Tortoise Soup by Jessica Speart Page B

bandanna that peeked out from beneath a straw cowboy hat. When he drew closer, I saw the gun belt strapped round his waist, a .45 snugly bedded down in its holster.
    I got out of the Blazer, leaving Pilot inside.
    “Howdy there, miss.” Harley brushed the tips of his fingers along the rim of his hat.
    No “ma’am.” I liked that. Who said he was such a bad guy?
    “You lost? Or are you out here to try and do a story on me?” Harley cheerfully inquired.
    Eyes as blue as a slow-burning flame took in every inch of me until I could have sworn he was flirting. I almost hated to burst his bubble.
    “Good day, Mr. Rehrer. I’m Rachel Porter. I’m a special agent with …”
    Harley’s friendly demeanor instantly vanished, his voice turning as prickly as cactus. “Save it. I know who you are.”
    I noticed that his right hand wasn’t far from his holster, his fingers jerking as if he had a bad itch.
    “I got your message about tortoises being dumped on your ranch and I was wondering if I could talk to you about it,” I began.
    “You want to talk?” he spat out, nailing me with his eyes. “Let’s talk about my rights and how you’ve been trampling all over them. Let’s talk about your wacko rules all because of some slow-moving critter with a hard top.” Harley tore a dog-eared copy of the Constitution out of his shirt pocket and began waving it in my face. “Thanks to you, the American cowboy is a dying breed. We’re the ones who are becoming extinct. Not some damn tortoise.”
    His eyes glared as if I were the Devil incarnate. It probably wasn’t the right time to point out that Marlboro men always hung tough until the government threatened to yank their federal subsidies, then the howl could be heard from Nevada straight to the White House.
    “You’ve taken away our birthright with all your gobbledygook regulations and laws.” Harley warmed to his topic like a preacher stumping at a local revival meeting. “When it gets to the point where I can’t graze my cows because of a damned tortoise, that’s where I draw the line. If it’s between them or me, I say let’s get rid of the damn things—and the people stoppin’ me.”
    He grinned malevolently and looked beyond me.
    A shiver tore down my spine, and I turned around, my skin clammy though the sun was set on deep-fry. Off in the distance, two ranchers were making their way toward us on horseback. If two is company and three is a crowd, four probably meant big trouble.
    I turned back and looked at Harley, wondering what he had in mind.
    “Gotta hand it to you. You got some timing there, Porter.” Harley laughed grimly as the two men approached. “Those are my neighbors, Randall Jones and Deloyd Small. Besides being good, God-fearing men, they’re vice president and treasurer of our Foundation. We were just about to have a meeting on what to do when it comes to dealing with federal agents. Maybe you’d like to sit in.”
    Visions of lynchings danced in my head. It wasn’t long ago that a Forest Service ranger had been shot while sitting in his pickup, the bullet lodged right between his eyes. I didn’t even want to think about the pipe bomb that had been set off at the federal Bureau of Land Management office in Reno. Or of the ranger who woke up to find the camper in his driveway ablaze like a charbroiled marshmallow.
    Harley nodded to the men as they dismounted from their horses.
    “Didn’t know an outsider was joining us, Harley,” stated one of the cowboys, as hard and lean as if he’d been sculpted from stone.
    “Didn’t know myself till just a few minutes ago, Randall.”
    Randall Jones looked me up and down. The brim of his black hat was pulled low to shade his eyes. Suspenders supported a pair of well-worn jeans that clung tightly to his hips.
    “Beg pardon, ma’am, but is this a fed I’m smelling here?” Sniffing loudly, he slithered over to examine my vehicle.
    Pilot let loose a low growl as Randall passed by. Randall growled