yelped in pain and now growled as it worked its way up, fell, and stumbled to its feet, trying to get to all fours again.
Meredyth dropped one of the stones she had held on to and pushed past Randy, crouched over the snarling beast, and brought the stone down on it, striking the bared teeth and snout, sending it reeling back in shock.
Meredyth dreaded striking a second blow, feeling the animal's pain, but she hadn't a choice. As Randy looked on, she brought the stone down a second time, striking the dog in silence with a blow to the side of the head. Meredyth's hands and the stone came away bloodied.
Randy felt his stomach give a dry heave, the pain excruciating. He had been bitten by the dog somehow in the moments between hitting it with the stick and Meredyth's attack on the little monster. He now doubled over and this time vomited his evening's meal.
“Damn,” he tried to joke it off, “now when they find my body and they do the autopsy and try to learn my last meal, they won't find a damned thing…”
“Nobody's going to find your body. Remember? They're going to stuff us all below a manure pile by the stables. We'll never be located. We will have simply disappeared.”
“You really know how to comfort a guy,” he replied, and then began to laugh hysterically.
“What is the matter with you?”
“Darlene. I'm in love with her. She loves me. My screwed-up life was just getting in order. Now this. Now I'm a dead man.”
She was in tears. Randy crawled to her, exhausted, frightened, cold with the chill of a cold Texas night breeze sprinkling raindrops like confectioners' sugar on his bare skin. He tried to comfort her, but she pulled away, saying, “We've got no time for tears and self-pitying blubbering damn it! We've got to help Lucas.”
Randy looked stricken. “Are you crazy? He told us to get the hell out of here, led them off in his direction so we'd have a fighting chance to get to the road, flag down help. It's what he wants.”
“He could be dead by the time we get help.”
“If we go after him, we could be dead even sooner.”
“I'm not arguing this. I've got to find Lucas and help him. You do whatever you think best, Randy. Go on, get to the road, get help! It's a good plan.” We saw a hell of a lot of traffic out on the road leading in, she sarcastically thought but did not say. She shoved at him, nodding, telling him it would be smarter.
“No, no, no… He said for us to both find the road, get help, remember? He wanted me to take care of you.”
She almost stated the cruel and obvious truth, that he could not in his wildest dreams take care of her. “You find the road. I'm going to find Lucas.” She pulled away from him.
He chased after her, tackled her, and held on. “You can't! I won't let you!”
She pounded him with her fists. “Randy, I'm not leaving him to the… to the dogs.”
Randy was over her now, pinning her arms, staring into her eyes, breathing wildly, a human umbrella against the falling raindrops. “Are you just plain crazy, Meredyth?”
In the distance, a lightning bolt streaked across the sky.
“Let me up! Let me go, Randy, now, damn you!” God, but she hated the helplessness of her female weakness against his male strength.
Randy found himself helplessly drawn to her, despite his professed love for Darlene. Meredyth just felt good beneath him, and she was down to her bra, and Randy was getting randy for her. He held her there longer, staring down at her, saying, “God, Meredyth, you… you're even prettier when you're mad.”
She pushed and shouted. “Goddamn it, Randy, let me go!” She kicked out, her knee catching him in a vulnerable place, sending him reeling in pain.
He relented, rolling to one side, helplessly groaning as she skittered away. In a moment, however, his groans turned to laughter at her.
“What is so bleeding funny?”
“You… you and me. What possible good can we do here, Meredyth? We're unarmed, and even if we were armed, neither one of us can shoot straight.”
“Lucas gave me some lessons,” she said defensively, even knowing he was right.
“Just the same, we have no weapons. A stick and a stone against a hunting dog is one thing, but against five mad humans? Please, please be reasonable and come away with me.”
The silver drizzle began slanting in at them from the south, from the direction where the road must be. Dark clouds overhead swirled as if stirred, a celestial cauldron filled with gray, black, and purple ingredients. She said nothing, mulling over his words, Randy hoped.
“It's suicide, Meredyth, and even if you never knew it or never acknowledged it… I… I love you… and if anything should happen to you… I'd never forgive myself…”
She stared at him, realizing for the first time why he had gotten himself so deeply involved in this most deadly of games, why he had never once said no to her. “Damn you, Randy Oglesby,” she muttered, found her footing and stormed away, running off in the direction the horses had taken. Randy was left with the blank night and the unconscious dog and his tree limb. He finally decided to follow Meredyth, the rain drenching them but also drenching any odor trail left by Stonecoat for the dogs to follow. Had Lucas Stonecoat somehow conjured up the rain? Randy wondered. Did he know the rain was imminent when he had so heroically made off with their clothes to create a false trail for the dogs to follow?
Randy wasn't so sure that the Indian didn't possess some magic or medicine bag of tricks he kept tucked away. In any case, Randy was now shivering, sloshing through a black forested area in the cold rain in his skivvies, one part of his brain wishing he were a little kid again, at home with his parents yelling up the stairs for him to come away from his computer games and down to dinner, another part of his brain wondering why he was not going in the direction of safety but in the direction of danger in senseless pursuit of a woman whom he could never have, trying to keep up with a woman who often had made him feel weak and foolish, a woman who had saved him from the fanatical fangs of a wounded and angry dog, a woman who was tough and resourceful and beautiful and stubborn as hell.
THIRTY-THREE
Lucas knew the dogs were on his heels, and he also knew that he had little chance of surviving this night, but he'd be damned if he would go out alone. He wanted in the worst way to take Bryce out with him, and maybe that bitch doctor and some of the others.
As he ran, he scattered Randy's clothes here, Meredyth's there in a continued attempt to keep the dogs-both animal and human-confused. Confusion now was his best and only ally, that and his native intellect. He hadn't given up his Bowie knife, which had been hidden the entire time in the sheath at the center of his back. It was his one hope, but a knife, however well he might wield it, was no match for sighted, laser-targeting, high-tech crossbows.
He led his pursuers deeper and deeper into the most rugged terrain he was able to find here. The forested area gave way to a dry riverbed, the sort of gulch that filled in an instant during a flash flood. He had little hope of seeing a flash flood here tonight, although the ancient riverbed was soggy and gave way beneath his feet as he raced on. Still, with the rain increasing, he hoped his scent and his tracks might be obliterated, but the hounds seemed on a scent and direction from which they could not be dissuaded-slowed, perhaps, but not dissuaded.
Out of the earth, like spirits from another world, a spectral fog began to rise, the earth being too quickly cooled by the rain. Lucas blessed the sight. It would provide more cover, and from the gloom, he might more readily strike. One more ally for him.
He continued into the rocky, pitted foothills, his arms free of the last vestiges of Meredyth's clothing now. He concentrated on locating a weapon, anything he might arm himself with, but the boulders here were all too large to handle and there were no tree limbs lying nearby.
One of the dogs had caught up to him; another was just behind. The first one attacked, leaping straight for him. He could hear the horses coming at a gallop, the shouting of excited hunters who smelled blood.
Lucas brought the Bowie knife up to strike the wild-eyed dog, but he missed, the speed of the animal too
