Chapter 11
Kyle blundered through the trees. He had no idea where he was or which way he should be going. This wasn’t Texas, with its open grassland and clear, bright sky. This was Louisiana, and he was lost.
Of course, when the thing a person was running from was so terrible and imminent, where you were running to was not as important.
Warren stumbled close to him. “Oh good,” he said. “I thought that was you crashing around.”
“Well, it’s a little bit dark,” Kyle said dryly.
“We need to find Michael and get out from under these trees,” Warren said. “Although I think our attackers are still close by.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Can’t you hear them?” Warren asked.
Kyle slowed his breathing, and standing still, yes, he could hear bodies moving through the woods.
The sounds were distinctive. The snap of a branch here, a grunt or groan there, a creature startled from its den, squawking or hooting or croaking—all punctuated with the places where there were no sounds.
Yes, there were a lot of people in these woods, and Kyle only wanted to know about three of them.
Four if he counted Alice, but she should be far away from here by now.
She should be on the road, riding to the nearest town.
She was safe. More than anything in this moment, that was what mattered to him.
More than his safety, more than even his friends’ safety.
He whispered a prayer that Alice would be sheltered under God’s wing.
Just then, Kyle heard footsteps, and a man blundered up to them.
Kyle and Warren raised their pistols. Then the person swore.
“Michael?” Kyle asked.
“Oh, it’s you,” Michael said, relief ringing in his voice. “I thought I’d lost you both. That is Warren there, crouching down, making a darker shape in the darkness?”
“Yes, how did you know?” Warren asked.
“Know the man, know the plan,” Michael said. “You would wait for me to attack Kyle and then you would jump out and overpower me. Right?”
“Yes,” Warren admitted. “Not the best plan, but there wasn’t much I could do.”
“We need to get moving again,” Kyle said. “They’re getting close.”
And they were. There was the soft rumble of voices speaking, trying to be quiet.
In the dappled moonlight of the forest, it was difficult to see.
And with their prey armed, the bandits didn’t want to light their torches and lanterns again.
They would be such easy targets, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Not that Kyle and his friends had many bullets left.
Not that the bandits knew that. This was a game of subterfuge.
The bandits planned to sneak around in the forest looking for them, and Kyle planned to get them all out of the forest as fast as possible.
Luckily, his sense of direction had always been exceptionally good. Even now, with nothing to indicate direction, he had a feeling they needed to head to the left.
“Come on,” Kyle said. “Let’s go this way.”
They had only taken about five steps when a gunshot rang out, and something thudded into the tree trunk next to him.
Kyle ducked and pulled someone with him. It was Warren. They crouched and ran through the trees while Michael kept pace.
Another boom, and a piece of bark stuck Kyle’s cheek.
“How are they seeing us?” He couldn’t work it out.
They hurried on.
Another boom, but this one was a little softer, and although Kyle could hear the thud it made when it hit a tree, there was no sting from the bark.
He wove through a few trunks, angling them in roughly the same direction. Boom, boom, boom. The bullets were fired, but the thuds of them hitting something went unheard. If they hit something at all.
“Is it me, or are those gunshots getting fainter?” Warren asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I think so,” Michael whispered back.
They hurried on and soon stepped out of the trees into the faint moonlight. It was a sickle moon, and there wasn’t enough light from it to see the terrain well. Still, it was better than nothing. They would simply have to make do.
What lay ahead of them looked like open grassland, and in the distance, a few trees grew. That was good. Kyle picked a direction that would take them in the general area of Grunnersberg and they set off.
As they put more distance between them and their attackers, Kyle’s mood brightened.
He was sure now that Alice had made it. Why would anyone send a person after a horse on its own when there were men to shoot at?
No one would. She had to have made it, and if they could get to the road, they could intercept the rescue party she would undoubtedly send.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Michael asked. “I can’t see enough of this place to know if we passed it on the way to Cherryville.”
“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “I’m kind of going with my gut.”
“Ah,” Michael said.
Kyle couldn’t see his expression in the dark.
“I suppose Kyle’s gut is somewhat better than nothing,” Warren said, but he sounded dubious.
