Target America

63

With Oso Cazador locked in the Chatham house, Marie and Dusty saddled up a pair of horses and set out for the ranch in a thickening fog. Marie’s breathing was less painful with the elastic bandage wound tightly around her rib cage, but the jouncing of the horse caused the occasional stabbing pain.

“I’d sure feel better if you headed back,” Dusty said.

Marie held the reins with one hand as they rode, the other inside her jacket over her cracked rib. “I think maybe we should skirt north.”

“Is the old Indian trail still there?”

“Yeah. You know about that?”

“That’s how I used to get to the Fergusons when we were kids. I was a trespassin’ little son of a bitch, Marie.”

She laughed in spite of her pain and fear. You never knew where you might find a friend in this world.

“I was always worried I might run across your daddy up there,” he went on. “I was scared to death of that guy.”

“He was a grump, but he was harmless.”

They rode along through the fog, the horses puffing steam from their flaring nostrils. Marie was shivering with cold, and she was grateful for the heat of the animal between her legs.

Dusty dismounted at the northwestern border of the Chatham ranch and used a pair of side cutters to snip the barbed wire fence. “I can still remember when this fence line used to run another couple hundred yards over that-a-way.” He pointed in the direction of the McGuthry ranch.

Marie smiled. “If we survive, I’ll let you move it back to where it was.”

He laughed and pulled the wire back out of the way so it wouldn’t snare the horses’ legs, and they crossed over to pick up the old Indian trail, following it through the rocks just below the foothills toward Marie’s ranch.

Back at the Chatham residence, Oso quickly concluded that Marie wasn’t coming back for him anytime soon. The scent of the house and the man who lived in it were foreign to him, and he was growing increasingly anxious about being alone in the foreign environment. Already missing the familiar comfort of his leather chair, he decided that it was time to leave and got up from the floor near the back door to hunt for a way out.

He caught the scent of fresh air coming from the back hall and followed it to the source at the end of the corridor, where the door to the laundry room stood ajar. He nosed his way inside and stood in the dark, listening. A distant flash of lightning illuminated a half-open window above the washing machine. The screen was down, but that didn’t concern him. He had learned young there wasn’t a screen window or door on earth that could keep him in if he really wanted out. It hadn’t taken Marie or Gil very long to learn that frustrating little fact of life either.

He jumped onto the washing machine and, with his head, pressed against the screen until it bowed outward. Then he gave it a shove, and the screen tore away from the old wooden frame. After that, it was just a matter of shouldering up the sash and leaping out into the fog. He put his nose into the air, but Marie’s scent was undetectable in the mist. That didn’t matter. He knew his way home.