By Joanna
Chapter VII
Revelations
The scream that split the night was undoubtedly Lou's, but Kid had never heard such a sound erupt from her. He stumbled forward and almost tumbled down the same embankment he'd just heard her go over in his hurry to get to her. Common sense told him falling down the hillside too wasn't any way to help her, but the scream brought chills to his spine. It was filled with absolute terror and panic.
"Lou!" He screamed down into the darkness, while he heard Jimmy and Buck cursing and trying to relight the torch so they could help her. The scream echoed and he couldn't even be sure exactly where it came from.
"Kid! It's got me!" Lou shrieked back still fighting the solid figure in the darkness with the death hold on her hand. Suddenly she felt her hand being lifted, toward what she could only assume was her attacker's head. She screamed shrilly again, trying to yank back, sure her hand was about to be devoured or cut off.
Then she felt something under her fingers. A round skull, void of a single hair, and covered with a piece of cloth.
Ike.
With a half-sob and a sigh of relief, Lou hurled herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and clinging tightly to his middle. Then, thinking the better of it, she pushed herself back and smacked him firmly in the chest.
"Damn it Ike, you nearly scared me to death!" she hissed at him, "You could have let me know it was you sooner."
Lou guessed it was probably better she couldn't see the gesture she heard Ike make in the darkness.
At the sudden, eerie silence below, seconds after the loudest scream yet, Kid nearly went out of his mind, as did the others.
"Lou!" They screamed as one and finally with a clacking sound of a rock hitting another rock there was blinding light from the torch. Their eyes, already accustomed to the blackness, were stung by the light, and they blinked rapidly.
"Lou?" Kid screamed again, "Where are you?"
"I'm down here! I'm okay, it's Ike!" Lou's voice called back with relief when she saw the sudden, single light up on the ridge. She realized she fell about fifteen feet. She turned to make sure Ike was really Ike and he glared at her, touching his lip tenderly.
"Did you fall down the embankment too?" Lou wondered.
Ike pressed his lips firmly together and nodded, indicating that when she fell, her foot tripped him, knocking him down as well.
"Oh, sorry." Lou said weakly, and suddenly put her hand on his arm, "Are they still after us?"
The boys on the hill seemed to wonder the same thing, because silence fell on both areas, as they waited. The eerie hum was gone, and there was no sign of any movement behind them.
"Can you two make it back up here?" Jimmy called down, holding the torch and trying to light them a path.
"I guess we'd better," Lou replied simply and taking Ike's hand, they began the climb up the hill.
"What now?" Cody wondered after they helped pull the panting Ike and Lou up the last few feet of the climb. Lou brushed the snow from herself and picked up her saddlebags.
"Well, we have to go back eventually. The horses are back there, and so are our saddles," Noah said logically.
"I am not going back there," Lou insisted, shaking her head. Jimmy and Cody looked inclined to agree.
"Noah's right. We have no choice. We can't go on without the horses. Maybe they'll be gone," Kid nodded.
"What are they?" Jimmy wondered, "I've never seen anything like that in my life. I thought ghosts would be white…but these things were gray."
Everyone looked to Buck who shrugged, "I believe in Spirits. I've never been chased by them before."
"We'll we're not going to find out sitting around here," Noah muttered and picking up his saddlebags he started back through the dense brush they broke through.
"Think we'll find our way back? We must have run at least half a mile or more," Kid pointed out.
"Well, we weren't real concerned with covering our tracks, so I think we'll be alright," Buck answered sardonically, taking the torch from Jimmy. He stepped to the front of the line as they started walking back to their campsite, unsure of what they would find there, and not looking forward to finding out.
Lou conveniently hid herself toward the back of the line, figuring that she could get away by the time the gray ghosts got Buck, Kid, Noah, Ike, and Jimmy. Only she and Cody would be left if such an event occurred, and she was confident she could outrun the pigeon-toed rider.
Her heart was still beating unnaturally fast, but she was getting used to that on this trip. Her knees too, were slightly boneless from the wild flight through the trees then the encounter with Ike, but the slower, solid presence of her friends helped her calm down. As long as they stuck together things would be okay, she felt sure.
