Lone Star 01 (21 page)

The two men flanking Daphne chuckled snidely; they were smugly relaxed after an hour of waiting, and Daphne was giving them no trouble. She was slumped in despair between them, speechless and glassy-eyed with her mounting horror. The third man was leaning against a boulder directly across the pit from Ki, holding his pistol lazily in his lap and appearing to be bored stiff. Volpes was a couple of yards to the near side of the man, facing Ki as alertly as ever, keeping his revolver leveled and taking no chances that his prisoner might attempt a break.

Ki continued digging. When the dual grave was a foot deeper and wider, he was positive he and Daphne would be shot firing-squad style and dumped into it, to be covered over and never found again. Whatever he was going to do, he'd have to do in the next few seconds.

“Enough digging,” Volpes said suddenly, as if reading Ki's thoughts. “Okay, boys, bring the bitch over next to him.”

The two hauled Daphne closer, while the other man, now holding his pistol firmly, rose and moved beside Volpes. Daphne was now mewing and writhing feebly, and when Ki said to her sharply,
“Tao Nien Hou,”
he couldn't be sure whether she was nodding with understanding, or merely shuddering with mind-numbing dread. But it was too late to repeat; it had either sunk in or not, and if not, they were both virtually dead. Volpes and the man beside him were foolishly close together, but that still left Ki's back exposed to the two men holding Daphne.

“That's it,” Volpes was snarling in response to Ki's words, “Say your yaller prayers.” And he thumbed back the hammer...

And Ki dove across the pit, gripping the shovel lengthwise by its handle. A thunderous flash exploded before him, the heavy .45 slug whispering past his ear as it sped harmlessly into the woods. Before Volpes could trigger again, before the man beside him could fire his own pistol, Ki had leaped the short space and flattened Volpes with a combination of shovel to the face and flying kick to the chest. The wooden handle smashed between Volpes's upper lip and nostrils with a driving upward thrust, shattering his nose and spearing shards of bone and cartilage into his brain. This, while Ki's driving feet were crushing his chest, snapping ribs into his lungs and rupturing his stomach and kidneys.

Volpes was dead before he hit the ground, and Ki was attacking the other man. He seemed to pivot in midair, using the shovel again to swipe the man's gun-wrist with a lightning sideways chop, and all in the same motion, as the pistol dropped and discharged, he added a thumb-jab to the man's neck. The man began wilting, his brain bursting from the eruptive pressure on his carotid artery. Lurching, spinning, dying, he fell backward into the open pit.

Again Ki swiveled, bracing himself against the expected fusillade of bullets from the men behind him. But Daphne had heard him, had understood, and with courage born of hope and desperation, had reacted the instant he'd sprung into action.

She had been forced to the edge of the grave by the man on her right, who was pulling her by the wrist, and the man on her left, who had a grip on her elbow. In response to Ki's barked command, she had applied
Tao Nien Hou
—the
T‘ai-chi
maneuver that translates as “Step Back to Repulse the Monkey.” She simply let her left elbow relax, dropping it into the man's grip—which, by removing all resistance, threw him immediately off balance, causing him to stumble. At the same moment, she placed all her weight in her left leg, extending her right palm in a forward thrust to the chest of the man holding her wrist. He had been pulling her, so the last thing he expected was for that hand suddenly to come toward him with lightning speed, as it now did. He also stumbled, and let go of her wrist.

Confused, the two men pounced for her again. Daphne barely had time to ward off one by striking his face with her left palm, when the other closed with a bear hug. She evaded his right arm by pushing it aside with her left forearm, and then, swiftly following through with the
Shih Tz Shou
or “Cross Hands” movement, she simultaneously stabbed her right hand forward over her left forearm, her extended fingers rupturing the man's trachea just below the thyroid gland. The man clawed at his neck, strangling ...

But his partner, swearing, was bearing down on Daphne with his Colt .44-40, squeezing the trigger before she could turn ...

