Afraid of that question. “No sir,” she replied, “but we’re on the track.” That’s a lie, she thought. Though it’s only been missing for twelve hours.
The Bishop grinned his tiny creepy grin. “Kind of hard to hide a Cat D-7 out here in the desert, wouldn’t you say?” He pulled out the throttle on the Mitsubishi, letting the roar of sixteen cylinders pronounce his opinion of the ranger’s explanation. If she had one. Lady rangers, he was thinking. Female dozer operators. Next thing you know they’ll want to be bishops. In our church. Just like the niggers. Yes, it’s a fact, true fact, we live in the latter days and the time of judgment is nigh. Sodomy in the streets and fornication in high places, like them naked sky jumpers do. Waxing wroth, he pulled the power takeoff lever and lifted the mighty dozer blade clear of the dirt. He engaged the clutch lever; the tractor lurched forward. Love aimed the machine at the center of the Earth First! line, directly at the slender form of that shameless long-legged harlot in the tight jeans and damp T-shirt.
By God, I’ll make her jump. Make her run like a scared bunny rabbit. She’s built for speed, let’s see her use it.
At full throttle he rumbled toward her, wind at his rear, dust cloud passing. The tall girl did not move. Instead she seized a small American flag from somebody nearby and held it before her, like a crucifix, warding off the devil.
But that only made the Bishop madder. Dirty tricks, he snarled, dirty tricks. At full speed forward he lowered the blade and plowed into the ground, shoving a half ton of stones, weeds, brush and rainsoaked dirt toward his target.
“Out of the way!” he screamed, “out of the way!”
She did not move, except to spread her feet apart for a firmer stance.
Cursing, Love halted the machine three feet short, raising the blade and letting his dune of debris flow over her feet, calves, knees, thighs, planting her crotch-deep in mud. Standing up from his seat, shaking a fist, the Bishop roared, “I’ll bury you!”
She turned white with fear but did not struggle to escape. “Vee stay here,” she yelled, great green eyes shining, waving her borrowed flag. “You go home. You bury not me on zee lone prairie.”
Love backed off a bit for better visibility and a second run, his dozer blade high in the air. Something hard clanged against steel. Amazed, he saw another woman, heavy and powerful, heaving rocks at the front of his machine. Like most of the others she wore a proclamatory T-shirt. “EF! Feminist Garden Club,” said hers, “Georgia Hayduchess, Pres.”
Holy Moroni! thought the Bishop, they’re everywhere. But Bishop Love had never run from a woman yet. Nor from any number of women. But he could use some support. He looked around for Orval Jensen. Where was Orval?
There was Orval’s machine, still in place, motor idling, but Orval himself was walking away, headed for his pickup truck a mile back down the road. The Bishop stared for a moment — that man is fired — then climbed down from cab to tread to ground. Again he jerked his thumb at the teenager. “Okay,” he said, “get back on your Mitsu. I’ll take the big one.”
Happily the girl obeyed. Love took over on Jensen’s machine, flipped the steering clutch levers, yanked out the throttle and roared once again toward the line of protesters. This time he aimed at what he judged to be a weaker sector of the line, a group of smaller, younger girls hanging together, elbow to elbow, on the left. Advancing at full speed, iron treads clattering, engine bellowing like a bull from Hell, he saw them tremble, saw one take a step backward, then another. Hah! he thought, they’re gonna break. He raised the dozer blade to make his machine look bigger, meaner, uglier. He glanced aside; his teenage operator was advancing against the right flank, on her pale face a look of rigid hate. Good kid! he thought; nothing like a female driver to scare the pants off anybody.
Whang!
A mighty blow resounded from his blade. Love paid attention. That woman throwin’ rocks again? No, it was the huge young punk with no clothes on, hardly any, all meat and muscle, rearing back with some kind of godawful battle club — a mace? — getting set for another swing. Before Love could lower the blade, amputate the. kid’s feet, he heard
Whunk! the second blow, duller this time, something dead and deadly about it, that tone without resonance which the practiced ear of Love recognized as the sound of weakened metal, distempered steel, of oriental molecules relinquishing their grip on reality. Quickly, the Bishop flipped the dozer lever, letting the blade drop to the ground, but he was too late, the sweating thug had already stepped aside and swung his weapon for the third time
Whack! and cracked the dozer blade from stem to rim. Impossible, the Bishop thought, even as his blade, plowing into the ground, parted itself in twain along the jagged split of fracture.
