“Whoever you are, get me out of here! All is forgiven if you don’t leave me down here. I won’t tell the game warden, your wife or your parents if you promise not to come back on my land,” I shouted. Surely if he intended to kill me he would have done more than just tumble me into the cellar.
“I promise I won’t tell your preacher either. Get me out!”
This time there was no attempt to disguise the footsteps. They ran down the driveway. One person in silhouette behind the flashlight. I couldn’t tell whether it was male or female.
A moment later, a car engine started and gunned away. Since it was impossible to turn on that slope, he must have driven up the hill, turned the car and parked it heading down hill for a fast getaway.
Great! Talk about pitch black. I kept feeling for the flashlight—the Glock wouldn’t do me much good at the moment.
I found it after what felt like a panicky half century. “If you’re broken, I’ll kill you,” I promised. I snapped it on and breathed a sigh of relief when it lit.
The Glock lay nose down in the dirt two feet to my right. Did guns fire when their barrels were blocked with dirt? I had no intention of finding out.
I picked up the Glock and shook it barrel down to clear it.
That’s when I heard the noise. I froze. Something was down here with me.
Chapter 18
Merry
I went very still. I hoped for a mouse or one of the brown pink-eared field rats that scampered away when I opened the feed room. I did not want to see a Norway rat the size of a Scottie. Or a possum or raccoon. Possums have nasty tempers, and tangling with a big raccoon can be deadly. The noise wasn’t loud enough to be a cougar or a black bear. A deer would have hopped out.
Staying as still as I could, I swung the light carefully around the cellar.
The snake struck just as my light hit it. I felt as though a straight razor had slashed my wrist.
I howled, flung it away, and fired half a dozen shots so fast they sounded like a single burst.
Its head exploded. Thank God the rat shot had hit it. Otherwise it would have come at me again.
My wrist was on fire. I scrambled to my feet and backed up against the cellar wall while I threw the beam of light into every corner. Please God I wasn’t in a nest of snakes. The walls were of concrete block, but the floor was dirt, now mostly mud. Except for the pile of sand I had fallen into, the floor was covered with wet leaves.
They weren’t moving.
Only the body of the snake I had shot still writhed in the far corner
I shone my light on it from a safe distance. A good six feet long, but thin and black. Rat snake then, or speckled king. Not a thick-bodied copperhead or water moccasin. Not a rattler, pygmy or otherwise. Plenty of those in the woods in the wooded property behind mine.
Rat snakes weren’t poisonous. One that size, however, gave a big, nasty bite that carried a ton of bacteria.
Suddenly every atavistic anti-snake nerve in my body went ape. I started yelling. I had the presence of mind to stick the Glock back into its holster, but I kept the flashlight clutched in my good hand. I could feel blood oozing from my right wrist down the back of my hand.
Where was Geoff?
How would he even know where to find me? I wrapped my sweater around my wrist and used my fingertips to pull out my cell phone.
Down in this hole surrounded by stone and concrete, there was no reception.
I had to get out now, rather than wait to be found. I scrabbled at the wall, but the dirt kept sliding out from under my feet and I couldn’t catch hold of the lip of the cellar above me. I was crying and gulping, my heart racing—the opposite of what I needed, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. So much for being cool in a crisis.
Then from across the pasture, I heard Geoff’s voice. “Merry! Where are you, dammit! If you’ve let something happen to you, I swear I’ll kill you myself. Merry!”
With my good left hand I waved the flashlight over my head like a klieg light at a Hollywood opening.
I heard Geoff’s shout, then the squelch of his footsteps as he ran across the pasture. I could see his light bobbing with the movement of his body. “Where are you? You hurt? Merry!”
“Come through the gate,” I called. “Don’t forget to lock it behind you or the horses will get out.”
“Screw the horses.”
I heard the scrape of the chains and the squeal of the gate as he opened it.
Then, a second later, I heard the chains again. He’d fastened it. Good.
“Where are you?”
“Be careful. I’m in the old cellar. In front of the road grader.”
“The cellar?”
A second later his light hit me square in the face. I sank down onto the sand and let my arms fall beside me.
“You hurt?”
“Not really. Just get me out of here. We’ll talk up there.”
“Your gun secure?”
“It’s in my holster.” Then I switched off my lantern and stuck it back into my jeans.
“Give me your hands,” he said. “Plant your feet against the wall. I’ll pull, you walk up the wall. Can you do that?”
I took off my sweater and tied it around my neck. No doubt it was badly bloodstained, but they say stain removers do a great job these days, and it was an expensive sweater.
My wrist still hurt like poison, but I tried to ignore it as I reached up to him like a baby reaching for its mother.
He grasped my wrists. I gasped with pain.
“What the hell? You sprained your wrist in the fall?”
“Don’t worry about that. Get me out!”
It felt like a millennium before I lay face down beside the road grader.
“Whoa! You’re bleeding?” he asked.
“Big snake,” I gasped.
“Sweet Jesus.”
“Don’t worry. King snake. Non-poisonous.”
He aimed the light at my wrist. “You’re seeping like a stuck hog.” He took the light between his teeth, pulled out his handkerchief and wiped away the blood. “You sure it wasn’t poisonous? We should take it to the ER with us so they can identify it.”
