Echo Burning

the west, the caliche sloped gently down again, pocked by dry gulches the size of ballparks. Behind them, to the east, the red house and the other buildings in the compound were spread out a mile away, flat on the baked land like a model. The road ran like a gray ribbon, north and south. Behind the tiny motor barn the dirt track wandered south and east through the desert, like a scar on burned and pockmarked skin. The air was dry and unnaturally clear all the way to both horizons, where it broke up into haze. The heat was a nightmare. The sun was fearsome. Reacher could feel his face burning.
    “Take care as we go down,” Carmen said. “Stay balanced.”
    She moved off ahead of him, letting her horse find its own way down the incline. He kicked with his heels and followed her. He lost the rhythm as his horse stepped short and he started bouncing uncomfortably.
    “Follow me,” she called.
    She was moving to the right, toward a dry gulch with a flat floor, all stone and sand. He started trying to figure whichrein he should pull on, but his horse turned anyway. Its feet crunched on gravel and slipped occasionally. Then it stepped right down into the gulch, which jerked him violently backward and forward. Ahead of him Carmen was slipping out of the saddle. Then she was standing on the ground, stretching, waiting for him. His horse stopped next to hers and he shook his right foot free of the stirrup and got off by doing the exact opposite of what had got him on a half hour before.
    “So what do you think?” she asked.
    “Well, I know why John Wayne walked funny.”
    She smiled briefly and led both horses together to the rim of the gulch and heaved a large stone over the free ends of both sets of reins. He could hear absolute silence, nothing at all behind the buzz and shimmer of the heat. She lifted the flap of her saddlebag and took out her pocketbook. Zipped it open and slipped her hand in and came out with a small chromium handgun.
    “You promised you’d teach me,” she said.
    “Wait,” he said.
    “What?”
    He said nothing. Stepped left, stepped right, crouched down, stood tall. Stared at the floor of the gulch, moving around, using the shadows from the sun to help him.
    “What?” she said again.
    “Somebody’s been here,” he said. “There are tracks. Three people, a vehicle driving in from the west.”
    “Tracks?” she said. “Where?”
    He pointed. “Tire marks. Some kind of a truck. Stopped here. Three people, crawled up to the edge on their knees.”
    He put himself where the tracks ended at the rim of the gulch. Lay down on the hot grit and hauled himself forward on his elbows. Raised his head.
    “Somebody was watching the house,” he said.
    “How do you know?”
    “Nothing else to see from here.”
    She knelt alongside him, the chromium pistol in her hand.
    “It’s too far away,” she said.
    “Must have used field glasses. Telescopes, even.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “You ever see reflections? The sun on glass? In the mornings, when the sun was in the east?”
    She shuddered.
    “No,” she said. “Never.”
    “Tracks are fresh,” he said. “Not more than a day or two old.”
    She shuddered again.
    “Sloop,” she said. “He thinks I’m going to take Ellie. Now I know he’s getting out. He’s having me watched.”
    Reacher stood up and walked back to the center of the bowl.
    “Look at the tire tracks,” he said. “They were here four or five times.”
    He pointed down. There were several overlapping sets of tracks in a complex network. At least four, maybe five. The tire treads were clearly pressed into the powdered sand. There was a lot of detail. The outside shoulder of the front right tire was nearly bald.
    “But they’re not here today,” Carmen said. “Why not?”
    “I don’t know,” Reacher said.
    Carmen looked away. Held out the gun to him.
    “Please show me how to use this,” she said.
    He moved his gaze from the tracks in the sand and looked at the gun. It was a Lorcin L-22 automatic, two-and-a-half-inch barrel, chrome frame, with plastic molded grips made to look like pink mother-of-pearl. Made in Mira Loma, California, not too long ago, and probably never used since it left the factory.
    “Is it a good one?” she asked.
    “How much did you pay for it?”
    “Over eighty dollars.”
    “Where?”
    “In a gun store up in Pecos.”
    “Is it legal?”
    She nodded. “I did all the proper paperwork. Is it any good?”
    “I guess,” he said. “As