The Time of The Cat 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
LANDER
I felt a sense of trepidation and slight depression when Rudy and his men entered the transporter in St. Louis. Apparently, Liz also felt much the same because she let out a deep sigh.
I turned to her and speculated, “I wonder if they went to Lubbock or Lander?” She simply shrugged her shoulders in response while she held Jefferson cradled in one arm. I was loaded down with the majority of our equipment, but, after all, I’m the man, and it’s my job to carry things.
We went through the transporter and came out of a door marked “Service” in the back of a gas station. We walked until we saw a motel sign that said, “Lander Dew Drop Inn.” I snorted; it was so stereotypical. Liz ignored me and said, “We’ve got to get a car somewhere so we can locate the Loveland transporter head. This place doesn’t look like it will be so easy.”
She was sometimes a bit too pessimistic. It was easy. We walked down to the Dew Drop Inn and watched as a heavy-set man wearing a cowboy hat and boots got out of a pickup. He limped with an uneven stride past an older Ford holding a slightly overweight but still good-looking woman.
He went into one of the rooms and shut the door. The woman looked all around and slowly got out of the car, still on the lookout. She paused and bent down to inspect her reflection in the rear-view mirror. Apparently, her hair and make-up weren’t exactly perfect because she took a moment to rearrange her bangs and refresh her lipstick. Then she straightened and looked around again. She didn’t see anything to alarm her, so she rapidly went to the same room and entered without knocking.
Liz looked at me and sort of snickered, “I’ll bet those two will be in there for at least an hour unless her husband finds them.”
“Well, let’s make it a little more interesting for them. We’ll take the guy’s pickup.”
It was an older model and easy to take. It helped that he’d parked it down at the far end of the strip of rooms without locking the doors. It had a loud muffler, but we eased away slowly, and they never looked out. I guess things were too interesting inside the room.
We started out of town on Highway 789, and we didn’t have to go far before we found a group of mobile homes with a kind of Quonset hut near one end. Our map had indicated a rounded structure at the location of the transporter head, and we decided that the hut might be the place. We pulled in and stopped in front of it. None of the nearby trailers looked as if they’d been occupied recently.
When we got out of the pickup, we were surrounded by some Indians. They were silent and were wearing hostile expressions. One of the men was obviously the leader.
He stepped closer to us and said, “You folks lost or something?” His friends suddenly seemed to be holding knives.
I lifted my windbreaker and pulled out my pistol. He said, “That don’t scare me, Mister. I’d a lot rather face that than the strange guy that grabbed my friend’s sister. I think you’d better get back in that truck and git while you can.”
He slowly removed an oversized machete from a sheath on his belt.
“So, you’ve met the Pugs?” I responded. “They’re hard to kill.”
He looked over his shoulder at his friends, and they started putting the knives away. The atmosphere eased up considerably, and he turned back to us and smiled, “That’s a good answer cause it means that you’ve killed some. We’d like to kill some more of them.”
He motioned us to follow him, and he went over to one of the dilapidated mobile homes. It was open, and we all went inside, not perhaps friends, but not enemies either.
There were seven of them in total. They introduced themselves as members of the Shoshone tribe. The leader was named Freddie Stormbreaker. He said he preferred to be called “Stormbreaker.” He didn’t like his first name because it sounded like a leftover from the white culture.
The other men laughed, and one of them said, “Don’t let Stormy fool you with that humble crap. He was Special Forces, and he’s a lot tougher than he looks.”
“But not as tough as he smells,” joked another.
“Aw, shut up, Charlie Short-leg!” Stormbreaker answered.
I could see that it bothered him.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it, Stormy. You know I was just foolin’ with you,” was the answer.
Stormbreaker looked at me and explained, “Charlie, here is Arapaho. The rest of us are Shoshone. We used to fight, but now we mostly get along, except Charlie thinks he’s better than we are.”
Charlie denied that, but he had a kind of half smile that showed me there was some truth in it, too. After that, things became friendlier, particularly after I mentioned my service record. That seemed to help with these guys.
We explained what we were up to, and they let us know in no uncertain terms that they’d like to be in on the hunt. I was feeling kind of nervous about getting more people involved, but it sounded like each of them had maybe lost a relative to the Pugs.
I thought maybe the Pugs were feeling more confident away from the cities, and as a result, they were engaging in open hunting of people. Perhaps it was for sport, perhaps for other reasons, but they’d really pissed off these guys, and they were ready to go on the warpath.