The killer had said this loudly enough that Fuego and Childress could hear. Both men chuckled now, reining their horses to a stop near the bottom of the scarp. Lonnie stood where he was, heart hammering the back side of his breastbone.
“She’s still alive, then?” Lonnie asked, knowing the jig was likely up for him and Casey, but still worried sick about his ma. “You didn’t … you didn’t hurt her?”
“I didn’t what? Oh, wait!” Dupree said, pretending to ponder the question. “Gee, I don’t remember, now. I can’t remember if I held it against her that she turned my money … er, I mean, me and the boys’ money … over to her son so’s he could give it back to the very folks I’d taken it from! I mean, if I’d wanted that to happen to all my hard work … er, I mean, me and the boys’ hard work … I’d have taken it into Arapaho Creek myself!”
“Let me go, you filthy coward!” Casey said, jerking her arm out of the man’s grip.
Dupree, who stood close to six feet four inches tall, looked like a tall, blond-headed, slant-eyed ghoul grinning down at her. “You watch your tongue, too, Miss Pretty. Or I’ll take a bar of soap and wash your mouth out myself!”
“Just try it!”
“All right, I will,” Dupree said. “Just as soon as we get down off this rock.” He chuckled and turned to Lonnie with a squint-eyed, suspicious look. “You ain’t got a pistol on you—do you, boy?”
“If I had one,” Lonnie said, barely able to keep his rage in check, “I’d have used it by now.”
He hadn’t gotten an honest answer about his ma, and he knew he wouldn’t get one. Dupree would only devil him about what he may or may not have done to her. That was the kind of man he was. All Lonnie wanted now was to find some way to get himself and Casey out of this current snare they were in.
Lonnie had thought he’d frightened away the bear, but Fuego’s rifle shot had apparently done that. To Lonnie’s embarrassment, the very men out to kill him had likely saved him … for now. The rifle’s report must have been drowned by the bear’s roar. He thought he’d seen the beast flinch a little. Maybe Lonnie wasn’t as tough as he thought he was.
Maybe, for how smart he was feeling about brushing Dupree off his trail, this was finally the end of his line.
For himself, he stopped caring. He was plum tuckered out. He felt like an old man. But he didn’t want it to be the end of the line for Casey. She was too much girl to be killed by Dupree. More girl than Lonnie had even thought before he’d gotten to know her. He’d fight for her to the very end.
Dupree said, “You think you’re tough—don’t you, kid?”
“I’m tough enough,” Lonnie shot back at the man.
“Lonnie, you hush now!” Casey said, casting him a desperately worried look.
To Casey, Dupree said, shoving her forward, “You go on down there with your boyfriend, Miss Pretty. I’m assumin’ you came up this way, so there must be a way down this way, too.”
Casey crawled gingerly down the boulders to Lonnie, who was waiting for her at the bottom. He took the girl’s arm as Dupree followed her down, leaping from rock to rock, keeping his rifle leveled on both of them with one hand, extending the barrel straight out from his hip.
“Well, what’re you waiting for?” Dupree barked, when he was standing over them both. He waved the rifle, angrily. “Let’s get down off these rocks, and then we can see about the money.”
Lonnie helped Casey back down the way they’d come up— through the cleft in the scarp. Getting down was considerably harder and slower than getting up had been, with the bear snapping its jaws at them. Dupree must have gotten onto the escarpment from the top of the ridge.
When they made it down and were standing outside the cleft, where Fuego and Childress were waiting, sitting on rocks, with their rifles resting across their thighs, Casey was barely able to put any weight at all on her ankle. She had an arm wrapped around Lonnie’s neck, while Lonnie had his left arm wrapped around Casey’s waist, holding her up.
“All right,” Dupree said, stooping as he came striding out of the cleft, his face red from exertion, pressing his rifle against Lonnie’s belly. “Where is it? You give me a smart answer, boy, I’ll gut shoot you and leave you here for that bear to come back and finish!”
Lonnie chewed on his answer. He could not bring himself to tell Dupree where the money was.
Dupree grinned with menace, showing his long, fang-like eyeteeth and squinting his gray eyes, and loudly cocked his rifle.
“Lonnie!” Casey said. “It’s over! We have to give him the money or he’ll kill us!”
