Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [49]
He turned to Zwick. “I want this location.”
“I’m not suggesting we drop it,” Zwick said. “But we could easily film the roundup and the cattle-drive sequences down in the valley near the cabin, and not have to move to three other locations that are difficult to reach at best.”
“Dropping those locations would screw everything up,” Johnny said hotly. “How in the hell can you film the roundup and the cattle drive in one place? It will look completely fake.”
“Not necessarily,” Usher said. “We can shoot the sequences from various directions. Use different angles, different shots. Focus on the actors, their horses, the cows. Believe me, on film it will look real.”
“Or like some cheap B Western,” Johnny replied.
Usher’s jaw tightened. “On film it will be just fine. Let me worry about what the audience sees.”
“I’ve got a say about what goes into this film,” Johnny retorted, “and the shooting script calls for a fifty-mile cattle drive.”
Usher pushed his new straw cowboy hat back on his head and smiled thinly. “And that’s exactly what you’ll get, done my way.” He turned to Zwick. “We’re finished here.”
Johnny kicked a rock into the canyon and stomped off. Kerney glanced at the faces of the crew as they dispersed toward the vehicles. None of them seemed the least bit upset by Johnny’s childish outburst.
At the vehicles Ethan Stone joined Kerney. “Not to worry,” he said gaily as he slid into the front passenger seat and waved a hand in the air. “These little catfights break out all the time.”
“That’s good to know,” Kerney said as he crammed himself into the backseat next to Julia, who’d kept up her tiresome coquettish behavior all afternoon. He’d decided she did it solely to entertain herself.
On the drive down the mountain a dust devil churned across the valley, lifting sand several hundred feet into the sky as it churned on its thin axis. Kerney tuned Julia out and turned his thoughts to Walt Shaw and his panel van.
Shaw seemed to be a good guy and solid citizen, but that was no reason to discount him as a person of interest in the Border Patrol officer’s death. However, Kerney decided it would be premature to point Shaw out to Agent Fidel as a possible second suspect until he learned more about the man. He would do some digging and if Shaw came up clean, he could drop the matter and avoid stirring up any unnecessary trouble for Joe and Bessie.
During the course of the afternoon the production team had traveled up and down the valley, and Kerney had learned a good deal about the lay of the land. With that, and what Julia had told him about the location of the Harley homestead, he felt fairly certain he could find his way to the barn where Shaw kept the van.
He’d come out to the ranch tonight, try to take a closer look at the van, and then decide on a course of action if one was needed.
They arrived at the copper smelter, the last stop of the day, right on schedule an hour before sunset. To the west the bare, blinding sand of the playas stretched like a ribbon on the desert floor, and the grim Animas Mountains sloped upward, craggy and inky black in long shadows that masked the eastern slope.
The warning beacon on the smokestack blinked faintly in the glaring light of a hot yellow sun, and the metal roofs of the smelter buildings reflected the sun’s glow in shimmering waves.
Usher and Johnny looked completely exhausted, and the remainder of the crew not much better. With bottled water in one hand and shooting scripts in the other, they followed Usher as he walked to the area he had chosen for the brawl between the cowboys and the cops. He stood on the rail spur near the ore delivery dock and explained what he wanted: cattle running loose among the ore cars, cowboys scattering as police cars careened over railroad tracks, vehicles overturning,