“Neither of us is going back down into that cellar after a dead snake. I blew its head off, but I recognized it. Definitely not poisonous.”
He managed a chortle. “Good shooting.”
“I wasn’t holding a tight pattern.”
He hauled me to my feet. “Can you walk?”
“Away from here? I’ll crawl if I have to, but yeah, I can walk.”
“How’d you wind up down there? Trip and fall?”
I hesitated and then just said it. “Someone pushed me. On purpose.”
“You’re sure?”
I swung away from him. “I don’t think it was a loose horse. There was somebody here. I saw the light just before I landed in the cellar.”
He opened the gate. We slipped through, and he latched it behind us.
“Both latches, please,” I said.
“Yes, madame.”
The horses loomed up out of the darkness. “And here you are again,” I said.
They followed us step for step across the pasture, then huddled around the gate until Geoff bundled me into his car. “I’m going to bleed on your upholstery,” I said.
He undid my sweater and handed it back to me. “Bleed on that. We’re headed for the hospital in Bigelow.
“I told you . . .”
“The heck with what you told me.” He handed me a pristine pocket handkerchief. “I am not taking chances with that bite. Wipe your face. What were you doing out there anyway? I left you at home on your way to bed, and an hour later you’re half buried in a cellar with a snakebite and a clip of ammunition gone.”
“It wasn’t a full clip. I was worried about the horses.” My voice sounded weak. God, I was thirsty.
“Don’t you go into shock on me, Merry.” He smacked me on my thigh.
“I’m not going into shock,” I put
my head back and closed my eyes. The next thing I remember was Geoff shaking my shoulder.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty, the doctor awaits.” He stood at the open door. “You need a gurney?”
“Don’t be silly.” I slid out and almost fell on my face. He wrapped his arm around my waist and I flopped my snakebit hand across his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to go to sleep.”
“You snore.”
“I do not.”
He shoved me into a chair in the waiting room and disappeared.
I expected to have to sit for at least an hour and answer forty thousand questions about my insurance. I guess, however, that being a GBI agent has its perks. I was whisked into an examining room.
“Wow! How many teeth did that sucker have?” The young resident wiped the blood of my wrist and agreed the snake was non-poisonous. “Big dude. No fangs. Course, it might be a coral snake.”
“It was black.”
“I’m kidding. You’re lucky. He chewed a small vein, but not an artery.”
Next he gave me a tetanus shot which I swore I did not need, then had me drop my jeans so he could shoot a big syringe of penicillin into my rear end.
When I lifted my turtleneck and unzipped my jeans, the doctor said, “Geez, what happened to your back?”
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized it hurt like hell.
“Somebody shoved me,” I said.
“Somebody cracked you with a two-by-four, more like,” he said. “We need to get you up to X-ray, make sure you didn’t fracture any vertebrae.”
“Oh, come on! All I want is to go home with a big prescription for pain meds and antibiotics.” I wriggled. “See. No broken vertebrae.”
From outside the room, I heard Geoff say, “Shut up, Merry.”
The X-ray seemed to take forever to read, and I was correct. No broken bones. Not even a cracked rib.
But I was hurting worse with every passing moment. “Please,” I asked the doctor, “Give me mega-legend drugs and send me home. I need a shower.”
I fell asleep in Geoff’s car again, but woke with a start when we pulled into my driveway.
Peggy’s house was lit up like a Christmas tree.
“You called her from the hospital, didn’t you?” I said.
The minute Geoff shut off the engine, the back door opened, Peggy flew down the steps and wrenched my door open. “Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Then I’m going to kill you.”
“Please kill me tomorrow,” I said to Peggy as I unlocked my apartment door. “And grill him. He called you.” I waved my good hand at Geoff. “Damn, my truck’s still out at the farm.” I glanced down at my watch. “It’s four in the morning. I have to feed by six-thirty.”
“Shut up.” Both Geoff and Peggy said.
“I’ll do it,” Peggy said. “I’ll bring you some breakfast afterward.”
I opened my door. Both of them followed me inside before I could shut them out. “I’m supposed to check with a doctor. I don’t have one,” I said.
“I do. He’ll see you,” Peggy said.
“You said you wanted a shower,” Geoff said. “You do feel gritty. Can you get your clothes off?”
“Certainly.”
“Got a baggy?” He pointed. “To keep your bandage dry.” Without waiting for permission, he rummaged in my kitchen cabinet, pulled out a box of plastic bags and a roll of duct tape.
“Whoa! I can’t get my clothes off with a baggy on my arm. Go away, Agent Wheeler. I’ll manage.” I stumbled toward the bedroom, then looked back at him. “Somebody really did whack me across the back? I really didn’t imagine that?”
He nodded.
“And Geoff? Thanks again.” I shut my bedroom door on them both.
Chapter 19
Merry
By noon when I woke, my entire body seemed to be a single throb. I stood under another long shower and took a deep breath before I looked at the damage. I’d been hit just above my waist, so I could check the bruise in the mirror.
