notice I was being followed from the airport. Maybe not wanting to take any chances this time, a second killer was coming up from behind, by the steps I’d come up, to shoot me in the back. From the top of my mesa I looked at the big sky I had come to see, the stretch of the Samaniego Ridge to the east and the broad valley to the west, and had never felt so closed in, so trapped.
If I ran forward to the east end of the mesa I risked getting nailed by the shooter. If I went back down the way I had come, I might be running straight toward a second asshole.
“Small change of plan,” I said to the Pugs, my heart still thumping with the mistake I couldn’t afford to make.
I looked toward the mountain again and in a brief break of sunshine through the clouds caught the light again. The rifle was still, and we were in a standoff, with only the unknown of what was behind me. I stood. “Hit me, you pussy,” I muttered, and then aimed and fired.
In reply a third round hit a little closer than the first two. Wow. I felt the whisper of sand against my leg when it hit, close enough to take even my breath away. I dropped behind the safety of the bench and leaned against it, heaving with fear.
The purpose of my firing wasn’t to shoot the sniper; there was no way I could at this range. I only wanted him to know I had a gun, too, make him, or his suspected compatriot, less likely to follow without knowing where I might be hiding in ambush. I took the leashes off the Pugs, who whined, upset by the loud noise of my gun and uncertain about what they were supposed to do. “Stick with me, guys,” I said.
At that moment a microburst of wind, maybe forty knots, caught me by surprise, nearly knocking me over even though I was sitting down. My hat blew off and whisked out of sight. Then, as is the way with those winds, it was just as suddenly gone. I blinked the sand out of my eyes and studied the sky rapidly blackening from the east; I hoped it was a sign of things to come, a storm that I’d seen many times before from the safety of my back porch. A little weather could come in handy about now.
Like a sound effect for a B movie, a flash of lightning was followed too closely by a crack of thunder loud enough to rattle your fillings. Come on, come on, I thought, work with me here.
And then it happened. Over the mountain the cloud fell to earth in a sheet of rain that looked like a black magician’s scarf making the mountain disappear from view. That put the shooter effectively out of the picture; he would have to worry now about getting off that mountain alive. I could just worry about whoever might be coming up from the rear.
The curtain of rain hadn’t reached my mesa yet but it was coming this way. I had to move and I had to move fast. “Come,” I said to the Pugs in a sharp command that I hoped brooked no resistance and took off running without looking back to see if they did.
Taking the chance that if someone was there they’d assume I would take the trail down, I slipped off the trail to the right of the stairs and butt-slid down the steep side of the mesa, the Pugs bouncing along with me like a couple of basketballs. It was the kind of thing that, if I’d still been in the Bureau, and lived to tell the tale, would make the guys howl with laughter in a bar.
By the time we started down the rain was close upon us, cold drops of water the size of blueberries splattering on us through the hot air. Then all the drops connected and it was just one big downpour, making my slide down a little slicker, a little faster. I bumped my tailbone against large rocks a few times, but we managed to avoid the more wicked cacti. I knew I was taking a chance at the bottom tucking my gun back into my pants, but there was no other option. I leaned over and scooped up both the Pugs so we could run faster.
Even then I stayed off the trail, instead making