“Mom?” Matt whispered. She stopped him by pressing him against her side.
No matter how much she wanted to become part of the confrontation, this was between Cord and the man he’d called Chuck. Although the others were nearby, they, like her, were simply bit players in the drama.
“Put it down,” Cord ordered, his voice as deep and low as the wind finding its way through a canyon. “Now.”
“You know who I am? How did-”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” Chuck admitted. “It doesn’t. Nothing does except…”
She wanted to scream at him to finish because right now nothing mattered more than getting inside Chuck Markham’s head. He had to at least care about an innocent boy’s life, didn’t he? He couldn’t possibly be thinking of taking the father’s life. As if in answer to her question, Chuck curled himself around his weapon, became part of it.
“No!”
Everything became a blur of movement, Cord striking out and throwing himself to the ground at the same time, a shattering blast of sound, cursing, Matt screaming and clutching her, a woman’s wailing cry. She fought to escape her son’s grasp, but he held on with fierce and desperate fingers, and she was afraid of hurting him.
Cord went down hard, his body bouncing off the earth. For a horrible instant, he lay limp as a fallen leaf. Then, although she wasn’t sure he was capable of rational thought or action, he reached out and grabbed Chuck around the ankles. Grunting, Chuck fell on top of him, the rifle trapped between them. She was terrified that in one, no more than two seconds, strength and maybe life itself would pour out of Cord and she would see her ex- husband die before her eyes.
“No. No. No.” She had to stop sounding like a wounded animal, but how? Dragging Matt with her, she stumbled over rocks and uneven ground until she’d covered about half of the distance. The two men were still locked together as they fought for control of the weapon. Cord wasn’t a killer, but if it came to his own life-
She couldn’t help him this way.
“Matt! Please,” she begged. “Let me go.”
“No! He’ll kill – they’ll kill you.”
“No, they won’t,” she said, although she might be lying to both herself and her son. The other men were staring fixedly at Cord and Chuck, briefly drawing her attention from her still-forming plan. Chuck, although shorter, outweighed Cord by maybe thirty pounds. That would slow him and make him clumsy, but he could also use his heft to advantage, especially if Cord was injured.
At the moment, it looked as if her awful prediction had come true. Chuck had straddled Cord and was using the rifle like a wedge to drive him into the ground. She saw-no!-saw that blood soaked the side of Cord’s head.
“Matt! Hide! Don’t move until I tell you to.”
“But-”
“Now!”
Her scream captured her son’s attention, but he was still staring at her when she whirled and ran back the way she’d come. For a desperate moment she couldn’t find Cord’s pack, then spotted it on a litter of grass and dead leaves. Dropping to her knees, she rummaged through it until she found the two-way radio.
“Dad!” she screamed into it. “Dad! Where are you?”
“Here, honey. What -”
“We need help! Now!”
“Matt?”
“Matt’s alive,” she told him as she hurried back toward the men, determined to let them hear and see. “But there are poachers-they have guns. They tried-I think one of them shot Cord.”
Fortunately her father didn’t ask any more questions.
Instead, he informed her that Sheriff Vollrath was with him and immediately turned the radio over to him. Unable to keep herself from babbling, she gave the sheriff a brief sketch of what was happening. The three other men watched her intently, but if either Clint or Cord heard, they gave no indication. Now Chuck was trying to get free while Cord struggled to keep him with him.
She was vaguely aware that Dale didn’t sound surprised by the presence of poachers, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that did was giving him as accurate a description of where they were as possible. To her overwhelming relief, Dale said he could get a forest service helicopter in the air in a matter of minutes.
Still clutching the now-silent radio, she looked around for Matt. She couldn’t see him and prayed he’d obeyed her command to hide.
“I’ve called the police!” she yelled at the men. “They’re on their way.”
For what seemed forever but couldn’t be, no one moved. She heard furious breathing and a grunt of pain that tore into her. It was all she could do not to jump into the middle of the battle, but what if something happened to her? Matt could be left with nothing-no one.
Finally, cursing, first one man and then the other two reached, not for Cord as she feared, but for Chuck.
“Leave me alone!” Chuck bellowed. “This ain’t none of your business!”
“The hell it isn’t,” the man called Elliott retorted. “It’s over, damn it. Over.” He wrapped his arm around Chuck’s neck and hauled him back. At the same time, Owen grabbed the rifle and wrenched it out of Chuck’s grip. It clattered to the ground near Cord; to her immense relief, it didn’t fire.
“The cops are on their way,” Owen rasped, his attention riveted on the rifle. “I can’t-Oh, God, I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Then I’m out of here,” Chuck insisted as he struggled to free himself from Elliott. “You guys will get your hands slapped. Me, I’m looking at jail time.”
Cord forced himself to his feet and stood with his legs wide apart, swaying slightly. “Where do you think you could go?” He took a deep, hard-won breath. “The sheriff knows about your plane. He’ll be looking for you. Everyone will be.”
“Not if I-”
“Didn’t you hear me?” she insisted. “There’s a helicopter on its way. You’ll never get away. You can’t-”
“Owen! Think, damn it!” Chuck snarled. “You want to be charged with attempted murder? If we get out of here, no one will ever -”
“You’re crazy. Insane,” Elliott interrupted. “Do you really think we’re going to let you dump this on us? Even if you somehow managed to disappear, the rest of us can’t. We’ve got businesses. Families.”
“Owen!” Chuck tried to jerk free. “Attempted murder? Do you want that?”
Owen’s rifle lay on the ground where Cord had thrown it, but he could reach it before anyone stopped him. In a strangely detached way, she wondered if she could place herself between Owen and Cord before he finished what Chuck had begun.
“I’m no killer. Never so much as hunted anything before this. I thought…thought it would…” Owen’s face contorted. “I almost shot a boy,” he whimpered, and kicked at his weapon. “I don’t ever-don’t ever want to touch that thing again.”
“You’re going to go to jail,” Chuck insisted. “And take me with you. Damn you, I-”
“Enough.”
Cord’s voice was like a cold wind on a hot day and instantly commanded her attention. How she couldn’t have noticed that he’d picked up Chuck’s rifle, she didn’t know. He held it with the barrel aimed at Chuck’s chest; despite what was wrong with the side of his head, he’d found the strength to keep it level. Something terrible and wild and dangerous came to life in his ebony eyes, and for the first time in her life she understood how fine the line could be between civilization and the law of the wild. By the other men’s reactions, she knew she wasn’t the only one aware of how close Cord was to crossing that line.
“You don’t want to do this, man,” Elliott said. At the same time, he released Chuck and stepped away from him, leaving the poacher to face the rifle alone. “You don’t want to kill him.”
Cord didn’t answer, but then she already knew he wouldn’t. He was aware of nothing and no one except
