TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (36 page)

Threebuck didn’t hesitate making his getaway when the creature went to the back of the cave. He had enough adrenaline pumping through his veins by then to overcome the pain from the blow to his knee. Threebuck scrambled to the porch and down onto the ledge, heading up the narrow and precipitous path, heedless of the dizzying drop-off inches to his left.

The creature looked up to watch Threebuck scramble out of the cave. He let out another angry growl and lumbered toward the cave opening. By the time he swung out onto the porch and looked up, Threebuck had made it almost three-quarters of the way to the top. The Hill Man snorted, and started up the ledge after him.

“Artie, are you okay?” Galynn asked. She could barely see him in the dim light across the cave.

Artie coughed, and sat up with his back against the wall. “Yeah, I think so,” he replied. “What about you?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed the side of her face.

“Still trying to come to my rescue, I see,” Artie said.

“Uh-huh, but he was bigger than Jimmy Mack.”

“I think we need to get the hell out of here, before that big thing comes back,” Artie said.

“Was that a bear?”

“Don’t think so,” Artie answered with a grimace when he stood up.

* * *

Hayward and Soc watched as the big tawny-colored creature appeared out of the woods at the top of the bluff, and swung with amazing agility down the narrow ledge to the cave entrance.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hayward said with obvious awe in his voice. “Is that...?”

“Yep,” Soc said. “Probably the same one you saw last night.”

“You mean there’s more than one?” asked Hayward.

Soc just shrugged.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hayward said again.

“This ought to be good,” Soc said as the Hill Man entered the cave.

From their spot on the opposite bank of the river and below the cliff, the two men heard a horrific yowl. Five seconds after that, a man—a large man—flew out of the cave entrance. He seemed to pause like a diver at the apex of his spring, and then fell screaming and flailing toward the river. Soc recognized the man as the one called Red Randy. He hit the water spouting up a ten-foot geyser and sending a foot-tall tsunami surging against the shore nearest them.

They waited for the man to bob to the surface, and when he did—face down—they moved toward the river to pull him out before he floated down stream. At the shore, Soc found a six-foot fallen limb with the stub of a branch at one end, and used it to hook under Randy’s t-shirt and guide him ashore. Once they got him aground and turned him over, Soc checked him for signs of life. Almost immediately Randy coughed up water, and moaned.

“Guess he’s still alive, but he looks pretty busted up,” Soc said. “Now all we got to do is get him to the sheriff, somehow.”

“I don’t think we can carry him,” Hayward said.

Soc stood to look around when his gaze crossed the cliff face. “Look,” he said, and pointed. There, the man called Threebuck scrambled frantically up the ledge toward the top. Below him, near the cave entrance, the creature they called the Hill Man swung along the cliff face in pursuit.

“I doubt he’ll get far,” Soc offered.

Soc turned again to their captive. He slapped him a couple times on the face. “Hey! Can you hear me?” he asked Randy.

Randy coughed again and nodded.

“Think you can you stand up?” Soc asked.

Randy shook his head. “Leg’s busted,” he said. Then added, “Can’t move my arms... neck hurts.”

“Well, son, don’t know how we’re going to get you out of here,” Hayward said. “We may have to leave you to go get some rescue.” He looked at the sky. “It’s gonna be dark pretty soon.”

“Don’t leave me,” Randy said. His eyes widened in fright.

“Look at that!” Soc said. He sounded surprised. “Artie and Galynn are coming out of that cave, too.”

“Well, I’ll be... Hey, Artie! Artie! Over here!” Hayward hollered. He stepped out into the river a little so he could be seen, and waved his arms over his head.

Artie and Galynn looked down trying to locate the source of the voice. When Artie spotted Hayward and Soc he shouted back, “Hayward? Soc? What the hell are you guys doing out here?!”

“Might ask you the same!” Hayward yelled. “You guys awright?” He added.

“Yeah, we’re okay. Who’s that on the bank?”

“It’s the fella got tossed out of the cave up there. Hey, you got a cell phone on ya?”

“Yeah,” Galynn shouted back.

“When you get to the top of the bluff, see if you can call out. Try to get a hold of the sheriff. We’re going to need some rescue down here for this guy.”

