Damned well-trained horse. No wonder my father liked him. Did he train him himself? Is this a polo pony? Aren't they smaller than this?
I'm going to have to try polo, real polo. Why not? There's two polo fields here, and it can't be all that difficult. I don't care how small the ball is, I can probably learn to whack it with a little practice.
The polo Clete had played, on Big Foot Ranch outside Midland and at Col-lege Station, was played with brooms, a volleyball, and on cow ponies, and, every once in a while, on a well-trained quarter horse, just for the hell of it.
What the hell are you thinking about? Playing polo, or Christ's sake?
Without thinking about it, he touched the reins. Julius Caesar, who had been trying to push his nose ahead of Rudolpho's roan, obediently moved be-hind him.
"Rudolpho, is it safe to gallop here?" he called.
"S¡, Se¤or."
"Let's go, then," Clete said.
Rudolpho touched the roan with his spurs and shouted something to him Clete couldn't understand. The roan broke into a gallop. Julius Caesar's ears stood up. Clete touched his heels to him, and the animal broke into a gallop.
Julius Caesar was larger and faster than Rudolpho's roan, and a minute later, passed him. Clete saw that at a full gallop the only change in Rudolpho's seat was that he no longer supported the Mauser on his knee. Now he had it cra-dled in his arm, like a hunter. He looked as comfortable as someone sitting in his armchair.
Well, that shatters your foolish belief that you really know how to ride a horse about as well as anybody, doesn't it?
Five minutes later, now moving at a walk to cool the horses, Clete realized that he had no idea where he was. There was nothing from horizon to horizon but the rolling pampas, dotted with cattle and groves of eucalyptus and pine trees. No sign of a road, or even a power line or a fence.
He had a sobering thought: If I had come out here by myself, and damned fool that I am, that's exactly what I intended to do, I not only couldn't have found the station, but I would have been lost, and they would have had to send somebody to find me.
Twenty minutes later, they topped a small rise and Clete scanned the hori-zon. There was a glint of reflected light high in a stand of pine trees several hun-dred yards directly ahead. It disappeared, and then reappeared. He shielded his eyes with his hand and looked again. It was gone.
He looked again a minute or so later, and it was again visible. He had just decided it was white, and a couple of inches long-and thus probably man-made-when there was proof. There was a faint but unmistakable glint off cop-per wire.
A radio antenna. They were approaching the station.
It was only when they were no more than fifty yards from the thick trees that he could see through them far enough to pick out automobiles and trucks. Three of them-immaculately maintained Ford Model A pickup trucks-be-longed to the estancia. And there was a 1940 Chevrolet business coupe and a 1941 Studebaker sedan. Tony Pelosi's and Dave Ettinger's cars, he decided, al-though he didn't know which car belonged to which.
They entered the trees, and a hundred yards inside came to a small clearing that held three buildings made of reddish sandstone. A large, somewhat florid-faced man in a gaucho's Saturday-Night-Go-to-the-Cantina costume emerged from the largest building. His flat, wide-brimmed black gaucho's hat was at a suitably cocky angle. He wore a red bandanna rolled around his neck, a flowing white blouse, topped with a black, red-embroidered vest, billowing black trousers, and soft, thigh-high black boots. There was a menacing-looking, sil-ver-handled dagger in a leather sheath on his belt. And he held a silver Mate (An herbal tea, also favored by Arabians, who for well over a century have been the best export customers of the Argentine Mate plantations in Corrientes Province.) jar with a silver straw in his hand. He smiled at Clete.
"Buenos tardes, Se¤or."
He looks more like a gaucho than Rudolpho. The only thing he won't do is get on a horse.
Clete smiled at him, then touched his right hand to his temple in a crisp salute.
"Permission to come aboard, Chief?"
Chief Radioman Oscar J. Schultz, USN, returned the salute crisply.
"Permission granted, Sir," he said. "Welcome aboard."
Clete slid off Julius Caesar.
"I like the hat," Chief Schultz said, offering his hand.
"Thank you."
"If I'd had a little warning, I could have arranged for side boys," Chief Schultz said, and then, remembering, added soberly, "I'm sorry as hell about your father, Mr. Frade."
"Thank you. It's good to see you, Chief."
"You're just in time for lunch," Chief Schultz said, pointing inside the house. "Mr. Pelosi and Sergeant Ettinger are here. They told me you would be coming, but not when."