April 2012 BB Challenge…. This month we were told to use 5 out of 7 phrases, rather than words. I used all 7.

• Barkin’ at a knot: doing something useless; wasting your time trying something impossible
• Hair in the butter: a delicate situation
• Hobble your lip: shut up
• Nailed to the counter: proven a lie
• Pulling a kite: making a face
• Scarce as hen’s teeth: extremely rare or hard to find
• Velvet couch: cowboy’s bedroll

XxXxX

4

The wolf was in the line shack.

No, it wasn’t just one wolf; it was a whole pack of them. How had they gotten in? Joe had set the latch. He knew he’d set the latch. Hadn’t he?

The walls rattled around him, shaken by a wind that shrieked and howled through every crack.

Or maybe it wasn’t the wind howling. Maybe it was the wolves. They were there…a whole pack of wolves was right there beside Joe, surrounding him. He would never be able to fight them all off.

He had to lie still. Maybe if he held himself completely still, they wouldn’t attack. But he was so cold…he couldn’t stop shivering.

Adam! he called out silently. Shoot it, Adam.

But Adam wasn’t there, was he? That had been another time, another place. And Joe hadn’t been so cold then. He’d been hot, so hot he couldn’t think straight.

He was thinking straight now, though. He could feel them all around him. Two began nudging him with their muzzles, trying to turn him to his back.

No, Joe pleaded silently. Can’t…can’t show them my throat. Can’t….

One started clawing at his arm. Red fire flared from the wound.

Adam! He struggled to keep the shout from escaping, almost seeming to strangle himself with the way his efforts constricted his throat. Hoss!

But Joe knew he was on his own. It would be up to him to fight them off, to get away. Somehow, he had to find the strength. And then he would have to be fast. Too fast. Impossibly fast. They would be on him in an instant, every last one of them. They would be on him just as soon as he opened his eyes.

Pa!

Joe wanted to pray, but he knew no prayer would be strong enough. No one would come to save him. If he were to pray, the only thing he could truly ask for was courage.  And yet…that would mean giving up. He wasn’t ready to give up. As hopeless as it was, he just wasn’t ready.

He should have realized facing the inevitable had nothing to do with being ready. Before he could steel himself, the plank walls rattled in a wind so fierce it shrieked across Joe with fingers of ice that shook him right to his bones…or maybe it was his bones that had rattled. He shivered in a violent spasm that drew a rumbling growl from one of the wolves. Joe could feel its hot breath on his face. It smelled of…moonshine?

XxXxX

Adam had never experienced a colder, wetter, more miserable ride; and he couldn’t blame it all on the weather. He kept hearing Dusty’s last breath in the wind. Worse, as rain changed to ice and then to snow, he could not shake the image his thoughts painted of his youngest brother lying broken on the ground, his body half submerged in mud and then frozen in place, the snow thickening around him…covering him…burying him.

Every mile made the image clearer, driving more ice into Adam’s already chilled heart. He wanted to curse, to argue, to rant…but what was the use? Ranting against the snow would not stop it from falling. And there was no one with whom he could argue, except maybe God.

He’d argued enough with God in his life to know it never did any good.

The wind brought a different sound to Adam then. He could swear he heard not only Dusty’s dying breath, but his living voice. “Just barkin’ at a knot is what you’d be doin’. No point to it. Knot’ll still be there. All you’ll do is bark yerself hoarse.”

Adam felt a bitter smile forming, one that would have had Dusty asking why he was pulling a kite. But he wasn’t the only one making faces. To his right, he could see fear contorting Hoss’s brow. To his left, worry was etching lines into Roy Coffee’s forehead deeper than his age had ever shown. Adam could almost believe Dusty McGraw was riding the wind to whisper his prairie wisdom at each and every one of them.

But Dusty was dead. And it was more than likely Little Joe was dead, too. They would all be fools to think otherwise. Dusty had ridden in on Joe’s horse; that meant Joe had been alone, on foot, chased as much by an early spring storm that had caught the whole territory by surprise, as by a group of men out for vengeance, men who might as well be monsters…if any of what Dusty had said could be trusted.

