Billy peeked around the boulder’s edge.
The man was standing. In the act of slipping his pipe into a pocket. He was big, maybe six feet. An old jacket hung on his shoulders, elbows out of the sleeves. But the color blended into that of the weathered stone. A fine slant-breech Model 1855 Sharps dangled from his left hand as he stepped forward to a drop-off and scanned the small cove.
Billy’s mouth had gone dry. He didn’t dare shoot. Could he take him? Did he even dare try?
Debts have to be paid.
On silent moccasins he crept forward, collected himself. With all the strength in his work-toughened body, he grabbed the old muzzle loader by the barrel and swung.
As he did, the man turned. Billy had a momentary glimpse of his face: lean, almost like a living skull, with shocked wide brown eyes and a scraggly beard that was darker than his dirty blond locks.
The stock caught the blond man full in the face. The power of the blow popped the hat up off his head. A muffled crack could be heard over the snap of bone as the maple stock split.
The man fell back into a currant bush, but Billy was on him. Gripping the barrel like an iron bar he swung the lock down into the man’s face, gratified with the meaty thunk. Again and again he swung. Each impact sent a tremor through the man’s body, causing his arms and legs to jerk.
Panting, every muscle in his body on fire, Billy stopped, gasped, and wiped his sleeve across his face.
What if this ain’t the bunch? What if he was just a guard for a family or something?
The moment of horror filled him, sent a shiver through his bones. He turned, staring anxiously down into the cove. Saw no movement, heard no shouts of warning. Heard only the rattle of the dying man’s lungs.
God!
I killed a man.
Beat him to death.
Billy swallowed hard, realized he was shaking, and sat down. “What if he wasn’t one of Dewley’s?”
Too late. The milk’s done been spilt.
“Got to find Sarah.”
He stared at his broken rifle, the stock cracked off at the wrist, the hammer broken off the lock, the nipple and metal streaked with gore.
Still shaking, he got up, searched the man’s pockets, finding a roll of Confederate bills, a couple of gold coins, the pipe and tobacco, a pocketknife, and a beautiful gold watch.
From the dead man’s belt, Billy took the cartridge box, opening it to find fourteen paper cartridges for the Sharps. A quick check showed half a roll of caps in the rifle’s Maynard primer.
The dead man had a Colt .44 Dragoon stuffed in his left waistband. Billy pulled it out and found five cylinders loaded and capped, hammer resting on an empty. The right grip on the revolver was charred, as if it had been in a fire. Finally, in the back of the dead man’s belt hung a long-bladed Bowie fighting knife in a hard leather scabbard.
What if he’s not one of Sarah’s abductors?
He started to shake again.
“Better get your tail down to that camp and see,” he told himself.
He wanted to scream, to run home to Maw, and let her hug him. Make him safe. She’d know what to do. Tell him if it were all right or not.
He glanced down, seeing her blood, now gone black on his fingers. It clung in his cuticles and under his fingernails. Tears came welling again. He thought of the still form he’d left wrapped in the blanket on the porch. She’d be stone-cold by now, stiff with the rigor.
Taking the dead man’s belt, he strapped on the Bowie, stuck the Dragoon down into the waistband, and picked up the Sharps.
Got to go Injun now.
The fatigue and stumbling weariness was gone. Muscles charged, he crept down the trail, keeping low as he sneaked from one patch of cover to the next. At the bottom, he eased left behind the stand of willows and heard the loud laughter, the clinking of tin pans. He was close enough now to hear their talk.
“Dewley ought to be back any time now. Then what?”
“Think we ought to be shut of Benton County, that’s what I think. Hancocks has friends hereabouts. They’s gonna be talk.”
“I tell you, should’a buried that old woman. Women disappear. No one knows but what they just up and left the country. Leaving a woman shot like that? In her own yard? And the daughter missing? I tell you, that be a calling card fer trouble down the line.”
Billy’s blood ran cold.
He knew the instant he changed. Felt it. Like a spigot being turned on. One instant he’d been scared, confused, and grieving. The next, he was filled with clarity. His senses—honed by years of hunting—now focused. He might have become a cougar: silent, deadly, his only purpose distilled down to the essence.
Weeds had grown thick around McConahough’s corral, which allowed Billy to slither close to their fire. With the horse guard returned, five men were now seated around it; pans were steaming on the stones.
“Damn,” one said, grinning. “They may hang us, but boys, I ain’t sure but what fucking that gal ain’t worth it.”
“Yep,” said another, “and Tucker’s still at it. The little shit gets his first ride on a damn fine-looking girl … and as many times as he can stiffen his wick in her. Me, I got my first cunt from a old black whore what was uglier than sin on Sunday … and loose as a mare’s ass to boot! And worst of all, I paid two whole dollars for that!”
The others laughed.
Billy’s heart slowed, the trembling gone from his hands.
The redheaded man on the end, however, looked worriedly over to where packs had been piled. “I’m telling you, boys, we shouldn’t have brought this one with us. Should have taken our turns at the place, cut her throat, and burned her and the old woman with the house.”
“Dewley never seen one this purty a’fore,” a dirty-faced, short
