Cold Wind (22 page)

Nate picked up the box and hefted it in his hands. Heavy, and not quite right.

“This isn’t a .454 Casull,” Nate said, looking over at Merle. “I thought we talked about the right weapon.”

“Jesus,” Merle said. “You can tell by the
weight
?”

“Couple of ounces different,” Nate said. “Lighter.”

Merle whistled. Then: “You amaze me. You’re right; it’s not a .454. Seems Freedom Arms has a new model, and I thought you might want to give it a try.”

Nate frowned back, perturbed.

“Tell you what,” Merle said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back for a .454 this afternoon and get the scope swapped. But at least make an informed decision.”

“What new model?” Nate asked.

“It’s called a .500 Wyoming Express,” Merle said. “Stainless steel five-shot revolver, just like what you’re used to, only bigger: fifty cal. A little over three pounds without the scope. It’s got a Model 83 chassis just like the .454 so it should feel the same in your hand. Seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. Shoots 1.765-inch belted cartridges at 35,000 psi. Twice the power of a .44 magnum. The belted cartridge allows them to cut down a little on the cylinder weight.”

Nate raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

“It’s not as fast as your .454,” Merle said, “but the knockdown power is greater. The .454 has a TKO of 30, while the .500 goes 39. And according to the man who sold it to me, it’s like getting hit by a freight train as opposed to a car. It’ll knock down a moose or a cape buffalo or a grizzly like nothing else. The penetration is incredible. The bullets just blow through flesh and bone and are rarely ever recovered afterward, which is an attribute I thought you might appreciate.”

Nate nodded. He liked that. “Range?”

“Five-hundred-yard capability,” Merle said, “but it’s most effective within a hundred.

“In the right hands,” he winked at Nate, “and with an adjustable scope, accurate one-thousand-yard shots are not impossible. Plus at close range, one could, you know, knock out a bulldozer.

“Hell,” Merle said, “you’re
Nate Romanowski
. You’ve got the rep. You’ve
got
to have the baddest gun known to man or beast.”

Nate said, “I’m getting interested.”

 

 

He liked the way
it felt in his hand, loved its balance and weight. Large Merle stood behind him, silent, letting him get acquainted with the weapon. Nate kneaded it with his hands, spun it on his finger through the trigger guard, checked out the scope, then opened the cylinder.

He was well practiced with the model. He loaded one large shell, rotated the cylinder past an empty hole, then loaded the next three rounds. The idea was to leave the firing pin resting on the skipped cylinder for safety. Then he raised it like an extension of his right arm and cupped his left hand under his right. He kept both eyes open and cocked it with his left thumb. The snick-snick sound of rotating steel cylinder was tight and sweet, he thought.

The fence they stood next to had warped wooden posts spaced every ten feet. He counted out fifteen posts from where he stood—fifty yards—and fired. The concussion was tremendous and it seemed like the air around them had been sucked away for a second. Large Merle cried out, “Jesus Christ! My ears . . . give a guy some warning.”

The post was split cleanly down the middle. A wisp of smoke and dust rose from the top of the post. The barbed wire strands sang up and down the fence from the impact.

Nate smiled grimly. “A different attitude than the .454,” he said more to himself than Merle. “The .454 is snappy compared to this. The .500 pushes straight back like a mule kick.”

Then he counted out fifteen more posts and blew the top off one at a hundred yards. He let the gun kick back over his left shoulder near his ear, and as he leveled it, he thumbed the hammer on the down stroke. Another heavy boom, and a post a hundred fifty yards away shattered into splinters. He calculated, aimed down the fence line, and fired his last round.

“My God,” Large Merle said, taking his fingers out of his ears. “But you missed the last one.”

“No,” Nate said, “look farther down. At two-fifty.”

The post at two hundred fifty yards was blown cleanly in two, and the top half sagged near the bottom half, held aloft by the strands of wire stapled to it.

“It doesn’t need to be said, but that’s some shooting.”

“Then why say it?” Nate asked. “You did well, Merle. This will do the job. How much?”

“The .500 WE retails for twenty-three hundred dollars without the scope,” Large Merle said. “The shells alone cost three dollars each, so keep that in mind. But given the circumstances, you owe me exactly nothing.”

Nate said, “I don’t like being obligated.”

“Given the circumstances,” Merle said again, “it’s the least I can do. I really liked Alisha, you know. I know how you felt about her.”

Nate said, “Let’s not talk about her, please.” And he raised the weapon and aimed it between Merle’s eyes.

“Tell me again you didn’t know a thing about the people who killed her,” Nate said without inflection.

Merle’s eyes got huge. He was close enough he could no doubt see the half-inch round of bronzed lead seated in the long, dark end of the barrel and no doubt envisioned what it would do to his head.

“I didn’t know a thing,” Merle whispered.

“Okay,” Nate said, letting the hammer down easy and slipping the weapon into his new shoulder holster. “Just needed to make sure.”

Large Merle collapsed back on the grille of his pickup as if his legs had lost their strength. He put a big paw over his heart. He said, “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.”

 

 

Before they left
the grassy plateau, Nate withdrew two one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, rolled them into a tight tube, and shoved it into one of the empty .500 brass cartridges. He jammed the brass into a crack in the first shattered target.

“So the rancher can buy some new posts,” he explained to Merle.

 

 

As they drove
slowly down the mountain, Nate said, “Have you heard how Diane Shober is doing in Idaho?”

Shober had been relocated via the growing underground network after what had happened the year before in the Sierra Madre with Joe Pickett. Nate hadn’t kept in contact with her, or with his friends who took her in.

