by Chris Pike
“Afternoon,” Dillon replied.
“I’m Lance Crawford,” the man said. He sidled up to Cowboy and patted him on the side. Cowboy’s eyes grew wide and he swung his head around, nostrils flaring. The horse took a step to the side.
“Dillon Stockdale.”
“You from around here?” Lance asked. “I’m actually from up the road,” he said. He hooked a thumb.
Dillon wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question. The guy had a strange look about him, not exactly a rancher type by the clothes he was wearing. Dillon didn’t know a lot of ranchers, but having the head of a snake tattoo peek out from under the cuff on his sleeve surely wasn’t a good sign. Besides, a rancher wouldn’t be as pale as this guy was.
Taking a chance, Dillon said, “I’ve got a place down the road.” He jerked his head in the direction he came from.
“Ah,” Lance said. “The Stockdale place. I heard about that.”
A knowing smirk almost flashed across Dillon’s face, but he resisted the temptation. “That’s me.”
“Strange times we have now, don’t cha think?”
“Yeah. Who would’ve thought the world would change on an October day?”
“Go figure,” Lance said.
“Well, nice to meet you,” Dillon said. “I’m in a hurry and need to get into Hemphill before it gets dark, so if you don’t mind, I’ll—”
“Town’s closed up.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll find what I need.”
“What’s that?” Lance asked.
“Supplies,” Dillon said flatly. “Like I said, if you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way.”
“Actually, I do mind,” Lance said.
That wasn’t something Dillon expected.
Lance reined in his horse and stepped away from Cowboy. His black eyes narrowed to those of a predator’s. He tried to position his horse in front of Cowboy, but the horse didn’t like the move. He snorted once and stamped the ground.
“I’m going into town,” Dillon repeated.
“In due time, neighbor. First, you’ll need to pay a toll. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new government in town and I’ve been assigned this road. Anyone that travels on it has to pay me. In return, I’ll protect you and your place, and you can come and go as you please. Since paper money looks like it’s been devalued, I’ll take your horse as payment.”
“This isn’t exactly the Sam Houston Tollway, and you’re not exactly a representative of the toll authority.”
Although the exact meaning of the statement escaped Lance’s working brain cells, he knew it was a challenge. A fly buzzed Lance and he shooed it away. He swallowed audibly. A dove flew across the road, its wings whistling, and a breeze rustled the dry grass on the side of the road. For some reason Lance felt empty inside, and the blue sky opened up, the trees swaying in the wind. He had never noticed these things before. The Boss said it would be easy. Go out to the road, claim it as your own, and the country folk would obey. If the Boss said it, it must be true.
Both men stood very still.
Cowboy swished a fly that was buzzing his rear.
Lance Crawford wasn’t used to being challenged, so this stranger’s calm attitude disconcerted him. While he might be bluffing like Lance was, there was something in the way the man talked that meant he would back up what he said.
If Lance went back empty handed, the Boss wouldn’t take too kindly to his failure. He had been told to get a horse. What for, he didn’t know; people didn’t question the Boss. He might get beaten, or worse, a bullet in the back. He’d seen the Boss’s henchmen in action before and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Maybe he should draw his gun right here, right now, catching Stockdale by surprise. Lance could drag his body off into the bushes, and in a day or two the wild hogs would have torn him to pieces. The only evidence of him passing this way would be a few shreds of clothing.
On the other hand, he thought about reaching for his snub-nosed 38 Special, a poor choice in a weapon that went along with other poor choices Lance had made lately. The chance of getting off a good shot wasn’t in Lance’s favor. It had been a while since he had target practiced and when he did, the targets never shot back. Lance might not win the gun battle. If he accidentally hit and killed the horse, he’d be going back empty-handed, and that certainly wouldn’t be any good, so when Dillon said, “Okay, you can have the horse,” Lance about shit in his pants. The Boss was right, these country folk were pussies.
“Why thank you,” Lance said. “I think we’re gonna get along real good.”
