Joe heard the bullet before he heard the shot; a sound like fabric ripping that suddenly ended in a hollow and sickening pock sound.
***
In the doorway of the cabin, John Coble flipped backward through the air and landed heavily on the table where Stewie Woods sat. Britney screamed and backpedaled until the wall stopped her. Her T-shirt and face were spattered with blood and bits of bone and tissue.
Stewie kicked back his chair and scrambled to his feet, looking down at Coble. The top half of Coble's head was gone. Outside, a heavy rifle shot rolled across the valley, sounding like
thunder.
***
crouching forward in the saddle like a jockey Joe spurred Lizzie out of the trees and into the open meadow that rose up the mountain to culminate at the shadowed front of a dark cabin. The boom
of the shot swept through the timber.
"Get down!" he shouted at the cabin, not knowing how many people were inside. "Get down on the floor!"
And suddenly Joe felt an impact like an ax burying itself into soft wood. Lizzie stumbled, her front legs collapsing as her rear haunches arced into the air, her head ducking as she pitched forward, throwing Joe. He hit the ground hard, crumpling against the foot of the steps to the porch of the cabin, his chest and chin taking the brunt of the fall. Lizzie completed her thousand-pound somersault and landed so hard, just a foot short of Joe, that he felt the ground shudder.
Britney was still shrieking inside but she had screamed herself hoarse and was practically soundless when the doorframe filled with Joe Pickett. The fall had knocked the wind out of him and he leaned into the cabin with his hands on his knees, fighting for breath. The rope he had looped around the saddle horn was tangled around one foot.
Stewie lurched around the table where Coble lay twitching and helped Joe inside, leading him from the open door, as a fist-sized hole blew through the front window and shattered all of the glass.
"Get down!" Joe barked, as he dropped to his hands and knees, pulling Stewie with him.
Methodically bullets hit the front of the cabin blowing holes through the walls that looked alternately like stars, hearts, and sunbursts --followed by the rolling thunder sound of the heavy rifle fire.
"You must be Stewie Woods, "Joe said, looking over to the man who had helped him inside the cabin.
"And you aren't Mary Harris," Stewie said.
"I'm her husband," Joe said, glaring at Stewie's disfigured face. Now was not the time to punch him in the nose, Joe thought. "Her name's Marybeth Pickett."
Stewie wheezed. "You're a game warden."
"Right."
"Do you know how many there are out there shooting at us?" Stewie asked with remarkable calmness.
"One older man in a black Ford pickup. He's got a hell of a rifle and he knows what he's doing."
"Look what he did to John Coble," Stewie gestured to the table above them. For the first time, Joe noticed the two boots that hung suspended from the edge of the table and a single still arm that dropped over the side. A stream of dark blood as thick as chocolate syrup strung from the table to a growing pool on the floor.
"Is he-"
"He's dead," Stewie said. Britney Earthshare had now crawled over to join them on the floor. Her face was a mask of revulsion and frozen shock. Joe sympathized. He couldn't yet grasp the magnitude and danger of the situation he was in.
"Do you have any weapons in the cabin?" Joe asked them both.
"No, but Coble has a pistol with him," said Stewie.
"Get it," Joe commanded. "Can you shoot a gun?"
"Of course," Stewie said. "I'm from Wyoming."
Stewie rolled toward the table and began to rise up. As he did, the kitchen window imploded with the force of another bullet and threw shards of glass skittering across the floor. Stewie dropped to a
sprawl, his attitude accusatory toward Joe.
"Forget that!" Stewie yelled.
"What about you, Britney?" Joe asked. She was closer to Coble.
"I will not touch a gun."
Joe cursed. They were useless.
Joe's mind raced as he lay there, his cheek pressed to the rough wood. Stewie was a few feet away and despite the immediacy and danger of the situation, he couldn't help staring. Stewie, Joe thought, was hideous. Seen in the dusty rods of light from the bullet holes in the walls, Stewie's face looked as if it were made of wet papier-mache that had been raked from top to bottom with a gardening claw and allowed to dry. His mouth was misshapen and exaggerated, capable of making a perfect inverted U when Stewie was angry like he was now. His mouth looked like a child's drawing of a sad face.
Under Stewie's rough, loose clothes, it was obvious that he had been bigger but had recently lost most of his muscle tone. Skin sagged on big bones. His left arm was limp and thin. Stewie's fingernails and toenails needed trimming, and a beard, once full and red, was now pink and wispy The hair on his head grew in patches, like putting greens on a desert golf course.
Joe, however, pulled his attention away from Stewie as he realized that the gunshots had suddenly stopped. Joe guessed that the shooter was reloading. He reached down to make sure his .357 was still in his holster and was relieved to find it was. Unfortunately Joe was a notoriously bad shot, and he knew that it would be close to impossible for him to hit the shooter at this distance,
The shots resumed, but inside the cabin nothing happened. The shooter had shifted targets. Joe heard a faraway shattering of glass, and a metallic clang from the impact of a bullet.
"He found my truck," Joe spat.
He remembered that his shotgun was in the saddle scabbard. On his knees and elbows he scrambled toward the open door.
"Where are you going?" Britney asked hysterically "Are you leaving us?"
"Try to calm down, Britney" Stewie implored.
Joe crawled to the side of the doorframe and cautiously leaned forward. His face and head felt stunningly exposed when he peered outside. He wondered if he would hear the bullet before it hit him.
Joe was practically useless as well. The shooter was over 1,500 yards away on the other mountain. Joe's .357 Magnum was not capable of even half of that range. The fat, heavy bullets he fired would fall short at about the distance of the road. Lizzie wasn't where she had fallen, but Joe spotted her further down the meadow. She stood in a pool of shadow just inside the treeline. His saddle had come loose and hung upside down beneath her belly She took a step, faltered, and stopped. She stood stiffly He could see that the bullet had shattered her right rear leg. Her leg, from her hock down, hung like a broken branch.
Suddenly, there was a puff of dust and hair from her shoulder and the horse jerked and buckled into the summer grass as the reverberating sound of shot rolled across the valley
That son of a bitch, Joe thought. That son of a bitch killed Lizzie!
Joe suddenly scuttled back as another .308 bullet blew a football sized chunk out of the doorframe Directly above where his head had been.
"Jesus Christ!" Stewie bellowed.
Joe knew his face was white and contorted with fear--he could feel his own skin pulling across his skull--when he joined Stewie and Britney Earthshare under the table. His voice choked as he asked them if there was another way out of the cabin.
Stewie said there was a side door but that Charlie Tibbs could probably
see them if they went out that way
"There's a window in the bedroom," Britney said, her teeth chattering as if the temperature were subzero.
They crawled across the floor of the cabin toward the bedroom over shards of glass, splinters of wood, and congealing globules of blood and tissue. A bullet tore through the wall a foot above floor level and smashed into the base of the stove where Britney had huddled just a few minutes ago. Joe felt the cabin shudder with the impact.