- Chapter 14 –

"Cowboys and Indians"

"What the hell was that?" Tavon twisted in his seat, taking his eyes off the road for an instant to rubberneck out the side window at the blur of movement in the distance, off to the right.

"Watch where you're going!" Rema shouted. The truck swerved sharply and she looked down from her side window in annoyance as he nearly over-steered down the incline into a patch of honey mesquite.

Tavon yanked the wheel quickly in the opposite direction and the big truck slewed back onto the roadway, throwing up a cloud of red dust along its left flank. "Did you see that?" He repeated.

Rema swallowed convulsively, wracking her brain for a plausible answer to the big man's question. She'd seen what it was; knew exactly who it was with incredulous certainty, but no way in hell would she let on to this guy exactly what the apparition had been. "All I saw was a blur," she finally told him. "A bird swooping down … or some kind of animal running off into the weeds … how the hell would I know? I wasn't even looking in that direction. It's too damn dark out there to see much of anything."

A cold shiver of frightened hesitation coursed its way down her spine and she stared straight ahead into the dashboard of the huge truck, afraid to look over at him for fear he might pluck the deception from her eyes. Her fingers wandered to the pocket of her shirt protectively, and to the extra vials of painkiller she harbored there. For Jimmy!

… And for Gray Fox … who wouldn't be needing them, since he was no longer there …

What the hell did he do …???

"Yeah … maybe. Scared the shit out of me. Sorry." Tavon settled himself behind the wheel and sped on, not far from the Hogan now.

00000000

At the edge of the desert, the big paint stallion was eating up the miles beneath his hooves. He was a tall animal and his flat-out motion at full gallop looked more feline than equine. His belly stretched out parallel to the ground with each great effortless stride, and his body seemed to double on itself between strides in the manner of an incredibly gigantic inchworm with legs.

On the horse's back, House crouched as intertwined as possible along the long neck, and buried his face, arms and hands deep in the thick mane. He was far beyond further physical reaction, and his pain had long since flared over the top of the scale. He was not sure, but was beginning to believe it possible that he was also approaching a mental state way beyond further coherent thought.

The big maroon pickup truck passed them in a cloud of red dust as it sped in the opposite direction, somewhere off to the far left, and continued on.

00000000

Tavon pulled up at the Hogan and parked beside the black Hummer, standing there with four flat tires, which made it useless for the purpose they had intended for it. Greene shook his head, enraged.

That son of a bitch!

When Kurtz fucked something up, he did it big time. No fooling around with the small shit for him! No doctor, whether tied hand-and-foot or not, would escape in that big Hummer while he was there! Tavon knew this was Randall's work, nobody else's. Kurtz had a big honkin' knife that continually burned a hole in its sheath. The asshole had actually found a way to use it to destroy the most valuable commodity in the shortest amount of time. So much for thinking things through!

Tavon Greene shut off the big engine and reached across to loosen the bonds on Rema's wrists. When he opened his door, Hosteen was standing there with a sleepy expression on his face and a suspicious look toward Rema, climbing out the other side of the truck. "You get the stuff?" He asked sourly.

"Yeah, sure," the big man replied as Rema came around the front of the truck. He turned away from Hosteen and opened the rear door of the pickup. Inside were three plastic bins filled with supplies and equipment, medications and bandages. "Got enough stuff to stock a good-sized clinic. If they can't find out what's wrong with the boss with this stuff, then we're all screwed, glued and tattooed."

Rema Marks looked up at him with a tolerant frown. In her day that remark might have

been called "square". There was something about this big, blustery dude that she almost liked, even though he'd certainly picked the wrong friends and the wrong means of earning a living. She wondered if her stray thoughts might be harboring a moment of

"Stockholm Syndrome", a phenomenon by which a captive became enamored with

his/her captors. But no, this wasn't it. Tavon was just part of the ruminations of

an old broad who was seeing a promising kid going down the wrong road! She'd seen this kind of thing before in her travels; would probably see it again.

