Dupree chuckled and glanced at Fuego and Childress. “Told you the kid was half Injun.”
Then he grabbed the rabbit out of Lonnie’s hands and set to work, dressing it out, skinning it, and chopping it up for the pot in which beans and bacon bubbled on the fire. Meanwhile, Lonnie gave Casey one of the canteens he’d filled.
She took a long drink. The outlaws didn’t seem to mind she was drinking their water. They’d already settled in for the night, drinking their coffee laced with rye and laying out a poker game while a pot bubbled and splattered on the fire. They were distracted, not overly worried about their captives.
That was fine with Lonnie. He hoped they’d stay distracted, so he could make a play for one of their guns.
The men ate but they didn’t offer any food to Lonnie or Casey, despite Lonnie’s having snared the rabbit to add to their otherwise thin stew. They acted as though the two weren’t even there, sitting about ten feet back from the fire. That, too, was all right with Lonnie. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but he wasn’t hungry. He supposed that having been in almost constant jeopardy since he’d awakened that day had something to do with that.
The men ate, and Dupree ordered Lonnie to scrub their dishes. Lonnie didn’t see that he had much choice, so he took the utensils down to the stream, and cleaned them. When he returned to the fire, Dupree ordered him to refill their coffee cups and to add a good portion of whiskey to each. The men were sitting on rocks and throwing playing cards down on the ground between them, calling, bluff, and raising.
Lonnie vaguely thought with an inward smirk that it would be nice if one of them drew a “Dead Man’s Hand.” He wasn’t sure what that was, exactly, but he knew it was a poker hand.
He added more wood to the fire, then sat back down with Casey. The men were getting drunker and talking louder, and the fire was burning loudly, too, so he figured they wouldn’t hear him and Casey conferring. Still, he kept his voice low as he asked, “How you holdin’ up?”
“I’m doin’ all right, Lonnie. How’re you doin’?”
“I’m all right. How’s your ankle?”
“It’s feelin’ better now. It’s not broke or nothin’. I just have to stay off it for a while. I reckon I’ll be doing that real soon, huh?” She’d dragged her voice out ironically, and gave Lonnie a droll look.
What she’d said and the way she’d said it struck Lonnie as funny, and he couldn’t help chuckling. That got Casey chuckling, then, too, and they both had to cover their mouths and hold their noses to keep from rolling out the loud guffaws.
Still, Dupree heard them, and he turned to scold them. “You two shut up over there. Go to sleep. I’ll be over to tie you up in a minute, so you don’t run off in the night.”
That sobered them, reminding them of the fix they were in.
They both sat back against the tree. A minute later, Casey slid her hand across the ground and closed it over Lonnie’s, and squeezed it. He squeezed hers back. When he looked at her, she was looking down at their entwined hands, her eyelids low. A couple of tears were dribbling down her cheeks, flashing in the umber firelight.
“It’ll be okay, Casey,” Lonnie said.
She didn’t say anything, but dipped her head a little and bit her upper lip as she continued to squeeze his hand.
Lonnie kept an eye on the outlaws’ rifles, but they were keeping the long guns close to them. Lonnie was beginning to think of a way he could get his hands on one later, after the outlaws had gone to sleep, when the three men began to confer amongst themselves in low, guttural tones. They seemed to be discussing something of gravity.
Dupree and Fuego glanced over at Lonnie, raked their drink-bright eyes across Casey, then Childress looked at Lonnie and said something to his partners.
Dupree threw his cards down, and rose with a grunt, saying, “No—it’s gotta be done. Might as well do it now as save it for the mornin’.”
Dupree stooped to fish around inside one of his saddlebags, pulling out a small coil of rope. Neither Childress nor Fuego said anything as Dupree staggered around the fire. Lonnie could smell the alcohol reek of the man as he stood over his two captives, his heavy shoulders rising and falling as he breathed.
The sick feeling in Lonnie’s belly got worse.
Dupree dropped to a knee and began rapping the rope around both of Casey’s ankles.
“Gonna tie you up, girl. You’ll be goin’ with us in the morning.”
Casey looked sharply at Lonnie.
“What do you mean ‘I’ am?” Casey asked, her shrill voice quaking with trepidation. “What about Lonnie?”
