He tried to see in through the knotholes in the old board siding, but it was already too dark inside for that. There were more sounds of restless animals though, so Mitch made his way around to the front where he knew the entrance would be. The horse he’d heard before snorted again, and the shuffling of hooves told him there was more than one inside. Mitch quietly unlatched the chain from the gate and entered, his finger on the trigger of the AR as he pointed the muzzle ahead of him in the dim shadows.
The horses were locked in a wooden stall along one side of the barn. Mitch whispered soothingly to them as he approached, and even in the dark interior he recognized Arod, with his distinctive splotches of white and light gray. The two packhorses were there as well. So this was their destination! The men who’d killed Mr. Holloway and taken the horses had brought them here, and were likely inside the house even now. And his sister might be too!
Mitch talked to the animals in low whispers, stroking each of them and giving them a pat on the side. “Just keep quiet fellows. I’m gonna get you out of here, but I’ve got business to take care of first.”
Mitch eased back to the front of the barn and took up a position just inside the gate where he could watch the house. The sun was down now and twilight would fade rapidly into night. He wished someone would come out before then, so he could see who he was dealing with. From the tracks he’d found around Mr. Holloway’s camp, he had to assume at least three men, but there could have been others already here. He would have the element of surprise in his favor, but he couldn’t use the rifle if he had to shoot in the direction of the house because Lisa was likely in there. His hope was that one or all of them would come out to the barn to check on the horses before dark. There was nothing in there for them but old hay and an empty water trough. Mitch doubted though, that the kind of men that would do what they’d done to Mr. Holloway would care much about the welfare of stolen horses.
A half hour passed as he watched in anticipation, waiting for full darkness to make his next move. If his sister was in there, there was no telling what they had already done to her or what they might do tonight. He hoped he wasn’t too late, but it was time to move now and find out. With an arrow nocked on the string of his longbow and the AR slung behind him for backup, Mitch slipped across the yard, keeping to the deeper shadows until he reached the side of the house opposite the chimney.
The window nearest him was covered with drawn curtains on the inside, but Mitch could see the glow from the fireplace through the thin fabric. Moving to the other side of the window, he could see a tiny sliver of the interior through a crack at the edge of the curtain, but the only thing visible at that angle was a wall and part of a torn and worn-looking recliner. With his head near the glass, Mitch listened for voices within, but heard nothing. Whoever was inside, they were keeping quiet, which seemed strange if it were indeed the three men he’d tracked. Mitch made his way slowly to the next window and the next, finding all of the ones on the back and sides of the house closed off by curtains. His last hope of seeing inside without being seen first was the front porch, where he knew there were more windows on either side of the door. There was more risk there, because of the possibility of a creaking board or someone suddenly stepping outside, but it was his only option now.
He waited at the corner of the porch, listening carefully before stepping up onto it. He could tell by the light coming from the window nearest him that the curtains of that one were open enough to see inside. Taking care to shift his weight as smoothly as possible, Mitch eased onto the porch and then slipped to the edge of the window. The boards under his feet were more solid than they looked, and didn’t betray his presence. From where he crouched, he could now see the fireplace, and next to it, a woman sitting in a wooden rocking chair, staring at the flames with her back to him. A few feet away, a man was lying on a couch, a blanket over most of his body and something that Mitch guessed was a makeshift bandage wrapped around his head. The man was immobile, and appeared to be sleeping.
The small living room he was looking into was open to the kitchen on the other side of the front doorway. There was a hall leading into the rest of the house from that side, and Mitch figured it led to the bedrooms and bath. The house was quite small, and if there was anyone else inside, they had to be in those back rooms. But as he stood there watching, Mitch heard nothing but the rhythmic creaking from the woman’s rocker. It was going to be difficult to determine if Lisa was in the back because he couldn’t see into any of the other windows.