But he didn’t stop. Lifting the blade, broken but still firmly bolted to its iron supporting arms, uglier, meaner, more dangerous than before, the Bishop drove his tractor onward. For the enemy was bolting. They were running, scattering before him like a bunch of panicked calves, grunting with fear. The girl had done it, the kid on his right, couldn’t even remember her name, she and her little Mitsubishi, something in her style of operating, her fixed frozen inflexible non-reactive grip on the controls, almost a paralysis of will, had communicated itself to the line of young people confronting her, forced them to realize, unanimously, suddenly, that they were being charged, not by a human driving a machine, but by a machine driving a human.
And so, naturally, sensibly, they unlinked arms and fled, throwing a few useless rocks, each on his and her own, in various directions. Only the tall young woman stood her ground in the center of the field, staying there because she could not move, could not pull her legs from the mound of mud in which they were embedded. Erika the Svenska, and at her side Hayduchess, scrabbling frantically at the dirt with bare hands, trying desperately, hopelessly, to free her.
The loafing horseman on the mesa raised one arm.
Ranger Dick sat in her pickup calling headquarters.
The two yellow bulldozers, circling right and left among the dodging yelling rioters, kept them scattered far and wide. Spotting the mound of backpacks on the ledge, Bishop Love advanced to crush them under his treads, saw the drop-off, lowered his broken blade instead and pushed them one and all over the edge, stopped his machine, reversed, rotated. His assistant was chasing an old graybearded buzzard through the sagebrush. “Press!” the man yelled, “press!,” holding up his little shirt-pocket notebook as he ran. It did him no good whatsoever; the teenage operating engineer maintained steady pursuit, engine roaring, blade elevated high to clobber him. (Her engine block smoking a bit, overheated.)
The Bishop grinned. Press, he thought, press — they’re the worst of all. I hope she jams him down a gopher hole. He looked about for fresh victims, saw Hayduchess and the young bastard with the giant monkey wrench trying to dig out that half-buried slut with the legs and the eyes and the big sweaty tits. We’ll see about that, by golly — that black-haired Barbie doll is mine; that gal is going to the pokey. For six months.
He gunned his engine. Didn’t respond quite right at first, he felt a couple of pistons seemed to miss a stroke. Then it took off, raging full bore, and the Bishop clattered happily back toward the struggling bodies in the mud in the middle of the right-of-way.
From the corner of one eye — good peripheral vision here — Love became aware of a patch of dust and yellow steel veering toward him from the right, on a bearing that would cut across his path not far from the objective. The kid? No, not her, she was far off on another tangent, still rattling after that reporter. This was a big machine, much bigger than hers, almost as big as Love’s, a Cat in fact, a D-7 in fact, third biggest hunk of crawling iron that Caterpillar makes. Well, good, the Bishop thought, we got them now, we’ll round up the whole crazy long-haired bare-legged flag-waving herd. He waved to the dark figure crouched at the controls, a man obscured by thick billows of dust rolling up from the treads. The operator waved back, lowered his filthy red bandanna for a moment to flash a gleami
ng grin, then drew it up again to screen his mouth and nose from the fine rich dust. Face half masked by the rag, no goggles, big black floppy hat pulled low on his head, the man resembled one of those half-breed Mexican desperados from an old-time Western movie.
Don’t think I know that guy, the Bishop thought. He one of my men? Why ain’t he wearing his respirator? His safety goggles? His hardhat? Goddamn OSHA’s giving us enough trouble already with their goddamn candyass rules and regulations, man can’t take a piss anymore without consulting their goddamn rulebook, can’t squat to take a shit without a backup beeper. And holy Moroni not so fast there buddy where’d you learn to drive and for the love of petesake why the hell don’t you watch where you’re —
Ca-rump!
The Cat D-7 slammed hard into the right front side of Love’s big Mitsu, jarring it off course.
Now what the hell —?