“Don’t got no more use for him. He’s about as useless as his mother.” As Dupree brusquely grabbed Casey’s arm and rolled her onto her belly, he gave Lonnie an evil smirk, adding, “God rest the stupid woman’s soul.”
Lonnie looked down at the pistol jutting up on Dupree’s left hip, the walnut handle angled back toward his belly. Lonnie’s heart started hiccupping and lurching every which way as he imagined making a grab for the pistol.
As Dupree began wrapping an end of the rope around Casey’s wrists, hog-tying the girl belly-down on the ground, Lonnie bounded up onto his feet and lurched forward, wrapping his hand around the big Colt on Dupree’s hip. The boy gave a loud grunt as he jerked the revolver free of the keeper thong and out of its holster.
Dupree cursed loudly and grabbed at the gun, almost tearing it from the boy’s grip before Lonnie jerked it back away from him. As he did, Dupree growled, “Why, you cussed little snip!” and grabbed for his second Colt holstered low on his right thigh.
Dupree’s hand was moving in a blur. He was fast. Too fast for Lonnie. The boy had no time to consider his actions, so he didn’t bother.
He merely ratcheted the Colt’s hammer back, took quick aim at the center of the outlaw’s broad chest, and fired.
CHAPTER 44
The pistol’s report sounded like a shotgun blast in the quiet night.
Smoke wafted in the air between Lonnie and Dupree, peppering the boy’s nose with the smell of cordite, making his eyes water.
Dupree froze, dipped his chin to look down in shock at his lower left side. His back was angled toward the fire, so Lonnie couldn’t see much of the man’s front, but he thought he saw a dark hole in the flap of the man’s sheepskin vest. Dupree stood a little to one side, and as Lonnie realized that his bullet must have plowed through the man’s vest and merely grazed the man’s left side—if he’d hit him where he’d thought he’d hit him, he wouldn’t still be living much less standing—Lonnie took another step back and cocked the Colt once more.
“Why, you little dung beetle!” Dupree bellowed, lurching for Lonnie and throwing his arms up as he thrust his left boot forward and sideways.
The boot swept Lonnie’s feet out under from him. As Lonnie became airborne, he inadvertently triggered the Colt straight up at the stars that glowed dully beyond the firelight.
“Lonnie!” Casey screamed as Lonnie’s old friend, the ground, came up to greet him once more without ceremony.
Again, Lonnie’s wind was pummeled from his battered lungs, and he lay on his side, legs scissored, groaning and trying with little success to suck air back into his chest. He looked at his right hand, which was thrown high over his head and lying against the ground. The Colt lay several feet beyond it, half buried in the finely churned dirt and pine needles.
Dupree was holding his hand against his side as he stepped over to Lonnie.
“No!” Casey cried from where she lay belly-down on the ground, wrists tied to her ankles behind her back.
“Kid, I thought this was gonna be hard for me,” Dupree savagely barked, bending at the waist to glower down at Lonnie still trying to suck a clean breath. “But it just got a whole lot easier.”
He slanted his Colt down at Lonnie, clicked back the hammer.
The gun barked. Only, it didn’t flash or stab flames toward Lonnie. And it hadn’t really so much barked as made a pinging noise, a
nd gave off a spark somewhere up near the cylinder.
“Ach!” Dupree yelped, tossed the gun away as though it were a hot potato.
Dupree grabbed the hand that had been holding the gun and looked at it with a curious mixture of outrage and befuddlement. “What the hell?” he yelled, lifting his head to cast his demon-eyed gaze into the woods behind Lonnie.
In the sudden silence that followed, a mild voice owning the soft twang of a Southern accent said, “Now, that ain’t no way to treat a young’un an’ you know it, sir.”
Both Fuego and Childress were standing. They both reached for their rifles at the same time. The pistol in the woods barked two more times.
In the periphery of Lonnie’s vision, he saw the flash of the flames in the darkness of the downslope trees, and he also saw, to his other side, both Fuego and Childress lose their hats. Each hat leaped off its owner’s head, one after the other, and flew back behind them in the darkness beyond the fire.
