It was a dirt road, I kept telling myself. There had to be tracks. The shepherds were pretending to look for something, but I knew they were mostly just confused. I walked up the hill on the right-hand track, assuming the home place would be on high ground. The surface of the road was actually hardpan, with lots of shattered flat rocks and even some shale. It was showing zero tire tracks, and I was getting antsier by the minute.
I walked back down to the dividing point, listened again to make sure no one else was coming up the road from the two-lane, and then tried going down. Fifty feet in I found a wet spot where a tiny creek was soaking through the dirt road. I finally passed Indian-tire tracks at last. I went back to the Suburban and called in the mutts, and we headed down, going slow with all the windows open. After another half mile it looked like the trees were thinning out ahead. I didn’t like being below whatever it was I was going to be watching, but this branch of the road had gone ninety degrees away from the upper branch, so it was going to be low ground or no ground. I parked the Suburban, hiding it as best I could behind some bushy pines. I rousted out the shepherds, the rifle, and the scope and headed into the woods on the left-hand side of the dirt lane. About three hundred yards in I stepped over a small creek and could finally begin to see the Hayes home place through the trees.
I discovered that I was approaching from below a long earthen dam, behind which there was a three-acre pond, formed in the valley cut out by a creek. At the other end of the pond there was a very pretty log cabin, which looked to have been one of those modern kit jobs, as opposed to an original rustic. There was a detached frame garage, behind which I could see Carrie’s vehicle, the brothers’ cruiser, and presumably Sheriff Hayes’s vehicle parked on one side of the cabin. To the left and slightly above the cabin was a graying, narrow, three-story house made of rough-hewn timbers. It was pretty obviously long since abandoned, with a slumping roof, gaping window frames, and a front porch that was down on the ground. There were several old outbuildings surrounding the house in similar states of ivy-draped decomposition.
Above and beyond the house, cabin, and pond, the land rose steeply on either side of the creek that supplied the pond, and I could see a mound of tailings halfway up the hill to the left, along with some rusting machinery stands and a few disintegrating mine carts. I was too low to see the actual mine entrance, but it had to be up there by those tailings. The mine was probably three hundred feet higher than the cabin and the house. There were no pastures or any other signs of farming, and the enveloping mountain forest was slowly but surely reclaiming the entire place.
I moved to the left along the grass face of the dam until I had a better view of the vehicles and the slopes to my right, where presumably that other road came out. We were miles from the Creigh place over in the next county, but not very far from the county line, as best I could tell. The Hayes place was on an eastern slope, and the late-afternoon shadows were beginning to creep down the higher ridges as the sun began to set. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no cover where I was crouching, and the slanting sunlight was full in my eyes. I had to move.
I signaled the dogs, and we went back down the dam face to the outflow creek and then down the long gulley below the dam until I could no longer see the cabin or the falling-down house. Then we cut directly south, into the woods. My objective was to circle the whole place until I came out up at the level of the abandoned mine. From there, I should be in the shadow of the setting sun and able to see the cabin, all the vehicles, and anyone coming down through the opposite woods.
It took me almost a half hour to get in position, as the woods on the south side of the property were thick with wait-a-minute vines and stands of hawthorn. I didn’t make any decent progress until I crossed a narrow track that presumably led up to the old mine. There were railroad ties and a badly rusted cog rail on one side of the track, so I followed that up until I reached a small plateau cut back into the face of the hill. The mine entrance was a rectangular black hole, framed in large timbers and cut into the side of the hill, with rusting narrow-gauge tracks coming out toward the tailings dump. The hill rose above the mine entrance two hundred feet or so.
There was more extinct machinery littering this area, and the flattened remains of a sorting shed to one side, which is where the cog line terminated. The little plateau was higher above the house and cabin than I had estimated, but the position was a perfect place to watch the cabin. The setting sun was behind me now, and the light was strong enough to penetrate the woods on the other side of the pond. We had maybe two hours before the virtual sunset caused by the mountains.
I used the scope to make a visual sweep of those woods and the hills above, but saw no sign of any creeping Creighs. The shepherds went exploring, which I figured was okay because we could not be seen from the cabin. Frack poked his nose into the mine entrance but came right back out, while Frick went rat hunting along the remains of the sorting shed, whose metal roof was now only about two feet off the ground. I wondered what had happened to the mine, whether it had simply played out or flooded, which was what usually shut these smaller operations down. There was enough old machinery scattered around the entrance apron to indicate there’d been a fairly good vein down there.
I crept over to one side of the tailings pile and set the scope up on the cabin itself. The front porch overlooking the pond was in shadow and out of my direct view, but the side and back porches were fully illuminated by the bright yellow setting sun. There was a lot of firewood stacked along the back porch.. All the windows were covered with curtains, so I couldn’t see anything inside the house. The immediate yard was neatly tended, and there was none of the junk and trash I’d seen decorating all too many of the places in these hills. 1 envied the sheriff and his tranquility up here, although he probably wasn’t enjoying much tranquility right now.
