James’ truck turned into the driveway almost without slowing. He slid to a stop on the gravel drive and he was out of the truck, pulling a shotgun out one-handed. “Any word?” The fright in his voice said he was one step below an all-out panic.
“Not yet. I don’t know where to start looking, but they walked to wherever they went.” Ned pointed to the north and the blue anvil-shaped thunderstorms rising over the barn. “James, you start up and work the gully, cutting through Joe Daniels’ pasture to where it ends at the spring. You’ll be able to see their footprints in the sand if they went that way. If they didn’t, come back here to the house.”
Without a word, James grabbed a flashlight and took off past the barn at a run.
“James!”
He turned and Ned pointed toward the north. “It’s coming up a cloud. You’re gonna have to move fast, and so are we.”
With a flip of his hand, James disappeared around the barn. Ned watched his son and realized he wasn’t sure which way to go. He first looked eastward toward the creek and the bridge, but he dismissed it as being too far away. Westward put the kids either on the highway or near any one of several houses on a little oil road leading to the bottoms, so he didn’t think they went that direction either.
Center Spring Branch was the only remaining option. He remembered Top’s interest in arrowheads a few weeks earlier.
“John, drive down to the creek bridge and start walking upstream on this side of Center Spring Branch. I’ll cut through Dell’s pasture there by the catch pen, and when I hit the branch, I’ll work my way toward you. If I find them and there’s trouble, I’ll fire a shot and you come a runnin’.”
“Yessir. They’ll be there I bet.”
“They better be.” Fear was a great knot in his ample stomach. “And when I get my hands on those two kids I’m gonna hug them and then whip their little asses.”
Chapter Thirty-two
I couldn’t catch my breath. I dreamed I was drowning again. The red muddy water was deep and I couldn’t touch bottom to push off. I fought to swim upward, but the Rules of the Dream were in play and I couldn’t get my hands free to paddle. Even my feet didn’t work and I couldn’t kick for the surface.
My eyes suddenly snapped open in the darkness. But even awake I still couldn’t move my hands and feet. I figured I was turned wrong in the bed and they’d gone to sleep, but then I smelled wood smoke and it dawned on me I wasn’t under Miss Becky’s patchwork quilts, I was laying with my cheek on damp leaves out in the woods somewhere. Birds twittered on their roosts as the wind began to rise from a coming storm.
A strange sound I’d been hearing finally cut through the fog and I realized Pepper was somewhere nearby, crying. I tried to focus in the dim light, but my left eye was swelled shut. Movement caught my attention and I blinked several times to clear my good eye and saw Pepper tied facedown over a fallen log on the far side of a campfire. Her arms were wrapped around it like she was hugging the rough wood. My stomach turned when I realized her shirt was gone and wet leaves covered the white skin of her back.
“Pepper?”
She sobbed quietly to herself.
A man stepped between us and threw a big limb onto the coals. With the fire behind him, he was a shape and nothing more. Panic rose in a great wave. My lungs closed up and I forced air in and out to release the tightness in my chest.
“Shhh.” The shadowy man spoke softly. “Be quiet.”
“What’s wrong with Pepper?” Hot tears filled my eyes and I began to shake.
“She’s mad at me.” The man knelt and piddled with the fire. His voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Thunder rumbled and a short rain squall soaked me in a matter of seconds. I found myself ignoring the rain, though. It was almost as if my mind couldn’t deal with everything going on around me.
“What did you do to her, mister?” I was scared enough to start bawling, too.
“I didn’t do nothing, yet.” His back to me, he watched her for a moment. He kept talking to me like we were having supper together. “Oh, you mean about her shirt? That was her fault. She wouldn’t quit fighting me and it got ripped off. It was a good thing, anyway, because when she lost her shirt the fight went right out of her.”
I rolled onto my side to get my hands free, but it was useless. My fingers worked around and I felt smooth, hard metal.
Handcuffs.
My wheezing was even louder. “I need my puffer.”
