The Avenging Angels by Michael Dukes

Author:Michael Dukes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
Published: 2018-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

It hadn’t been easy, giving that pack of lawdogs the slip, and it had taken time, but the fact was, he’d done it.

Going on a week ago Zeller lost sight of them through the glass of his telescope, having had little sleep and plenty of long, hard hours playing mental and geological chess with his pursuers. When he did close his eyes he only dozed, and when he did swing down it was to give his mare a breather and a drink from a hatful of tepid canteen water. That old girl deserved a month off on good grama, and she would get it.

Whoever they were, they knew the lay of the land as well as Zeller did, if not better. Still, however familiar they were with the terrain and however skilled at reading it, they had never used it the same way their quarry did. They were lawmen. He was an outlaw. They rode by the light of day and on the open prairie, he rode by the light of the moon and kept to the back trails and forgotten byways. There had been times when they had him sweating hard. But whereas the possemen, dogged though they were, stopped each night to rest their horses and replenish their energy, Zeller and his long-winded mare—veterans of innumerable chases like this one—pushed on.

It hadn’t been easy, but he’d lost them. He could only hope the lawmen kept on the way they were going and didn’t pick up his trail again.

He nearly fell on his face when he dismounted in the yard. No horses in the corral, no smoke or light from the cabins, but he was too run-down to care. He pulled his knife, cut the mare’s cinch, and tore the saddle from her back. With the butt of his rifle, Zeller smashed the thin layer of ice that had formed over the water in the trough. He watched with satisfaction as his horse guzzled. After she’d had her fill and turned sluggishly away, it was his turn. Dropping to his knees, he blew on the water before drinking. As it was, he felt icicles stab his brain, but he had ridden through hell just to taste this water again, to feel this canyon’s air again. It was a good pain.

He heated four pails’ worth of water inside the main cabin, which he then poured into a tub. The water wasn’t as hot as he would have liked, but he couldn’t wait any longer and sank like a rock up to his ears. He soaked for hours, warming his chilled flesh, cauterizing and bathing his wound.

After he reckoned he’d soaked enough, Zeller stood to take a speculative look around the room, running fingers through his beard. He decided against a shave and got drunk instead.

The following morning he stumbled out of the cabin into the light of a bleak autumn afternoon. Not caring for it, he stepped back into the semi-darkness and got a fire crackling on the hearth.

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