Shepherds Abiding In Dry Creek, page 14
Marla’s voice had gotten a little high.
“Hush,” Les said in a soft whisper. “We don’t want anyone to hear us.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Les wondered if Marla would like the young men inside the barn to hear them. He probably should have gagged her at some point tonight before they got this close.
He wasn’t sure he could have done it even if he had thought of it, though. Les told himself that when the regular sheriff got back to Dry Creek, he was going to turn in his reserve deputy sheriff badge. He’d let someone else go around putting gags on people.
“You’re not going to make lots of noise and warn them, are you?” Les asked.
The night had gotten even darker than when they’d started out and Les could not see Marla’s face clearly. Of course, with the scarf wrapped around it, he wouldn’t have been able to see much of it even if it had been a full sunny day. He still had his hands on her arms to steady her, though, and he could feel her muscles tighten in indignation.
“All I want is for everyone to be safe,” she said.
Les nodded. “That’s why we don’t want to give them a chance to use that rifle. Which means no noise.”
“I understand that.”
“Good.”
Les looked around. He wished he hadn’t kept the area around his house so tidy. There was nothing to tie the horses to. He’d even taken out the old clothesline when the posts started to rot. Since he didn’t need the line, he’d never replaced it. He had an old lawn chair where he sat in the summer and looked at the wildflowers that grew all the way up the rise, but that wasn’t enough to keep a horse from straying.
“You’ll have to hold the reins,” Les finally said as he turned to Marla. He couldn’t spend all night looking for somewhere to anchor the reins.
“For all the horses?”
Les nodded, then looked at the men in front of him. “Elmer, maybe you could?”
“I’ll stay with her,” the older man said. “But if I hear trouble, I’m going to let these horses fend for themselves and come help.”
Les nodded. “Thanks.”
“Where shall we go in?” one of the Elkton ranch hands asked as he unsnapped the scabbard holding his rifle. He drew the long Winchester out and cradled it next to his shoulder.
“I figure we’ll circle the barn. A man at each window. Don’t worry about breaking the windows. Just don’t do it until they know we’re there.” Les took the rifle Elmer handed to him.
“Everybody loaded?” Les asked as he cracked the rifle he’d just been given and made sure there were bullets in it. He knew the Elkton ranch hands took their rifles when they went into the far pastures on horseback, just in case they ran into wolves or maybe even a mountain lion if they were high enough in the hills.
Les saw a series of Stetsons nod.
“Well, then,” he said, his voice still low, “I’ll go around by the entrance and see if I can make sense of what’s happening inside. Remember, we want to avoid any gunplay.”
Les saw Marla wince.
“We plan to do this quietly,” Les added for good measure. “Everyone take their station by a window, but wait until we figure out what’s happening inside. Those boys might just be hanging out and happy to give up the rifle and come out peacefully.”
“Maybe they didn’t even take the rifle,” Marla whispered.
Les nodded. “That’s possible, too.”
He supposed it was possible, Les told himself. In the realm of what was possible, maybe Mrs. Hargrove had stolen it. Or Linda, at the café. Or Santa Claus. Still, he couldn’t say no to the hope that sprang up in Marla’s mind.
When Les had talked to the sheriff in Miles City, they had gone over strategies. They had decided not to use a bullhorn and call out to the young men inside until Les could figure out where Sammy stood on all of this. Les didn’t want to risk anyone making Sammy their hostage just in case he hadn’t gone with the other men willingly.
It was a small chance that Sammy was innocent, but Les wanted to give him every benefit of the doubt even if it made his own job tonight more dangerous.
“It wouldn’t hurt to say a prayer before we head out,” Les added.
To a man, the ranch hands bowed their heads.
After they prayed, they each gave their reins to Elmer and followed Les over to the barn.
Marla watched as the men walked away. She could see dark shadows as they moved toward the barn. A snowflake fell on her eyelash and she blinked it away so she could see better. The men looked so powerful walking in the dark with their rifles resting against their shoulders and pointing to the sky. Each man walked differently. All of them were wearing tall leather boots, though, and she could hear the muffled sounds of their boot heels hitting rocks here and there.
“They should have bulletproof vests,” Marla whispered.
Elmer grunted in response. “Don’t worry about that boy of yours. Les will take care of him.”
Marla didn’t say that she’d meant Les was the one who should have the bulletproof vest. She supposed it was expecting too much for the Dry Creek people to forgive her and Sammy this time around. It was one thing for Sammy to steal the church’s shepherd; it was another for him to help steal the sheriff’s rifle. She looked over at Elmer. The older man had changed out of the suit he had worn earlier this evening. If he had been willing to play the harp because he thought Les was going to propose to someone, Elmer would probably take Les’s point of view on anything.
Which was as it should be, Marla thought to herself. Les belonged here; it was good that his friends stood beside him. She might wish that they were her friends, too, but one look at Elmer’s face and she knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t trust her, either.
