Chapter Seven
Peter ran, trying to ignore the stitch slowing gaining intensity in his side. His back ached where he’d been kicked, and his head throbbed. Getting back to Mike and Kate was the most important thing, so he focused his mind upon it and not the two miles he had yet to run.
He dodged to the left and ducked as the sound of hoofbeats grew louder once again. He heard the thundering sigh of a passing equine, waited a few seconds, then darted back out, running slightly left of where he’d been headed before. The full moon guided him overhead back in the direction of Kate’s house, and he wheezed. That’s it, Peter. More long-distance training for you . . .
~~~~~
Just before dawn split the skies, Mike rose and walked outside. He was trying to get the courage to go in and face Davy’s unconscious form. Maybe he could split a little wood to take his mind off it and his missing friends . . . He moved from the porch toward the pile and chopping block.
A body was draped over it, blond-haired, with a pink hand mottled with red splotches almost touching the ground.
“What the he—Peter?”
Peter struggled to push himself up, succeeding only in toppling himself to the ground. Mike lifted him and tore into the house.
“Who’s hurt now?” Kate grumbled, looking up from her coffee.
“Peter . . . ” Cradling him like a child, Mike raced into the same room Davy slept in.
“Mike?” Davy said, pushing himself up. His eyes were hazy but he was awake.
“Peter’s been beat.” He laid Peter down and turned to Davy. “How are you?”
“Beat? How?” Davy shoved himself up with his good arm and swung his legs out from under the covers.
“Bart’s men, who else?” Mike sighed as he began to wipe the burned hand with cool water.
“Mike?” Davy said softly. “Where’s Micky?”
~~~~~
Sunlight peeked over the edge of the window, sending hot rays stabbing into Micky’s eyes. He groaned, rolling onto his side away from the light. The ropes that Bart had tightened kept Micky’s body bent backwards, a position that sent thrills of pain through him with each breath. Bart himself was sleeping in a chair nearby, gun at the ready.
Biting his lip to suppress a cry, he twisted his aching, nearly numb hands around and worked at the knots, focusing all his energy into his fingers as they finally managed to snag the rope binding his ankles together. It was stubborn, but it slowly began to give.
When the knot finally parted he shook his legs free and rolled onto his back, sliding his bound hands out from behind his back, pulling his legs through. He attacked the knot with his teeth, keeping one eye on a still-slumbering Bart, who snorted and shifted position, but didn’t wake.
Finally he was free; he crawled silently to the door and slipped out just as Bart’s men came riding up the path. Micky ducked down behind a shrub, waiting. The two men dismounted and walked inside. Moving silently, Micky leaped up on the back of one of the horses, grabbing the reins of the other. With a loud “Hyah!” he took off, dragging the other horse behind him.
~~~~~
Mike frowned as Peter’s eyes opened. “You okay?”
Peter sat up. “Mike?”
“Yeah.”
“Mike, Bart wants the ranch because there’s oil on it!” Peter blurted.
“Oil?” He gasped. “Hellfire!”
“Oil?” a voice repeated. Kate was standing at the door, looking torn between confusion and bewilderment. “How can there be oil here?”
“It’s what they’re after!” Peter gasped. “Bart wants it!”
“You saw him?” Mike said, his voice sharpening.
He nodded. “He’s got Micky captive and they beat me and—and—” He took a deep breath. He was so rattled he was rambling.
“Where were you, Peter? Start from the beginning.” Mike, Davy, and Kate listened intently as Peter described going to the cabin (“So that’s how he manages to keep coming around so often!” Kate said), overhearing Bart, and the discarded coffee that had burned Peter and given them away. “ . . . and while they were hitting me I managed to get loose and I ran here.”
“Ran? Boy, it’s almost five miles!” Kate said.
“I zigzagged a little to avoid them,” Peter said. “It was more like seven.”
Lucy’s voice cut through the sudden silence. “Riders comin’ in!”
Davy and Peter both stood, the latter wobbling far more than the former. Davy crouched low, heading toward the window—and suddenly stood. “It’s Micky!”
“It’s what?” Peter howled, lunging for the stairs, Mike right behind him.
“It’s Micky—he’s riding one and ponying another!”
“Honey, I’m home!” Micky shouted as he drew to a halt in front of the porch. “Hey! Where’s the welcome wagon, huh?”
Davy was the first one to hit the porch.
“Davy!” Micky shouted. “You’re okay!” He leaped off the horse and ran to the shorter man.
Davy suffered the hug and patted Micky’s back. “I’m okay . . . now. What’s all this about oil?”
“That’s right! Kate! Hey, Aunt Kate!” He bounded into the house.
