Blood Feud

by David Robbins

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Drinking with the Enemy

  “That’s strange,” Buck said. “I’m feeling peculiar myself.” He took another sip of coffee. “Even my mouth is tingling.”

  “Maybe you are coming down with something,” Ezriah said. He scratched his chest and slid his hand under his shirt, still scratching.

  “I feel fine,” Fox said. He glanced at Buck, and at the cup in Buck’s hand, and then at Granger, and at the cup on the table in front of him, and said, “Son of a bitch.”

  “Too bad you didn’t drink some, too,” Ezriah said. He brought his hand out from under his shirt. In it was a Cloveland House pocket revolver in .41 caliber. He cocked it and pointed it at Fox.

  “What is this?” Buck said in alarm.

  Ezriah shot Fox. The slug cored Fox’s forehead and snapped his head back. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a grunt. A red drop trickled down his brow as he slowly folded and his body slid off the chair to the floor. He twitched a few times and was still.

  Both Buck and Granger went to reach for their rifles. Both only raised their hands a few inches and then looked at their arms in dismay and disbelief.

  “What the hell is happening?” Buck said.“I can’t hardly move.”

  “Me either.”

  Ezriah Harkey held the smoking pistol level. “It’s the poison. Pretty soon you won’t be able to move at all.”

  Buck and Granger said together, “Poison?”

  “Woman’s doing,” Ezriah said, with a jerk of his thumb at his wife. “She’s good with potions and herbs and”—he grinned a wicked grin—“poisons.”

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First Printing, October 2010

  Copyright © David Robbins, 2010

  All rights reserved

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-44369-9

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  To Judy, Josh, and Shane

  1

  Summer green clothed the rugged slopes and deep valleys of the Ozark Mountains. Bears and cougars prowled, coyotes yipped and coons ran, and a wealth of birds warbled and sang. It was a beautiful land, and it was a beautiful girl who came to Harkey Hollow.

  The girl was all of eighteen. Tawny of skin, with corn silk hair, she moved with agile grace. She wore a plain homespun dress, green like the world around her, and nothing else. Her feet were bare. They had never known shoes.

  Scarlet Shannon was her name, and she was where she should not have been.

  Scarlet knew better than to come to Harkey Hollow, but she was fond of blackberries and they grew thick and delicious. She was wary but sure of herself, ready to flee should there be cause. She pricked her ears, and her eyes darted like a doe’s on the lookout for wolves.

  The vegetation thinned. Scarlet hunkered behind a sugarberry tree and surveyed the hollow. The blackberry bushes were as thick as ever and hung heavy with plump berries.

  Save for a few bees and a swallowtail butterfly, nothing moved. The only sound was the tweet of a wren.

  Scarlet moved into the open. She hefted the old wooden pail she’d brought and scooted to the nearest blackberry bush. She plucked a ripe berry and plopped it into her mouth. Closing her eyes, she chewed slowly, swallowed, and grinned. She commenced to pick berries as fast as her fingers could fly. Every so often she glanced about her.

  The sun’s golden glow splashed the hollow and the surrounding woodland, lending the illusion that all was well.

  Scarlet went on picking. For every two she put in the pail, she helped herself to another. She plucked and ate, plucked and ate, moving deeper into the patch as she went. Once she looked up and saw how far she had gone and took a step as if to turn back but shook her head and continued plucking.

  The cicadas stopped buzzing.

  Somewhere a squirrel chattered as though it was angry and a blue jay screeched noisily.

  Scarlet’s pail was half full. She came to a bush with some of the biggest blackberries yet and put two in her mouth. She bent to get at those near the bottom and heard the blue jay do more screeching. Belatedly, she realized what it might mean. Her fingers froze midway to a berry.

  Just then the forest became completely still.

  Scarcely breathing, Scarlet rose high enough to peer over the bushes. She scanned the woods. A goldfinch and its mate took wing and she studied the shadows where the birds had come out of the trees. Her whole body went rigid with dread.

  Some of the shadows were moving.

  Crouching
, Scarlet moved deeper into the patch. She held the pail with one hand and the handle with the other so the handle wouldn’t squeak. Rounding a bend, she flattened on her belly as close to the bushes as she could without being pricked by thorns. She folded her arms and rested her chin on her wrist. Time crawled. So did a large black ant, practically under her chin. The temperature climbed. She closed her eyes and fought the tension inside her. The crunch of a twig brought her out of herself.

