A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 19

HAWK WAS SITTING IN THE VOLVO WITH THE motor running as I sloshed out of the woods. He’d have the heater on. I got slapped one last time across the face with a wet branch and then the woods relinquished me and I stepped out onto the road about ten feet behind the Volvo.

When I did about ten guys with guns stepped out with me. From my side, from the other side, in front of the Volvo. One of them was the fat guy with skinny arms who had been working the counter where we’d had breakfast yesterday. He was pointing a double-barreled shotgun at me.

“Who’s minding the store,” I said.

“It’s Mr. Costigan’s store,” he said.

“I imagine so,” I said.

The Volvo engine suddenly snarled and its tires whined as they spun on the wet pavement. The guys in front of it had time to put one shot through the windshield before they dove out of the way and the Volvo screeched off uphill and around the curve in the road.

“Son of a bitch,” the counterman said.

“Greedy,” I said. “You wanted to wait and make sure of us both.”

“Got you,” the counterman said. He grinned at me over the gun. “Your buddy hauled ass and left you,” he said. “Most niggers’ll skedaddle like that.”

I shrugged. The Volvo was out of hearing already. The group gathered around me. The gunny who fired at Hawk said, “I mighta winged him, Warren.”

The counterman nodded. Even when the Volvo had bolted and the shooting had followed he’d never wavered. He’d kept looking straight at me down the long twin barrels of the shotgun. “Bobby, you and Raymond go get the cars. Soon’s I kill this boy we’ll get after the nigger,” he said.

Everyone was quiet as the two men walked down the highway. I could hear the hiss of the rain and the beat when it landed and the slower syncopated plop of the droplets that fell from the leaves and branches. The counterman stepped closer, so that the shotgun barrels were six inches from my face.

“I figure both barrels at once will blow most of your head off completely,” he said.

“Unless you miss,” I said.

He giggled. “Miss,” he said and giggled some more. “You dumb fucker. How can I miss with a shotgun from six inches.” His shoulders shook with the giggle.

“Come on, Warren,” one of the gunnies said.

“Shoot him and let’s get after the nigger. Mr. Costigan’s gonna be pissed.”

Warren nodded. “Okay, stand away less you want to get blood and brains all over you.”

Then the smile vanished and his eyes narrowed slightly. He took in a slow breath, and while he was taking it in, his head jerked, a round red hole appeared in the middle of his forehead, and a gunshot sounded from the woods to the right. Warren staggered back a step and the shotgun sagged and then fell from his hands and he keeled over backward. Everything froze in that posture and I turned and plunged back into the woods. The rifle shots continued fast, at about the rate it would take to lever a shell into the chamber of a .34-.30 rifle.

I headed for the place the shots were coming from, my gun out now, forcing through the wet woods as hard as I could go. Running in a crouch, with my left forearm bent in front of me to keep from being blinded by a branch. Gunfire from the road cut leaves and branches around me as I ran, but most of it seemed aimed at where the rifle fire came from.

In front of me, Hawk said, “Spenser,” and I saw him standing behind a tree in a small clearing, feeding shells into the magazine of a Winchester. The gunfire from the road was nearly continuous. I scuttled on all fours across the clearing and behind Hawk’s tree. A bullet thudded into it at eye level.

“Dumb to shoot so high,” Hawk said.

The clearing was maybe thirty feet higher than the road, and below me I could see three bodies sprawled in the angular repose of death. The rest of the gunnies were crouched off the shoulder of the road opposite, firing toward us.

“Road does almost a hairpin,” Hawk said. “Car’s about ten yards that way.” He jerked his head behind us. “With the motor running.”

“Let’s get out of here before they bring the cars up,” I said.

Hawk nodded. There was a cut under one eye, and blood ran in a neat trickle down his cheek, diffused pink by the rain before it dripped onto his shirt. He fired six shots down at the enemy as fast as he could work the lever on the Winchester. Then he dropped it behind the tree and we ran for the Volvo. They returned fire, but you tend to shoot high uphill and in five strides we were on the down side of the hill and the bullets hummed and whined harmlessly above us. We half slid, half scrambled the last ten yards as the muddy hill turned into a steep slick banking and then we were sprawling into the road beside the Volvo and, soaking and smeared with mud, we were in the Volvo and spinning rubber away from the hill with me driving. Fifty yards up the road, I jammed the car into a screeching U-turn and headed back down toward the bad guys with the accelerator pressed to the floor. We roared by them and the two cars, which had just pulled up, heading in the other direction and were around the next curve with only three more shots at the car. One shot went through the back window, the other two missed.

I kept the accelerator hard down and drove a lot too fast for the wet curving road. The first crossroad I came to I turned right and at the next I turned left and, at a third I turned right again. There was no one behind us. I slowed to sixty.

I looked at Hawk. He had a wad of cloth pressed against the cut on his cheek.

“Glass?” I said.

“Yeah, when the dude shot through the windshield.”

“Counterman worked for Costigan,” I said.

“Sort of a forward observer,” Hawk said.

I nodded. “And they covered the way out once they knew we’d gone in. So just in case the ambush didn’t work at the lodge…”

“Thorough bastards,” Hawk said.

“Be good to remember it,” I said. “There’s Band-Aids in the glove compartment.”