Pg 39

of A Crow in the Wheat

Matthias had spent more than fifteen minutes patiently combing the buildings on 440N. Everyone seemed to have remembered seeing Emmy, but no one could say quite where. More importantly, when. The kid whose father had been shot...Bryan, or Brydon or something...was missing too. The implications of that were not encouraging. The one place they hadn't looked was the bayou. The foreman said they played there on free days so it was a good bet that’s where they'd gone this morning.

The bayou was a good four-hundred yards away, south of the houses and well off the paved road. A meandering canal that carved a path from the foothills to the delta and carried, most times of the year, natural run-off from the Eastern Sierras. It was lined on the edges year round with full-grown dogwood and ash and eucalyptus trees. For a snatch-and-eliminate job, this was the worst possible circumstance. Matty had only one pickup and three men, a serious tactical disadvantage.

The targets had cover winding for miles in two directions, a full view of his approach, and if they spooked, a head start on terrain impassible by truck. They clearly would have seen the cotton harvester stunt, and as satisfying as it had been, Matty had raised the anxiety level on the whole section. The old Yachuts had made a rare error in not grabbing up Emmy first. Now he’d need to do both the brats. Only one still had a mother, a grieving mother, and his 'disappearance' would raise a lot of questions. 

Eventually, there would be hell for him to pay one way or another, no getting out of that now. So Matthias did what he did best and focused on the present. Time to put one moccasin in front of the other, as his racially ignorant boss liked to say. He walked up to Silas and spoke in a serious but nonchalant tone.

 “How are you for transpo? 

   “Quarter-ton pickup, don’t run it much. Couple of dirt bikes. Quads.”

   “Horses?”

   “Two, yeah. They ain’t Derby winners, but they're decent, why?”

   “Saddle one up for me. Now.”

There was no hesitation. While the foreman ran to fetch the mount, Matty quietly got his men back into their truck and told them to stay there. Then he went into the toolbox in the bed and pulled out something roughly the size of a yardstick wrapped in soft deerskin. He undid the rawhide ties with a certain amount of ceremony, and pulled out the machete. It had belonged to his grandfather. Polished and gleaming, with an ox-bone handle carved with native-american runes, Matthias rarely touched the weapon. But it would be highly effective for a horseback job.

On the reservation, the elders had used to tell him and the other boys horror stories about scalping whites with weapons like this one. They were lies of course, the tribe had ceded their ground to worthless treaties and ruthless railroad expansion by the mid-1880’s. Still, there was something powerful about this particular piece of steel. And Matthias kept it well-oiled and sharp. 

Silas walked up with a slightly sway-backed chestnut about fourteen-hands high. The saddle seat and seat jockey had an almost mirror shine from years of wear, and the rest of the tack was cracking with age, but it would do. If the Sousa girl was still there, a lone old man, walking up slowly on a horse was the least-threatening way to approach. Multiple men on dirt-bikes or quads would just create noise and confusion and likely make the quarry go to ground.

Matty mounted with an ease that belied his age, and draped the horse-hair leash of the machete around the saddle horn letting it hang down, pinning it between his jeans and the fender. He clucked to the horse and they started off toward the trees in the distance.

Emmy had had good instincts about running. And a lucky instinct about the direction she chose. She and Brydon had had a twenty minute head start and were flying East as fast as their aching legs could take them. The sheer banks of the bayou ran about ten feet deep to the sandy bottom where was still a foot of water running in a serpentine trickle. That meant two small people on foot could move through the water without leaving a trail. There were plenty of places for cover in the tall dirt banks, thick bunches of bulrush and honey mesquite. But Emmy just ran. Brydon did his best to keep up. 

Matthias urged his pony down the soft bayou bank at an angle and came to rest on the sandy bottom. From where he sat the canal curved away in both directions. No sightline. He sat serenely on his horse, closed his eyes and listened. Wind through the eucalyptus, the whisper of the water over gravel, mourning doves chirping their flights overhead. Then, a rattle of brush to the right. He clucked at his chestnut and turned her West. He began to pull at the loop on the saddle horn in order to get a good grip on the machete. Then he announced, as pleasantly as he knew how, “Emmy Sousa?”

The dire wolf flew out of the tules like a blur.