Dillon dismounted Cowboy and stepped back. “Go ahead. He’s your horse now.”
“Stay back,” Lance said. His bravado was rising now. “And don’t make any fast moves.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”
“That’s right, I am.” Lance mounted Cowboy, took the reins in one hand, the reins to his horse in the other. With the heels of his boots, he kicked Cowboy, prodding him to move.
Cowboy did nothing.
“Come on, let’s go,” Lance ordered. He pulled tighter on the reins and kicked harder. The horse held steadfast.
“Giddy up!” Lance kicked Cowboy again. Lance didn’t have much respect or use for horses, considering them dumb beasts, so as he was trying to get Cowboy to move, he didn’t notice Dillon positioning himself behind the horse.
Dillon couldn’t help but to snicker. Holly was right. The magic phrase was needed.
“What’s wrong with this damn horse? Is there some sort of secret code to get this horse to move?” Lance asked.
“Actually, there is,” Dillon said. His voice was low and to the point. “And since there’s a new government in town, I think I’ll put into effect an old law. Stealing horses is a hanging offense, and I’m commissioning a new name for the law now. I think I’ll call it Stockdale’s Law.”
“Huh?” Lance was dumbfounded. “Hanging?” Lance hadn’t counted on any of this. It was supposed to have been easy.
“That big oak over there,” Dillon said pointing to the century old tree. “Looks like it’ll work.”
Lance turned around and when he did, he was facing the barrel of a Glock. His thighs quivered and a little pee dribbled out, staining the front of his pants.
“Put your hands in the air, and if you make any quick moves, I’ll put a bullet right through your heart. You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”
Lance did as he was told and put his hands in the air. He thought quickly about his predicament and about going back empty handed to the Boss. Lance was what people called a “slow learner,” and had been marked at a young age where it was easier to put him in remedial classes than actually try to help him. Critical thinking was a skill Lance had not been schooled in, so when he dropped his hands to dismount, he made a fateful decision to reach for his gun.
He was indeed dead before he hit the ground. The hollow point from Dillon’s gun had seen to that.
Standing over Lance’s body, the pavement darkening from a crimson stain, Dillon pondered what to do. He had already wasted enough time and now the sun was sliding behind the horizon. Seeing that Lance had tried to kill him made Dillon’s decision easier. He dragged the body off the road and rolled the corpse into the ditch.
Dillon looked at the horse, decided not to keep it, so with a slap and a yell, the horse took off running down the road.
Twenty minutes later, Dillon came up to the outskirts of the town. Shacks at first with unkempt lawns, old cars jacked-up on bricks, tires missing. The hood of a car was propped up, broken children’s toys scattered about.
A man sat on a front porch swing of a house that hadn’t seen a woman’s care or a new coat of paint in ages. A dingy muscle shirt stretched across the man’s beer-bloated belly. A chained dog barked.
Further Cowboy trotted, past a convenience store, windows shattered, the store looted, boxes of macaroni and bags of potato chips knocked haphazardly on the floor.
The laundromat sat empty a
nd dark this Thursday night, no crying babies clamoring for their mothers busily folding clothes. A gas station no longer had the comforting energy of cars and patrons busily going about their business pumping gas and buying cigarettes or candy.
A darkened stoplight swayed and creaked in the breeze, no need to flash green and red lights for cars that didn’t work.
A man wearing a black hoodie and baggy pants peddled a fast bike past Dillon. He threw a curious look at Dillon and the horse as if he had never seen a man riding a horse.
Without streetlights and houses lit or florescent bulbs illuminating parking lots, it was dark.
A cloud floated past the full moon, casting long shadows over the land.
The steady beat of Cowboy’s clattering hooves upon the blacktop was the only sound on the deserted highway.
A police car sat empty in front of the grocery store, the tires flattened. The automatic sliding doors had been pried open, a bar wedged between the glass and the frame. A looter holding a burlap bag like a hobo ran out of the store and ducked behind a car at the sound of the approaching horse.
