She smiled and let out some more string.
She knew what she was doing. Who had taught her? Her mother? He yelled, "Okay, let her rip!"
She began running across the flat meadow, feeding out the line. He released the kite when he felt it catch the wind. He shouted, "You've got liftoff!" She stopped running, drew back a bit, and turned the rod a bit to the left. The long multicolored tail whirled about in a big circle.
"Great, let's see you do some more."
She was a lot better at flying it than he would have been. The kid was really good. He watched her move her hand first this way, then that, then flip her wrist, and the dragon's tail whipped about and whirled around and around, turning back in on itself, then streaming out again, long and shining in the wind. He didn't know how she did it, but she turned her wrist back, wiggled it a bit, and that shimmery tail rippled just like a real dragon's tail.
Whoever had taught her was an expert.
She made no sound at all, but she seemed to be having the time of her life. He stood back and watched her. It was the best twelve-dollar investment he'd ever made.
He ended up sitting on the steps of the cabin, not letting her out of his sight.
Time and his thoughts slowed, leaving only the child who was flying the dragon kite amid the meadow of bright columbine.
Then, suddenly, there was a shot, startling and clear in the silence. The kite dipped and plowed earthward, landing in a bush. She didn't hesitate for an instant, not even to look around. She started to run back toward him as fast as she could.
He was to her in a moment, grabbed her up on the run, and turned back, carrying her into the cabin.
Another shot rang out from behind him just as he slammed the door with his foot. He set her down behind the couch. "Stay here. Don't move."
He shoved his pistol into his belt and picked up his rifle.
He crouched next to the window, scanning the far forest, searching for something that was different, something that didn't belong in his world. There came another shot, then another, but he couldn't hear any bullet impacts.
He heard a man shout and another man answer. They were some distance away, maybe fifty yards from the front of the cabin, just at the edge of the forest. There were no other voices. There were two men, then. He said quietly to her, "Stay behind the sofa, sweetheart. It will be all right. Just stay there.
Remember what I told you. I'm big and strong. I'm also mean when I have to be. Nobody will get to hurt you."
He looked back out the window. To his surprise, two men stumbled out of the thick fir trees, each carrying a rifle. He had the closer one in his sights when he saw they were laughing, leaning into each other, one of the men dragging his rifle. He cursed viciously. The idiots were drunk. Jesus, there was no hunting allowed anywhere near here and here they were shooting and drinking.
The closer man was very tall and thin, he could tell that even though he was wearing thick dark corduroy pants and a heavy dark brown down jacket. He had a plaid hunter's hat on his head. He was waving toward the cabin, yelling, "Hey! Anybody there? We're sorry, we didn't mean anything." Then he giggled as the other man, short, bowlegged, wearing cowboy boots, said, "Yeah, we thought you was a couple of deer. I told Tommy here that deer didn't fly kites."
Ramsey put down his rifle, but held the pistol at his side as he came through the front door out onto the porch.
He was so angry he was shaking. He wanted to bang their heads together, the morons. He yelled at them, "What do you think you're doing firing guns up here? Didn't you see my little girl?"
They waved at him. The drunken idiots actually waved, as if he'd invited them up for a beer. The tall guy called out, "Hey, buddy, it was an accident. Who are you? We didn't think anybody lived up here. We're sorry, real sorry."
The bowlegged guy didn't say a word, just walked along toward him, looking at his rifle or his snakeskin boots, or both.
"You up here a long time?"
When the tall guy asked him the question, Ramsey looked away from the shorter man for just an instant, just long enough for the man to raise the rifle and aim it at him.
Ramsey didn't think, he fired. He caught the bowlegged guy in his shooting arm just as he felt a numbing cold slam against his left thigh. The tall man had his rifle up in an instant, but Ramsey was faster this time.
He got him in the shoulder, a clean hit that knocked him backward, off his feet, to the ground.
Ramsey started toward them, then stumbled. He'd been shot in the leg. He hadn't realized it. He yelled, "What the hell do you want? Who are you?"
They were both wounded, cursing, one of the rifles on the ground. The tall guy on the ground managed to jump up, and the two of them had turned and were stumbling back toward the forest. Ramsey raised his Smith & Wesson and fired. He saw a chunk of tree bark fly into the air. He fired again. He heard one of the men yell. Good, he'd gotten one of them with two bullets. He couldn't see them now. They were gone deep into the forest. He wanted to go after them, but he couldn't. He looked down at his thigh. Blood was seeping through the denim. He realized in that instant that he hurt like hell.
Ramsey quickly turned and ran as fast as he could with his gimp leg to the cabin. One of the men still had his gun. He was still at risk. He was in the open and they were hidden in the trees. He saw an old.22 on the ground where the bowlegged guy had dropped it. It was banged up, not very powerful, thank God, but powerful enough to do the job, accurate as hell from close range.
He made the cabin and looked up in shock to see her standing there on the porch, frozen, staring at him.
He grabbed her up, ran inside, slamming the door behind him.
He felt a new shock of pain in his left leg. He looked down to see his jeans ripped through the outside of his thigh, the blood oozing through the thick denim to run slowly down his leg. Slowly, he eased her down. She clutched his right leg. She was making those gut-wrenching mewling noises again.
He kept her against his right leg. He didn't want to get any blood on her, that would be all she needed to freak her out all over again. But she'd overcome her fear to come outside to see if he was okay. "I'm all right, sweetheart. The bad men are gone, at least I hope they are. You're really brave, you know that?
I'm proud of you. You run really fast and that's good too.
"I didn't lie to you. We kicked butt, didn't we? We beat the bad guys. They're gone." But for how long?
What the hell did they want? Who were they? What did they want?
HE was seated on the single chair in the living room. She stood over him when he pulled down his jeans to examine his leg. The bullet had gouged a gash through the outside of his thigh, ripping away skin, a bit of muscle. Not deep, maybe two inches long. It wasn't bad. He was very lucky.
He poured vodka over the wound. It burned like hell, but she was standing right there, so scared, her face whiter than high mountain snow, and he wasn't about to yell. He gritted his teeth and kept pouring until he was as certain as he could be that the wound was clean. It probably needed to be stitched, but he couldn't do that, no way, since he couldn't sterilize a needle and thread. The last thing he needed was an infection. He pulled the skin tightly together over the gash, then put some sterilized gauze over it. Then he ripped some adhesive tape off with his teeth, stretched the tape tight to hold the edges of skin together beneath the gauze, and pressed it down. Pain hissed out between his gritted teeth. She made a small mewling sound. He saw her lay her hand on his right knee. "It's all right. It just hurt a little bit, not bad.
That was the worst of it, putting that tape over it."
He laid down more tape, making it tighter. He rose slowly, turned slightly away from her, and pulled up his jeans. "Now, sweetheart, let's get some aspirin down my gullet." He took four generic aspirin from Clement's and drank a full glass of orange juice. He laughed and wiped his mouth. "Vitamin C is good stuff, maybe even helpful for a gunshot wound."