Longarm had scattered the chunks of rotten wood he'd cut away and torn from the hole in the log, and there was enough litter on the forest floor that he hoped the signs of what he had done would not be too readily apparent.
'What do you mean he's not there?' came another voice. 'The star-packin' bastard's got to be there! We saw him run behind that deadfall, and he never came out!'
'I don't care, he's gone.'
The hollowed-out passage inside the log suddenly narrowed down, and Longarm felt his shoulders pinched. No matter how hard he shoved with his toes, he couldn't make any progress. What if he got stuck in here? That was a chilling thought.
His face was bathed in sweat as he pushed himself backward a few inches. Exploring with his hands, he found the place where the tunnel grew smaller. His fingers dug into the rotten wood and tore pieces of it away. Worms were burrowing there, and his fingers grew slick with the juices of the ones he crushed. At the moment, he didn't care. If some worm guts helped him ease his way through the narrow passage, then he was glad for the sacrifice they were making in his behalf.
He pushed forward again. For a second he thought his shoulders were going to stick again, but then they slipped through. His hips were smaller, and they cleared the bottleneck easily.
'Shit! I can't figure this out. You sure he didn't get past you, Durkin?'
'Damn right he didn't get past me! What do you take me for, Avery, a fool?'
'Keep your suspenders on! Hell, I didn't mean no offense. It's just that I know the boss wanted this badge- totin' sidewinder dead, and we were supposed to go along when the rest of the boys hit that lumber camp too.'
'We'll be done here in plenty of time for the raid. I know that jasper was wounded--I saw the blood on his shirt when he fell off his horse. He can't have gotten very far. We just have to find him.'
The words 'raid' and 'lumber camp' echoed in Longarm's head with a sound just as hollow as this tree he was crawling through. Whoever these bushwhackers were, no matter what the identity of the mysterious boss they worked for, one thing was crystal clear to Longarm. There was going to be an attack on the Mcentire lumber camp--and that would likely mean that Aurora's life would be in danger.
Now more than ever, it was vitally important for him to get out of there. He wasn't sure when the raid was planned, but the men he had heard talking had sounded as if it wasn't too far off. He had to get away from these men and make it to the camp so that he could warn Aurora of the impending attack.
Suddenly, there was a thump behind him. Someone had struck the log with a gun butt, or a clenched fist, or something. What it was didn't really matter. What was important was the echo that resounded from inside the fallen tree.
Longarm pushed himself harder, faster. The seconds were slipping away.
'Hey! This tree's hollow. You don't think-'
'Son of a bitch! He's inside the tree!' Time was up.
CHAPTER 8
Longarm wasn't far from the end of the tree now, and this was where the disease had been the worst, where the wood was the most rotten. He pushed himself onto hands and knees, arching his injured back against the trunk. Pain washed through him, a red-tinged agony that might have made him pass out had his effort not been fueled by desperation. With a splintering sound that he hoped was from the tree, he emerged with pieces of rotten wood showering around him.
Dizzy from the pain, he threw himself to the side as guns began to bang. The shots came from the other end of the tree, however, where he had crawled into it. He twisted, catching his balance, and yanked his Colt from the cross-draw rig. Firing as much from instinct as anything else, he snapped a couple of shots toward the bushwhackers, and was rewarded by the sight of one of the men doubling over and collapsing. Longarm stumbled toward the trees.
The edge of the pine forest was only a few feet away here, and in a matter of seconds, Longarm was among the towering trees. He careened along in a staggering run, hoping that he wouldn't run into one of the pines and dash his brains out on its trunk. Shots still rang out behind him, but now they sounded slightly muffled. He didn't know if that was because the thick growth deadened the reports, or because his hearing was going. Either way, he had to keep moving.
Suddenly, his feet went out from under him. With a bone-jarring thump, he sat down hard and started sliding. Realizing that he had fallen into a gully, he reached out blindly in an effort to grab something and slow down his slide.
His fingers hooked around the base of a bush. He closed them tightly, and as the bush's roots held, Longarm came to an abrupt halt. He lay there on the steep slope and looked around, blinking sweat out of his eyes. The gully was a deep one, about forty feet, and he had slid about halfway down the side of it. At the bottom of the gully, a small creek bubbled along over a narrow, rocky bed. The noise it made sounded loud to Longarm, but not so loud that he could not hear the voices shouting in the woods above him.
'He headed over this way! I heard him!'
'Be careful, damn it! He may be trying to set up an ambush.'
'Ambush, hell! The bastard was half dead when he busted out of that hollow log. I saw him, and he could barely move.'
A third voice said, 'He moved well enough to kill Durkin.'
Longarm felt a little tingle of satisfaction at the knowledge that he had downed one of the bushwhackers. Evidently there were three of them left, however, and they were in the process of hunting him down. If he stayed here, it probably wouldn't take them very long to find him, and he'd be an easy target perched here on the side of the gully like this.
Time to get moving again, he told himself grimly.
Now that he wasn't sliding out of control, he was able to slip down the side of the gully without crashing
