Chapter 14
BOULDER
Rancor's bike comes up the lane at dusk, and the whole yard straightens for it.
He backs in next to my ride, takes his time with his gloves, and stands a minute in the middle of the yard, reading the whole of it once, gate to barn.
"So this is the ground," he says.
"This is the ground."
Cross comes down from the gate with two days of quiet eye on Dewey Ledbetter, no seasoning on any of it.
"Ford sat his place all day yesterday. This morning he drove to the pull-off north of the river bridge.
Panel truck's already sitting there. Driver hands him a fold of bills through the window, and Ledbetter counts it in front of him like a kid with allowance money.
Truck ran the corridor north after. I let it go rather than teach it my headlights.
Plates trace to a leasing outfit in another county. Dead end on paper."
"Not enough to figure out what the fuck is going on here," Rancor says.
"Enough to know something's cooking," Cross says.
The note's folded in my cut, and it might as well be a coal for all the peace it gives me.
"I'm not taking this club to war on a maybe.
" Rancor turns from the barn to face me.
"The Hounds want that barn bad enough to squeeze a dying man over it.
That we know. Before we do anything we can't undo, I'm requesting a meet with Spade on neutral ground.
If there's a version of this where nobody bleeds, I wanna fucking consider it. "
"And if there's no such version?"
"Then we'll know that too." He pulls his gloves back on. "I'll make the call right away. Prez to Prez."
It takes him two hours to set it.
Before we leave, I sit down across from Spark at Wade's table and tell her.
"We're meeting Spade. Neutral ground, his word on numbers."
She turns her chair to face me square. "You're going to talk to the men who killed your brother? Why?"
"To find out if there's a way through this that nobody has to bleed for. Rancor's words."
"And yours?"
"Mine ran more toward a dark road. But his way's probably better."
"If you're gonna be standing in front of the man whose colors were on our road the day Wade's heart quit," she says. "Don't let the angry part of you answer before the rest of you gets a vote, Cole."
"That's why Rancor will be doing all the talking."
At the door I kiss her once, slow.
Brick's at the trucks with his arms crossed like a gate. "Nobody gets up that lane," he says like a promise he's making to himself.
Spark stays on the porch with her radio on her hip. "Two clicks when it's done."
"Two clicks."
The livestock auction on the county line has been shut for years, pens gone to rust, scale house boarded. Neutral because it's nobody's ground anymore. With Rancor, we ride out three strong, and get there early.
Spade isn't late.
Three bikes come off the highway right on the hour. Their President's a big man gone lean, beard more gray than not. He leaves his two at the bikes when Rancor leaves Whiskey at ours, and then it's three men on cold gravel, and nobody offers a hand.
Rancor walks him through it, short and dry, and I do the job he gave me, which is standing at his shoulder and keeping my mouth shut.
Wade Briggs, pressured at his gate for two weeks over a barn lease, dead of his heart October ninth with Hounds colors sitting on his road half the afternoon. Warden running the show. Nothing moves in Spade's face.
Then Rancor holds out the note. I handed it to him earlier.
Spade reads it slow. "When was this left?"
"Two days back," Rancor says. "Under a rock on my VP's mailbox, while men wearing your colors walked the tree line."
He hands it back. He asks nothing about the girl.
Rancor keeps going. The old logging cut above the farm, weeks of eyes on the yard. Ledbetter's Ford and the fold of bills at the pull-off. The panel truck.
"What was the truck hauling?" Spade says.
"You tell me," Rancor says.
Spade doesn't. He looks at the boarded scale house a moment, and I'd give a lot to know whether he's choosing not to answer or hasn't got the answer to choose from.
When he talks, his voice gives away no more than his face did.
"Here's what you get from me. My club's business is my club's business.
What we run, where we run it, who I send, none of that goes on a scale for you.
Warden sits at my right hand until my table says different, and you don't get a vote at my table.
" He lets that stand a beat. "But a man who wears my patch while doing a job my table never agreed to, he works alone.
If it turns out somebody's been running a private trade in my colors, whatever finds him in the doing of it is between him and the road.
I don't bury clubs for putting down problems I didn't send. "
"That'll hold," Rancor says.
"It holds narrow." Spade's eyes come off Rancor and settle on me. "If Thunder Bastards take today for a hunting license, if Hounds start going down out here on sanctioned work, it becomes my problem. Hear that part with both ears."
He walks back to his bikes. No goodbye, no thanks, and he said Warden's name exactly once.
We ride home split across the dark, and at the county road I key the radio twice. It clicks back from a farm with its barn light burning, and the day lets go of me a notch.
She's waiting in the kitchen. I hang my cut on Wade's chair and give her the simple version.
"Spade didn't send any of it. The note, the ridge, Dewey. None of it ever crossed his table."
"He told you that?"
"He told us a man who runs a private trade in his colors carries it alone." I sit down where I can see the window and the lane beyond it. "We rode out there to talk peace with the Hounds, and their own Prez handed us a different animal."
She lets a breath go. "So it's smaller than a war."
"Smaller and worse. Club against club has rules. One man using his club for cover has nothing to lose but the cover, and tonight it started coming off him."
She turns her mug a slow circle on the table, hands doing her thinking for her. "Wade wrote Dogs at the gate," she says. "It was never the pack, was it. It's one dog gone off the chain."
"His own Prez won't move a muscle for him. His errand boy counts cash in daylight. All he's got left is the reach. So we don't touch him, and we don't spook him. We keep feeding the deer stand, and we let him put his own hands on that barn."
"And when he does?"
"He finds out what's been standing behind him since tonight." I turn my mug once, matching hers. "Nothing but air."