Love on the Line - Deeanne Gist [101]
In a dead elm to her right, a collection of barn swallows decorated its leafless branches like beading on a woman’s bodice. She’d first become acquainted with the steel-blue species while playing hide-and-seek in her father’s barn and tumbling about the hay in its rafters. As a result, swallows always called to mind happy hours filled with warmth and laughter.
As she waited for her thrasher to appear, grackles, scissortails, blackbirds, and wrens stopped in to say hello. With each visit, she recorded the time, place, species, behavior, and song in her journal.
And then she saw him, dipping in and out of the pecan, circling his territory with a tilting, uneven flight, and singing an aria which captivated and inspired. The thrasher repeated each phrase, as if to make certain she understood him.
I missed you I missed you . . . how are you how are you . . . sing with me sing with me . . .
Tempted as she was to whistle back, she didn’t dare. With a flutter of wings, he landed in the very top of the tree, noticeably perched, long tail working like one end of a seesaw. Viewing him through her opera glasses, she couldn’t help but smile at the elevated opinion he had of himself, his speckled white breast and rusty back as handsome as any coat and tails seen in the opulent ballrooms of society.
He didn’t make her wait long for the opening of his performance. Dropping her glasses, she scribbled the names of the birds he mimicked, tried to tally the number of couplets he sang over a thirty-minute period, and reveled in her front-row seat.
As she began to sketch his foot-long silhouette and long, long tail, a series of gunshots shattered their oasis. The thrasher cut off mid-note and launched from the branches, darting across the grove and out of sight.
Rapid gunshots sounded again.
Pop-pop . . . poppoppoppoppoppop.
Fury drove her toward the sound. Stupid, stupid hunters. How dare they desecrate God’s beauty with their accursed weapons? If they were after her birds, so help her, she just might turn a gun onto them and see how they liked it.
She ran through the thicket, opera glasses bouncing, scrub brush snagging her skirt, twigs slapping against her arms and pulling at her hair. Still she ran, following the sound, rage simmering in her veins. It wasn’t until the trees began to thin and a distant field came into view that thoughts of Prysborski’s accident began to temper her headlong rush.
What if the hunters weren’t aiming at the sky? What if they were pursuing game that roamed the earth? She’d purposely dressed to blend in with her environment so as not to scare or distract her birds. What if the men with guns mistook her brown form for something worthy of gutting and putting on a spit?
Another series of rapid shots bounced off her ears, making her jump. She took a deep breath, ready to call out when another thought stopped her. What if they weren’t hunters at all? It was well known the Comer Gang claimed Washington County as their home, and though she didn’t know exactly where they hid, she knew it had to be close. Especially after Frank Comer’s visit on Maifest Eve.
Her chest rose and fell, partly from exertion, partly from fear. She didn’t know what to do. If she crept away and they were hunters, she could very well get herself shot. But if she called out and they were outlaws . . . the repercussions didn’t bear thinking of.
Slowly, quietly, she set her journal on the ground, lifted her skirt, and crept forward. A twig snapped beneath her foot. Freezing, she scanned the area. No movement. No sound. She didn’t so much as shift until the next rush of shots.
The minute they erupted, she lifted her skirt with both hands and sprinted to a tree several yards in the distance, then hid behind it, waiting, waiting. Three times she made her dashes under the cover of gunfire until finally, she was close enough to see the field without exposing herself.
She peeked around the tree. There was only one man in the clearing. He set up a row of bottles on a sawhorse-like contraption, then headed