Wild Honey

by Terri Farley

  “So, we’re checking out a camp of fighting roosters,” Preston said, changing the subject. “I left a message for Heck, but he’s busy chasing down the man he thinks is Christopher Mudge.”

  “Why aren’t you?” Sam blurted. “I mean, after all this time…”

  “I know,” Preston said, nodding. “I’ve been asking myself the same question, but your friend Mrs. Allen asked me not to go. She thought it might involve some gunplay—which I doubt—so I decided Heck could handle it on his own, while I helped you out with these chickens. And, after all, I am retired.”

  “This should be pretty safe,” Sam said.

  Preston bristled. Did he think she’d called him a coward?

  Sam hadn’t meant it that way. Before she could explain, though, Preston gazed into the distance as if a pleasant memory had crossed his mind, and said, “Can’t do much but get scratched and pecked, I hear.”

  Wow, Sam thought, turning her attention to the trail as they passed through Lost Canyon. Preston must have the world’s biggest crush on Mrs. Allen if he’d passed up the chance to arrest the thief who’d stolen his horse.

  The stony path narrowed, but Sam didn’t look off the edge, down to the turquoise ribbon of water in Arroyo Azul. She’d ridden the Phantom for the first time down there.

  She didn’t search the wide stone benches that made the arroyo look like the Roman coliseum, either. Sometimes the Phantom stood on one of them, watching over his herd as they drank down below.

  Sam hoped the stallion was far away from here. Preston’s test for his palomino wouldn’t make anyone happy.

  “Last September, this was a mustang trap,” Sam told Preston as they rode through a sunny area overgrown with pinion pine and sagebrush.

  Preston took a good look at the broken and bleached boards that had been part of the trap. He allowed Honey to stop and sniff them. Sam wondered how much of the mustangs’ story the mare could read there.

  “I haven’t heard a single rooster,” Preston said as they kept riding.

  “Me either,” Sam said. “My friend said they crow almost constantly. He figured that’s why the guys kept them out here, instead of in town.”

  “We almost there?” Preston asked.

  “Almost,” Sam said.

  Ace’s shoulders tensed and his front legs moved stiffly. He threw his forelock back from his eyes and snorted, but he moved on.

  Sam knew her worry was telegraphed down the reins to her horse, but she couldn’t help it. She felt a jolt of childish fear when she saw the bus.

  There was no reason it should give her the creeps. This ravine was obviously deserted. The only sounds were chirring cicadas and sagebrush bobbing in the wind, scraping against the rusted metal of the bus.

  The only other time she’d come here, she’d been with Jen and they’d hiked in.

  Now, she and Preston rode. If there was trouble, escaping would be easy. They had two instantly responsive mounts. A single touch would send the horses whirling around to gallop out of the canyon.

  Except, Sam thought, giving Preston a side glance, that wasn’t what cops did when they encountered trouble. They rode toward it, not away from it.

  Maybe that was why the sight of the narrow chasm with the faded blue bus jammed into it made her nervous. She didn’t want to face down a clutch of criminals in such close quarters.

  Not that she planned to go into the bus. According to Darrell, the roosters were tethered outside by little A-shaped shelters. But where were they? And if they were here, why were they so quiet? Maybe her guess had been wrong.

  “Think it rolled down there and just stuck?” Preston asked as he studied the bus. “It’s all creased and rusty on this side, like it had a bad crash.”

  “Maybe,” Sam said. “It’s stuck tight, I know that. Once you get inside, you can touch the hillside through the windows on the driver’s side.”

  The breeze plucked at tattered cloth inside the bus, pulling it out for them to see.

  “Clothes tucked into the windows in place of curtains,” Preston observed.

  “It was a hideout,” Sam told him. “Not a very comfy one, though. Some of the seats are broken loose from the floor and others are split, with stuffing puffed out of them. And it stinks.”

  In the quiet, both horses lifted their heads and stared at the steep hillside.

  Maybe the Phantom was nearby, Sam thought.

  But then she reconsidered. Ace wasn’t acting like he did when he scented the stallion. He moved rigidly, as if he was only here because Sam had made him come.

