Where there’s a dam, there is water.
“Are you blind, y’infernal camel? To the gully. The gully there.”
The willful mule carried on another minute before swerving. Ott could see the crown of the structure: a charcoal parapet of logs against the backdrop of hill and range. He squeezed his thighs to hasten the mule and to have a chance at filling his canteen.
Beavers perform their labours during nighttime. They are a diligent sort, and co-operative. Able to lug stones and logs of surprising weights. These base supports are pounded into the bed of a stream or creek. A family of beavers—a colony—will establish foundations so broad as to actually divert waterways. Dams and dwellings can be larger than the houses of men.
The walls and roof of a lodge are comprised with what materials are at hand. Weeds and grass, bark, branches large and small. Mortars of leaves and mud. The slightest aperture must be stopped up. Impregnable to moisture. Logs which are too bulky to drag are slid over wetland, or down mudslides. Ingenuity is abundant in the furry architects. Beavers will spend hundreds of hours gnawing for desired materials to construct their homes. Their jaws are among the most powerful on the plains. Granpappy had once said so.
“Git on. Walk, I says.”
Ott neared the fracture in the land. His thirst intensified. He had been foolish to permit the mule to wander where it would. They hadn’t come on a drop since town. This was his own doing. He’d been wallowing in his grief. It was unbecoming of a man. Pender would tell him. Pender had the grit to resume his chores and to make something of daylight hours. Ott could hear his brother’s scorn. Wash yer mind of it. It’s done ‘n happened. Y’ain’t improvin’ his opinion of ya, draggin’ yer ugly puss in the dirt. He ain’t here to see it. Buck up, ya useless teat.
They were lucky to stumble upon a creek. The frontier was a hundred million miles across, in the wagoner’s estimation. It was the nearest thing to infinite. Without water and grub, a traveller was doomed. Might as well be a blind goshawk. Ott and the mule would drink themselves full. The dog, as well. Perhaps there were fish. He would fashion himself a spear and sit in a shaded spot.
The beaver is a cunning builder. The interior of its lodge has a precise amount of space between waterline and ceiling to accommodate flooding. Seepage and ventilation are planned from the outset. Food supplies of birchbark and alder roots and cambium are just outside the lodge entrance, at the water’s edge. The beaver does not roam for days in search of game. Hoping against hope. Food is on hand. On the point of entrances, the beaver is shrewd: he designs a front door and a rear. Entrance and exit. Or, as he pleases, two entrances, two exits. A contingency plan found in few soddies or log homes. The beaver has knowledge of forethought. He and his kind will survive on the cruel plains. Homesteaders of the new west could learn something.
These particulars were not formed precisely in Ott’s thoughts. Granpappy had recited observances of beaver lodges and the nests of robins and all manner of wonders in nature. Ott was fascinated by these insights. He admired his grandfather for the scope of his knowledge.
“Mind the drop, ya ignorant donkey.”
The mule took him close on to the bank, which dropped a mere few feet. Ott could see the knots in the logs, the splintered shafts of twig and stick jammed into place. While the lodge remained an impressive piece of craftsmanship, it was evident the abode had fallen into disrepair. Boughs had tumbled out, as if pushed from within. The roof had caved, leaving the jumble of wood reminiscent of an erupted volcano.
The lodge was abandoned. This Ott knew, for the creek bed below was bone dry.
There was a high-pitched, stricken sound. It came from his throat.
“Damnation! There ain’t water to rench with.” Ott’s voice cracked. He threw up his childlike arms and scanned the perpetual dunes. Perspiration beaded at the nape of his neck. “The mutt needs drink. I need drink. Yer bound to collapse afore we find a trickle.”
He spoke to the mule like it needed convincing. The pang in his gut was constant now. Between his wailings, he leaned on the saddle apple.
“’Nother day ‘n we’ll be starved. The buzzards’ll be circlin’.” He wiped his brow and neck with his hat. Brooding. The heat made the air thick, and he thought his brains would soon bake. The only thing to do was to follow the dried-up gully and hope it would lead them to a source.
