A Wolf in the Fold

I still hesitated. Gertrude reminded me of a cat about to eat a canary. I didn’t trust her. But so what if she did not keep her word? So what if she had the Butchers gunned down? I was fixing to kill them, anyway. What difference did it make who turned them into maggot bait so long as I was paid? Shrugging, I turned. I was almost to the door when Gertrude called my name. Not Reverend Storm, but my real name.

“Oh, Mr. Stark?”

Mad as hell, I looked over my shoulder. She had drawn her Colt and was pointing it at my back. It stopped me in my tracks. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving myself five hundred dollars.”

Gertrude shot me. There was a sharp sensation between my shoulder blades and the slug tore through my chest and burst out the front of my shirt. The impact jolted me. The world darkened and spun. Close to passing out, I lurched toward the front door and groped for the latch. I heard Gertrude laugh, and it was like having a bucket of cold water splashed in my face. My vision cleared and I stumbled to the door just as it was yanked open from within. Hannah enfolded me in her arms and pulled me in after her. None too soon. A volley from the woods blistered the door.

Jordy slammed the door after us.

Everyone else was down low. Hannah and Daisy half dragged, half carried me to a far corner and gently eased me down so I had my back to the wall. A strange weakness had come over me, and it was all I could do to hold my head up.

“She shot him!” Daisy exclaimed. “She shot the parson!”

“I wouldn’t put anything past that monster,” Hannah said while plucking at my shirt. “Let’s see how bad off he is.” She flicked my jacket aside. I tried to reach up to stop her but couldn’t. Suddenly she recoiled as if I had slapped her. “What in the world is this?”

“It’s a pistol!”

“I can see that, daughter.” Hannah slid the short-barreled Remington from my shoulder holster. “But what in the world is the preacher doing with a hideout? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“He has a rifle, too. I saw it in his saddle scabbard.”

“Even preachers shoot game for the dinner table,” Hannah said. “But this”—she hefted the Remington—“this is something a gambler or an assassin would carry.”

I had to say something. She was close to guessing the truth. But I was so weak that all I could croak was, “Pro—tect—you.”

“What did he say?” Hannah asked.

“I think he said he brought the gun to protect us,” Daisy said, and tenderly clasped my hand.

Disbelief was written plain on Hannah’s face.

Just then another volley peppered the cabin to the accompaniment of whoops and yips from the cowboys. The window shattered in a spray of shards. Slugs cored the door, narrowly missing Kip.

“Douse the lamp!”

Sam leaped to obey. As he rose to extinguish the wick, a rifle cracked. He had exposed himself through the window to a shooter in the woods. The slug caught him high in the shoulder and spun him around. He braced himself against the wall to keep from falling, but would have collapsed if not for Jordy, who caught him and lowered him into a chair. It was Ty who blew out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

Hannah crabbed toward her youngest. “Keep low!” she cautioned. “Jordy, bolt the door. Carson and Ty, scoot over by the window.”

I attempted to sit up, but my legs would not cooperate. Seldom had I felt so defenseless. Hannah had taken my Remington, leaving me with nothing but the boot knife. The shooting, though, had stopped.

The way I saw it, Gertrude had four choices. She could wait us out until we were so low on food and water, her cowboys could overrun us. But that would take days, and by then the Texas Rangers would arrive. Her second choice was to rush us, but she was bound to lose a lot of punchers. Her third option was the one I would pick: sit out there and pepper us with lead for ten to twelve hours, whittling us down so when she did give the order for her cowhands to attack, they would overwhelm us with little loss of life on their side.

As if Gertrude was able to read my mind, she shouted, and leaden hail blistered the cabin on four sides. She had not been exaggerating when she said she had it surrounded.

Laughter pealed in the silence that followed the shots. “Are you still alive in there, Hannah? If so, you won’t be for long. By daybreak all of you will be dead and your cabin burned to the ground.”

Hannah was bent over Sam. Without raising her head she called out, “What did we do to you that you hate us so?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Gertrude rejoined. “But it will stay my little secret this side of the grave.”

“Please, for the sake of my children, don’t take the law into your own hands. Turn us over to the Texas Rangers.”

“Beg all you want, but my mind is made up. None of you are getting out of there alive. That includes your parson friend, in case he’s still breathing.”