Lonnie Gentry

by Peter Brandvold

  Food …

  Lonnie hadn’t eaten since before he’d ridden into Arapaho Creek. He realized he felt as hollow as an old stump. His belly growled at the thought of a big steak and fried potatoes smothered in steak gravy. He had trail grub in his saddlebags and cavvy sack. Soon, he and Casey would have to stop and think about getting some of that food in their bellies. This was a tough ride, and you needed a bellyful to make it.

  As he looked in the direction from which they’d come, the direction from which Dupree would likely be showing himself soon, he knew he couldn’t take the time to eat yet.

  Steeling himself against his anger at the girl he was riding with, he moved back to the horses and led the General out of the stream. As he did, he saw Casey sitting on the bank, bathing her bare foot in the water. At the sight of her bare flesh, he turned away. A boy didn’t look at a girl’s ankles. Doctoring her was one thing, ogling her was another.

  He glanced at her foot once more quickly, then he reached under the General’s belly to tighten his saddle cinch.

  “How’s it look?” he asked the girl.

  “I don’t think it’s broken.”

  “If it was broke, you’d know it. Probably pulled the tendons in there.”

  “Thanks, Doctor,” she said, pulling her sock back on.

  Lonnie ground his jaws at that. She’d lost her father. Girls could be cranky for no reason, and here she had a reason and he was blaming her for it.

  Still, he felt miffed at her again when he had more important things to worry about. It was just that she seemed to keep taking potshots at his pride, which he’d never realized was so tender.

  Because he wanted them to get moving as soon as possible, he walked out into the creek and fetched her chestnut back onto the bank. He slipped the filly’s bit back into her mouth, adjusted the bridle straps to sit evenly over her ears and then tightened the cinch beneath her belly.

  “Here ya go,” Lonnie said. “Miss Abigail’s ready for ya.”

  As he turned around to face Casey, she limped up to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, drew him against her warm, supple body, and planted a semi-wet kiss on his cheek.

  “Thanks,” she said, sort of crossing her eyes as she smiled at him, pulling that full upper lip back slightly. Her hazel eyes and her blonde hair glistened in the high-country sunlight.

  She draped the blankets he’d given her over his own shoulder.

  Lonnie’s heart turned a backward flip in his chest.

  His ears rang.

  The boy had no words with which to respond to the girl’s inexplicable behavior. He stood there, lower jaw hanging to his chest, while she used a rock humping out of the creek bank to get seated on the chestnut’s back.

  She rode out away from the creek and called behind her, “Let’s make camp soon, huh? If it’s safe? I don’t know about you but I’m hungry.”

  A cabin sat in another clearing ringed with fir-covered slopes.

  It was an old, gray log affair with a shake-shingled roof missing shingles the way an old man misses teeth. The shingles that remained were as gray as the hovel’s weathered logs, and they were blue-green with moss. A dented tin chimney pipe angled up out of the roof, and a rusty coffee can had been turned upside down over the end of the pipe to prevent birds from nesting inside.

  The windows were shuttered. A deep, packed-dirt depression lay in the ground before the front door. Rain and snow must have collected in the depression and rotted away part of the doorsill. A backless chair sat left of the door, a rock propping up one of the front legs to level the chair on the uneven ground.

  A doorless privy flanked the cabin, and to the cabin’s right squatted a small log stable whose roof had collapsed. Only a few rails remained of the peeled pine log corral that surrounded the stable on three sides.

  “Looks abandoned,” Casey said, sitting her chestnut beside Lonnie as they inspected what appeared to be an old miner’s headquarters.

  Lonnie said, “Let’s see if it has a stove. If so, I’ll try to snare us a rabbit. Nothin’ like fresh meat to fuel a long ride.”

  She glanced at Lonnie who kept his eyes roaming around the dilapidated buildings. “Sounds good to me. I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

  Lonnie jerked a surprised look at her.

  “You heard me.” She smiled brashly. “I know that wasn’t ladylike, but out here, who’s to wash my mouth out with soap?” She pulled his hat brim down, teasing him. “You?”

