Taos Lightning by Johnny D. Boggs

Author:Johnny D. Boggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2018-05-15T20:42:28+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

The Trace is a winding road through dense forests, and I can’t say it’s wide. It’s almost like we’re riding through a cañon. Sometimes we can ride at a good lope, but not for long. Bugs are thick. The wind don’t blow. For September, it’s real hot and sticky.

Then we ain’t riding nowhere. A bearded man wearing a straw hat stands in the center of the road, and he’s aiming this long rifle right at us.

“Pay the toll, or pay the troll,” he says. “Either way, you pay me.” Then he laughs.

Crazy as a hatter, I think, but that long rifle is cocked, and the barrel and the front bead keep moving from Arena to me, back and forth.

The man wears overalls, only he ain’t got no shirt underneath them. His boots don’t match, and he’s missing most of his teeth. His eyes is sunk deep in his head. He’s lost most of the hair on his noggin, and he ain’t shaved in months, maybe years.

“This is a public road,” Arena tells him. “We have a right to pass.”

“None shall pass except those who pay the toll or pay the troll.” He seems to like that phrase. “Either way, you pay me. Five dollars.”

“You’re nothing but a highwayman,” Arena says.

I wish she’d shut up. That long rifle might be a flintlock, but it’s primed, and the cannon of a barrel can’t be no smaller than .69-caliber. If I had my druthers, I’d be somewhere on the Hillsboro Pike about now.

“I’m the toll keeper. I’m the troll. You must pay me … one way or the other.” He licks his lips with the longest, ugliest, most disgusting tongue I’ve ever seen.

“Tell you what,” he says, and swings the barrel of that flintlock at me.

It don’t waiver no more. It’s steady, and he’s got a firm hold on that long gun, and the stock is tight against his shoulder. “You may pass. She will pay me.”

The hairs on my neck rise and prickle. I feel my ears reddening.

“I don’t have five dollars,” I tell him, just to say something, but maybe that was the dumbest thing I could have said.

He licks his lips again. “The boys who rid through earlier, they said she’d be a-willin’. They say she’s got plenty of experience. That she ain’t all that particular. She looks fine. Real fine. You may pass, boy. She will pay the toll and the troll. And pay me good.”

“You son of a …” Arena stops herself.

Don’t matter, because now the old man’s eyes are flaming, and he’s turning that long rifle back in Arena’s direction.

Arena kicks her gelding into a lope. As the old coot’s finger starts to tighten on the trigger, I’m spurring Taos Lightning, reaching for my lariat, kicking free of the stirrups, and diving out of the saddle.

The long rifle roars. My left side feels like I’m back in that burning warehouse. We land in a heap, me and that crazy jasper, the Kentucky rifle, and the lariat I’ve swung at that fellow’s bearded face.

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