Losing their hats seemed to take all the sap out of the two outlaws’ demeanors. They left their rifles where they were, and tensed, stared fearfully across the fire and into the darkness beyond Lonnie and Dupree, who was still standing where he’d been standing before, clutching his hand to his belly and grunting painfully, grinding his jaws.
The strangely slow, mild voice rose again from the forest. “Anyone reaches for another shootin’ iron, they’re gonna acquire a third eye—one they can’t see out of—right quick. Now, ya’ll stay where you are so I can keep these old hog legs quiet.”
Boots crunched pine needles until the figure appeared at the edge of the firelight—a lanky gent whose clothes seemed to hang on his gaunt, bony frame. The battered and torn Confederate gray cavalry hat was tipped low over the craggy, severe-featured face that Lonnie had seen somewhere before, though he couldn’t remember exactly where. The stranger held not one pistol but two old-model, cap-and-ball pistols in his gloved hands. One pistol was aimed at Dupree, the other was angled in the general direction of Fuego and Childress.
The stranger looked down at Lonnie. “Son,” he said, “you got the galldarnedest worst luck of any shaver I ever known. Can you stand?”
“Can I what?” Lonnie said tightly, still unable to take a full breath.
“Can you stand? You know—get up and walk around? I’m thinkin’ you should do that if you can.” The man turned his head to one side and spat out a long stream of chaw onto a rock. “The girl, too—if’n she wants to ride out of here.”
The severe-featured face belonged to the old Confederate—at least, Lonnie figured he was in his forties or so, maybe even older—who’d saved Lonnie’s bacon back before the boy had reached Arapaho Creek.
Dupree winced against the pain in his bloody hand, and let his eyes bore into the lanky gent holding the old-model pistols on him. “You know who you’re messin’ with here, Grayback?”
“No,” the mild-voiced stranger said while Lonnie climbed to his feet. “But I gotta feelin’ you’re gonna tell me.”
“Shannon Dupree!” The tall, blond outlaw held out his bloody right hand clutched in the other one. “And it’s my hand you just shredded with that old horse pistol, Grayback!”
The bearded stranger’s severe brows drooped over his deep-set, dark-blue eyes, and he shook his head as he said, “Dupree, huh? Well, I do apologize. Don’t recollect the name. It’s a tall one, huh?”
“A hell of a lot taller than you, my soon-to-be-dead Rebel friend!”
“That’s no way to talk to a man bearin’ down on you. Now, I could understand you talkin’ that way if you was the one holdin’ the pistols, but you ain’t.” The Confederate glanced at Lonnie, who, standing, was still trying to drag a breath deep into his lungs. “Boy, I ain’t gettin’ any younger and neither is this night, and I got your horses waitin’, so I sure would appreciate it if you’d take that big-talkin’Yankee’s knife out of his boot and use it to cut that girl loose.”
Lonnie’s eyes brightened when he turned to regard the stranger. “You got our horses?”
The stranger gave a slow dip of his chin. Switching his gaze from Casey to Dupree, he pursed his lips and shook his head. “That’s no way to treat a girl, neither. Tyin’ her up such as that. What was you thinkin’, Yankee? You think she’s a calf for the brandin’? Why, I never seen the like! Boy, take his knife and cut her loose! Don’t worry—if he so much as twitches, I’ll give him a pill he can’t digest!”
Lonnie looked at the knife handle sticking up out of Dupree’s right boot. He crouched down and slipped the bowie knife out of the sheath sewn into the boot. Lonnie didn’t look at Dupree while he did, though he could feel the outlaw’s devil eyes boring into his back.
Knife in hand, Lonnie hurried over to Casey, and sawed through the ropes, freeing her wrists from her ankles. Casey rolled over, finging the ropes away with a grunt. Lonnie tossed away the knife, leaned down, and wrapped his right arm around Casey’s waist, helping the girl to her feet.
“You two young’uns head on back behind me. You’ll see your horses there with mine, ole Stonewall—the big cream. Steer clear of Stonewall, as he’ll tear your shirt, you get close, as he can smell Yankees from ten miles away!” The old Confederate chuckled at that. “Mount up and ride north along the bottom of that ravine. I’ll catch up to you as soon as I’ve made sure we won’t have no shadowers.”