  “Nah, you can talk however you want around me, Miss Casey. I ain’t no saint—that’s for sure.” Lonnie poked his hat back up on his forehead, and swung nimbly down from the General’s back. “But I don’t reckon we’d best stop here for long. You can dismount and lead your chestnut around, though. If your ankle doesn’t hurt too bad, I mean. Make as many tracks as you can.”

  He dropped the General’s reins and walked up to the cabin’s front door.

  Behind him, Casey frowned. “Why?”

  “Just do as I say, Miss Casey. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Hey, I don’t take orders from you, kid,” Casey said, and eased down from her saddle, keeping her cool gaze on him. She was miffed again. “Remember, I’m the marshal. And just because we’re on the trail together, and I gave you that kiss, don’t go thinking we’re married!”

  CHAPTER 32

  The girl’s fickle moods were too much of a puzzle for Lonnie. He kept his mind on what lay before him, which at the moment was the cabin door.

  He tripped the steel and leather latch, which clicked. The door slackened in its frame. The leather hinges squawked. When Lonnie pushed the door open a foot, the door sagged to the cabin floor, which was nothing more than hard-packed dirt. He sidled through the opening and walked on into the cabin, which was about one quarter the size of the cabin in which he and his mother lived at the Circle G.

  There was little inside the place except an old table, another backless chair, and a small sheet-iron stove in the cabin’s far right corner. A wood box sat beside the stove. It had a few chunks of rotted wood and a squirrel’s nest inside it.

  There were a few shelves on the wall opposite where the table sat. Three airtight tins sat on the shelf. Inspecting their badly faded and water-stained labels, Lonnie saw that one held tomatoes, one held pinto beans, and the third one held sweetened apricot slices.

  Lonnie’s stomach growled. He salivated just thinking about chewing up a sweetened apricot …

  He looked around once more. Obviously, judging by the lack of anything but rotted wood and the squirrel’s nest in the wood box and the several layers of undisturbed dust on the table, no one had visited this place in at least a year, maybe more. Lonnie had a feeling the place had long ago been a miner’s cabin. It might now serve as a line shack for an area rancher—so infrequently that Lonnie didn’t think that he should feel overly guilty about confiscating the three tin cans of food.

  He and Casey needed the food more than the squirrels did, and they didn’t have time to cook anything.

  He took all three cans down off the shelf, went out, and closed the rickety door behind him. Casey was limping around, leading the filly. She stopped and turned to Lonnie, frowning.

  “What do you have there?”

  Lonnie grinned. “I got pinto beans, tomatoes, and apricots!”

  “Hooray!”

  “Hold on, hold on!” Lonnie hurried over to where General Sherman stood ground-tied, and dropped the cans into his saddlebags.

  Casey gaped at him. “Kid, you got a mean streak—you know that?”

  “We can’t stay here,” Lonnie said, glancing back in the direction from which they’d come. “We don’t know how far away Dupree is, but we have to assume he’s a better tracker than I think he is and that he’s only a mile or so behind us. I know he won’t stop lookin’ for us until he gets the loot back.”

  “He couldn’t have tracked us in the dark.”

  “No, but he’s had plenty of time to make up fo
r the time he lost before daylight.”

  “So what’re we stoppin’ here for?”

  “I’m thinkin’ that if he’s still on our trail, it’ll lead him here. Now, maybe we can confuse him a little, maybe lose him for good.”

  “How?”

  Lonnie walked over and helped her back up onto the chestnut’s back. “Just follow me.”

  “You’re enjoying playing mountain man, aren’t you, kid?” she asked, glowering at him from her saddle.

  Lonnie didn’t let her see him blushing as he swung up onto General Sherman’s back. Yeah, he was showing off. But he figured he had a good reason. If Dupree caught up to them, they were dead.

  “Come on, Miss Casey,” he said, booting the General northward out of the yard. “Let’s make some tracks!”

  The General lunged into a lope.

