Dead or Alive Read Online Free Page A

of town, Larson directed Lenny to an unpaved county road that headed south. They followed it to a few miles north of the village of Roy, where it joined up with a two-lane state highway. Past the village a turnoff took them near the famous Bell Ranch and across the Canadian River.
    They were traveling in the least populated area of New Mexico, where cows outnumbered the people and traffic was almost nonexistent. A few miles beyond the small Hispanic settlement of Trementia, Larson ordered Lenny off the pavement onto a country road that wandered through a vast basin peppered with red-rock mesas. When the country road turned into a seldom used ranch road, Lenny’s pickup truck with the off-road option package handled the washouts, deep ruts, and boulders without difficulty.
    Ten miles beyond the cutoff to the ranch headquarters, Larson ordered Lenny to stop the truck. “Get out,” he said when Lenny killed the engine.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” Lenny asked in a shaky voice.
    The bright afternoon sun bounced off the hood of the truck. It was getting on to the hottest time of the day. There were few clouds in the sky and virtually no shade on the parched basin. Heat waves rising from the ground distorted Larson’s view of a few nearby stray cows that had raised their heads at the sound of the truck.
    Larson waved the gun at Lenny. “Out.”
    Lenny scrambled out of the truck.
    Larson slid behind the wheel and opened the driver’s-side window. “It’s ten miles back to the ranch headquarters cutoff and about twelve miles to Santa Rosa. You get to pick which way you want to go.”
    â€œDon’t leave me out here without water,” Lenny pleaded.
    â€œIf you’d rather, I’ll shoot you now and leave you for the buzzards.”
    Lenny shook his head. “Don’t do that.”
    â€œMy brother likes your company, Lenny, that’s the only reason you’re still alive. Buy him a beer when you get that Crime Stoppers check.”
    Lenny nodded, lowered his eyes, and looked away.
    Larson closed the window and drove off. The dust kicked up by the rear tires momentarily obscured Lenny as he stood at the side of the road. Larson thought about backing up and shooting Lenny just to be on the safe side, and he braked the truck to a stop. Through the rearview mirror he saw Lenny take off like a jackrabbit at a dead run cross-country.
    He drove on, calculating it would take Lenny a good four or five hours to reach civilization on foot and get to a telephone, if he didn’t die from dehydration first. He would have to ditch the truck and find another ride, but he had more than enough time to get to Santa Fe before then.
    Larson pressed the accelerator and bounced the truck over some big rocks. If he remembered correctly, he had about another mile of rough road before it smoothed out.
    Larson hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was getting on toward late afternoon. In Santa Rosa, a town that catered to travelers on Interstate 40, a major east-west highway, he stopped, loaded up on snack food and soft drinks, and continued westbound. Traffic was fairly light and the big rigs pushed along at eighty miles an hour or more, only slowing to form convoys in the right-hand lane on the long hill climbs. Most of the passenger cars that passed him were from out of state.
    Larson knew the route was heavily patrolled by state police, so he kept his speed at the posted limit and fell in behind a rancher in a big old diesel truck pulling a horse trailer. He tensed up when a black-and-white patrol car came at him traveling in the opposite direction, but it kept going and soon disappeared from sight.
    He got off the interstate at the Clines Corner exit and headed north toward Santa Fe. He’d started the day in Albuquerque and was about to make almost a complete circle and end it in Santa Fe. There was no one behind him until he reached the White Lakes turnoff, when headlights