Authors: Leaving Whiskey Bend
Releasing his hold on his brother’s tombstone, Eli grasped his father’s. The stone was equally hot, but he welcomed the pain, rubbing his fingers along the rough rock. Emotion welled yet again; while he wouldn’t have to repeat his entire tale, he had more than his share of apologies to make.
“I’m sorry that you and I never got along, Father,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry that you were disappointed in me.”
Like a thunderclap issuing from a cloudlessly blue sky, a sharp crack split the air and echoed off the trees and grave markers. Eli felt a hot, searing pain race the length of his right arm before the corner of his father’s tombstone exploded in a shower of stone and dust. He fell on his side, grasping his arm in pain, his fingers wet and sticky, his mind reeling and dizzy.
I’ve been shot!
H
EAT FAR HOTTER
than the summer day filled Eli’s arm. In the split second after the shot, the pain had been slight. But after that first moment, after the first beat of his heart, it engulfed him.
“Son of a bitch!” He winced as his fingers probed along his elbow, growing sticky with the blood that oozed from the wound. He couldn’t be certain, but he believed that the bullet had passed clean through the soft flesh in the underside of his right arm before crashing into his father’s marker. With every new touch, fresh shock waves of agony raced from his elbow to his shoulder and across his chest. The coppery smell of blood filled his nostrils.
From where he lay on his side in the scraggly grass, Eli tried to look around, to gain his bearings. Sighting through the rows of tombstones was difficult; it was as if he were peering through a broken set of teeth, each stump more rotten than the one before.
Who in the hell is out there? Who means to kill me?
Carefully, he raised his head and peered into the scraggly line of trees at the cemetery’s edge, in the direction from which he thought the shot had come. He hadn’t had time to focus on a single tree or scrub, let alone to find a gunman bent on murdering him, when another shot split the summer day, whizzing past his face and smashing into a weather-beaten tombstone inches behind his head. From equal parts fear and reflex, Eli fell back to the ground, pressing himself into the earth.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted, his anger rising as quickly as the pain. “Who the hell are you?”
No answer.
“Only a coward would shoot a man without showing himself!” he continued, hoping to shame his assailant into at least revealing his identity. “Only a yellow coward would do such a thing!”
Still no answer.
Eli strained to hear any sound over the incessant pounding in his ears. He lay as stock-still as he could manage, his wounded arm pressed tightly to his side, his ears cocked for any noise, hoping that the gunman would reveal himself; but he heard only the gentle rustling of the leaves in the trees.
He felt as defenseless as a newborn calf. While he’d often carried a gun when he’d been in the army, he hadn’t done so since. He and Hank went hunting with rifles in the woods near the ranch, but he’d never been the sort to go into town with a holstered pistol at his waist. If he had a gun with him, he could have defended himself— returned fire and, at the very least, made the other man think twice, worrying that he didn’t have an easy kill.
Now here I am, an unarmed, wounded man with my life hanging in the balance!
“Hell of a time for a mistake,” he muttered under his breath.
He had to move. To stay where he lay amid the tombstones was to court a certain death; he’d join Caleb at his father’s side, where all
three
of them would lie silent and without argument. Eventually, the shooter’s caution would run out and he would realize that Eli did not have a gun. At that moment, it would be a simple task for him to walk through the cemetery and put a bullet right in the middle of his chest.
If I want to live, I need to move!
It was too much for him to hope that the shots had been heard in Bison City; the town was too far away from the cemetery. Even if
someone had heard the gunshots, he’d believe that a hunter was roaming through the thickets looking for game. With every passing second, the pain in Eli’s arm grew in intensity like a raging fire, blazing out of control across his body. Isolated, the only person he had to depend upon was himself.
Once again, he tentatively raised his head, but this time looked in the other direction, the direction that offered him an escape. He only had a quick moment to scout a path into the woods before another shot cracked across the cemetery and imbedded itself into a wooden marker.
Had that shot come from closer range?