  Harsh laughter pealed and a voice like the rasp of a file on a corn cutter hollered, “You might as well show yourself, girl. We know you’re in there.”

  Scarlet bit her lower lip and felt the blood drain from her face.

  “You hear me? We were coming for berries and seen you.”

  Quietly, Scarlet rose but stayed stooped over. By small fractions she unfurled to where she could see over the bushes.

  “We got you surrounded. You ain’t going to get past us nohow. Make it easy. Come on out. You don’t, you’re liable to make us mad.”

  Scarlet counted seven heads. She dipped low and moved along the path, seeking another way out. But it appeared to be the only path, and meandered helterskelter. Worse, it was taking her deeper into the hollow.

  “We know you ain’t a Harkey,” the voice went on. “That means you’re one of them. You got grit coming here, girl, but it was awful stupid. What, there ain’t no blackberries on your side of the ridge?”

  Some of the others thought that was funny. Scarlet almost went past a gap in the bushes. An animal trail, not as wide as she was, but it was better than being cornered. Flattening and holding the pail in front of her, she crawled. Brambles snatched at her dress and scratched her arms.

  “I’m patient, missy, but I won’t wait forever,” the voice warned. “Either you show yourself or we’re coming in. And if you make us do it the hard way, there will be hell to pay. We’ll take it out of your hide.”

  Scarlet wasn’t overly scared yet. She had confidence in her ability to outrun them if she could find her way out without being spotted. She wriggled along, wincing when she was scratched, until she came to the thicket’s edge. A shadow moved across the opening. One of her enemies was out there, pacing back and forth.

  “Come on, girl,” the voice urged. “Don’t be this way. You don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting away. Come out and I’ll treat you nice. You have my word.”

  As careful as she could, Scarlet stuck her head out. A stocky block of muscle with no shirt and no shoes had his back to her. She drew her head back before he turned.

  “Which one are you?” the voice called. “I don’t know all of you by sight. Those I’ve laid eyes on over to Wareagle won’t hardly ever give me the time of day.”

  Scarlet had a sharp retort on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. She slid the pail to the opening and deliberately moved the handle so it squeaked. Dirty feet appeared and a freckled face lowered and fingers as thick as railroad spikes reached down.

  “Rabon! I done found her pail!”

  Scarlet exploded into motion. She was out of the gap like a fox-chased cottontail out of a hollow log. Some girls would have scratched or pushed, but she punched him flush on the jaw. He fell onto his backside and grunted, more surprised than anything. It gained her the seconds she needed to wheel and flee into the forest. Her pail and the blackberries were forgotten. She had something more important to think of.

  Scarlet flew. Shouts and the thud of pounding feet told her they were after her. She glanced back and her confidence climbed. She had a good lead. There wasn’t a boy anywhere who could catch her when she had a good lead. She flew, and she laughed. Her legs were tireless. She had taken part in footraces since she was knee-high to a calf, and could go forever. She needed that stamina now to make it over the crest before they caught her. Once she was on the other side, she was in Shannon territory. They didn’t dare follow.

  Scarlet’s dress whipped about her. Her long legs flashed. The soles of her feet slapped the ground in rhythmic beat. She glanced back again and laughed louder. She had increased her lead by a good ten yards. She vaulted a log and avoided a boulder and came to a leaf-covered slope where the footing was treacherous. She slipped but recovered and churned higher. Something moved in the leaves, a snake, and she bounded aside.

  A rock missed her ear by a whisker.

  Startled, Scarlet ran faster. She hadn’t thought they would resort to rocks. But then they were Harkeys, and as her pa liked to say, the Harkeys were worthless no-accounts. She concentrated on running and only running. A flat clear stretch gave her a chance to put more distance between them. She was almost to a stand of maples when pain flared in her left leg and it buckled under her and the next thing she knew she was tumbling cattywampus. She hit so hard, the breath was knocked from her lungs. She lay dazed, her ears ringing, her vision blurred, struggling against an inner tide of darkness.

  Voices and a poke in the ribs brought her back to the here and now.

  Scarlet blinked and looked up and felt the way a raccoon must feel when it was ringed by dogs. The seven of them were puffing and sweaty from the chase. Only four wore shirts, and the shirts they wore were little more than rags with buttons. The biggest had a shock of black hair that fell in bangs over bushy brows. His dark eyes regarded her as her little brother used to regard the hard candy in the general store at Wareagle.

