C. Box - Nowhere to Run

“You loaded?” Nate asked, pulling Joe’s new shotgun out from behind the seat and zipping off the gun cover.

“Shells in the glove box,” Joe said.

Nate, who was never unloaded, sighed and found the shells and fitted them into the receiver.

“I have mixed feelings about this thing we are about to do,” Nate said.

“I know.”

“You do, too.”

Joe grunted. “If it weren’t for Diane, I might be tempted to turn around.”

“But we can’t let feelings get in the way,” Nate said, putting the shotgun muzzle-down on the floor and shoving the stock between the bench seats so it wouldn’t rattle around on the dirt road. “We’ve set our course. It doesn’t matter what we think about politics or the law or anything else. It’s not Speed kills , it’s Hesitation kills . If we find those brothers and you’ve got a shot, take it. These boys aren’t going to let us lead them back to jail. They’ve left all that behind, I’m afraid. Don’t start talking or reading them their rights or trying to figure out where the hell they went off the rails. Just shoot.”

When Joe started to object, Nate said, “It isn’t about who is the fastest or the toughest hombre in the state. It’s never about those things. It’s about who can look up without any mist in their eyes or doubts in their heart, aim, and pull the trigger without thinking twice. It’s about killing. It’s always been that way.”

Sheriff Ron Baird’s county Ford Excursion was parked twenty feet off the two-track in a grove of aspen trees that overlooked the campground below in the distance. It wasn’t burning, but it had been worked over.

Joe pulled up beside it and jumped out of his pickup with his shotgun. He circled the Excursion. The hood was open and all visible wires had been sliced in half or pulled out and thrown to the ground like angel-hair packing from a shipping crate. The front windshield was smashed inward and cubes of safety glass sparkled like sheets of jewelry on the front bench seat, with errant cubes of it on the hood. The tires were flat and air had stopped seeping out from the open wounds in the sidewalls.

Baird was nowhere to be found.

Nate had opened the passenger door and stood outside the truck on the running board. Using both hands, he tracked through the air how he guessed the brothers had come up from down below on each side in a pincer movement converging on Baird’s vehicle.

Joe said, “I wonder where they took him.”

“They marched him down the hill,” Nate said, binoculars at his eyes. “I see him.”

Joe felt a spasm of fear shoot through him. “Is he alive?”

“I think so. But he doesn’t look real good.”

“How so?” Joe asked.

“Looks like he’s got an arrow sticking out of his ass.”

The stench from burning fuel, tires, and plastic was nearly overwhelming on the valley floor. The pickup that towed the horse trailer, the trailer itself, and Dave Farkus’s pickup was on fire. Baird was fifty yards off to the side of the camp, and he appeared to be hugging the trunk of a tree.

“Do you see any sign of the brothers?” Joe asked as they drove down the hill toward the scene. He’d shifted to four-wheel drive because of the incline, and he let the compression of the motor hold back his truck and trailer.

Nate lowered the binoculars. “Nope.”

“Think they’re gone or using the sheriff to draw us in and ambush us?” Joe had used the same tactic two years before when he’d bound a wanted man to lure in his would-be assassin. It had been one of the most shameful decisions he’d ever made, even though he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t do it again, given the circumstances.

“If we get sucked in and ambushed using the same trap,” Joe said, “it’s not poetic justice, but it’s something like it.”

Nate shook his head. “My guess is those boys are running back into the mountains. They probably came down to disable the vehicles and didn’t expect to get surprised by the sheriff.”

“Or us,” Joe said.

Nate said, “And I bet they’re wondering why they picked the only day in Wyoming history without wind to start a couple of cars on fire. Normally, we might not even see the smoke.”

Joe drove to Baird and hit the brakes and leaped out. He could feel the heat from the burning pickup on his back.

Baird was conscious, his eyes wide open, his mustache twitching. He was hugging the tree because they’d cinched Flex-Cuffs around his wrists on the other side of the trunk. And, as Nate had mentioned, there was an arrow shaft sticking out of his left buttock. Joe recognized the craftsmanship of the arrow and knew it had been made by the Grim Brothers. He could see the rawhide where the shaft was bound to the point next to the Wrangler label on Baird’s jeans. The arrow wasn’t deep at all, although Joe guessed it probably hurt.

“Sheriff,” Joe said, “you’ve got an arrow sticking out of your butt.”

“Why, thanks, Joe. I was wondering what it was bothering me back there.”

“You want me to pull it out or cut you down first?”

“Cut me down, please.”

As Joe removed his Leatherman tool and opened the blade, he said, “How far are the brothers ahead of us?”

Baird nodded toward the forested slope on the other side of the burning pickups. “Maybe thirty minutes,” he said.

“They on foot?”

Baird nodded. “They are, but they cover ground like demons. I saw them coming out of the trees at me on both sides, but they were so fast I didn’t get a chance to fight them off.”

“I understand,” Joe said, cutting the plastic cuffs free. “I’ve tangled with them and lost, just like you.”

Baird stepped away from the tree and rubbed hard on his wrists. His Stetson had fallen off, and strands of his wispy black hair reached down from his brow to his upper lip. As he rubbed his wrists, the arrow shaft danced up and down.

“So,” Joe said, “do you believe me now?”

Baird reached up and pushed his stringy hair back. “I was waiting to see how long it took you to ask me that question.”

As the two men looked at each other, Nate strode behind Baird toward the burning vehicles in the camp. As deft as a swallow plucking a gnat from the air, Nate reached out and pulled the arrow from Baird.

“Ouch, goddammit!” Baird said, spinning around. “Who said you could do that?”

Nate smirked, handed Baird the arrow, and continued on his way.

“They had no intention of killing you,” Joe said to Baird a few minutes later, as he helped the sheriff limp to a downed log to rest on. “Or you’d be dead.”

“I know,” Baird agreed. He straddled the log and leaned over it so his chest rested against the bark. His wound was open to the sky.

“Same with me,” Joe said to the sheriff. “For whatever reason, they did some real damage, but they didn’t feel compelled to finish the job.”

“It would have been easy,” Baird said, then gestured over his shoulder toward his wound. “This thing hurts. How bad is it?”

Joe said, “This is when you find out who your friends are,” looking at the trickle of fresh blood coming out of the wound.

“Just don’t let that friend of yours near me again,” Baird said.

Joe grimaced and turned for his pickup truck to get his first-aid kit.

Joe ripped another strip of tape to bind the compress to the wound while doing his best to avoid looking at Sheriff Baird’s bare butt, which was stunningly white. As Joe applied the tape, Nate came down out of the trees.

“Did those boys say anything?” Nate asked Baird.

“Like what?”

Nate shrugged. “Anything at all? Like, Stay off our mountain, sheriff , or Damn, where’d you come from?”