Crack Shot

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Chapter 1 The party was in full swing. Jimmy Burton's finger had been broken catching a football thrown by one of Lolly MacKenzie's grandnieces; the bunkhouse toilet had stopped up twice; Charley Bell was making eyes at Burdger Harris's wife, who, at eighty-one, was eating it up, much to the consternation of her husband, who was looking a lot like a rained-on rooster; four kids had been thrown in the pond; Chi Chi Tapia, the chickenshit cowboy, had passed out in the hay barn; Top Dog, my triathlete firefighting cousin who lives on the San Carlos Reservation, had filled his plate three times; and Prego, the local mechanic, was wearing a muscle shirt featuring the Statue of Liberty and slow dancing with Shiwoye, my Apache grandmother, who appeared to be having some trouble figuring out just where to put her hands on his naked shoulders. All that and we'd had close to two inches of rain in twenty-four hours. That probably doesn't sound like much if you're from Wisconsin, but in Tucson, in early July, it's unusual. Our summer monsoon season starts the end of June and usually doesn't get really cranking until mid-July. But here it was the fourth of the month and the rain gauges on the ranch had already measured one-sixth of our annual rainfall. Not that I was complaining, for southern Arizona ranchers never bitch about moisture. Still, I was hoping that if rain was in store for Independence Day it could at least hold off until after the barbecue. As a private eye and the owner of the Vaca Grande Ranch just outside of La Cienega, Arizona, you'd think I had enough to keep me busy without having an annual Fourth of July shindig. Truth is, all of us here on the ranch actually look forward to our parties. They give us the opportunity to enjoy old friends, eat a lot of good beef, and drink a few margaritas. It's good for the ranch, too, as the weeks beforehand find us in a flurry of activity to spruce things up for the fiesta and raise the American flag. And what is the Fourth of July without the American flag? I'm fanatical about our flag and have considered it my personal mission, on more than one occasion, to go wheeling furiously into assorted businesses and hotels to berate them for flying a tattered, ratty flag. I take this seriously. The old flagpole in my orchard is graced with the national banner only on special occasions. Like today. I don't want to get home late at night and find it flying, unlit, in the dark, or worse, drenched by a thunderstorm. We'd been collecting patio chairs and tables from our neighbors all week long for the fiesta, and they were scattered around the pond and in the front orchard. Plastic red-and-white-checked cloths adorned each table, and the centerpieces were huge paper flowers that my foreman's daughter, Quinta, had picked up in Nogales, Mexico. Two one-hundred-gallon water tanks, liberated from one of the corrals, were filled to their lips with cubed ice and loaded with Corona, Budweiser, and Tres X's beer, wine coolers, and sodas. Serape-covered folding tables held chips, salsa, guacamole, lemonade, iced tea, and huge pitchers of frosted margaritas. Cars and trucks had been pulling in all afternoon, and we'd had to open one of the horse pastures to accommodate everyone's wheels. Ranchers, town folk, local business owners, politicians, Mexican cowboys--even a federal judge--along with many of my Apache relatives and friends had all found their way out to the Vaca Grande. The animals were dressed in their party clothes. Mrs. Fierce and Blue, my two dogs, and Petunia, my cousin Bea's potbellied pig, who has every indication of becoming a permanent ranch resident, were decked out with red and blue bandanas tied on their collars. They were definitely in the party spirit as they played Hump Dog, or in some cases, Hump Pig, darting in and out among our guests' legs. Every time I looked at Petunia she seemed to be dribb