Fistful of Reefer

Fistful of Reefer: scene 46

McCutchen encouraged Chester carefully up the steep slope of the canyon wall. At the first hint of light he had picked up the tracks of the fugitives' horses and followed them. His fugitives had not been on the beasts when they were led up the slope by night, but after the strange events of last night he embraced the basics.

Fumbling with his good hand, he pulled the smoking tin from his duster and lit the tip of a fresh marihuana cigarette, his second in the last few hours. He never permitted himself such an indulgence, but the vacant real estate that used to accommodate his left ring finger throbbed. Removed at the second knuckle only the blister from his wedding ring remained, a burn scar from a previous life. Now that his finger was gone, the stub felt more naked and the memory more raw, so he wrapped it with extra gauze and smoked.

He puffed on the cigarette, elevating the bandaged hand above his head. The pain returned to a manageable level. He could not begin to understand the events of the last several hours, nor was he sure he wanted to. His thoughts a minefield, he eluded encounters with painful memories, avoided past failures, all the while forcing his mind to gloss lightly across every page of his history. He needed the big picture in moments like these, moments when a single minute detail could cause him to lose his way. Moments when the abstract grew tedious.

He was missing a finger. That was concrete enough, and someone owed him. He would catch the bastards and make them pay. Refocusing his determination, he banished thoughts of failure, swallowing his embarrassment. As long as the tracks continued he had all the means he needed to set things right.

After an hour he discovered where the horses had been held overnight. Tracks led in and out of a small hollow just below the crest of a hill. A cave opened in the back of it, large enough for a man to crawl through. "Damn caves." McCutchen's bloody stump throbbed at the sight of it. He reined Chester to a stop shy of entering the hollow and dismounted to take a closer look at the tracks.

As he suspected, they were shallower and cleaner on the way in, while leaving a deeper impression on the way out. The three horses had left with riders, probably within the hour. Loath to get too close to the cave opening, he inched further into the hollow to inspect the footprints before they mounted the horses. Four sets of tracks. One had accompanied the horses into the hollow. The other three he had seen in the Catholic Hills, two sets of boots, one huge, and a smaller set of moccasins.

After hearing a woman's voice cry out the night before he suspected the smaller set belonged to her—two men and a woman. He backed away from the cave and led Chester along the trail on foot, looking for one more critical piece of evidence to set his mind at rest. Just before he gave up the search he found it, a marihuana bud. These were no doubt his fugitives, and they still carried at least a portion of the illicit crop—the corrupting element he swore to keep out of Texas.

The fresh trail called to him. Kicking Chester into a trot, he followed it south. With the fugitives aware of his pursuit, it proved to be a difficult task. All day he struggled with the fact he simply didn't know his quarry well enough. They had kept to themselves in the Catholic Hills. O'Brien and his daughter had helped them, and O'Brien took a sharp dislike to most. But they had paid him well. They had come out of the caves alive, and with the assistance of someone.

He still couldn't put it together.

They were the best he'd ever tracked, and he worried he was losing too much time. Steadily heading south, soon he'd run out of Texas soil with no legal reason to pursue them into Mexico. If he hoped to stop them before that happened, he had to figure out their motives—connect the dots.

They hadn't tried to jump him. Not once during the course of the day had they attempted to set a trap or go on the offensive. They knew he was alone. Strange that a group of three hadn't given it more thought. And why south? Why now? Had they only chosen Mexico after they discovered his pursuit? Had the flash flood changed their plans? They were too smart to be playing it by ear.

McCutchen continued to follow the trail, wracking his brain to gain the upper hand. They had caravanned north, met up with O'Brien and then fled south toward mysterious caves. Finally he landed on it. They were too smart. Early on he'd assumed the fugitives were slow-witted, lonely outsiders. But their survival over the last twenty four hours refuted that conclusion. Most runners didn't make it half a day. Not only were they intelligent, they seemed to understand people, or more likely, and this seemed to be the salient point, they knew people.

These three were not loners. The large crop of marihuana, the special harvester, meeting up with O'Brien in the middle of the night. Bastards. They beat him because they were part of a larger syndicate, links in a chain.  A network growing, storing and distributing marihuana in the state of Texas. The caves had been a trap. Whoever had helped them escape had no doubt dug up the buried marihuana by now, stashing it in the caves.

But if the fugitives were only growers, who ran the operation? And why create a new market for an unknown intoxicant with the demand for illegal booze skyrocketing? What value could there be in moving marihuana north across the border? Dammit, it didn't make sense.

The rhythmic movement of Chester's hooves along with the practice of splitting his attention between the trail and the reasoning behind the trail hypnotized him. His mind sharpened during the trance, coming to a pinpoint focus. After hours of scanning his thoughts for flotsam the moment of discovery was at hand.

What forces along the border would profit? The border. That was the key. The borderlands were the most unstable region in the whole of the United States. Surely some would seek to profit from that, and some to proffer it to others. Finally the connection he sought slammed into place like a keystone falling from heaven to miraculously complete an intricate arch.

Twice in his career he had encountered advanced German weaponry employed in conflict along the border. The first had been a Huertista stash south of Matamoros. Grenades, machine guns, things he couldn't identify. That episode ended with a chain of events destroying the entire munitions dump. Big Benny Lickter had been the second. Now certain of it, no other explanation existed for a German Jewish immigrant turned sheriff to possess such advanced machinery and weapons. Friends from across the pond indeed.

Lastly, there had been the pamphlets on Bronco O'Brien's desk. He hadn't thought anything of it at the time, Rocksprings being on the edge of German hill country. McCutchen nodded to himself as he emerged from his trail-bound trance. He'd heard fear-mongering politicians prattle on about the threat from German immigrants and spies, but dismissed it as another chupacabra. Feasibly, the German government could be working through a complacent Mexican government to destabilize the border. Crazy, yes. Impossible, no.

That meant his fugitives might be bolting for the border. Or they might be aiming for another rendezvous with the final link in the chain, their last connection. His gut told him it was the latter. Everywhere they'd gone so far had been intentional, not a mad dash, but a strategic plan.

The town of Brackettville dotted the map directly between him and the border. Having assumed they were trying to steer clear of people, he had failed to see the pattern emerging, the network. Brackettville wasn't an inconvenience to avoid, but their last connection. It struck him in the face like a fist. All he had to do now, was figure out the connection.