Lonnie glanced once more at Dupree, who was eyeing him darkly, then Lonnie helped the girl into the trees. They headed downslope together. As they did, the General gave a bugling whinny, and Lonnie grinned broadly. The big buckskin had scented its owner, or maybe had heard his voice, and that had been the General’s vigorous greeting. Another whinny followed the General’s, and Lonnie saw the cream standing about ten feet away from where the General stood with Casey’s chestnut, about fifty yards down the slope.
The outlaws’ horses were tied straight south of the camp, up higher on the slope and nearer the rocks capping the ridge crest.
“Hey, you big chicken,” Lonnie greeted the buckskin, which gave its young rider a vaguely sheepish look and then bobbed its head unctuously. “Thanks for runnin’ out on me. I really appreciate that.”
Both the stallion and the roan were tied to one tree while the Confederate’s stallion, named after an opposing general, was tied to another tree several yards away. As Lonnie helped Casey up onto the chestnut’s back, he saw with relief that the second pair of saddlebags, containing the money, were still draped over the General’s back, where Lonnie had strapped them to his saddle skirt.
“Lonnie, do you know that man?” Casey asked as Lonnie untied their mounts.
“Seen him once before,” Lonnie said, tossing Casey her bridle reins. “Don’t ask me his name, but I reckon I’ve acquired a Confederate for a guardian angel. Don’t that beat all?”
“Well, its beats somethin’, anyway,” Casey said, glancing up the dark slope toward where the fire glowed amongst the tall, black pines.
As Lonnie stepped up onto the General’s back, he looked up the slope, as well. The old Confederate stood silhouetted against the firelight, just off its far right side. Lonnie could tell Dupree by the man’s considerable height. He could hear the Confederate talking, and then, as Lonnie turned General Sherman toward the downslope, he saw the Confederate’s gray shadow move away from the fire and toward the outlaws’ horses, which they’d tied to a picket line.
Lonnie let the General pick his own way down the slope. Casey’s chestnut clomped along behind, occasionally snorting and whickering. Both horses sensed the edginess of their riders. As Lonnie touched heels to the General’s flanks, urging more speed when they’d gained the bottom of the ravine, the boy jerked with a start as a pistol popped once, twice, three times.
“Git on!” he heard the old Confederate yell amidst the thudding of the outlaws’ horses’ hooves. “Git along there, you Yankee cayuses, or I’ll shoot you and leave you to the possums!”
The horses were jostling shadows against the side
of the slope, scattering as they headed straight for the bottom, dodging trees. There was one more pistol crack, and then a shrill, wild Rebel yell—“Heee-ee-yahhhh!”—vaulted over the still night that was as tense as a held breath.
That high-pitched, echoing yell caused the hair on the back of Lonnie’s neck to stand on end. He had a feeling he’d just heard what his father and so many other Yankees had heard and what had turned their knees to mush on so many Southern battlefields during the war. Behind Lonnie, the sound of fast-moving hooves rose quickly, and then, as Lonnie and Casey followed the creek meandering along the bottom of the ravine up and over a low divide, the old Confederate on the cream stallion he called Stonewall shot past them in a streak of gray lightning.
“Come on, young’uns!” he called. “We’s aburnin’ moonlight!”
“Lonnie?” Casey said, as they both put their horses into lopes down a broad, grassy hill, the large, silver moon quartering over them, silvering the forest on both sides of the meadow.
“What is it?” Lonnie asked, pulling his hat low over his forehead, so it wouldn’t blow off.
“Why do I have the feeling we just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire again?”
CHAPTER 45
Nearly an hour of hard riding later, through forest and over low divides and into this narrow canyon heavy with the smell of the creek running through it, and ferns and rich, green grass, Lonnie checked the General down.
The horse was silver with its own sweat lather. As Casey stopped the filly off Lonnie’s left stirrup, Lonnie stared through the trees at what appeared to be a cabin sitting about thirty yards back from the creek. The cabin was a black silhouette against the slope rising behind it, but the starlight reflecting off the tin chimney pipe poking up out of the hovel’s roof told Lonnie it was a cabin, all right.
Lonnie Gentry Page 17