The mastiff had clamoured down to the lodge. It poked its head into openings, detecting scents of what living things had passed through recently. A faint indication of skunk. A hint of rotten flesh—the scrap of a hawk’s kill that had fallen from the skies, perhaps. The horses of the migrating Lakota and the dogs which accompanied them. Sir Lucien nibbled at the leaves of the alders there. He would not budge until he was good and ready.
* * *
“We’re directly agin’ it, Lucien. You need to bust out ‘less ye want yer skeleton laid out here for eternity.”
The winds had been threatening. Now they swelled over the evaporated creek, pushing the company to a standstill. Walloping them with pebbles and dust. Sir Lucien hunkered down. He and Ott both were temporarily blinded.
Tumbleweeds appeared. A howling filled the air, where before there had been silence. Ott was forced to sit on his hat. He pressed a hand to his eyes and peered between fingers to see. The mastiff, invisible through the dust storm, tucked low to the ground. It was whimpering, though its cries went unheard.
Ott spat and hacked. He cursed. The dirt penetrated his ears. The dirt mass blotted out the sun. A creeping shroud of shadow, worthy of a desert, enveloped mule and rider. There was little point in turning about: no matter which direction they faced, there was a barrage of needling particles. Ott gambled that the gusts would blow themselves out.
“Ptuh. Ptuh. Christ in a bucket.”
Sir Lucien balked. The windstorm made breathing difficult.
“Consarn!”
He slid off the saddle and held tight to the reins. His other hand on his trousers, he led the mule down into the gully. The slope was a mere dozen steps, but Sir Lucien resisted.
“Come on. Hold fast, ye idjit.”
They made slow progress. Noise and chaos followed them. When Ott lost footing and fell on his hip, he thought the mule would roll.
“Whoa now. A’right. This-a way.”
Ott cried out against the agitated wind, as a beacon for the mastiff. There was a chance that it could hear. He got the mule safely to level ground.
There was a niche low in the bank. He sunk into it directly. He’d lost his hideous hat and couldn’t afford to lose the mule. Sir Lucien was not a shelf item from the dry goods store. He was Ott’s lifeblood. Double fisting, Ott wrung the reins.
“Lean yerself in, Lucien. Lean!”
The square body of the animal was a target for the wind. It took all of Ott’s hand strength to hold onto the reins. He had visions of the mule tumbling over, breaking a leg. Ott wasn’t about to play veterinarian in the heart of nowhere.
“Criminy! I can’t steady ya if’n ya won’t steady yerself!”
A column of dirt swooped through. Ott’s tongue was coated in film. He wriggled into the shallow niche and spat on the mule’s hooves. For a full minute, he shut his eyes tight. Barely breathing.
Then, as suddenly as it was born, the hard bellows dissipated.
“Ptuh. God ‘n Moses…”
He emerged and plumbed his ear canals with a finger. There was sediment in his beard and inside his boots. The windstorm could be seen pushing on, stirring up topsoil in its vacuum path. Leaving in its wake broken branches and stalk. A floating swath of turmoil.
“That there was a close shave. Thought you was about to crash down on me. Make a flapjack o’ this poor boy.”
He gave the mule a once over to see that it could hold its own weight. The rifle was there in its scabbard. The animal had no visible cuts or injuries.
“Where you think that skinny hound’s got to? Here, boy!”
The niche in the bank held evidence of a beast’s presence. Small swatches of hair matted on the curved floor. They were stuck into the earth. Ott knelt to see.
The fur was tawny and grey. Not rabbit fur—rabbits living in burrows. Ott had chased many fleet rabbits down their holes. He sniffed the short tufts and got nothing out of the exercise. One side of the niche wall was etched with straight lines, as if the occupant had been counting the days he’d been imprisoned therein. Imprisoned or taking cover. The marks were deep and long. Crisscrossed scratches. Indications of a cougar scrape, where a male had called for a mate in the throes of mating season. He may have caught scent of a female in the area.
