Snowman by Norman Bogner

going to walk around with it in cash?"
    "Sure, who's going to take it from me?" he asked without concern.
    "What if you get held up?" Monte asked, looking perplexedly at Cathy.
    "l'll take the chance."
    Bradford was handed a clipboard by the Wells Fargo guard, and he signed his name next to the entry "Received cash $250,000 denominations $100. After agreeing to meet Cathy and Monte back at the reservation after he had gathered his team, he took hold of the metal box and threw it in the back seat of the Cherokee. He picked up his guitar case and unceremoniously slid it alongside the box. Then, as they all waited for his next move, Bradford yanked the tab of a can of beer and climbed into the back seat.
    "We've got a long ride, through the desert up to the Arizona border," he told Ashby, who was going with him. "It's just past Yuma. A place called Bard."
    He sipped his beer slowly, relaxing like a seigneur accustomed to the attentions of an entourage. Bradford noticed Cathy looking with curiosity at his guitar case, and she finally asked, "What sort of guitar do you play?"
    "I don't play," he replied. He lifted the clamps of the black case and pulled up the lid. She felt her saliva dry up, and she forced herself to smile pleasantly at the two sawed-off forty-gauge shotguns fastened to metal racks in the case. They were as awesome as pythons.

Chapter Nine
    The seven mustangs in the corral were listless and hungry. Bone protuded through their withers, and their ribs pressed tightly against the flaccid skin of their sides. Ed Packard had served in Vietnam for three years as a weapons expert in Special Forces, but during the whole nightmarish experience he had never conceived of the horror that he now faced.
    He would have to kill the mustangs.
    He had nursed them as yearlings, when he bought the ranch two years ago with the savings he had accumulated after his discharge. His dream had been to leave behind the bitter memories of a wife who deserted him and the rat race of Los Angeles, where he had worked as a Physical Education teacher in an elementary school.
    City people are sustained by fantasy, and Packard was no different from most. Locked in freeway traffic each day, he felt his need for privacy, a retreat away from the crowds and cars, become more urgent. One day he had picked up and roamed through the western
    states until he found the piece of land that divine providence had selected for him.
    It was a foreclosure, and the bank offered him reasonable terms. He put down fifteen thousand in cash, took out a second mortgage, and saw himself as a gentleman horse rancher who would hunt and fish throughout the year. Idylls such as his, unless backed up by substantial financial reserves, tend to go sour. The inexperienced city man fell prey to larcenous horse traders and unscrupulous feed merchants, not to mention the drought which burned out his rich grazing pasture. Packard's credit soon ran its slender course, and he was shunned by the local tradesmen and harassed by the bank.
    Yes, he would kill the horses rather than see them sold for fifty dollars a head when he knew they'd be worth a thousand apiece if they could be properly fed. He'd been up all night brooding, and when he walked out of the barn carrying his Loaded Rossi Overland .20-gauge hammer shotgun, he was tempted to turn the weapon on himself. The horses straggled to the fence posts and whinnied pathetically when they saw him. Dumb stupid beasts who depended on him; he loved them all with a strange, inexplicable ardor.
    He heard a truck engine behind him, and he wheeled around with the shotgun stock pressed into his shoulder and knew that he'd fire if it was the bailiff, a fat, tobacco-chewing soak, who'd served him with writs twice before. He'd pour kerosene on the body and he'd just hang in and wait for the locals to prove he'd done it.
    He sighted the Cherokee and released the safety, then suddenly lowered the weapon as the truck splayed pebbles from the