“She was born that way, but I couldn’t bring myself to shoot her. I used to have grandchildren coming here, and they got some use from her.”
“One of the bays has a broken shoe on the right front hoof, but that’s no problem if you see to it soon enough. The other two bays look pretty good, although they’re getting old and I don’t think there’s more than a year or two of heavy work left in them. The sorrel’s another matter. She’s got a swelling on the upper part of the cannon bone that I don’t like at all.”
“Calcium build-up.”
“I don’t think so. What did the vet say?”
“Calcium build-up.”
“Sure. It looks to me like that’s where she’s been kicking herself when she runs, though, and if she keeps doing it, she’s going to cripple herself. The only one I can’t decide on is the pinto. I can’t tell if she’s sickly or just naturally that slight. I’d have to be suspicious though.”
“So what’s your judgment?”
“No question, your three bays are the best. The other three are workable if you handle them right, but that sorrel, I doubt you’ll see her this time next year, and the pinto, you’d have to go awful easy on her. I take it that if you decide to sell the last three are the ones.”
“If I decide to sell. Two horses for packing. You must be taking up a lot of gear.”
He shook his head no. “One horse for packing gear, the other for grain and oats and bringing back what I shoot.”
“Yeah, that’s the way I’d do it too. Why not just rent them? As soon as the season’s over or the snow’s too deep, they won’t be any use to you then anyhow. Why not just rent them and save yourself the extra money?”
He shook his head no again. “If I get up there and something happens to one of them, I want to be sure it’s my own horse I’m shooting, not somebody else’s. I don’t want to have to feel that you’re looking over my shoulder at your property. When the time comes that I’m done with them, I’ll sell them back to you. For a lower price I assume. But the difference will be the same as the rent, and this way they’ll still be my horses.”
The old man thought about it. “Not bad,” he said and started chewing again. “That’s as neat as I’ve ever heard it put. Not bad at all.”
“Then it’s a deal?”
“Not quite. There’s still that other matter we’ve got to talk about.”
“What’s that?”
“How much cash you’ve got to spend. Do you like pure grain liquor?”
“I’ve never tried it.”
“Oh you’ll like it fine. Just fine. Why don’t we go on in the house and sit a spell and have a glass or two?”
3
He spotted them about the same time they spotted him, just as he was coming out of the hardware store, shouldering his knapsack. He’d been in there buying a gun belt for his revolver, a three-inch-wide strap of smooth flat-brown leather with loops for ammunition and a small buckled strap around the middle of the holster and a leather thong for tying the holster to his leg. He bought an extra box of ammunition, tucking the gun and the belt and the box into his knapsack just before he opened the door and went outside, and he was never sure what made him look across the street just then.
They were walking along the sidewalk directly opposite him, two of them, wearing jeans the same as everybody else, but their shirts were different, red-checked wool hunting shirts with khaki army field jackets unbuttoned over them, and one nudged the other, looking over at him. He didn’t let on, just stood there long enough to hitch the straps of his knapsack up over one shoulder, and then letting his eyes slip past them toward the post-office truck going by, he started walking slowly down the sidewalk.
It was a warm bright Friday. The big clock hanging up over the corner a half block away indicated a little after three. There were cars and trucks parked all along the street, people come to town to cash their paychecks and buy supplies and have some fun to start the weekend. A woman was walking toward him, pushing a little boy in a stroller as a man carrying two sacks from a feed and grain store nearly bumped into her.
Take it easy, he told himself.
But he started speeding anyhow and had to force himself to slow.
Just take it easy. This might be nothing. Maybe it’s just some girl over here that caught their eye. Maybe they think you’re somebody they used to know.
Maybe nothing.
He wanted to turn around and see if they were still watching him, but he couldn’t let himself, and he finally stopped in front of a drugstore, pretending to look at the razors and shaving soaps displayed in the window, glancing at the reflection in the window of them farther along the street, directly opposite him now, standing, staring at him.
He was going into the drugstore before he knew it.
How had they found him this soon?
Never mind this soon. How had they found him at all?
“I need the largest first aid kit you’ve got,” he told the girl in white behind the counter. “And some heavy-grain aspirin and some multiple vitamin tablets.” And what else? he thought. What else were they going to need that he had not thought of? And the strain must have showed in his voice because the girl behind the counter looked strangely at him a moment before she went and got what she was told.
The place smelled of disinfectant.
A knife, he thought. When I was in the hardware store I should have bought a knife.
He stood half-hidden behind a counter of hair sprays and bath salts, looking out the window, and they were coming across the street now, waiting for a motorcycle to pass before they kept coming and stopped between two cars parked at the curb.
“Here you are, sir,” the girl said behind him. He turned, and she was standing there at the counter, putting everything in a large brown paper bag. “That’ll be eight dollars and seventy-six cents.”
He gave her a ten and took the bag.
“Your change, sir,” she said.
But he was already going out the front door.
