Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [122]
“Is that all you can think about?”
Johnny laughed. “Don’t kid a kidder, Sis. I was there when you first started twitching your hips at all the boys.”
“And you were the first to take advantage of it.”
“Those were the days,” Johnny replied.
Julia stuck her tongue out. “Do you know where Kerney is?”
Johnny shook his head. “Did he have a run-in with Shaw?”
“If he did, Walt didn’t say anything about it to me. Why do you ask?”
“Kerney pumped me for information about him. Except for telling him that Shaw was once your lover, I really didn’t have much to say.”
Julia put the car in gear. “You’re such a jerk, Johnny.”
Johnny leaned in and kissed Julia on the lips. “Are you ready for the cattle drive? We start shooting it tomorrow.”
“It should be fun.”
Men removed the barricade from the road. Julia waved ta-ta with her fingers, smiled, and drove away.
During the next three days Kerney had little time to think of anything other than herding cattle back and forth for the cameras along a ten-mile stretch of the Jordan ranch. Johnny’s rodeo cowboys, and the character actor who played the rancher bedeviled by the BLM officials, all knew how to sit a horse, as did Johnny, Julia, and the locals hired as extras. But the ingenue was a complete disaster on horseback. Although she’d taken riding lessons in preparation for her role, she bounced in the saddle like a raggedy doll whenever her mount broke into a canter.
When her stunt double took over, things went fine. However, several scenes with dialogue required the young woman to be mounted. She had a hard time controlling her horse and jerked the reins every time it moved, making it shy and turn away from the camera. After several failed attempts Usher shot the scenes with her dismounted.
As a circle rider Kerney ate dust on the perimeter of the herd. He wondered if he’d feel self-conscious when cameras started rolling, but he was far too busy prodding cattle back into the fold to pay any attention to them. Fortunately, he had a sound cutting horse with a good mouth named Lucky who did most of the work.
On the second and third mornings there were predawn calls for wardrobe and makeup. All the working hands, stuntmen, and actors exchanged their costumes for identical outfits that were a bit more grungy, and then had their faces smudged and dirtied to make it look like they’d been driving cattle for days. The real cowboys from the area ranches who’d hired on for the movie got a big kick out of it.
Two of the cowboys were Kent Vogt and Alberto “Buster” Martinez, who worked full-time at the Jordan outfit. Vogt, a cheerful, talkative man in his late thirties, loved movie trivia.
During one break Vogt reined in his mount next to Kerney and said, “Did you know Steve McQueen filmed most of Tom Horn just across the state line in the Coronado National Forest?”
“I didn’t know that,” Kerney replied.
Vogt pushed back his cowboy hat to reveal a white forehead above a rosy brown, tan face. “Did you see that movie?”
“I did, a long time ago.”
“Well, I played the boy sitting on the fence who got bushwhacked. My fifteen seconds of fame.”
“No kidding?”
Vogt nodded. “This will be my second time being in a movie. Ain’t that a hoot?” He flicked a rein gently against his horse’s neck. The animal turned smoothly and trotted away in the direction of Buster Martinez.
Grim and reticent, Martinez was the complete opposite of Vogt. Although Kerney didn’t recognize him, the MVD report had listed Martinez as the owner of the pickup truck that had arrived behind Shaw’s panel van at the barn. Kerney had watched Shaw and Martinez drive south toward the Sentinel Butte Ranch where he later found the landing strip and signs of a recent cargo drop.
Kerney’s attempts to draw Buster out had gone nowhere. Pushing fifty, Martinez had an oval face with small, narrow eyes that made him look like he was always squinting. He had a beautiful saddle, obviously custom made, with silver conchos on the cantle, a horn embellished with a sterling silver