CHAPTER 32
“Fat Charlie, shoot her if she tries to make a run for it,” Machado said. “She’s had all the chances she’s gonna get!”
Hunter’s gut tightened. He’d crawled back several feet farther from the fire and hunkered down behind a mark a little larger than a grave marker. Peering around the rock’s right side, he gazed toward where the fire shimmered in the cottonwoods. He’d been hearing the clatter of pans and eating utensils, and now his gut tightened again when he saw Anna step out away from the camp and into the darkness, her red hair darkening as though a flame had been doused. She was a female-shaped shadow now, carrying behind her shoulder what appeared a heavy burlap sack bulging and clattering softly with cookware.
She slumped forward against the weight of the bag, whose mouth she held with both hands against her shoulder. A big, man-shaped shadow wearing a broad-brimmed, low-crowned sombrero and Mexican striped serape followed her out from the camp and into the darkness beyond. She and Fat Charlie were heading for the ravine and the stream bisecting it.
Hunter’s heart thudded.
Cold sweat broke out across his back.
Now was his chance!
He watched the two shadows, the smaller one Anna’s, walking twenty feet ahead of the stout-hipped and big-gutted Fat Charlie, who aimed a rifle at her back straight out from his left hip.
Anger burned in Hunter, made him grind his molars.
Don’t you hold a gun on my wife, you fat slob.
When Fat Charlie had followed Anna down into the streambed, both figures disappearing from Hunter’s view fifty yards ahead and to his right, he looked around carefully, making sure there was no sign of the picket. Not seeing the man, he got down on all fours and crawled through the buckbrush and sage, pulling the Henry along in his right hand. He moved more quickly, and made more noise than he wanted to, but urgency compelled him to risk it.
This might be his only chance to rescue his wife from these slave-trading curs, all of whom needed to die hard, howling.
The voices of the men conversing by the fire, and the faint snapping and crackling of the fire itself, dwindled as Hunter angled away from it, toward the dark cut that was the ravine. If he could get her away from Fat Charlie . . . away from the horses that might very well wind him and give him away . . . away from the smoking picket . . . they had a chance. They wouldn’t be in the clear by any means, because they would both be on foot until they reached Nasty Pete. And even when they reached Nasty Pete, they’d have to ride double. Pete was already tired, and there was no way even the steadfast, stalwart grullo could outrun a half-dozen relatively fresh horses.
When he gained the lip of the ravine, he stopped, dropped to his chest, and peered down into the ravine. The stream was a gleaming, serpentine snake at the bottom of it, another fifty yards away from Hunter. He could see the broad, tall figure of Fat Charlie and the smaller, shorter figure of Annabelle silhouetted against the dark, shining skin of the water.
There was a loud clattering as Annabelle upended the sack and spilled its contents out on the ground beside the water.
Fat Charlie didn’t help her at all. The fat dog sat down a rock nearby, his back to the bank on which Hunter lay, keeping his long gun aimed at Annabelle, whom he spoke to in low, harsh, jeering tones. Anna ignored him as she knelt to begin cleaning pots and pans in the stream with handfuls of sand.
Rage burned hotter in Hunter.
Slowly, quietly—he had to be very quiet now as well as patient—he slid down over the lip of the ravine and onto the side of the embankment. He pressed his chest to the ground again and crawled down the decline. When he reached the bottom, out of sight from the camp behind him now, he rose and moved slowly through the grass growly lushly at the arroyo’s floor.
Again, cigarette smoke touched his nostrils.
Then he saw the pale smoke wafting back over Fat Charlie’s right shoulder, buffeting in a vagrant breeze like a tattered cream guidon. The man’s broad back with sloping shoulders clad in the striped serape grew larger and larger before Hunter, as he approached one slow, careful step at a time. He didn’t want Anna seeing him, either. She would see only a big man’s moving shadow and give a start. He didn’t know his wife to scream, but that didn’t mean she might not with her nerves likely drawn as taut as they were.
Eight feet from Fat Charlie, Hunter saw the glow of the cigarette as Fat Charlie drew on it. He turned his head to the right and blew the smoke plume into the darkness. As he did, he must have glimpsed Hunter behind him. He grunted and began to turn his head to see behind him.
Heart racing, Hunter dropped his Henry and leaped forward, drawing his Bowie knife with his right hand and wrapping his left hand around Fat Charlie’s big head, closing it taut over the man’s mouth, and sliding the savagely upturned tip of the Bowie deep into the man’s back, just beneath his hat.
Hunter suppressed the image of the dead young Billy Scanlon whom Hunter had killed in the same way, as he drove the tip of the Bowie up hard and into the backside of the big man’s heart. He pulled the man’s head back as Fat Charlie dropped his rifle and his cigarette, which bounced and sparked. Charlie groaned deep in his throat, suddenly shocked and terrified, and flailed his arms, trying desperately to reach back for the man who was killing him.
As Annabelle suddenly stopped scrubbing the pot in her hand and having heard Fat Charlie’s muffled screams, started to turn around, Hunter said quietly, “Anna, don’t scream. It’s your husband!”
Anna gasped and, leaping to her feet, swung around.
She stiffened and closed both hands over her mouth in mute astonishment as Hunter continued to drive the Bowie deep into Fat Charlie’s heart.
