“Y-yonder,” he croaked, staring almost cross-eyed at the muzzle of my rifle. “In the glass hole.” He pointed behind him in the direction from which they’d come.
“You lead me to her,” I ordered. “Now! Move it!”
I knew I had very little time. Those gunshots would bring Nathan and whatever other hired help he’d brought with him, and they’d probably be a little more competent than this scarecrow trembling in front of me. The problem was that they would probably be coming from the same direction I needed to go.
“Awright-awright, I’ll do her,” the man pleaded. “Anythin’, mister, just don’t shoot me. That there woman’s Nathan’s bizness, none o’ourn. He’s the one shot that other fella, too.”
“Where’s the hole?” I asked.
“T’other side that there big rock,” he said, glancing sideways toward where Jacky had disappeared. He pointed with a trembling hand in the direction of the formation, which rose over the trees like a big black cloud. “Yonder it is.”
I’d obviously hit Jacky, but I had no way of knowing how badly. The problem was that 1 couldn’t see him anymore, or, for that matter, hear him, and a quick look revealed that he hadn’t turned loose of that shotgun, either. Although even a flesh wound from a. 308 would pack a hell of a punch, he was still out there in the weeds with a shotgun.
“You,” I said. “Go find your buddy. Haul him out here where I can see him.”
“Me?” he squeaked, looking around as if to see if there was anyone else out there. I had a bad feeling that there might be, but if somebody was going snake hunting in close quarters, it wasn’t going to be me.
“Yeah, you. Or how about I shoot you right where you’re standing and then go find him myself? Now do it, and keep those hands where I can see them.”
He kept his hands out in front of him, as if ready to be cuffed. He started moving down the hill toward the lake. I remained in the boulders until he was within a few feet of disappearing into the dense underbrush, and then, perforce, I had to follow him. Behind me I heard the dog expire with an ugly noise.
My tactical situation wasn’t terrific: As soon as that guy figured out that I couldn’t see him, he’d run for it. Or he’d miss Jacky entirely, and then Jacky’d get a shot at me as we walked by wherever he was hiding. If he was hiding-he might have taken off, too. As I entered the thicket, I put my rifle on safe, slung it over my back, and got out Mose’s little pocket gun. The rifle wasn’t of much use in dense underbrush. Jacky’s shotgun, on the other hand, was just about perfect.
I could hear the other guy pushing his way through the branches and brambles in the general direction of the water’s edge. I kept a lookout for any blood trails and cursed my own dogs for taking off. I heard a rustling in the bushes ahead and stopped to crouch behind a tree. As I strained to listen, a shotgun boomed in the underbrush, and I heard the dog handler make a mortal noise. I hit the deck and lay very still. Apparently Jacky hadn’t taken kindly to being fingered, or he’d mistaken the handler for me. I could hear the handler groaning up ahead, and he couldn’t have been that far ahead of me.
The tower of black rock rose above the trees ahead, and I guessed I was maybe a hundred yards from its base. I tried to imagine my previous line of advance and then began to crawl off in a direction at right angles to that line. It was awkward with the rifle slung over my back, but I needed my hands free to push bushes and branches out of my way quietly while I tried to work around Jacky’s position. I was pretty sure he was wounded and maybe even down, but he was obviously not in such bad shape that he couldn’t fire a shotgun, as his ace buddy had just discovered. I got as flat as I could, pushing through grass, gravel, briars, and baby trees. I kept stopping to listen, but all I could detect was the sounds of the dog handler groaning.
Was Jacky moving, too? My cheek brushed up against a softball-sized rock, so I picked it up and pitched it as high as I could over the bushes back in the direction from which I’d come. It made a satisfying thump, but unfortunately it sounded just like a rock had been thrown into the undergrowth. So much for my deception plan. Then I heard something coming from behind me, and the something was making zero effort to hide its approach.
Dogs. Oh, shit, I thought. Nathan’s four-pack had come back and were hot on our trail. No, my trail.
I looked at the little. 25-caliber peashooter and briefly considered using it on myself rather than face the prospect of being torn to pieces by four big beasts.
Except the furry face that finally broke through the bushes was Frack, who was very happy to see me. Frick came through right behind him and took advantage of the fact that I was on the ground to do some serious licking. The problem was that they were making a lot of noise, and if Jacky was near, that shotgun was training around on us. I grabbed a stick and threw it high in the general direction of where I figured the handler was lying, and they took off to retrieve it. They went crashing through the bushes, so I took that opportunity to squirm thirty feet farther to the right under cover of all their noise.
By now I had the rock formation at my back, which meant that Jacky and his erstwhile buddy ought to be between me and my original trail. The dogs were still thrashing around out there, and then they started barking. I winced and waited for the shotgun, but nothing happened. They continued to bark, and they weren’t moving. I decided it was time to close in.
Jacky was propped up against the base of a tree with his back to me. He was trying to bring the shotgun to bear on the shepherds with just his left arm, and he wasn’t doing too well. I could see a pair of boots sticking out of a clump of hawthorn bushes some ten feet in front of him. The shepherds were very aware of the shotgun and kept darting in and out of the line of fire, continuing to bark at Jacky. I was able to creep right up behind under cover of all that dog racket and grab the shotgun out of his hand before he could pull the trigger. He yelled in pain when I did that, and then pressed his left hand over his right arm, as if trying to hug himself. His left hand was covered in blood.
My snap-shot had managed to hit him in the right hand. It wasn’t anything like the old western movies. That. 308 round had essentially exploded his right hand, to the point where there were jagged bits of bone protruding everywhere his palm used to be. He was distinctly gray around the gills, and there was a baby lake of blood under his legs where he’d been hunched over, holding his right hand under his left armpit. His mouth was open and he was taking short, gasping breaths through all that beard. Keeping an eye on Jacky, I checked out the dog handler, but he was either unconscious or dead. Jacky had managed to put a blast of some large-caliber shot into the man’s chest, and he was probably gone.
I turned back to Jacky, shut down the barking shepherds, and squatted down a few feet away from him, keeping the. 25 pointed in his general direction. His whole face was gray now, and his lips were trembling as he slid deeper into shock. I was amazed that he could have fired the shotgun, given the recoil of a ten-gauge. I broke open the action and found two new shells, so he’d also been able to reload after shooting his own man down. He was glaring at me through a haze of pain. I was very aware that Nathan was out there somewhere, possibly with more of his black hats. They had to have heard all the gunfire.