  “There,” Preston said quietly. He nodded instead of pointing, and Sam saw what he’d indicated. Hidden among the waving weeds, roosters were chained to small shelters.

  “I wonder why they’re being so quiet,” Sam mused.

  “That’s not normal?” Preston asked, and Sam remembered he hadn’t worked in a rural area.

  “No way,” Sam said, and then, as if he’d heard her, a small rooster with black-and-white feathers jumped atop his shelter and released an ear-splitting cock-a-doodle-do.

  Sam was laughing when she felt Ace’s stockinged hind feet strike with staccato uneasiness.

  “You’re not afraid of a mouthy little rooster,” Sam said, patting the gelding’s neck, but then Preston shook his head with a quelling motion.

  He lowered his hand from the reins, toward his…what? His stirrup?

  Sam didn’t know what he was doing, but all at once she wished they had walkie-talkies. She wanted to notify Sheriff Ballard what they’d found. They couldn’t move the roosters on horseback, and there was no time to waste. Besides, she suddenly felt way too isolated and alone.

  If men like Ally’s dad were winning enough to buy mandolins and formal dresses, a lot was at stake here. The criminals probably wouldn’t give up without a fight.

  Except there really didn’t seem to be anyone here. That creaking sound she’d just heard had come from the bus door, folded almost closed but hanging from a single hinge so that it stirred in the wind.

  “Wonder what it was used for before it crashed?” Preston said, still staring at the bus.

  “My friend Jen says it shuttled prisoners between court and jail,” Sam suggested.

  “Could be,” Preston agreed. “Want to take a look inside?”

  “You go ahead,” Sam said. “I’ve been in there. It’s not just smelly—there are mice and bugs everywhere. Probably snakes, too, there to eat the mice.”

  “And you don’t like that,” Preston pointed out, as if that was just what he’d expected.

  “I’m not afraid of mice and snakes,” Sam said. “Or spiders. But I’d prefer they didn’t surprise me.”

  She remembered the shiny-coated mouse that had run up her leg when she’d been sneaking around inside the bus with Jen.

  “Amen to that,” Preston said. He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “It was never spiders and snakes that kept me from enjoying my female partners, come to think of it.”

  Sam couldn’t tell if he was joking. If he wasn’t, she didn’t want to talk about Preston’s bias against female officers. She’d seen Brynna in action, and no male officer could do better, but the retired policeman seemed determined to tell her why he preferred male cops as partners.

  “Naw, the reason I didn’t like having a female partner is they get to have all the fun.”

  Sam hadn’t expected him to say that.

  “They do?” Sam asked.

  “Sure. Most bad guys are stupid. They dismiss the female in uniform as weaker, and focus on the male partner. So, while the bad guys were busy facing off with me, my female partner would slink around behind ’em, take ’em down to the ground, and handcuff ’em.”

  “And that’s fun?” Sam asked.

  Preston chuckled, and for the first time Sam found herself liking him.

  Her pleasure only lasted a few seconds.

  A bullet struck the boulder between the horses, peppering them with shards of granite.
r />   “Go!” Preston shouted.

  Sam had already leaned to her right. Ace gathered himself to run, but then a voice cut through the whining sound still hanging in the air from the shot, and that voice stopped her.

  “Don’t you do it or I’ll gut-shoot that mare right out from under you, and nail that bay before he can make two jumps up the trail.”

  Gathering in her reins, Sam turned.

  The man coming through the yellow weeds held a rifle against his shoulder, and though he wasn’t sighting down the barrel, he’d only have to lift it an inch to do it.

  Tall and broad-shouldered, about Dad’s age, he wore piggin’ strings, the leather strips used to tie calves, dangling from his belt. Even though he was hatless and walked with a limp, he moved like a seasoned buckaroo. That was how Sam recognized him.

  He was Flick.

  Curtis Flickinger wasn’t carrying his coiled bullwhip this time, but he was the same man who’d taught Dark Sunshine to scream, the same man who’d scarred the Phantom’s neck and threatened to leave Sam hog-tied on the hillside over-looking Arroyo Azul.

