Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff by J. E. Thompson

Author:J. E. Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

Twelve

The pile of dirt was huge, maybe a couple hundred feet around and thirty or forty feet high. At first glance it looked like a solid circle, but when I reached the spot where Bee had disappeared, I saw that the dirt had been scooped out to form a deep hollow. There was a half-buried truck and a bunch of other junk scattered in that hollow. That’s where I found Bee.

“Thank heavens,” I whispered. “Can you not run off like that?”

“I saw this opening and thought Yemassee might be here,” she said, looking around. “This is weird.”

“Where next?” I whispered.

“The other pile,” she whispered.

We ran across fifty yards of open ground, reached the other pile, and started around it. I was right on Bee’s heels when she slammed on the brakes and turned toward me, her face stretched in panic and silently mouthed the words, The guard!

“Where?”

“Over by the shed.”

I crept forward enough to peek around the corner of the dirt pile. The man who had chased us off the other day was maybe a hundred yards away. He had a double-barreled shotgun broken across his arm. He wasn’t looking in our direction but up at the sky and out toward the water; however, Leaper was just a few feet behind him, and he had his nose in the air like he was sniffing for trouble. It looked like the guard was heading toward the far side of the hole, but I saw the problem right away: if he walked around the hole, he was going to put himself between us and our kayaks, and then, if he did a full loop, he would come back straight toward the dirt piles where we were hiding.

Bee and I started to inch around the side of the dirt pile to stay out of his line of sight. As we rounded the far side we came to a second big hollow similar to the one we had found in the first pile, and we scrambled into it.

“What’re we gonna do?” Bee hissed. “He’s got us trapped in here. What if we can’t get out and the storm gets worse? What if he spots our kayak? What if Leaper smells us?”

“We gotta think.” My blood was pulsing in my ears like a bass drum “Okay,” I said, trying to shove down the panic that bubbled in my stomach. “You keep checking on where he is, and I’ll try to come up with something.”

I turned and looked around the hollow, but all I saw was another wrecked truck, hunks of metal all over the ground, and a table made out of a plywood sheet laid over a couple of old barrels. Two masks lay on top of the table, and beside it were some hoses and tanks. I knew it was welding gear because I’d seen the plumber use the same stuff when he had hooked up a new well on the plantation about two years earlier. It wasn’t going to help us get away from Leaper.

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