Shirley Murphy: The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

Well, hell, he guessed the gray wouldn’t begrudge a quart or two from his water barrel. Lee told himself to settle down, he tried to bring back the old steady calm with which he always worked. His plan was to wait in or behind the old barn beyond the Jamesfarm cutoff, leave the gelding and the trailer there, go on into town in the truck late in the day, as evening settled in. Hit the back door of the post office late, when the ranch foremen started showing up for their money. He’d have a long wait, all through the middle of the day, and then a fast hustle. Thinking about the moves, and the last-minute timing, he began to sweat.

Maybe he shouldn’t wait all day at the cutoff and risk being seen, maybe he should move on up into the dry hills and lay up there. Return to the cutoff in late afternoon, leave the gray and the trailer there. Hit the post office, return to the cutoff until it started to get dark, leave the truck and trailer with Dawson’s ID and then, as he’d planned, head for the mountains on horseback. That was where the timing grew critical. If he took too long or was delayed, he’d miss the last, crucial move. Thinking about that, his gut began to twitch. He had to get up into the mountains, bury the money, and be back down at the airstrip in time to meet Mark.

Well, hell, he could do that. Mark had said eight-thirty. That gave him two to three hours. That was the plan, the rest, the getaway itself, was a piece of cake. There might be a few weak spots, but there was risk in everything. He pulled off his straw hat, flipped it onto the dashboard, and headed past the cutoff up into the hills.

Hidden among the sand hills, he had a little nap and so did the gelding, sleeping on his feet. At three o’clock Lee loaded the gelding up again and headed back down for the Jamesfarm cutoff. He was halfway there when the truck dropped, jerking the steering wheel, and he felt the dead thump of the tire on the sand road. Swearing, he let the truck bump to a stop, set the brake, and stepped out.

At least it was on the truck, not the trailer. Front tire, and he thought maybe he could change it without unloading the gray. He kicked the bastard tire hard, kicked it again, and knew he had to cool down. There was plenty of time, he’d planned it to give himself time.

He looked up and down the empty road. Not a car in sight, the desert so quiet he heard a lizard scramble off a rock into some cactus. But he reached into the cab for the revolver and laid it on the floorboards. Then he lifted the seat cushion, pulled out the jack, the tire iron, and lug wrench, and dropped them beside the flat tire. Before he got to work, he blocked the truck and trailer wheels with rocks. By the time he got the wheel changed he was sweating, and breathing hard, was so tired that it seemed a huge effort even to tighten the lug nuts. He couldn’t get his lungs full of air, and there was a heaviness on his chest so he had to rest several times before he finished tightening the last lug. The emphysema hadn’t been this bad in a long time, he knew it was the stress. He struggled to get the blown tire and wheel up into the pickup, wondering why the hell he was keeping them. Too tired to lift the seat cushion, he threw the jack and lug wrench on the seat. He removed the rocks from under the wheels, beat the dust and sand off his pants, and crawled into the driver’s seat, sank behind the steering wheel feeling weak and old, swearing with anger at his weakness.

Cranking the engine, he eased on slowly so as not to jerk the trailer. He rolled on, cursing old age, until he saw the Jamesfarm sign, saw the old barn among the scrawny tamarisk trees. He pulled in among them, backed the gray out under the low, salty-smelling branches. He tied the gelding to a tree, then checked out the barn.

It leaned a bit to the right, and half the roof shingles were missing, but when he shook the supporting timbers, nothing wobbled, the barn stood steady. There were four fenced stalls inside, four tie stalls, and an open space for a truck or tractor. He unloaded the gray then, backed the trailer in there, out of sight of the road. Before he unhitched it, he opened both truck doors to keep the cab cool, and unloaded the water barrel.

He led the gelding into one of the larger stalls, fed him, tied his water bucket to the rail. After filling that, he filled the truck’s radiator, then washed the grime and sweat off his face and hands. He had moved the saddle from the pickup bed into the trailer, had turned back to get the bridle, which had fallen to the ground, when the gelding jerked his head up, and Lee tensed.

The gelding snorted, looking back toward the big door, and Lee heard a faint noise, a dry snap. He spun around, grabbing the bridle as a blurred image flickered across the truck window. A man filled his vision, a crazed look in his eyes, a knife flashing in his hand. As he charged, Lee swung the bridle. The heavy bit hit him hard in the throat. He staggered but came at Lee again. Lee stumbled backward into the open truck, grabbed the lug wrench, and swung it at the man’s face.

The heavy wrench connected hard, the man fell, twisting away. Lee backed against the truck, looking around to see if there was another one. The gelding was rearing and snorting, white eyed, blowing like a stallion. Lee reached for the gun on the seat, watching the shadows around him. The man lay on the ground unmoving. What had he wanted? The truck? The horse? Or was he just some nutcase, out to hurt anyone who looked weaker? Lee remained still, watchful and tense until the gelding began to settle. When the horse had calmed and turned away, when Lee was sure there was no one else, he rolled the man over with his boot, holding his gun on him.

The body was limp. The face was a pulp of blood from the blow of the lug wrench. There was a bloody hole where his nose had been, as if the bones had been driven deep. Lee felt his breath coming hard. He palmed his revolver, glancing at the gray to see if anything else alerted him, but the good, sensible gelding had put his head down again and started to eat.

Lee eased himself down on the running board, sucking air. Where the hell had the guy come from? Had he been in the barn all the time? Sleeping, camping out in the old barn? Lee thought he’d looked around good. He had seen no sign of anything to alarm him, nothing in there that he’d noticed but some old gunny sacks, twists of bailing wire, a rusty bucket.

Rising from the running board, Lee studied what he could see of the dead man’s face, what was left of it. Dark eyes beneath the blood, bushy brows soaked with blood. Despite the gray’s quiet assurance, Lee still wasn’t certain the man had been alone. Nervously he circled the barn and then eased away into the trees beyond, looking back watching the barn, and watching behind him; the light was beginning to soften, but so far, by his watch, his timing was okay. Some twenty yards into the trees he found a small clearing and a makeshift camp. One dirty blanket, a backpack with some canned goods, an empty cook pot. A single metal plate lay beside a miniature fire, near an unopened can of beans, a can opener, and a spoon. As he turned back toward the barn, he could see again the man’s dark eyes under the bushy, bloodied brows. He stood over the body, looking more carefully. Despite the gaping wound he could see how close the eyes were together, the face long and thin. Zigler. Luke Zigler, peering out from the wanted poster hanging in the Blythe post office.

Zigler, serving life for murder and armed robbery, escaped from Terminal Island some two hundred miles to the north but born and raised in Twentynine Palms. If that was Zigler’s home, maybe he’d been waiting here for someone he knew, maybe had camped here to join up with a partner, and that made Lee nervous. He sure didn’t want to leave the gray here for some badass to find. But what other choice did he have? He sure couldn’t leave Zigler, either, for someone to discover.