Blaze gathered up the scattered bills. He stuffed them into his pockets with fingers that had no feeling in them. George was panting. He sounded like a dog on a hot day.
“George, let me pull it out —”
“No, you crazy? It’s holding my guts in. Carry me, Blaze.
Blaze picked George up in his arms and George screamed again. Blood dripped onto the blanket and onto Ryder’s shiny black hair. Under the shirt, George’s belly felt as hard as a board. Blaze carried him across the warehouse and then outside.
“No,” George said. “You forgot the bread. You never got any goddam bread.” Blaze thought maybe George was talking about the swag and he started to say he had it, when George said: “And the salami.” He was beginning to breathe very rapidly. “I got that book, you know.”
“That book with the picture of —” But then George began to choke on his own blood. Blaze turned him over and whammed him on the back. It was all he could think of to do. But when he turned George over again, George was dead.
Blaze laid him on the boards outside the warehouse. He backed away. Then he crept forward again and closed George’s eyes. He backed away a second time, then crept forward again and knelt. “George?”
No answer.
“You dead, George?”
No answer.
Blaze ran all the way to the car and got in and threw himself behind the wheel. He screamed away, peeling rubber for twenty feet.
“Slow down,” George said from the back seat.
“George?”
“Slow
Blaze slowed down. “George! Come on up front! Climb over! Wait, I’ll pull over.”
“No,” George said. “I like it back here.”
“George?”
“What?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Snatch the kid,” George said. “Just like we planned.”
Chapter 23
WHEN BLAZE BLUNDERED out of the little cave and got his feet under him, he had no idea how many men were out there. Dozens, he supposed. It didn’t matter. George’s pistol fell out of the waistband of his pants and that didn’t matter, either. He trod it deep into the snow as he charged the first guy he saw. The guy was lying in the snow a little distance away, resting on his elbows and holding a gun in both hands.
“Hands up, Blaisdell! Stay still!” Granger shouted.
Blaze leaped at him.
Granger had time to fire twice. The first shot creased Blaze’s forearm. The second plugged nothing but snowstorm. Then Blaze crashed all two hundred and seventy pounds into the guy who had hurt Joe, and Granger’s weapon went flying. Granger screamed as the bones of his broken leg grated together.
“You hit the kid!” Blaze yelled into Granger’s terrified face. His fingers found Granger’s throat. “You hit the kid, you stupid sonofabitch, you hit the kid, you hit the kid, you hit the kid!”
Granger’s head was flopping and nodding now, as if to say he understood, he was getting the message. His face had gone purple. His eyes bulged from their sockets.
Blaze stopped choking the guy and looked around. No one in sight. The woods were silent except for the wind and the faint hissing noise the snow made as it fell.
No, there
Blaze ran back up the embankment to the cave. Joe was rolling around, wailing and clutching at the air. The flying chip of rock had done more damage than the fall from the cradle; his cheek was covered in blood.
“God
He picked Joe up, wiped his cheek, slipped him into the envelope of blankets again, and stuck his cap back over the baby’s head. Joe whooped and screamed.
“We gotta run now, George,” Blaze said. “Full-out run. Right?”
No answer.
Blaze backed out of the cave holding the baby to his chest, turned into the wind, and fled toward the logging road.
“Where did Corliss leave him?” Sterling panted at Franklin. The men had paused at the edge of the woods,