  Who would have thought he’d return to his old hideout? It made sense, though, Sam thought. Only she and Jake had seen him here.

  He was Cowboy, too. She just knew it.

  Don’t no one want to cross Cowboy—isn’t that what Bug Boy had told Preston? Sam could see why. And Cowboy had decreed that any stolen horse was a dead horse, because it was safer that way. That would fit Flick, too.

  She knew it was him and she wondered if Sheriff Ballard had checked to see if he’d been released from prison. Maybe he’d escaped.

  Crowing from the top of his shelter, the black-and-white rooster seemed to be doing his best to act as a watchdog.

  Flick gave the rooster an annoyed glance. Then, calm and cocky, Flick kept walking toward them.

  “Swear to God I’ll shoot that mare right out from under you if you don’t stop reaching for your boot,” Flick said.

  Preston dropped his reins and raised his hands.

  “I’m not going for anything in my boot,” he assured Flick.

  “Get on down off that palomino,” Flick said.

  He still hadn’t glanced at Sam as he crab-stepped down the steep part of the hillside. The agitated roosters rustled and crowed, springing to the ends of their tethers as if they could fly away.

  “Get off,” Flick repeated.

  “I’d rather not,” Preston said.

  Afoot, she and Preston would lose their advantage, Sam thought.

  But then, as casually as most men would hitch up their pants, Flick swung the barrel of the rifle aside and shot the black-and-white rooster.

  Oh no, Sam thought. She didn’t gasp, and neither horse shied at the sound, but the squawking hadn’t stopped, even when the explosion of bright feathers had drifted down to the ground.

  Then it was quiet again.

  Sam kept watching Flick, but from the corner of her eye she caught Preston’s glance. His expression said he wouldn’t have dismounted, no matter what, if he’d been alone.

  Somehow, though, he wasn’t looking at her as a liability. He glanced at her with confidence, but she had no idea why.

  “Okay, I’ll dismount,” Preston said, looking ever more pointedly at Sam, “but you remember what I said about being a good female cop….”

  “What’s that mean?” Flick guffawed. “Think she’s gonna hightail it out of here, screaming for help? Naw, I’d put a bullet in her nag and sell him to Baldy Harris, if she tried. That’d about break her heart. ’Specially if I lamed him first.”

  Sam swallowed hard. She’d bet Flick was reminding her how he’d fallen on the canyon’s rim and how he’d been hurt. That time, they’d left him while they went for help.

  “Getting off,” Preston announced, then, and to Sam’s amazed eyes, it looked as if he did it with no hands.

  “That’s better,” Flick said. “I been wantin’ to stake that mare out as an invite to that gray stud.”

  Sam’s heart shivered in her chest, but she didn’t let Flick see her react. He knew the Phantom had been hers. He knew—of course! The letter Linc Slocum had showed the sheriff hadn’t been from Karl Mannix at all.

  It was Flick who had a standing offer of ten thousand dollars for the capture of the Phantom. Once before he’d tried to catch the stallion and sell him to the millionaire. That time he’d failed, but now he was trying again.

  “Used a trip wire and almost had her—”

  Each word he said ended a mystery. Honey’s leg had been cut by Flick’s trip wire.

  “—but that stallion rushed me, spiteful as if he remembered me from before. Knocked me down with his shoulder and by the time I got up, they were both gone.”

  Flick spat on the desert floor, then balanced his rifle with one arm and reached for a piggin’ string.

  Was he going to tie Preston up? If so, he’d be preoccupied. Sam had to do something to help.

  What had Preston said? Bad guys focused on the male partner. It was true.

  Flick actually turned his back on her while he tied the retired cop as if he were a calf.

  “Yeah, it’ll be nice to have this mare,” Flick said, glancing up at Honey. “When I thought I couldn’t get her, I went after that buckskin of mine. Heard me, didn’t ya?”

  When he glanced up at Sam, he didn’t seem to notice that she’d urged Ace a little closer.

  “Yeah, I saw everyone speedin’ away from your ranch like their tails were on fire, leaving you alone with those cowhands and I just came on down to take her. Didn’t expect the barn to be locked, or for her to remember me, too.”

