Chapter One
Jolene looked over at her mother and paled. “Oh, my God mom, they are crazy.”
Miss Amy pressed her lips together and glared at the two women. “They are about to learn a harsh lesson.” Then she looked at Cheyenne. “Can you wound rather than kill them, my dear?”
Cheyenne muttered under her breath, “I’ll try but since they are out to burn us down, I make no promises.”
Outside, one of the young men placed a lighter to the rag stuffed in the bottle of gas, then he raised the bottle preparing to throw it over the fence.
Cheyenne carefully aimed her rifle.
The moment the bottle left his hand, it exploded in midair.
The man scrambled backward as the flaming gas spread all over him. He kept beating his pants as the flames landed on them and spread to his legs.
Then another shot rang out.
That was when the man began screaming as the bullet ripped through his hand.
The others stepped back while looking toward the clubhouse in horror.
Then an older woman stepped out of the vehicle and stood there with her hands on her hips glaring at the clubhouse. “Aunt Amy, you miserable old woman, you dared have your hooligan friends shoot your own nephew, Chester? Are you crazy?”
Asa stomped his way to the front door then turned to Cheyenne to say, “Cover me, girl.”
“Got it, Dad.” She huddled over her rifle and looked down the barrel.
Asa opened the door and stood there for a moment before he yelled back, “You came to our door, looking to burn us out. This is just us protecting ourselves lady and I use that title carefully.”
Emma marched up to the gate and reached for the bars shaking them with vigor. “You tell my aunt that we’re here for our fair share of the family treasure. We should have been living on that money all our lives but she hoarded it for herself. It’s time we shared it.”
“With Molotov cocktails in your hand?” Amy shouted. “That treasure is not ours. And it never has been. It is stolen goods.”
Emma crossed her arms over her chest and sneered. “At least now, we know it’s real. And we aren’t leaving without it.”
“Wanna bet?” Asa growled from the door. He slammed the door shut.
Cheyenne began firing bullets at them.
Everyone scrambled behind their vehicles.
All she hit was what she really aimed at in the first place... the other three bottles filled with gas and had rags stuffed into the top.
When the last bottle shattered, the silence was broken by the curses from their party.
Then Emma came around the back of the vehicle with something in her hand, it was the lighter that Chester had used for the first cocktail.
When she flicked it open above the pile of gas slowly soaking into the dirt, Cheyenne carefully aimed at the fingers holding the lighter.
When she popped off one more shot, Emma screamed as the lighter flew out of her hand and blood poured from her missing fingertip.
She screamed and screamed as she cradled her injured hand.
Chester limped from around the back of the reinforced RV and his brother was right behind him. They dragged their cousin back with them.
Now an older man came around the back of the vehicle. “Amy, you self-righteous old bitch, you turned on your own family. That’s gonna haunt you the rest of your life!”
Amy walked to the door and opened it again, “Simon, you came here to get something that was never yours to take. If the treasure is real, and I’m not even sure about that, it doesn’t belong to our family. It never did. It is stolen goods and no one has ever found it, you old fool.”
“I read a page from grandpa’s diaries. It's real!” Simon shouted.
Amy shook her head. “Those diary pages aren’t grandpa’s.
They never were. They belonged to his grandfather, the pirate.
Whatever treasure he carried up here didn’t belong to him either.
He stole it a long time ago. But he never stayed here long enough to matter.
He was only here for a few months, then he took off again.
No one really knows if the treasure is here or not.
My bet is the old pirate didn’t trust anyone with the treasure and he kept it with him.
And he didn’t stay in the area long enough to settle down.
If he had a treasure, he knew enough to take it with him. ”
“That doesn’t explain the diary page I found.” Simon growled. “He wrote about burying the treasure to keep it safe. And I’ll bet the map is in the rest of his papers. I want that damn map and I’m not leaving without it.”
Just then, the silence was broken by a police siren. A few moments later, a car roared up the driveway and slammed to a stop, leaving a cloud of dust flying everywhere. The Sheriff got out of his vehicle with one hand on his holster as he took in the scene in front of him.
He saw the broken glass and could smell the scent of gasoline in the air. He saw the ragtag group of people coming out from around the back of the RV.
One of the younger men was limping with spots of burn marks on his jeans and
Emma was still crying, her hand dripping with blood.
“Just what the hell is going on here?” The Sheriff growled.
The Clubhouse front door opened slowly and Asa came out to stand on the front porch.
Mad Dog and Cheyenne came to stand behind the president. Cheyenne still carried her rifle.
The Sheriff asked them, “I got a call of shots fired, Asa. What happened here?”
Asa crossed his arms over his chest and glared back at the lawman.
“These people came to my gate this morning and decided that they wanted their fair share of the old pirate’s treasure.
And they didn’t really care if they had to burn the place down to get it.
” He motioned at Chester and said, “That damn fool fired up a cocktail and threw it over the gate, but lucky for us, Cheyenne’s a good shot.
The cocktail exploded in his damn hand and she made sure he couldn’t throw another one.
Then a woman came out from behind the RV and held up the lighter over the puddle of gas and was gonna drop it right into the gas.
Cheyenne stopped her.” He paused then told the Sheriff, “Then the old coot came out and was telling Miss Amy that he wanted the treasure for himself and that she couldn’t hoard it all and it was time to hand it over. ”
The Sheriff turned back to the group to observe the truth of Asa’s words and shook his head. “You people are crazy. He got on his mic and asked for a wagon to be sent up to the clubhouse.
“We haven’t done anything wrong here,” Simon blustered. “We just came to talk to my aunt, that’s all.”
The Sheriff motioned at the burnt area and the broken bottles, “And you don’t think using force is inappropriate?”
Simon shrugged. “That wasn’t all of us. My nephew and my daughter did all that.”
“Dad,” Emma exclaimed and glowered at her father as he calmly blamed them in front of the law.
Simon turned his head and glared right back. Then he turned to the sheriff and said, “My daughter needs a doctor. She lost a fingertip from that young woman’s reckless shooting. I think you should arrest her as well. She put lives on the line when she started shooting.”
The Sheriff just raised an eyebrow at this load of crap. “That young woman was protecting her home. They deemed you and the others as a threat to their home.”
Simon sneered at the lawman. “We came here to talk to my aunt and we weren’t going to take no for an answer. We felt we had no choice but to push the situation as far as we had to make her listen.”
“There were several other ways you could have approached this,” the Sheriff explained.
“One: you could have gotten a lawyer to represent you in this action. Two: you go to court, where you could have gotten a judge involved. Or number three: you could have come to my office and had me come up here with you. But you chose violence instead.”
The group went quiet.