"Perfect. I"ll hang onto the side like the old garbage collectors."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Believe me, a man shouldn"t see his bride with intestines in her hair."
Mason shrugged. "All right. Hang on tight."
He climbed down and slid back into the cab. Bowie seemed particularly interested in the smell of something on his hands.
"Where"s Jules?" asked John.
"She wants to clean up a bit before coming up front."
He looked out his window for her, but she was on the opposite side of the truck.
"Are you sure she"s okay?"
"She"s fine. I told her that she could wash up at the river."
John shook his head. "I tell you, vanity"s going to be the death of that woman."
"I"m not so sure. If I had to guess, I"d say she"s going to live a nice long life."
"You really think so?"
"Sure," he said. "If Jules proved anything tonight, it"s that she"ll do whatever it takes to stay alive."
Carl, John, Lucy, and Jules stood in the bright shine of headlights, hugging and crying as emotions overwhelmed them. They had all lost so much-friends, family, and any sense of life"s normalcy. The prospect of losing one another was more than any of them could bear.
Connie stood beside Mason, both of them trying not to gawk at something so intimate and heartfelt. Bowie, however, showed no such discretion as he stared at the family with his tail wagging.
"That was a fine piece of work, Marshal," she said.
Mason dabbed a wet cloth against the cut on his forehead.
"A little too close if you ask me."
"What about your truck?"
"I"ll go back at first light and get it. I can"t afford to lose those supplies."
"And after that, we"ll head straight to Ashland?"
Mason smiled. "As long as nothing else gets in our way."
"I have a feeling you and your giant dog can deal with anything that gets in our way." She squatted down to pet Bowie, but when he started licking her face, she quickly straightened. "I just wish he wasn"t such a s...o...b..r mouth!" she exclaimed with a laugh.
"We all have our ways of showing affection. That"s Bowie"s."
She reached over and squeezed the back of Mason"s arm.
"What"s yours, Marshal?"
Mason said nothing as he watched Jules swing young Lucy around in a big circle, both of them laughing with joy.
"Marshal?"
He turned to Connie with a sad smile.
"Come on," he said, "let"s get some rest. Tomorrow"s going to be a long day."
CHAPTER.
8.
Even standing fifty yards away, Samantha heard the woman scream. It was a violent, angry scream, laced with every possible type of profanity. She wheeled around and hurried back to the shop. When she stepped inside, she saw Tanner sitting in a small chair with his back against the wall. The sawed-off shotgun rested across his lap, and he was looking out through the front window like a man without a care in the world. The woman was still taped up on the floor. She didn"t appear injured, but her t-shirt was now on inside out, and a strip of duct tape was covering her mouth.
"What happened?"
Tanner motioned toward the woman.
"She got angry and started screaming. I couldn"t have that."
"What made her so mad?"
"She learned a hard lesson," he said, meeting the woman"s venomous stare.
"What lesson?"
"Never to trust a man when he"s negotiating for honey."
Nipples tried to say something, but her words were m.u.f.fled by the tape.
"She had honey?"
"Yep."
"Is there any left?" Samantha asked, looking around the small store.
"Nope."
"You ate the whole jar of honey by yourself?"
"Oh yes," he said, winking at Nipples.
Nipples glared at him, growling.
"And she expected you to let her go for giving it to you? Is that it?"
"That"s right."
"But you didn"t?"
"Nope. The way I see it is we"re even now. She did me wrong, and I did her wrong." Tanner rubbed the scab on his side where the blade had nicked him. "I don"t think either one of us will forget the other anytime soon."
"I suppose that"s fair," Samantha said, still feeling a bit uncertain as to whether or not she was getting the whole story.
"I"ve always said I"m fair, if nothing else."
"I"ve never heard you say that."
"No?"
"No."
"Well, it"s true isn"t it?"
Samantha thought for a moment.
"Not really, no."
He laughed. "You might only be eleven, but you could teach our prisoner a thing or two."
They came for Nipples shortly after dark. The same two young men he had seen earlier scuttled around the huge pile of dirt that sat behind the repair shop. Tanner watched them from a thicket of trees about thirty yards away. When the men got to the back of the building, they split, one going right, the other left. The one that went to the right pa.s.sed directly in front of him, barely outside of arm"s reach.
Tanner let him pa.s.s before stepping out and beaning him with the b.u.t.t of the shotgun. The man fell forward into the dirt without making a sound. Tanner picked up his rifle, a Marlin carbine, and flung it off into the trees. A quick pat down revealed no other weapons. He pulled two long strips of duct tape from the roll and secured the man"s hands and feet. Then, like he had done to Nipples, he put a short length of tape across the man"s mouth. Taping someone"s mouth was risky because it could cause suffocation, but Tanner chalked that up to being a hazard of the profession the man had chosen.
When he was finished, he hurried to the corner of the building and peeked around. The second man had already cleared the opposite corner and was moving toward the front door. Tanner leaned around and waved for the man to come to him, hoping that it was dark enough that he would think it was his partner in crime. Before the man could get a clear look at him, Tanner ducked back around and waited.
A few seconds later, the man hustled around the corner.
"What are you doing? I told-"
He was cut short when Tanner stepped forward and headb.u.t.ted him across the bridge of the nose. The blow was so powerful that the man dropped his rifle and stumbled back a couple of steps. Never one to leave things unfinished, Tanner brought a knee up into his groin and coldc.o.c.ked him in the ear. The man bent at the waist and then fell sideways, moaning. Tanner taped him up before doing a quick circle around the building to make sure no one else had joined the party.
They hadn"t.
One by one, he grabbed the men by their ankles and dragged them into the shop. He slid them up next to Nipples and let them drop. For her part, she only shook her head with disappointment. Tanner reached down and carefully pulled the tape from her mouth.
"If you scream, I"ll zip you right back up. We clear?"
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
"Thank you for not killing them," she said softly. "The older one is my brother."
He studied the first man, and there did indeed seem to be a resemblance.
"How many more of you are there?"
"Obviously, we made a mistake taking your things."
"You think?"
"We"re just trying to survive. No different than you and your kid." She nodded toward Samantha, who was standing over near the window, looking out.
"Wrong," he said. "We don"t take from the living."
"That"s true," Samantha said, without turning around. "He wouldn"t even let me take a chicken when I was starving to death."
He glanced back at her.
"I don"t remember you starving at the time."
"Well I was."
"Uh-huh. Sure you were." He turned back to Nipples. "Point is you stole from us. That"s not something I"m going to let slide."
"Like I said, it was a mistake."
"Okay. So, I"ll ask you again. How many more of you are there? It"s better if you tell me. That way, I don"t have to resort to pulling out your brother"s fingernails."
She sighed. "Eleven. The rest are probably still over at the Domtar paper mill."
"You"re holed up at the paper mill?"
"Most of us worked there. We use it as our home base now. It"s not much, but at least no one bothers us there."
"All right then," he said, standing up, "eleven more to go. I hope I have enough tape."
"They"ll leave us here," she said. "They"re not going to chance another rescue."
Tanner b.u.mped one of the men with his boot.
"For these two bozos, maybe not. But for you, darlin", they"ll give it another go." He smiled. "Believe me, you"re worth it."
She glanced over at Samantha and lowered her voice.