A Maidens Grave

desperate voice. “Let those girls go!”
    And all the while the phone inside the slaughterhouse rang and rang and rang.
    Potter spoke into the radio mike. “Dean, I hate to say it but we’ve got to stop him. Hail him on the bullhorn and try to get him over to the sidelines. If he doesn’t come, send out a couple of men.”
    “Handy’s just playing with him,” Budd said. “I don’t think he’s in any real danger. They could’ve shot him easy by now, they’d wanted to.”
    “ He’s not who I’m worried about,” Potter snapped.
    “What?”
    Angie said, “We’re trying to get hostages out, not in.”
    “He’s making our job harder,” Potter said simply, not explaining the terrible mistake Marks was now making.
    With a whining ricochet, a bullet split a rock beside thelawyer’s leg. Marks remained on his feet. He turned and he was listening to Dean Stillwell, whose voice was being picked up by the Big Ear and relayed into the van. To Potter’s relief the sheriff wasn’t cowed by the man’s authority. “You there, Marks, you’re to get under cover immediately or you’ll be arrested. Come back this way.”
    “We’ve got to save them.” Marks’s raw voice filled the van. It sounded resolute but terrified and for a moment Potter’s heart went out to him.
    Another shot.
    “No, sir. Do you understand? You’re about to be placed under arrest.”
    Potter called Stillwell and told him he was doing great. “Tell him he’s endangering the girls doing this.”
    The sheriff’s voice, mixing with the ragged wind, filled the van as he relayed this message.
    “No! I’m saving them,” the assistant AG shouted and started forward again.
    Potter tried the throw phone again. No answer.
    “Okay, Dean. Go get him. No covering fire under any circumstances.”
    Stillwell sighed. “Yessir. I’ve got some volunteers. I hope it’s okay but I green-lighted pepper spray if he resists.”
    “Give him a blast for me,” Potter muttered, and turned back to watch.
    Two troopers in body armor and helmets slipped from the line of trees and, crouching, headed through the field.
    Handy fired several more times. He hadn’t noticed the troopers yet and was aiming only around Marks, the shots always near-misses. But one bullet hit a rock and ricocheted upwards, shattering the windshield of a squad car.
    The two troopers kept low to the ground, running perpendicularly to the front of the slaughterhouse. Their hips and sides were easy targets if Handy decided to turn malicious and draw blood. Potter frowned. One of the men looked familiar.
    “Who’re those troopers?” Potter asked Stillwell. “Is one of them Stevie Oates?”
    “Yessir.”
    Potter exhaled a deep sigh. “He just got back from a run, Dean. What’s he thinking of?”
    “Well, sir, he wanted to go out again. Was really insistent about it.”
    Potter shook his head.
    Marks was now only forty yards from the slaughterhouse, the two troopers closing in slowly, scrambling through the buffalo grass. Marks saw them and shouted for them to get away.
    “Sir,” the voice through the speaker called—Potter recognized it as Oates’s—“our orders’re to bring you back.”
    “Fuck your orders. If you care about those girls just leave me alone.”
    They heard a whoop of distant laughter the Big Ear was picking up. “Turkey shoot,” resounded Handy’s voice, riding on the wind. Another deafening gunshot. A rock beside one of the troopers flew into the air. They both dropped to their bellies, began crawling like soldiers toward the assistant AG.
    “Marks,” Oates called, breathing hard. “We’re bringing you back, sir. You’re interfering with a federal operation.”
    Marks whirled around. “What’re you going to do to stop me, Trooper? You work for me. Don’t you forget it.”
    “Sheriff Stillwell has authorized me to use all necessary force to stop you, sir. And I aim to.”
    “You’re downwind, son. Pepper-spray me and you’re the only one who’ll get a faceful of it.”
    Handy fired again. The bullet split an ancient post two feet from Oates’s head. The convict, still in a playful mood, laughed hard.
    “Jesus,” somebody muttered.
    “No, sir,” Oates said calmly, “my orders’re to shoot you in the leg and drag you back.”
    Potter and LeBow stared at each other. The negotiator’s fervent thumb pressed the transmit button. “He is bluffing, isn’t he, Dean?”
    “Yep” was Stillwell’s unsteady reply. “But . . . he