Dillon kept his hand on his Glock, ready in case he had to use it again.
By the light of a flickering candle, a shadowy shape in the grocery store moved from aisle to aisle, pushing a shopping cart filled to the brim with canned food, diapers, toiletries, and anything non-perishable.
Up ahead the pharmacy sign loomed dark, and Dillon slowed Cowboy to a walk, approaching the store with caution. Coming up to the front entrance, Dillon dismounted and loosely tied the reins to a bicycle port next to an overflowing trash can. He tugged on the straps on his backpack, tightening them.
He walked into the dark store and ducked behind a row of body lotions of various scents advertised by airbrushed models with glowing skin and red lips. For a brief moment he thought about getting Holly a tube of lipstick. Nah, maybe another time.
A noise in the back caught his attention and he crouched lower, his Glock steady in his hand. Unafraid of darkness, Dillon knew it would conceal him, as much at it would conceal the unknown. Darkness was his best friend when needed.
Keeping low to the floor, he crept along the aisle of body lotions, careful not to trip on the unwanted items looters had pilfered through. When he came to the end, he jumped across to the next aisle which happened to be the personal care aisle of deodorants and shampoos. Taking advantage of the situation, he stuffed deodorant and bottle of shampoo in his pocket. He spied a pack of disposable razors and reached for it until he realized it would make too much noise.
He heard the noise again. Someone shuffling several aisles away.
Dillon wound his way to the back of the store where the milk and frozen goods had been kept in a working cooler.
He quickly jutted his head around the aisle, trying to get a look at the person loading a soggy frozen dinner into a shopping cart. In the dark light Dillon had trouble discerning the person. Maybe a looter who was hungry. Still, he couldn’t be too careful.
“Stop!” Dillon shouted.
The person screamed and dropped the formerly frozen macaroni and cheese to the floor.
“Don’t move and put your hands in the air! If you make one move I’ll put a bullet through your head. Understand?”
The person stood frozen.
Dillon kept aim on the person and when he got closer, he realized his Glock was on a child. “Turn around.”
The child turned around and faced Dillon. The waif of a girl with pleading eyes looked at Dillon.
“How old are you?”
Too frightened to answer, the girl stood there, her eyes as big as a moon.
“I’m not going to hurt you. How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“What are you doing here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here? Where are you parents?”
“I don’t have a dad. My mom is home sick. She told me to go to the pharmacy and get her medicine.”
“What’s wrong with your mom?”
“I don’t know. She said she has a fever and needed anti…um, anti…”
“Antibiotics.” Dillon pondered that, scratching his beard, itchy from not shaving in days. “Did you find any?”
“I didn’t know where to look, so I thought I’d get some food.” The child nervously glanced away. “Am I in trouble? You’re not going to take me to jail are you?”
“No. I’m here to get antibiotics too. What’s your name?”
“Anna Cooper.”
“Okay, Anna Cooper,” Dillon said, “you stick next to me. I don’t want you getting hurt. Pretend you’re my shadow. Can you do that?”
Anna nodded.
“Good. The medicine is behind the counter at the back of the store.”
Anna followed Dillon as instructed, as close as she could get without stepping on his boots.
Plastic bottles littered the floor, and the shelves were nearly empty. The cash register had been smashed on the floor, the drawer empty. Dillon stood still a moment.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked.
“Thinking,” Dillon said. “Anna I need you to help me. See those bins?” He motioned to the wall behind the counter. “I need you to take the paper bags in the bins, open them, and put the bottles on the counter. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“Good. We’ll go by the alphabet, so you start with A, and I’ll start at Z.”
Dillon picked Anna up and hoisted her over the counter, surprised at how light she was. If he hadn’t asked her how old she was, he would have guessed about seven. Even so, the kid had guts, either that or the mom was nutty as a pecan.
