White Lightning by Lyle Brandt

Author:Lyle Brandt [Brandt, Lyle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780425259108
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

11

A decent wagon road led north from Stateline over flat, clear land, aimed more or less toward Garnett, Kansas City, and the border with Missouri. Naylor and Slade weren’t traveling that far, however. When they reached a Y fork in the road, about four miles from town, they veered off to the west and slowed their pace. Another half mile on, they stopped and Slade took out his spyglass, peering farther down the track. He saw the kind of gate some ranchers liked to put up at the entrance to their property, even without a fence or wall attached to it. Tall timbers with a crossbar at the top, and standing proud atop that bar, a rocking R.

“That’s it,” he said. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Naylor replied.

They had talked about the best approach, deciding they should play a stealthy hand. Approach Rafferty’s spread as unobtrusively as possible and have a look around. If they were intercepted on the way, it was a simple matter to explain that they’d come out to see the boss and might have wandered off the beaten track by accident. It might be thin, and Naylor had expressed concern over the possibility they’d both be shot for trespassing, but the alternative—riding direct to Rafferty’s front door—promised to yield nothing.

Hedging his bets, Slade had prepared his two long guns for rapid action, each one with a live round in its chamber and the hammers down, requiring only pressure from his thumb to cock them. Any challenge from a distance, he could answer with his rifle. Closer in, he had the shotgun and his Colt.

Assuming that the first shots didn’t take him down.

They turned off-road and passed the gate, two hundred yards northward. Slade could track the road from that distance, ride parallel and watch for any traffic heading back toward Stateline, hopefully in time to keep from being spotted. It was risky here, with so much open land. The nearest halfway decent cover Slade could see lay north and farther west, a wooded rise at least three-quarters of a mile away.

Then, there was corn.

A sea of it, it seemed, stretching away to the horizon, leafy stalks approaching seven feet in height, marching in rows that stood about three feet apart. Slade paused with Naylor at the edge of it, imagining how early pioneers had felt upon encountering a trackless forest, but the maze before them was man-made.

“Seems like the rows run more or less in the direction of the road,” Naylor observed.

“Let’s hope so,” Slade replied.

“We doing it?”

Slade nodded, said, “We’re doing it,” and nudged his roan into the rustling vastness of the field.

They followed two parallel rows, green stalks with good-sized tasseled ears of corn brushing against their legs and horses’ flanks. The field smelled dusty, making Slade’s nose twitch. He tried to watch the road, past Naylor riding to his right, imagining what they might look like to a passerby, their disembodied heads bobbing along above the stalks. The very opposite of headless horsemen, something that a drunk might see and blather to his friends about.

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