Mitch thought about his options as he waited to see if the woman would move. When she finally did, it was to get up and walk over to where the bandaged man lay on the couch. She bent over him, touching his face and saying something, but the man was unresponsive. Considering the sheer bulk of the wrapping on his head, Mitch wondered if he might be unconscious. If that were the case, he was one less threat he had to worry about.
He studied the woman as she stood there. She had stringy blonde hair that framed a plain and somewhat gaunt face. Mitch thought she looked about 30, but the hard living of the past months could have made her look older than she was. Looking past her, he scanned the room for weapons close to hand that she might go for, and saw a shotgun leaning against the kitchen bar. It was a good ten paces from the couch or the rocking chair, but he still didn’t know who else might be inside and what weapons they might have. There were dog bowls on the floor close to the shotgun, but if dogs were living here, they weren’t around now. If they were, they would have already caught wind of him and he would have heard them barking long before he was this close to the house.
All he knew for certain was that the three horses were here, including the one Lisa had been riding. Mitch didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary trying to determine if she was in there or not. The man on the couch might not be able to give him answers, but the woman probably could. Mitch needed to get her attention and then get her in a position where he could ask his questions without the risk of getting shot. He decided the best way to do that was to get her to come outside. That would also tell him if there were others inside or not.
He turned and leapt lightly off the porch and then ran quickly to the barn and opened the gate. Once inside, he found the bridles and put them on the horses, then opened the stall and led them all out together. Stopping to make sure all was still quiet at the house, he then crossed the yard again and led them around to the side of the porch. He stepped back up to the window to make sure the woman was still in the room, and saw that she was back in the rocker, facing the fire like before. Mitch returned to where the horses were standing and kicked a metal pail loudly across the porch. Then he slapped both packhorses in the rump to get them agitated before quickly leaping back onto the porch and pressing himself flat against the wall opposite the door.
He heard the woman get up and walk across the room as the horses stomped and shuffled about in the yard. A deadbolt rolled back and then the knob turned and the door opened. The woman stepped across the threshold, the shotgun in one hand, her attention fully focused on the horses that were supposed to be in the barn.
“Preston? Curtiss? Is that you?”
The woman was staring intently out into the yard, trying to see in the dark. Mitch knew the other men weren’t in the house now. He quickly lunged from the shadows and grabbed the shotgun by the barrel, stepping through to put a foot behind her legs to trip her to the deck as he did. The woman screamed as she tried to get back up and make for the door, but Mitch was blocking her path, the shotgun leveled at her chest.
“Shut up and you won’t get hurt! Those three horses that were in your barn belong to me, and I’m looking for the men that took them along with my sister.”
The woman was in a state of panic, and Mitch was afraid she would try to run. He stepped closer so he could grab her if she did because he didn’t want to have to shoot her before she answered his questions.
“There’s nobody here but me and Johnny. There ain’t no girl here
. I didn’t know anything about the girl until she hurt Johnny.”
Mitch nudged her through the door with the shotgun. “Let’s go inside. You’ve got some explaining to do!”
He pointed to the man that was still lying unconscious on the couch. “Who is that? Is that Johnny? What happened to him?”
“Yes. He’s my husband. Preston and Curtiss found him in the barn like that. They thought he was dead, but he’s still breathing, I just can’t wake him up. And the end of his tongue is cut right off!”
Mitch could see part of a rag the woman or someone had stuffed into the man’s mouth to stop the bleeding. He showed no signs of regaining consciousness anytime soon.
“Where did the girl go if she’s not here now?”
“I don’t know where she is. Preston and Curtiss went after her with the dogs. They said she ran off in the woods. I never even saw her. They said Johnny was taking them horses to the barn, but he took a girl out there too. Then Preston and Curtiss went out there and found him all bloody and beaten in the head with a board. Whatever they brought that girl here for, it wasn’t my Johnny’s idea. I know it wasn’t. He wouldn’t have just taken a girl like that, but Preston and Curtiss probably talked him into letting them do it. I thought they would already be back by now, but that was the night before last and I haven’t seen them since. I don’t know what happened to them.”