Warm blood flowed out of the man’s back and around the knife hilt, quickly bathing Hunter’s gloved right hand.
The man spasmed violently, trying to reach behind him toward his assailant, waving his clenched fists. Gradually the spasms died. The man stopped swinging his fists, opened them, and his arms dropped down against his sides. He gave a last groan and then his big body went slack.
Hunter pulled the Bowie out of his back and, keeping his hand drawn taut over the man’s wet mouth, eased his large, slack body down off the rock and into the grass growing up around it. Hunter had no sooner straightened than Annabelle threw herself into his arms. Arm, rather. Hunter held the bloody knife out away from her, held her with his left. Burying her face in his chest, she convulsed with a sob and squeezed him around the waist until he groaned.
She pulled away from him, looked up at him, eyes showing concern in the starlight.
She flicked his hat brim with her index finger. “About time you get here! And when’s the last time you heard me scream?”
Hunter chuckled, remembering an incident involving a mouse she’d found in the stable early one morning. He didn’t mention it. He kissed her then, knowing there was no time to waste, moved quickly around her, cleaned his knife and his hand in the stream, sheathed the knife, and took Anna’s hand in his own.
“Let’s go. Fast but quiet. Nasty Pete’s tied up yonder.”
He led her quickly along the narrow creek but slowed his pace when he realized, by her sluggishness, that she was exhausted. When they’d moved a hundred yards upstream, the ravine began to make a leftward curve. Nasty Pete was up on the tableland to their right. Hunter found a game path; he led Anna up the path and into the brush and sage of the flatland above.
They’d no sooner gained the top of the cut than a man’s shrill voice cut through the night behind them. “Boss! Fat Charlie’s dead an’ the girl’s gone!”
The picket had found Fat Charlie. His voice echoed menacingly across the starry night.
A silence just as menacing from the camp was the picket’s only response. A glance back toward the fire told Hunter the other three men were scrambling for guns and possibly horses.
Hunter turned to Anna. “I know you’re tired, honey, but we best make a run for it.”
Annabelle nodded, squeezed his hand. “Let’s go. I believe this cat has done run out of all nine of her lives!”
Hunter turned and, holding his wife’s hand tightly in his own, ran back in the direction he’d left Pete, hoping like hell he’d be able to find the horse in the darkness. It just now occurred to him that he’d been in such a hurry to get to Anna that he hadn’t taken adequate note of where he’d tethered the grullo. Steering by instinct, he adjusted his course slightly. He and Anna had run a good fifty yards when he felt Anna slowing. Hunter had just started to turn back to her when he tripped over a rock and fell. Anna gave a clipped, involuntary cry and fell on top of him.
They rolled together several feet, and Hunter’s heart hiccupped when he heard, “Over there!” shouted back in the direction of the fire.
Only, Machado and his men were no longer at the fire.
He could see three man-shaped shadows running out away from it, silhouetted against it, dusters or jackets winging out around them. Another man was running toward Hunter and Anna from the direction of where Hunter had blown out Fat Charlie’s wick.
They were on foot.
Good.
Now, if Hunter and Anna could just reach Pete.
Hunter turned to Annabelle lying across his lap. A lock of her hair was in his mouth. Annabelle rose, slid her hair from his mouth, and said breathlessly, “That was a very rare scream, and it was no fault of my own, bucko!”
“Really glad to have you back again, honey.” Grunting against the lingering ache in his ribs, Hunter set his hat back on his head, scrambled to his feet, took Anna’s hand again, pulled her to her feet, and took off running once more.
“There they are!” came a deep, angry voice behind them. Machado’s most likely.
Hunter glanced back to see the running shadows adjust their course and come straight toward Hunter and Anna, both of whom were so exhausted that Machado’s remaining four men were closing on them.
Pistols flashed and popped.
Bullets thudded into the ground just behind them and to either side.
“Oh, God, Hunter,” Anna said behind him, slowing, even more breathless than before. “I’m not gonna make it. My feet are lead.” She bent forward, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. “My heart’s gonna explode!”
Guns continued to pop and flash.
Hunter grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind him once more. “You’re comin’ with me, lady! Whether you like or not!”
“You’re gonna . . . you’re gonna kill me!”
“No, I’m not. We’re both makin’ it back to the Box Bar B in one piece. Think of Angus. Think of Nate. Run!”
They’d just crested a low hill and ran several feet down the other side. Hunter released Anna’s hand and yelled, “Pete should be up there around those rocks. Tighten his cinch, shove his bit in his mouth, and ride. I’m gonna stay here and feed those bastards so much lead they’ll be rattling when they shake hands with ol’ Scratch!”
Anna ran a few feet, slowed, bent forward again. “I can . . . I can’t . . .”
“Go, Anna!”
To his surprise, she continued running, albeit slowly and as though her knees would buck at any second.
Hunter threw himself to the ground at the crest of the ridge. He tossed away his hat, racked a round into the Henry’s action, and aimed straight out from his right shoulder.
He flinched when he heard Anna fall to the ground behind him.
“Hunter,” she sobbed. “Oh, Hunter . . . oh, God, honey . . . I’m sorry!”