* * *

Although Sunny had fallen all over Gale with affection and high regard for rescuing her from those killers on Halloween night, within six days they were on the outs again.

Somehow, Sunny thought, even after they’d experienced all that gunfire, violence, and confusion, Gale had snuck back into her cellar that night and took her terra cotta jar of
kimchi.
Again! At first she’d laughed it off, because he had, after all, saved her life; but as the days wore on the humor of it began to whither.

“Okay, Gale, you’ve had your joke,” she said to him. “Now bring back my jar of
kimchi
. Enough is enough.”

He’d come over for dinner, and had planned to stay the night.

“For the last time, I ain’t got your jar, Sunny,” he said, his patience wearing thin. “I told you, White told me he seen the Hill Man take it that night. I don’t know why you won’t believe me on this.”

“Because you—and White—would like nothing better than for me to believe you. Then you two...
boys
could continue to play your juvenile games. There is no Hill Man, Gale. Never has been, never will be. It’s all a myth, a story to scare small children on Halloween night... and a few grown men with moronic IQ’s.”

“Woman, I don’t understand you at all.” Punch got up off Sunny’s sofa and put on his down vest and corduroy cap. He fished his truck keys out of his jeans pocket. “You believe in magical genomes and fairies and them spirits all over ever thing, even rocks, but you won’t never believe the Hill Man is real even when he has tromped around in your own back yard and stood right next to you. I swear to God you are one hard-headed woman.”

And with that he walked out her door. That had been two nights ago.

It was probably just as well, Sunny thought. “We’re about as opposite as two creatures can get and still be called human beings,” she said to her cat Igor.

She put on her denim jacket, and stocking cap in preparation against the sharp north wind blowing outside on that dark, steel-gray November morning. The eggs needed gathering in the barn and the goats fed. Going to the barn was something she dreaded doing since that night when those men had accosted her. Before Gale walked out on her, he had either gone with her to do those chores, or done them himself.

She pulled the holstered six-shooter off the peg in the kitchen, and strapped the belt around her waist. When her pistol came up missing after “That Night,” she went to a gun store and bought another almost exactly like the last one. Lately, she didn’t want to leave home without it.

Sunny knew her fear of going into the barn was mostly irrational, because one of her assailants, the one called Red Randy, had been arrested, and was laid-up in a hospital bed with plaster casts from head to foot. An armed guard stood outside his room, until such time he could be transported to the county jail to await trial.

Sheriff Bluehorse had come by to tell her about his capture and arrest. His story seemed a little sketchy on what’d happened to the guy, but he told her Randy had suffered a broken collarbone, two broken arms, three broken ribs, a broken leg, a strained neck, and a ruptured spleen. The Sheriff thought the man was lucky to be alive. The other one, he said, the little creep called Threebuck, had escaped.

“We ain’t tracked him down yet, but I doubt he’ll be coming around here,” Sheriff Bluehorse told her. “I ’spect that boy is long gone from these parts by now. Just the same, you’d be wise to have some protection until we can get him into custody.”

Well, she didn’t have big, strong, Gale standing next to her now, but she did have Mr. Beretta. She decided it was all the man she needed.

Sunny pulled her coat collar tight around her throat as she hurried through the cutting north wind. Her head bent, her eyes to the ground, she trotted across the barn yard. At the barn door, she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye; something... or someone, standing on the top step of the root cellar. It startled her, her right hand going to the handle of the pistol. But when she looked squarely at it, no person stood there. What she did see, though, surprised her more than if it had been one of her assailants.

She studied it for several seconds as she stood at the barn door. Then she walked over toward it, that strange sentinel standing like a bizarre totem pole on the cellar steps. She continued to stare at it, by then oblivious to the cold wind.

Her four-foot terra cotta
kimchi
jar sat on the cellar step; and atop the jar’s lid stood a two-foot tall painted concrete statute, the yard gnome she called Frodo. He looked back at her and smiled from behind his Santa Claus beard. But the thing that made her laugh was the piece of cloth the size of a handkerchief that’d been tied at two corners, and the loop placed over Frodo’s pointed red cap. There, bouncing in the wind, flew a Confederate flag printed bandana.

