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Show Flying - 82 smile and offering them his hand. "I'm Tex Hogan, Cochise county sheriff's office. Hear you fellers had a little run-in with Black Gert." He slaps his hand on the counter with a sound like thunder. "I been after her since she got her first man, better'n five years ago. By God I'm going to get her one of these days." He turns to smile at the waitress, who has been standing at his elbow waiting to serve him. "Gimme some coffee, honey. Black and hot." He taps his five-pointed silver shield with a thick thumb-nail. "I been wearing this here star for eleven years and no damn woman's going to make a fool out of me." "Weighs two hundred and eighty-five pounds and he's quick as a cat," says the waitress to John Henry after Tex Hogan leaves. "But he don't ever lean on people, not like some of the other cops around here." Her eyes are filled with tenderness. "He's real gentle with a woman," she says, "always real polite." The jeep rolls out of Benson almost two hours behind the convoy, and heads west on Route 86, Sergeant Armstrong at the wheel. At the edge of town they pass a white police car parked in front of the Gateway Motel and Tex Hogan, standing beside it, waves at them. The road is smooth and wide and Sergeant Armstrong's |