It took them much longer to trudge back through the snow the distance they covered in only minutes before. Lou knew they must be getting close when every boy in front of her slowed his stride and leaned forward to creep on the balls of their feet lightly through the snow. In the dim light of the torch, Lou could see the scattered tracks going in the opposite direction. She was no tracker, but she could only pick out seven pairs. Whatever it was either didn't leave footprints or didn't follow them this far.
"It looks like it's clear," Buck murmured and stepped out of the protective cover of the trees toward the campsite.
"Oh no," Kid's low groan was full of regret.
"What?" Cody called quickly.
Similar groans erupted from Jimmy, Noah, and Buck.
"The horses are gone," Jimmy muttered from his place in the snow where he stood, the bridge of his nose pinched in his thumb and forefinger.
"Spirits don't steal horses," Noah muttered angrily, stomping over to the low burning campfire.
Buck, from the other side of the camp, straightened from where he'd been studying the snow, "They also don't leave boot prints."
"So what are you saying?" Lou wondered, "That we didn't all see those gray ghosts?"
Kid shook his head, and kicked his saddle in frustration, "We saw something gray." He bent down to pick up a piece of paper carefully inserted into the pommel of his saddle.
He held it up and the others walked over for a closer look, sensing that the answer to their mystery lied within his hands.
They groaned at their own stupidity as one. Kid held the poster announcing the bounty on Satan. The same one the bounty hunters they'd encountered in the stable in Trail's End showed them.
"How did they do it though?" Cody wondered.
Kid, with a grim face, reached down and held up his own standard bedroll blanket. It was a medium shade of gray…enough to stand out of blackness eerily, and cover a man from head to toe, transforming him into a drifting, shapeless object.
"But they were so quiet," Lou protested.
"They are hunters, they have moccasins," Buck supplied.
"And the humming?" Jimmy wondered.
In illustration, Noah pressed his lips together and began a low, throaty hum almost identical to the one they'd heard before.
"We're such a bunch of damn fools!" Jimmy shrieked suddenly, kicking the snow and sending it flying, and finding that inadequate given his frustration, "They are all sitting around with our horses, laughing at us! Those no-good…"
He continued on his tirade, kicking up snow and using progressively worse language until Kid snapped at him, "Jimmy! That ain't going to help!"
"And what is Kid? You want to just go back in time and not be a bunch of yella-bellied idiots this time? Cause that's the only thing that would help! What are we gonna do? We're out here with no horses, seven saddles, and enough food to last us maybe three days, since they took the provisions too!"
"Jimmy, calm down!" Lou snapped, "you're giving me a head ache. We have got to think."
"What would you like to think about Lou?" Jimmy wondered, "About how we're gonna freeze to death, or how we're gonna starve? We'll probably turn into cannibals before this is all over, just like that Donner party. We ain't even got any horses to eat!" Jimmy screeched the last few words, bouncing them off the walls of the mountain. Silence answered him after the echoes died down, taunting them all, reminding them the horse thieves were long gone.
"Jimmy," Buck began in a low tone, "If you bring an Indian war party down on us, we ain't gonna have the chance to freeze or starve."
Jimmy stalked away from all of them, looking down at the clear tracks in the snow with eyes that should have melted it completely.
After he was gone, Kid lowered his voice and addressed the others, "I hate to say this, but he ain't too far from the truth if we don't do something."
"Well, we'll just have to get the horses back," Cody answered logically.
"That's brilliant Cody, but we're on foot, and they are on horseback."
"So we don't have any time to waste. I say we drag our saddles to cover, carry everything we'll need, and go after them," Cody proposed, "They'll make camp tonight. We might even catch them then."
"And when we find them?" Noah humored him.
"We give them a taste of their own medicine," Cody's smile curled at the corners, giving him an evil countenance, with the fire flickering over his features and his eyes dancing with visions of a scheme.