  “Hey, wait for me, goll darnit!” Casey yelled behind him. “Don’t make me regret giving you that peck on the cheek back there, Lonnie Gentry!”

  Lonnie felt his lips spread a grin.

  That was the first time she’d used his proper name.

  CHAPTER 33

  Lonnie led Casey on probably what seemed a wild-goose chase to the girl.

  Without following any trail, and with no seeming rhyme or reason, Lonnie galloped the General to the edge of the clearing in which the abandoned cabin sat. He slowed the horse as they entered the forest and descended a gentle hill. About halfway down the hill, Lonnie turned General Sherman onto a deer trail that ran perpendicular to the slope before dropping gradually toward the hill’s bottom.

  Lonnie glanced behind to see Casey following on her chestnut filly, the girl scowling after him, her hair blowing out behind her in the wind or bouncing across her shoulders. The brim of her man’s hat rippled, and the chin thong danced against her chest. Just as Lonnie had to do, she occasionally ducked under low pine boughs.

  At the bottom of the slope ran a stream. Lonnie crossed the stream and put the General up through the forest on the other side.

  At the bottom of the next hill lay another stream. Lonnie glanced back once more to make sure Casey was keeping up with him. The girl was handling her horse in such rugged terrain well for a gal who spent most of her time clerking in a mercantile. But her suntanned cheeks and hands attested to her likely riding the chestnut any chance she got—maybe after work or on weekends.

  Lonnie enjoyed showing off his own riding ability, but he was also glad she was able to keep up with him. If she hadn’t been able to ride handily, Dupree was sure to catch up to them sooner or later.

  “Where in tarnation, Lonnie Gentry, are we going?” Casey demanded behind him, as Lonnie put the General into the stream.

  Instead of crossing to the other side, Lonnie rode the General right down the center of the stream, going against the current. Water splashed up over his stirrups, soaking his boots. He said nothing but kept riding. He’d explain later. Besides, he was enjoying keeping her in suspense though he knew it was a devilish thing to do. The uppity town girl deserved it.

  When they’d followed the creek around several bends, Lonnie put the General up the north bank. He stopped the horse to let Casey catch up, and when she’d mounted the bank to stop the chestnut beside him, she said, “You’re loco!”

  “You’re keepin’ up right well.”

  “Is this a test or somethin’?”

  “Yeah, somethin’ like that,” he said, enjoying himself. She doubted she’d be looking down her nose at him for much longer.

  Lonnie chuckled and reined the General sharply away from her, but as the General lunged up another, fir-stippled slope, a pine bough swept toward him in a dark-brown, lime-green blur. The boy snapped his eyes wide in surprise and started to duck— too late.

  The bough caught him across his upper chest and shoulders. He had sense enough to kick free of his stirrups so he wouldn’t snap both his ankles, and then, as the horse continued trotting forward under the branch, Lonnie fell back hard and turned a backward somersault over the General’s burr-prickly tail.

  Lonnie hit the ground with a thump and a loud “Ghahhh!” as the air was pounded out of his lungs.

  He’d landed on his back, and now he lay spread-eagle on the ground, staring up through the forest canopy at bits of blue sky and fringes of white clouds beyond the arrow-straight tops of the evergreens.

  A church bell was ringing loudly from nearby, and little white birds were fluttering around in front of Lonnie’s face, obscuring his vision. Only, after a moment he realized the birds were actually inside his head. The church bells were in the same region. He lifted his head, hearing himself grunt raspily, loudly as he tried to suck a breath back into his lungs that were having none of it.

  He lay his head down and arched his back, trying again to draw a breath. As he did, Casey entered his field of vision, her pretty face staring down at him from between him and the pine tops and the small scallops of blue sky beyond her. She turned her mouth corners down and shook her head, crossing her arms on her chest and cocking one hip.

  “A fool and his horse are soon parted,” she said. “My father told me that when he was first teachin’ me to ride.”

  “Wise … wise man,” Lonnie croaked out. He tried to push himself up, but Casey set a boot on his chest and pressed him back down to the ground. “Just lay there a minute. You got the wind knocked out of you. If you’ve broken anything, I’m leaving you here. You best know that, Lonnie Gentry. The bobcats can have you.”

