Then the voices, harsh male voices on the witch's wind down from the mountains.
Coming up the hill-
Looking for me.
"Here's a well!" somebody shouted.
They would find the cover off and put a torch down into the darkness and find me.
"The hell with the well! Look over there in that stand of jack pines."
This was Ev Hollister's voice. He was leading his own posse.
I went lower and lower in case they came back and looked down the well. They wouldn't have much trouble finding me, if they wanted to look. It was a very shallow well.
The heels of my boots touched water.
I stopped my descent, just hung there listening to the voices of the posse fade in and out on the wind.
Obviously they'd given up; the voices were moving back down the hill, in the direction of the house.
I just kept thinking of that word I'd been so afraid to say the past couple of days…
I felt the top of the money sack.
I grasped it and began to pull it up and-
The rope started to give at the very top.
Even as I hung there, I could feel it begin to fray and weaken.
In a moment I would be dropped into the water and entombed forever… terrible fever pictures came to me. I would be prisoner down here forever, till I was only white bones for greasy black snakes to wind in and out of, and for the rats to perch on as, crimson-eyed, they surveyed the well… I felt as if I was suffocating.
Distant starlight in the midnight sky was my only guide now.
I stabbed my heels against the shale walls of the well. Propped up this way, I could at least keep from being pitched into the water.
With one hand dredging up the money sack, and my boot heels digging into the wall…
I started to climb.
All I could hope was that Hollister and his men would be gone by the time I reached the top.
I just kept looking straight up at the bright indifferent stars above. In prison I'd read about how many worlds our stars shine on, so many that our little world hardly matters at all.
Even with everybody on our planet screaming, nobody in the universe could hear us anyway…
I knew I was getting sicker all the while, my mind fixing on things like astronomy, my bones and joints aching so bad I could hardly keep a grip on the rope or the sack.
And every few feet the rope would fray a little more and I would feel the tug and jerk as it threatened to tear apart completely…
But I kept on climbing.
I have no idea how long it took me.
By the time I reached the top, I was gasping for breath.
I threw the bag over the top of the well first. It landed on the frosty earth with a satisfying thump.
And then I wrapped both hands in the rope and climbed the rest of the way up, cutting my hands on hemp and jagged rock alike, till hot blood flowed from my palms.
But I didn't care…
I lay for long minutes on the hard cold earth. The chill air felt cool and cleansing on my fevered skin.
I got to my feet, grabbed the money sack, and started walking back up the hill.
Beyond the hill were Gillian and Annie…
When I reached the other side, I swung wide eastward, so I could come up behind a copse of jack pines. From here I could see the front of the cabin clearly… yet I was so well-hidden that nobody could see me.
Five riders with torches sat horses. The wind-whipped flames made the faces of the men look like burnished masks.
There was a sixth horse, its saddle empty, standing ground-tied. Where was its rider?
Gillian stood in the doorway-Annie clinging to her like a very small child-talking to the men.
Suddenly a man came from the cabin. He was toting a Winchester. He'd obviously been searching the place, seeing if I was hiding there.
It was Hollister. He got back up on his horse.
There was more talk between the men and Gillian, the words lost in the midnight wind.
And then they left. Abruptly. Just turned their horses and headed westward, the light from their torches diminishing as they reached the edge of the great forest, where they likely thought I'd gone.
Gillian and Annie stood outside the cabin for long moments watching the men disappear into the great pines.
And then, just as I was about to call out for Gillian, I felt the darkness overwhelm me again, felt all my strength go and my body begin to sink to the ground.
Once again I slept…
31
The prison dreams came again… watching the teenager drown as the old con held him under… listening to the screams of the men as whips lashed their backs… seeing a wolf silhouetted against the full golden moon as he stood on the hill overlooking the prison…
Even in sleep my teeth chattered from the cold of my skin and baked in the heat of my insides.
I wanted Gillian… I wanted Annie…
And then the scream.
At first I counted it as part of my nightmares. Only when its intensity and pitch were sustained did I realize that it was Annie screaming.
I crawled to my feet, covered with pine, so dry I could barely part my lips. I felt at my side for my.45. Still there.
Annie kept on screaming.
I staggered across the clearing.
The cabin was dark but the front door was flung wide, and there in the doorway I saw him crouching-
The wolf.
His yellow eyes gleamed and across his face were dark damp streaks of blood.
I tried to understand what had gone on here…
Reeves had come here to get the money and had brought his wolf along with him.
He growled but moved cautiously away so I could go inside.
I went into the cabin.
And saw Annie at the entrance to our bedroom door.
Her flannel gown had been shredded by wolf claws, and she lay bloody and unconscious, half propped up against the door frame, her golden hair darkened by splashes of her own blood.
I stumbled toward her, paying no attention to the snarl and growl of the wolf behind me. I reached the door and looked in on the bed and there-
Gillian had not been so lucky. She had been eviscerated.
The wolf had ripped most of her clothes off and had then torn open her throat and stomach.
I struggled toward her, fell next to her on the bed, felt for a pulse I knew my fingers would never feel.
Gillian-
She looked like a fawn that had been attacked by a ravenous predator, and when I put my fingers to her lips… she was already getting cold. I must have been out longer than I realized.
I took out my.45 and went over to Annie.
Beneath her bloody flesh I felt a pulse in both neck and wrist, and I snatched her up like an infant and carried her in the crook of my left arm.
I kept my right hand free to use the gun.
