Page 70 of Wyoming Tough

He was thinking, planning, plotting. The money would buy him a cheap car, and clothes and food. He could run to Montana, where he had other friends who would hide him. He could get away.

He turned back to her and picked up the shotgun. For an instant, her heart shivered as she wondered if he’d kill her now that she’d given him the cash.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said in an awkward way. “I just want to get away. I can’t go back to jail. I can’t be locked up.” He stared at the money. “I hit my mother with a tire iron,” he recalled in a faraway, shocked tone. “I never meant to hurt her. I never meant to hurt anybody. I get these rages. I go blind mad and I can’t control it. I can’t help myself.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe I’d be better off dead, you know? I wouldn’t hurt anybody else. Poor old Mallory…he was kind to me once, gave me a helping hand because Tank asked him to, after we got out of military service. Tank was my friend. I lied to him. I told him I was framed.” He sighed. “I wasn’t framed. I meant to kill the man. I’ve done terrible things. Things I never wanted to do.” He looked at her. “But I can’t let them take me alive, you understand? I can’t be locked up.”

She grimaced. “If you gave yourself up, maybe they could get a psychologist who could help you….”

“I killed a man,” he reminded her. “And kidnapped another one. That means feds will come in. They’ll track me all the way to hell. I can get away for a while. But in the end, the feds will hunt me down. I knew one, once. He was like a bulldog. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, just hunted until he found the man he was looking for. A lot of them are like that.” He took the other biscuit and the thermos of coffee. “Thanks,” he said. “For the food and coffee. For the money.” He hesitated. “For listening. Nobody ever really listened to me except my wife. I beat her….” He groaned. “God knows why she didn’t leave me. I never deserved her. She got cancer. They said she knew she had it and she wouldn’t get treatment. I knew why. She loved me but she couldn’t go on living with me, and she couldn’t leave me. Damn me! I don’t deserve to live!”

“That’s not for you to say,” she told him. “Life is a gift.”

He swallowed, hard. He looked at her with eyes that were already dead. “My mama knew there was something wrong with me when I was little. She said so. But she had too much pride to tell anybody. Thought it was like saying there was something wrong with her. I could never learn nothing, you know? I quit school because they made fun of me. I saw words backward.”

She went closer, totally unafraid. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He ground his teeth together. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this. Wasn’t your problem. Mallory’s a half mile down the trail,” he said after a minute, “off to the right, in some bushes. He’ll be hard to find, because I didn’t want him found.”

“I’ll find him,” she said with certainty.

He started to the door, hesitated, looked back at her. “Damn, he’s a lucky man!” he said through his teeth. He closed the door and melted into the night.

MORIE DIDN’T WASTEa minute. She rushed out, mounted the horse and turned him down the narrow trail that she knew from weeks of riding fence. Mallory was out there somewhere, getting soaked in this cold rain. God knew how long he’d been tied up. He would certainly need some sort of medical attention. It was almost freezing, unseasonably cold. She felt her heartbeat shaking her as she worried about not being able to find him. She could call for help, but if Joe was still around and watching, he might think she’d sold him out and he might try to kill Mallory and her in revenge. She didn’t dare take the risk.

She rode down the path for what she judged was a half mile, and she dismounted, tied her horse to a tree and started beating through the underbrush. But she found nothing. What if Joe had lied? What if he’d really killed Mallory, and she was going to stumble over his body instead of the living, breathing man? She felt terror rise in her throat like bile.

Maybe she’d misjudged the distance. Maybe it was farther away!

She mounted again and rode a little ways. Somewhere there was a sound, an odd sound, like a crack of thunder. But it was just drizzle. There was no storm. She shrugged it off. She was upset and hearing things. She dismounted and started searching off the path again. It was slow going. She could hardly see her hand in front of her face, and the flashlight was acting funny. She searched again and again, but she found nothing. There were trees, all around, but none with a man tied to it.

“Damn,” she muttered, frantic to find Mallory. What if Bascomb had lied? What if he’d killed Mallory and dumped his body someplace else? If a man could kill, couldn’t he lie, too?

She swallowed, hard, and fought tears. She had to think positively. Joe wasn’t lying. Mallory was alive. He was somewhere around here. And she was going to find him! She had to find him. She had no life left without him.

She rode a few more yards, dismounted and searched off the path again. But, again, she found nothing. She repeated the exercise, over and over again, fearful that she might get careless and miss him. She could get help when it turned light, but that might be too late…!

She went down the path to a turn in the road, dismounted and walked through the underbrush. The glow of the flashlight began to give off a dull yellow light. She’d forgotten to change the batteries! She shook it and hit it, hoping the impact might prop it up for a few more precious minutes, but it didn’t. Even as she watched, the light began to fade.

“Oh, damn!” she wailed to herself. “And I haven’t got any spare batteries. Of all the stupid things to do!”

There was a sound. She stopped. She listened. Rain was getting louder on the leaves, but there was some muffled sound. Her heart soared.

“MALLORY!” SHE CALLED. Damn Joe, she wasn’t going to let Mal die because she was afraid to raise her voice.

The muffled sound came again, louder, to her right.

She broke through the bushes wildly, blindly, not caring if they tore her skin, if they ruined her clothing, if they broke bones. She trampled over dead limbs, through patchy weeds, toward a thicket where tall pine trees were growing.

“Mallory!” she called again.

“Here.” His voice was muffled and bone-tired and heavy.

She pushed away some brush that had been piled up around a tree. And there was Mallory. Bareheaded, pale, tied to the tree with his arms behind him, sitting. He was soaking wet. His face was bruised. He looked worn to the bone. But when he saw Morie, his eyes were so brilliant with feeling that she caught her breath.

She managed to untie the bandanna that Joe had used to gag him with.

He coughed. “Got anything to drink?” he asked huskily. “Haven’t had water for a day and a half….”

“No,” she groaned. “I’m so sorry!” She thought with anguish of the thermos of coffee she’d given Joe Bascomb.

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