"If you boys want to get this stuff inside, we can get to work and find out what's wrong with your 'boss' as you call him. If not, at least let me go in there and see what I can do for the doctor you shot, and for the one you hurt so badly he can't move. Your choice!"

Tavon grabbed the first bin and passed it along to Hosteen, who accepted it reluctantly, but turned toward the hole in the wall and moved off.

The next sound they heard was the crash of the plastic bin onto the dirt just outside the hut, and a muffled curse from the tall Hopi. "Oh … son of a bitch!"

Tavon grabbed Rema's wrist and they hurried over to where Tull stood staring across at the empty paddock with the gate hanging wide open. "One of the fuckers in there got away!" He did not mention that even though he was supposed to be on guard, whoever it was had sneaked right past him, led the horse out of the immediate vicinity and taken off on it, and he had never known.

Pulling Rema behind them, both men hurried into the Chindi House and stopped cold at the opening in the wall. Before them the tethered captives were right where they'd been when they left, still trussed with ropes, apparently sleeping, except for the young doctor who had been shot, and who stirred restlessly in obvious delirium. Suarez remained deathly still on the cot, and Jeffries, Lansa and Kurtz were slumped about the Hogan sleeping soundly.

The crippled doctor, however, was nowhere to be seen.

"FUCK!"

An air of intrigue pervaded the place. This scenario was not natural. These men should have awakened when the big diesel pulled up outside, or at least when the truck doors had slammed and their conversation took place. No one had expected them to come out with open-armed greetings, but they should at least have been awake and expecting them when they'd entered the Hogan.

Then they'd all realized at the same moment: the crippled doctor with the reinjured leg was gone. Drag marks on the floor were evident, even with the fire in the firepit gone out, and led directly to the hole in the wall where they'd just entered. Tavon and Hosteen both knew they would find drag marks outside also, where the injured man had pulled himself across the ground and across to the paddock, somehow mounting a half-wild stallion and getting lost in the desert. Hosteen's large dark eyes were like saucers over this escape. He was up "shit creek" big time!

Tavon came to the realization also, that the ghostly image he thought he'd seen a few miles back had been the courageous doctor, flattened across the back of the horse, galloping like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction. Probably heading back toward the hospital in search of help! He turned angry eyes on little Rema. She'd known who it was, but she'd played dumb and convinced him that it had been nothing more than some wild animal. Most natural thing in the world … an animal in the desert.

Damn her!

In the moments it took Tavon to think these thoughts, he sighed in admiration for the man who had fooled them all: the man they'd believed was injured too badly to be a threat. But he was hurt! Doctor Gregory House. He was injured so badly that in no way should he have been able to drag himself away from there, subdue a wild horse, then actually get up on its back and ride any distance at all. If there were rewards in this world for sheer stubborn determination, then the good doctor would have won them hands down. Tavon shook his head. Incredible!

"Hey Assholes!" He shouted.

Kurtz, Jeffries and Lansa scrambled awake and onto their feet, Kurtz and Jeffries pulling their guns in an almost laughable effort to appear alert. It failed miserably.

"Wha … ?" It was a classic cartoon comeback.

Hosteen and Tavon might have been amused if the situation hadn't brooked such grave consequences for them. "You fucked up again!" Tavon thundered. "You let the crippled guy get away! He took the goddamned horse, and if you don't find him, we're double screwed!"

He looked around at the prisoners and noticed, too late, that Rema was not checking the status of Jose as she was supposed to be doing, but kneeling beside the hunched body of wounded James Wilson, injecting him with something from a vial which she had kept hidden somewhere on her person all the way from the hospital. It was no use screaming at her now. It was too late. It was too late for a lot of things. He could see the ghost of a smile flit across her small face as she chanced a look in his direction.

She had known the injured, crippled doctor would not be here when they got back, and she was also telling Tavon and anyone else who cared to look, that she was determined to give House every chance of success.

