Lucas got to his knees, the knife held out threateningly toward the animal, which was obviously trained well to please its master. The dog hurled itself at Lucas and was suddenly struck down in midair over Lucas, taking the arrow meant for Lucas when it jumped into the path of the laser beam.
Lucas felt the weight of this dead animal thud into him and he immediately yanked on the arrow shaft in the dog's back, rolling to his left, dragging the dead carcass with him, over once, twice, and into a small crevice between the rocks here. The dog was hung up overhead now, the arrow pointing straight down into the crevice. Lucas pulled it free, the animal's blood flowing over him, painting his features in wild color.
There was an exit behind Lucas and he crawled for it, taking the steel arrow with him, still holding firmly to his knife as well. Above and around him, he could hear the clatter of horse hooves and the voices of his assassins.
Bryce was shouting, 'The red devil's killed my dogs! That son of a bitch is going to suffer for this. Find him, find him and kill the bastard. Fan out!”
Lucas rolled and crawled and pulled himself along, staying low among the rocks. He heard the noise of a babbling creek and went toward it at a run.
Behind him, he heard the woman shout, “There! There he is!”
He felt the pain as an arrow tore across his calf, cutting a swath but veering off, not penetrating. He lunged into the creek, already soaked, hoping the water was deep enough and swollen enough to take him downstream. The hunters behind him had abandoned their horses for the moment, coming straight for him.
The water was deep and the current swift. He allowed himself to be carried along.
A singing arrow bit the water before his eyes. A second one slapped the water harmlessly beyond him. Several other shots were fired, and Lucas wondered how long his pursuers would take before they began using high-powered rifles that could open a hole in him the size of a grapefruit.
Lucas was slammed into a tangled nest of brambles, dead tree limbs, and growth in the stream, and he hung on, trying to catch his breath. The water felt soothing on his wounded leg and his shoulder where he'd torn out his stitches. He felt his blood streaming along with the cool waters now.
He heard Washburn, Dalton and Bryce taunting him now, calling out racial sneers. Besides being murdering assassins, they were also a pack of bigots, he thought.
He pulled himself along the shallows and found a bevy of reeds and cattails. It was shallow enough here to stand, the bottom mushy but holding. He quickly cut a reed at both ends and descended below the surface in the best of Indian traditions.
His hearing was impaired by the water, but not by much. He sensed that two or perhaps three of the deadly hunters now had passed his location. He waited patiently for any others, but he could hear and sense nothing. Finally, he gave up the vigil and surfaced.
He now moved with the stealth of a cat, slowly, making no sound as he found the true shoreline and inched his way from the water. Rain still pelted the world, and darkness and gloom and fog lay over the creek, smearing the woodlands here with grim despair.
From what he could gather, from the number of horses he'd heard and seen thundering up, Bullock and Price had come along on the hunt. Some odds, he mused, five to one. Any betting man would not give him much of a chance.
He gave a moment's thought to how he had become embroiled in this horror, thought of Meredyth, pleased that the hunters had come after him in the mistaken belief they were all still together. Lucas wondered if he'd ever see her again, if she and Randy had made it out to the road, or if they were dead and lying somewhere beneath the cold rain. He had counted three dogs from the yelping and yet there were only two lying back there among the rocks. But he had to keep focused, keep his mind on survival. There were five deadly Questors, five murderous, live Helsingers in these black holes all around him, just waiting for him to step on a dry twig so he could be drilled through the heart by their arrows.
Again he blessed the rain. It had shielded him thus far, saving his life. He wondered if there wasn't some distant ancestor looking out for him.
A blazing eruption suddenly burned an image into Lucas's mind, an image of a man being electrocuted as a tree exploded within fifty feet of Lucas, a lightning bolt having caused the explosion. The lightning filled his nostrils with ozone even as it sent Lucas sprawling several feet and onto his back. It lit up the entire area, the fiery tree sending deadly shards in all directions and sending both a flaming body that looked the size of Stu Price and a burning tree limb cascading around Lucas's prone body. Lucas felt the other man's body whiz by like a twig, and he felt both lucky and vulnerable at once. Had anyone seen him?
The burning tree was lighting up the sky with crazy lights that flickered bright and low, now high and mighty, then dipping into a near-dark death with the wild rush of wind the fire itself had created. The raindrops hissed as they touched the fire.
The light was dangerous for Lucas, and the shock wave from the lightning strike had thrown him down so hard that he could not find either his knife or the arrow now ripped from his grasp. His singed eyes sought out the body near him, but Price, his body sending up a smoke cloud, had no crossbow fused to his hands. Lucas tried to frisk the smoking corpse for a gun, but the body was extremely hot, and it suddenly erupted once again into flames, sending Lucas scurrying back.
Now without weapons, he saw Pierce Dalton, silhouetted against the light from the fire. He came directly toward Lucas. Had he seen or heard Lucas's shout? Lucas couldn't recall if he had shouted, but it seemed likely, given the impact. His ears were still ringing.
Pierce Dalton didn't shout for Bullock or the others, but Lucas could hear the other three at a distance, shouting for Dalton and Price in the wake of the lightning strike. Perhaps they thought their comrades had been struck by the bolt or disoriented by it, and if so they were half-right. Perhaps the others feared that, in the tumult, Lucas had managed to get his hands on one or the other's crossbow.
Lucas thought it not a bad idea, so he worked his way around, slithering snakelike toward the burning tree. The closer he got to the tree, the more lit-up and exposed he felt. Still, if he could locate Price's crossbow, he thought he might have a fighting chance.
And there it was, lying at the base of a rock not far from the inferno. He inched toward it.
So far, Dalton hadn't seen him. Dalton had, however, found Price's body, and he was turning the dead man with his foot, gazing down into the shocked eyes, the still-burning hair. Dalton had been close to the flash as well, and he appeared shaken.
Lucas made a grab for the crossbow, found it blazing hot, burned his hands, and dropped it all at once, knowing the noise alerted Dalton. Dalton wheeled as Lucas rolled into a deep shadow created by a nearby overhang of rock and brush. Everything outside the firelight now was darker than ever, the black shadows multiplied tenfold by the flames.
Counselor Pierce Dalton, who no doubt had given Judge Charles Mootry his last legal advice before killing the man, came ever closer to where Lucas lay in the deepening shadows of this area. A second smoldering limb lay just out of Lucas's reach, but its jagged, pointed edge made for a tantalizing prize. Lucas dared inch toward the limb.
Dalton kept coming as if he had his eyes trained on Lucas, as if he could see into the empty wall of blackness here, but Lucas saw no evidence of the telltale red laser beam rising from his weapon. Closer and closer the malevolent man and the powerful crossbow came at Lucas, who now feared Dalton would see the whites of his eyes.
Dalton turned sharply in a 180-degree turn, hearing another sound directly behind him. He instantly lifted his bow and readied to fire, searching for the source of the noise. Lucas had heard it, too, but could not worry about it. He had only a split second in which to make his move.