The Trouble with Texas Cowboys (13 page)

“Please, tell me the third song isn't that fast,” she said when it ended.

The whine of the fiddle in an old song softened the lights and the whole atmosphere in the bar. Sawyer pulled her close to his chest, picked up her hands, and put them around his neck. Then he dropped both his hands to rest at the small of her back, and he moved slowly around the floor as George Jones sang “Don't Be Angry.”

He softly sang the words in her ear as they danced. He sang about remembering the first time he flirted with her, and asked her not be angry with him when he failed to understand all her little whims and wishes all the time.

When the song ended, he tipped her chin up and kissed her. She heard the whine of the fiddles and a harmonica somewhere in the distance, even though the music had stopped. There wasn't an angry bone left in her body when she rolled up on her toes for the second kiss.

“That, darlin', was the payment on the bet,” she said.

He picked up the broom and started sweeping.

“So?” she asked.

“So what?”

“So is my bet debt paid in full?”

“Honey, after that kiss, I will need at least two cold showers to cool my blood so I can sleep.”

Clouds shifted back and forth over the moon, and only an occasional star could be found in the sky when Jill and Sawyer locked up for the evening.

Jill inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with clean, cool air. “Thank goodness the bunkhouse and the store are smoke-free, or we'd both drop graveyard dead with lung cancer from secondhand smoke.”

“At least the exhaust fan takes most of it out of the bar area, so we don't get what the folks do that are out there around the tables.” Sawyer's hand went to the small of her back as he guided her to the truck.

They were inside with seat belts buckled, and he had put the truck in reverse, when both doors opened, startling Jill so badly that she squealed.

“What the hell?” Sawyer said.

Tall men with ski masks, bibbed overalls, and work boots pointed sawed-off shotguns at them. Sawyer's pulse quickened, and adrenaline rushed through his body, but there wasn't a thing he could do. Three guns in his truck, and he couldn't reach a damn one of them.

“Out of the truck right now. You make a move, and I'll shoot this little lady right here in the parking lot. She'd bleed out before you could get an ambulance all the way up here,” the one with a gun on Jill said gruffly.

“Hey, slow down. We're not protesting. You can have the truck, if that's what you are after.” Sawyer reached for the seat belt and got a tap on the shoulder with the butt of the gun.

“Don't be cute, or you'll never see her again,” the man said.

“I'm undoing our seat belts. Don't get trigger-happy. We are stepping out now,” Sawyer said.

If only one of them had held a gun, he might have grabbed it and told Jill to run, but not when there were two guns. Jill might get hurt or killed. There wasn't a truck in the world worth harming one hair on her head, but who in the hell would have thought there would be hijackers in Burnt Boot, Texas?

“Hey, Sherlock,” the man with the gun on Jill yelled. “It's all yours.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Sawyer asked. “Can I get my personal things out of the glove compartment before you take it off to strip it down for parts?”

“Who said we're stripping it down? And, no, you can't get anything out of the inside. You've probably got guns in there. Give me your cell phones, billfold, and your purse, woman,” Jill's assailant said.

Sawyer inhaled deeply. Yes, there was a pistol in the glove box, another one in the console, and a third one under the seat. He had a license to carry all three, but it wasn't doing him a bit of good right then.

Sherlock crawled into the driver's seat, backed the truck out, and drove away with it. No skidding tires or slinging gravel—just drove off like it belonged to him.

“Now, you two start walking,” Jill's outlaw said.

“To where?” Jill asked.

“Out to the road.”

“Are you going to kill us in the middle of the road? Wouldn't it be better to shoot us right here?” Jill asked.

Sawyer could have wrung her pretty little neck himself right then. If they reached the road, there was a possibility that someone might drive by and help them. He reached over and laced her fingers in his. She squeezed his hand gently, and he hoped that didn't mean she was about to try something stupid.

A dark van pulled up and slowed down, and Sawyer thought their problems were solved, until the double doors at the back swung open, and the two hooded men motioned for them to get inside.

“What the hell is this?” Sawyer protested.

The second man shoved the gun into Jill's gut, and Sawyer crawled inside the van. They pushed Jill in right behind him. The doors closed, and the darkness was so thick that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

“Jill, where are you?” he whispered.

A hand reached out and touched him on the shoulder. “Right here.”

