Pursuit
Page 28
Jubal ran his hand softly across her face. “Are you in a lot of pain, sis?”
She nodded and held her hand to her mouth. “Jube . . . I’m not seeing too well.” She cried, not like a child, but deep and steady. “My side hurts, just here. I’m bleeding something awful.” She tried to touch her rib cage. “Maybe ma’s pain potion, under the washbasin. The small purple bottle.”
Their mother kept codeine elixir for severe pain, on a shelf in the kitchen. Jubal wondered if he could get to it or if it had even survived the fire. The men must have left the farm by now. There was still daylight, and he could be down to the farm and back in twenty minutes. “Pru, I’m going to try to get you that medicine. Will you be all right for a bit?”
“Ma,” she called. “Ma, I don’t feel well. I’ve got deep pain there. A man was with me. Make it go away.”
Jubal dropped to his knees.
“Can you get me the man in the moon? He’s frowning.”
She was delirious. Maybe it would be a good time to get back to the cabin for medicine. She moaned, knees drawn up tight toward her chest, hands dug between her legs. Her forehead was dampened with sweat, her face flushed red. But he was afraid to leave her in such pain.
“Jubal Young, a man-child.” She rolled to her side and reached a hand out toward him. “I wrote a poem for you, Jube.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
She tried to smile. “I don’t think I can remember it all. It’s about the land, the animals. . . . I gave the poem to ma to keep for your birthday. She put it away somewhere. I really need ma to help me. It’s a lady’s kind of thing. Please.”
Jubal made up his mind. “Listen to me, Pru. I’m gonna scoot down to the house and I’ll be right back. You’ll be fine for a few minutes, won’t you?”
She nodded, trying to smile.
Rifle in hand, Jubal ran back toward the homestead. The image of his sister lying huddled in misery, her pale face distorted, blurred him to anger. He would kill them all. He felt anguish, dizzy with it. I will track them to the ends of the earth.
The men had not left but were spread around the clearing, apparently looking for him. Jubal skirted the tree line and started once again to crawl. He realized the farther he went, the more he would be cut off from his sister. Never mind, he would deal with that later. First, these men.
The setting sun turned the raging fires that were once his home into a fiery pink mist. He took a last glance at the sad bundle that was his mother and continued to the root cellar. With the slide-action Colt steady on the door, he let out his breath and squeezed the trigger softly.
A man with a battered straw hat caught a round in the neck. He dropped his rifle and sat on the ground, both hands swatting at his neck as if shooing a pesky bee. Gripping his throat, he tried to squelch the bleeding. Jubal slid another bullet into the chamber, aimed, and fired it squarely into the center of his forehead. The man’s sweat-stained hat spiraled backward. Arms outstretched in surrender, the renegade seemed to melt into the earth.
The other men scurried down behind his father’s overturned hay wagon, several with antiquated, single-shot weapons. Jubal hit the ground as the balled rounds ripped at the earth around him. Forcing himself to be calm, he once again reloaded.
The men called out to Jubal, denouncing him, describing in detail what they would do to him. All the while bullets plowed into the ground close to Jubal.
They continued to fire, one of the younger men skipping over a pile of clothing to charge toward the root cellar. As the man drew a long-barreled .44 from his holster, Jubal’s bullet caught him in the chest. Stumbling, he tried to reach Jubal, pounding his pistol at the soft earth. Moving within twenty feet, he slipped to his knees and then slowly eased to his side, as if preparing for a nap.
Several rounds splintered the root cellar’s plank door, a long thin piece of wood catching Jubal in the side of the head, opening a wound. For an instant he couldn’t see. He wrapped his bandanna around his forehead to stop the bleeding and fired several more shots into the distant hay wagon.
The intense pain from his gashed head gave him some welcome courage. His family had suffered, and this pain seemed to make him one with them. He thought of Pru, her bloody dress, and pa, Jubal Thaddeus Young Sr., a man striving to make a life for his kinfolk, killed now by his own son’s hand. Jubal had a moment when he thought maybe his father would forgive him his death and be proud of him.
Be the man . . . , he would have said. Jubal prayed that it be so.
Jubal rose and heard what he thought was a hornet, then a high whistling sound and a shocking pain in his left hip. An arrow protruded from his body. It had not penetrated the skin of his back but stopped somewhere inside his lower waist. Jubal dropped back down on the native grasses to crawl below a small rise in the earth beyond view.
