No intruder in his right mind would ever enter a house where there was a nervous woman and a gun. The muscles along my shoulders felt as tight as the wires inside my old upright piano. Even though I held the gun with both hands, it jerked up and down in a spasmodic dance. Should I call out that I was armed and dangerous? I had a mental image of flinging open the door, squatting in a classic “gotcha covered” pose and yelling . . . yelling what? If someone was out there, did I want to hold him until help arrived or scare him away? I took one small step toward the door and rammed my foot against the rocker part of my mother’s rocking chair. Pain ricocheted through my big toe. I yelped and dropped the gun. It went off with a boom that vibrated through the house. Something thudded on the porch followed by a short scuffle; then, silence.
In that shocked quiet after the gunshot, my mother clattered down the stairs. “Darcy! What happened? Did someone shoot at you?”
I pointed to my gun lying on the floor by the door. “No, I thought I heard someone outside and then I whacked your rocking chair and dropped the gun and it went off.”
She grabbed my arm. “Someone outside? Are you sure? You could have been killed, Darcy, by your own gun. Oh, for goodness sake! Thank the Lord you’re safe.”
“No, Mom! Don’t do—”
Too late. She unlocked the door, flung it open, and flicked on the porch light. Nothing moved in the yellow light. No shadows crowded in from the darkness.
She pointed to an empty flowerpot which rolled against a porch post as the wind moved it. “There’s your prowler, Darcy. And I don’t think it is dangerous at all.”
I pushed the door closed, re-locked it, and sank down on the floor. My legs wouldn’t support me any longer. Okay, maybe there was no one on the porch. But what had Jethro sensed? Would something as innocent as a windblown flowerpot cause that terror-stricken stare?
And would I ever feel safe again?
Chapter 17
What little sleep I got the rest of that fractured night came in snatches, punctuated by dreams of being chased by faceless intruders. By 5 a.m., I could stand no more nightmares. I dragged myself out of bed, slipped into my jeans and a red T-shirt, and staggered downstairs to plug in the old yellow coffee pot. By the time I had washed my face, brushed my hair, and fed Jethro, dawn was a faint glimmer in the east.
Surely, if there had been someone outside our house, the gunshot had scared him away. Yet, as I stepped onto the back porch, a feeling of fear met me. Overwrought nerves again? Drat that Jim Clendon! I found myself second-guessing every emotion, wondering if my nerves were playing tricks on me. Did I hear or only feel something stirring? The world still lay in pre-dawn grayness although the eastern sky promised the sun was back there somewhere, waiting to slip above the horizon.
The air felt odd, heavy, and damp as I took a deep breath and tried to banish the jitters.
Wispy clouds in the west shone a little lighter than the rest of the sky. Were they harbingers of one of Oklahoma’s infamous tornadoes? But it really wasn’t warm enough for that. Maybe the woods were on fire farther south. Even though the smoke was not visible, it sometimes added a thickness to the air. I sniffed. No, I couldn’t smell wood smoke. Somehow, though, the morning felt different. Perhaps it was the leftover dregs of my scare last night. Or maybe it was all in my sleep-deprived brain, my overwrought brain.
Mom had apparently not slept well either. She came out of the house behind me and sniffed. “Thought I smelled smoke. You are up early, too. I tell you, Darcy, I don’t know what to think about the noise you heard last night. I don’t know if all that excitement or this oppressive feeling in the air is what kept me awake.”
I turned to kiss her cheek, but she was frowning and squinting toward the west. “You think a tornado’s brewing?”
We lived right in Tornado Alley where some of the nation’s most vicious storms arrived regularly, especially in the spring and fall. I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
She voiced my own appraisal. “Somehow it just doesn’t feel like tornado weather.”
Something moved in the pasture on the north side of our house. Our neighbor’s mule lived there and recently two saddle horses had arrived to keep him company. The horses trotted to the fence and whinnied softly to us then suddenly wheeled and tore across the field, heads up and tails streaming behind them, as though a pack of wolves were in hot pursuit. The mule trotted out to meet them and split the morning with his raucous bray.