Lonnie knew it was true. Still, it was hard getting the words out. “It’s on my horse. He ran off when the bear hit us.” It was true. Lonnie had strapped the money to the stallion’s back, so Casey’s filly hadn’t had to carry the extra weight over the rough terrain.
“Which way?”
“That way.”
Dupree looked behind Lonnie and said, “Fuego.”
The stocky half-breed rose from his rock, swung up onto his horse’s back, and galloped away through the trees.
Childress said, “Maybe I oughta go with him.”
Dupree eyed Childress suspiciously. “You stay here with me. He’s too stupid to get any ideas himself. But the two of you together might concoct something.” He spat to one side. “Something like a double-cross, maybe.” He smiled. “I’d be lookin’ for you two in Mexico.”
“That’s just like you, Shannon,” Childress said, shaking his head sadly. “Don’t got a trustin’ bone in your body.”
Dupree looked around. He told Childress to gather wood and build a fire. Childress looked at him crossways, and Dupree said, “I’m gonna watch these two lovebirds, make sure they don’t go flyin’ off together. Neither one of ’em will be out of my sight until we get the money back. So fetch the wood and build the fire before you and me get crossways!”
Lonnie wondered what he meant by “until we get the money back.” What would happen once they had the money?
Foolish question. Lonnie knew very well what would happen to both him and Casey. Somehow, he and Casey had to get away.
But how were they going to do that when Casey could put no weight on her ankle, much less run?
When Childress had stomped off to fetch firewood, Dupree said, “You two lovebirds sit down and make yourselves comfortable. Try to run off, I’ll tie you to a tree.” He grinned at Casey in a way that seared Lonnie with raw fury. “Doesn’t look like Miss Pretty’s goin’ anywhere, though. At least, not very fast.”
Casey cursed him in a way that made even Lonnie blush.
Dupree whistled in awe at the girl’s finesse with the rougher parts of the English language—the parts that hadn’t made it into the dictionary and likely never would.
“You got a mouth on you, Miss Pretty!” Dupree looked at Lonnie. “Kid, you really know how to pick ’em. Where’d you find this one?”
“I’m Casey Stoveville. Marshal Stoveville was my father.” Casey spit the words out like unwieldy prune pits. “Until you killed him, you butcher!”
Casey lunged toward Dupree, who took one laughing step back as Casey fell flat on her face with an anguished groan.
“Now, you try that again, Miss Pretty,” Dupree said, pressing the barrel of his rifle up against the back of the girl’s head, “and this party’s gonna be over for you right quick!”
Before Lonnie knew what he was doing, he was lunging for Dupree.
Dupree may have been big, but he was fast. When Lonnie was still three feet away from him, the outlaw shifted his rifle around and rammed its heavy butt into the dead center of Lonnie’s belly.
Lonnie stopped in his tracks. His knees buckled as the wind left him in one loud spurt.
Holding his belly, he collapsed in agony.
CHAPTER 42
It took Lonnie a miserably long time to draw a breath into his lungs. When he finally did, he rolled over onto his back and kept breathing, enjoying the feeling of having air retur
n to his body despite the horrible predicament that he and Casey found themselves in.
When he’d regained his wind as well as his senses, Lonnie realized that Casey had been kneeling beside him the whole time, one hand on his back and scolding Dupree venomously. For his part, the outlaw merely sat on a rock and built a cigarette from the makings sack he wore around his neck, and leisurely smoked it, a smug expression on his face.
When Childress returned with an armload of wood, Dupree continued to smoke while the other outlaw formed a ring with rocks, and built a fire inside the ring. He boiled coffee on the flames, then he and Dupree sat around the fire, drinking coffee to which they added splashes of Old Kentucky Rye and looking downslope every now and then, expecting Fuego and the stolen money.
Lonnie was in no hurry for Fuego to return. When Dupree had what he considered to be his money back, he would have no more use for Lonnie and Casey. In the meantime, Lonnie waited for a chance to make a move on one of the outlaws.
His only hope for survival would be to somehow acquire one of the outlaws’ guns, and either shoot them both—he thought he could shoot another man, now, given that it was the only chance he’d have at saving himself and Casey—or disarm them both and keep them pinned down while he and Casey rode off on their horses.
