Joe gasped as he heard the hooves.
No...NO!
He pushed himself into a slow jog, tears streaming down his dirty face, but he didn't make a sound.
He heard heavy footsteps strutting across the yard.
He pushed harder. His jog turned into a stumbling run.
The pain was so intense...
Don't think about it.
He told himself strongly. As he stumbled on, not daring to look back, he heard a door creak open, then slam shut. The noise echoed through the trees like gunfire. Joe clenched his teeth and kept going, waiting for the inevitable...
Sure enough, within a minute of the door slamming, he heard a roar of anger followed by a crash as the figure exited the cabin.
Joe stopped a moment and looked behind him. What he saw made his chest feel tight. As he had run, he hadn't paid any attention to the trail he had been leaving behind. Blood lined the ground, leaving a trail that a child could follow.
He racked his foggy brain for anything that might help him.
He took off the remains of hiis scraggly shirt and tied it as tight as he could stand around his waist so that it would at least slow down the drip of blood to the ground. When that was complete, he looked wildly around, gasping as he became lightheaded from the movement.
There was a bush a few paces back.
He stepped back slowly, making sure he trod on his already existing footprints until he reached the shrubbery, then taking a deep, steady breath, he dove as far as he could behind it. His vision blurred as he hit the ground, and a wave of nausea nearly overwhelmed him.
Meanwhile the footsteps were sounding closer.
and closer.
and closer...
Clay Parker sat on his horse, riding back to the shack that he and Mason Gray had been saying at for the past two weeks.
Cursing softly under his breath at that idiot Mason, he took his hat off and wiped the thin layer of sweat off his face, then put the hat back on his head.
He could see the yard up ahead and sped his steed up a little. He was eager to get out of the hot sun.
At the sight of a familiar dark brown horse tied to the post outside the door, he sighed deeply. He didn't want to confront Mason about the boy, because he knew the big man wouldn't budge, and he would probably end up in a rage which could very possibly end in one or more fatalities.
"Ugh. Damn lunatic..." he muttered, running his hand down his face. But he stopped half-way. There were small footprints leading across the yard, intermittently spattered with drops of blood.
"SHI-" he jumped off his horse and hurried into the trees, following the footprints.
BLAM!
He stumbled as a gunshot was heard in the distance, then sprinted after the noise.
"Shit shit shit shit shit!" and he vanished into the foliage.
Joe flinched as the stranger shot his pistol into the air, trying to scare Joe out into the open. He waited with baited breath as his vision cleared and the nausea passed.
Meanwhile the footsteps were getting closer...
and closer...
By pure luck, there happened to be a hole hidden under the bush he was hiding behind.
He could hear the leaves crunching under the stranger's feet.
He shuffled down the hole as quietly as he could feet first, pulled the branches over the opening so it was practically invisible to anyone just walking by.
He would be safe if he could get farther back.
So, biting his lip to keep it from quivering and to hold back any whimper that might try and escape, he slid backward down the hole.
"Come out kid, I aint gonna hurt you, you heard Mason. He won't let me touch you." Mason Gray stumbled loudly through the brush of the forest.
He chuckled drunkenly and waved his gun out in front of him. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." He cooed in a sing-song voice.
"Mason! Damn You! What the hell is going on? Get over here! Now!" The voice of Clay drifted through the trees.
"Not now, pal." Mason called back, peering through bushes and around trees.
"Yes, now, you overgrown drunken bastard!"
Joe took advantage of the muffled shouting match and slid backwards down what turned out to be a small tunnel. He was amazed at how far back it went.
Was it getting wider?
It was.
The tunnel was getting wider and wider so soon Joe was able to crawl backwards.
He paused a moment, panting, and listened until he was sure that the shouting match was still going on.
He gave a muffled cry of surprise as the tunnel he was in dropped out and he fell several feet to the ground, where he lay still.
Almost as if he were dead.
Above the ground, the voices raged on.
"You idiot!" Clay screamed into Masons face. "What d'you mean you lost him!"
Mason was turning redder by the second.
"I told you to watch him! That includes STAYING IN THE CABIN AND WATCHING HIM! But nooo! You go and get drunk off your-"
WHAM!
Mason punched Clay hard across the face, sending him sprawling.
He lay there a few seconds, flabbergasted, then got to his feet and tackled Mason, and the two men rolled across the ground, punching, kicking, biting, and scratching.
Slowly, achingly, Joe's eyes flickered open.
He sat up, slowly, and leaned tiredly against the wall behind him.
He knew something was wrong when he wasn't as sore as he'd expeced. In act, he had very little trouble sitting up at all...
He shook his head slightly, and the dizziness came.
He waited for it to clear, and when it did, he took a look around the room he was in.
He gasped at what he saw.
A thin beam of sunlight drifted down from the tunnel about seven feet above his head, illuminating a chamber about the size of the dining room at the Ponderosa. There, laying on the ground in front of Joe in several large piles...
Clay lay on the ground, unconscious, blood dripping from a cut above his eye, and several bruises covering his features.
Mason stood nearby, standing tall, though also looking worse for wear. He cracked his bloody knuckles, then walked on, trying to find the boy's footprints again.
He found them after a few minutes, and followed them deeper into the forest.
He stopped abruptly after about a quarter mile, however.
The trail stopped.
"What the hell?" He mumbled, running a sweaty and blood-stained hand down his face.
He looked around and noticed where he was.
"Oh no. Oh no, he better not have-" He stumbled back a few steps and practically ripped a random bush out of the ground, exposing a thin hole in the ground. Small enough for a small boy to fit in. There were several spots of blood dotting the ground, and the dirt was turned up.
"Oh hell no..."
...were hundreds of bars of gold, surrounded by even more dynamite...