He grabbed it and pulled her into his lap, felt around her face until he found an ear, and pressed his lips close to it. “I imagine this is bugged, so start kicking the side of the van to make noise, and I'll whisper. Who do you know that would kidnap you?”

She kicked and said in a loud whisper, “Nobody. Not even Aunt Gladys or Aunt Polly would do this.”

“Gallaghers or Brennans?”

“Both.”

“Which way are we going?”

“I don't know. I think we turned around about the time they shoved me in here, but I'm not sure.”

The van slowed down as if stopping at a red light or a stop sign. Burnt Boot had only one red light and a handful of stop signs, but Sawyer still couldn't get a bearing on where they were. Or why in the hell either of the feuding families would want to kidnap them.

Tires squealed, and they were thrown against the doors of the van. Whoever was driving cussed loud enough that they could hear him through the metal separating the cab from the cargo area. “Damn tree in the road. You should have checked things out better than this, Dumbo.”

“Does that name mean anything to you?” Sawyer asked when they were sitting back up.

“No,” she whispered.

“Well, let's get out and move the damn thing. We can't get to where we're going any other way,” the one with the deep voice said.

Everything got quiet.

“I'm going to kick these doors open,” Sawyer said. “Slide back so you are out of the way.”

He raised his foot, his boot landed square on the hinged part, and the doors swung open as if by magic. Trouble was, instead of a midnight sky, there were two more guys in ski masks with guns, pistols this time, motioning for them to be quiet and get out of the van.

“It's the FBI,” Jill said. “They're here to save us and then shoot the balls off those bastards for stealing your truck.”

One of the men chuckled. “Follow us. Now get in here. Be quiet, and we'll get you out of this.”

Sawyer and Jill moved as quietly as possible and crawled into another cargo van. This one was blue with some kind of lettering on the side, and the doors went shut, but not before Sawyer shoved his jacket in between them.

“Why did you do that?” Jill asked.

“I don't think we're being rescued. I think we're changing kidnappers.”

“No!” she said.

“Give them time to get around to the front, and then we're getting out. Slide off into that ditch until they drive away, and then we'll start making our way out of this mess. We might have to find a place to hole up until daylight, when we can get our bearings. I think we were driving for about twenty minutes, but I don't have any idea which way…now, Jill, slide out right now. They're starting to move.”

He grabbed her hand and opened one door, retrieved his denim jacket, carefully shut the door, and the van pulled away into the night without its passengers. The two men wrestling with the tree finally freed it, and they went in the opposite direction without ever realizing they'd lost their cargo.

Sawyer and Jill exhaled loudly at the same time as they watched from a prone position halfway down a ditch beside the road.

“Now what? We don't know where we are, and our cell phones and money are all gone,” Jill said.

“Take a real deep breath,” Sawyer said.

“Yuck,” she said.

“That, darlin', is pig shit. Where there are pigs, there is a barn or a house or something nearby. We'll follow our noses until we find a barn.”

“Why not knock on a door and ask for help?” she asked.

“We might get shot for one thing, and how do we know who we can trust?” He pulled her up, put on his jacket, and wrapped her hand into his. “I'm going to kick some ass when I find out who did this. I'm too damned tired to walk for miles in the cold.”

“Get in line, Sawyer O'Donnell. I get first chance at them. I hate to pee in the brush, and I damn sure hate sleeping in a hayloft,” she said.

They crawled over two barbed-wire fences, worked their way through a patch of thick mesquite, and outran one rangy old bull before the barn loomed up before them like a silent sentinel in the night.

“I may go back to Corpus Christi and sling hash for a living after this. I'm sick of pig wars and pig shit, and I'm not sure I even like pork chops anymore,” she grumbled.

“It's only a quarter mile at the most, and it looks like the pasture has winter wheat growing. It's not tall enough to turn the cows into it, so the going should be good,” he said. “Besides, Gladys will call out the Army, the National Guard, and the Texas Rangers when we don't show up for church.”

“No, she won't. I told her that we might not be there, and she's not going. She and Aunt Polly are staying home, and Verdie is coming over later to play canasta with them. And, remember, she's doing chores tomorrow, so she won't miss us until Monday, probably when we don't show up at the store.”

The barn hadn't been in use for years, but what was left of the tack room still had a couple of well-worn winter horse blankets stored in a drawer. Sawyer carried them to a stall, kicked the straw around to fluff up a bed, and shook out one blanket.

