The Savage Curse by Jory Sherman

Author:Jory Sherman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

16

BEN RAISED HIS RIFLE SLIGHTLY, TOOK AIM.

“Don’t shoot him,” John yelled. “Let him go.”

Ben lowered his rifle.

“But he’s getting’ away.”

“Look at him,” John said. “He’s just a boy.”

It was true. The naked brave was small and thin, covered with dirt, but it was obvious that he was no more than twelve years old, if that.

The boy ran over the lip of the mesa and disappeared.

John handed his rifle to Gale.

“Cover me, you two,” he said and ran around the pile of rocks. He crouched low and drew his pistol.

“Good luck,” Gale called after him.

A Navajo’s head bobbed up and Gale fired her rifle. The shot was high, but the brave ducked back down below the ledge.

“Missed him clean,” Gale said. “Not by much.”

“A miss is as good as a mile,” Ben said.

She flashed him a wry smile and Ben’s face flushed with embarrassment.

“You really know how to make a woman feel good, Ben Russell,” she said.

“Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean no disrespect.”

Mollified, Gale levered another cartridge into the chamber. The spent casing ejected and clanged against the rocks.

John ran in a zigzag pattern toward the laboratory, his feet moving very fast in small, ground-eating steps.

He heard the shots from Gale’s rifle and saw the Navajo escape injury. He knew there could be dozens of braves on that long slope up to the mesa. Any one of them could pick him off before he reached the lab. And there could be others just outside the lab, waiting for him.

He reached the back of the building and stopped, breathing hard. He looked back at the line of tailings, the carbon ore glistening in the sun, and could see the dark shapes of Gale’s and Ben’s heads, the snouts of their rifles. He raised a hand to let them know he was all right. Then he began to slide around to the sidewall of the building. He stepped slow and soft, so as to be almost noiseless.

His temples throbbed with his rapid heartbeat, and something curdled in his stomach, a tangle of nerves that had begun to spark with the first electric shoots of fear. He forced himself to take deep breaths, to quell the rising anxiety he felt at being in a place where he could not see his enemy, a place where the odds were greatly against him. The Navajo were experts at hiding in plain sight. They could be all around him, like black cats at night, ready to spring on him and tear him to bits.

John waited, listening. He counted the seconds in his mind. He heard nothing.

Then he drew his pistol and stepped around the corner of the building, his thumb on the hammer of the Colt.

A great sense of relief coursed through his senses as he looked down the wall toward the door and saw nobody there.

He paced off the steps to the door in his mind. Eight, he figured, if he stretched his stride. He took the first step, waited, then took another. His palm was

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