Author's Notes: Hey everyone - sorry again for the lateness. The usual excuses, you know. I finally got an answer on my job prospects, and though it's not quite the answer I hoped for, it does a heck of a lot more for my pride than my wallet. And, my apologies to my beta readers, as this chapter has escaped thier scrutiny - sorry, gals, I'm still trying to get myself back in that groove, and that includes the occasional screw-up. :-D Otherwise, enjoy!
Chapter 10: Wounded Deer
Charles "Buck" McGregor prided himself on being a man of principle. He regularly attended church, honored his mother and father, and was unwaveringly loyal to his friends and family. His word was as binding as a legal contract – possibly moreso, because 'legal' was not a word that entered into Charles Buck McGregor's vocabulary. Whether it was theft, murder-for-hire, or the simple delivery of moonshine, his work was neat, timely, and efficient, and he took his pay as his well-earned due. So when his younger partner, Shane Willow, insisted on chasing after the wounded deer he'd shot, the older man grit his teeth, impatient with the delay.
After spending half the morning tracking the animal through the forest, they lost the trail, but picked up another trail of a different sort – a woman, barefoot and alone, wandering south along the shore of the Ridgewater River. Buck was leery, seeing the potential for trouble, but Shane argued with him about the danger if the woman saw them or found their…belongings…in the woods. Both of them were wanted for a list of felony charges as long as their arms, and there was enough evidence in those trees to put them away for quite some time. Of course, Shane had his own reasons for taking the pretty little thing as their captive, but his arguments were logical, and Buck quickly sketched out an attack plan.
Now, after a day and a night wasted struggling with this hellcat they'd picked up, Buck wasn't so sure the danger of someone discovering their operations outweighed the trouble they'd brought on themselves. However, as Shane pointed out, it was too late to turn back now. She'd seen them, she could identify them, and the first chance they got, they'd kill her and dispose of the body where no one would even think to look for her. But that would have to wait – they were a full day behind schedule, and Buck wasn't tolerating any more delays.
That was why dawn found them back on the narrow trail, pack mule in tow, with the woman bound and gagged on top of the sacks of sugar and yeast. Shane gained a black eye in the effort to hoist her up there, which he now nursed with the occasional grumble, but Buck had tied the ropes tight, and all she could do now was glare at them fiercely when they happened to glance in her direction. Buck set a fast pace, hoping to make up time – but as usual, Shane found a way to delay them yet again.
"Hey Buck, lookee there!"
The enthusiastic words woke Bo from his sound sleep against the tree. He opened his eyes to bright sunlight streaming down through the trees, turning the forest to brilliant shades of gold and green above a floor of earthy brown and green foliage. The mass of raspberry bushes beside him was thick, tall, and wide, bursting with bright red berries but for the places where he'd stripped it clean, and curling with thorns that had scratched his hands unnoticed. Somewhere on the other side, in the direction Bo had come the night before, the voice spoke again.
"Blood on the ground. Think it's my deer?" There was a brief pause. "Looks like it's off that side of these bushes somewhere…"
There was a snort from another man a little farther away. "If it is, we're damned well not going after it ag'in. We got enough trouble, an' we already lost a day between the girl an' that stupid deer. Now let's git goin'. We got orders to fill."
The first man grunted reluctant agreement, and he moved away from the bushes. Mixed with the padded steps of the two men, Bo discerned the slow clop of hoofs, and the resigned sigh of an equine animal led along behind. He remained frozen in place, hardly daring to breathe, until they had moved off. Only after several minutes of silence did he risk slowly hauling himself to his feet, using the tree trunk for support.
He peered over the top of the bushes, but saw nothing but more forest in either direction. He hissed in pain as he gingerly put weight on his leg, but after a few moments, it was bearable. Slowly, cautiously, he retraced his steps around the fruit-laden bushes to where the voices had come from.
Bo couldn't believe his luck. Right there, under his bare feet, was a well-trodden path leading more or less southwest into the trees, and in the loose dirt on top, the exact boot prints he'd been following most of the night. He'd missed the path entirely in the darkness and exhaustion of the night before. And the two men - it was them, it had to be! But where was Daisy? The second man had mentioned trouble, and a girl – what did they do with her?
The thought made Bo's blood boil all over again, but he stopped himself just shy of charging down the path. Two to one made for poor odds when that one was half lame and unfamiliar with the territory. What he needed was more information.
After taking one more good long look at the path, Bo slipped back into the trees to the west, and charted a course parallel to the narrow track. Moving swiftly now, at a jagged trot, he ignored the pain in his leg and strove to catch up with his quarry. With any luck, the trees and bushes would hide his movements, and he could get a good look at what he was up against.
As soon as Bo sighted movement up ahead on the path, he slowed his pace and moved stealthily from shrub to tree, watching all the while. He was beyond relieved to catch sight of Daisy first, slung unceremoniously across the back of a huge gray mule. Her hands were tied before her, her feet behind her, and a bandana gagged her mouth. Otherwise she appeared uninjured – at least from this distance – and he blew a quiet sigh of relief. Beneath her, the plodding mule was burdened with a heavy-looking load of burlap sacks, the contents of which Bo couldn't begin to guess.
Ahead of her walked the two men, both tall and heavily built, carrying packs on their shoulders. As Bo drew closer, moving slower and quieter still, he could see their shirts were scruffy and worn, with poorly-sewn patches in odd places, and a fair amount of dirt obscuring the original coloring of the cloth here and there. They carried rifles in their hands, and huge buck knives on their belts. He cursed to himself, because he knew the type – men of the woods and mountains who lived by knife and gun, and who respected no laws or rights but their own. They would kill with impunity, himself or Daisy, and that made them far more difficult to deal with than ordinary criminals, who at least feared punishment from the law.