When this night was over, Marla thought to herself, she would have to start packing again. She had to believe Sammy was innocent in all that was happening tonight, but even if he was innocent, their days of being welcome in Dry Creek were likely over. Her neighbor from Los Angeles had been right. People in small towns didn’t like having gang members show up in their towns. Not that she could blame them, Marla thought. She didn’t like the gang showing up in her family, either.
Les put his hand against the front of the barn. The old boards were dry from many years of sun and wind, but he kept them painted, and a few years ago he’d had the boards all sanded down. He had taken off his gloves to give them to Marla and now the wet snow on the barn chilled his fingers. He looked up and could see a couple of the Elkton men ahead of him, each stationed at one of the windows in the front of the barn.
The windows had been an extravagance a decade ago when Les had them installed. He liked to have the extra sunlight for the calves. He’d never thought he would be using them to help disarm some big-city gang members.
Les inched toward the smallest door that led into the barn. He had a huge cattle door on one end of the barn that he could open if he needed to, but there was a smaller door he could use, as well. He knew there was some risk in opening even the small door, but there was no other way, outside of looking through a window, to see what was happening inside the barn. He didn’t want to use a window because that made a man too vulnerable. If the gang members inside were watching anything, they would be watching the windows, waiting to see headlights as a pickup came down the same drive they had used.
Les stopped close to the door. He could see the single tracks of what looked like two motorcycles. They must have driven them inside his barn for the night. If he hadn’t seen the light from the back window, he wouldn’t have a clue that someone was in his barn tonight.
It was just too bad there wasn’t a way to see everything better. Suddenly Les realized that there was a way. Permanently braced against the barn was a ladder that led up to the hayloft. If he could get up there, he could look through some of those cracks in the floor of the loft and look right down into the barn and the workshop both. The last place anyone would be looking would be at the ceiling.
Les walked by several Elkton men and whispered his plan to go up to the hayloft.
The ladder was sturdy and, with his rifle strapped over his shoulder, Les was able to make the climb to the loft quietly. The hayloft was open all year around and Les only had to swing himself onto the floor when he reached that opening. There were old straw bales lying around and straw dust everywhere. The wind had blown some snow in tonight and the bales were wet to the touch when Les leaned on several of them. It was darker inside the loft than it had been outside and he waited for his eyes to adjust.
Les carefully walked on the floorboards. He knew if he stayed close to the stacks of bales, his extra weight would not be enough to make the boards creak. When he got to a good-sized crack, he knelt and put his eye to the space.
The two strangers were there, all right. One of them was sitting on the worktable and the other had pulled in a wooden stool Les kept near the stalls. They weren’t doing anything. The drawers in his workshop had all been pulled out and the contents dumped on the worktable already, so they must have finished searching for things. They had the rifle. It was lying on the floor by the man sitting on the stool. An opened box of bullets was next to it, so Les assumed they had loaded the gun earlier.
As Les looked more closely, he revised his opinion that these were men. Linda had said she estimated the two strangers at being around seventeen, but Les had figured they were probably a year or two older. Seeing them now, though, he wondered if they were a year or two younger. They were really teenagers instead of men.
The one sitting on the worktable had tattoos covering his arms and he was holding a hammer in one hand, swinging it softly. Les looked at the other teenager, too. Neither one was wearing a coat. They looked cold.
Maybe they’d be glad to give up their adventure.
Les had to move to his left and look through another crack before he saw Sammy. His heart was glad when he saw that Sammy was bound, both hands and feet, and lying in a corner of the workshop. Maybe Marla wasn’t the only one who had kept hoping that her son was a victim instead of participant in all of this. Sammy had a bruise on his face, but other than that he looked all right.
Les moved his hand to prepare to stand and felt some small pieces of straw move with him. His hand was wet and that’s what had made the straw stick. Unfortunately, the straw that didn’t stick was also lifted and it was now slipping through the crack he’d been looking through.
Les held his breath as he watched the straw float down to where the boys were. He’d have to wait for their attention to move to something else before he dared to lift himself up from the floor.
Sammy was the only one to look up. He gave a half grunt of surprise and then closed his mouth.
“What’ja doing now?” the guy with the hammer demanded of Sammy. “Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?”
“Maybe he wants you to hit that shepherd of his again,” the guy sitting on the stool said with a sneer. “Teach him to keep quiet. We’re hiding out here. We don’t need any little kid whining.”
“Ah, ain’t nobody coming out here tonight,” the guy with the hammer answered. “It’s snowing out there. The cops will all be someplace drinking coffee.”
“Still, he should be quiet.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, here.” The guy swung the hammer and hit the shepherd.
Les winced. No amount of putty was going to fix that Nativity figure now.
“You’re going to be sorry you did that,” Sammy growled as he struggled with the ties around his feet. “When I get my hands free, I’m going to—”
Both of the guys laughed.
“Yeah, you and who else are going to come get us? You got any amigos around here that’ll help you whip us?”
Sammy was quiet for a moment. Then he started to talk, low and fierce. “Yeah, I do. That shepherd belongs to God. You mess with His shepherd and He’ll take your guts and grind them up until you’ll wish you were dead. And then He’ll have the buzzards come and drop you in the fire pit. And then—”
“Whoa—hey, man,” the guy with the hammer said. Les thought he looked a little nervous. “I get your point.”
