Chapter Eight

"You think he saw us?" Slim asked, his body pressed tightly to the ground with the grasses that stayed alive along the creek bank even in the summer's worst heat covering most of his face.

"No," Jess gave a nod toward Alamo and Traveler as he stood up, his hand coming up to his hairline to pull a loose blade of grass out of his disheveled locks, "but he saw the horses."

"Maybe he isn't the nosy type," Slim rose from the ground and replaced the hat on his head that had been whisked off the moment he had dropped. "He didn't exactly look like a man that would scamper out of his seat to check out a couple of loose horses getting a drink but leave it for the next person to come along and do."

"Looks can be deceiving," Jess said abruptly, starting to walk toward his mount.

"You think he was a real threat?" Slim gave a quick look over his shoulder, but the wagon and man that rode in it were gone.

"Everyone's a threat when you're on the run," Jess ran his hand up Traveler's nose and then turned to see Slim stepping into the creek, "that's why we're gonna ride. You all right, Mort?"

"Yeah," Mort's voice came from the opposite side of the creek, where he had lain flat along a short rock that had just hidden his frame. "Who was it do you think?"

"Probably just a local," Jess answered with a shrug, "but we can't be too careful. Sometimes they're some of the worst to run into."

"How do you mean, Jess?" Slim asked as he walked Mort to Alamo's side and then hoisted him on the animal's back.

"They ain't hungry for bounty money, just for some good, old-fashioned justice," Jess put his hand up by his neck. "Lynching style. And a mob can do what one can't do alone."

"You sure know how to paint a pretty picture," Slim said sarcastically as he put both hands to his hips. "You have anything else cheery to add?"

"Nope," Jess said, the lie sticking to his throat as he barely gave his head a shake. "Let's get going."

As Jess took the leadership position with his back toward his friends that followed, he ran a finger along the base of his neck and then reached up to give the stubble on his chin a scratch. Knowing from experience what a hanging rope felt like, Jess always could feel the sensation renewed when there was a threat of a noose close by, and at that very moment, it was as if it was tightening around his neck. But being a man that had been stung by multiple bullets in his life, maybe Jess should have been an expert on when a piece of lead was closing in, too. Because bullets often came screaming out of nowhere, there was no preparedness a body could take to gauge their arrival, yet at that moment, along with the neck-in-a-noose feeling, Jess could feel another presence threatening to penetrate his skin.

When Slim had thrown the sarcastic question his way, he didn't want to say it aloud, but Jess was becoming more convinced that they were about at the end of their line. They had skirted two bounty hunters that morning, but by now, considering the slow pace they needed to keep for Mort's sake, the pair should have discovered how they had made their slip and were back on their tail. And there had only been a brief mention of the actual gang that had started this mess in the first place. Where were they? Likely they weren't having tea and cookies with Mrs. Monroe, but were trying to stay ahead of her cracking whip to bring her captives back to her doorstep. There might not have been a man in sight, but in essence, they were surrounded.

"Something eating you, Jess?" Slim asked the question and it seemed to jump across the empty space between them and hit Jess on the back.

"Huh?" Jess barely tossed the return over his shoulder.

"I know we're in a tough spot," Slim shrugged as he flashed a small portion of teeth, "but you look like a bobcat's gnawing on your backend."

"Gotta pretty good growl to go with it," Jess answered, trying to soften the tension in his veins, but nothing was going to make it ease up, even if there was a member of the cat family hanging on his hind quarters. More specifically, a fuzzy kitten with a purr that could tug at a man's heartstrings couldn't even lessen the tightness wrapped across his body.

"Well, it's better than having a rattler in your hip pocket," Slim said, once more giving his face a glint with a smile, but the light couldn't hang on. "Right?"

"I dunno what's nestled against our hips," Jess stated glumly, "but I wish it were a forty-five instead. I reckon we're gonna be in need of them real quick."

"You see something, Jess?" Mort asked, turning his eyes from left to right, but the landscape appeared to be empty.

"No," the answer came with a solid shake of his head, "but they're out there. Behind us or before us, maybe all around us."