“We've slept spoon style before, and that's the only way we'll be able to stay warm with a bed this small,” he said.

“I could sleep standing up in a broom closet. Sawyer, why would the Gallaghers or the Brennans kidnap us? It doesn't make sense.”

He eased down on the makeshift bed. “Honey, I don't know what the hell they had in mind, but the one that chuckled was a Gallagher. I don't know his name, but I recognized his voice from one of the guys in the fight at the church. That means they were stealing us from the Brennans.”

“But why?” She stretched out beside him.

He wrapped an arm around her. “Anyone who gets into a pig war is bat-shit crazy. Let's find our way home and pretend it never happened, until we can prove it. And then we'll take them out, one at a time.”

“No use in wasting time. I'll set fire to both their ranches and burn them to the ground.” The last words were mumbled, and then she was sound asleep.

He tucked the blanket tightly around them both and swore that when he found out who'd done this, the pig war would be nothing compared to what he would do.

Jill didn't want to open her eyes. She knew exactly where she was and how she got there and who was snuggled up against her back, but an itchy feeling on the nape of her neck said something was staring at her. If it was a granddaddy long-legs spider, she did not want to see it.

“Hey, are y'all alive?” someone said in a whisper.

Spiders did not talk, so Jill opened her eyes slowly.

“Wow! You
are
alive. I was afraid you was dead, and I ain't touchin' no dead person,” the kid said.

A big yellow dog stuck his nose through the wooden slats of the stall and sniffed the air.

“That's Buster, my dog. He's the one who found you first. I come huntin' for him. Can you hear me?”

Jill nodded. “Where are we?”

“In my daddy's barn. We only raise hogs now, so we don't use this barn too much 'cept to store hog feed in and use when a sow has pigs in the real cold wintertime.”

“Are we in Burnt Boot?” she asked.

“Are you talkin' in your sleep?” Sawyer asked.

“No, I'm talkin' to a boy and his dog,” Jill answered.

Sawyer sat up so quick that the blanket went flying. The end smacked the dog on the nose, and he yelped. “Do you have a cell phone, son?”

“No, I don't, but my mama does. She took it with her over to Miz Ruby's last night though. Miz Ruby is getting another baby, and she needed my mama. Y'all know you ain't supposed to be here, don't you?”

Sawyer rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Where are we?”

“In my daddy's barn. I done told the lady that.”

“But where is your daddy's barn?” Sawyer asked.

“In Salt Holler. We're the last house in the holler,” he said.

“How do we get out of here?”

“Well, you could go to the bridge if you need to drive across. But if you follow me, I'll show you where you can climb over the fence and then go up to the road and follow it. If you go the wrong way, you'll come to the bridge.”

“Do you go to church in Burnt Boot?” Sawyer asked.

“No, sir. I go to church right here in Salt Holler. Mr. Wallace Redding is preaching this mornin'. I like to listen to him.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“Burnt Boot.”

“Do you know Martin Brewster?”

“You mean Martin O'Donnell. He's done changed his name, you know?”

“Yes, that's the boy I'm talkin' about.” Sawyer smiled. “Would you tell him tomorrow morning about finding us here, and tell him that my name is Sawyer O'Donnell?”

The kid nodded. “I'll do it for you if you don't tell my daddy that I let you go. He don't take too kindly to people trespassin'. There's signs up on all the fences.”

“I promise I won't tell your daddy,” Sawyer said. “If you'll show me which way it is that I need to go to get out of this holler, you can go on home.”

“Right back of this barn, you go straight through the corral and past the old outhouse, and you'll see a fence with a red sign that says ‘Trespassers will be shot.' Crawl over that fence and go through the 'squite all the way to the road. You can see the top of our barn when you get up on the road. It's pretty steep to get up to the road, but me and my brother have done it, so I reckon y'all ain't too old.”

“Which way do we go then?” Jill asked.

“The bus that takes us to school goes…” He looked at his hand and made an L with his left thumb and forefinger. “You go right.” He smiled.

“How old are you?” Jill asked.

“I'm eight, but that right and left business gets me all bumfuzzled.”

“Okay, but you won't forget to tell Martin in school tomorrow, will you?” Sawyer asked.

He shook his head. “You'd best put them blankets back where Daddy had them. He don't like things left out of place.”

“We will, and thank you,” Jill said.

“Bye, and y'all ought to get on out of here pretty quick. Daddy is feedin' the hogs, but you never know if he'll need something out of the tack room or not,” the boy said, and then he and the dog were gone.