“No, you don’t. Learn to breathe like a man.”
“You don’t understand. My puffer helps me breathe.”
“I understand perfectly. Ned babies you kids too much. But you’re gonna have to tough it out for a little while, hoss, and pretty soon it won’t matter no more.”
Despite my terror, I was amazed at how casual our conversation had become.
He threw a wet stick on the smoldering fire. It flared up and shifted with a crisp sound. But even then, with one eye swollen shut, I still couldn’t see his face.
Panic took hold and my kicking heels made him furious. “Dammit!” He rushed to my side in demonic fury, flipped me onto my stomach and put his knee on my back. The monstrously heavy weight knocked all the air out of me.
“Be still, you little shit!”
Our fighting brought Pepper out of wherever she had withdrawn. “He needs his medicine.” Her voice was high and scared.
He ran his hands over my jeans, found the puffer in my front pocket and yanked it free. He threw it into the fire. The rubber bulb immediately melted and belched black smoke.
“Now, shut up about that damned contraption.”
I gasped when he took the anvil-heavy pressure off my back. Pepper turned her head to see us better. A huge mouse pushed her cheekbone out of shape. I was scared of what the other side looked like.
The wind rose, bringing the sound of gurgling water and the smell of clean mud, not like a stock pond in the summertime when the sun beats down and turns it hot and sour. I knew we had to be near the creek, because the river had a completely different sound.
Lighting sizzled overhead and in the colorless glare I saw the steep rocky bank of the creek’s opposite shore and the nearby sandbar. I knew then where we were.
The Rock Hole.
Shadow Man stepped past the fire and straddled the log behind Pepper. He grabbed her wet hair and yanked her head backward. Mouth opened in pain, she gasped. He leaned over her bare shoulder to whisper in her ear. Pepper fought her bindings like a trapped animal.
Dropping to his knees on the wet ground, Shadow Man laid his head between her shoulders and rubbed his hands up and down her bare arms. He turned and grinned at me, and now the light was on my side. I sucked in my breath.
“Raymond!”
“Shhhh.”
Lighting ripped again with a sharp report, and it began to rain in earnest.
Chapter Thirty-three
Ned saw the light-colored muslin bag hanging from the tree limb as soon as he reached the low water crossing. He was right. They had been there, hunting arrowheads. Biting down rising panic, he forced himself to stay calm.
Dusk was already making it difficult to see. Thunder rumbled and lightning lit the distant clouds. Ned directed his flashlight toward the bank, and quickly located their footprints on each side of the branch leading toward the creek.
Although he wasn’t a tracker, the prints were for the most part easy to follow. Ned followed the tracks at a fast walk, weaving in and out of the sand and gravel bars. He lost one set for a while when they led up the bank and into a dense growth of berry vines, but he went back to the stream to follow the other set. Within a minute the first pair returned and he continued his search.
He almost didn’t see the print that alarmed the kids. He’d have missed it completely if the track hadn’t been pointed at right angles with the other, smaller marks. But there was no way he could have missed the area where they’d been taken. Only yards away, the sand dug deep with the impr
int of struggling feet and bodies told the story of a vicious fight.
Top’s new BB gun lay in the water. He was proud of the gun and would have never intentionally left it in such a way.
Ned’s fear mounted and he fished it out with a sick, sinking feeling. He walked the area, trying to make sense of the scene. He found leafy branches and twigs that didn’t match the nearby plants. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the smoothly cut branches. Someone had obviously had fought with the kids. But what tore up the surrounding brush?
Was there a machete involved, a sword? Maybe an ax?
“Where you at, Ned?” The deep voice came from downstream.
“Here!”
In minutes John’s flashlight flickered through the underbrush.
“What did you find?” Ned asked.
John’s shoes were muddy and sheep-burrs stuck to his clothes. “I didn’t see nothin’.”
“I found tracks. Footprints. Somebody stole my kids, John.”
“Was it Raymond?”
