“Well, I know there ain’t no fish in any of them muddy tanks,” Horton said.
“Well, I found a spring-fed pond that does have fish in it. Good evening, Mr. Horton.”
Dag chuckled and they kept walking.
When they were out of earshot, Jo whispered, “I’m glad you’re wearing a six-gun, Felix.”
“Why? I always wear it when I’m working or out after dark.”
“I know. Don Horton gives me a funny feeling, that’s all. I don’t know why he was teasing us.”
“It’s just his way,” Dag said.
“He knew where we were going. He heard me ask you.”
“He did?”
“I’ve been watching that man, Felix. And he’s been watching you.”
“What?”
“Whenever you’re not looking, he’s watching you, like a cat watches a mouse—or like a hawk sitting on a fence post looking at a rabbit.”
Dag laughed, but it wasn’t much of a laugh, more of a snort of disbelief. “Don and I don’t have no bad feelin’s between us, far as I know,” he said.
“Then I wonder why he keeps watching you like a red-tailed hawk.”
Dag shrugged. “Maybe he finds me interestin’,” he joked.
“Just don’t turn your back on him when you’re off by yourself. He might just be behind you.”
Jo said no more about it. Dag made a note to himself that he’d keep a closer eye on Horton, but he had no idea why the man would be watching him. Maybe it was just Jo’s imagination.
“Here’s the pond,” she said.
The water shimmered in the faint moonlight. It had high banks like the pond he had at home. Someone had widened it with shovels and there were tracks around it from deer, cattle, and coyote. Someone had tended it, so there ought to be cattle around close. He wondered why Horton had found so few.
“You can see it bubbling over on one end,” she said. “There’s a spring under here, and I saw fish when I rode up here this afternoon.”
“Did the fish have whiskers?”
She laughed. “Let’s find out.”
They sat on the bank and rigged their poles with line, hooks, and sinkers. Dag cut up the liver into small chunks and they baited their hooks.
Jo threw her line in the water. The sinker made a splash and then sank, dragging the line with it. Dag put his line in a moment later.
“You got a head start on me, Jo,” he chided.
“First fish.”
Dag chuckled. “A bet’s a bet,” he said.
All of a sudden, Jo pulled back on her pole and reared backward. Her line was taught and was making circles as it cut the water.
“I got one!” she exclaimed and bent back even farther, pulling on the line to keep out the slack.
That move probably saved her life, because just then, a rifle shot cracked. Dag heard a bullet sizzle just past his ear, frying the empty air where Jo had been a second before.
Dag’s blood froze as his belly knotted in fear.
Chapter 13
Dag lunged to cover Jo with his own body, smothering her under his weight. The sound of the gunshot lingered in his ears for several seconds. And then it grew quiet. He thought he heard the sound of running footsteps, but he couldn’t be sure.
Jo struggled to free herself, squirming beneath Dag.
“Hold still,” he whispered. “Listen.”
Jo stopped struggling. They both listened, but all they heard was the sound of crickets sizzling in the grasses surrounding the pond, and the throaty wharrumping of the bullfrogs.
They listened some more, turning their heads so they didn’t hear their own breathing.
The cattle were quiet, except for a few still roaming around. The occasional whuff of a horse clearing its nostrils sounded. A far-off coyote yodeled. The distant whirruping call of a whip-poor-will was answered by another even farther away. Underneath all the vagrant sounds was the soft susurrance of their breathing, and underneath that lay the deathly silence of a graveyard at midnight.
“Felix,” Jo whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“No, not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Someone took a shot at us.”
“I heard it,” she said. “Who? Why?”
“It wasn’t a ricochet. I mean it was a straight shot. Aimed at you. Or me.”
She shuddered beneath him.
He looked down at her, her face barely visible in the moonlight, but the contours all there, the nose shadowed, the lips. Invisible eyes in dark sockets.
He slid from Jo’s body and lay beside her, still listening.
Something moved. Dag saw that Jo’s hand was wiggling. She still clutched the pole with the dancing fish on the end of her line.
“I caught a fish,” she said. “He’s still on.”
“Well, throw him back in.”
“But I won,” she said, her voice a teasing whisper in his ear.
“Yeah, Jo, you won. Let’s get out of here and back to camp. We’ll see who’s up, who’s pretending to be asleep.”
“What if he’s still out there, waiting for us?”
“We’re going to make a wide circle,” he said, “go back a different way than the way we came.”
Dag got up, drew his pistol. He peered into the darkness, looking for any movement, any sign of life across the empty plain. There was nothing that he could see.
Jo got up, brushed herself off. She still held the pole in one hand. She crept up the bank on all fours and squatted. She pulled on the line, bending her pole back over her shoulders. There was a splash, and the inertia gone, she fell backward, stopping herself just before she tumbled down the bank.
“Oh, it got away,” she said, still in a whisper.
“Good. Now I don’t have to pay you that nickel. Let’s get the hell out of here. Just follow me, Jo.”
He picked up his pole and helped Jo down the bank. They walked away from the pond, keeping it between them and the direction where they heard the rifle shot. Dag held his pistol at the ready, but it was uncocked.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’ll come up on the herd from the south,” he said. “Maybe add another half mile to a mile to our walk out here.”
She was silent for a few moments. “Felix,” she whispered, moving close enough to him that their bodies touched, “I can still feel you on me.”
“Huh?”
“Back there. When you were lying on top of me. Protecting me. I liked it. I felt safe.”
“Ain’t no nothin’ in that, Jo.”
“Yes, there is,” she said, her whisper louder than before. “There are feelings. My feelings. Yours, maybe.”
“I just didn’t want you to get shot is all.” His voice was gruff as if he were not at all certain that what he said was true.
“I know. You were protecting me, Felix. But it was nice having you so near. Almost as if . . .”
“As if what?”
“As if we were married.”
Dag swallowed hard. There it was, he thought. Jo did have her eyes on him. As Laura had said.
“Jo, we’re not married. I am married. To Laura. That’s not going to change.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “But a girl can dream, can’t she?”
“Maybe you should learn to be more realistic, Jo.”
“I’ve loved you for a long time, Felix. I will always love you. I can’t help that.”
“Maybe not. But you shouldn’t talk about marriage with a married man, that’s all.”
“All right. I won’t. I promise. I just wanted you to know how I felt about you, Felix.”
“You’ll make some man a good wife someday, Jo. That’s what you should be thinking about.”