Tavon glared at Rema with an expression somewhere between disgust and a sneaking admiration. He saw a fleeting moment of fear cross her features as he looked at her, but then it was gone and her dark eyes sparkled with new intensity. Somehow he was not surprised. He hesitated.

Tavon felt at cross purposes, experiencing a cold weight like frozen lead in his stomach, and the dead certainty that all their elaborate plans, all their grandiose dreams were gone at that moment like a puff of pale chimney smoke in the approaching dawn. He turned to Lansa and Kurtz and Jeffries and made a decision.

It would not bode well for Dr. House, but the decision must be made unless they chose to spend the remainder of their lives in prison. When … not "if" … they were caught, it would be on a charge of murder. "If" the handsome young doctor on the floor died also, it would be three counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He had a family he wanted to go back to. He had no choice.

Tavon turned to Lansa. "Take the truck. Take Jeffries and Kurtz with you and make sure Dr. House doesn't make it back to the hospital. I don't care how you do it, but do it! If you don't, we're up shit creek, but I guess you already know that. I'll stay here and Tull and I will make sure nobody gets any silly ideas. Leave one of the guns here in case I need it. We've got four doctors sitting on their asses. One of them ought to be able to see to the boss. Get going!" He turned away and the three men made tracks out the hole in the wall.

The pickup's engine started noisily, sounding like a handful of marbles rolling around in an iron bathtub. Tavon felt sick, but what else could he have done? His eyes skimmed the table that stood across from the cot. One of Kurtz's big pistols lay like a shiny metal persuader in the middle. He picked it up, shoved it deeply behind his beltline.

Hosteen Tull walked over the opening in the wall and leaned there smoking a cigarette. Tavon walked back over to Rema who sat hunched between Nikki and James, caressing the doctor's painfully furrowed brow. Wilson breathed a little easier now, pumped full of painkillers. Tavon touched the small woman's shoulder and when she turned to look up at him, tears were running down her cheeks and the expression she turned upon him was murderous.

00000000

Lansa pushed the accelerator to the floor, and the Ford F-250 leapt ahead like an F-5 tornado. He did not care about damage to the vehicle. Just like the rental cars at the hospital, it was not his and if it died of his mistreatment, it was no skin off his Navajo ass.

His only concern was catching up with the goddamn sneaking gimp and the goddamn painted horse and turning both of them into a gourmet meal for all the goddamn mangy coyotes and buzzards in the goddamn county! His fingers tightened around the steering wheel like the teeth of a vise, and he leaned forward across it to peer out the dust-clogged windshield, looking for any sign up ahead of the miniature dust clouds stirred around from the hooves of a galloping horse.

They were barely fifteen minutes out from the Chindi House, and Tavon had said the gimpy doctor had at least an hour's head start. Lansa was not certain how far a horse could get at full gallop through the desert, even a stallion as obviously young and healthy as this one seemed to be, but the dry, desert miles would take their toll. If the animal hadn't started to slow down by now, it would begin to do so very soon.

Another thing to take into consideration was the stamina and endurance of the rider. Mark had witnessed the physical distress of the crippled man who had moved along the hallway of the hospital yesterday morning, certainly in pain and walking carefully with concentrated effort. He had listened to the doctor's screams when he was manhandled in the kitchen, and again when he'd been beaten and roughed about in the Chindi House. Someone with severe injuries such as these, on top of a long-time disability could not possibly last long on the constantly shifting back of a galloping horse.

Lansa slowed the truck's speed and directed Jeffries and Kurtz to be especially watchful out the side windows for anything that might indicate they were approaching their quarry. They were surely getting close by now. They were still eight or ten miles from the hospital, but the sooner they caught up with House and put him completely out of action, the better it would be for all of them.

They drove on, craning their necks to see along the lay of the land, but the miles fell behind them with no results, other than a coyote or two melting into the underbrush, or a jackrabbit leapfrogging along like a miniature kangaroo. The miles to the hospital began to narrow dangerously and the men were getting jittery. They were no more than five miles out now, and still nothing to break the monotony of the landscape.