Mitch forced the woman to go with him as he searched every room of the house. He found the bags containing the weapons, magazines and ammo that had been packed on the two extra horses for trading in Purvis. But Lisa wasn’t in there and the woman’s story seemed to add up. She’d been too frightened and too surprised by his sudden appearance and didn’t seem bright enough to make up something like that under duress.
Mitch took the bags of weapons from the house along with her shotgun and carried them out to the barn, hiding them under the hay in the horse stall. He didn’t know if he would ever be back to retrieve them, but he warned the woman not to touch them, saying he would definitely be back to get them and they’d better all be there. The same applied to the horses because he couldn’t take them either. If the two men who were looking for Lisa set out after her on foot with dogs, then it was because she had taken off cross county, through the woods. It was exactly what she would know to do, and the best thing she could have done in the circumstances. Mitch would have to go on foot as well, and come back for the horses later. He went and got Amigo and turned him loose with the other three. There was a pond on the other side of the property, so they would have water. Then he disappeared into the dark woods in the direction the woman swore the men and dogs had gone.
Twenty-four
MITCH KNEW HE WOULD have a hard time picking up a two-day old trail in the dark, but hearing the woman’s story of what happened spurred him to do what he could without delay. The unconscious man on the couch had thought he could handle Lisa alone, but she had somehow gotten the better of him and nearly killed him. A part of Mitch wanted to finish what she’d started, but he felt he had a better chance of getting the woman’s cooperation if he didn’t. She seemed to believe him when he told her he would return, and that the guns and horses had better be there when he did. And the truth was, he did intend to come back for the horses and guns. If the man regained consciousness before then, he would deal with him as necessary. But it was also possible he would die before he woke up. Either way, that was not his concern now. Finding Lisa had to come first.
Dark or not, Mitch didn’t want to delay and had no reason to spend any more time around the house. He decided to head into the woods in the general direction the woman had pointed, which was west. He was sure he would cut the trail come morning if he worked back and forth over the most likely path a fleeing person would take. The woods here were mostly pine, and for the first half mile open enough that Lisa could run, and he had no doubt that she’d done so. Mitch knew she could cover a lot of ground before she tired, and if not for the dogs, the men wouldn’t have a chance of finding her. If the dogs were any good though, they would catch up eventually if the men were able to push them hard enough.
Checking his surroundings as well as he could as the moon rose high enough to provide a little light, Mitch came across trampled pine seedlings and dead goldenrod stalks that had been broken by the passage of people or animals. Confident now that he was moving in the right direction, he continued on until the terrain dropped from the pine hills to a lower area of hardwoods and cypress. It was at the bottom of the slope that he came to an extensive blackwater slough. There was little moonlight reaching the ground through the taller trees here, but he took his time, crouching and feeling the ground, examining it carefully wherever there was an area illuminated enough to see. He worked his way back and forth along the edge of the water for a good hour, when at last his persistence paid off. Deeply imprinted in an area of soft mud at the water’s edge, Mitch found the tracks of dogs and men. If Lisa’s footprints were there as well, he couldn’t see them, but he figured it was safe to assume she’d entered the water here. It was good thinking on her part if she did, but Mitch knew she would have had to come out somewhere and the men hunting her would have known that too. As he worked his way along the water’s edge, he could see evidence here and there of their searching the banks. But finding where the trail left the water was a task that would have to wait until daylight. Mitch found a place to bivouac at the base of a big cypress tree and curled up to sleep a few hours. He would make up for lost time once he found Lisa’s trail, but he couldn’t go indefinitely without rest.
Sunlight hitting his face woke Mitch with a start and he was instantly on his feet. He had not intended to sleep past the crack of dawn, but he was exhausted from the long day before and little sleep the night before that. He ate some of the jerky he was carrying and shouldered his rifle, choosing to carry the bow at the ready instead. Here in the cover of the woods, he didn’t expect any surprises outside of arrow range.