“What’s got into them?” Mom asked.
“Oh! I’ll bet that panther is around. He must be scaring them!”
Mom groaned. “Oh, no. I forgot to call the neighbors to warn them to keep an eye on their livestock.”
As we watched, the horses reached the corner of the pasture near the woods and ran straight toward the barbed wire fence, skidding to a stop in the nick of time. They reared and squealed, then raced on down the fence line toward their barn.
“I don’t know. They seem to be really scared. Maybe that wildcat caught a calf or jumped onto one of the horses.”
We went down the steps and around the corner of the house to watch such strange behavior on the part of these usually gentle animals. Still squealing, the horses and mule ran into their barn and immediately began to kick the sides of the wooden structure. A loud crash came from the far side of the building.
Mom grabbed my arm and pointed. “Look at that, Darcy.” Three deer shot out of the woods behind the back pasture and headed toward our garden fence. Deer were common along the river and in the woods behind the pasture, but they didn’t usually stray from the cover of trees during the day. This bunch, however, ran with their heads up, white tails flagging an alarm. They sailed over the garden fences with room to spare, one after the other, then flashed across the road and into the brush beyond. A big doe, fifty feet behind the others, tried to jump the fence, stumbled and fell on the rough garden area. She righted herself, bolted across the garden, sprang over the outside fence, and charged directly toward the road at the front of the house. She did not seem to see the truck headlights that beamed down the road leading to Levi.
Mom grabbed my arm. “My lands! That truck’s going to hit that poor thing for sure!”
But the driver saw the doe in time and veered toward the ditch, barely missing her.
“I’ve never seen deer or horses act so crazy for no reason,” Mom said. “It must be the panther but I don’t know where it is. I certainly haven’t seen it.”
Looking back in the direction from which the deer had come, I couldn’t see anything unusual. And neither Mom nor I had heard the panther’s spine-chilling scream.
The doe tumbled into the brush, and the lumber truck pulled back onto the road and kept going. One second the truck’s headlights beamed a straight path through the murky morning; the next, they jiggled up and down like the scenes in an old movie.
Far back in the woods, a cracking sound began and grew into a roar. The trees in the yard shivered as if they felt a sudden chill.
The ground shuddered beneath our feet. Everything around us shook as though a high wind were striking the area. Behind the house, something banged and crashed. Glass rattled and splintered with the tinkle of a thousand icicles.
Mom gasped and wheeled back to the porch. She slipped and landed hard on one knee. “It’s another earthquake! We better get inside before it gets worse!”
I dropped down beside her and grabbed her arm. “No, we are better off in the open. Your poor knee, Mom. It’s bleeding.”
I had an unreal feeling of déjà vu. That first quake must have been a preview of the coming attraction because this one was a doozy. I heard Mom whispering, “Heavenly Father, protect us . . . .”
The trembling lasted for perhaps a minute. I hadn’t realized I had closed my eyes until it was over. I opened one eye at a time, fully expecting to see our house in shambles. But the home that had stood for a hundred years still appeared intact so far as I could see in the growing light of morning. A fi
lmy cloud drifted over the tops of the trees in the back pasture. Smoke? Dust? Whatever it was, I hoped it didn’t signify disaster.
Mom struggled to get to her feet. “I’ve got to take a look around and see how much damage has been done.”
“Let’s wait just a little longer. Sometimes aftershocks immediately follow a quake like this.”
For another five minutes, we sat on the ground, expecting to feel the shaking again. An eerie quiet settled over everything but the earth remained still and solid. As the sky lightened further, we could see a large tree near the corner of our property lying partly in the road. The big corner fence post leaned toward us, kept from falling only by the wire nailed to it.
My voice sounded as shaky as I felt. “I wonder what happened to the truck we saw heading toward town?”
Cautiously, we got to our feet. Mom gingerly touched her knee. “Do you reckon anything inside the house is broken?”
“Well, things look pretty normal from here, but let’s walk around the outside first and . . . oh, no!”