Mountain lions roamed the Black Hills freely. Their territory was vast and unpredictable. The amorous cat who’d created a scrape for the wagoner could have been a hundred miles distant at the moment or slinking above Ott’s bedraggled head, ready to pounce.
“Hm,” he let go the tuft of fur, and it drifted into individual hairs. “Damn, my eyeballs is hurtin’. My whole face is raw.”
Gingerly, he touched his cheekbones. The flesh there was burnt a tender scarlet. The sun would worsen it now that he had lost his headpiece. Like hobbled ponies, the man and mule made on. The dog, unharmed by the sudden twister, loped into its customary position.
* * *
Virginia creeper vine sufficed for a belt on his loose breeches. Ott entwined strips of the vigorous vine to pass minutes on the saddle. Once he’d fashioned a usable length, he held the belt over the waistline of his breeches and tied a double knot.
“There. That oughtta hold a spell.”
On they went.
His thirst became overpowering. His lips were dry on his tongue. A man can get relief from sucking on a sodden neckerchief. Dip the kerchief into a pond and wad it into a ball. That ball will last all day for a drover pushing cattle under a sweltering sun. For children crammed knee to knee inside a covered wagon, bumping over a long trail toward uncharted land, molasses works dandy. Mothers soothe their babes with fabrics soaked in sweet molasses.
Ott did not possess a sodden neckerchief, and the spit that he swallowed could not fool his stomach into believing it was being fed. Somewhere along the way, the gully had become level ground. The mule trod among the rolling hills. Its rider was mute, having fallen into a protracted lethargy.
They had seen no game. The mastiff, whose vision and smell far exceeded Ott’s, discovered no nests or dens. He hadn’t startled a grouse or a quail out of any brush, for there wasn’t a grouse or quail there to startle. Even the snakes had abandoned this impoverished borderland.
The trio trudged on until the sun’s strength waned. Shadows became long and the only interruptions to the peace of the area were Sir Lucien’s sluggish paces and the whipping of his tail.
* * *
It was the dog that worried the road agent. Not the rider.
The rider was an unremarkable figure. He slumped in the saddle, head drooping like a dead man’s. He failed to read his surroundings and failed to direct his mount, leaving the dumb animal to ramble on in a wasteful, zigzag course. The rider wore no hat. He was alone. The chief indication that the approaching man was a consummate idiot was that he rode a mule and not a horse.
The road agent was confident.
It was almost definitely the mastiff that would cause a problem. Dogs are wild cards, as a rule. They can be trained—even taught profound devotion to their masters—but there remains something of the wild beast in them. A dog’s mouth is a deadly weapon. Under no circumstances could the road agent allow himself to be attacked by the steely-jowled hound.
He did possess a knife. He hadn’t forgotten. Merely a dull apple peeler but he would have to make do with it. He drew out the blade and crouched lower in the thicket.
The road agent had acquired the knife from a lad in the first village on the coach’s route. It was a desperate act, he knew, but the villagers had left him no recourse. The women there recoiled from him in fear. They steered their toddlers away rashly and, when he rapped on doors to beg food, they refused to open. The men were harsher. Self-righteous, even. Proper gents with their polished buckles and pocket watches on chains. The gold-toothed fellow who had rounded on him, beating him about the ears and neck—oh, how the road agent longed to carve that chump like a fish. He oughtn’t have been so haphazard in his attempt to pinch the gent’s coin purse.
It was the road agent’s rough appearance, he knew. They were bastards who had lashed him and put him on the stagecoach bleeding all but naked. His shirt had been slashed to tatters. The sting of the wounds hurt him still. Had he any healing balm or salve, he wouldn’t have been able to reach back to apply it. He despised the lot of them.
