Джо Горес - Dead Man

Vangie started to whirl toward the place she had hidden it, behind some sacks in the storeroom, then froze, her head coming up, her nostrils flaring like those of a spooked mare.

She said, “It’s time.”

“Okay. You shut the windows and then get into position. Let me know when you’re ready.”

After Vangie had gone around shutting the windows, he stood up and, on an unspoken common urge, they embraced.

Vangie said in a small voice, “Good luck, Dain.”

“Good hunting, Vangie.”

Somehow the phrases seemed inadequate, especially if they turned out to be the only epitaphs either would get; but what else was there to say? He watched her go out the door and around to the back of the cabin in the darkness, and ached to call her back. But it was too late for that.

There was the slightest lingering sunset over on the western horizon, but moonlight was already laying down cold fingers of light as the four manhunters wrapped rags around the tholes of the oars. Nicky and Trask were very clumsy at it, Inverness swift and adept. Nicky stood up in frustration.

“Can’t we use the fucking flashlight? Can’t see a—”

“Quiet!” hissed Inverness. “Voices carry at night.”

He stuck an oar pin in the oarlock, tried it by moving the oar back and forth. It made no sound. He nodded and looked up at the sky. Clouds thickly edged with silver were massing across the face of the moon, fading its light.

“That cloud will give us twenty minutes,” he said in a very low voice. “Let’s move out.”

Now that he could not be seen from outside, Dain had the kerosene pressure lantern on the table, by its light was pouring gasoline over the blankets and ripped mattresses Vangie had strewn about. He especially drenched the blanket trailing down under the floor. At her three measured knocks, he released the pressure of the lantern, by the dying light poured out the rest of the gasoline, dropped the can, and went to the door.

His dark silhouette darted out through the door, closed it as the lantern died. He dropped nimbly to the ground, flitted across the open knoll and without pausing hopped down over the lip of earth where he had hidden the two-by-six.

As he waited, peering through his screen of branches, he gradually became aware of the night life around him. A week ago he would not have been. That was it! Marie had always been so much more intensely alive than he; now, if he died this night, it would be knowing he had returned to life before it happened.

Was it the knowledge of death out there that made life so precious? Blind, urgent, unquenchable life? The night was alive with animal cries, whistles, songs, chitterings. First, flying squirrels emerged from abandoned woodpecker holes to soar through the dimness, chattering shrilly. Then a fox trotted by a yard from the immobile Dain without being aware of him ambushed there. An armadillo waddled across the open ground. A carefully stepping deer made little splashes at the edge of the channel.

Through the forest drifted a great horned owl. It floated across the tops of the trees, swooped down over the bayou, landed in a tree near the point of the island. Dain’s eyes, accustomed to the dark, followed its flight, could pick out its dark bunched shape in the top of the tree. It looked about fiercely and gave its distinctive hoo, hoo-oo, hoo, hoo hunting cry.

It was glaring down at the water, its light-gathering eyes picking up the dark moving shape with its four hunched hunters. A fish broke water right beside the flatboat’s gliding hull. There was a vague squeak of oar, a slight gurgle of water along the strake. The slog of the prow into mud.

Four silent shapes left the boat, melted into tree shadow. Silent was a relative term; their clumsy presence muted the life around them. The owl flew off unnoticed by these other hunters, noted only by Dain as the light began to pick up with the moon’s emergence from the clouds.

Crouching in their cover together, the raiders looked across the now once again moon-drenched open ground to the cabin, dark and peaceful. They spoke in low tones, although Maxton couldn’t keep the elation out of his voice.

“She doesn’t have a fucking clue we’re here!”

“Even so, we wait fifteen minutes,” breathed Inverness. “Watch the animals. They’ll always tell you if somebody’s around. Did you see the owl telegraphing our presence below his tree? If Dain is watching—”

Maxton came out of his crouch and massaged his knees.

“If that bitch was wise to us, she’d be ten miles down the bayou with my bonds. Instead she’s alone in there, asleep. I want to hit her now. You got us here, great, that’s what you’ll get your percentage for. But now I’m taking over the assault.”

“I’ll cover you from here,” said Inverness drily.

“Like hell you will.” He turned to the other two silent killers. “Trask and I will each take a window. Nicky, you bust in through the door. And remember we need her alive long enough to tell us where the bonds are.”

“What if Dain’s in there? What do I do then?”

“Kill him,” said Maxton. “Inverness, you’ll take the back of the—”

“Pass.”

“You’re passing up your cut of the bonds, too, you know.”

“You don’t get it, do you? All I want is Dain — dead. I’d be a fool to risk myself over the bonds if he already is.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“Then maybe you’ll get lucky and kill him for me — or at least maybe cripple him up some more, I know I winged him the other night. If he kills you, I’m no worse off.”

Maxton just chuckled and turned away.

“The yellow streak shows at last,” he sneered, then said to Nicky, “Remember — we need her alive to get the bonds from her.”

“And to have a little fun with after,” added Trask.

The pilings gave just enough headroom for Vangie to lie on her back under the cabin with her head turned so she could see out from beneath it. She stiffened momentarily when, out on the moonlit ground, the moving feet of the three attackers appeared. They took up their positions around the cabin.

Gun in hand, Nicky approached the front steps, tense and crouched and ready. He silently mounted them, crossed the porch. A second small cloud started across the face of the moon, dimming its light again, so the flash in his left hand flickered for one instant to show him the simple iron latch.

Nicky jerked open the door and leaped through the opening, yelling, gun quartering the room.

Everything happened at once, in the five seconds it took for his light to show the room was empty.

Dain was already charging silently at a dead run from his place of ambush under the bushes. His two-by-six slammed the door shut as he smashed it down into the cleats Vangie had made for it. He was already spinning away at a dead run for cover.

“Now!” he yelled.

Vangie touched her already struck match to the blanket-fuse coming down through the cabin floor, rolled away from the searing heat as it went up in a whoosh of igniting gasoline.

Inverness already was drifting back from his tree-shadow cover toward their flatboat pulled up on the mud behind him, even as his quick eyes picked out Dain’s dark moving shape hitting the safety of the bushes on his return.

“That goddam Dain,” he muttered aloud. “Waiting.”

The whole inside of the cabin was already blazing. Nicky was slamming his forearm against the barred door, but it didn’t give. He dropped his gun, ran back a few paces — and the fire running up the gasoline-soaked fuse Vangie had ignited whooshed up around him.

Blazing now, screaming, he hurled himself again and again against the door.

The door of the cabin burst outward, the cleats ripping from the wall, and out came a screaming fireball. Air sucked inside made the cabin a sudden massive torch. The fireball rolled in the grass and then quit screaming and quit moving as inside, the shells in its dropped gun began to explode.