Treads grinding into bedrock, the Cat pushed at low speed full power against the forequarter of Love’s machine, its massive dozer blade jammed against the Bishop’s right tread, tilting him off center, robbing him of full traction, swinging his whole front end around a good ninety degrees. He was now headed toward the rim of the ledge that curved on a bias up the wash, a clear fifty-foot overhanging drop-off, with the man on the Cat continuing to push him toward the closest part of the edge.
Wants a fight, does he? By God we’ll give it to him. Love pushed the forward-and-reverse lever into reverse position, attempting to back clear from his opponent, get room for a racing head-on charge, shove that wise guy ass over tincups. Big as the Cat was, his Mitsubishi was bigger, outweighing the other by five tons.
But the other gave him no space for maneuver. No sooner did Love go into reverse, disengaging his right tread from the Cat’s dozer blade, than the bandanna bandito rammed full tilt against the inside of the Mitsu’s blade, shearing off the broken right half, exposing the vulnerable radiator to frontal assault.
Dirty tricks, the Bishop thought, dirty tricks again! Bastard won’t fight fair. Still in reverse, backup signal screeching, he lifted his remaining half a blade as high as it would go, shifted into forward, full speed, yanked back the right clutch steering lever and made a sudden lunging attack directly at the open unshielded cab of the Caterpillar.
Better jump, pal, better jump, or you’re one mashed-up Catskinner.
The man on the Cat did not jump. Instead he rotated his tractor face-to-face with the Bishop and caught the Mitsu’s dropping blade behind the edge and between the arms of his own. With the clang of iron and a shower of sparks they locked.
Horns locked, like a pair of rutting bull elk, like two stag beetles, they struggled for a moment blade to blade, motors bellowing, both driving forward on slipping treads, each striving to shove the other back, neither gaining an inch.
At first. And then the Mitsubishi’s superior weight and power began to pay. To pay off. Despite his slightly uphill advantage, the man on the Cat was forced to yield, foot by foot, before the Mitsu’s greater mass. Grinning under his sunglasses, the Bishop turned a hair to the left and then another, forcing the Cat this time toward a corner of the overhang.
The bandanna bandit tried to free his blade from beneath the weight of the other’s; he had power enough to cant up both but could not detach his own without the other man’s cooperation. (The Bishop grinned.) The Cat driver attempted a sharp turn in reverse, as the Bishop had done, but this time the ploy left the Cat with its rear close to the rim of the ledge and the Mitsu on the uphill side. (The Bishop grinned again.) The man glanced over his shoulder; the edge lay ten feet away. Nine. Eight. Seven. …
Jump, you moron, the Bishop thought, his satisfaction smug and complete, jump or die.
But the moron did not jump. Not yet. Looking back, then forward, then back again, standing up but not leaving his place, he remained at the levers of his Cat D-7b.
So okay, thought Love, be that way. It’s your funeral. He pulled his throttle out to the last notch. Full power forward. His sixteen pistons danced in their oily vaginae, the black smoke jetted from his stack. And then, as the bandit tractor teetered on the edge, apparently about to fall, Bishop Love remembered that his shattered dozer blade was caught behind the other man’s dozer blade. Well … He jammed down the steering clutch brakes, pushed the speed selector into neutral, pulled back on the blade lift lever. We’ll let him go over nice and easy, he thought, give him time for a prayer. A short one.
The Bishop’s dozer blade rose as instructed.
But the other man’s blade rose with it and stayed there, keeping the two bulldozers coupled together, nose to nose.
Out of habit the Bishop stood up to get a clear view of the problem, releasing the brakes. “Let your blade down!” he shouted, making the customary down-pushing hand signal. The man on the Cat seemed not to understand. “Let it go down!” the Bishop shouted again, trying to be heard above the clamor of the excited engines. The man stared at Love, nothing visible of his face but the wild red crackpot eyes between the greasy brim of his hat and the upper edge of his greasy bandanna. The Bishop pointed at the locked dozer blades. “Down!” he shouted, getting angry, “down, you moron!”
This time the man nodded, placed a gloved hand on a control lever, the other on the outer edge of the fuel tank, looked over his shoulder one last time, shifted his tractor into reverse, and vaulted over the fuel tank. Into space.
Both bulldozers clanked over the edge.