The road agent—or, thief, as he had been crudely labelled—had been so close to procuring that handsome colt. Another fifteen minutes and he’d have succeeded. He would have been long gone, riding hard. Not one of those simpleton townsfolk would have learned the truth.
He had no choice but to jump the stagecoach at his earliest opportunity. He was a wanted man in Fort Garry and in Kingston. Returning east would have meant a certain walk to the gallows. No, his best shot was to remain on the frontier. Here, there was small risk of encountering a familiar face. Here, the newcomers carried so much more than pistols and flasks. They stuffed their portmanteaus and burlap sacks to capacity, wanting to retain the trinkets of their former lives. Family heirlooms and jewellery. Silver candlesticks from European burghs with ridiculous names—places they would never again visit. They were, by and large, an unsuspecting lot, these newcomers. Their fears were of the red man or of foul weather. Often, they were blind to danger standing right next to them, on a train platform or in a general store.
He had found the lad in back of a stockyard. The lad may have been the stockyard owner’s son or simply a derelict type, shunning his daily chores. Whatever the case, the thief discovered him slicing a turnip. The thief did not recognize the peculiar vegetable. He had never seen a turnip or a squash or a beet, the seeds of which women sometimes sewed into the hems of their dresses for the long journey beyond the hundredth meridian. But the turnip was not what caught the thief’s attention.
He’d left the lad busted up. His jaw definitely cracked—that, the thief heard clearly. It wasn’t that there had been intent. Looking down on the kid, when it was done, he could not recall throwing a single punch. It was as if his fisted hands and gnashing teeth functioned independently of his brain. His body had been temporarily hijacked out of greed. Over a jackknife.
Regaining his senses, he knew he had to run. There were people about. Close enough that he caught snippets of conversations. He saw no opportunity to acquire a mount. Muddle-headed, he took to the open land on foot.
The thicket was dry and prickly. The thief tensed when his scarred back contacted the thin offshoots. He was sunburned. But he needed a hiding place.
In silence, he observed the progress of the inattentive rider.
The target kept his rifle in its scabbard. The thief could make out the barrel when the animal was at an angle to permit it. The mule rider appeared to be small in stature. That was fortunate. Taking a knife to a gunfight, the thief knew, was an ill-advised gambit, but he could not pass up this chance. He was desperate for food. Surely, the dopey traveller had tack or dried meat. Water, at least. Overruling all else, the thief needed that mule.
They drew closer. The hound lagged behind the man—this was fortunate. So far, the dog hadn’t detected the thief’s presence. Perhaps the breeze favours me, thought the crouching outlaw. Perhaps the fool rider is asleep. He hasn’t lifted his head. Men have been known to nod off in the saddle before. The thief’s heart raced. There was gold not two days’ ride from here. The promise of it was on virtually everyone’s lips. He knew what he needed to do.
Ott was nearly abreast the bramble of osier and ninebark before he noticed it. The tangled brush ran a mile or more into a shallow glen which may have been a stream in another time. He contemplated the thicket as one might contemplate air. It failed to stir his excitement. There may have been grouse or hare within. What of it? He had only one musket ball left in his saddle. He couldn’t hit a hare if it had the proportions of a grizzly.
The mastiff followed. Ott had not turned to confirm it, for he could invoke no reason to do so. The dog could not provide for them. It was unable to provide for itself. Ott himself could not support the company. In this wasteland, what could be accomplished? Dehydration had sapped the mule’s strength. Alongside the coarse brush, it plodded. In the saddle, Ott’s mind was a vacuum. Meek and weary were his limbs.
Suddenly, Ott’s head exploded. He found himself on the ground and knew not how he got there. His shoulder had smashed on contact. Sir Lucien was in a fit, kicking up dust. Ott thought he heard squealing.
