Threepersons Hunt

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Book: Threepersons Hunt Read Free
Author: Brian Garfield
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anywhere in his direction—it didn’t have that sort of crack. He searched the brush but his view was restricted by the scattered fat trees. He caught the reflection of sunlight off something metallic and he was rattled enough to turn his sights that way before he realized it was only sun-glare bouncing off some part of his own car.
    He moved ten feet to one side to change his field of view through the clumps. There was another rifle shot. Again it wasn’t aimed in his direction. It had a muffled explosive sound as if it were being fired away from him.
    He moved again but still couldn’t see anything. There was a third rifle shot and then a fourth, these last two quite close together. Thoroughly mystified he crawled up over the lip of the gully into a cluster of piñons and slithered between them, his uniform soaked with mud, prising the branches apart with his left hand and poking the revolver out ahead of him.
    Then he heard briefly the crunch and scrape of someone moving through heavy growth; after that the padding of footfalls in the soft earth, a man dogtrotting. The sound dwindled quickly.

4.
    He edged cautiously back toward the dirt track and found the place where the rifleman had squatted down to shoot at him. Deep heel-indentations and pointed toes: cowboy boots. Everybody around here wore cowboy boots, that didn’t mean a thing.
    Quite obviously the man was gone. When Watchman got to his feet he heard the distant revving of an engine being started. The roar settled down to a chug and went whining away in a low gear.
    He put the revolver away in its clamshell holster and started running back toward his car in disgust.
    Whoever it was had followed him up the highway in a car. So it wasn’t Joe Threepersons.
    The Highway Patrol cruiser squatted like a derelict on its rims. Watchman walked around the car and stared unhappily at the four bullet-shredded flat tires.
    He broke a leafy twig off a scrub oak and rubbed it between his palms to clean them. Then he contemplated the 6.3-mile walk back to the highway.
    You’re being a pretty stupid Indian. He tramped over to the car. The bottom of the door scraped the ground when he dragged it open.
    It hadn’t occurred to the rifleman to disable the police radio. Watchman switched it on and hoped he hadn’t parked in a dead spot and put the microphone close to his lips.
    â€œNiner Zero. Niner Zero. I have a Code Ten-thirteen.”
    â€œDispatch to Niner Zero. Go ahead on Ten-Thirteen.”
    In an embarrassed mutter he explained where he was and the girl on the radio desk had to ask him to repeat it. Finally he got it across to her and asked her to make contact with Trooper Buck Stevens and ask Stevens to bring him a few items. When the awkward dialogue concluded he sprocketed the microphone and reached for his coffee thermos.
    He left the door open in the heat; he settled back on the seat, caked with mud, and pulled his hat brim down over his eyes. It would take a while.
    Sitting in a half-doze he reviewed the events that had sentenced him to this.

CHAPTER TWO
    T HE WALLED Arizona State Prison was surrounded by several acres of cropland contained within an eight-foot-high Anchor fence topped with nine parallel strands of barbwire strung in a configuration which in cross section resembled an arrowhead. There were no watchtowers on the fence.
    From the corner where the north road intersected U.S. 80-89, the fence ran south along the shrubbed shoulder and travelers on the highway could glance out of their car windows and see small groups of prisoners working the farm fields, guarded by correctional officers who worked in pairs on horseback, armed with riot shotguns and hunting rifles.
    The prison had been built just after the turn of the century to replace the infamous and medievally rancid Territorial Penitentiary at Yuma. The present facility stood midway between Phoenix and Tuscon on the arid outskirts of Florence. It was antiquated

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