Adam had a hard time believing Dusty McGraw would have said anything that wasn’t true. Dusty had proven long ago to be more reliable than just about anyone Adam had ever known.  Even with his thoughts addled by pain and cold, if Dusty McGraw had said men were after Joe, Adam had to believe it was true.

“Don’t do no one no good to go stringin’ a whizzer,” Dusty had said often enough. Most cowboys like tall tales, and the taller, the better, but not Dusty. Stretching the truth, even for the sake of telling a good story had no business in Dusty’s life. He would call out any man for saying things that didn’t quite measure up to reality, though his sort of showdown never involved guns. Instead, he would aim to prove the lie, and since no story-teller ever liked to be nailed to the counter, it didn’t take long for the rest of the ranch hands to stop telling stories when Dusty was around.

They’d never come to hate him for it, though. Dusty was a hard man to hate. His matter-of-fact manner just kept men honest…or at least, more honest than they might otherwise be. That was one reason why Adam had always preferred it whenever Little Joe was paired up with Dusty for the day. The man was a good influence on Adam’s youngest brother. Hoss and Pa knew it, too. They all breathed easier when Dusty was with Joe.

At least, they used to.

Now, Adam wasn’t sure he could breathe at all.

XxXxX

The wind grew stronger as they climbed, driving snow and ice so brutally against them it became hard to breathe. Adam pulled his neckerchief over his nose and mouth, and noticed Hoss and Roy doing the same. His eyes burned with cold crystals of fire, but there was nothing to be done for that.

“We got to stop, boys!” Roy shouted.

Though the sheriff was right next to him, Adam could barely hear his words.

“Line shack’s just up yonder!” Hoss hollered from Adam’s other side.

Adam doubted his brother had heard the sheriff. Hoss had simply shared Roy’s good sense. They all knew they had reached their limit. They wouldn’t find anyone or anything in this storm. They were more likely to freeze to death themselves. Adam’s coat had been fairly well soaked through by the time icy rain had changed over to snow; now it was stiff and heavy, half frozen. Roy and Hoss were both right. They had to stop. The line shack would at least let them dry out some.

Adam squinted through the snow, trying to see past the trees ahead. Despite the hour, the whiteness of the storm cast an ethereal glow all around them. It was a haunting sort of glow, the kind sure to bring along its share of ghosts, lighting up the woods almost as though it was day—an other-worldy, ghostly, gray day—rather than the deepest part of the night.

Again, Adam’s thoughts turned to Dusty. “Weather like this,” his ghost seemed to howl with the wind, “sure makes a man want to curl up into his velvet couch.”

Again, Adam saw the image of Joe curled up into the ground, covered by a blanket of snow.

“Smoke!” Hoss shouted then. “See that?” When he slapped Adam’s arm in emphasis, Adam was too numb to feel it. “It’s chimney smoke!”

It was, Adam realized. It was smoke, a steady stream of darker gray twisting upward through the white of the snow and the lighter gray of the glow it cast.

“It’s Joe!” Hoss whooped in excitement. “He made it, Adam! He made it!”

Adam could see his brother kick his horse’s flanks, but it was a wasted effort. Even if it wanted to, that horse wasn’t moving any faster against the raw force of the wind and the layers of snow already coating the icy ground. They had no choice but to trudge wearily, slowly forward.

“I’m feelin’ warmer already!” Hoss called out, gazing up at that smoke like he had nothing to worry about except reaching that line shack. In no time at all he would be cozy as a toad under a cabbage leaf, as Dusty would say.

But when Dusty’s whispers in the wind blew Adam’s way they held a different message entirely. Joe hadn’t been the only person they had come up here to find. What if it wasn’t Joe in that line shack at all? They could very well be about to meet Dusty’s monsters.

“Careful, Adam,” Dusty’s voice wailed, “you already knowed this ride could end up bein’ dangerous as walkin’ quicksand over hell.”

Roy’s thoughts…perhaps influenced by Dusty’s whispers…must have taken the same course as Adam’s. When Roy’s hand grasped Adam’s other arm, he turned to see the sheriff pointing through the trees.

“Woo-hee!” Hoss shouted.

