Sitting on the ground, he shouted, “The gun!”
She ran to him and gave it to him. He turned in time to see a large man bearing down on him with a gun. He fired, and the man spun and fell. There was another man right behind him, and Decker shot him, too.
There were three more men running toward him as his vision blurred, but they suddenly seemed to jump into the air and didn’t move when they came down.
“Come on,” somebody said, grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet.
It was Brian Foxx.
“Take Rebecca.”
“Let her walk,” Foxx said. He pulled her to her feet and slapped her in the face. “If you want to live,” he shouted into her face, “run!”
Felicia came forward and grabbed Rebecca’s hand.
“Run!” she shouted.
Decker’s legs didn’t feel very strong, and as he tried Tomove he felt as if he were running in molasses.
“Go,” he told Foxx. “Get out of here.”
Brian took a stick of dynamite out of his belt, lit it, and threw it, then did the same with his last stick.
“That’s it. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Get going!” Decker shouted at him.
“Not without you.”
He put Decker’s left arm around his shoulder and said,
Chapter XXXVIII
Decker didn’t know where he was.
He didn’t know what day it was.
He opened his eyes and looked up and saw Felicia looking down at him.
“Oh, Decker. You’re alive!”
He frowned. The statement seemed silly to him. She wouldn’t have been talking to him if he weren’t alive.
“What happened?” he said. “Where are we?”
“We’re in an abandoned church,” she said. “Foxx brought us here after you rescued us.”
“When was that?”
“Two nights ago.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Help me up.”
“You can’t—”
“Help me sit up,” he snapped at her.
She reached for his arm and pulled him until he was sitting. There was a dull ache in his side, and when he touched it he found that he was all wrapped up with bandages.
“Where is Rebecca?”
“She’s outside.”
“And Brian?”
“He’s outside, talking to her. They’ve been talking ever since we got here.”
“Tell me again how we got here.”
“After you rescued us, Brian took us to where the horses were. He put you on one horse and me and Rebecca on the other and took us away from there.”
He looked around the church, recognizing it as the same one where he had first encountered the Foxx brothers.
“Where’s Brent Foxx?”
She didn’t answer.
“Felicia, where’s Brent?”
“Brian’s outside,” she repeated. “I’ll get him.”
“Felicia—” he called out, but she kept going.
He realized that he was lying on a pew bench and swung his legs off it and to the floor. The dull ache in his right side became a sharp pain, causing him to catch his breath.
“Are you all right?” Brian asked as he came up to Decker.
“Hurts like a son of a bitch!” he said through his teeth.
“I guess so. You were lucky, though. The bullet went right through.”
“You doctor me up?”
Brian nodded.
“I watched when the doctor in Stillwell wrapped Brent up. I got the bleeding to stop and bandaged you. Is it too tight for you?”
“I can’t tell,” Decker said honestly. “It hurts too much.”
“You should be okay in a few days.”
“We can’t stay here. We need supplies.”
“We have some.”
“From where?”
“I went back to the comanchero camp and did a little scavenging. I found enough to keep us going for a day or two more, if we ration it right.”
“What about the comancheros?”
“Well, we killed a few, and the others scattered, I guess. They never knew what hit them, so they didn’t know where to look for us. I guess they decided to cut and run.”
“The wagons—” Decker began. If they had a wagon, they could get started right away.
“I thought of that, but they took them with them.”
“All right,” Decker said, “now where’s Brent?”
Brian looked away.
“You let him go, didn’t you?”
“You only need one of us to collect your bounty, Decker.”
“To hell with the bounty. He’s a mad-dog killer and you let him go.”
“When it came right down to it, he was my brother. I couldn’t let him be executed.”
“I don’t understand—”
“You don’t have a brother. Even Rebecca understood, Decker.”
“Rebecca? How is she?”
“She came around. She went through a terrible ordeal, but she’s tough.”
“How did you keep her from killing you?”
“She knows I didn’t kill her brother.”
“How did she react when you let him go?”
“She was still in shock when I did that. It was the first night.”
“You let him go in the dark?”
“Yes.”
“With a horse?”
“Yes.”
“With a gun?”
“No…but he could have gone to the comanchero camp and picked one up. They were all over the place.”
“He’s going to try and kill us, Brian.”
“He’ll run.”
Decker grimaced and said, “You don’t believe that. He’s going to try and kill us, and he’ll probably save you
