A bunched comforter covered the front of the truck — the frail engine, the flapping fenders, the hole of the radiator — and dragged on the ground. Wade tore it off, a matador sweep of dirty cotton. He began to crank but the narrow engine, so worn and without gaskets, still made no sound, turned over with no resistance, loosely. It was a truck that carried both man and animal, rear floorboards chopped from the toes of pigs, a truck to be seen at night with a woman’s knees down to the running boards and in winter left frozen in a field.
Cap Leech’s horse poked his overhanging nose toward the truck, sucked his tail tighter and returned to gazing at the plains. Cap Leech whistled softly through his teeth to see if it would start.
There was a cow in the back of the truck. The sheer and luminous udder swayed lightly through the slatted planks and, as Wade cranked, the red calf gently bounced, tossing the velvet ball. It was a youthful cream head of cheese, a nodding pendant, and the teats protruded only faintly, the knobs of new horns. The Sheriff walked slowly to the side of the truck, reached through and stroked it. The little hoof stamped, the immature red color, pink and brown, quivered in his hand. A smell of new milk and oil, manure, and brake drum fluid filled the yard. Between the red wagon and the truck and backed against the last adobe wall of the jail lay the fresh row of motorcycles, already entwined with corn stalks, webs of dust. Flies and sac-tailed insects moved in columns across the broken spokes. An accumulated late night buzzing came from the heap of confiscated machines, a warm and smoldering pile of metallic fodder.
“Is she gassed up, Wade?”
With weak step, still sick, the Sheriff returned from the jail weapons chest and carried under his arm the hunting shotguns. Sighing, clutching the truck door, he stacked them, blue bored canes, behind the feather and sawdust seat. He climbed in and wiped a clear spot on the windshield.
“You better come with us in the truck here,” called the Sheriff.
“I’ll follow,” answered Cap Leech, “you can’t drive faster than the wagon.”
Wade brought the cannisters of shotgun shells, sank behind the wheel. And Cap Leech flew in his wagon, pointed the horse in chase, running neither in trot nor canter after the red back light of the truck which, without splashboard and no vehicle to lust, sped toward Mistletoe.
He kept no hold on the mad horse but gripped the edge of the springing seat, spoke to the deviled ears now and then, a rootless spectator to the burning of the twenty miles. The horse, having never flattened himself along this course before, was guided by the Sheriff’s lamp; Cap Leech, having stumbled upon the rotting stones and stories of his family grave, rode willing to take one look, no more. The deodorizer of the homestead watched for the first sign of blackened wood and a narrow door cut with an air hole of a quarter moon. Ahead he saw the young cow hold her bush up uselessly for love or rain.
As if they had been lying on their stomachs in the flat sand, four muffled men jumped from the side of the road, ran hobbling and with yells to wait toward the slowing truck, climbed on, pulled up the last, and crowded the cat backed calf against the planks. The men clung to the red neck.