The house had originally been built with a big chimney on the side that ran up both levels of the structure and extended about six feet above the roof to allow escaping embers from the upstairs fireplace to cool before falling onto the flammable roof. But now, instead of the tall red brick four-foot square chimney, there was only a jagged stump. In the growing light I could see a few loose bricks lying across the shingles. Several large chunks of red brick were scattered in the yard, twenty feet from the side of the house. The mortar was old and had obviously crumbled, so most of the bricks had broken apart before falling to the ground. A crack ran down one side of the stump that was left intact. A huge chunk had broken off and fallen in against the other side, sending two slabs plummeting to the ground. Several small pieces of brick and mortar lay scattered across the yard.
A few steps closer we got an even bigger shock. A pair of jeans-clad legs stuck out from under the biggest chunks. The jeans ended above tan western boots. One foot pointed at the sky, the other pointed downward.
Chapter 18
My mother dropped to her knees. “Oh my Lord, Darcy.” She grabbed my arm with fingers that felt like steel bands. “There’s a man under there. Our chimney fell on somebody. Who is it? What was he doing here? We’ve got to get him out from under that thing and to the hospital.”
Surely Mom and I were caught in some sort of a dream from which we’d soon awaken. The downed tree, the toppled chimney, and now the partially hidden man under a pile of bricks seemed like last night’s nightmares merging with reality. I knelt beside my mother.
“Yes, we need to get him out and we’ll have to have some help to do that, but I really don’t think there’s anything a doctor could do for him.”
The upper half of the body lay hidden under the broken chimney. There was no way two women could lift that pile of bricks.
Surprisingly, the cell phone in my pocket worked and my numb fingers punched in 911. Even more surprisingly, after only two rings, a gravelly voice answered. Roy Peel, Mom’s neighbor who owned all kinds of farm equipment, was manning the phone.
“Roy, we’ve got an emergency here. Our chimney fell on somebody; I don’t know who, and we can’t move the bricks and stuff off him. We need an ambulance and probably we need Grant, too. Hurry, please.”
“Right. Help is on the way, Darcy, but it may take a while for the sheriff to get there. That quake might have downed some trees across the road.”
Mom looked up at me as I ended the phone conversation. “Darcy, go check in the house. I’ll stay here beside this poor soul. I couldn’t make it inside anyway; my legs are too shaky.”
My legs weren’t in the best working order either and my hand, as I patted her shoulder, shook like the oak leaves above us. “I’ll hurry, Mom.”
I dreaded what I might find inside. Another dead body? Had the house been damaged to the point that it would topple over on us? Astonishingly, except for minor damage, everything in the house seemed to be okay and no one else, alive or dead, was in sight. Some small glasses in the china cabinet lay in shards on the floor and the big Monet print of spring violets that had hung in the dining room for years lay face down on the table. The quake had tumbled cans of food onto the floor but these things were the only visible damages. Possible structural harm to the interior walls, plumbing, and heating, would have to wait for a more experienced eye than mine.
I ran back to the yard. Mom still sat beside the pile of bricks and mortar. My nerves were jumping so that I could not sit still so I began picking up and tossing broken bricks and glass out of the path leading to the front gate.
“I hear them coming,” Mom said. A distant wail grew closer. The ambulance stopped in front of the gate, its siren moaning into silence. Two EMTs hopped out and hurried toward my mother and the body. They looked at the debris covering the victim. Ted Everett, one of the attendants, turned toward me. “More help is on the way. There’s a lot of junk on this poor devil. You got any idea who he might be?”
Mom and I both shook our heads.
A county truck equipped with a winch and two burly men screeched to a halt behind the ambulance. The taller man shook his head. “Terrible thing. Here, Joe, back right up to the fence and lower that cable. We’ll have him uncovered in no time.”
“Not that it’ll do much good,” Joe muttered.
In less than three minutes, the cable was lowered, the huge hook latched onto the largest chunk of mortar, and the powerful winch motor whirred. Just as the slab was about to be raised, a white Ford Ranger pulled in behind the tow truck. Grant and Jim Clendon sprang out.