“What I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee,” Jill groaned.

Sawyer quickly folded the blanket they had huddled under. “Well, darlin', I'm sure once we hop that barbed-wire fence, beat our way through another mesquite thicket, and climb up out of this holler, there will be a Starbucks sitting right there.”

Jill followed his lead, stretching to get the kinks out of her back. “And a hotel right beside it with a soft bed and a big shower.” She shook hay from the bottom blanket and handed it to Sawyer. “I'm grateful right now that we had a place with a roof to sleep. We might have been huddled up against a scrub oak tree somewhere.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes, but I'll live. You think someone will come along and give us a ride once we're on the road?”

“Could we trust anyone other than Gladys or Polly or Verdie enough to get into the car or truck with them?” he asked.

“Well, shit!” she mumbled as they followed the path through the mesquite thicket.

Bits of hay had woven their way into Sawyer's hair, and his jeans looked like he'd crumpled them up and let a dog or two sleep on them. Jill figured if she looked in a mirror, she'd be in the same bedraggled condition.

“Why would they do it?” she asked.

“If I was a guessin' man, I'd guess that the Brennans got us first and they planned on throwing me out somewhere along the way and then sending Quaid out to rescue you. The way they had it planned is that you'd be so grateful to him for helping you to escape that you would have to repay him.”

“But you?”

“I'm collateral damage. They had figured on you taking your own truck, but when we got into my vehicle together, they had to take me with you.”

“They would have probably hog-tied you and given you to Kinsey to play with all weekend, instead of throwing you out beside the road.” She grinned. “And at the end of the weekend, she'd have you pantin' around her long legs like a male dog after an old bitch in the springtime.”

“Maybe that's what she thought, but she would have been in for a big surprise.”

They came out of the thicket and there was a wall of mud in front of them. Two little boys might climb that thing like monkeys when there was grass on it, but two grown adults were another story.

“Now what?” she asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest and studied the situation. “If I had a chain saw, I could cut down a tree, and we'd climb up it to the edge. Who'd have thought there would be an embankment like this in these parts? I can see the guard rails up there.”

“Me too. I vote that we keep the road in sight and follow it until we come to a better place to climb up,” she said.

He nodded and held up his left hand, making an L with his thumb and forefinger. “That way.” He grinned as he pointed.

“Yep, at least the sun is coming up and it's not raining or sleeting,” she said.

* * *

Sawyer took her hand in his and trudged on ahead. She looked downright cute with hay stuck in her red hair. And by damn, she was a good sport to boot. She'd found things to be grateful for rather than bitching about her feet aching or no food.

“Are we getting close to the Starbucks?” she asked.

“It's not far. Just keep walkin' and thinkin' about it,” he said.

A big bluetick hound bounded out of the brush and fell in behind them. He kept his distance, but when Sawyer looked back, he wagged his tail, so hopefully he wasn't stalking them for his breakfast.

“I smell coffee,” she said.

“It's a mirage.”

“A mirage is something you see, like a coffee shop or a Dairy Queen up ahead, but an aroma is something different, and I swear I smell coffee and a woodstove,” she said.

“If you do, let's hope it's not on Wallace Redding's part of the Holler. From what that kid said, I don't think those folks play well with others.”

“He said his daddy's pig farm was the last one in Salt Holler, and when we climbed over the fence, we were out of it,” she said.

The hound dog shot out past them and was a blur as he ran ahead. Sawyer cocked his head to one side. “I heard someone whistling. That dog is going home. There's a house up there, and it's not far. Maybe they'll have a phone we can use.”

“Or they'd be willing to share their coffee,” she said.

Neither of them saw the cabin until they were right up on it. The back half was built into a hillside with only the front showing. That part had a wide porch roof made of split logs and held up by four tree trunks that still had the bark attached. The hound lay on the porch beside an old rocker. When he saw them, his tail beat out a welcome on the wooden floor.

The man who stepped out the door with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands wasn't much over five feet tall and wore bibbed overalls, a red flannel shirt, and worn work boots. The wind blew his wispy white hair in all directions, and his blue eyes had settled into a bed of deep wrinkles.

“State your business. You ain't supposed to be on my property. Didn't you read the sign that said trespassers would be shot?” he said gruffly.

“I've read a lot of those signs,” Jill said. “Are we still in Salt Holler?”