The gray lobo still crouched in the front doorway. A growl rumbling up its chest and throat. Waiting for me.
I raised my.45, sighted, began to squeeze the trigger, and-
He sprang.
He was so heavy yet so fast that he knocked my gun away before I could shoot accurately.
Two, three shots went wild in the darkness, the flame red-yellow in the shadows.
And then the wolf was on top of me, Annie having rolled out of my grasp as I was knocked to the floor.
He was all muscle beneath the blood-soaked gray fur, all madness in yellow eyes and blood-dripping mouth.
All I knew was to protect my throat. Once his teeth or claws reached it…
I rolled left and right, right and left, trying to keep him off balance until I could roll away from him completely.
By now I was beyond pain, he had ripped and bitten me so often, first across the forehead and then across the chest, and then across the belly, heat and saliva and urgent, pounding body slamming into me again and again.
And finally I started to feel myself give up. No more strength; maybe not even any more determination. Too much pain and weakness. Overwhelming…
And then I heard, as if I were unconscious and dreaming again, a terrified but very angry voice saying, "Leave my daddy alone! Leave my daddy alone!" She was awake now, and had found my.45, which she held up with surprising confidence.
And then there were two huge booming shots in the gloom, and the sudden cry of a wolf seriously wounded, and then the cry of a young child as she collapsed again to the floor.
The wolf, shocked, bleeding badly already from the bullets in his chest and stomach-the wolf began to crawl out the front door, crying so sadly even I felt a moment of sorrow for it.
I slowly got to my feet and crawled over to Annie.
I took her to me and held her, and at first I couldn't tell if the crying was hers or mine.
"I'm sorry I brought all this on, Annie," I said, "your mother was right. I shouldn't have tried to get Reeves."
But she was unconscious in my arms, and my words were wasted.
And then I heard the wet snort of a horse near the front door.
I lay Annie down carefully, grabbed my.45 and ran to the doorway.
In the moonlit grass before the door, Reeves knelt next to the wounded wolf, stroking the animal as it crouched, growling, at the sight of me.
To Reeves's left his horse stood waiting for him. And then-
Reeves brought his right hand up-
I barely had time to duck back inside before the bullet tore away an inch of wood from the door frame.
Two more shots, quickly. And then silence.
Before I could crawl back to the door frame, I heard Reeves swing up on his horse-saddle leather creaking-and start to ride away.
By the time I reached the door frame and steadied my hand enough to squeeze off some shots, Reeves was fast becoming a silhouette on the hill-fast-retreating horse and rider with the gray lobo running alongside.
I fired twice but only to sate my rage. From this distance, I had no hope of hitting him.
I forced myself to ladle up some water for Annie. The mere smell of it still nauseated me.
I got her on the floor in the kitchen, dragged out a blanket, and propped her head up on a pillow I'd taken from the back of the rocking chair.
Every few moments I felt her wrist for a pulse. I had to keep reassuring myself that she was alive.
I raised her head and gave her water. Her eyes fluttered open but remained so only briefly.
I was just starting to examine her wounds when I heard, on the distant hill, the sound of a rider coming fast.
Reeves. Come back for the fight that was inevitable.
I kissed Annie on the forehead and then grabbed my gun and moved to the doorway, keeping to the shadows so he couldn't see me.
As I leaned against the wall, waiting for him, I heard Annie moan. She needed a doctor, and quickly. After I finished Reeves…
The rider stopped short a few hundred feet from the cabin. Eased off his saddle. Ground-tied his beast. Grabbed his carbine from the scabbard. Crouched and started moving toward the cabin. All this in black silhouette against the silver moonlight.
Pain and my sickness were taking their toll on my eyesight again.
Not until the rider was very close to the door, just now getting his carbine ready, did I realize it was not Reeves at all, but Hollister, who must have doubled back and let the rest of the posse continue on. Good lawman that he was, he'd known that I couldn't leave without seeing Gillian and Annie one more time.
Now I knew how I'd get Annie taken care of.
I pressed back against the wall and let Hollister come through the door. Soft jingle of spur, faint creak of holster leather, hard quick rasp of tobacco lungs, scent of cold wind on his dark uniform.
He got four steps in and saw Annie where I'd rested her on the floor and then said, "My God!"
And set his carbine down on the kitchen table.
And rushed to little Annie. And knelt beside her. And lifted her head gently and tenderly upward so that he could see her face better. He no longer cared about his own safety-he knew I could be hiding anywhere in the cabin, but he didn't care. His overwhelming concern was Annie.
It's a funny thing about a man, how he can be crooked the way Hollister was with his prisoners when he was drunk, but be absolutely straight otherwise. Despite the animal he sometimes became in that little locked room of his in the police station, he held in his heart love and pity and duty, and I was watching all three at work now.
He rested Annie's head again and then started to stand up.
I stepped from the shadows, put my.45 on him.
"I want you to take her to the doc. Reeves brought his wolf out here. The wolf has rabies." I paused, wondering if I could actually say it out loud. "And so do I."
"Rabies!" he said. "You sure about that?"
"Yeah, I'm sure. That's why I've been so sick the last few days. One day I went out to Reeves' and the wolf bit me. There's a shot the doc can give her. You need to get her there now, and fast."
"But what about you? Won't you need the shot?"
"It's too late for me. All I'm worried about is Annie here."
We stood in the shifting darkness of the big front room, wind like ghosts whistling through the front door, fire guttering in the far grate.