Adam grabbed his brother’s coat sleeve, as much to quiet him as to draw his attention to what the sheriff had discovered: horses. There was a string of horses secured to the hitching post in the lee side of the shack, crowding together under the extended roof to keep as far out of the snow as they could.

“Best hobble your lip, Hoss,” Dusty would have said. “Looks like we got some hair in the butter, now.”

Adam watched his brother’s smile spread out into a grimace, and knew he didn’t have to say anything at all. Hoss must have heard Dusty just fine.

And suddenly the icy wind felt even colder. Adam prayed Joe was in that shack, dreading the alternative. At the same time, he dreaded the very idea of Joe being trapped in there with men Dusty McGraw referred to as a pack of rabid wolves…

…Because if that’s what Dusty thought of them, then that’s exactly what they were.

XxXxX

Frigid wetness stole Joe’s breath and forced his eyes open. He found himself staring into hard, varicolored eyes while icy water dripped from his hair and slid beneath the collar of his shirt, eliciting shudders he could do nothing to control. He couldn’t even draw his arms to his chest for the scant warmth it might provide; his hands were locked in place at his back, his arms pulled tightly against the wooden slats in the chair where he found himself sitting. The position tugged brutally at the knife wound that had been left gaping and raw.

And he couldn’t even remember….

One moment he had been lying on the floor of the line shack, surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves. Now he was seated in a stiff chair, as wet as he’d been when he’d first come in from the icy rain, and surrounded by men, not wolves…although the eyes glaring down on him were almost more wolf-like than human. Part brown and part green, they were riddled with specs of amber that made them look almost feral.

“Was you done it; wasn’t it?” The voice behind those eyes spoke with a growling rumble, spewing out more alcohol than air.

Joe’s head spun in a wave of dizziness that made him feel as though he’d swallowed a whole bottle full of whiskey…or maybe…maybe a jug full of moonshine.

Jonas T. Schultz…. That was the moonshiner’s name, wasn’t it? Or…it had been his name. The man was dead now. He was dead because he had come at Joe with all the wildness of a rabid wolf. He’d thrown a knife, knocking Joe from his horse. And then….

Fire…fire had seared through Joe’s arm as the knife was pulled away. He’d lost his breath in the fall, the world gone dark…and then that fire…the fire had pulled Joe’s eyes open then as much as the icy water had just a moment ago…and the eyes he’d faced then were no different than the ones before him now…wild…feral.

“You killed ‘im.” The words smelled strong enough to knock a man out cold, just like…

…Jonas T. Schultz… He’d pulled the knife mercilessly from Joe’s arm, the action so forceful Joe could believe the blade had drawn bits of bone as well as the blood that had still been dripping from its edge as Jonas T. Schultz raised it up, crosswise above him…He’d been preparing for a backhanded slash, one that would drive that knife right into Joe’s throat.

There had been no time to think. Joe had gone for his gun on instinct. He’d fired before he even remembered aiming, his bullet catching Jonas T. Schultz in the hollow of his neck before the man’s knife could start its downward plunge.

“It was…,” Joe gasped, “him or me. I didn’t have a choice.”

The wolf’s eyes yellowed to a luminescence that emphasized the similar coloring in its teeth as the human animal before Joe now drew back his lips in a snarling sort of smile. “See there, Buck,” the creature growled without turning his eyes from Joe. “Told ya’ was this one what done it.”

He raised up one hand, and Joe was grateful to see it empty, eerily reminded of the position Jonas T. Schultz had taken with his knife. But as that hand was brought down in a backhanded slap that connected the man’s knuckles with Joe’s jaw, gratitude was forgotten in an instant. Joe’s head snapped sideways, momentum tipping his chair until someone grabbed his arm to keep him upright…thick fingers dug into his wound, pressing almost as deep as the blade on Jonas T. Schultz’s knife.

They wouldn’t even allow Joe the luxury of oblivion. Icy water was again thrown in his face.

“That was my pa you killed, boy.” Those yellow eyes burned like fire. “Now you’ve got hell to pay.”

Joe knew in that moment it was the devil himself he was facing. And he realized he was finally ready to pray for courage…not just to face the inevitable, but to endure it.

XxXxX

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