  When Lonnie was finally able to draw a full breath and the tolling of the bells in his ears had died somewhat, he said, “How come you seem so fond of my name all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a nice name, I reckon.” Then she cracked a grin, and she laughed. “Better than you deserve, you foolish child!”

  “That’s more like it,” Lonnie said, his ears ringing again but this time with embarrassment.

  She helped him to his feet. He couldn’t look at her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, kind of snootily, he thought.

  He turned away from her and then stooped to scoop his hat off the ground. He muttered something under his breath though even he wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Are you sure you didn’t break anything?” Casey asked him.

  Lonnie swatted his hat against his thigh, ridding it of dirt and pine needles and little round bits of squirrel scat. His back and shoulders and the back of his head ached like holy blazes, but he didn’t think anything was broken. If anything was broken, he figured he deserved it.

  In fact, he deserved to be put down like a rabid dog for acting like such a copper-riveted fool.

  He wished the ground would open up and swallow him.

  “I’m all right,” he grouched. “I … just didn’t see that dang pine branch, that’s all. What the heck’s it hangin’ so low for?”

  Hearing Casey give a snort behind him, he set his hat on his head and stumbled stiffly up to where the General stood about thirty yards beyond, head lowered and eyeing his fallen rider skeptically.

  “Oh, hobble your lip, General,” Lonnie said, grabbing the buckskin’s reins. He groaned as he heaved his aching body back up into the saddle. “Come on,” he told Casey, whose amused gaze he could still feel on his back, making the back of his neck burn. “No time to dally, girl!”

  He touched spurs to the General’s flanks.

  But he proceeded a little more slowly and carefully this time.

  CHAPTER 34

  Lonnie stopped the General along a deer trail running along the shoulder of a grassy mountaintop clearing, at the edge of fringe of mixed pines and aspens. He eased carefully out of the saddle, for his head ached from the braining he’d taken earlier.

  Not to mention that his back and shoulders felt as though he’d been beaten with a shovel.

  As Casey reined up her chestnut behind the General, Lonnie dug into his saddlebags for his spyglass, which resided in a small, deer-hide sack with a rawhide thong stitched around i
ts mouth. Looping the thong around his neck, the boy climbed the steep slope, his boots sliding on the short, slick grass and crusted layer of dirt and pebbles. Several times he had to lean forward and push off the ground with his hands.

  Near the top of the hill, he got down and crawled until he could see over the top of the ridge and over another, lower, pine-carpeted ridge beyond. Beyond that ridge lay a valley with a clearing, a willow-lined creek curving around the clearing’s left end.

  Lonnie got out his spyglass, telescoped it, and turned the wooden ring around the brass casing, bringing the clearing below into focus. He heard Casey climbing the slope behind him, breathing hard. When he turned toward her, she got down and started crawling until she lay belly-down beside him.

  “Where are we?” she asked. The breeze brushed against them, scudding cloud shadows over the top of the otherwise sunsplashed hill before them.

  “Guess?” Lonnie said.

  “You don’t know, do you? With all that runnin’ around, you got us lost! Do you know where the trail to the pass is?”

  “Sure do.” Lonnie was trying to get some of his pride back, which he’d lost in his tumble from the General’s saddle. At least, he was trying to sound confident again, though he was beginning to learn that prideful confidence could be a dangerous thing.

  Just as showing off for a girl could get you killed faster than Dupree could do it.

  “Well,” Casey said skeptically. “Where is it?”

  Lonnie rolled over onto his back and sat up on his butt, bending his knees slightly out to both sides. He rolled his neck, trying to loosen some of the kinks, and poked his hat back off his forehead.

  “See that big, dark mountain humping up there, higher than the two to either side of it? It’s got some snow on the left side of the peak.”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “That’s Storm Peak Pass. The trail to the pass is beyond that lower ridge there. We’ll get to it sometime tomorrow, I think.”

  “Are you sure you know where we are?”