“What other option do we have?” Kyle asked. “Either we pick a direction and head out that way, or we get caught.”
“We could be heading right to them now, anyway,” Michael said. “I think we should be heading more to our right. It’s farther from the wood we just came out of, which we can use as a reference.”
“But we need to head more this way,” Kyle said, trying not to lose his temper.
Michael knew a lot about business and mining and running a town, and Kyle was happy to defer to his expertise there.
However, when it came to animals and the wilderness, that was more Kyle’s territory.
After all, he spent more time outdoors than either of his companions ever did.
He was willing to bet that his gut was a better compass than Michael’s.
“He has a point though, Kyle,” Warren said. “We can see the forest behind us. There is no marker for the way you want to go. We have no idea if we’re heading in that direction or not.”
“The forest is on our left,” Kyle said. “Well, left and now behind.”
“But it’s not like those trees over there offer a perfect point to head toward,” Michael said. “And really, in the dark, does it matter where we go? So long as we’re hard to find.”
“We need to find a spot to hide in till morning,” Warren said. “We’ll be less lost then or likely to end up in trouble. I’ve done some reading, and Louisiana is full of swamps and bogs and critters. We really should find a place to spend the night.” He shuddered. “Preferably indoors.”
There was no point in turning this into a proper fight, and splitting up was no option at all.
They had already sent Alice off on her own, and that had Kyle’s guts in a knot as it was.
He couldn’t deal with not knowing if Michael and Warren were also in trouble.
He would have to stick with them, even if that meant going in the wrong direction.
“Fine,” he said, speaking softly. “Lead on. But my last word on the matter is that we really shouldn’t go that way.”
“Why not?” Michael asked.
“Because it’s got a funny smell,” Kyle said. And there was an odor of mold and plant decay on the air when the wind blew from that direction.
“I understand,” Michael said. “But I really don’t want those criminals to find us. Maybe there’s something there we can lose them in.”
Kyle shrugged. “Okay, but be careful.”
Michael took point, and soon, they headed in the wrong direction.
Kyle kept his mouth shut and watched the trees that Warren had pointed out growing ever closer.
He was tired, and he wanted to go to bed.
His thoughts drifted to his cabin in Unity, where he would have a fire burning in the grate.
The night was becoming cool, and soon it might even be downright chilly.
They couldn’t light a fire. That would signal everyone in the area where they were.
Think of home, he told himself.
So, he did, and just to see how she fit, he tried putting Alice in the picture.
They would have dinner together at his small round table that seated four.
It would be a cozy dinner, just for two.
She would laugh at all of his jokes, even the bad ones.
Then they would snuggle by the fire in the sitting room and watch the flames dance in the grate.
Maybe they’d even get themselves a dog. He would like that.
Alice seemed to like animals. The dog could snore at their feet while they read books to each other. Oh, that was the life.
He could almost see it. It was a whisper on the edge of hearing, but if he just focused, he could grab that image of Alice snuggled up against him and keep it. Make it come true.
And then, suddenly, the ground gave way.
With a wet, glooping sound, the bit of ground that Kyle had tried to step on sank underwater and then bobbed up to the surface again. The chorus of frogs and toads croaking that had been a bit of a serenade to him in his reverie cut off close by but continued farther on.
The air filled with tiny flying insects that swooped and bit and buzzed at him.
Kyle flailed and swatted at them while trying not to end up in the water. There was a boggy, peaty smell around them now, and Kyle realized he’d been smelling it for a while and thought of the smell of wet dog.
“What the heck?” Michael asked.
“I’m guessing we’ve found a bog,” Warren said.
“It explains the smell,” Kyle muttered. “We’ll need walking sticks now to test the ground.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael said as they began to search in the darkness for fallen branches.
“It’s okay,” Kyle said. “We should angle out of it though, more the way I said we should go.”
“So long as it’s not more bog,” Michael said.
After a bit of a search, Warren lifted something. It writhed in his hand and, crying out, he dropped it.
Warren swore, jumping around like a maniac. “I just picked up a snake!”
“Let’s be careful,” Michael said in his fatherly tone, which drove Kyle mad. As though Warren had deliberately picked up one of the bog’s denizens!