The Husband

brush would reveal not the hand of Nature but instead his enemy.
    As far as he could tell in this murk, all was still.
    Acutely aware that his own movement made a mark of him, hampered by the handcuffs, Mitch wriggled on his belly to the man behind the car.
    In the gunman's open and unblinking eyes, the mortician moon had laid coins.
    Beside the body rested a familiar shape of steel made sterling in this light. Mitch seized it gratefully, almost squirmed away, but realized that he had found the useless revolver.
    Wincing at the faint jingle produced by the short chain between his handcuffs, he patted down the corpse—and pressed his fingers in a wetness. Sickened, shuddering, he wiped his hand on the dead man's clothes.
    As he was about to conclude that this guy had gotten out of the Chrysler without a weapon, he discovered the checked grip of the pistol protruding from under the corpse. He pulled the gun free.
    A shot cracked. The dead man twitched, having taken the round meant for Mitch.
    He flung himself toward the Chrysler and heard a second shot and heard the whispery whine of passing death and heard a bullet ricochet off the car. He also heard a closer whisper, although he might have imagined two near misses with one round and might in fact have heard nothing after the insectile shriek of the ricochet.
    With the car between himself and the shooter, he felt safer, but then almost at once not safe at all.
    The gunman could come around the Chrysler at either the front end or the back. He had the advantage of choosing his approach and initiating the action.
    Meanwhile, Mitch would be forced to keep an alert watch in both directions. An impossible task.
    Already the other might be on the move.
    Mitch thrust up from the ground and away from the car. He ran in a crouch, off the road, through the natural hedge of mesquite, which crackled revealingly and at the same time shushed as if warning him to be quiet.
    The land sloped down from the road, which was good. If it had sloped up, he would have been visible, his broad back an easy target, the moment the gunman rounded the Chrysler.
    He had lucked into firm but sandy soil, instead of shale or loose stones, so he didn't make a clatter as he ran. The moon mapped his route, and he weaved among clumps of brush instead of thrashing through them, mindful that keeping his balance was more difficult with his hands cuffed in front of him.
    At the bottom of the thirty-foot slope, he turned right. Based on the position of the moon, he believed that he was heading almost due west.
    Something like a cricket sang. Something stranger clicked and shrilled.
    A colony of pampas-grass clumps drew his attention with scores of tall feathery panicles. They glowed white in the moonlight, and reminded him of the plumed tails of proud horses.
    From the round clumps sprayed very narrow, sharp-edged, pointed, recurved blades of grass three to five feet in length. They were waist-high on Mitch. When dry, these blades could scratch, prickle like needles, even cut.
    Each clump respected the territorial integrity of the other. He was able to pass among them.
    In the heart of the colony, he felt safely screened by the white feathery panicles that rose higher than his head. He remained on his feet and, through gaps between the plumes, he peered back the way that he had come.
    The ghostly light did not reveal a pursuer. Mitch shifted his position, gently pushed aside a panicle, and another, surveying the edge of the roadway at the top of the slope. He didn't see anyone up there.
    He did not intend to hide in the pampas for long. He had fled his vulnerable position at the car only to gain a couple of minutes to think.
    He wasn't concerned that the remaining gunman would drive away in the Chrysler. Julian Campbell wasn't the kind of boss to whom you could report failure with the confidence that you would keep either your job or your head.
    Besides, to the guy out there on the hunt, this was sport, and Mitch was the most dangerous game of all. The hunter was motivated by vengeance, by pride, and by the taste for violence that had led him into this kind of work in the first place.
    Had he been able to hide until dawn or slip away, Mitch would not have done so. He wasn't boiling over with macho enthusiasm for a confrontation with this second professional killer, but he understood too well the consequences of avoiding it altogether.
    If the remaining gunman lived and reported back to Campbell, Anson would