Chapter Sixty-four
Cody wasn’t hit, but he lost his balance and fell with a crash backwards through a tangle of driftwood, losing his .45. A limb slapped his forehead, and blood immediately covered his left eye.
The gunshots from the road told Cody that Ned and John were still in the fight. He thrashed in the dried wood, trapped like a fly in a spider web. Kendal leaped over the steep bank and landed on her feet halfway down the bank. Like someone running down a sand dune, she made two more long jumps until her shoes slapped hard on the sandstone.
She dropped to her knees from the momentum. Her pistol skittered away. Blood poured from her head wound. More welled from three pellet wounds in her back, but she was far from dead. With bullets and #4 shotgun pellets exploding in the sandstone all around her, Kendal regained her feet and staggered the open forty yards to the river with Hootie right behind.
He sank his teeth into her calf just as she reached the water’s edge. She fell onto all fours and the dog released his hold to get a better grip.
Kendal kicked free and regained her feet just as Top shouted from the bank. “Don’t you hurt my dog you bitch!”
Hootie was distracted by the boy’s voice and quit fighting long enough for Kendal to take two steps before she half-fell, half-plunged into the thick, fast current.
Cussing, Ned carefully slid down the bank and met Cody as he thrashed in the tangled limbs. John followed. He grabbed hold of Cody’s arm and gave a heave, yanking him free of the drift.
The blood covering Cody’s eye scared him. “Oh lordy, you shot!?”
“Naw, limb-slapped.” He saw a bullet hole in Ned’s shirt. “You hit!?”
Surprised, Ned glanced down. “Naw, just went through my shirt. Glad my belly only sticks out to the front.”
They rushed to the water’s edge where the furious dog barked and raced back and forth on the sandstone peninsula that prevented him from following Kendal.
She was in the strongest part of the current when a partially submerged tree swept past. Realizing a quick means of escape, she reached for the trunk and grabbed onto a broken limb. Her weight shifted the balance of the tree and it rolled in her direction. Like an iceberg, most of its mass was underwater. With a lazy spin, the limbs caught and dragged her below the surface.
The three men watched until the current swept the tree out of sight.
She never re-surfaced.
Chapter Sixty-five
Instead of the crop report on the radio a week later, the Beatles were singing that they wanted to hold someone’s hand. The phone rang seconds after everyone sat down for Thanksgiving dinner. As usual, Miss Becky suffered Ned’s glare and answered. She listened as she watched her family through the open door into the kitchen.
Ned sat in his usual place at the head of the table, facing the living room. To his right, Cody filled his plate. Beside her uncle, Pepper buttered a biscuit. Miss Becky’s plate was still empty at Ned’s left elbow. Across from his girl cousin, Top, his left arm in a cast, was eating a chicken leg. James and Ida Belle had their backs to the living room door. Cody’s laughing red-haired wife, Norma Fay, circled the table, filling jelly glasses with sweet tea from a forty-year-old crock pitcher.
Hootie lay under the table, patiently waiting for one of the kids to sneak him a bite.
Finally, Miss Becky put down the receiver. “Ned, it’s for you. It’s that Oklahoma game warden, Homer Williams.”
Mumbling to himself, Ned left his dinner and sat at the telephone table. “Hello!”
“You mad about something, Ned?”
“Only that my dinner is getting cold, Homer. What’s the matter?”
“Well, I thought you might want to come over here and meet me where you did the last time, beside Cody’s Sportsman’s Lounge. You won’t believe it, but we have Bill Caldwell dead to rights. He’s been caught netting in the river.”
“You don’t need me. That’s Oklahoma jurisdiction, not Texas.”
“I know that, but I figured you’d be interested to know that we have him because he caught a body in his net this time, and not stuck on empty trotline hooks.”
Ned sat down on the telephone table’s seat. “You know Jennings’ body was put there later, after Bill caught it in his net, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know you suspicioned it, just like I did. This time, though, I was watching him through my binoculars when he hauled up the net and saw the body. Get this Ned. He untangled it, drifted downriver to one of his trotlines, and hooked it on just like before. Then he went downstream to the Sportsman and called the sheriff’s office.”
Ned smiled. Now everything made sense. “Who’s body is it? Anyone we know?”
A chuckle came through the receiver. “As a matter of fact, Sheriff Matthews says it’s Kendal Bowden. I’ll see you at the river.”
Ned heard the click as Homer hung up the phone. He waited for a long moment. “Now Miss Whitney, I don’t want you telling that before me now, y’hear?”
He grinned when the old eavesdropper gasped and slammed down the phone.
Cody glanced up from his plate. “What was that, Ned?”
“Something I need to study on while we finish our dinner.” He rejoined the family at the table and half an hour later, nothing remained but dirty dishes. Cody, Ned, and the kids escaped the kitchen in a flurry of cup towels and flying aprons, and settled in front of the snowy television to watch the Oilers play a little football. Sprawled on the couch, Cody could tell Ned had something on his mind.
They sat through an entire quarter to let his dinner settle, until Ned couldn’t stand it any longer. He grunted to his feet and put on his felt hat. Shrugging on a coat, Ned pinned the little badge onto his shirt and picked up his holstered revolver from where it rested on top of the television.
“What for?”
“To watch the Oklahoma laws arrest Bill Caldwell for netting in the river.”
“Well, if that don’t beat all.” Cody stood with a sigh.
“That ain’t the half of it.”
As they opened the doors of Ned’s bullet-ridden Chevy sedan, a strong gust nearly snatched their Stetsons. A single snowflake struck his cheek and Cody shivered, but not from the chilly wind. It came from last night’s suddenly remembered dream of snow, woods, rivers, and Mexico.
Damn this family curse.
Author Note
Thank you for the reading this second book in the Red River series. These novels are largely fiction, but they all contain a few grains of truth gleaned from old stories and my own experiences. Chisum, as many of you know, is my version of the real Paris, Texas. Those who know the area recognize many landmarks, and might question a few changes, but they were necessary to advance the story line. No, there is no Cotton Exchange, and never was, but at one time the Speas Vinegar plant sat on that spot I described, directly across from a train depot on the south side of Paris. The block is in reality too small for the gigantic Exchange in this book, but that’s where fiction takes over from fact.
In addition, because this isn’t a history book, I have taken the liberty of compressing certain events and timelines within this mystery, specifically Cody Parker’s experiences in Vietnam. Though American troops were already involved there at the timing of this book, I believe “tunnel rats” were in their infancy.
Again, the characters in this story are the result of the author’s somewhat twisted imagination.
January 10, 2012
Reavis Z. Wortham
Frisco, Texas
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Table of Contents
Burrows
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Author Note
More from this Author
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