To that end, as one hour passed, and then another, and they all waited for Fuego, Lonnie kept a vigilant eye on the men and their guns. Both were drinking enough coffee and rye while they passed the time that both men left the camp several times to tend nature. Dupree always took his rifle with him, but Childress left his own Winchester leaning against the rock upon which he’d been sitting.
Only, one man always remained in camp. When Childress was gone, Dupree stayed, drinking his spiced coffee and smoking, making any attempt Lonnie might make on Childress’s rifle sheer suicide.
Lonnie had seen Dupree wield a rifle several times in the past. The man was not only good with a long gun, but he rarely missed at what he was shooting at, be it gophers or coffee cans perched on fence posts. Once, Lonnie had seen the killer shoot a hawk out of the sky for sport. That was when Lonnie started to hate the man, before he’d ever suspected him of being an outlaw.
Only a no-account vermin would shoot an animal for sport. Real men as well as real women killed animals for food only. Lonnie’s father had never believed in mounting an animal’s head on the wall, even if the animal had been brought down primarily for food. Doing so was disrespectful to the animal and only proved that the man who did it was a show-off, a soulless tinhorn, a fool.
That’s what Dupree was. A fool. Lonnie didn’t know why his mother hadn’t been able to see that. It was frighteningly clear to Lonnie.
The afternoon was a tense one for Lonnie. He could tell that it was tense for Casey, as well. They sat against the same tree, Casey massaging her swollen ankle. Occasionally they glanced at each other and exchanged wan smiles meant to be encouraging though they really only betrayed the desperation and anxiety percolating inside them both.
Sun-dappled shadows slid around the pair.
Birds piped and squirrels chattered in the branches. The breeze wisped and occasionally moaned amongst the treetops. Sometimes, there was the shrill cry of a hawk hunting high in the sky above camp.
Otherwise, the only sounds were the crackling of the fire, the chugging of the coffeepot, and the occasional murmurs of Dupree and Childress, mostly wondering aloud what was keeping Fuego. Their two hobbled, unsaddled horses munched grass nearby, hooves crunching pine needles as they moved slowly around to forage.
All afternoon, Lonnie’s heart beat heavily, and his palms sweated.
Desperation was a living thing inside him, chewing away at his insides. He’d thought he was ready to die. But, now, having had some time to think about it, and to wonder what it would be like, to give up this world for the grave or whatever lay beyond it—would he see his father again, or his mother if she were dead as well?—he realized how badly he wanted to live. To breathe mountain air winy with the scent of pine, to hear a hawk screeching as it hunted, to be close enough to Casey to smell the distinct smell of the girl, to hear her breathing and shifting around beside him.
He knew he was too young to think about such grown-up things, but he thought that he wouldn’t mind being married to Casey. He could see them working the ranch together and raising a passel of young’uns.
That, however, was probably not likely to happen …
Lonnie’s heart jerked when, in the mid-afternoon, a horse whinnied down the slope behind him. Casey gasped and jerked with a start, as well. Dupree, who’d been sleeping lightly under his hat brim while Childress had been adding more wood to the fire, suddenly poked his hat back on his forehead, and stared down the slope through the pines.
“Here he comes,” he said, rising from his rock and resting his rifle on his shoulder.
Lonnie could hear the thuds of an approaching horse. He glanced to Casey on his left. The girl’s face was pale again, with a little pink on the nubs of her cheeks. Her face was drawn with worry, lips slightly parted. She slid a plainly frightened glance at Lonnie, and they both turned to stare down the slope where the hoof thuds continued to grow louder until Lonnie could hear the squawk of leather and the faint jingling of a bridle chain.
The stocky Fuego came into view amongst the trees. He rode up to the edge of the camp, and both Dupree and Childress stood regarding the man, frowning curiously.
“I was about ready to saddle up and go lookin’ for you,” Dupree growled.
“Thought I wasn’t comin’ back, huh? Maybe headin’ for Mexico?” Fuego’s dark eyes flashed mockingly. Then he shook his head. “Sorry, boss. I couldn’t find that hoss nowheres. Came back because I was so far out I figured it’d get dark on me. No point in stumbling around after sundown.”
Dupree’s eyes widened. “No sign of it?”
Fuego shook his head. “None that I could see.”