And Ki came launching across the pit again in a
tomoenage
whirl, caroming into him, sending the man sprawling on his back. Desperately the man tried straightening, aiming the pistol he still gripped tenaciously in his fist. Ki feinted with a kick, as if to knock the pistol away, and the man responded as Ki anticipated, rolling back to gain more space. Half through his roll and facedown, the man suddenly felt Ki jump on his back, and then he felt excruciating pain, and then nothing, as Ki grabbed both his ankles and pulled violently up and backward. A scream, a dull cracking noise, and the man died, his back broken and his spinal cord severed.

Daphne rushed to Ki, almost collapsing with relief into his comforting arms. “Oh, I was so terrified,” she whimpered, clinging tightly to him.

“You did beautifully,” Ki soothed her, cradling her head to his chest. “You're a little rusty with your timing, but you did just fine.”

“I know. I should practice more. My father would be ashamed.” She drew away then, her eyes bright disks of fear and excitement. “Ki, we've got to get out of here, and fast!”

Before Ki could answer, other voices starting filtering from the clearing:

“Boss?”

“Hey, you all right?”

“Boss, what's going on there?”

Then came the noise of boots approaching through the brush.

A low word came from Daphne's lips. Ki touched her to warn her that silence was necessary, holding on to her right arm as he guided her out of the defile and into the sheltering woods. But he was aware that she was right. The very compactness of the pocket would make any possible refuge out of the question for long. Daylight would, of course, make them easy game for the remaining rustlers.

“Crap, looky here!”

“They got the boss!”

“They got everyone!”

Ki dropped low to the ground, Daphne stretching close beside him. “If we can, we should circle back to the shed,” he whispered in her ear, “and try for our clothes. What there is of them.”

“Goddammit, they've escaped!”

“Where?”

“They can't have gone far. They gotta still be in here someplace, so let's block the hole before they can get out it.”

“Yeah, four of us can do that.”

“Me an' Clyde, we'll stake out that shed.”

“Good idea. Some of you help me build up the fire so we can see ‘em, and then let's spread out, track 'em down.”

So much for getting out the simple way, Ki thought glumly, or for getting back to the shed for their clothes. “We'd better find a good place to hide,” he said to Daphne.

In a crouching run, they wormed through the low scrub and trees toward the nearest slope of the pocket, ducking before they reached it and lying down prone, motionless, as four men trampled past, heading for the entrance hole.

The campfire was flaring briskly now, as kindling, brush, and tree limbs were tossed on it. Across the pocket, Ki and Daphne reached the steep, rocky wall, anxiously watching the growing flames brighten the encroaching night darkness. They moved along the slope, exploring the stone with their hands and bare feet, hoping, praying to locate enough rubble to hide in. The light was growing in the pocket, casting reflections almost to the walls. In a few more minutes it would be light everywhere. They must be undercover by then.

Cautiously they continued groping along. The pile played out, and for the space of a hundred feet, they encountered no more loose rock at all. Growing desperate, Ki went straight down the side wall and around to the one supporting the land-bridge that concealed the pocket. Daphne kept close beside him, touching him occasionally as if for support. Nothing. Nothing at all. Still they moved on, hurrying more, running out of time.

They almost bumped into a rough jumble of boulders that seemed to jut out of nowhere. Signaling Daphne to wait, Ki moved around it, searching its contours with his fingers. He came to a narrow crevice that angled in to the face of the wall like a wedge.

“I think we might have found a hiding place,” he whispered to Daphne when he returned. “Maybe it won't last long, but it's something.”

He also thought they must be so close to the land-bridge that any guard posted up on its rim would surely notice them when the fire rose full enough. That there would be a guard, or guards, was something Ki could almost certainly count on; Volpes couldn't have lasted as long as he had, if he hadn't taken elementary precautions like that. Yet by shifting some of the stones, Ki was able to fashion a place for them to lie flat. No part of the pile of stone was high, but it would conceal them from a distance.

The rustlers were already divided up into teams, and were impatiently scouring the pocket from one end to the other. One group, reaching the exit that led through the land-bridge, called out, “Hey, Johnson! McCully! What're you doin‘—sleepin'?”