In truth, it really was behind and before, but those ahead of them were moving slightly off target to run right into the framed men on horseback, except they were about to get an assist from the other group. Coming up from the rear, the two bounty hunters reined in their mounts when their prey came in sight. They were at a good range for their rifles, with good vision, but the man seated at the front on the doubled up horse would be hard to get. The first shots would have to be for the man riding solo, which the bounty man on the left started focusing on, and the one taking the second position on horseback, the man on the right now had in his sights. Whoever would take down the third and final member might go undecided between the two hunters, but there was too much money at stake to argue about it now. There was much, too much at stake for all men involved.

The rifles were raised and two triggers were pulled, and one after the other, the victims fell to the ground, dead.

At the blast of the shots, Mort felt Slim's body leave the horse, and although there were too many emotions slamming into his chest to define them all, the survival instinct was screaming one of the loudest, telling him to go low, as another bullet should be sizzling his way. When Alamo stopped moving underneath him, with the target on his back unmistakably large, he was about to ignore the pain in his leg and launch to the ground, but there were two strong hands instead that eased him to be leveled with the earth. His eyes opened wide and a fist balled up tightly at his side, ready to take that fight that Jess had talked about all the way to his end, but it was a soft blue that met him first.

"Slim."

"You all right?" Slim asked as he hovered over Mort's frame.

"I guess so, but I thought…" Mort blinked his eyes repeatedly as he stared at Slim's non-bloodied body, but then a hard thump hit his chest as the worry lines furrowed deeply on his face. Before he could form the name on his lips, Slim was doing the searching for him.

"Jess?"

"I'm here, Slim," Jess crawled out of seemingly nowhere, pausing by Slim's side, the air working in and out of his lungs fairly heavily through his mouth, but not because he had been seared by a bullet's hot flame.

"Those shots," Mort sent a finger toward Slim and then at Jess, "I thought you both were wearing lead. Permanent. I could have sworn I heard the sound of bullets making impact."

"You did," Slim released a held in breath, "just not in us."

"Then who?" Mort asked, pulling himself higher off of the ground with Slim's outstretched hand to see what Jess' gaze was fixed upon.

"Those two bounty hunters went down," Jess gave the explanation with a frown. "Slim and I hit dirt, expecting the rest of the slugs in those rifles to come blazing our way, but no more were fired. I reckon it was just them hunters that were supposed to get it."

"But who pulled the triggers?" Mort shook his head, looking first at Jess who was still fixated on the ground where the blood was pooling, and then to Slim, who gave a small shrug. "Another bounty hunter not wanting to share our large prize?"

"I dunno," Jess answered, casting his serious expression for a moment in Mort's direction, "seems doubtful, but…"

"What is it, Jess?" Slim asked quickly when Jess' body suddenly went rigid.

"It's them," Jess' voice was edged in ice as he narrowed his eyes at the trio at the far tree line. "The fake us. They killed the bounty hunters."

"To get us back in her clutch?" Mort asked, his hand needing to find the wound on his leg as being upright made it throb even more.

"Probably," Slim answered, finding the group with his vision as he felt the heat rise in his chest. "But why aren't they advancing? We're wide open here. They can see us just as well as we can see them, so what's holding them back?"

"Maybe they're waiting for Mrs. Monroe," Mort suggested, searching the area around the men for a feminine presence. "She's probably got something better planned for us than what they'd do right about now. We should ride while we can."

"I'll get Alamo," Slim said with a step toward his mount.

"Wait," Jess turned abruptly and held his hand out to stop Slim from taking another step.

"What is it, Jess?" Slim asked, trying to see what lived behind Jess' intense shade of blue, but he wouldn't even begin to define what he saw.

"I dunno," Jess shook his head, his teeth pulling in his bottom lip, "but I hear something. It reminds me of a locomotive, but there ain't no train tracks for miles, and my neck, if feels like… Dad-gum!"

"I hear it, but what is it?" Mort slowly turned his head, and spilling around the side of a hill was an angry crowd of men, the shouts coming from their mouths blending as one until the wagons and horses that they rode on churned out a rumble that could have mimicked distant thunder. And they were all coming for them. "A lynch mob!"