“I can’t tell. I’m no tracker. But I know they’re gone.”
They shined their flashlights on the sand and trickling water. To the north, the thunder deepened and rolled closer. The wind freshened and rustled the leaves overhead.
“Well, he didn’t bring them downstream or I’da found something. He’s taken them somewhere.”
Ned waved his arm north toward a faint dirt road that was once the low water crossing over the stream. “He had to have gone that way. There’s no way he could carry two kids to the south. It’s nearly two miles of boggy country to the nearest road.”
“Yeah, but it’s only about a hundred yards to the growed up stagecoach road over there. Come on.”
They rushed through a landscape lit by flickers of lightning, dodging through the strip of trees bordering the branch and then charging across the rough pasture. Minutes later they broke out onto the road, breathing hard. Their twin flashlights revealed a set of tire tracks and, when John moved his light over the grass thrashing in the wind, Raymond’s vehicle backed into the woods.
Searching the ground, John saw more footprints and drag marks across fresh gopher mounds. Heart pounding, he pointed east. “He went back out toward Gilbert’s hay grazer, where the road comes out on the highway.”
A sudden gust of wind threatened to take Ned’s hat. He pulled it down tighter. “Do you think he went across the bridge toward Arthur City?”
Frustration mounted, because he had no clue. “I don’t know.”
“C’mon John. Help me here!”
“I cain’t. I don’t have any idy where he went. You know Raymond. Where would he go? To his house? Down toward the river somewheres? Maybe Ike’s cornfield again.”
Ned thought about what could have transpired. He attempted to recreate the events traumatic enough to render two kids incapable of fighting back. Pepper was a fighter, so getting her under control would be more than a skirmish. His stomach clenched at the thought of what it would take to restrain the little tomboy. And Top, he’d fight back as long as his lungs could take it, and then…
…the recurring nightmare of suffocating…
…drowning in red muddy water…
…down by the river somewheres….
…he wouldn’t go back past Ned’s house, so the only other direction was across Sander’s Creek bridge…
A crack of thunder rolled over the creek bottoms as the storm arrived. They felt the vibration through the air. Seconds later, a brief deluge soaked their clothes. Ned studied John’s face for a moment in the glow of their flashlights as rain poured off their hat brims. John saw the constable’s eyes widen.
“I know where they are. We have to get to the Rock Hole.”
He prayed he was right.
Chapter Thirty-four
I was drowning in fresh air.
Fighting the handcuffs had exhausted me. The whipping wind kept me in woodsmoke for minutes at a time, closing my lungs. I was close to passing out.
Pepper no longer cried on the other side of the fire, but she whimpered quietly to herself. The sound was unnerving. Pepper had never whined a day in her life and I couldn’t believe my tomboy cousin wasn’t fighting back. I wasn’t sure if she was still awake or not, but I kept drifting away, never knowing how long I was out each time.
The rain poured on us for minutes at a time, only to slack off and then fall again.
The contrary fire sputtered and smoked badly, frustrating Raymond, who kept muttering to himself and poking at the burning sticks with a big two-handed screwdriver. He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the approaching storm.
“I like rain.” Dropping the screwdriver beside the fire, he took off his shirt and threw it onto the ground. “That was the only time we cooled off in the Nam, kids. Rain, beautiful rain. Rain is clean. It washes away the blood, and you know what the preachers say: water purifies us, and I have no sin after I’m washed in rain.”
Terrified, it was all I could do to simply inhale. “Please call Grandpa. Use your radio and we won’t tell.”
“I can’t talk to Ned anymore now since you shot me.” In a flash of light, I saw the bruised hole above Raymond’s eyebrow. It still leaked blood. “You’re pretty good with that air gun and you damn near shot out my eye. If I show up with this BB hole in my face, Ned will know what happened, and I can’t have that. It’s all your fault that I have to leave, but I was almost done anyway. It’ll be time to go when I’m finished tonight.”
“Please?”