Dillon opened the last bin and tore off the paper package, reached in, and retrieved the bottle of pills. Scanning it, he decided not to keep it, thinking it must have been something for high blood pressure. Methodically, he went through each bag. Fortunately, the looters hadn’t bothered with the alphabetized bins since all were full. Some of the medicine he decided to keep and quickly stuffed them in his backpack. He recognized the brand names, seeing that pharmaceutical companies advertised them on TV as if they were soft drinks. The usual maladies advertised: high cholesterol, allergy, insomnia, depression, osteoporosis, migraine, and others. He decided to keep the migraine medicine. He could use that as barter if he needed to. He had gone through about a fourth of the alphabet when he came across pain medicine, deciding to keep that. The other folks, well, he figured they would succumb to their diseases without refills.
“How you doing over there, Anna?” Dillon said after noticing she hadn’t made much progress.
“I’m okay,” Anna said. She carefully pried open the stapled bag so as not to tear it.
“Just rip off the top and don’t worry about it. We need to hurry.”
“What do I do with the bag?”
“Throw it on the floor.”
“But that’s littering.”
“Anna, it doesn’t matter. Just put the bottles on the counter as fast as you can.”
“Alright.” She sounded defeated. “I’m hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”
“I’ll get you something after we’re finished.”
“A hamburger?”
“I don’t know about that, but I’ll get you something good.”
Fifteen minutes later Dillon had gone through all the bottles. He tossed the Viagra, Detrol, Humira, Crestor away. If he didn’t recognize the general name, he tossed those too.
Anything ending in ‘cillin’ he kept, as in amoxicillin or penicillin, also anything ending in ‘xacin’ and ‘cycline’. In all, he found eight bottles of ciprofloxacin, commonly known as Cipro, three bottles of tetracycline, and two each of cefadroxil and Macrobid, the latter for UTIs.
Anna had only managed to open the packagers in the bins marked A,B, C, and D, for a total of about fifty bottles. Dillon decided not to waste anymore time, so he scooped all of them into his backpack.
“Come on,” Dillon said. “We have to get going.”
&nbs
p; “I haven’t gone through everything yet,” Anna said.
“Doesn’t matter. We have to go. I found what I needed.”
On the way out, Dillon grabbed a first aid kit, bandages, anti-itch cream, peanut butter and jam, a loaf of wheat bread, disposable razors, several packages of dental floss, toothpaste, and soap. Dillon instructed Anna to stay behind him, and he went out the same way he went in, past where he saw the lipstick. On a whim, he grabbed a tube of lipstick and stuffed it in his pocket.
Coming to the glass paneled front, he stood behind the wall and scanned the parking lot and street. It had gotten darker. In the distance, he heard voices.
Dillon bent down on one knee. “Anna, have you ever ridden a horse?”
“No.”
“A bike?”
“Yes.”
“Good, riding a horse is like riding a bike, only a little bumpier. We’re going to walk out the store and I want you stay behind me. In case something happens, here is one bottle of medicine for your mother. He unzipped her backpack and put the medicine in, along with the peanut butter and bread. “If anything happens, I want you to run as fast as you can, all the way to your house and don’t look back, no matter what you hear. Understand?”
Anna nodded.
“Before we go, tell me where you live.”
After Anna told Dillon where she lived, giving him directions as best she could, Dillon told her that he would get on the horse first. She would ride behind him and hold on to him with all she had. “Don’t be scared. Pretend you’re a pioneer girl.”
“Like Annie Oakley?”
Dillon smiled. “Just like her. Good girl, let’s go.”
Chapter 28
You’d think riding a horse in Texas was a common sight, but it really wasn’t, regardless of how the movies portrayed Texas. While there are riding horses, it’s mostly done for pleasure and competitions in rodeos. Horses used in husbandry work went the way of the buggy whip.
Although the city was small, the sound of hooves on pavement caused people to take notice, because a horse galloping down the street carrying a man with a child wasn’t your everyday occurrence.