And boy, was it a doozy. The doctor had been right to demand an X-ray. If I ever caught the person who hit me . . . As I rubbed horse liniment into my aching back, I realized I didn’t want to think what would happen if Geoff or Peggy actually got a glance at it. I’d never be allowed to leave the apartment again.
I unwrapped my wrist, saw no sign of infection, slathered antibiotic ointment across the bite, then used my teeth to apply a fresh bandage and wrap the wrist with bright blue Vetrap, the stretchy wrap I use to bind the horse’s wounds. Every horseman keeps a supply at home for minor sprains and such. Much better than people bandages.
I dressed and went upstairs to bang on Peggy’s door.
When she opened it, all four cats eddied around her expecting me to love on them. When they smelled the horse liniment, however, they turned tail and disappeared.
“If it’s not the idiot child,” Peggy said. “Do come in. I have the straitjacket all laid out and ready.”
“Don’t start. I’m starved. Thank you for looking after the horses this morning.”
“They’re all fine. Everything is locked up tight, and I put a padlock on the pasture gate by the old cellar.”
“You think I ran into a plain old thief or vagrant?” I asked.
“If not for our road rage incident, I’d say yes. As it is . . . How’s your wrist?”
“Hurts, but not as badly as I thought it would.”
“Be grateful it wasn’t a poisonous snake.”
I sank onto a kitchen chair and accepted a glass of ice tea. “I owe that snake a big apology.”
“I beg your pardon?” Peggy sat opposite me.
“Big king and rat snakes keep the poisonous snakes away,” I said. “They eat them. He was a good snake and I killed him.” Maybe it was the cumulative effects of assault and drugs, but I felt downright maudlin when I thought of what I had done to that poor unassuming snake.
“Snake is snake,” Peggy said. She reached across for the platter of sandwiches on the kitchen counter and held it out to me.
“Is not.” I took one and ate half of it in two bites. I was starved. Fear does that to me. “That snake was in the cellar catching field mice and minding his own business. If it hadn’t been so chilly last night, he’d have been able to slither away safely, but he couldn’t move fast in the cold air. Must have scared the stew out of him when I hit him with that light. No wonder he nailed me. I owe him an apology for blowing off his head.”
“Whatever you say.” Peggy rolled her eyes.
“Do you mind driving me out to pick up my truck?”
“Can you drive?”
“I’ve had worse cuts and bruises than this falling off horses. I’m good to go.”
“And stoked to the gills with pain meds,” Peggy said. “You have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. In the meantime, I can change your dressing.”
“Already done. I’ve watched over enough horses with injuries. The wound is neither hot nor suppurating. No sign of blood poisoning or infection. I really don’t need to see your doctor unless something changes before morning.”
Peggy nodded. “We’ll see. Geoff called to check on you. He’s coming out to the farm this afternoon to help with evening feed and to look for signs of attempted burglary.”
“Just what I need,” I said.
“You may be surprised.”
Chapter 20
Geoff
When Geoff walked into the stable that afternoon, he was amazed that Merry, whom he expected to be home in bed, had finished bridling and hitching that infernal donkey to her pair of long lines. Peggy rolled her eyes at him.
“Now I know you’re crazy,” he said. Merry’s wrist was wrapped in bright blue Vetrap.
“You and I had a bet, remember? Five bucks that Don Qui would be marginally better today?”
“Oh, for . . . we can postpone the bet under the circumstances.”
“If I let him slough off, he’ll think he beat me. Can’
t have that. I have a full training schedule tomorrow and a couple of driving lessons with Creekites, so this afternoon is my only free time. If I don’t keep moving, my back will freeze up.”
Peggy made circles with her finger against her temple.
“If you’re determined, why don’t you let me handle those reins or lines or whatever you call them?”
Merry stared at him with her eyebrows raised almost up to her hairline. “What do you know about long-lining a horse?”
“Exactly as much as you think, but with this ass, all I have to do is stay far enough back from his rear end to avoid his hooves when he kicks, and hang on when he goes forward, right?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“I offered,” Peggy said, “But she turned me down flat, too. Merry, let him do it. You can walk beside him and give instructions.”
Merry looked at them both, then down at Don Qui’s fat little body already duded up in its shiny VSE harness and blinkered bridle.
She closed her eyes for a second and sighed. “Let me get him out in the arena and set up for you, then you can give it a shot.”
That must have cost her, which meant she was further below par than he’d guessed. She gathered the lines while Peggy slipped Don Qui’s halter on over his bridle and led him out to the arena.
When he saw Heinzie, his friend, standing by the pasture fence watching, he let forth a single bray, but whether he was complaining or showing off, Geoff had no way of knowing.
“I’ll handle the whip,” Merry said. Don Qui stopped in the center of the arena, allowing Merry time to play out the long lines and show Geoff how to hold them. “I’ll give the commands. You guide.”
Geoff realized at once that he’d lost his bet. Don Qui had either mellowed in twenty-four hours or figured that he wasn’t being attacked from the rear. Maybe the difference was simply Heinzie’s presence at the fence. He walked forward on command as though he’d been doing it forever. Until Geoff tried to turn him left on Merry’s command. Geoff got the lines crossed and tangled, then hauled hard on the left line.
One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] Page 13