Chapter 12
A couple of minutes later, they came out the front door of the bar, locking it behind them. Someone had opened a gate to the fenced-off area across the highway, and they were trying to herd the runaways into the enclosure.
Ash and Dylan took off east, blocking the escape of a pair of runaways, while Gunner took off after a solitary bull, hoping to at least get it off the highway before it was hit by oncoming traffic.
Before long, traffic was blocked from both directions, while the echoing sound of sirens warned of a highway patrol car approaching from one direction, and an ambulance coming from the other.
But what soon became apparent to the people caught in the traffic jam, was the race between Gunner and the longhorn he was chasing. The young bull was in panic mode as it darted in and out between the vehicles, but it was the man chasing after it who caught their attention.
A trucker stopped on the highway, got out of the cab, and began filming the race, and a pair of teenagers abandoned their truck for the truck bed for a better view, watching the tall, long-legged man chasing after that runaway. What was shocking to the onlookers was that he was gaining on it.
* * *
It was midafternoon.
Nora was sitting within the silence of her house, going through another box of old photos, when she heard a loud boom, followed by a screeching of brakes. She’d heard that too many times in Fort Worth not to recognize the sounds.
Someone had just had a wreck!
She ran to the window, saw smoke rising above the rooftops, heard a lot of shouting, then the sound of cattle bawling.
She put on her coat, then grabbed her phone and keys and locked the door on her way out.
She ran down the steps and then into an alley that came out onto the highway between the gas station and the Yellow Rose Café.
What she saw was chaos. The front end of a semi was crushed and smoking. The trailer of the bull hauler it was pulling had broken away from the cab, and the young longhorns they’d been hauling were out, and running in every direction.
She caught a glimpse of Asher running across the highway with Dylan right behind him, and then saw Gunner go flying past the gas station running west. She could tell the bulls were young, likely yearlings. But they were already bigger than she was, and sporting horns nearly as long as her arm.
Chasing longhorns was not on her agenda, and now that she knew what had happened, she turned around and took herself home.
* * *
Gunner was aware of people shouting as he sped past the vehicles, but his focus was on the back end of that bull, and the length of the horns.
He didn’t have a rope. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it if he caught up with it, but he’d never quit a race in his life, and he wasn’t starting now.
No sooner than he’d thought of rope, than someone in a pickup truck held a coiled lariat out of the window as he flew past. He grabbed it on the run.
He had never had a desire to rodeo, but like every little boy in the rural part of West Texas, he had grown up knowing how to throw a rope. Now he had the rope. All there was left to do was corner the critter and put a loop around its neck.
The air was cold, but he was sweating beneath his coat.
He was in the rhythm of the run, aware of the number of steps he was taking between breaths, wondering where this was going to end, when he caught sight of a crowd of bystanders forming a line across the highway, intent on turning the bull’s escape.
He saw his chance and extended his kick.
The moment the young bull saw the blockade, it veered to the left, went down into a ditch, and was beginning a climb up the other side when Gunner caught up.
He’d already shaken out a big loop on the lariat and was circling it over his head.
He was only going to get one chance before it bolted, so he let it fly.
The loop sailed out across the ditch, then over the steer’s head just as it was coming up on the other side.
Gunner gave the rope a hard jerk as it settled around the yearling’s neck, and before he ran out of rope, ran to the nearest truck, and began wrapping it around the trailer hitch, then held on and waited for the bull to run out of rope.
The moment it happened, it yanked the bull backward, landing it on its back with its feet in the air.
The race was over.
The little bull was down.
All of its flight and fight was gone, and the trucker was still filming when Gunner unwrapped the rope from the trailer hitch and let out enough length for the bull to stand up.
Still dazed from the hard landing, with sides heaving from the run, the yearling yielded to Gunner’s tug on the rope and climbed back up the ditch, then onto the highway.
Looking back at how far they’d come, Gunner guessed they’d run a good quarter of a mile, and he still wasn’t winded. He was in better shape than he thought. He gave the rope another tug, and this time, the young bull followed.
People were laughing and pointing as they passed by the vehicles. Gunner just took it in stride, talking to the weary steer as they went.
