He switched the rifle's field of fire. The man was gone!
Doyce Deek never felt the rifle leave his hands. He didn't feel the bore jamming up his rectum, either, the gunsight ripping his dormant hemorrhoids til they bled.
But suddenly he was squatting on the ground, with the stock dangling between his legs and the skinny easterner was taking Doyce's own hands, helpless as a child, and making him take a good strong grip on the rifle. He forced Deek's own thumb into the trigger guard and held it there.
"I'm going to give you a choice, pardner."
"What kind of a consarn choice involves having a Marlin .444 jammed up my own ass?"
"A hard one."
"Uh-oh. "
"Option one," said the confident voice of the easterner. "You pull the trigger and kiss your butt hasta la vista."
"I'm kinda leaning toward option two."
"Confess to the murder that Roy Shortsleeve is doing time for."
"That ain't exactly a healthy option, either."
"Think you can handle the trigger by yourself-or do you want help?"
"I got a car phone in the pickup. Think you could fetch it here? I'd like to call Utah about a little misunderstanding."
"That's the option I was hoping for."
"Yeah, but it could have gone the other way."
"Never happened yet."
Doyce Deek made his eyes round. He squinted with the left one.
"You done this before?"
"This? I do this stuff all the time."
"I mighta guessed, on account of you done it all slicklike from the git-go."
Remo carried the man under his arm two solid miles through the open sagebrush wilderness to the waiting pickup. The dangling rifle bounced with every step, and with each bounce Doyce Deek made a funny little noise deep in his throat.
At the pickup, Remo set him carefully on the ground so the rifle wouldn't accidentally discharge. He dialed, waited for the ring, and held the phone receiver to Doyce Deck's unhappy face while he confessed in excruciating detail.
After he had hung up, Doyce Deck had a simple request.
"Separate me from this rifle, won't you?"
"Nope."
"I done what you said."
"So? Everybody does. I don't give points for cooperation."
"Oh."
And a hand-not a fist, but a hand-came up in Doyce Deek's long face and took consciousness away from him.
Remo left him in the pickup and walked back to Gillette, whistling. Satisfaction. There was no substitute for it.
Harold Smith received the report without comment. "Chalk up one for the good guys," Remo said. "Now how about Dr. Gregorian?"
"Perhaps later. I am still compiling information on him."
"How much information do you need to understand the guy is on a quasilegal killing spree?"
"Enough to be certain."
"I'm certain."
"I may need you for something else," said Smith.
"Yeah?"
"Last night, there was an incident involving the Apatosaur."
"Bronto," snapped Remo. "Get it right."
"My understanding is-"
"Look, which sounds more like a dinosaur? Apato or Bronto?"
"I will admit that I prefer the latter, but-"
"But nothing. Go with tradition. It's Brontosaur. So what happened?"
"I gained access to the Burger Triumph electronic mail system, which is buzzing about the creature's arrival," Smith said. "Information is sketchy. The corporation has evidently clamped a lid of secrecy on the entire incident, but it appears some terrorist organization attempted to hijack the animal en route to their corporate headquarters."
"It can't be the Congress for a Green Africa," Remo muttered.
"Why would it be or not be them?" Smith asked in a puzzled voice.
"Chiun and I chased them off back in Gondwanaland. They were upset about endangered species or something."
"Please hold, Remo." And through the earpiece the hollow, plasticky click of Harold Smith's long fingers working his computer keyboard came like castanets in spastic hands.
"The Congress for a Green Africa," Smith murmured. "A little-known African ecoterrorist group. Formerly known as the Congress for a Brown Africa in its nationalistic phase, and the Congress for a Black Africa in an earlier black power incarnation. It was founded in the late 1960s as the Congress for a Red Africa."