A second shot smacked into the wall next to his neck. He thought automatically, He’s pulling high and to the left. He’s shooting uphill and failing to compensate.
Wyatt threw himself onto the ground as a third shot slammed into the wall. There was the same powerful sound, the same double echo in the nearby hills.
Rifle shots were not uncommon here but it was usually Craig or his father, taking random pot shots at rabbits and foxes with their small-bore rifles. Soon Craig’s father or one of the other neighbours was going to notice the sound of a heavy calibre weapon and wonder who was making war at ten-thirty on a Sunday morning.
Not the cops-they wouldn’t come in like that. Not Finn’s Sydney connections-even if they knew where to find him they wouldn’t come so soon, so rashly. Sugarfoot Younger? In his pain and tiredness Wyatt had thought that Sugarfoot was dead or gone. He’d forgotten the dumb instinct and obsession that drove the useless hoon.
Dragging himself along by his elbows, Wyatt made for the side of the house. Multiple shots are easier to pinpoint than a solitary shot, so he knew where Sugarfoot was. Wyatt had one advantage: his house and sheds were on a slight rise. With no high ground to fire from, and wary of crossing open ground to the house and sheds, Sugarfoot would have positioned himself in the pine tree plantation.
But he would take some finding. He had plenty of cover. Wyatt’s property was almost completely surrounded by trees: the pine plantation, an uncleared tangle of scrub and blackberry bushes, and the neighbour’s apple orchard. The drive-way at the front of the house ran down an avenue of golden cypresses to the small Shoreham road, hidden by hedges and earthen banks. If Sugarfoot circled the house while closing in on it, Wyatt would have trouble keeping track of him. If he circled at a distance, he’d effectively keep Wyatt boxed in.
There was a flurry of wind and rain. Wyatt shivered. The tracksuit and slippers gave him no protection. The wound was bleeding again. He considered his options. If he made a run for it in the car, he risked a bullet. If he stayed in the house he’d have no flexibility. Better to go after the punk.
But his.38 was under the bed, in a holster strapped to the springs of the bed base. There was a little.22 rifle, but it was in the barn. Not that he intended going after Sugarfoot through undergrowth with a rifle he’d not fired for two years and then only at pigeons with birdshot.
He manoeuvred along the wall until he was behind a clump of bamboo. Beyond the bamboo was an old, unused dairy. If Sugarfoot had moved to the south-west edge of the pine plantation he would have a clear shot at the open ground between the house and the dairy, but Wyatt was guessing that Sugarfoot would station himself where he could get Wyatt if Wyatt tried to enter the house through the kitchen door.
Wyatt knelt, waited a beat, and ran at a crouch toward the old dairy. There was no point in zig-zagging, not if Sugarfoot was firing from the side. He heard a thudding, and realised it was his body straining-not shots, not his footsteps on the soft ground. He passed the bamboo, and splashed through the sodden area around a leaking garden tap. He felt the wound tearing. His slippers and tracksuit were splashed and soaked with water and mud. He wiped raindrops from his eyes.
He got to the dairy, his heart pounding, just as the shot came late. It hit somewhere on the other side of the dairy. It told him that Sugarfoot had him pinned down.
The only escape was to strike out in a straight line away from Sugarfoot, using the dairy as a screen. Then he could circle around the house and go in through the front. Sugarfoot would be expecting him to advance, not move away. Sugarfoot also had farther to travel if he anticipated Wyatt and circled around to meet him, and by that time Wyatt would be in and out of the house again, armed this time.
He set off at a lope, twenty steps running, twenty walking, remembering his old army training. His main obstacle was a high, tightly sprung stock fence topped with barbed wire. There was little give in the wires. They pulled cruelly at him as he pushed through to the other side.
Again he walked and ran, conscious of pain and the blood spreading over his hip. He circled left, dodging tussocks of grass and treacherous hollows where cows and horses had left deep imprints in the muddy soil. Once he slipped, his left leg sliding away beneath him on a fresh cow pat. He recovered, clutching at his side, and ran on.
His run took him across the top corner of the paddock. On the other side was another fence, and then he was in the shelter of his golden cypresses.
He stopped. Ivan Younger’s white Statesman was parked at the side of the sunken road, fifty metres down from the entrance to his driveway.
He waited for two minutes, isolating sounds: a sheepdog alerted by the rifle fire, its owner shouting at it to shut up, a motor starting up somewhere. Almost eleven o’clock. Wyatt knew that some of the neighbours went to eleven o’clock church but it could also be someone deciding to investigate. Suddenly Wyatt knew how he would do this. He would kill Sugarfoot, dump him in Ivan’s Statesman in Frankston, then come back and commiserate with one or two of the neighbours about these bloody weekend shooters tramping all over the place.
The pain had eased a little now that he’d rested. He approached the house at a walking pace, keeping close to the cypress trees.
He paused at the final tree and surveyed the open ground that sloped down to the apple orchard. That’s when he saw him. Sugarfoot, wearing cowboy boots, stetson hat and long coat, was slipping from the edge of the pine trees and into the orchard about three hundred metres away.
Wyatt ran crouched over to the broad front verandah of his house. He had about a minute before Sugarfoot was stationed where he could see the verandah and the front door and windows. Tension gave him an acute sense of things. He saw, as if for the first time, the warped boards and nail heads on his verandah, the dusty cobwebs on the old lathe-turned posts.
The front door and the window to the left of it were always locked, but his bedroom window was partly open. He removed the insect screen and tugged on the bottom pane, tensing himself for shots from the orchard. The window resisted him, gripped by the old moisture thickened frame. Suddenly it protested like a shrieking bird and moved freely. Wyatt tumbled over the sill and into the room. The window exploded, coating him in shards and chips of glass. He rolled across to the bed and reached under it for his.38.
And blacked out.
When he opened his eyes he had a sense of weightlessness. He didn’t know if he’d been out for seconds or for minutes. The world tipped left and right.
He waited.
When he felt steady, he reached under the bed again and found the.38. It felt reassuring in his hand. It was chambered for five rounds only, unlike his large capacity Browning automatic-but double-action automatics tend to jam, or the clip may crimp if it’s slammed home. He’d fitted a fat, natural-rubber grip to the.38. The metal surface and moving parts were finely coated with a protective layer of oil, and the front sight was rounded so that it wouldn’t drag in the holster or catch on his clothing. The gun seemed to slide into his hand.
He switched off the safety catch and ran through to the laundry at the back of the house. Here there was a narrow broom cupboard where he stored old hats, coats, boots and shoes. He selected a green, quilted, waterproof jacket with a hood. He removed the sodden slippers and put on light, sturdy boots. Under a false panel in the bottom of the cupboard were several boxes of cartridges. He opened a box and poured a dozen loose cartridges into his pocket.
Now to get Sugarfoot. Once he was down in that belt of cover he would have the advantage. Sugarfoot’s rifle was unbeatable for long-distance pinning down and accuracy, but useless for snap shooting and close work among trees and undergrowth. Unless Sugarfoot also carried a pistol. Wyatt had to assume he did.