"Now what, Bo Duke?" he asked himself quietly. He couldn't think of a single thing that would give him any advantage over these two hulks – not with Daisy tied up, himself wounded, and a pocketknife his only defense.
Silently, he kept moving, keeping pace with the slow-moving group deep in the trees, trying to think. Bo was careful, stepping along with all the woodskill Uncle Jesse and Luke ever taught him, but he wasn't careful enough. An unnoticed twig snapped under his heel, and he dropped to the ground, ducking behind a tree even as the men stopped in their tracks.
"What was that?" came the deeper voice of the second man - Buck he'd been called - peering into the forest.
"Deer, probably," the first man answered, searching with eyes and ears. "Ain't nothin' else out here that big, but the bears and coyotes. Want to try for venison steaks again?"
"Dammit Shane, cain't you think with somethin' besides yer stomach?" Buck growled.
"'Course I can!" Shane retorted, with a leering grin towards Daisy. She aimed a kick at him from the back of the mule, but he easily dodged out of the way. "Oh, don't you worry, pretty, you won't have near so much fight when I'm through with you," he sneered, but his partner was in no mood. Buck grabbed him by the shirt sleeve and shoved him along the path.
"We ain't got time for that neither! Get a move on!"
Shane snarled something back at him that Bo couldn't quite hear, but the mule's clopping hoofbeats began again, and they were on the move. Again he waited until the sounds of their travel were distant and faint before he moved out from cover and started out through the trees once more. Wherever they were going, they were following the trail, and with a little luck, he'd do them one better, and have a few surprises waiting for them at the other end.
Even injured and barefoot, Bo was able to move much faster than the two men and their laden pack mule. He slowed down when he came parallel with the group from deep in the forest, but he resumed the swift trot as soon as he was safely past them. Even when he was well ahead of them, he stayed in the trees that would hide the evidence of his passage, though he moved closer to the path lest he miss some critical turn or side-path and go off-course.
After nearly an hour of this steady loping, however, Bo's swift trot was becoming more of a weaving stagger. Not even his night's rest and a bellyful of berries could erase the fatigue and strain of injury and bloodloss, no matter how stubborn he was about it. But even as he slowed and sized up his surroundings for a good place to stop and rest, luck sided with the youngest Duke cousin a second time.
In his weariness, he almost missed the faint side-path, and it was nearly right there under his feet before he saw it. It broke off from the main trail to his left, carefully hidden between the shrubs at the trail's edge, and continued on west to Bo's right, disappearing over a hillock in the distance. He couldn't help but wonder where it led to, whether this was the ultimate destination of the two men and their mule, and so with slow steps, he traced the path to the edge of the hillock and looked down.
For a man of the Duke family, it took no effort to recognize what he was seeing, and any questions or doubts he might have had about the men's destination were erased. There in the little bowl-like clearing was a moonshine still, primed and ready for production. A neatly stacked pile of wood sat at one edge, waiting to fuel the fire, and the well-trampled dirt told Bo this still was often and recently used. There was just one thing missing. The mule was heavily laden, but Bo was willing to bet that they weren't hauling in water along with all the other ingredients. With sharp eyes, he scanned the edges of the clearing, and finally spotted another narrow path leading out again.
Treading with eager feet, he crossed the clearing and followed the second path, right down to the edge of a smooth stream some hundred feet into the trees. In an instant he was on his knees, gulping down handfuls of water. Yesterday he'd had more than his fill of it – today he couldn't get enough. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was until now.
Finally, thirst slaked, he stood and walked a little ways downstream. Finding a nice shallow spot, he sat down on a rock and carefully untied the cloth wrapped around his calf. It had bled far more than he thought, and the cloth was soaked red again, with a trail of red dripping down his ankle. The wound itself looked decidedly unhealthy, ragged and squeamishly open, with pale, discolored skin all around. Bo rinsed it as best he could, then washed and wrung out the stained blue plaid cloth, all while thinking of his predicament.
So the men were moonshiners. That explained the mule and the burlap sacks on its back. If they were afraid of getting caught by Daisy – well, that might be the case, but the river was a good distance from this path and its hidden still – or stills – and it didn't seem to Bo that Daisy was much of a threat - which left other, more sinister reasons for her kidnapping. Bo tried not to think about that.
How, then, could he get his cousin away safely, and preferably himself as well? That was the real question. Bo had little doubt that he would be any good in a fight alone against those two trolls. That meant using a little Duke ingenuity, something Bo wasn't nearly as good as Luke at. Trolls, he thought, looking down at the blue plaid shirt in his hands with sudden memory and a small smile. He remembered Luke reading that book to him and Daisy, every night for two weeks, while they all piled onto Luke's bed before bedtime. If only all he needed to do was keep the two of them arguing all night, until dawn came and turned them into stone.
Bo shook his head, amused at the thought, then scolded himself to find a real answer, while he replaced the bandage around his leg. He winced, securing it firmly in place, then stood, testing it again. It still hurt, but no more than he could tolerate. The rest had refreshed him, and he stooped for a few more handfuls of water, trying to satisfy his growling belly. Now, to work.
As he walked back upstream towards the path and the still site, and sorted through his options. But in the back of his mind, the thought about the trolls stayed with him, and he just couldn't help but think: keep them arguing. Then Bo smiled, and felt new energy coursing through him as a genuine Duke plan formed in his mind.
Now, I don't know exactly what that boy's got in mind, but I'll bet it's gonna be good...