’t want anybody else to see ’em like this.”

“This is real bad, Sheriff.”

“Yes it is.”

But they couldn’t leave. They stood and watched the headless horse-men disappear. Twelve horses thundered across the highway, the gruesomely dead boys suddenly flashing bright in the brassy yellow beams of the semi.