Nowhere to Run

“You want me to pull it out or cut you down first?”

“Cut me down, please.”

As Joe removed his Leatherman tool and opened the blade, he said, “How far are the brothers ahead of us?”

Baird nodded toward the forested slope on the other side of the burning pickups. “Maybe thirty minutes,” he said.

“They on foot?”

Baird nodded. “They are, but they cover ground like demons. I saw them coming out of the trees at me on both sides, but they were so fast I didn’t get a chance to fight them off.”

“I understand,” Joe said, cutting the plastic cuffs free. “I’ve tangled with them and lost, just like you.”

Baird stepped away from the tree and rubbed hard on his wrists. His Stetson had fallen off, and strands of his wispy black hair reached down from his brow to his upper lip. As he rubbed his wrists, the arrow shaft danced up and down.

“So,” Joe said, “do you believe me now?”

Baird reached up and pushed his stringy hair back. “I was waiting to see how long it took you to ask me that question.”

As the two men looked at each other, Nate strode behind Baird toward the burning vehicles in the camp. As deft as a swallow plucking a gnat from the air, Nate reached out and pulled the arrow from Baird.

“Ouch, goddammit!” Baird said, spinning around. “Who said you could do that?”

Nate smirked, handed Baird the arrow, and continued on his way.

“THEY HAD NO INTENTION of killing you,” Joe said to Baird a few minutes later, as he helped the sheriff limp to a downed log to rest on. “Or you’d be dead.”

“I know,” Baird agreed. He straddled the log and leaned over it so his chest rested against the bark. His wound was open to the sky.

“Same with me,” Joe said to the sheriff. “For whatever reason, they did some real damage, but they didn’t feel compelled to finish the job.”

“It would have been easy,” Baird said, then gestured over his shoulder toward his wound. “This thing hurts. How bad is it?”

Joe said, “This is when you find out who your friends are,” looking at the trickle of fresh blood coming out of the wound.

“Just don’t let that friend of yours near me again,” Baird said.

Joe grimaced and turned for his pickup truck to get his first-aid kit.

JOE RIPPED another strip of tape to bind the compress to the wound while doing his best to avoid looking at Sheriff Baird’s bare butt, which was stunningly white. As Joe applied the tape, Nate came down out of the trees.

“Did those boys say anything?” Nate asked Baird.

“Like what?”

Nate shrugged. “Anything at all? Like, Stay off our mountain, sheriff, or Damn, where’d you come from?”

Baird shook his head. “Nothing at first. It’s like they could communicate through hand signals or something. They never said a word the whole time. Until the end, I mean.”

Joe paused, said, “What did they say at the end?”

Baird cleared his throat, coughed up a ball of phlegm, and spat it away. “After they cuffed me to that tree, I expected them to just cut my throat and leave me there. One of ’em got right behind me and kind of whispered into my ear. He said, ‘The only reason we’re letting you live is so you can tell anybody who will listen to leave us the hell alone.’”

“That’s all?” Joe said.

“Pretty much. He repeated himself, though. ‘Just leave us the hell alone.’ Then he stepped back and said, ‘This is to show you how serious we are,’ and shot me in the butt with that arrow. I could tell he took it easy on me, though. He barely shot that at me with much force. I mean, he could have done all kind of damage.

“I don’t know which one it was who shot me,” Baird said. “It’s not like they introduced themselves. And you know they look and dress exactly alike. The only difference between them was one of them had a bandage taped on his face, on his chin.”

“That would be Caleb,” Joe said. “Meaning Camish was the one who talked to you and shot you with the arrow.”

Baird said, “Well, Caleb didn’t talk. I got the impression maybe he couldn’t anymore.”

“Did he look wounded any other way?” Joe asked. “Did he appear to move stiffly or hang back, anything like that?”

“Not that I noticed,” the sheriff said.

Joe shook his head. How could he shoot the man square in the chest and cause no harm?

Baird turned his head around toward Joe. “You know, I gotta tell you, I was scared at first. But when he said, ‘Just leave us the hell alone,’ I felt sorry for them in a weird way. Even though they did this to me. Ain’t that strange? Maybe it’s because I think that way myself a lot these days.”

Nate was close enough to hear Baird’s question, but he didn’t respond. To Joe, he said, “I saddled the horses.