Merle said, “Changed her name and her hair color. She’s gained a little weight since she’s not running anymore. But from what I can tell, she’s settled in.”

Nate grunted approvingly.

“Learned to shoot,” Merle said. “She’s just waiting for the revolution, from what they tell me. Nate, what do you think? Will there be one? Will they come and try to take away our guns and our freedom?”

“Don’t know,” Nate said. “I’ve only got one thing on my mind right now and it’s not that.”

“I’m worried,” Large Merle said. “Everybody’s worried. But we ain’t gonna let it happen without a fight. What the bastards don’t really understand is what it
means
to have an armed citizenry.”

Nate grunted again.

 

 

“How you gonna get
the fingerprint and DNA identification you mentioned?” Merle asked as they neared Nate’s Jeep.

“I know a guy in law enforcement,” Nate said, looking away. “I’m pretty sure he’ll help.”

“Is it the guy I’m thinking about? The one you had the falling out with over Diane Shober? The game warden?”

Nate looked over and silenced Merle with a look.

After a few beats, Merle said, “You want me to go down in the canyon and clean it up a little? Make it habitable again?”

“No.”

“So you aren’t coming back?”

Nate shook his head. “If an angry woman and two yahoos can figure out where I am, The Five wouldn’t have any problem. No, I’m gone from there.”

“Where are you gonna be?”

“For now,” Nate said, patting the holster and the weapon, “I’m going hunting.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Merle said, pulling up next to the Jeep. “Money, ammunition, a home-cooked meal. Anything. Just let me know. And keep in touch.”

Nate looked over. “Why?”

Merle said, “In case we need you. If things turn real ugly, you know? Or if The Five decide to start taking out everybody from our old unit who’re still around. I know there aren’t many of us left, but as long as we breathe, we’re a threat to them.”

Nate nodded, said good-bye with his eyes, and climbed out of Merle’s Power Wagon.

 

 

As Large Merle
rolled away, Nate got out of his shoulder holster and placed it on the hood of his Jeep. He withdrew the .500 WE and reached into his jeans pocket.

He’d braided the three-inch length of Alisha’s hair into a stiff bolt and tied one end of it to a supple leather jess he’d last used on his murdered peregrine. Nate took the loose ends of the jess and knotted them to the end of the muzzle of his weapon, just behind the front blade site.

He lifted the revolver and aimed it. The length of hair tilted slightly in the breeze. It would help when it came to gauging wind velocity for long-range shots. And it would remind him—as if he needed it—of the only thing he cared about right now.

Friday evening,
Joe and Marybeth took Joe’s pickup to dinner at the Thunderhead Ranch. Missy had invited them, and Joe had been dreading the event all week. Lucy couldn’t join them because of play practice, and when they raised it with April, she said, “If I’m grounded, I’m friggin’
grounded
.”

“Family events can be an exception,” Marybeth said.

“One of the problems with you people is you keep changing the rules,” April said, stalking back to her room and slamming the door.

Her favorite new phrase, besides “frigging” was now the accusatory
you people
.

Joe held the front door open for his wife. As she passed him, she said, “Marcus Hand better be as good as they say, because if he isn’t, April gains in power.”

“Ouch,” Joe said, flinching.

 

 

“I don’t want to do this,”
Joe said, as they turned onto the highway.

“I know,” Marybeth said. “I can’t say I’m very excited myself. But my mother needs to know she’s got some support, Joe. Can you imagine how she feels?”

He bit his tongue and drove. If the woman had made any effort at all to befriend the locals or even show some respect for them, he thought, she might have a few allies.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Marybeth said.

“Can’t help it.”

He’d taken a shower and changed into jeans and a Cinch shirt, but his face still burned from being outside in the wind and sun all day. Mourning dove season had opened on the first, and he’d spent the last two days in the field checking hunters and limits. There was no other season where all a successful hunter had to show for himself was a small bag of the soft gray birds that would barely make a single meal—even though it was a tasty one. But because mourning doves migrated out of the area as quickly as they arrived, it was a furious few days of hunting and work and he’d not been able to pursue his investigation further.

 

 

Joe and Marybeth
had not caught up because they’d been missing each other at home with his long days and her evening shift at the library.

As they turned off the highway and passed under the magnificent elk antler arches that marked the entrance to the Thunderhead Ranch, he said, “I guess this will give me the chance to ask Missy a couple of questions that have been nagging me since my talk with Bob Lee.”

“Like what?” she asked.

Joe chinned toward the north in the direction of the Rope the Wind turbine project. “The wind,” he said. “It blows.”

 

 

Dinner was served
at the regal long table in the rarely used dining room. José Maria had been pulled from duty with the cows and dressed in a black jacket to serve ranch-raised beef tenderloin, asparagus with hollandaise, garlic-roasted sharp-tail grouse, and red-skinned new potatoes. Missy sat at one end picking, as usual, at tiny bits of food. She wore pearls and a black cocktail dress that showed off her trim figure and youthful legs, and Joe wondered if she could possibly be the same wan person he had seen in the courtroom.

Marcus Hand occupied the other end of the table. He wore a loose guayabera shirt over jeans and cowboy boots. His reading glasses hung from a chain around his neck. He ate huge portions and loudly enjoyed them and washed down each bite with alternate gulps of either red or white wine. Hand was well known as a gourmand, and he’d penned dozens of unapologetic essays about eating large quantities of rich food. In one piece Joe had read in a national magazine, Hand lamented that fried chicken was rarely offered in local restaurants and that elites should stop looking down on big eaters who enjoyed their food in quantity. Hand dismembered a grouse by pulling it apart and gnawed the meat off the carcass. Then he snapped the thighbones in two and sucked out the marrow.