The Bishop scrambled down from his, over the rippers in the rear, barely in time to save his ass. He lay on the cool stone for a long time, face flushed, hand on his heart.
Ranger Dick came trotting near, lugging a big first aid kit. She dropped to her knees beside Love, put one ear to his chest and grabbed his wrist, listening, feeling, counting heartbeats.
“I’m dead,” he said. Feeling for her hip, his hand came to rest on her gun butt. “Ginny, I’m dead.”
“Should be. Bishop Love, when you going to stop doing things like this? Got to take care of yourself. Get your hand off my leg.”
“That’s your leg?”
“My hogleg. Take your digitalis today?”
“Yes I took my digitalis today. Yes I took my digitalis yesterday. Yes I’ll take my doggone digitalis tomorrow.”
“Don’t get upset. Was only asking.” The ranger pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped his damp brow. “Drink of water?”
“Got any Pepsi?”
“No.”
“I’ll take a drink of water.” Laboriously he sat up, leaning a bit on Ranger Dick’s strong warm shoulder as she unslung her felt-covered canteen. Unscrewing the cap he said, “How do you feel about polygamy, Ginny?”
“How’s your wife feel about it?”
“Yeah …” He drank, wiped his mouth. “Yeah, that’s the problem. But say …” He grinned at her. “Was that a great fight or was that a great fight?”
“Great. Pushed your own bulldozer over the cliff.”
“You mean that Cat D-7? That was mine?”
“Hell yes, Dudley; you didn’t know?”
He lay back on the ground and closed his eyes. “Hold my hand, Ginny, I feel weak.” She took his hand, held it on her warm and abundant lap. “Any man can’t recognize his own brand,” the Bishop went on, “better get out of the livestock business.”
“You’re insured.”
“The deductible gets higher every year. Last time this happened they said they’d cancel my policy.”
“Don’t tell ‘em.”
“Yeah, don’t tell ‘em.” The Bishop smiled. “Anyhow by God I won the fight. Didn’t I win the fight, Ginny?”
“Ever think of getting a bypass operation?”
“No. You see that evil bandit bugger jump? God but he was scared, you should of seen the look in his eyes.”
“Might do you lot of good.”
“There’s only one heart doctor in this whole country I’d trust to do that operation and he don’t like me anymore. Not since I
had my change of heart. And besides he don’t do hearts anymore anyhow. What they call a pediatrician.” Love’s big thick fingers twitched on the ranger’s thigh. “Think maybe we oughta take a look?”
“A look at what?”
“At the remains.”
“If you want. Make you sick.”
He sat up again. Taking his hands she helped him to his feet. They walked to the edge and looked over, smelling the stink of burning diesel fuel. Approximately ninety feet below the two bulldozers lay, belly to belly, like copulating lovers. Treads untracked, blades twisted, internal organs dangling, both were burning, quietly burning in the shade of the drop-off within the generalized desert stillness. Scattered about the wreckage, spattered with fuel and also burning, were the charred melted remains of a dozen or more heavy-duty backpacks, a few of them once pretty fancy.
Bishop Love gazed down at his smoldering machines, the bigger one sprawled upon the slightly smaller one. He turned a sly shy smirking grin upon Virginia. “Wish I was doing that.”
She caught his meaning. “Well go ahead, Dudley, they’re your bulldozers.”
“I mean, you and me.”
“Oh come on. Haven’t you had enough action for one afternoon?”
“Ginny, you’re a caution. Heavens to betsy.” A helicopter thumped past overhead, awkward and violent in approach, subdued and sneaky in departing. Like a country lover. The Bishop looked up. “BLM? What’re they lookin’ for?”
“Your boy.”
“My what?” Love stared at her, then up at the dwindling helicopter, then down at the smoking ruins. He noticed for the first time the great slopes of fine sand banked against the canyon wall on the near side, reaching from the floor of the canyon to within ten feet of the base of the overhang. Slanting down the loose dune, from top to bottom, was a series of sitzmarks, like the footprints of a giant hound, spaced well apart. The question that was uppermost on Love’s mind he finally brought down to his lips. “He jumped down there?”
“Guess so, Dudley. Time I got here I saw only his rear end going around that next bend down there. He must be four miles down the canyon by now. You all right?”