They were standing between the two cars, watching him. Twins, he saw, as he turned to the left toward the hardware store. Tall, thin-faced, thin-lipped. Short blond hair, sideburns trimmed to the middle of their ears. As soon as his back was to them, he looked at the reflection in a window that was angled their way, and they were following him.
“Hello again,” the guy in the hardware store said as he came in.
“I need a skinning knife.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t care.”
The door opened, bell tinkling. One of the men came in, pausing to look at him, then walking over to a rack of fishing poles, touching them.
“I don’t mean what brand,” the guy from the hardware store said. “I mean what kind. Short blade, long blade.”
“Five inches long with a double cutting edge. A thick metal guard between the handle and the blade.”
“Just the thing,” the guy said, reaching under the counter.
There were specks of sawdust on the wooden floor.
The twin over by the fishing poles wasn’t touching them any more, just standing, watching him.
“How about this one?” the guy from the hardware store said, showing it: a dark wooden handle with a smooth shiny blade and a thick rounded tip that wouldn’t break.
“I need a case for it.”
“They come as a package. I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”
“I’m just looking,” the twin over by the fishing poles said.
The twin followed him when he paid and left. This time there wasn’t just his double out there but another guy, dressed the same, hair cut the same, but taller, heavier, square-faced with a mustache and a high-powered rifle complete with scope. They were following him so close now that he turned into the next place he came to, a restaurant, drab metal coffee maker behind the horseshoe counter, meringue-topped slabs of pie behind the glass doors of a cooler, hamburgers sizzling greasy on the grill. There were men in cowboy hats si
tting at the counter and in some of the booths. An old lady in a hairnet was working the grill.
“A hamburger,” he said and sat at the counter.
“Three coffees.” The three men sat next to him.
“Listen, you’ve got to stop,” he said,
“I don’t know what you mean,” the guy with the mustache told him. He had his rifle propped barrel up against his leg.
“Sure you do. You know damn well what I mean, and you’ve got to stop.”
The guy was frowning at him now. He looked over at the twins. “You know what he’s talking about?”
“No, I don’t know what he’s talking about,” the one twin said.
“No, I don’t know either,” the other twin said.
“You’ve been following me. You’ve been hard on my back ever since I came out of the hardware store the first time.”
“The hardware store!” the one twin said. “Now that I think of it, you were in that hardware store while I was checking out the fishing poles.”
“Jesus, stop it!”
Everybody was looking at him now. The old lady was stopped in mid-motion reaching to flip over a hamburger on the grill. Except for the sizzling of the hamburgers, there wasn’t a sound.
“Hey listen, buddy, you better take it easy,” the guy with the mustache said. “I mean I know it’s been hot lately and I can guess what kind of trouble you maybe have at home, but you’ve got to take things more easy. I mean this kind of commotion isn’t good for anybody. I tell you what. If you’re so sure that we’ve been following you, why don’t we go outside and leave these people to their food and talk about it?”
“No!” he said. He was stumbling back, holding his stomach, clutching the side of a table. “No!” and he hoped it looked believable because this was the only chance he was going to get and he needed to convince them he was really sick. He leaned over, retching dryly, looked up at a sign pointing through a swinging door toward the men’s room, and lurched toward it as if he needed to get there fast, shouldering through the door, knapsack clunking, and his fear now was that this hall would be a dead end, that there’d only be the men’s room, but there it was, the exit at the far end, and he was straightening, the door flapping behind him as he hurried down the hallway, praying the exit wouldn’t be locked, twisting the knob and the door opened and he was racing down the narrow garbage can–littered alley toward the sidewalk.
4
“Claire!” He shouted, stumbling out of breath up the slope toward the cabin. He tripped and fell, his hands out, his palms scraping on the hard sun-baked dirt of the wagon road. His face struck the mound of grass between the ruts, sweat smearing across his chin, lips tasting of dust as he staggered to his feet and swayed there a moment before he lurched up the hill.
He didn’t have much time. He was sure they hadn’t seen him as he crisscrossed through town and then out through the fields on the other side. They obviously didn’t know where he lived. Otherwise they would have come straight here instead of checking out the town. So they had only two choices: either get in their car and drive around until they maybe spotted him, or ask around town, the hardware store guy or the real-estate man, for anybody who might have a line on him. The first was too slow and chancy, the second more sure. Fifteen minutes, a half hour at the most, and they’d be here.
He shouted for Claire again, lunging toward the top, and he had the taste of salt mixed in with the dust in his mouth now, and he knew it was from where his lips must have cracked open when he hit the ground back there.
Sarah was waiting for him at the top.
“Where’s your mother?” He was breathing so hard he could hardly get the words out.
“In the house.”
“I don’t have time to explain. Lie down here and watch the road.” His chest was on fire. He could actually hear his heart pounding. “Yell the second you spot anyone.”
She started to say something, and he cut her off. “Don’t ask questions. Just do what you’re told.” He pressed her down, then ran toward the cabin, and Claire was standing stark-faced in the open doorway.
“Don’t tell me.”
“Three of them in town. They can’t be far behind. We need to pack and get out.”
“You’re sure? There isn’t any doubt.”