Eli couldn’t be certain, but it sounded as if the shot were nearer. He wondered if his adversary was moving closer, inching forward to finish him off. He didn’t dare pop up to look for fear of taking another bullet. If he were shot in the leg, if he were unable to get to his feet and run to safety, he was as good as dead.
He had fallen beneath the tombstones of his father and brother. Looking up at their names carved into stone, he felt the fire in his arm spreading to his gut, urging him to get to his feet and to run to save his life. Even as he stared at the reminders of their deaths, his family gave him the courage to fight.
So, too, did the thought of Hallie. He remembered the night that he had first met her along the banks of the swollen river, the chill that ran through his body whenever he was at her side, the passion of the kiss they had shared just the night before, but mostly he thought of the times still to come. To die here in the cemetery, to surrender himself to the mystery gunman, would deprive them both of what lay ahead, and that was something that he would not allow.
Screwing up his will, Eli readied himself to run. His breath caught hot in his throat, sweat poured from his skin, and his heart pounded as if it were a jackrabbit’s. Every second that he stayed there in the cemetery was one second longer for the gunman to find him.
“Move, damn it!” he urged himself. “Move!”
It pained him to move his arm, but he blocked it from his mind and sprang to his feet to race between the uneven tombstones, careful not to collide with one and topple back to the ground. Even though he was no more than twenty feet from the wrought-iron fence, it seemed miles of ground stretched before him. Still, on he ran.
From behind him, shots rang out. He held his breath, waiting for one of the bullets to collide with his back, his arms, or his legs; but instead they slammed into tombstones, or thudded into the earth and spit up dirt. One even clanged against the fence before him, sparks blazing into the sunlight. He strained to push himself faster for fear that the bullet with his name on it was yet to come.
“Keep going,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
He leaped over the fence, one boot touching the metal bar, but even as he landed awkwardly on the ground beyond, he held his balance and kept stride, racing for the tree line and the hoped-for safety beyond. The cracks of the pistol continued to come unrelentingly, now ripping into the trunks of the trees and bushes before him. His lungs began to ache from the exertion, but Eli never slowed for an instant, barreling ever forward.
Eli pressed on as he crashed into the deep underbrush that choked the space between two tall elms. The thick vines and ensnaring branches snatched his hat from his head, but he never thought of stopping to retrieve it even for an instant. Small thorns tore at his exposed flesh, but the pain was nothing compared to that of his wounded arm as it brushed against the snapping branches. He clenched his teeth tightly to keep from crying out.
Then, as quickly as he had entered the deep brush, he was through it and out into the open spaces of the woods. He dodged past tree trunks, leaped over fallen limbs that rotted on the forest carpet where they lay, and pushed himself until his arms and legs burned and he had to suck air into his heaving lungs. Still, he never stopped moving, fearfully certain that the gunman was right behind him, ready to finish him off.
Finally, the ache of pushing himself became too much and Eli darted behind a tree trunk and stopped, his heart deafeningly racing and his fists balled for whatever fight he might have left to give. He tried to listen for any sound—a footfall or a stick breaking that might give away his pursuer—but couldn’t hear past the rushing of his own blood.
He waited, waited, and then waited some more before taking a deep breath and looking out from where he hid into the forest. His eyes peered from tree to tree, bush to bush, and then back again for any sign of the gunman, but he could see none. Instants turned into seconds then into minutes but still he saw nothing—no movement, no assailant. Questions raced through his head as swiftly as the bullets that had been shot at him.
Who in the hell is after me?
Where has he gone?
Did he follow me into the woods or is he waiting for me to walk out of them?
Eli knew he had to get away. He had to get out of these woods, back to Bison City, and get himself and Hallie back to the ranch. He’d do it or die trying!
The smell of the man almost made Hallie sick. His clothes were stiff and unwashed, filthy with sweat and food and stinking with the sharp odor of tobacco that clung to him as if it were a blanket. His breath bore the tang of whiskey. Even the air around him seemed to exude rot. Held in place, unable to move an inch, she was afraid she would retch.
