Not daring to question, I dash into the tack room, check the nameplates on the bridles and yank them free. No time for saddles.
By the time the two of them make it down the loft stairs, the siren sound is coming down Tanner Farm Road. I’m already on top of Peaches. Cooter yelps bad as he swings his knee over the back of Dancer. Billy grabs the mane of Sonny and is up clean.
“Goddamn it all! I just remembered something,” I say, sliding off the donkey’s back.
“Whatever it is, we don’t have time,” Billy says in an SOS voice. He’s pressing his leg against the chestnut’s side, heading toward the barn’s back door. Cooter’s on his tail with his temple vein running blue.
Halfway down the aisle, I shout back, “It’s Cooter they’re after. They’ll string him up they catch him, ya know they will!”
Billy presses the reins against Sonny’s neck, spins around and commands Cooter, “Go on without me.”
“No!” I holler. “Ya gotta help him, Billy. He’s in no shape and doesn’t know the trail. Go on. I’ll be right behind ya. Sneaky Tim Ray must have the treasure map on him. I gotta get it for Clever.” I can see in his face that he’s torn between abandoning me and keeping Cooter from getting strung up dead. “Ride, Billy, ride.”
“I’ll get him pppointed in the right direction, then I’m comin’ bbback for ya,” he calls, and the two of them charge out the barn, sucked up fast by the storm, Keeper out front.
Garnering my breath, I kneel down to where Sneaky Tim Ray’s still passed out in the aisle and dig my hand into his breast pocket, just like he’s done to me so many times. No treasure map there, but I steal back my locket. Maybe he put the map in his…
“Gotcha,” he rails, latching his fingers around my arm and struggling to sit up, so pickled he doesn’t even realize he’s been beat up. “This what you lookin’ for?” His hand slides down the front of his pants.
“No, it is not,” I say, battling to break free.
“Ya sure ’bout that?” He pulls the map out from somewhere down there. Waves it in my face. “I got me a real good idea. What say me and you go fetch that treasure and take off for parts unknown, darlin’?”
This not being my first rodeo, thank Jesus, I know exactly how to handle this critter. I drop my tussling and put on an admiring tone. “Why, Sneaky Tim Ray, you really have repented. I’m so proud of ya for bein’ willin’ to share like that.”
“Thought I’d sweeten the pot, ya might come to your senses. Near impossible to resist ole Tim Ray and a treasure,” he says, giving me one of those shining smiles of his. “We could even get hitched, ya want.”
So sure of his charms, he eases his grip.
“Well, as temptin’ as that offer is, darlin’…” I reach back and remove the.22 from the back of my pants.
Tires crunch to a sliding stop. Out the barn doors, Deputy Jimmy Lee is jumping outta the car, shouting and gesturing to a couple of men. Not the law. They’re bounty hunters come speedy for that reward on Cooter.
I take aim at the zipper on Sneaky Tim Ray’s caked jeans. “Unless you’re wantin’ your precious pecker to be in the same situation as your eye, I suggest you hand over that map nice and easy.”
Rain collecting in the brims of their black hats, the lanky bounty men are heading our way. I recognize the two of them, all right. They’re well known for their tracking skills.
“I’m not foolin’,” I say to Sneaky Tim Ray as I cock the gun. “Now.”
Instead of him begging for mercy like I thought he would, outta his mouth comes the same phlegmy laugh he lets loose whenever he’s got me cornered. “Ya ain’t got the nerve. You and me both know you’re nuthin’ but a scared little retard with real nice titties.” His hands shoot up to my double D’s. Squeeze hard. “I got ahold a her, boys,” he cackles.
I’m looking him straight in the eye, when I pull back on the trigger.
“Halt in the name of the law,” Deputy Jimmy Lee booms down the aisle.
Plucking the map outta Holloway’s fingers, I dash down the aisle and throw myself onto Peaches’s back. “Git,” I shout, heeling her hard into the downpour.
Behind me, Sneaky Tim Ray is squealing, “She shot me. She shot me in the pecker!” And the deputy is yelling, “Stop, Gib, stop.” At the beginning of the trail, I spin Peaches around so I can see if they’re coming after me. Jimmy Lee is kneeling down in the aisle, ministering to Holloway. But silhouetted in the barn door, those two bounty hunters are long and lean. And smiling at me like it’s Christmas morning.
Hightailin’It
Farther down the trail, where the woods thin from oak to scrub, I can barely make out Billy coming toward me, that’s how bad the rain is sheetin’ down. I don’t dare call out to him. Those black-hatted bounty hunters back at the barn? They’re the Brandish Boys. And they got ears bigger than Peaches’s. Well, one of them does anyways. Even as far away as Tennessee, they are legends. I heard a story about when the Boys were hunting a bail-jumping feller from two counties over. By the time those two dragged him into town, that poor man was missing an arm. Word was the Brandish Boys ripped it clean out and near beat him to death with it. Even Grampa, the least jumpy man I know, swallowed hard when he told me, “Wouldn’t wanna be the object of one of those Boys’ searches. They hunt for the fun of it. Reward money’s just the pork in the beans.”
I reach down to swipe off the rain that’s caught up in Peaches’s mane, give her a pat for a job well done. The trail’s so muddy, I don’t know how she’s managing.
“You okay?” Billy asks, drawing up close, trying to shield me from the punishing storm.
“Where’s Cooter at?” I ask, peering around him.
“Keep’s leadin’ him. It’s a straight shot from here to the cottage. He’ll be fine.”
He better be. Rosie needs a daddy. That’s right, it’s just come to me outta nowhere that it CAN’T be Willard that’s Rosie’s daddy. Even though Clever’s sort of a birdbrain, she’s smart enough to pretend that Willard’s the baby’s daddy so he’ll take her back to New York City with him ’til tongues stop wagging. That rascal. She knows damn well if she births a baby of the opposite color around here, folks are gonna give her a flock of grief.
“We can’t hide at the cottage long,” I say. The trail widens enough here that we can ride the rest of the way together. “They’ll figure that out, won’t they, Billy?”
“We got a little time, I think. Jimmy Lee… ya know… that vat accident… he’s kinda dumb.”
“That’s true,” I say, looking up at him. “But the Brandish Boys aren’t.”
Billy whoas up in a flurry. “The Brandish Boys?”
“They were with Jimmy Lee up at the barn.”