Chapter 6
Hunter watched Grace slip away. Was she dead?
Had she been shot in the chest or something?
Panicking more than a little, he turned and began to examine her.
There was nothing. Just a little nick on her cheek and a bullet that had grazed her leg.
When he saw that her chest was still rising and falling with her breath, he let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank you, God,” he whispered under his breath.
Just then Jeff came running in a crouch toward him, a patter of bullets hitting the ground in front of him. He dove behind the barrels Hunter was hiding behind.
“Oh, well, I should have guessed,” Jeff said, shaking his head at Grace’s unconscious form.
“Leave her be,” Hunter snapped, immediately protective of his wife. Any woman would have fainted in a similar situation! “Can you see who we’re shooting at?”
“No,” Jeff said. “I thought you could.” He rose a little and fired his gun into the barn’s open doorway.
“Do you think Robert can see?” Hunter asked.
The sheriff was hunkered down behind a large barrel not far from them but closer to the other side of the barn door.
“I don’t know,” Jeff said.
“Let’s just try to find a way into the barn. If we come at it from the back, maybe we can catch them off guard.”
“Great idea. I’ll find a way. You keep them busy on this side,” Jeff said.
A moment later he was gone, crouching and crawling around the side of the barn. Hunter hoped that Jeff would have some luck finding a way into the barn through the back, or perhaps this barn had a side door. But what would he find inside? Was the Emmerson family there?
Emmerson had two daughters. One was around eighteen, and the other was about fourteen.
There was also a little boy, Emmerson’s son, who Hunter guessed had to be no older than ten years old.
Where were they? Were they in the barn being held hostage?
Please, Lord, let the family be okay, he prayed.
Emmerson could be cantankerous, but he was a good man and didn’t deserve to be hurt or to have his loved ones injured.
Suddenly, just randomly firing bullets into the open mouth of the barn didn’t seem like such a good idea. What if they hit someone innocent?
“Hey!” Hunter called. “You in the barn! Do you think we could stop firing for a moment and maybe talk?”
A bullet whizzed past his ear, seeming to suggest they weren’t interested in talking.
Hunter couldn’t give up though. If the Emmerson family was in there, he had to try and resolve this without any more bullets flying.
“Okay, I understand,” Hunter called, leaning his back against the barn wall.
Jeff had disappeared from sight. “You don’t want to talk.
But if you hurt the good folks who live on this farm, there won’t be any mercy for you.
See, our sheriff here, he doesn’t like folks who prey on others.
He will make you pay for every injury you cause.
So maybe we could put down our guns and talk about it. ”
A hail of bullets came flying through the air.
Hunter hunkered down, covering Grace’s still-unconscious form with his body as wood splintered around them.
Guilt nudged at his conscience at how badly he’d failed to prepare her for the place where she would be living.
But he’d sincerely thought the threat had lessened.
Good grief, these criminals were determined to shoot someone today. How many bullets did they have? He was running low, and he’d brought extra. They couldn’t have an unlimited supply. Sooner or later, they would have to run out. And then what?
He fired back into the barn, and there went his last three bullets.
Now what should he do? Start throwing rocks?
He had another box of bullets that he had left in the saddlebags on his horse.
It was no use now. And to think that he’d felt foolish packing so much ammunition that morning. Now he wished he’d packed more.
Peering around his barricade, he saw Robert looking at him. He made a hand signal from the mine. Sometimes there was so much noise that the only way to communicate was with hand gestures. He was asking where Jeff was and showing he only had two bullets left.
Hunter quickly signed back that he was looking for another way into the barn and had no bullets.
Robert signed that Hunter should keep talking to the men in the barn. He would go around the other side and try to help Jeff.
Hunter nodded.
And of course, in that moment, when so much hung in the balance, his mind went utterly blank. What could he possibly say to these people that he hadn’t said already?
Nothing. There was nothing in his head, but his heart was beating so fast it made the blood rush in his ears. His friends were relying on him. His new wife was relying on him.
Another hail of bullets came flying at his hiding spot, puncturing the barn wall.
He would have to say something. His hands were shaking though, and he knew that his choice of words would make all the difference between them walking out of this alive or ending up dead in a ditch.