“Come on, hot shot. Nope. Don’t hook that horn at me. You’re already missing the party. Where did you think you were going, anyway?”
* * *
Ash and Dylan were back at the crash site.
The runaways had been herded into the pasture.
They didn’t know where Gunner was until they began hearing whoops and whistles, and people clapping, and turned to see what the commotion was all about, and saw him walking back through the line of cars, leading one of the runaways.
“What’s all that about?” Dylan asked.
Asher shrugged as a cowboy walked up beside them, grinning from ear to ear. “Did you see that?” he asked.
“See what?” Asher asked.
“That dude ran down one of those yearlings and threw the cleanest loop you ever saw, then threw a knot around someone’s trailer hitch and let the bull yank its own ass down. Never saw anyone that fast before.”
Dylan started grinning and Asher laughed. “That’s our brother.”
The cowboy frowned. “What do y’all call him? Roadrunner?”
“His name is Gunner Kingston. He’s a homicide cop with the Dallas PD.”
The cowboy paused, then looked at them again.
“Kingston, you said? Any relation to Jacob Kingston?”
“He’s our father.”
The cowboy shook his head. “I heard about what happened to Jacob. I’m a regular at the Weed. I think a lot of that man. You tell him Beau Rangely sends him good wishes.”
“I will do that,” Asher said.
“Gunner Kingston. I’m gonna remember that name,” Rangely said. “Nice to meet you,” and walked off.
Unaware he’d been the subject of a conversation, Gunner kept walking toward the crash site, looking for someone to take the bull, when a couple of wranglers came running.
“Good catch,” they said, and led the bull out into the pasture with the rest of the herd while Gunner jogged up to rejoin his brothers.
“Did you really run down a longhorn?” Dylan asked.
Gunner grinned. “I kinda did, but he’d still be running if someone hadn’t tossed me a rope as I ran past their truck. Anyway, all I need is a good drink of water and I’m ready to get back to work.”
“I’m right there with you,” Asher said. “I’m not going to bed until we’ve gone over that whole floor. And if it’s not there, we start on the outside tomorrow.”
The spurt of adrenaline from chasing longhorns ended as they descended the cellar steps again. Gunner was silent, and Dylan’s shoulders were slumped in defeat.
For a few seconds, Asher saw them as children again, with dread on their faces.
“Damn it, boys. We’re not digging up a grave, and we know it has to be here somewhere, or Brandt’s sons would have never set foot on the property. Dylan, fire up your magic wand. We have work to do.”
And just like that, they picked up the rhythm again, trusting Dylan to be the judge of the hits they were getting.
So far, he’d identified the sounds as likely old coin or nails, or things like metal belt buckles from centuries past. The little pings that indicated deep in the ground, and the louder pings, indicating just beneath the surface.
But they weren’t getting anything to indicate something large, something metal, like the missing strongbox, and they were running out of floor to search.
They had one last area left before going outside, but there were things to be moved.
Dylan came to a halt, waiting for the brothers to begin shifting the stacks.
“This stuff needs to be hauled off,” Asher said. “It’s all wooden crates full of old canning jars, and a full bundle of asphalt shingles from the last time the roof was repaired.”
“Not going to argue that,” Dylan said.
Finally they had the area cleared, and within moments of Dylan’s first sweep, the beep he got was loud and startling. He swept across the area from every direction until he had a fairly clear picture in his head of the size.
“It’s metal. It’s big. And there’s likely less than a foot of dirt over whatever it is,” Dylan said.
“Then we start moving bricks. Where does Dad keep his work gloves?” Asher said.
“I saw some in that big bucket we moved up near the stairs,” Gunner said.
“Grab some for us, will you buddy? I’ll get a pry bar for the bricks. They’re not mortared in, but the years have wedged them in tight,” Asher said.
The thought of what might lie beneath their feet shifted all of them into high gear. Dylan put the detector aside and gloved up with his brothers as they got down on their knees.
Asher was prying up the bricks and Dylan and Gunner were stacking them aside, working quickly and in unison, anxious to put a shovel in the earth below.