Grant took in the scene and turned to me. “Was this person a visitor? Somebody who was coming or going? Or did you even know he was anywhere around?
I shook my head. “We had no idea, Grant. We just found him after the quake.” I felt my stomach clench.
“Are you and Miss Flora okay?”
“Yes, Grant, but that man . . . .”
He gave my shoulder a brief pat and watched as the cable slowly lifted the chunk of our chimney off the person on the ground.
I turned my back on the scene and covered my face with my hands. Thankfully, Mom had moved to the corner of the yard and faced away from that prone figure. She had no desire to see what lay under the debris and neither did I.
Grant spoke gently. “I’m sorry to ask this, Darcy, and I am pretty sure about who he is, but I want you to look at this fellow and tell me whether you know him.”
He kept his arm around my shoulders as he led me up to the poor man on the ground. I took a deep breath and looked. His head had been turned to the right when the chimney fell and now his face was toward me. His hair was dark, his nose was long, and there was a scar just above his left eyebrow. There was no doubt I had seen this man before—in a courtroom in Dallas, during a trial in which I had provided photographic evidence. Was he the noise I had heard last night? Had he been in our yard all night or had he left, scared away by my gun and come back this morning? I would probably never know. It looked like he had been out for revenge. There was one thing I did know: the sad story that began in Dallas had ended here with Rusty Lang dead at my feet, a lethal-looking rifle beside him.
Chapter 19
In thirty seconds the EMT’s confirmed my first impression that nothing could be done for the man on the ground. “He died when the first big chunk from the chimney hit him,” Ted Everett said.
Then Everett turned to Grant. “We’ll finish up our report and get out of here, but I guess you’ll want to leave the body until the medical examiner arrives?”
Grant nodded. “Yes. I’ve already contacted the morgue.”
My mother made a choking sound and stumbled toward me. “Oh, Darcy. If that quake hadn’t happened when it did . . . .” Unable to continue, she began to cry. “That man, that Rusty Lang, had a rifle. Do you think he meant to shoot you? The earthquake broke our chimney, but it looks like it saved our lives and at the same time, killed
that poor soul there.” Mom’s eyes were wide and she was pale and trembling, obviously near collapse.
Everett cleared his throat. “Maybe we ought to take a look at you two ladies. Sometimes a person gets hurt in a disaster like this and doesn’t realize it until after things have calmed down.”
Over Mom’s head, I nodded at Ted Everett. “It might be a good idea if you took a quick look at her. She stumbled and fell on one knee when the quake first started and I’m afraid her blood pressure is going to be sky-high.”
As Everett reached for his medical bag, I took Mom’s arm, then he and I led her toward the wide front porch and lowered her to the first step.
Grant pulled his cell phone from his belt, punched in a number, and spoke quietly. Putting his arm around my shoulders, he drew me close. “I’m thankful to the good Lord that my two favorite women are not harmed. Yes, Lang must have been out to get you. What other reason could he have for being here with a gun? A close call but that’s all it was. He won’t be a threat any longer.”
Amazing how good it felt to lean against Grant with his strong arm around me. For a few seconds, I closed my eyes and tried to block out the horror of the morning.
Joe worked the hook off the fallen slab of bricks and signaled the truck driver to re-wind.
“Sheriff, if you won’t be needing us any longer, we’d better be getting back. I’m betting we’ll have more work than we can handle today,” he said.
Grant nodded. “Yes, I’m sure you will, but the last word I got was that the damage wasn’t as extensive as it could have been.” His gaze swept up and down the jagged pile of bricks. “I’m a little surprised there wasn’t more harm done to Miss Flora’s house considering the way this chimney cracked wide open.”
Jim Clendon squinted up at the roof. “Maybe the chimney was already cracked from that first quake. And anyhow, it was old and the mortar was most likely brittle and didn’t need much shaking to break.”
The Darcy & Flora Boxed Set Page 26