Raymond’s face went blank. Then without expression he mocked me in a frightening grown man’s baby voice. “Please, please. You whiny little shit!”
Pepper was tied up and couldn’t take care of herself. I’d never seen her when she wasn’t full of piss and vinegar as the old-timers would say. I wanted to be tough, and not whiny. Something in my gut rose into my throat. Before I knew it, I spat out words I had never spoken before, but heard many times from my Grandpa. “You son of a bitch! Let us alone, goddammit!”
In three long strides he was across the fire and gave me kick in the side. It felt like I’d been hit with a sledge hammer. It knocked out what little breath I had left and I started seeing sparks.
“I’ll be back with you in a few minutes, just as soon as Pepper and I are done.”
The fight was out of me.
He crossed back to the log and rubbed his hand on her back. She whimpered like a scared puppy, but I barely heard her. “Please let us alone.”
Overhead, the bottom fell out and the world turned to water.
Chapter Thirty-five
Ned and John pushed their way through the thick woods bordering Sanders Creek. Flashlights did little to light the way in the heavy rain, and between the percussion flares of lightning, they fought through darkness by feel alone.
Thick brush and wet dewberry vines caught their ankles, tripping them at nearly every step. Huge stands of grapevines blocked their way, costing them precious time. Soon both men were cut and bloody.
Ned grunted with each step and his lungs burned with exertion. His age and the months of worry finally were catching up with the old lawman. “John, go on. I’m slowing you down.”
Carrying his shotgun at port arms, John used it to push thorny vines out of the way. “Come on Mr. Ned. It cain’t be far now.”
“I don’t know if I’ll make it.” Ned stopped to catch his breath in the rain. If not for their hats, the downpour would have blinded them. “I don’t know if I have the strength to make it.”
“Ain’t we almost there?”
“It’s not far ahead. They may be on the other side of the creek and if they are, we’ll have to decide what to do then.”
“I want a clear shot.”
“I just want to see my kids alive.”
John kept bulling through the wet brush. “We got to get there first.”
Chapter Thirty-six
I thrashed and fought the cuffs, knowing what Raymond had in mind for Pepper
. But I couldn’t imagine what he’d do to me until I recalled tortured dogs and the goat’s teeth in the culvert and skinned people hanging on fences.
Raymond is The Skinner.
He kept whispering in Pepper’s ear, ignoring me. With his knees in the muck, Raymond slid his hands around her naked waist and pulled her toward the end of the log. She screamed as the rough bark tore her skin. I recognized the position from what I’d seen bulls do in the pasture.
Mud covered Pepper’s jeans and Raymond’s khakis until they had no color at all in the flickering firelight. Raymond pushed closer and put his lips directly against her ear.
Pepper didn’t move, terrified and completely defeated.
He quit whispering and straightened up, still on his knees, to howl like a wolf. The insane sound was muffled by the rain, but for a moment it startled Pepper. She turned her head to see him and the movement caught his attention.
“I’ve got something for you two half-breed kids.” He stood up and picked something up from the fire.
I remembered Uncle Cody’s dog.
I remembered the goat in the culvert.
My blood ran cold.
Raymond held up a long, smoking stick. He’d wired one of the largest arrowheads we’d found that afternoon onto the end. “Here you go Pepper. I found this in your pocket. See? Just having this proves you’re half-breed kids of that Indian, Becky Parker. I bet you’re gonna like what happens next.”
He hunched over Pepper and touched the arrowhead against the back of her right shoulder. Even in the rain, I heard the sizzle of burning flesh and smoke briefly puffed up. The sound Pepper made was not human; she twisted, fighting whatever was holding her against the log. Then she shrieked again because he kept pushing it harder and harder.
I would have shrieked with her, but my panic was silent.
“It’ll be all right.” Raymond put the arrowhead back in the fire. “The rain will wash away the pain. Just wait and see.” He turned and grinned across the fire at me. “Hey, Top. You get the spear point.”
The Rock Hole Page 25
