Unidentified by McBride Michael

Author:McBride, Michael [McBride, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DarkFuse
Published: 2017-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

July 26th

40 Years Ago

“Quiet down, would you?” Eric whispered. “My dad will kill me if he finds out what we’re doing.”

“Your old man’s passed out drunk,” Bruce said. “You could lead a marching band through your house and still not wake him.”

“You don’t know him. He always finds out.”

“Don’t worry,” Wyatt said. “He’ll thank us for it in the morning.”

“Thank us for taking his guns? You’re kidding, right?”

“No, man. For taking care of whatever killed his cattle.”

Wyatt’s flashlight beam slashed through the mote-infested darkness until it reflected from something metallic buried in the hay.

Karl shined his light onto it and tossed aside the dry straw until he revealed a red-and-black checked blanket wrapped around a pair of shotguns. They were older models with weathered stocks that had belonged to Eric’s grandfather, but still found occasional use as rentals for the hunters who drove up from Denver for pheasant and prairie chicken seasons and paid good money to hunt the harvested cornrows.

“You’d better be careful with them. If anything happens to them—”

“We know.” Bruce hefted one from the stack and sighted down the barrel. It was too long for him by a good six inches. “Your old man will kill you.”

“We’ll take excellent care of them,” Val said.

Hers had been the sole voice of reason. While she could easily shoot as well as any of them, she objected to the idea of crawling down into a wild animal’s den with weapons designed for use at a distance and in wide-open spaces. She also took exception to the idea of slaughtering any animal without at least knowing what it was first. Her participation was largely supervisory. She intended to make sure none of them blew their fool heads off or got carved to pieces by a mountain lion.

Karl selected an A.H. Fox Sterlingworth 20 gauge and seated it against his shoulder. There was no rubber on the butt to cushion the kick and he was going to have to crack it open after every shot to reload the barrel, but he didn’t anticipate needing more than one shot. After all, shooting an animal they guessed was roughly the size of a German shepherd wasn’t nearly as hard as hitting something as small as a dove in flight, especially not with these old guns that didn’t have any kind of choke on the end of the barrel to tighten the pattern of lead. They were designed to fire a cloud of pellets that could cut through darn near anything like an airplane propeller.

The awesome potential of the shotgun made what they prepared to do feel real for the first time. His father would strangle him if he ever found out. As it was, his dad had been too angry to dish out his punishment from the night before and had elected instead to pray on it overnight, which always seemed to make things worse. And yet something about this felt important. What he’d felt down there, watching him from behind the cover of the roots…

The mere thought of it caused him to shiver.

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