Free Wild Country by Dean Ing Page A

mind.
    Marianne's mascara was smudged, but now, dry-eyed, she stalked to her car and faced Wardrop. Her harangue was designed for the hearing-impaired. "No, dammit, for the last time! If I had never set eyes on you, my father would be alive now!" She swung into the driver's seat, stowed the bag carefully in the passenger footwell.
    Wardrop knelt his long frame to make some plea.
    "I don't know what you can do! Undertake some inane romantic quest in my name?"
    Wardrop still knelt, but as he spoke he seemed to be at attention.
    An expression of fierce joy spread across the elegant cheekbones of Marianne Placidas. "All right, you pigsticking moron, bring me the head of Ba'al, and then I'll forgive you! I don't know if my father would; he died without last rites." Now she was nodding, pleased with her idea. She unwound the scarlet kerchief, flung it at Wardrop's feet. "Here, Ivanhoe, I'll give you a real Wild Country quest—and a token of my affection! Bring me the head of Ba'al," she snarled, and the Ocelot's engine snarled with her.
    The three voyeurs watched her storm off with Wardrop half-hidden in her dust. "She wants the man dead," Marrow observed.
    "That's one hunt I ain't goin' anywhere near," Hutch replied.
    "There won't be any hunt," said Quantrill. thinking fast, "if nobody helps Wardrop. Ba'al hasn't been seen around here for years. Probably dead."
    "No, he ain't," said Hutch. "One of Garner's fence-riders seen his sign this spring."
    "You tell the Englishman that, if you want to see him buried in a cigar box," Quantrill said evenly. "Besides, Wardrop may be a romantic, but I don't think he's stupid."
    "He ain't," Hutch agreed, "but he's got bigger balls than a pawnshop where pig is concerned. The way he'll wait for a boar's charge with not even a sidearm to back up that lance just scares the pure-dee ol' shit outa this child. No, I don't reckon I'll help him."
    But by now. Lieutenant Alec Wardrop was certain that the name "Ba'al" referred not to some mythical Hebrew demongod but to something tangible. Something worthy of the Wardrop steel.
    By nightfall, the body of Anthony Placidas was on its way to SanTone. And by then some fool had shown Alec Wardrop a glossy print of an old infrared photo. It revealed a boar beyond Wardrop's wildest dreams, and all the warnings in the world could not make Wardrop forget the scarlet pennant that symbolized his quest.

Chapter Fourteen
    The fires of Marianne's fury did not flicker low until after she had found gasoline near Norman, Oklahoma. As long as she stayed on interstate highways, the search for this unusual fuel was fairly easy. It was different on secondary roads, where diesel and electric services were the rule and gasoline a rarity. Marianne knew, in any case, that in a pinch she could fuel the Ocelot at most airports. Gasoline was still a popular fuel for older aircraft and, of course, for special effects used in the entertainment industry.
    She rolled into a swank new Holiday Inn near Tulsa; estimated that she could get a night's rest, with the bag as her bedpartner. She could then arrive in Kansas Ringcity by noon, thanks to the ID transceiver in her roadster. Most of the shuttle set avoided fast cars, when police were so pleased to hand out speeding tickets. Police did not hassle other police, however, regardless of the vehicle type. The last special gift old Tony Plass had given his daughter had been the police ID unit for her car. Settling between clean sheets, she wondered what the old man would have said had he known the Ocelot had become a drug-running roadster.
    Marianne called the SanTone mortuary before breakfast the next day and said she simply could not face the memorial services. Would they cremate the body and turn away reporters' questions about the service? They would. They understood her bereavement; she could count on their discretion in her hour of need.
    Halfway through her outrageously expensive steak and eggs, she had shelved her grief and was