***
JOE TRIED TO STAY in the trees, avoiding the grassy open meadows, as he rode hard up the mountain. Lizzie was tiring, her easy lope giving way to lunges, and she was throwing her head in annoyance. Her hooves launched chunks of wet black earth into the air behind them.
He tried to anticipate and play out the scenarios that might occur when he reached the cabin. Should he ask them to come out with their hands up or yell for them to get down on the floor? Should he tell them about his suspicions in regard to the man in the alcove? A stream of sweat trickled down the back of his neck from his hatband.
Sensing that Lizzie was just about to give out, Joe reined her to a stop in the shade of a tree. While she rested, her nostrils billowing, Joe raised his binoculars and looked across the valley to the opposite mountain. He swept the binoculars over the mountain parks and granite spires, looking for the black Ford truck. A glimpse of movement in a meadow startled him, but when he looked back he saw it was only a cow moose grazing at the edge of a treeline.
Then he saw a flash of glass. Fumbling, he dialed the focus in tighter and tried to concentrate his view while Lizzie heaved, breathing hard, and his own heart whumped against the inside of his sternum. He found it. The glint was from something in the rear of the black Ford
truck.
Joe reached out to grab a branch to steady himself and raised himself up in his stirrups so that he could see better. He took a sharp intake of breath. The man in the Stetson was in the back of the Ford, leaning over a long rifle mounted in the bed of the pickup. The glint was from the telescopic site. Joe imagined a line of fire from the black Ford to the cabin, which must be just above him through the trees.
Joe heard the bullet before he heard the shot; a sound like fabric ripping that suddenly ended in a hollow and sickening pock sound.
***
In the doorway of the cabin, John Coble flipped backward through the air and landed heavily on the table where Stewie Woods sat. Britney screamed and backpedaled until the wall stopped her. Her T-shirt and face were spattered with blood and bits of bone and tissue.
Stewie kicked back his chair and scrambled to his feet, looking down at Coble. The top half of Coble's head was gone. Outside, a heavy rifle shot rolled across the valley, sounding like
thunder.
***
crouching forward in the saddle like a jockey Joe spurred Lizzie out of the trees and into the open meadow that rose up the mountain to culminate at the shadowed front of a dark cabin. The boom
of the shot swept through the timber.
'Get down!' he shouted at the cabin, not knowing how many people were inside. 'Get down on the floor!'
And suddenly Joe felt an impact like an ax burying itself into soft wood. Lizzie stumbled, her front legs collapsing as her rear haunches arced into the air, her head ducking as she pitched forward, throwing Joe. He hit the ground hard, crumpling against the foot of the steps to the porch of the cabin, his chest and chin taking the brunt of the fall. Lizzie completed her thousand-pound somersault and landed so hard, just a foot short of Joe, that he felt the ground shudder.
Britney was still shrieking inside but she had screamed herself hoarse and was practically soundless when the doorframe filled with Joe Pickett. The fall had knocked the wind out of him and he leaned into the cabin with his hands on his knees, fighting for breath. The rope he had looped around the saddle horn was tangled around one foot.
Stewie lurched around the table where Coble lay twitching and helped Joe inside, leading him from the open door, as a fist-sized hole blew through the front window and shattered all of the glass.
'Get down!' Joe barked, as he dropped to his hands and knees, pulling Stewie with him.
Methodically bullets hit the front of the cabin blowing holes through the walls that looked alternately like stars, hearts, and sunbursts --followed by the rolling thunder sound of the heavy rifle fire.
'You must be Stewie Woods, 'Joe said, looking over to the man who had helped him inside the cabin.
'And you aren't Mary Harris,' Stewie said.
'I'm her husband,' Joe said, glaring at Stewie's disfigured face. Now was not the time to punch him in the nose, Joe thought. 'Her name's Marybeth Pickett.'
Stewie wheezed. 'You're a game warden.'
'Right.'
'Do you know how many there are out there shooting at us?' Stewie asked with remarkable calmness.
'One older man in a black Ford pickup. He's got a hell of a rifle and he knows what he's doing.'
'Look what he did to John Coble,' Stewie gestured to the table above them. For the first time, Joe noticed the two boots that hung suspended from the edge of the table and a single still arm that dropped over the side. A stream of dark blood as thick as chocolate syrup strung from the table to a growing pool on the floor.
'Is he-'
'He's dead,' Stewie said. Britney Earthshare had now crawled over to join them on the floor. Her face was a mask of revulsion and frozen shock. Joe sympathized. He couldn't yet grasp the magnitude and danger of the situation he was in.
'Do you have any weapons in the cabin?' Joe asked them both.
'No, but Coble has a pistol with him,' said Stewie.