  Flick gave a cruel laugh. “And shoot, I’ve never seen such a commotion over one dumb barking dog.”

  Don’t listen, Sam told herself. Don’t think of Blaze’s bleeding lip. Do something.

  He wouldn’t be saying all this if he meant to let them get away.

  As if someone had touched her on the shoulder and whispered, Sam suddenly knew what she had to do.

  She had a rope. Flick didn’t.

  She was mounted. He wasn’t.

  He did have a rifle, but Ace could drag him off his feet and all over the ravine if she could only rope him. She didn’t think about her remedial roping skills. She only thought of getting her horse into position for the best throw she could make.

  Gently, Sam closed her legs against Ace. He took her a step closer to Flick and suddenly the cicadas on the hillside went silent.

  Sam heard the thud of a hoof just as Honey and Ace lifted their heads. The palomino nickered in recognition.

  No! Sam’s mind shouted. Run!

  The Phantom stood about a quarter mile up the hillside. His lone white form looked down at them.

  Preston shifted his attention from Flick to Honey, but he couldn’t silence the palomino with his stare. A second neigh floated from her to the silver stallion.

  “Okay!” Flick stood up, backed a step away from Preston, and rubbed his palms together. “Now things are gonna get interesting.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sam eased Ace a bit closer.

  Communicating with Ace was something she knew how to do, but she couldn’t read Flick’s mind and predict his next move.

  Would he use Honey for bait to attract the Phantom? But he didn’t have a rope or a corral. Even if the Phantom came close, how would he catch him?

  Flick glanced over his shoulder. A frown wrinkled his brow. If he’d noticed Sam was closer, though, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he tried to scare her.

  “I think I might just put a round between his eyes,” he told her. “What do you think? Can I do it from here? And if I acted like I was gonna hurt this mare, or you, would he come snortin’ and gallopin’ to the rescue?”

  He thinks he can control me by scaring me, Sam thought. He thinks I’ll just freeze or do whatever he says.

  Sam tried not to give him that power.

  Flick sighted down his rifle barrel at the stallio
n. She watched him squint one eye closed, then urged Ace forward another step.

  Ace obeyed, then planted each hoof and stood firm. She was close enough, he seemed to say. Now it was up to her.

  Sam’s hands shook as she reached down and unsnapped the leather strap holding her rope. She had to steady her fingers enough to throw a perfect loop.

  This was her only chance, and she’d better hurry. Flick had no qualms about shooting the Phantom and the stallion was just standing there.

  His mustang instincts must have helped him sense the danger, but even the smartest horse wouldn’t know the range of Flick’s rifle.

  A glance told Sam that Preston was working to free himself. Flick must see it, too.

  In case he didn’t, though, Sam tried to keep Flick’s attention on her.

  “Won’t Linc pay the ten thousand dollars for that stallion?” Sam croaked.

  “Well, now, he might,” Flick answered instantly. He lowered the rifle and tilted his head to one side, seeming to consider her reminder. Then he shook his head. “But I’m thinking it might be ten thousand dollars worth of fun, to—”

  Enough.

  Eyes focused, arm whirling the loop above her head, Sam swung her rope toward Flick. It had to settle over his head and pin his arms to his sides. This time, when an accurate throw really mattered, she had to aim right.

  The rope slid through her fingers, singing toward him in what seemed like slow motion. Flick saw the loop coming. He dodged to one side and dropped.

  Preston kicked out, slamming both boots into Flick’s knee, knocking him off balance.

  Sam heard hooves and the Phantom’s neigh, but she didn’t look at the stallion. Her eyes were fixed on her rope. The loop cleared the outlaw’s head, but she hadn’t made a clean catch. When the loop closed, one edge sawed against the right side of Flick’s neck. The other side was caught under his left arm.

  All he had to do was grab the loop and lift it off over his head. But he’d have to drop the rifle he still clutched in his right hand to do that.

  “Giddyup!” Preston yelled, reminding Sam and Ace of the desensitization class and his order to her to have Ace drag him.