“No problem.”
Mike loaded the Magnum, sticking each round back into its chamber. Then he tucked the gun into his pants. He handed a beer to Hawley. The aluminum was cold and wet with condensation. The can was a good weight. Miller High Life. Hawley opened it and took a sip.
“What about you?” he asked Nunn. “I’m sure you get real dry talking to those prairie dogs all day.”
“Ha-ha,” said Nunn.
“Come on,” said Mike. “Drink with us.” He opened a can and held it out.
Nunn had already flipped off the safety on his rifle. Hawley could tell he was trying to make up his mind—whether to murder him or wait. Nunn was looking at Mike, sizing him up as a witness. One beer. That’s all it would take to decide.
Hawley sucked in a breath. He let half of it out. And then he threw his Miller High Life as hard as he could at Nunn’s face. It smacked his chin, then bounced and knocked the Weatherby, which went off, a hole blasted in the wall next to the Kit-Cat clock, the boom of the rifle ringing in their ears. The can dropped onto the floor, spraying foam and beer across the tiny kitchen. Hawley grabbed the Magnum from the back of Mike’s pants.
“Brah!” Mike said.
“You think you can come to my house and kill me?” Nunn shouted. “You think I’m going to let you do that? I got a right to live. A goddamn right.”
“She’s got more,” said Hawley.
He shot Frederick Nunn in the head. It was a clean shot. Done and done. The back of the man’s skull opened in a dark spray across the walls. Mike started screaming and whacked the Magnum from Hawley’s hand with the butt of his rifle. Hawley pushed out the door of the trailer, cutting around the corner just in time to see Ike hustling toward them from the shooting range.
Hawley got the door open to the car, but before he could get inside, Mike had shot out the windshield with the Weatherby and then rattled up the rest of the sedan with holes, hitting the tires. Hawley snatched the shotgun and blew both barrels into the trailer, and it was enough to make both Mike and Ike dive for cover. Enough time for him to run.
Hawley chose the only direction he could: toward his own land. But first he had to cross the prairie-dog town. He covered fifty yards and then a bullet rang out over his head in the gloom, and he flattened, losing the shotgun. He got his elbows up and started army-crawling across the dirt, dragging himself over the holes.
The prairie dogs had all disappeared into their tunnels, but he could still hear them underground. Thousands of little throats straining in a mile-wide game of telephone. And then he felt the earth give and his whole arm broke through into one of the holes and he was up to his shoulder. He tried to pull himself out but another shot rang over his head, and then he felt an even bigger shift in the earth and he was falling through, a chasm opening beneath his body. Dirt and sand was all around him and in his eyes and in his ears and up his nose and in his mouth.
When Hawley finally hit bottom, he wiped the grit off of his face. He’d fallen into a hollowed-out den, seven or eight feet from the surface. Something was moving in the dirt around him, struggling out from the sides and below, biting and scratching. The prairie dogs. At least a dozen of them. They had looked small and cute from a distance. But up close they were giant furry rodents, backing up on their hind legs, with rigid tails and fat bellies and short noses and black eyes and agile, humanlike paws with long fingers and even longer nails. Overhead he could see the darkening sky and some of the prairie dogs were clambering up toward it, and others were trying to find the tunnel out, and still others were crawling across his back and his head, and Hawley pushed himself up and threw the dogs off of him, shoving away until he was sitting against one side of the den and the dogs were scuttling back and forth across the other. They seemed to move and act as one. All of them barking, barking, barking.
Once Mike and Ike found this hole, he was dead. Unless he could get out in time and make it to the fence. Hawley moved to his knees and then to his feet, but when he pulled himself up, the edge crumbled around him. It was like trying to crawl out of a hole in the ice. Hawley dug in with his boots and scraped at the sides and he got his head above the burrow, just enough to see Mike and Ike searching the field about two hundred yards to the west. And then the whole side collapsed, and Hawley dropped to the bottom, and the earth fell down and buried him.
The loose ground pressed on Hawley like the weight of a blanket. He was covered up but he couldn’t breathe. He clawed with his fingers and felt an opening. A tunnel left behind by the dogs. He grabbed hold of some roots, shoved his head inside and took in the fetid pocket of air. The walls were tight, but he forced his shoulders through. Then he dug madly and widened the space until he was jammed half in, half out of the narrow tunnel. He could hear the men’s voices getting closer.
“Thought I saw something.”
“Brah, check this out.”
Hawley bent his head to the left. He could see their shadows at the edge of the hole.
“Think he fell in here?”
“Can’t see the bottom.”
Hawley heard one of them spit. There was the sound of a bullet being chambered and then both men aimed their guns and fired down into the hole. The first missed and the second drove through the layer of soil covering him and split Hawley’s calf and nicked the bone. He knew at once it was the Magnum from the force of the blow and how much it hurt and the way it made his leg feel like it had been ripped from the rest of his body.
He bit into his arm to keep from shouting, even though a part of him was aching to scream and let them know he was stretched out in the bottom of this hole. They wouldn’t even have to dig a grave to bury him. It would be so easy. It would all be over. But Hawley only bit himself harder. There were more errands to run. So he just lay there in the dirt and bled.
Above, the men were listening.
“There’s no cover out here.”
“You spooked?”
“I can’t see for shit. We should go back to the trailer.”