Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [64]
Jenkins dismounted and was raising his rifle to shoot.
Ulysses continued running, the trees that lined the clearing passing in a blur on either side. Lionel looked back just after Jenkins fired and heard the shot spiral overhead. Beatrice turned Ulysses toward a large fallen tree that even on its side looked to be about ten feet high. Another shot rang overhead, and Lionel saw Mr. Hawkins appear crouched on the top of a log straight ahead of them.
Mr. Hawkins leveled his heavy rifle on the rot of the fallen log and fired twice, both shots hurtling past Lionel, Beatrice, and their grandfather, then splintering a tree branch on the opposite end of the clearing just above Jenkins’s head.
“Now, I missed them first two on purpose! The next time I pull this trigger you best believe it’s gonna be different!” Hawkins shouted, the delayed thunder of his rifle rolling in echoes across the woods as if to emphasize his point.
Jenkins and the rest of the government men bolted for cover, and an eerie calm fell over the clearing. Ulysses continued into the safety of a cluster of rocks across the far end of the clearing opposite from Mr. Hawkins’s position. when they rounded the corner, Lionel was surprised to see Corn Poe and Tom Gunn hunkered down with their hands over their heads.
“They’re shootin’ at us!” Corn Poe exclaimed as though some of their party hadn’t figured it out yet.
Beatrice didn’t bother spending time alleviating Corn Poe’s concerns or commenting on his obvious claim. Before Ulysses even stopped, she dropped off the horse, and with their grandfather’s rifle in hand, scrambled up to the high point of the rocks.
Lionel could see Junebug lying on his back about fifty paces away from them behind the big fallen log, holding the Hawkins’s string of horses by the reins. Mr. Hawkins remained against the trunk with the heavy rifle sighted and aimed in the direction where Lionel had last seen Jenkins.
Mr. Hawkins turned, and with a wild look in his eye, shouted across their end of the clearing, “Y’all all right? They didn’t hurt ya, did they?”
Their grandfather waved as Lionel dropped from Ulysses’s back and into his arms.
“You okay, boy?” their grandfather said, looking over the welts from Jenkins’s whip.
Lionel answered by burying his head into his grandfather’s chest as random shots from the government’s guns continued to crack and whiz into and off of the rocks surrounding them.
“Now, just where in the hell did you get to?” was all Corn Poe could think to say.
When Lionel looked up to answer, he realized it was too late. Jenkins and the government men were on top of them.
Chapter Thirty-Three
HUNKERED DOWN • JENKINS’S HANDS AND HAWKINS’S ACCORD
JENKINS REACHED them first. He and Lumpkin had dismounted and continued on foot through the trees that skirted the clearing to the huddled rocks where they hid. Jenkins appeared from their blind side, and before anyone knew it, knocked their grandfather to the ground and turned, facing Ulysses and Lionel.
“I told ya to quit yer runnin’,” Jenkins said through clenched teeth. “Now ya gone and really made yerself some troubles.”
Jenkins inched forward as more soldiers emerged from the trees.
“Now, hand me the reins to that goddamned horse before I cut ya from guts to gullet,” he said, pulling the Frozen Man’s knife from his army belt.
Lionel noticed for the first time that a single bear claw curled around the hilt of the Frozen Man’s long, jagged blade. He looked from the knife to his grandfather, who, although back on his feet, stood staring into the barrel of Lumpkin’s rifle.
“Ya leave that boy alone,” Grandpa demanded. “This is a matter for the captain.”
“Well, the captain ain’t quite here, is he?” Jenkins said, inching closer. “And I’ve got a little score to settle with yer sister, don’t I, Li-o-nel? It is Li-o-nel ain’t it?”
Lionel looked down at the shiny, taut skin stretched and sutured across