Scuttling along on his right side, he was careful so the arrow did not catch in the heavy foliage. With all the weapons in play, rifle and pistol rounds eating up the earth around him, Jubal thought it odd he would be hit by, of all things, an arrow.
His mission was too dangerous, and from the looks of the house it would be a miracle if anything survived the fire. He would have to go back empty-handed up the steep trail leading to Morning Peak and Sultan’s Castle. But Jubal didn’t know what else he could do for his sis.
If these men could track, and he knew at least the man with the bow could, then they would trail after him, but he knew the rocky path so well he was confident they couldn’t get around him. He glanced at the farmhouse, it continued to burn.
They would follow.
He wanted them to follow.
• • •
Hours had passed since Jubal had first come upon the attack. He deemed himself safe for now, having barely made it out of the bloody grounds of the homestead, inching along on his good hip. Grasping the embedded arrow with his left hand, he clawed and elbowed with his right. The ghostlike image of a tall gray-haired man kept him going. Jubal knew him. He felt as if he were missing something, a reason. It eluded him. The figures darting about his family’s property were mere phantoms without motive. His lack of memory, the why of this kept him strangely alert.
Jubal limped across an open meadow. Looking down at the protruding arrow, he thought it must have glanced off his hip bone. The length of it jutted out from his bleeding upper leg like an errant tree branch.
A stand of ponderosa pine lay ahead. He pushed on, glancing back often to see if he was followed. Not yet.
At a cliff overlooking what his sister referred to as “Young’s Valley,” once again he found his sister’s retreat, the small opening where two large rocks formed an inverted V.
The light started to fade as Jubal eased himself into the cave, where he was greeted by the sound of his sister’s soft, forced breathing. A strand of light from a gap at the top of the boulders illuminated her pale face.
He felt remorse. His search for the medicine had not only been worthless, but he had also been rewarded with a deep wound.
He watched his sister, wondering what to do next. How to deal with his own fierce pain of the arrow was beyond him.
Prudence stirred. “What would pa say?” she asked. It was almost as if she had read his mind. “Pa once said to me, ‘Prudence, when all else fails, simply smile.’ It’s a little harder done than said. Wouldn’t you say, Jube?”
“Pa was full of sayings.”
“Was?” she asked.
Jubal was happy to hear his sister once again speaking clearly, but she’d caught him off guard. He tried to cover his mistake. “Oh, I just mean he’s always saying these . . . platitudes. I think that’s the word. Anyhow, he’s funny sometimes, right?”
Quiet for a long time, Pru worried Jubal when she finally spoke. “I’d been picking flowers.” Her voice softened. “I think I was running and calling out to ma. Then, a smell like somebody’s sweat. Is Butternut okay?”
Jubal didn’t answer. He sat at her side, the arrow jutting out o
f his left hip, the blood flow fortunately stanched.
“A man was mean. He did hurtful things.” Her voice began to fade. “I want ma. Please get her.”
He wished he could.
Pru raised her clenched fists and made feeble striking movements into the air. She cried out.
Jubal once again stroked her forehead. “Try to relax if you can. It will be better soon.” He pushed his arm under her neck and brought her head close to his own. He kissed her softly on the cheek. Her eyes opened wide.
“I love my brother, Jubal. He’s funny and kind. . . .”
Then she was gone.
GENE HACKMAN is the two-time Academy Award–winning actor best known for his performances in such iconic American films as Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, Unforgiven, Mississippi Burning, and Hoosiers. Since retiring from acting, he has coauthored three novels with Daniel Lenihan—Escape from Andersonville, Justice for None, and Wake of the Perdido Star—and went on to win critical acclaim for his first novel, Payback at Morning Peak. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and two German shepherds.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Gene-Hackman
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
DISCOVER MORE GREAT BOOKS AT
ALSO BY GENE HACKMAN
Payback at Morning Peak
Available now from Pocket Books
We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Books eBook.
* * *
Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
Pocket Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Gene Hackman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Pocket Books paperback edition December 2013
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Interior design by Lewelin Polanco
Cover design by Jae Song
Cover photograph by Lester Lefkowitz/Getty Images
Author photo by Prestige/3rd Party/Getty Images
ISBN 978-1-4516-2357-4
ISBN 978-1-4516-2359-8 (ebook)