Wells waited to see the effect of his words.
Kirsten fought to keep her face a mask. “You are a detective, Mr. Wells,” she said with brittle levity. “To have guessed so much, you must know still more.”
A wide-armed gesture took in the darkening slopes. “This here’s Split-Fork Creek on Walnut Mountain, and it’s been Wells land ever since white folk settled. We don’t make a quarrel over what don’t concern us; the right sort know and respect us, and the wrong sort don’t trouble to call. We go about our business and the law don’t much come around.”
Kirsten nodded, but had not understood the inferences.
“So today I’m curious to know why there’s some folks using around these parts like they was sure enough hunting for something. I seen their tracks going up this ridge and down — and I’m here to find out who it is, and why they’re snooping around where they ain’t been asked.”
“You say there are men who search…” Kirsten demanded, losing her composure.
“That’s what I figured I was after finding out when Ben tore off tracking you,” Wells told her. “But now I’m thinking there’s something worse than revenuers poking about here.”
A low growl cut him short. The Plott hound’s nose snuffled the breeze that carried downstream. His hackles made a ridge along his thick, black neck.
“Miss von Brocken,” said Wells, “I think you’d best slip back behind that big twisty hemlock over yonder.”
They made their way confidently down the streambed. Three men, Kirsten saw from where she crouched behind the dead hemlock — three men and an ugly, black hound whose pointed snout hovered inches above the rocks. Two of the men wore outdoor clothing that looked like it had been recently purchased from a hunting goods store. The third wore faded overalls and looked skinny without any shirt; he carried a scoped hunting rifle that looked new. The hound was of a breed unlike Kirsten had ever seen. It was dark and shaggy and rawboned; its legs were too long and there was something repulsive about the way its joints splayed out to let it run close to the ground.
Then Hampton Wells stepped out from the shadow of a boulder and faced them, shotgun ready. They halted at his appearance, imperceptibly fanned out. The shaggy hound darted into the underbrush and vanished.
“Stand there, Ford Colby,” Wells called out. “And tell me where you stole that rifle, and what you’re doing on my land where you know you got a standing dare to set foot.”
They stood there in the mist-hung streambed with shadows deepening about them and cloaking the ridges in grey moss, and the clear water purling past their feet. Over the left of the ravine the full moon had risen and shone bright enough to turn the still pools silver. The two men in city-bought clothes glanced at the third, wanting him to show them how to play it. One looked plump and red-faced and slow; the other was tall and straight as a stiletto and wore a hat whose brim appeared wider than his shoulders.
“Now don’t you fret yourself none, Hampton,” inveigled the man addressed as Colby.
“We’re not fixing to bother about that still you’re running back up there on the ridge.”
“We’re hunters,” explained the red-faced man glibly. “We’ve hired Mr. Colby here as guide.” His was the soft voice she had heard giving orders last night, Kirsten recognized with a sick chill — just as Colby’s had been the mountain twang that had answered from below.
“Whatever it is you’re hunting, you’d best be doing your hunting on somebody else’s land,” Wells growled. He nudged the shotgun muzzle a fraction higher. His eyes never wavered from the rifle Colby cradled in his arms. “Now get on out of here the way you come.”
The thin man’s nasal voice cut like a knife. “Don’t deal in when you don’t know the stakes, redneck. This is none of your business.”
He started forward, but Colby warned him back. “That scatter-gun’ll cut you in half!” Wells declined to contradict him.
“Be reasonable, Mr. Wells,” argued the plump man, who seemed to know the mountaineer’s name. “We’ll gladly pay for the unintended trespass.”
“Don’t want your money,” Wells grated. “Just get off my land. Right now.”
The tableau held for a breathless interval — tension straining to an unendurable silent scream.
Beside Kirsten’s place of concealment something rustled in the rhododendron thicket. She tore her stare away from the impasse in the streambed. A few feet from where she crouched, the heavy foliage parted. A pointed, yellow-fanged muzzle poked through the long waxy leaves and pink blossoms. Eyes large and round as an owl’s stared back at her.
Their hound… thought Kirsten. Then the animal raised itself on its hindlegs, and she saw that it wasn’t a hound. Its front paws were spade-nailed and long-toed, and they gripped the branches like hands to push them aside. The possum muzzle grinned to show double rows of sharp-pointed teeth.
Kirsten’s nerve broke in that instant. A frightened cry escaped her tight-pressed lips.
Then a sudden rush from the other side of the dead hemlock trunk, and Ben launched himself for the creature’s throat. The bearhound struck the animal like a black thunderbolt of muscle and snarling fangs, driving it back into the rhododendron bank. Floral branches lashed to hide their combat.
In that same instant Kirsten’s sharp outcry broke the tableau, as heads jumped toward the sound. Colby saw his chance and jerked his rifle into line.
The blast from Wells’s ten-gauge thundered in the ravine. Colby squawled like a stepped-on toad and flipped a broken somersault — the rifle flung from his grip by the charge of leaden shot that caved in his chest.
Already the thin man had jerked a.45 Colt automatic from the holster at the small of his back. His shot ricocheted wild as the second shotgun blast caught him at beltline. The ten-gauge was long-barreled and full-choked, and Colby had not exaggerated.
Echoes walloped and rolled down the stream-bed, and in the moonlight the silvered water showed tarnish.
The plump man was slower than he looked. It saved his life. On the far side of the stream only a few pellets spattered past him. The.45 Colt New Service he’d dug out of his waistband looked too big for his chubby fist. His round face was cruel and colorless from the close brush of death.
“That’s both barrels, redneck,” he sneered, raising his revolver. “Want to try to reload?” Brandishing the empty shotgun, Wells stood on the blood-tainted water, waiting for death.
“You can live if you just show me where you got her hid, redneck,” the fat man hissed. “You know who I mean. We all heard her yell. Just call her to come out.”
Wells gauged the distance to cover, didn’t like the odds. “You can go right to hell,” he told him.
The plump face twisted in a grin. “First one goes right through your belly button.”
“Wait! I’ll come out!”
The big revolver didn’t waver from Wells’s midriff, but he shot a glance in the direction of the sound. The fat man’s grin grew broader. From the hound’s angry baying, fast growing distant, he judged that Dread’s stalker had fled — and he knew his chances of finding the girl by himself in the gathering darkness were nil. The chance that she was still close enough to see her defender’s plight — and would be fool enough to think her surrender could save him — was all that had kept Wells alive for a few minutes longer.
“That’s smart, sister,” he barked. “Come on over here with your big friend.”
The full moon bathed the water with silver light. Too bright, thought Wells, blinking his eyes. The water cascaded in droplets of bright silver, the rushing stream was a torrent of silver light, the quiet pools were vast mirrors of blinding silver-white. He wanted to shout to the girl to run, not to throw her life away in a useless effort to save his. His head felt dizzy. The words would not come.