“Lucien—”
He knew he should get to his knees or feet but the stabbing in his head kept him down, in fetal position. He tried to blink his eyes into seeing. The mule’s dark form had gone. It was replaced by the totem shape of a man. A stranger. Ott tried to decipher what was happening. He was now cradling his injured arm. When had he decided to do this? The stranger, out of focus, was holding a rifle. Loading it, it seemed. Ott thought he heard words of anger. Threats. Was the stranger upset with him? What did I do, he thought. A different sound came. Ott knew this sound. Yes. It grew closer. It was the dog’s bark. It had locked in on a hare. Finally. Maybe it would nab it. Maybe we will eat—
No. The dog was attacking the man. In the confusion, Ott saw the stranger whirl and level the rifle. Is that my old peashooter? How did he—The gun fired. Instantly, the barking was silenced. Ott turned to see through the settling dust. No, no. Where are you, boy? No, it couldn’t be…He listened for a bark, a whimper...
Nothing.
When Ott looked back, the stranger had vanished.
“Sir Lucien.”
His words sounded far away to his own ears. Jumbled words. The tendons and muscles of his shoulder had ripped. The arm was connected—Ott saw that he still possessed it—yet it was numb and useless. Things seemed to be occurring in slow motion. Time and space were somehow distorted. Pushing off his functioning arm, Ott got to his feet. He weaved in the direction of the noises.
“Holt! I says holt!”
He hollered when he saw what the stranger was after. Sir Lucien was having none of it. The mule bucked and spun, fighting to throw off the stranger grappling for the saddle horn. Ott struggled to catch up.
“Leave off my mule!”
The stranger ignored Ott’s commands. Holding the rifle aloft, he was determined to grip the pommel. In a chaotic dance, the mule twisted and kicked. The stranger managed to get a foot into the stirrup and was hopping madly alongside the furious animal. Ott saw that he was young—barely growing chin whiskers. His mop of blonde hair flopped as the mule pulled him about. Ott had not seen the thief when the man had been tied to the pole, back in the town. The only recognition was that a man was attempting to steal Sir Lucien.
Adrenaline gave Ott energy to pump his stubby legs. His mind was clearing and, as he closed the distance, he put forth his functioning arm in an effort to latch on to the thief. He did not anticipate the younger man’s agility. The thief, suddenly detaching himself from the mule, brought his second hand to the barrel tip of the rifle and swung the weapon. He struck Ott squarely on side of the head with the blunt stock.
Ott crumpled to the earth.
The world went black.
Seeing his opponent felled, the thief doubled over to recover breath. He was an ugly turd, the mule owner. The thief wondered briefly if he’d ever observed such an odd model of humanity. A trickle of blood went from the runt’s temple down into his ear.
The mule had trotted some yards into the pokey thicket, where it paused in fear. It too was weak from undernourishment and fatigue. Perhaps, thought the thief, he could calm the beast with affable talk and a quiet approach. He took small steps toward the red osier dogwood and ninebark.
“Easy, boy. Easy now.”
The thief’s head was throbbing. Examining his brow, he found a firm bump there. He had not intended to contact the rider skull-on-skull. It was nothing that a whiskey wouldn’t cure. He had heard tell of a new town not terribly far off called Deadwood. Plumb full of prospectors and renegades, it was said. A place that beckoned a man, like a woman’s breast. Rife with fools who had hard money in their pockets. They were just waiting to be had.
The thief entered the dense brush.
“That’s a good donkey,” he crooned. “I ain’t fixin’ to harm you none.”
The briar patch was difficult to navigate. Every step was into a crisscross of branches and stems. Prickly hawthorn and wild rose were mixed into the mess, and the thief felt the needles overtop his boots. The ground was uneven. There were few places to grab hold of to steady oneself. The thief possessed the rifle still. He kept it high, out of the bramble. The situation would have been vastly easier had the stupid mule remained in the flats.
“Thatta boy. Let me come to you.”
His equilibrium slightly impaired, he neared the object of his attack.