He resumed his search of the edge of the slough, finding lots more tracks of the two men and their dogs where they had worked the shoreline back and forth looking for the place where Lisa left the water. It was a long, winding slough that allowed her to walk in it for quite some distance, but he found her footprints where the water ended in a muddy ditch. The pursuers had continued along its slippery bed, too, the question was how long it had taken them to find it and get moving again. Mitch knew Lisa had the stamina and the will to push herself hard, but he had no idea about the men chasing her other than what he’d seen of their squalid living conditions and the state of disrepair of their house, vehicles and other possessions. The dogs might be good, but it wouldn’t matter if the two men couldn’t keep up with them.
Mitch had no trouble following all the tracks they left, even though they disappeared at times for long stretches where there was a lot of pine straw and other forest litter on the ground. Once he had an idea of the direction Lisa had taken, which had barely deviated from her original westerly heading, it was easy enough to find the sign here and there in the muddy or sandy places. That she was keeping to a straight path told Mitch that she was focusing on putting distance between her and the house as rapidly as possible. Knowing her pace would likely average more than four miles per hour even in thick woods and that Lisa could keep it up for hours, Mitch increased his own speed as much as keeping sight of the trail permitted.
The route Lisa took crossed another gravel road and kept going west. Mitch wondered if she had a destination in mind. If she stayed on that course long enough, she would come to Highway 49 eventually, heading in the opposite direction she needed to go in order to get home. Maybe she was planning to circle back to the east to Black Creek before she got that far? He would find out soon enough, he just hoped it wouldn’t be too late when he did.
The tracking got tougher when the trail led through several expansive areas of cutover. Lisa had worked her way around the worst of the thickets, and the men and their dogs had followed, but he lost
the trail several times and had to crisscross and backtrack to pick it up again. By mid afternoon, Mitch figured he’d covered at least ten miles. He had stopped to take a short break when he heard something approaching through the woods from the west. Mitch nocked an arrow and crouched low behind a fallen tree. Whatever it was, it was coming fast and making considerable noise running through the brush. Mitch waited as the sounds drew closer, and then he spotted the source—two dogs.
The dogs were moving at a trot with their noses down, clearly following their own back trail and headed for home. They looked like the typical deer hounds people kept in these parts, a mix of black and tan and who knows what else. There was a slight breeze out of the northwest, that was in his favor and the dogs had not yet caught his scent but they would be upon him soon enough. Mitch scanned the forest behind them for signs of the owners but saw nothing. When the hound in the lead was forty yards away, he drew his bow and took it down with an arrow that struck it just in front of the shoulder. The other dog stopped in its tracks and growled when it saw Mitch, but he nailed it as well before it could turn and retreat. His second shot was not as true as the first, and the wounded dog yelped and thrashed in the leaves. Mitch stood to get a better angle and finished it with a third arrow.
A forth arrow was on his bowstring immediately as he dropped back behind the tree and watched and waited. Were the two men coming behind the dogs, or had the hounds abandoned the chase and turned tail for home? At the pace the dogs were moving, Mitch doubted anyone was right behind them. The men might have caught up with Lisa and could be bringing her back even now, or they might still be hunting her. Mitch waited a good ten minutes and when nothing moved; he walked over to examine the dead dogs. Both were wearing collars, but they were scrawny and half-starved, their hides scarred from what looked like beatings with a whip or rope. Mitch hated to kill dogs but he really had no choice. If they had discovered him and started barking he would have lost all his advantage of surprise as he trailed these men who had no idea they were being hunted. But after seeing the poor animals up close, Mitch had put them out of a miserable existence anyway. He retrieved and cleaned his arrows and carried the dead dogs well off the trail and hid them in the bushes before continuing on.
Darkness After Series (Book 4): The Savage Darkness Page 15