I swept the scope back over the far slopes again, cruising optically over all the good hiding places. Frack came over and sat down next to me. If I was watching, he would watch, too. It was what he did best, sit down and look at things with those amber wolf eyes, which was why he saw the problem before I did. He gave a small woof, and I looked over at him to see what was up. He was staring down at the pond, so I swung the scope over to the pond and the dam and landed the lens right on the face of a man. He was lying prone on the face of the dam, just his head showing as he swept the cabin area with binoculars. I thought for a moment we were looking right at each other, but he was focusing on the cabin. His lenses flashed in the setting sun, while mine should have been in deep shadow. I told Frack to lie down and backed away from the rim of the tailings apron so that just my scope was sticking out into the black hat’s field of view.
I’d assumed they’d come from the high ground because that’s what you did if you could. Instead, they’d probably come up the same damned road I’d walked. Assumptions were kicking my ass this afternoon. I wondered if they’d found my Suburban.
I refocused the scope for longer range and swept it through the trees and underbrush beyond the pond, and finally caught a metallic glint through the leaves. After a minute of study, I concluded that it was probably a slick-back Crown Vic. That meant Mingo’s crew was here. I pointed back onto the dam, but the watcher had disappeared. That had not been Mingo looking though the binocs, so I had to assume at least two potential shooters, maybe as many as four. I swept back up to the far slope just to make sure there weren’t twenty of the bastards out there, and then remembered there was a fair-sized hill above me and the mine. I rolled slowly over onto my back and traversed the scope up along the ridge above the mine entrance. Nothing visible, but I realized I was pretty exposed out there.
I called Frick quietly, and then the dogs and I moved underneath the ruins of the trestle over which the tip cars had been dumped onto the tailings pile. A rusting mine car was growing into the ground at the base of the trestle, and that should protect me if Mingo got a shooter up there on the ridge above the mine. I still had a good view of the po
nd, but I’d be more exposed to fire from down there than I’d been when lying flat on the ground at the rim of the mine plateau. Keeping the scope pointed downhill, I began to use my boots to gouge out a shallow foxhole in the tailings debris. Then I saw the head again, rising like a round periscope above the top of the dam, binocs glued to its face. I slid the Remington over and tried its scope. I had the sudden urge to pop this guy, but it would have been a tough shot, downhill on about a twenty-five-degree slope, at an unknown range, and over water just to make things harder. I bolted a round into the chamber and the dogs moved away—they hated the noise of gunfire.
I put the rifle down and went back to the spotting scope. The head was gone again, but I caught a quick glimpse of a rifle barrel about twenty feet to the watcher’s right. Okay, at least two. I did another sweep of the opposite hill and then checked my back. Nobody visible, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another tactically capable shooter up there who was waiting for the same shot I was waiting for. Then I heard a vehicle coming, and whoever was driving was making no attempt to be stealthy about it. A moment later another cop car eased into view on the lower road. I recognized it as M. C. Mingo’s personal car. He drove right up to the point where the dam melded back into the front lawn. He turned his car around to point back down the road, shut down, got out, took a quick look around, and then walked up onto the porch and out of my line of sight.
Coming the way he had, he had to have seen those shooters plastered against the face of the dam, which confirmed that those were his people. No big news there, but it also meant that when he was done with his visit, he’d be signaling those guys to either back off or get on with an attack of some kind once he was deniably clear of the scene.
I tried my cell phone again, but the right-side signal panel was blank. Useless damn things. Now I had to figure out how to warn the people inside without giving away my own position. I could try to sneak down there, but if the guy with binocs went up-scope at the wrong moment, he would warn Mingo and whatever was going to happen would start inside the cabin. Not a good plan. I did my scope sweep of the surrounding area again, and this time spotted a figure moving through the trees high on the opposite ridgeline above the cabin. It looked like he was trying to get into a position to cover the cabin’s back door. Then Frick gave a low growl and stared hard behind me.
I rolled over slowly to the left, making sure both dogs were down on the ground with me. I peered around the nearest trestle post and saw a fourth man half-sliding, half-walking down the hill above the mine entrance. He was carrying a rifle, and he was paying close attention to where he was putting his feet, which was probably why he hadn’t spotted me. It looked like he was aiming for the mine entrance as a hiding place. He would have been in full view of the cabin had anyone been looking, but my guess was that Mingo was keeping everyone inside fully occupied. I mentally chastised the Bigs for not posting a lookout.
I rolled back the other way so that I’d be out of sight when he finally got down to the plateau, and then the dogs and I crawled up toward the lip of the tailings slope right where the dump trestle projected out over the pile. We watched from the edge, hopefully well out of sight of the men hiding down on the dam. The shooter finally reached the plateau in a shower of loose dirt and rocks, which dumped him unceremoniously on the ground twenty feet to the right of the mine entrance. He got up, dusted himself off, and then walked over toward the lip of the plateau, where he stood out in full view for a moment. He waved his rifle, then turned around and walked back toward the mine entrance. He was wearing jeans, a light denim jacket, and, bless him, a black hat.. I waited until he was out of the sight line from the dam and the cabin and almost to the entrance to the mine, and then I fired the shepherds at him.