The thief had no misgivings about the ugly man. He was a means to an end. The new world—this land of opportunity, this glorious West—was not for the likes of an idiot mule rider. It was for the strong. Sure, there were the homesteaders who would exhaust themselves in body and in spirit, dedicating a lifetime to squeezing meagre profits from the soil. There were the pig farmers and cowhands. A fraction of these would survive to raise their families. The next generation of patient labourers. There was need for the tanners, the smithy yards. But the thief knew these were not his callings. He would have gain now, and his gain would be substantial. The devil take those who got in his way.
“There you are. That’s better…”
The mule grew mollified. It kept a bulbous eye on the thief but it did not bolt. Its ribs contracted as it gulped for oxygen. The thief arrived at the animal’s position.
“Ain’t meanin’ to hurt you. Don’t fret yourself…”
Cautiously, he tugged the lip of each saddlebag. No man would dare venture through the hills alone and powderless. The ugly man had a store of musket balls, surely. A pistol would be a better prize. The mule allowed the thief to search the other side. There was neither powder nor pistol.
He scanned the area the mule had trampled. The packets must have ejected during the infernal donkey’s fit. The thief was of a mind to hitch the mule and spend an hour searching. He made a quick audit of the sky. Two hours of light remained.
“Hellfire.”
He would use the time to push south. Women and whiskey awaited. He could acquire ammunition in the town. Procure himself a pistol. The ugly man’s rifle was a relic. He reached for the saddle horn and lifted a foot to the stirrup. The mule sidestepped.
“Come on, now. Enough o’ that nonsense. I need to get on.”
The thief forced a soothing tone. His upper lip began to curl, however. In his thoughts, he called up saltier language. The mule was an obstinate one. Had there been a whip handy, the man would have lashed the obstinance clear out of it. He was running short of patience.
“There we are. Steady now. I just needs to get my boot into—”
The blow was delivered directly behind the thief’s ear, and it sent him off balance into the thorny brush. Ott broke knuckle bones landing the punch. The contact pain was a shock to his system. It caused him to rave.
“Arrrr!”
He crashed onto the thief, flailing with his able arm. Battering the blonde man, who could not find purchase for his feet.
“Nghh!”
The noises were feral. Ott elbowed his foe on his brow, the nose. When the overwhelmed rustler squirmed, Ott connected on his windpipe and collar bone. The combatants went at it hammer and tongs. Dark blood seeped from Ott’s gashed temple. The thief managed to scratch a strip of skin from Ott’s neck.
When the younger, fitter man knocked the other laterally, Ott found himself tumbling to lower ground. Through woody shoots and stems he crashed. His back and arms felt punctured by a hundred nails. Behind him, he could hear the thief approaching. The younger man now disregarded the mule. He leapt over and into the troublesome brier patch, bent on finishing the fight. The knife in his pocket had not been needed before; now, he brandished it with malice in his eyes.
Ott’s shoulder was being stabbed by lightning. The pain consumed him. Glimpsing the oncoming thief, he got to his feet and staggered farther into the brush. The earth, which he could not see below the dense tangle, descended in places then levelled off. Ott lunged forward, zigzagging.
It was inconceivable that the blonde man pursued him. Ott had pummeled the man with all his might, splitting his nose. The thief was cursing as he charged. Both men had knees buckle beneath them. It was a lumbering, ill-contrived chase.
Ott began to search for a rock or a bough. Any makeshift weapon. A shield, at least. There was nothing in the area but scrub and more scrub. It was cumbersome, tramping through such terrain cradling one arm with the other. The thief was gaining ground.
“I’ll slice you open, you ignorant waste o’ skin! Cut you up ‘n leave you for the crows…”
Ott patted his trousers in hopes that he had his jackknife. He remembered: these were Maisie’s gifted breeches. No pocket, no knife. He leapt over the unfriendly brush.
There was a long outcropping of rock. Like an enormous shell, it thrust out from solid ground on an angle. The upper portion of rock slab was roofed in grass and thistle weed. A lesser amount of cane than what grew below. The underbelly of the slab, which jutted the length of a train car, was chalky white. Barely visible through the scrub that was now as high as Ott’s chest.