“Not in Wallace Redding's part of the holler. You're at the very end in my part right now,” he said.

“Are you kin to the Gallaghers or the Brennans?” Jill asked.

“Hell, no! If I was, I'd shoot myself in the head with this gun.”

“We were kidnapped, but we escaped, and now we're trying to get back to Burnt Boot,” Sawyer said.

“That damned feud. I heard it had fired up again over a bunch of pigs that got stolen. You give me your word y'all ain't no revenuers from the gov'ment?” He eyed them both carefully.

“I promise. We'd sure like to borrow your phone and call for help, sir,” Sawyer said.

“Ain't got no phone, but from the looks of you both, you could use some breakfast. Me and Otis here, we done ate, but there's plenty of flapjacks left over, and coffee is hot.”

“We'd appreciate that very much,” Jill said.

“Well, don't stand out here in the cold. Come on in here and tell me your story. I like a good tale, and there ain't been nobody to talk to for at least a month. Wallace is supposed to come over next week for a batch of brew, so you can entertain me until then. I'm Tilly, short for Tilman.”

“I'm Sawyer O'Donnell, and this Jill Cleary,” Sawyer said, glad that Tilly had lowered the shotgun and was holding the door open for them.

“So you are Gladys's new foreman at Fiddle Creek, and you are her niece who'll wind up with it someday. Now it makes sense why them thievin', feudin' families would want to kidnap you. Crazy sons a bitches ain't got a lick of sense, but they've both been after Fiddle Creek for years. Go on over there and wash up a little bit while I put the breakfast on the table for you.” Tilly motioned toward the back side of the cabin, where a pump sat at the end of a makeshift table with a washbasin below it. “Ain't got no hot water heated up, so you'll have to make do with cold, but I expect after a night in the woods, it won't feel too bad. Where'd y'all bed down?”

“In a barn a couple of miles back that way.” Sawyer pointed.

“See anybody?”

“Just a kid that gave us some directions out of there. Said that we could climb up to the road, but we haven't found a place that wasn't a muddy mess,” Jill answered.

Tilly set his mouth in a firm line. “You'd be some lucky folks. That place belongs to Wallace's nephew, and he's a mean bastard. They ain't friendly in Salt Holler. Ain't but a handful of people is allowed across the bridge. Years ago it was a place where outlaws went. I reckon those that live here are still the offspring of those outrunnin' the law. Me and Otis, we keep our distance from them people.”

“But you sell him moonshine?” Sawyer asked.

“Hell, yeah! Got to sell it to someone, and I damn sure don't want people comin' around here. They might bring the gov'ment men with 'em. This way we're both makin' some money, and I ain't got to deal with people. I'm a hermit,” Tilly said.

The coffee was so strong that it could melt the enamel from teeth. The pancakes were rubbery, but the hot, buttered, homemade sugar syrup made them go down right well. Sawyer finished off two stacks before he finally pushed back from the table. “We thank you for your hospitality. Do you have a vehicle that can get us out of this place? We'd be glad to pay you well to take us home to Fiddle Creek.”

He rubbed his freshly shaven chin. “Ain't got no car, but I do go to town twice a year. It ain't time yet, but I'm runnin' low on a few things. It's a five-mile stretch up there on the road, and I reckon if you'd be willing to pay me in flour, sugar, and coffee, and if we was to get started pretty soon here, old Bessie would get me home by dark. Way these crazy people drive, I don't like to be out in the wagon after the sun sets.”

“Bessie?” Jill asked.

“That would be my mule that pulls my wagon. Y'all'd have to ride in the back, seein' as how the seat in the front only 'commodates me.”

“Yes, sir. We'd be obliged, and we'll stock you up on supplies,” Sawyer said.

“Then I expect we'd best get goin'. Sun is up, and if we get there by noon, I can load up and get back by sundown,” he said. “Days are short this time of year.”

“How do you get out of this holler with a mule and wagon? Do you go back to the bridge?” Jill asked.

Tilly chuckled. “I got my ways. Bessie lives across the road on fifty acres I own over there. That's where I keep my wagon. That side is pretty flat.”

He pulled a rope and a ladder fell down from the rafters. “Fancy, ain't it? It was made for one of them houses with a ceilin', but I got it fixed up so part of it falls down to here and the other part stays up there to the hatch in the roof. Y'all follow me.”