“None at all.” And he was slipping off his knapsack, taking out the gun belt and buckling it on. He checked the revolver to make sure it was loaded and holstered it. He hooked the knife in its case onto the gun belt.
“Here,” he said to Claire. “Fill my knapsack the same as yours and take them and the saddlebags out back. Grab the blankets off the bed.”
“Daddy, someone’s coming.”
They looked at each other.
“I’ll meet you where the trail starts,” he said to Claire. He turned, racing back toward Sarah, and she was standing out there, pointing toward the road.
“Someone’s coming! Someone’s coming!”
“Get down,” he told her, diving, knocking her down into the grass, crawling to the edge of the slope, and they were coming all right, the same three in their red-checked hunting shirts and jeans and field jackets, small down there, hiking up the road through the trees toward the open slope. Except that they all had rifles now, not just the one with the mustache, and now that he looked harder, none of them had a mustache, and neither of them were twins, and one of them was round-faced instead of thin or square and another was stocky and these weren’t the same three at all. They were coming in shifts. And they were so sure of themselves that they were just walking casually in the open.
Or maybe the other three were in the woods behind the cabin.
“Get moving,” he told Sarah. “Your mother’s waiting at the trail.”
But she didn’t move, and when he looked, she was holding her stomach, gasping from when he had knocked her down, and he had to grab her, dragging her back with him, saying, “Hurry, sweetheart. You’ve got to go.”
She ran, holding herself, toward the back of the house, and he was rushing into the front, up the stairs to the tower on top, the only spot in the house from where he could see them. He had to create a diversion, slow them, force them to think he was making a stand from the house, and the moment he came dodging to the side of the open window up there, he was drawing his gun, firing three times blindly, recoil kicking, watching them scatter as he fired once more and ducked out of the tower toward the stairs, hearing the ca-rack of a high-powered rifle, the window shattering loudly behind him.
He nearly fell rushing down the stairs. He swerved around into the kitchen and out the back door and Claire and Sarah were up there where the trees started, waiting on the trail.
“Those shots,” Claire said.
“Came from me. Don’t worry about it.” And then they were moving again, him hoisting the knapsacks up, one over each shoulder, Claire lifting the saddlebags, running awkwardly, Sarah racing short-legged ahead of them. It was cool in under the trees, the branches bare, leaves spread crisply yellow all around them. There were fall birds singing and then the birds stopped and he ran harder, thrashing through the leaves, working up through the trail between the trees toward the upper level.
They’ll hear where we’ve gone, he thought.
But there wasn’t anything he could do about it and he was too out of breath to worry about it anyhow, and then the trail turned to the right, grew steeper, turned to the left, even steeper, and they came bursting out of the trees into the sunlit level clearing up there.
They came so loudly, so abruptly, that the three horses skittered nervously in the corral, backing off, neighing, into one corner. He had found this place the second day after they’d come here. A log-fenced corral with water and feed troughs and one tumbled-down equipment shed from where the cabin’s owner must have kept his horses during hunting season. That was what had given him the idea of the horses in the first place, and he had brought Claire and Sarah up here to show them what to do if trouble came, going over with them
what they’d learned when he had taken riding lessons, and each day he’d come up here to feed and exercise the animals. In the end he’d even persuaded the old man to let him have one of the bays instead of the lame sorrel, and he’d pretended to be unhappy about the pinto even though he was secretly glad because a horse that small was perfect for Sarah, and if the buckskin was blind in one eye, at least it could run and he thought he knew enough to be able to handle it.
“Help me with the saddles,” he told Claire, dropping the knapsacks, shouldering open the door to the shed. Claire was dropping the saddlebags, helping him heave the saddles up onto the fence, and Sarah was doing exactly what she’d been told, running around the corral to where the horses were, climbing onto the fence and shooing them over toward the shed. He paused just a second to make sure she wasn’t getting into trouble with them, and then he was grabbing the bridles from the shed, vaulting the fence, waiting till a horse came near, the pinto, slipping a bit into its mouth, hitching a halter up over its ears, buckling it. He slid a saddle blanket down over the pinto’s back then eased a saddle onto it, cinching it, going on to the next horse, the bay this time, while Claire tied a pair of saddlebags onto the pinto behind him.
It was taking too long, he told himself. They’ll be up here any minute.
He tried to hurry, but that only made him clumsy, and he needed to slow and do it right, finishing with the bay, turning to the buckskin, and the buckskin shied away and he had to waste time calming it.
“I hear them. They’re coming,” Claire said.
She was right. The trees down there were echoing with the sound of someone rushing up through the leaves.
“Open the gate,” he told Sarah, helping Claire buckle on her knapsack, easing her onto the horse.
“Get going,” he said, slapping the bay, and it bolted through the open gate, breaking into a sudden gallop, almost dropping her. He picked up Sarah and set her on the pinto, slapping it as well, telling her “Hang on” as the pinto bolted through the gate following Claire across the clearing, and then he was finished with the buckskin, buckling on his own knapsack, swinging up into the saddle.
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