The defenseless wagoner steered toward it.
It was like wading through oil. Every inch of progress exerted the muscles. Unlike oil, each movement caused superficial scrapes and cuts.
Ott had twenty yards to go when the thief struck. The man’s hair wafted in the air. He launched himself at the wagoner, his knife thrusting forward in an arc. Ott knew he was under attack. Reflexively, he cowered and fell to the bed of scrub, turning his wounded shoulder from whatever was coming. The knife swiped downward, narrowly missing its mark. The thief crashed into the wagoner’s heels.
On brittle, broken cane, they scrambled to right themselves. There was a moment as they squared off that neither man flinched. Ott, puffing hard, locked in on the knife. His lungs burned. He was terrified. He would be slain here, in these badlands. He would die alone. The thief had lacerations on his hands, his face. A latticework of bloody slashes. Ott must have looked the same.
Then it came.
The thief made a few tentative feints with the blade. Paring wildly. Ott raised his hands—the one only slightly. He was hemmed in by the thick ninebark and dogwood. Trapped. In a quick shuffle, the knifeman swiped low then switched to high, aiming the steel at the centre of Ott’s chest.
Ott reacted too late. His able hand tried to fend off the stab but hardly brushed the forearm of the thief. The knife blade pushed straight on toward the wagoner’s heart and would have sunk into it had it not struck the flesh of Ott’s limp hand. The tip of the small knife ejected through the back of the hand and nicked Ott’s chest, the force of the attack sending his body into the prickly bush.
The thief collapsed beside his opponent.
Ott had no time to gape at the impaled knife. Now, it was no longer in the thief’s possession. The little man gave the thief a solid heel kick to his privates and turned to flee once more. The peculiar rock slab lay ahead.
“Befriend me, God…save me from this fiend…my hand…oh God, it’s stuck through my fuckin’ hand…somebody help me…”
It was shock. Or, perhaps the fluke of the knife missing every major bone of the hand. The stabbing was, so far, painless. Ott gaped at it. A foreign object lodged into his flesh. He wanted to retch. He felt blood draining from his head. High-stepping through the thicket, he went for the outcropping.
Below the upper slab was a second stone of the same proportions. This second immense slab was embedded in the earth. Overgrown with weed and cane. Any individual ludicrous enough to enter the briar patch would fail to see this rock bed if he wasn’t directly upon it.
“Please, Lord, please…can’t feel my hand…can’t find my way out…”
The wagoner babbled his way to the giant, stone clam. He had lost blood. The power of his adrenaline was seeping. He realized now there was no way to stave off the thief. It wasn’t as if he could remove the knife and employ it as his own. He was crawling on only one hand. He needed to muster every ounce of his strength to scale the rock bed. The knifed hand dangled useless and blood-soaked along the chalk floor. Where the two slabs met was a space large enough for a man to lie in. Cool and shaded. Inviting. Suddenly, the wagoner was lulled by the thought of ensconcing himself there in the secret spot. An enormous rock shell bed. Going to sleep. Forever. If it wasn’t for the cutthroat trailing him, spitting his violent intentions.
“Pappy?” Ott breathed.
His vision was blurry. Blood and dirt caked one eye. His brain was concussed. On his backside, he tried to pull himself farther into the wedge, his arm extended above his head and his feet pushing feebly. The thief was mounting the lip of the slab. He would be upon him in mere moments. This was the end. Ott could see the shape of the killer between his own boots. The thief was standing. Spewing his foul-mouthed threats. Now, he loomed over Ott, blocking out the sky. If the devil himself had appeared then, in his wrath with a serpentine tail, Ott couldn’t have been more terrified.
His fumbling hand went into a hollow ball, behind him. He gripped the good-sized ball and swung it with force. A savage swing. A barbarian’s swing.
And all flashed a brilliant white.