Dupree turned to Lonnie. The other two outlaws turned to the boy, as well, their eyes flat and hard. Dupree walked over and casually pointed his Winchester at the boy’s forehead.
“Boy, if you lied to me, I’ll kill you right now!”
“He didn’t lie!” Casey yelled. “Both our horses ran that way down the ravine. Just because that big idiot can’t track …”
The girl let her voice trail off, knowing she was pushing too hard.
Fuego stared at her with flat eyes.
“I wasn’t lyin’,” Lonnie said. “Both horses ran that way down the ravine. Maybe they turned and ran up the other ridge. I don’t know. I didn’t see ’em. Had more important things on my mind when they run off. But if Mister Fuego didn’t find ’em, that’s what they must’ve done.”
“How can I be sure?” Dupree said, staring menacingly down the barrel of his rifle at Lonnie. “How can I be sure you didn’t hide the money somewheres along the trail. Maybe you an’ Miss Pretty knew me an’ the boys was closin’ on you, and you didn’t want us to catch you with it. Maybe you figured if we caught you without the money we wouldn’t kill you, and you could go back for it later.”
Dupree blew a caustic snort. “Well, you figured wrong, boy.”
Lonnie made a hard effort to stifle his shaking. He raked his gaze from the round maw of the rifle, and said, “How do you figure killin’ me an’ Casey is gonna get your money back?”
“It ain’t,” Dupree said, smiling coldly and pressing the rifle barrel against Lonnie’s chest, over his heart. “But it’ll make me feel a whole lot better.” He grinned again. “Best pray, boy. Best pray real hard!”
CHAPTER 43
Lonnie stared up at the outlaw, speechless. Sweat dribbled down the sides of his face to drip from his chin and dampen the front of his shirt. Even Casey had been rendered speechless by what appeared the dead certainty that Dupree was about to pull his rifle’s trigger, and kill Lonnie.
The boy’s shoulder was touching the girl’s. He could feel Casey breathing as hard as he was.
Finally, Childress said, “No point in killin’ him yet, Shannon.” The lanky outlaw was nibbling a weed. “Kid had a point. Killin’ him ain’t gonna get us the money. Let’s get the money first, then we’ll talk about what we’re gonna do with him and the girl.”
“Only one thing to do with ’em, either way,” Fuego said. “They know all about us. Can’t let ’em live.”
“Well, I for one would like to consider the situation a little longer,” Childress said. “I don’t know—killin’ kids. I ain’t never done that before. Mighty tall order. Maybe we could take ’em with us down to Mexico, set ’em free at the border.”
“Travel all that way with a couple of howlin’ brats?” Dupree said, still staring at Lonnie. He shook his head.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Lonnie said after he’d tried to swallow the hard knot in his throat. “We wouldn’t be no trouble. None at all. In fact, we could set up and tear down camp for you fellas.”
Of course, Lonnie had no hankering to do any such thing. He was trying to buy him and Casey some time.
“Yeah,” Casey said. “We could do that. And I can cook, too. No point in killin’ us. The law would be extra mad, track you extra hard, if you killed a couple of kids.”
Dupree looked at her in that way of his that burned Lonnie deep in his bones. The outlaw lifted his rifle and off-cocked the hammer. He laughed and then said, “We’ll track the horses tomorrow, spend the night right here. Let’s eat—I’m hungry as a wolf.”
While the outlaws laid out their gear, forming a proper camp, Lonnie was sent out to snare a rabbit and gather firewood. Dupree had seen how handy Lonnie was with a rope snare. The outlaws weren’t worried that Lonnie would try to run away. They knew he’d stay with Casey. How far could he get on foot, anyway, before they ran him down again?
Lonnie didn’t think he’d be able to snare anything before good dark, but he set his trap in the brush well away from the camp. He gathered enough wood for the night, and had built up the fire and put a fresh pot of coffee on to boil. Then they set him out in search of water. There was a small stream at the bottom of the ravine, so he walked down the slope and filled the men’s canteens after taking a long drink himself. A high shriek rose from the direction in which he’d set his snare. Lonnie strode over to find that he’d caught a big jack. He wrung the frightened beast’s neck, and brought him back to the fire.
Lonnie Gentry Page 16