An Enemy in the Bushes
“Something wrong?”
Zach raked his gaze over a patch of brambles. He had the sense that something was amiss, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“We not take long,” Chases Rabbits chafed. “Raven On The Ground need us.”
“We won’t be any help to her if we’re dead.” Zach looked at the brambles again. Few would choose it as a spot to hide, what with all the thorns. The center of the patch was especially dense, which would also discourage anyone from crawling in. Almost too dense, he thought, at the same moment that Blaze growled.
Details came into focus with sharp clarity—a squat form that seemed to be part of the brambles, but wasn’t; branches that were going every which way, when most grew straight up or at right angles to the main stems; and the dark eyes that were fixed on him with fierce intensity.
Zach snapped his Hawken up. In the brambles a gun boomed. He felt a searing shock to his shoulder, and then his right arm and fingers went numb. He lost his hold on the rifle.…
Wilderness #65: Seed of Evil David Thompson
Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane. And to Beatrice Bean, with the most loving regard.
Chapter One
The sheriff and his deputies bristled with weapons. They crept through the muggy Missouri night following a trail an informant told them about. The trail ended on a hill that overlooked a valley. The valley was a black pit with a pair of glowing eyes at its center.
The sheriff and his men huddled. The sheriff could hardly see their faces. Several worked for him full-time. The rest were volunteers who lent a hand when he needed extra help. He needed it tonight.
“From here on out, our lives aren’t worth a plugged coin,” the sheriff whispered. “One mistake is all it will take. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous he is. I shouldn’t need to remind you that the cutthroats who ride with him are a pack of rabid wolves.”
“What I want to know,” said John Byerly, one of the regular deputies, “is why we’re going to try to take them alive.”
“They’re entitled to a chance to surrender.”
“Hell,” Byerly said.
One of the part-time deputies cleared his throat. “You know as well as we do, Sheriff, that they’ll make a fight of it.”
“It will be kill or be killed,” said another.
“We do this as the law says to do it,” the sheriff insisted. “If any man wants out, now is the time to say.”
“Hell,” Byerly said again. “I’m not complaining. I just don’t like the notion of sticking my head in a bear’s mouth and then asking the bear not to bite it off.”
Several of them grinned nervously.
The sheriff fingered his shotgun. “All right. We’ve been through what to do. Remember the signals. Anyone gets in trouble, yell for help.” He said the next pointedly. “Above all, we can’t let Ranton escape.”
“He’s a bad one,” Byerly said.
“That he is,” the sheriff grimly agreed. “Wherever he goes, he sows seeds of evil. It’s time to put an end to it. He has infested our state long enough.” The sheriff stood. “Let’s do this, men.”
The trail was narrow and winding. Midway down, a deputy tripped. Everyone froze, but there was no sign their quarry had heard.
The sheriff was sweating. His mouth was dry. All his years in office, he’d never had to deal with anyone like Neil Ranton. If ever there was a man who came out of the womb born rotten through and through, Ranton was it.
The twin eyes were lights in windows. The two-story house was old, built by a settler years ago. It had been abandoned when the last of the family died. It was so far out that no one wanted the place, and it had fallen into disrepair. But the house was good enough for the use Ranton put it to.
Female laughter brought the sheriff up short. It was wrong, them sounding so happy. He whistled in imitation of a robin and his deputies spread out. They had two minutes to surround the place. Then it would commence.
The sheriff wiped his palms on his pants and thumbed back the hammers on his English-made shotgun. Both barrels were loaded with buckshot. He wasn’t taking any chances. If anyone raised a gun to him, he would blow them in half.
Off in the night an owl hooted.
Without warning the front door opened and a man came out.
The sheriff crouched. He aimed the shotgun, but he didn’t shoot. He couldn’t give himself away until his deputies were in position. He wished he could tell who it was.
The lamplight inside briefly framed the figure. Then the front door closed and the man came down the porch steps, moving toward the outhouse.
The sheriff swore silently. He hadn’t counted on this. But he was confident his deputies would take the man into custody quietly. They were well trained.
The outhouse door creaked open and shut.
By then the two minutes were up. The sheriff rose and advanced to within a dozen feet of the front porch and cupped a hand to his mouth. “This is the sheriff! We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands in the air! If you resist we will use deadly force! Come out now!”
The sheriff crouched, and it saved his life. In an upstairs window, a rifle cracked and the slug whizzed past his ear. The sheriff jerked his shotgun up and let loose with one of the twin barrels. The window exploded in a hundred shards, and a man shrieked.
Bedlam broke out. Everywhere guns blasted. Men cursed and shouted and screamed.
The front door was flung wide and out charged a heavyset man with a pistol in each hand. He fired at the sheriff as he came down the steps, and the sheriff let him have the other barrel in the chest. The buckshot lifted the man off his feet and slammed him against the porch rail hard enough for him to pitch over it.
As abruptly as it had begun, the firing stopped. A man wailed that he was hit and begged for help. A woman sobbed.
The sheriff reloaded. He was almost to the porch when Byerly rushed up.
“Deputy Hanson is dead.”
“Damn,” the sheriff said.
“It was the one in the outhouse. He left a knife in Hanson’s chest.”
“Did you get him?”
“No, he got away. But I did get a glimpse.” Byerly paused. “Sheriff, I think it was Ranton.”
The sheriff gripped the shotgun so hard, his knuckles hurt. “Hell in a basket. Fetch the dogs and set them on his scent.” Not that it would do any good. Ranton had eluded dogs before.
“He won’t stick around,” Byerly predicted. “He’ll go somewhere else and start over like he always does.”
“God help the poor people who live there, wherever it is,” the sheriff said.
Chapter Two
The mountain man was being followed.
Nate King woke at dawn, as was his habit. He kindled the embers of his fire and put the coffeepot on. He could go without food in the morning, but he refused to go without coffee. His wife liked to tease that he wouldn’t need to make as many long rides to Bent’s Fort if his will wasn’t mush.
Nate had two addictions in life, coffee and books. He was an avid reader, everything from James Fenimore Cooper to Mary Shelley to Plato. As he waited for the coffee to perk, he opened the beaded parfleche his wife had made for him and took out his copy of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. He was about to open it to where he had left off when his bay raised its head, stared off to the west, and whinnied.
Nate looked up. He was well out on the prairie, amid rolling swells of grass pockmarked by wallows and split by gullies. The rising sun cast a golden glow that caused the morning dew to sparkle. He saw neither man nor animal. The bay was still staring, though, so he shoved the book back into the parfleche, picked up his Hawken, and strode a few yards from the fire.