“No disrespect to your God,” the other one said.
“Well…” Sammy hesitated. “He’s not my God, but I know a woman, Mrs. Hargrove, and—”
“Your amigo is a woman? So is she sexy?”
“Mrs. Hargrove? No way. She’s old.”
“Your amigo is an old woman. And she’s going to help you whip us?”
Both of the guys laughed a little.
Sammy nodded emphatically. “God does what she asks Him to do. He’ll come and get you if she says she wants you to be gotten.”
“You mean she puts out a curse? My grandmother used to know about curses. I don’t want any curses around me. They can shrivel a guy up. Some guy my cousin knew died from a curse like that.”
Les figured, with all the talking going on down there, it was a good time to make his move back to the ladder. He only hoped Sammy didn’t scare the other two guys too much. He’d rather have them half-asleep than all wide-awake and spooked.
Les climbed down and walked along the side of the barn again. Now that he knew where everyone was located in the workshop, he knew he could open the large cattle door without anyone seeing it. He oiled the hinges on that door every fall and he knew it wouldn’t make a sound as it slid open tonight. The guys inside the workshop might feel a sudden drop in temperature when the cold air came into the barn, but they wouldn’t hear anything to make them suspicious.
After stopping to tell the men from the Elkton ranch what his plan was, Les walked over to the cattle door and swung it open. The door opened to the wide aisle that ran down the center of his barn. The workshop and the horse stalls were on one side of the aisle. The cattle stalls were on the other.
The horse inside the barn was the first animal to notice the cold air, and he gave a loud whinny of protest. A couple of chickens squawked as Les slipped into the barn and inched his way along the side of the workshop. He moved to the workshop window that faced the front of the barn. He’d already noticed it was closed. No one inside would be able to hear him.
When he reached the workshop door, Les pushed on it gently. Sammy was the only one facing the door and Les hoped that the boy wouldn’t give anything away. Once he had the door open a crack, he could hear them talking inside. They were still on the subject of curses.
“What was that?” one of the gang members said. Les thought it sounded like the guy sitting on the stool. He was the one with the rifle lying on the floor beside him. “Did you hear that?”
“Ah, you’re just spooked,” the other guy said. “It was the horse out there making noise.”
“No, it was after that.”
“Then it was the chickens. Relax.”
Les knew he hadn’t made any noise. The two of them were just jumpy after all the talk about curses.
“There it is again,” the nervous one said. “And it ain’t no chickens. I’ll bet it’s the cops.”
“We haven’t even seen any headlights,” the other one said.
“No, but they’re here…”
Les was wondering if the guy somehow saw the backup team from Miles City up on the rise. He supposed if someone up there had turned on a flashlight or something they would be seen. Suddenly a rifle shot shattered the window of the workshop.
Les decided it was now or never.
“Put your hands up. You’re surrounded,” Les yelled. He didn’t stand where they could see him, but they could sure hear him.
Les heard the sound of windows breaking all over the barn.
“We’ve got a hostage!” one of the boys screamed out. He was so young his voice ended in a high squeak.
“What you’ve got is trouble,” Les yelled back. “Put the rifle down and come on out here with your hands in the air.”
That’s when Les heard the thunder coming. The first horse to come galloping into the barn was Stubby from the Redfern place. Then there were a couple of the Elkton horses. Then there was—
Marla! She was chasing the horses. Or rather, trying to catch them. She had a rope outstretched and was looking at the animals in panicked frustration.
“Get back!” Les yelled, but he wasn’t sure she could hear him over the sounds of horse hooves.
The men from the Elkton ranch sure didn’t hear him. They all had a fondness for their horses, and they were sliding into the barn to calm them down.
“Who’s there?” the youngster with the rifle shouted from the broken window. He swung the rifle around as if he didn’t know who to shoot first.
Les heard eight rifles cock at the same minute.
“What the—” The teenager with the rifle saw all the rifles pointing at him.
In one motion, the men from the Elkton ranch had swung onto the backs of their horses while keeping their rifles trained on the boy in the window.
“It’s time to give it up,” Les said smoothly as he walked toward the teenager. There were too many guns ready to fire for his comfort. “No need to make this harder than it is.”
Les saw the gang member looking at the Elkton men. The ranch hands had their Stetsons pulled low and the collars of their sheepskin coats pulled high around their necks. They had one hand on their horses and the other steadying their long-barreled rifles, all aimed at the teenager standing in the broken window of the workshop.
“You don’t want to get hurt,” Les continued softly as he took a few more steps closer. “Give me the rifle.”
“Who are you guys? Some kind of a posse?”
The teenager dropped his rifle through the workshop window and it fell to the floor in the barn.
“We have a right to be arrested by the cops.” The other teenager spoke up from inside the workshop. “We have our rights. Nobody is going to string us up.”
“Drop the hammer and come out here,” Les said.
The boy dropped the hammer as if it was on fire. “I’m not armed. No one can shoot me. I demand police protection.”
Les heard several cars coming to a stop outside his barn.
