“Now isn’t this a pretty spot,” James Shock said.
Pretty? It was like visiting a cemetery.
But I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t looked at him since we left the levee road and I didn’t look at him now. I sat away over on the wagon seat, as far away from him as I could get, and hunched and hugged myself and tried not to think what was going to happen.
He wasn’t James Never Jim Shock to me any more. He wasn’t a handsome, romantic, banjo-playing traveling man; he was just a peddler and a cold-souled, foul-mouthed killer, and I didn’t know how I ever could have believed he was a man to run away with and give my favors to. Shame made my face and neck flush hot. I
I kept remembering the way he’d talked and the look on his face when he found me in the wagon, as if I were a bratty child instead of a woman-as if he’d like nothing better than to paddle my backside, or do something even worse to me. His eyes-Lord, that cold, ugly stare! It wasn’t anything at all like the way his eyes had been in the common room last night. That James Shock had been a sham, a sweet-talking wolf in sheep’s clothing. This was the real James Shock, sitting next to me right now. And I was as purely scared of him as I’d been of anything in my whole life.
“This road just ended,” he said. “And I don’t see any other.”
I gestured without looking at him. “It runs through that motte of swamp oak down along the river, on the far side of the meeting house.”
“It better had. And it better lead where you say, back to the levee road.”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Well, that’s right, now, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have any reason to lie.”
“None at all. What…what are you going to do with me?”
He didn’t answer, just snapped the reins and clattered us across the meadow toward the meeting house. We were almost there, angling past the big empty shell, when he shifted around in a way that made me cast a quick glance in his direction. He was holding the reins in his left hand and he’d moved his right down and was pulling the tail of his coat back, reaching inside to his belt.
I don’t know how I knew he was about to draw his revolver, and what he intended to do with it, but I did know, all at once, and never mind that I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason for him to want to harm me. I just knew, with a certainty that made the hair on my scalp stand straight up, that he was planning to kill me as soon as he was sure of where that other road was.
I’d been scared before. Now I was terrified.
“Annabelle? You sure, now, the road starts in that motte of trees?”
I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried. And I didn’t dare sit there next to him a second longer. My only hope was to jump off the wagon and try to get away from him, and that was what I did, quick as a cat.
I landed all right on both feet, but then I lost my balance and sprawled headlong in the wet grass. Shock yelled something, but I didn’t listen to it. I rolled over and pulled my legs under me and lifted my skirts and ran as fast as I’d ever run, away from the wagon toward the meeting house.
The open doorway yawned ahead. I was almost there, almost safe…
And then-oh, God!-he started shooting at me.
T.J. Murdock
The first two shots sounded, faint and echoing in the morning stillness, when we were a few hundred rods from the camp. I pulled back hard on the reins; so did Nesbitt. The ghost buildings weren’t within sight yet, hidden behind a screen of trees ahead.
“Small caliber,” he said. “Handgun, not a rifle.”
“Christ!”
“Can’t be Shock. What would he be firing at?”
“Nobody else out here.”
“Hunters, shanty boaters?”
“Not this soon after a big storm.”
Another shot cracked.
My heart slammed and my mouth turned dry as dust. I kicked Kraft’s roan into a run, no longer mindful of the boggy ground. Nesbitt was right behind me. I had stopped caring what happened to me, but Annabelle…if anything happened to Annabelle…
James Shock
The little bitch had caught me by surprise, jumping off the wagon that way. I yanked Nell to a halt, dragged on the brake with my left hand, and drew the revolver with my right. I had it out quickly enough, while she was still running, but haste threw off my aim. The round missed wide, tearing splinters from the building wall. I steadied my arm and fired again just as she ducked through the doorway inside. I couldn’t tell if I’d hit her or not.
Cursing, I hauled the Greener out from under the seat and jumped down and ran over to the tumbledown building. By grab, I’d blow her damned head off when I caught her.
Annabelle Murdock
Hide!
But there was nowhere to hide in the meeting house. It was just one big room, with no partitions or cubbyholes and a section of the roof gone and a hole in the back wall where the fireplace had collapsed.
I couldn’t stay here. I had to get out quick and find some place else. The woods, one of the other cabins, any place where Shock wouldn’t find me. I wasn’t hurt, but I’d felt the heat of the second bullet on my cheek as it whizzed by. I was so scared I thought I might wet myself.
Enough daylight came in through the holes so that I could see well enough. There wasn’t anything on the uneven floor but weeds and animal droppings and pools of rain water. I stumbled across it to the jumble of fireplace stones, clambered and clawed my way over and through them to the opening in the wall. My foot slipped before I reached it and my knee knocked hard on one of the rocks.
And just as that happened, I heard a
Gasping, sobbing, I crawled over the rest of the stones and flung myself through the hole, tearing a long rip in the sleeve of my coat. My knee burned like fire, but I didn’t care as I scrambled to my feet. All I could think was- run!
Run, run, run!
Boone Nesbitt
Kraft’s roan was a better horse than the piebald and Murdock was ten rods ahead when we cleared the trees and Crucifixion River came into view. But I had only a peripheral look at the crumbling ghost camp and Shock’s wagon stopped in the open meadow. What caught and held my attention was the girl staggering across open ground between the shell of a large building and a cluster of decaying shacks squatting among the trees.