But mingled with the sharp smells of the man was that of her own making, the bitter odor of fear. Sweat ran in rivulets down the sides of her face and spine, matting her hair against her forehead. She felt smothered, oppressed with worry and despair that knotted her insides. Even in the heat of the mercantile, shivers raced across her skin.
“Keep your tongue, girly,” the man threatened, his scratchy voice little more than a whisper. “If’n you try to yell out, I’m just as likely to cut you from ear to ear as I am to look at ya! Listen to what I’m sayin’ and you might live to see another day.”
Even if she had wanted to do so, Hallie couldn’t have screamed for help, not with the man’s hand clamped down over her mouth like a vise. His hand was as rough as bark on a tree, scratching against her skin.
“Are ya gonna listen?”
Hallie quickly nodded her head.
“Then know that I’ve been a waitin’ here in this piss hole of a town for a hint of you or either of them other two bitches,” he began, his wet tongue licking her ear. She jerked her head away. “Waitin’ for one of you bitches to be stupid enough to show yer face and that’s exactly what you done.
“Chester ain’t the type that takes kindly to bein’ made the fool,” he kept on, giving name to the man who terrorized Hallie’s dreams.
All of my fears of being pursued have come true in an instant!
“He’s gonna be damn happy with ol’ Charlie here for bein’ the one to find you!”
Even as she listened to Charlie’s words, Hallie’s eyes looked furtively around the mercantile for someone to come to her aid. An elderly man stood not ten feet away, a tin of some sort only inches from his face as he peered at its label, his wrinkled forehead lined with concentration. Other than him, she couldn’t see a soul. She would even have been thankful for Fawn to return, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.
Hallie heard sounds coming from the street: the strong voices of the men greeting acquaintances, the pounding of horse’s hooves, and the creaking of wagon wheels. All the sounds were so close but still too far away to be of any help at all.
I am all alone with this monster!
“I wonder if Chester would mind if I did the deed myself.”
Hallie’s blood froze in her veins at the man’s words. Tears came to her eyes and ran down beside the sweat. She felt suffocated and so weak in the knees that they bent; the man’s hand yanked her upright and back into place.
“Don’t like that there idea, huh?” He chuckled into her ear, obviously pleased that his words had found their mark. “Don’t like thinkin’ about a knife slidin’ all easy like between your ribs, and you bleedin’ out onto the floor.”
Hallie was shaking, unable to control herself. She thought of Pearl and Mary and all the trouble they had already endured. That harm should come to them
now
, when they had traveled so far was a tragedy that threatened to overwhelm her.
But then she thought of Eli. In her mind’s eye, she could see his face just as plain as day. She remembered the joy that she had felt by his side only hours earlier, riding beside him in the wagon. She thought of their kiss again, the familiar waves rushing over her, giving her strength she didn’t know she had. No, she would not quit, not surrender to the fear this man inspired. Straightening her back, she managed to stifle her tears.
“Nah, I ain’t gonna be the one that does you in,” Charlie continued, unaware of the feelings running through his prey. “That’s somethin’ reserved for Chester alone. But no matter where you run, no matter what you do, it ain’t gonna make one goddamn difference in the end, you mark my words. He’s gonna gut you and them bitches just the same. Hell, he might even like it more if you run and make some sport of it.”
Fear gave way to anger in Hallie’s heart. She had been a victim long enough, longer than she could bear. This man wouldn’t shake her, wouldn’t make her cower in a corner. She was just about to fight, to scratch at his skin or to do anything to free herself, when he spoke again.
“Keep lookin’ over your shoulder, ’cause one day he’ll be there!”
With that, Hallie was shoved forward, losing her balance and falling hard on one knee. Pain shot up her leg but she ignored it, turning around quickly, ready to fend off another attack, but the man had already gone.
For a few moments, Hallie sat on the wooden floor, her mind racing over all that had happened.
Chester knows where we are!
Try as she might, she couldn’t escape that truth. As long as they remained in Bison City, as long as they stayed with the Morgans, their lives and those of all around them would be in danger.
But what can we do?
Mary’s condition was such that she couldn’t be moved.