Page 79 of Badlands

“I don’t know. But Gallina Canyon…” She drew in a breath. “I’m going now. If you’d like to come, I’d sure appreciate it, but I’m not going to wait.”

“Well, how can I say no? I can’t let you go alone.” Corrie made a little effort to squelch her irritation. Nora had, after all, made the crazy trip to Mexico that broke wide open her investigation, and she owed her a big one for that.

“Thank you, Corrie, really, thank you. I appreciate it.”

47

BEHIND THE WHEELof the black SUV, Corrie did her best to thread her way safely through the fantastical landscape of spires and hoodoos. They had passed several largeNO TRESPASSINGsigns put up by the oil companies, and now far ahead she could see a large drilling rig, a row of green fracking tanks, and several white pickup trucks. A group of men in hardhats and orange vests were working on a cluster of pipes nearby. As Corrie and Nora approached, the men saw them, turned, and jogged for their pickup trucks.

“What are they doing?” Nora asked.

“Looks like they’re blocking the road,” said Corrie.

And they were, in fact, pulling their trucks into a line across the road. Once they successfully obstructed the road and both sides of it, the men got out of the pickups and waited.

“This is strange,” said Nora. “I wonder why they’re so touchy.”

“I guess they think we’re trespassers.”

The SUV reached the flat and Corrie slowed to a halt as they approached the roadblock. The half a dozen or so men wereleaning against their open truck doors or lounging around, dirty and grinning. Several had taken the opportunity to light up cigarettes. One had a cigar.

“Kind of ugly to be Harvey Girls,” said Nora. “Besides, I don’t see any restaurant around.”

Two of the men sauntered over. The one with the cigar tapped on the driver’s window. Corrie rolled it down. The man looked inside, turned to his friend, and said, “Looky what we have here.” He turned toward Corrie. “Wanna party?”

Corrie stared at the man. He was so disgusting—unshaven, dirty and sweaty, stinking of cigar smoke—that she almost laughed. The days when she’d feel cowed by a miserable bunch like this were long gone.

“We’d like to pass,” she said.

The man turned to his friend. “The buckle bunnies want to go through.”

“Gotta pay the toll.”

“What toll?” Corrie asked.

“What’s the toll?” the man called back to his friend.

“Show us a titty.”

“He wants you to show us a titty,” the man at the window said, blowing a stream of smoke into the cab.

Corrie gazed at the man steadily. “Atitty? Half a dozen good old boys like you—and all you want as a toll is to see one titty?”

The man was momentarily taken aback. Then, aware of the others staring at him, leered. “What you offering, girlie?”

“How about something spicier?” Corrie asked.

“Hell, yeah!”

“You sure you’re man enough, now—to see it, I mean?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, cackling. “Let’s see it.”

Corrie reached into her jacket and removed her FBI wallet,held it inches from the man’s face, and let it fall open, displaying her badge and ID. “Spicy enough for you?”

There was a freezing silence as the man stared.

Corrie let a beat pass and said: “Special Agent Corinne Swanson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albuquerque Field Office—in case your reading skills are as bad as your breath.”

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