Then Jeffries spotted them, off to the left. The horse was not running. Rather, he was barely plodding along, reins of the hackamore loose, one of them dragging on the ground.

His head was down and even from this distance they could see his sides heaving. He had given all he had and looked ready to drop.

On his back, the man was no better. His head was down also, listing to the right of the stallion's neck, clinging to his seat only by one arm whose bent elbow clamped for dear life across the animal's neck just above the withers. His clothing was in tatters, his skin choked with dirt and dust. His hands, arms and legs, and those of his mount, were dark with blood from mesquite, sword grasses, prickly pears and cactus. They were ready to collapse. It wouldn't take much to bring them both down.

In the back seat, Kurtz picked up his Winchester lever-action 30-30 as the truck slowed to a crawl. Scrolling down the window, he shouldered the rifle and took careful aim. The old gun had no scope, but he prided himself mightily as a marksman. The rifle bucked, once, twice, and the shells ejected onto the floor of the truck.

The painted horse stiffened, took two more steps, then staggered to the right and went down on his knees. The rider's right shoulder erupted in a geyser of blood, and his body slipped off as though he had let go gracefully and with purpose, and slid down over the right flank, his left arm rising into the air like that of a ballet dancer at the top of its arc.

House melted into the ground in slow motion and lay still. The horse's head was down, but his back legs held him up for a moment longer. Kurtz raised the rifle again to finish the job. Then the painted rump went over in the opposite direction and the mustang stallion lay still on the desert floor also.

The wind picked up for a moment and blew a dance of dust devils around the silent forms. Off to the east, the first rays of morning sun lifted off the horizon and painted the land with a palette of yellows, silvers and pinks.

"Want to go check 'em?" Lansa asked casually.

Kurtz grinned. "Nah. Let the buzzards an' coyotes check 'em. We gotta get back, pick up the boss and get the hell out of here, or we're gonna end up behind bars!"

"Yeah, guess you're right." Lansa swung the truck around and stepped on the throttle. The fuel gauge read a quarter of a tank. Where the hell were they to find diesel fuel way out here??

It was Tuesday.

00000000

Sonny's feet were still tied, but Greene had loosed the bonds on his hands so he could attend to Suarez. Alan Tam stood helplessly beside the big Navajo with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, a BP cuff in one hand and the paddles for a portable heart stimulator in the other. The battery was dead. Had been dead for a long time. They couldn't use it. Lack of funds! They did not have the tools necessary to hook it to the battery of the truck or the Hummer.

Sonny straightened. Their job was over before it started and Jose Suarez was quite dead. Cerebral hemorrhage, Sonny believed. Both pupils were blown. His body was ice cold when they'd been allowed, finally, to examine it. Whatever was going on here, it was now finished. The only thing these men had accomplished was the successful murder of the man purported to be their leader, and a tragedy, which wouldn't have had to happen, had they brought him directly to the hospital when they'd first arrived in this unforgiving land. Stupidity and greed had done nothing but earn them prison time.

When Sonny looked up and stared into the dark face of Tavon, they both knew no words were necessary. Tavon took the pistol out of his belt and placed it back on the table. He then went to Nikki and loosened her bonds. He went to Elan and did the same thing.

He finished by untying Susan Carr, who would not meet his eyes, but remained where she was on the floor. Her spirit, he believed, had been completely broken. She would probably need some psychotherapy when she finally walked away from this experience. Her boss had wanted her to come here and learn something. And she had.

When Tavon looked up from releasing Susan, Elan was gone, and so was Hosteen. Elan would go back to his horses, and Tull? Tull could see the writing on the wall. Nothing good was going to come out of this venture, and he had sneaked out on them to save his own ass. So be it!

Nikki and Rema were working with silent concentration over the wound in Wilson's belly, and wondering how in hell they could get him out of there in time to save his life.

Tavon sat down at the table, buried his head in his hands and gave up quietly. No one paid any attention to him at all.

00000000

163