They went in at a dead run, ears flat, tails out, back legs pumping hard, and hit him simultaneously in the back of the legs and the small of his back. He went down like a trapdoor, with a shepherd tugging hard on each shirtsleeve and in opposite directions, totally immobilizing him. I got up and sprinted across the plateau, trying to minimize my time in the open. When I got to the man I relaxed because he was so obviously petrified I knew he wasn’t going to be a problem. I kicked the rifle away from his reach and stabilized the dogs. Keeping my own rifle on him, I told him to crawl into the mine, where I secured him on the ground with his own belt, socks, and shoelaces, the belt for his hands behind his back, his socks and shoelaces to tie his feet together. Then I knelt down beside him and pushed his face into the dirt.
“Listen to me,” I said, as calmly as I could. “You keep still. No matter what happens outside. If I see you move, I’ll send these dogs back in here to eat your face, and then I’ll cave this sucker in right on top of you, got it?”
He whimpered something, his eyes still squeezed shut. It was unlikely that the shepherds would eat the guy’s face, unless there was a really good sauce. But he didn’t know that. He was heavily bearded like most of them were, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Thin, bony face, bad complexion, snaggled, yellow, meth-rotted teeth. And so scared I could smell urine. I left him ten feet back into the mine itself, which was a square tunnel hewn out of the rock and supported by heavy side beams pushing up corrugated tin sheets on the roof. The tunnel went back and down as far as I could see into the dusty gloom, and I had no inclination to go any farther in. It smelled of damp rot and chalk, and the floor had about a two-inch layer of fine dust covering the two rails running down the center.
I took his black hat with me and picked up his rifle on my way out. I put the hat on, downed the shepherds at the entrance to watch my prisoner, and went far enough out on the plateau for my hat and rifle to show if the guys down on the dam took a look, which they did about two minutes later. I could see the binocs flashing up my way, so I tipped my head forward, hopefully showing the hat and rifle the guy down there was expecting to see.
But my original problem was still there—how to warn the good guys inside that Mingo was having them surrounded. Then I had an idea: send a messenger.
I scuttled back to the entrance of the mine. The dogs were sitting on either side of the black hat, who was being very still. I walked over to him and cut off his bindings. He opened his eyes. Then, standing behind the guy, I flashed my teeth at Frack, who flashed back and growled. It was just a thing he’d learned to do, but it was really impressive. Frick just watched. I did it again and the guy in the dirt whimpered. I told him to stand up, carefully, with no sudden moves. He got to his feet and it looked like it was taking everything he had not to bolt—into the mine.
“I have a job for you,” I told him. “Mingo’s down there at Sheriff Hayes’s cabin, right?”
He nodded, while trying not to stare at Frack. When he did look at Frack, I flashed my teeth again over his shoulder and got a truly gratifying response from the big black dog.
“I want you to go down there and tell Mingo that federal cops are on this hill. I’m not the only guy out here watching you people, understand?”
He nodded again, still keeping an eye on Frack, who was waiting to play some more. “Yessir,” he croaked.
“You go down there and tell him to get his people off this land or there’s going to be a war, and the guys with the machine guns are going to win.”
He blinked. “Machine guns?”
“I’ve got one right out there under that trestle, so when you walk down this hill, you remember that.”
“Yessir.”
“I can put a hundred rounds through your spine in ten seconds,” I boasted, and he nodded. He glanced down at his feet.
“Shoes?” he asked, and I told him no. Based on the looks of him, I figured he’d been barefoot for a good part of his life already. I gave him his hat back, but not his rifle, and he limped his way across the slag debris and the gravel and then started down the hill. I resumed my position under the trestle, and he did not look back. The dogs watched him go. Frick seemed a little disappointed. Maybe she would have eaten his fa
ce. Perhaps it was all the food bits in his beard.
I surveyed the dam with the spotting scope and finally saw the binocular man again, then saw him start when he caught sight of his barefoot buddy making his way down the hill from the mine. I wondered if they’d shoot him. If they did, that would be a warning, but I preferred getting my little message in front of Mingo if that was possible. He might or might not believe it, but his posse would.
My messenger made it up onto the porch, took his hat in hand, and disappeared around to the front door. A few minutes later he came out with Mingo, who went down the front steps at a quick walk, his erstwhile shooter hobbling behind him. Neither Carrie nor the Big brothers were visible, but I could just see Sheriff Hayes standing on the edge of the front porch, watching Mingo go. I swung the big scope around to follow Mingo, who had reached his car. He said something to the barefoot man, who nodded repeatedly, and then Mingo got in. I could see him pick up his radio mike. He said something, dropped the mike, and drove off. The barefoot man walked after the cruiser, hopping from one sore foot to the other on the stony surface.
I could just imagine what Mingo had said to him. I swung back to the far edge of the dam and pretty soon saw three, not two, men slink off into the underbrush. Then I heard a screen door slam and looked back at the cabin. Carrie was standing out on the back porch, looking up at the mine. I waved from my hide under the trestle. She waved back and then indicated I should come down there. I flashed my hand, five fingers extended, at her twice, indicating ten minutes. She understood and went back into the house. I saw Bigger John out on the side porch now. He had his gun out and was watching the area in front of the house while sucking up a quick cancer stick.
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