Suddenly, Grace’s questions from earlier, the ones about why the bandits were doing what they were doing, came to mind.
Hunter gathered his courage and cleared his throat.
“So, I take it you’re El Aguila’s men, coming here to strong-arm an innocent farmer into not doing business with us. Am I right?” Hunter called out.
A single shot rang through the air and hit the barrel that Robert had been hiding behind a moment ago.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Hunter said.
Another three shots boomed and thunked around him. This barricade was starting to look a lot like Swiss cheese. He had to do something, or he and Grace would be shot before Jeff and Robert even made it into the barn. Their cover was showing daylight through multiple holes.
So, he did the only thing he could think of. He stood up and raised his hands in the air. Hunter’s heart hammered in his chest like a drum. It thudded, and he tensed, expecting to be hit by a hail of bullets.
When nothing happened, Hunter drew in a breath.
Suddenly there were noises in the barn. Sounds of men fighting. He got to his feet and rushed inside, gun brandished. For a moment, he couldn’t see much as his eyes adjusted, but he saw the fist clearly enough as it came right for his face.
He managed to turn his head and the blow glanced off his jaw, hurting but not knocking him senseless. The man who had tried to hit him was close now, so Hunter balled up a fist and aimed it low. He hit the man in the stomach and as he bent, he kicked out the man’s knee with a sickening crunch.
The bandit hit the ground hard and rolled around in pain, clearly not sure if he should hold his gut or his knee.
Looking around, Hunter realized it was all over. There had been four bandits in the barn, hiding behind a low wall. One was shot dead, lying in a pool of blood, and the other two were groaning and clutching their injuries.
“Well, that worked well,” Jeff said with a smile.
“It certainly did,” Robert said. “Good thinking, Jeff.”
“If we’re being honest, it was Hunter’s idea,” he said.
“I’m just glad it worked,” Hunter said.
He smiled and let out a sharp breath. He was still shaking.
It took some cold water from the well to get Grace to wake up. When she finally sat up, she was pale and seemed very shaken.
“I fainted again, didn’t I?” she asked, looking around.
Hunter nodded. “In all fairness, it was really scary with the bullets flying and everything.”
She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head.
“Are you feeling sick?” Hunter asked.
She nodded, and then, moving a lot faster than he thought someone who had been unconscious for a while should, Grace darted off away from him to be sick around the side of the barn.
Hunter wondered if he should go and check on her but decided not to.
There were times when a person needed to be alone.
Jeff and Robert came striding up to Hunter with Mr. Emmerson and his wife behind them.
“Oh, Mr. Emmerson,” Hunter said, smiling and holding out his hand to the farmer. “It’s good to find you alive and well. We were so worried.”
Mr. Emmerson, a burly man with a serious face, glared at him. “We wouldn’t have been in this mess if you folks hadn’t?—”
Mrs. Emmerson thumped him in the ribs as she spoke over him. “What my husband is trying to say is thank you.” She turned an angry glare on him. “Aren’t you, honey?”
“Yes,” Mr. Emmerson muttered.
“Please come inside and have some tea with us,” Mrs. Emmerson said, smiling. She was a pretty woman with light brown hair that was starting to show some silver threads.
“We would be delighted,” Robert said. “Hunter, I think you should fetch your wife.”
Mrs. Emmerson looked past them to where Grace was on her haunches, clearly trying to steady herself. “Honestly! Men!” the farmer’s wife tutted and hurried over to Grace.
Seeing that Grace looked embarrassed, Hunter took a guess that she needed a little more space and followed the men into the house while he left Mrs. Emmerson to tend to her. He prayed that was the right decision and wouldn’t make his new wife feel overlooked.
Jeff and Hunter had tied the bandits to a sturdy post in the barn. Mr. Emmerson assigned one of his workers to watch them.
“We owe you now, I suppose,” Mr. Emmerson said, not sounding happy about that at all.
“No,” Robert said. “We owe you an apology. If we had done a better job of chasing these bandits off, you wouldn’t have been in that situation.”
Looking surprised, Mr. Emmerson led them into the house and into the kitchen. There, they all sat around the table, and one of the Emmerson daughters made them tea.