  “Well, well, well. Ain’t you a looker?”

  Scarlet realized her dress had hiked halfway to her hips. She sat up and smoothed it and stood straight and tall. Her left leg still hurt and when she put pressure on it, she winced. “Who threw that rock?”

  “The one that hit you?” the big one said, and chortled. “That would be me. Good aim, huh?”

  Scarlet hit him. She punched him on the jaw as she had punched the other one, but where the other one went down, the big one didn’t. His head rocked and he put his hand to his chin and did the last thing she expected; he laughed.

  “Not bad. I’ve been hit harder but only by them that was larger than me, which ain’t many.”

  “What do you want? Who are you, anyhow?”

  “As if you don’t know. We’re Harkeys, all of us. I’m Rabon Harkey and these here are my brothers and my cousins.”

  “You’re a Shannon, ain’t you?” one of the others said. “You look like a Shannon with that yellow hair and those blue eyes.”

  “She’s a Shannon,” Rabon said. “She can deny it but we know better and now she’s in a fix.”

  Scarlet put her hands on her hips. “I was picking berries. You had no right to come after me like you done.”

  “You’re on Harkey land,” Rabon said. “That’s all the right we need.” He took a step and poked her, hard, in the shoulder. “What, you reckoned that since you’re a girl we’d go easy on you? That you could sneak in and steal our berries and if we caught you we’d let you go?”

  “They’re not your blackberries,” Scarlet said.“They’re there for anyone who is of a mind to pick them.”

  Rabon shook his head. “Not if they’re on Harkey land. Harkey blackberries are for Harkeys and no one else.” He crossed his thick arms across his broad chest. “The question is, what do we do with you?”

  “You let me go or there will be trouble,” Scarlet warned. “My pa won’t take kindly to you mistreating me. I won’t tell him if you let me be. I give you my word.”

  “Is that supposed to scare us?” Rabon snorted, and gestured at the one Scarlet had punched down at the thicket. “Are you scared, Woot?”

  “I surely am not, brother,” Woot replied. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’m afeared of a Shannon.”

  “What do we do with her?” the smallest and the youngest of them asked.

  “We can’t beat her like we would a feller.”

  “Why not, Jimbo?” Woot said. “It makes no difference to me. If they’re a Shannon they have it coming.”

  Jimbo turned to Rabon. “It wouldn’t be right hitting a female. M
y ma wouldn’t like it. Your ma, neither.”

  “You ever cut free of those apron strings, you might be a man, cousin,” Rabon said. “But you’re right. Pa is always saying as how we need to be nice to ladies. So we’ll be nice to this one if she’s nice to us.”

  New fear clutched at Scarlet. “How do you mean?”

  Rabon stood so they were almost touching. His breath smelled of onions and his teeth were yellow. “You’re more than old enough. I bet you have already, plenty of times. A few more won’t hardly matter.”

  “No,” Scarlet said.

  “It ain’t like I’m giving you a choice. It’ll be me first and as many of the rest as want, and you can be on your way.”

  “No,” Scarlet said, more forcefully. She went to step around him, but he pushed her back.

  “I’m not kidding, neither,” Rabon said. “Here or in the shade yonder. I’ll let you decide that much.”

  Scarlet looked at each of them. She saw no pity, no mercy, only resentment of who she was or, rather, what she was. The only exception was the young one.

  Jimbo; he was troubled. She appealed to him, saying, “Your ma wouldn’t like this. It’s not decent.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jimbo agreed, and turned to Rabon. “All she wanted was some blackberries. You do this, everyone in the hills will be against us.”

  “She won’t ever tell,” Rabon said, and took hold of Scarlet’s arm. “Will you, girl?”

  Before she could respond Jimbo grabbed Rabon’s wrist and pulled his big hand off her. “No. I won’t stand for it. You hear? She’s free to go.”

  Rabon’s features twisted in amazement and then fury. Yet he smiled and patted his much smaller cousin on the head and said, “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, the only reason I don’t stomp you into the dirt is because you’re kin. Remember that when you wake up.”

  “But I am awake,” Jimbo said.

  “You were,” Rabon said, and punched him. Rabon’s knuckles were the size of walnuts, his fist as large as a sledge. His blow lifted Jimbo onto his heels and sent him sprawling in a heap. Rabon rubbed his fist and regarded the rest. “Anyone else object?”