"Cody, if you think they're gonna be worried if we go running at them with our blankets, you are out of your mind. Even if they hadn't just done the same to us, I doubt they'd be as foolish as we were," Kid pointed out.
Cody's smile only widened, "Oh, don't worry. My plan is much better than theirs. I know it will work."
"That's what scares me," Noah muttered.
"Anyone got any other ideas?" Lou wondered with a grimace, looking around the faces of the others. When they all stared sheepishly at their toes, Lou sighed. "Well, I guess we better start walking. We're gonna need the hours before sun-up."
With sighs of frustration, they stuffed their saddlebags for what could end up being several days away from camp. Noah and Buck worked on dragging the saddles out of the clearing and covering them with extra ponchos, then with greenery and snow. They could only hope no one would find and take them.
They began trudging through the snow in sullen silence, with only two torches to light their way through the thick trees. No one spoke, although many glares were cast from one rider to the other. It wasn't anger at each other, but at themselves. They knew better than to abandon their gear and their horses, but in a moment of terror they'd forgotten everything Teaspoon ever taught them. They weren't looking forward to telling him they had not only failed to recover the stolen horses but lost theirs as well.
"You think that Medicine Man earlier was in on it?" Kid asked some time later, when the wind had burned their cheeks raw, and they were shivering as much as walking. Talking was the only thing he could think of to keep his lips from freezing together.
"I don't think so," Buck shook his head, "But I imagine the trackers ran across him, and used his warning to their advantage."
"How did they find us anyway?" Lou muttered, "I thought they went another way."
"If you want my opinion, they been following us from day one. They knew we were riders and they knew we would know the land. They waited for us to head out, and tracked us the whole time. That's why we kept feeling we were being followed," Jimmy muttered.
"He's probably right," Noah muttered, "And we played right into their hands."
"Some first classed fools," Lou agreed.
Silence resumed as they marched on in a nearly single file line through the night. Lou thought they must be nearing dawn, but the sky remained as dark as ever.
Finally, when she thought they couldn't walk any more, the line slowed and fanned out. She crept toward the front of the line and crouched between Buck and Cody. For a moment they watched the campsite down below.
Kid narrowed his eyes when he spotted Katy, already fitted with one of the men's saddles.
"We need to move fast. Dawn will be here soon," Buck whispered, "If they ride off now, we'll never catch up to them again."
"Well, Cody, what's your big plan?" Jimmy wondered after they figured out where everyone was positioned around the fire, "There's fourteen of them and seven of us."
"Only six. One of us is going to be a diversion."
"A diversion. How?" Kid wondered.
"I figure one of us has to run down there and act like they've seen something scary, get them to wake up."
"Cody, they've seen all of us. And there's no way they are going to be stupid enough to believe any of us now!" Noah growled.
"No. Not one of us," Cody smiled, the corners curling in the smile that meant trouble for all of them. He reached into his own saddlebags and pulled out Lou's pink and white dress.
"Where did you get that!" Lou snapped, grabbing for it.
"I saw you were going to leave it behind, and knew we needed it. It's the only way. They won't know what to think of a woman bursting into their camp. You can go in there screaming and yelling and acting like something's attacked your husband. In the confusion, we'll surround them and come out."
"That might work. They've obviously visited the medicine man too. Once they hear Lou, they'll think the spirits are after them for sure," Noah pointed out.
"What if it doesn't work? What if they get Lou?" Kid wondered, ignoring the glare from the party in question.
"Nothing will happen! They've got no reason. They'll be waking out of a dead sleep, and we're alert. It's the only way we're going to get past the guards and get the horses without a fight. We need a gun within them, as well as around them."
Lou looked around and saw the agreement on the boys faces and felt dread eating at her.
"No, I won't do this, it's the stupidest plan I've ever heard of."
"You won't?" Cody wondered, raising an eyebrow.
"I won't," Lou growled back, but seeing the reckless light in his eyes, she knew it wasn't going to be that easy.
To be continued...Chapter Eight
Copyright 1998-This work is not to be reproduced without the permission of the author