“Hell, no!” a loud bellow replied. “We're right here on this side of the hole, and Winnie and Sam are on t‘other. A field mouse ain't gonna get by us. What's up? You lost 'em?”

“Naw, we just ain't found ‘em yet, is all.”

“We'll ride this pocket till we root ‘em out,” another of the group shouted, as the men turned and moved on through the brush.

The roaring blaze from the campfire was strong enough now to illuminate the entire area, even high up the walls of the pocket. Hidden in the rocks, Ki kept surveying the slope they were against, curious about a line of blackness along it. A slight crown cast shadows far above it, but something lower down, not ten feet over their heads, also drew his close scrutiny.

After a long study, Ki decided that what he was seeing was a fault line running up the wall, a thin slice of softer stone that had eroded, crumbling, forming the rubble they were lying in now, and leaving a depression in the otherwise sheer surface of the wall.

Ki wondered if it could be climbed. Probably not, but on the other hand, they couldn't stay where they were forever. A losing proposition, no matter how he chose. He chose to try.

Touching Daphne on the shoulder, Ki slipped from his bentover crouch and began inching laborously ahead of her into the fault. She promptly, unquestioningly, followed his lead. Slowly they worked their way up the fault which was like a stovepipe cut lengthwise down the middle, bracing themselves against the thin sides of the depression with elbows and knees, exerting all their strength to retain a hold in what time-scalloped chinks they could find. They climbed and climbed, and then climbed some more, clawing with broken fingernails and tensed feet, realizing that if they should slip now, their height would guarantee a grisly death.

A second bunch of riders trotted up, and Ki and Daphne froze while the men exchanged a few words with the four guarding the hole. Then one of them stretched in his saddle to yell out, “Tait!”

When nobody responded, he shouted again, “Tait, damn your mangy hide, where the fuck are you up there? Answer me!”

Nobody did, and now another of the men said, “Ah, forget it, George. Tait's likely over watching the other side of the bridge, where Volpes told him to set tight this morning.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I don't like—”

“Hell, Tait's a good egg. He'll nab ‘em if'n they get up there. Which they can't, ‘lessen they suddenly grow wings.”

“Almost seems like they did.”

“Can't find no sign of ‘em in here, 'pears like.”

“They've gotta be here!” George raged, wrenching his horse about. “They're lying out there laughing at us, I knows it!”

Ki and Daphne held their breaths; the men were so near the boulders below that it seemed impossible for them not to have noticed the two naked bodies clinging up in the fault. But the men all turned with the one named George, and rode back toward the clearing, where the others were gathering now, equally discouraged.

Ki surveyed the ridge above, and the surrounding cliffs, then glanced at the sky, pleased to see that the rainy overcast was blanketing the stars and moon. He craned to whisper down at Daphne, “There's a guard up there, but evidently he's posted way over by the trail leading in. There's a chance we can avoid him.”

“There's a better chance I'm going to fall if you don't get moving again,” she quavered.

Ki started the perilous climb again, Daphne moving right behind him with a sigh. They struggled higher as fast as they could, but the steepness and shallowness of the fault made their progress agonizingly slow.

Eventually they reached the overhang of the ridge. Ki caught the rim of the fault and flung himself over. Immediately he turned and helped Daphne over the edge. She fell forward, scrambling to her knees and then pitching forward a second time.

“Hurt?” Ki asked hoarsely.

“Out of breath. Let's get out of here.”

They got three feet from the rim, when a shape loomed out of the trees directly ahead. It was a hard black outline against the softer black of the forest, and the most Ki could tell about it was that it was fat, it carried a rifle, and it was lurching toward them, babbling, “It's a trap! They think I'm helping, but—”

The shape stopped short, blurting, “You!” as Ki rushed toward it. “You again! You and that damned female!” the shape was ranting, leveling the rifle. “Least I'll pay one of you back!”

Ki didn't understand what the shape was saying, and he didn't care. He was simply assuming the shape was the guard named Tait, and that Tait would be able to shoot him before he could get the rifle.