Mike was supporting Peter. “Ka—Peter!” Micky skidded over. “Are you okay how bad’d they hurt you Pete I promise I’ll get them for you you’ll see—”
Peter waved a hand. “Nothing that won’t heal . . . How bad are you hurt?”
Micky looked down, giving himself the once-over. “I’m just a little sore. They didn’t hit me or anything.”
“Good . . . good!”
Davy had gone over to the horses and was stroking their necks. “Magnificent animals.”
“Yeah, magnificent,” Kate said. She stepped onto the porch. “Only one person ‘round here has horses like that.”
“Nice saddles too—distinctive imprint.” He turned the stirrup over so Kate could see it—a ‘C’ with a wheel inside it.
“These are Ben Cartwheel’s horses,” Kate said grimly. “Bart must have stolen them.”
Mike frowned. “Ben Cartwheel? Who’s that?”
“Black Bart,” Peter said tightly.
“No,” Kate said, giving him a ‘don’t be silly’ look. “Ben Cartwheel is the kindest millionaire I know. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“A fly? No!” Micky put in. “But if you’re a human, he’ll kill ya!”
“I don’t believe it,” Kate said. “Black Bart is a nasty, vicious man. He’s the complete opposite of Ben.”
Peter raised his head. “So you know Ben.”
“Know him! Of course I know him! He’s helped out this ranch a time or too!”
“Describe him.”
Kate paused. “Well, he’s about my age, a little shorter, with silver hair and blue eyes. He always wears these lovely outfits—lots of blue and red.”
Peter’s eyes shifted to Micky’s. “When we saw him, he was all in black with a bandaged shoulder.”
“I’m telling you boys that you’re mistaken,” Kate said stiffly. “Ben is no more Black Bart than Michael is.”
“The henchmen said he’s the law round these parts,” Micky quoted.
“Well, he’s not!” Kate countered. “He sits on the farm council but that hardly makes him the law!”
Davy was rubbing the back of his neck. “I believe you, Peter.”
Kate crossed her arms. “If you boys want to find Black Bart you’d better start looking elsewhere. Ben won’t take too kindly to being fingered as Bart.”
Mike met her eyes. “And what if we’re right?”
Kate glared him down. “You’re not. I’m older than you, boy, and the one thing you have to learn is that you can’t always be right.” She hiked up her skirts and stomped back into the house.
Lucy sighed after her, then turned to look at Mike. “For what it’s worth, I believe you.”
“Thanks, Lucy.”
She nodded. “I’ll go try to calm her down.” She walked into the house.
Davy sighed and buried his face for a moment in the horse’s neck, then he asked, “What are we going to do?”
Mike shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know!” With an angry shout he took off for the barn. When Micky moved to follow Peter reached out and snagged his arm.
“Just let him go, Mick. He needs to cool off.”
~~~~~
The barn that Mike’s uncle Leroy—Kate’s first and only husband—had built in the twenties was still as solid as it had been in Mike’s youth. He could still remember sitting in the rafters on hot afternoons, letting the warm hay-scented breeze blow through his hair.
Now, ten years later, he stormed into the same barn, looking for something, anything to hit. The old dusty punching bag still hung from a rusted chain in the corner next to the tractor. Its cracked leather surface still bore the imprints of a teenage Mike Nesmith’s fists—one for the time he’d been ambushed coming back from the store and left naked along the roadside, his clothes in a nearby tree, one for the time Clara and Lucy had been teasing him about the limbs that had outgrown their clothes in a single summer.
He paused before it, imagining Black Bart’s face plastered across the surface, laughing, mocking, snarling “I’m gonna get your aunt’s ranch and there’s nothing you can do about it!” until a wild howl escaped his chest, his fist ramming into the bag with a hollow, dusty thud.
“You . . . bastard!” he raged, punching again and again and again, sweat pouring down his back and neck. After more than a dozen blows he started adding kicks, battering the punching bag with roundhouses, chops, and a few light, graceful jump kicks until the old chain finally parted with a snap, spilling the bag—already losing its stuffing—into the dirt.
Mike collapsed onto his knees with a sob, panting as he put his head in his hands. How could everything have gone so wrong so quickly?
When he finally lifted his head a flash of gold caught his eye, and he crawled to his feet, approaching the object that had caught his eye.
It was a wooden box sticking out from beneath a bundle of old tarps. He pulled it out, setting it on a nearby sawhorse. The flash he’d seen had been the sun reflecting off the box’s brass latches, which he undid, opening it.
He’d first thought it was a toolbox—his uncle had always had tools laying around, tools he’d bought and never used. After his death Mike and his aunt had found scores of new or nearly new tools in the barn; most of them had been sold but Mike wasn’t surprised that they’d missed one.
But it wasn’t a tool. It was a sword.
A samurai sword.
On to Chapter Eight
Back to Chapter Six
Back to Secrets and Lies Index