Sunny put her hand to her mouth, and shook her head. “That damn Punch,” she said.

From out of the trees on the side of the hill about a quarter mile away the wind carried a long mournful sound.

Sunny looked out toward the trees, then back at the jar and its mounted yard gnome. “That idiot,” she said to Frodo. A sudden gust chilled her, so she clasped the jacket collar around her throat again, and hurried back to the house.

Epilogue

In the winter of 2008 Randell Vitus Brown, a.k.a. Red Randy, had recovered enough from his injuries to stand trial for the murder of Buck Buchanan, as well as for lesser charges of breaking and entering, burglary, and assault with intent to kill. During the second day of his hospital stay, Randy confessed to his part in the murder. But Randy’s admission didn’t come until, writhing in pain—that is, writhing as much as possible in his almost totally plaster-casted state—he begged for his pain medication. The sheriff, who had been at Randy’s bedside for a couple of hours interrogating him, kindly promised Randy he would let the nurse give him his medication just as soon as Randy told him about Buck’s murder.

Randy admitted he had been the ring leader, but he said his accomplice, one Chauncey H. Threebuck, was the one who had actually conked Buck on the skull, and then ran him over with the disking implement. He even told the sheriff he would find the murder weapon in the toolbox of Buck’s tractor. The sheriff had Deputy Butch go out to Sunny’s, where he did locate that crowbar in the tractor. The forensic folks not only found a latent print from Threebuck, but also skin, blood, and hair samples whose DNA matched Buck’s.

Randy had also implicated Stanley “Goat” Griggs in the crime, so the sheriff stepped up his efforts in locating the man. That would probably have gone for naught had not Sunny received a Christmas card from her dad with a return address in Barstow, California. Goat had written her a short note telling how he had found Jesus, and had established a small church he called The Road to Glory Church of Jesus Christ, which occupied a store front in an abandoned strip mall right next to the Flying S Truck Stop on I-15. There he’d turned his days into spreading the Gospel and ministering to road weary drivers, and all other manner of indigents.

The sheriff had Goat extradited back to Oklahoma to stand trial for his murder charges. Once back he cut a deal with the district attorney to testify against Red Randy. Goat got a twelve to fifteen year deal. Not long after his arrival in prison, he became a trustee for the prison chaplain, and still serves his time working for the Lord in Big Mac.

Red Randy received a conviction for murder in the first degree, and was sentenced to life without parole.

Sunny and Punch never really got back together, although Sunny didn’t give up hope. A month after Punch walked out on her, he and Jo Lynn had a reconciliation of sorts. With the advent of the Christmas season Jo Lynn apparently got a heart full of goodwill toward men and welcomed Punch back into her arms. That only came after Punch got down on his knees before Jo Lynn, begging her forgiveness and swore that he would never wander from her again. Jo Lynn didn’t really believe him, but she’d aged into a sentimental fool, so she let him in the door. Besides, now that Galynn and Artie had become officially engaged, Jo Lynn wanted the entire family to be together for the holidays.

But Sunny never gave up thinking Punch wanted to come back to her, because he kept sending her little messages in his warped sort of way. She kept making batches of
kimchi
and sticking the jar in the cellar, and the jar would disappear for a few days only to reappear empty on the cellar steps a few days later. Sunny would then replace it. She continued to do this for a few weeks, because she believed that it was Punch’s way of telling her he still cared about her. One of the odd, and endearing, things Punch always did was leave some sort of token on the lid of the empty jar—a pile of walnuts, a gathering of gooseberries or blackberries (in season), different nests of wild mountain herbs, several excellently smooth, flat, and spiritually useful river rocks, and once, unfortunately, a dead raccoon. He never did disturb the yard gnomes, though; and Frodo, standing again at his post above the cellar door, silently watched it all with his enigmatic smile.

White Oxley got some interest from the people at the History Channel on his Halloween night video. Parts of it did seem to show some kind of huge menacing creature or creatures, but the whole thing was dark and jerky and mostly out of focus, and it went dead just as White zoomed in on the creature throwing the man. White put a price of one million dollars on the video, but the History Channel people thought it too inconclusive at that price, not to mention smelling of a hoax, so they passed.