"So that's why they stopped," Slim gave another glance toward the men that had killed the bounty hunters, but they were no longer in sight. "They couldn't take us for fear they'd get taken themselves."

"Yeah," Jess said, instinctively taking a position where his body blocked both Slim and Mort from the oncoming group of men, even if he wasn't carrying an iron of protection. "And now they're gonna sit back and watch the show. Dad-gum, if only I had a gun."

"I appreciate your stance, Jess, but you wouldn't have enough bullets," Mort's voice wavered between the sound of a father and a lawman as the group continued its rush toward them. "That's a mighty big crowd, Son. You'd get dropped before you could put a dent in their rage."

"We're bound to get dropped anyway," Slim sucked in a quick breath, "there's not a star among them."

"I'm still wearing mine," Mort said, his fingers rising to find the badge pinned to his vest. Even if every man coming upon them thought it was tarnished, Mort knew there was still power behind it. How he would release it, though, he wasn't quite so certain, because they were now out of time.

Surrounded by the mob, there was hardly a word that could be discerned, except the one that rose higher than the crowd itself. Lynch! More ropes than were necessary were hoisted in the air, but without anything tall and stout to tie the opposite end of the nooses with, they remained in the hands that held them. It was no use to try to explain that they were not the ones that the angry men sought, that they were innocent of the crimes written so foully about them, because in an enraged soul, nothing could stop its blind hatred. And that enraged soul was multiplied by the multitudes.

Slim was contained first, as his merit of being the brawn brought the instant constraints of several grasping hands, but before his limbs were fully restricted of their use, he managed to put a stout boot into two guts and tossed one man from his back to land in another squalling trio. Jess, his reputation already cut down without a gun on his hip, carried just as much fight as Slim possessed, but he was knocked down too soon to use it, and the first rope wrapped, in a fortunate gasp through Mort's lips, was around Jess' waist, not his neck. But he was pulled to the ground, his side hitting the dirt hard enough that a puff of dust curled upward, and then as Jess struggled against the pressure, he was roughly jerked forward to bounce across the rough ground to their desired destination.

Maybe it was because Mort was injured, but he was handled less roughly than his companions. Someone pushed him from behind, and then there was another body, and another, the pressure of multiple hands shoving him forward was almost carrying his weight so much that his leg barely needed to limp as he began to move. Where they were going was no mystery, as soon as the tree came into sight. It was a towering maple, large limbs jutting out in magnificent fashion, and the three main branches were already being prepared for a use that the resplendent piece of nature would have never believed possible at its birth.

Stopping at its base, the different versions of pain that Slim, Jess and Mort endured burned at its hottest, the noise from every throat grew louder, as the lust for their blood intensified in those that dominated them. Holding the title as killer and molester, it was Jess that took the swiftest piece of hunger for retribution that kept the mob advancing without forethought for their actions. Thrown into a saddle, the horse that was underneath him jolted only slightly under his weight, but it was enough for the rope that dug into his flesh around his waist to claw even deeper, but this wasn't the piece of rope that frightened him. A noose swung over the thickest branch and was pulled down to his head's level and then placed around his neck, the final tightening against his throat allowing for one final swallow before the restrictive hold took place.

Jess fought to keep his strength from falling away like the sweat droplets that cascaded down his cheeks. He had been there before, only with another mob, another tree, another rope, but the feelings that went with this hanging would feel nothing alike. It wasn't that he held no hope that someone in the crowd would possibly cut him down and not allow the lynching to go all the way, but it was a thought that felt even harsher. He wasn't alone. The rope around his neck, that sent a quiver all the way to his middle, made the sensation grow to its sickest level when Slim was given the same treatment that he had already endured. His Pard was going to hang right beside him.

Slim was barely conscious from a blow to the back of his skull as he was lifted into the saddle, the resistance that he had tried to keep going faded away when the noose stole the ease of air in and out of his lungs. He saw Jess through blurred eyes, blinking and blinking until his sight became clear, watching the fight boiling from Jess' bluest hues as not another part of his body could display it wrapped in rope. But then something suddenly switched, tenderness, and the suffering of a loss was viewed, and Slim's heart wept openly before them. His Pard was going to hang right beside him.