Free Wish You Well by David Baldacci Page B

paused dramatically—“course, there’s the haunted well.”
    “A haunted well?” exclaimed Oz, who had just run up, Jeb at his heels.
    “Where?” asked Lou.
    “Come on now.”

    Captain Diamond and his company of infantry cleared the tree line and plunged across an open field of tall grass so fine and uniformly placed, it looked like combed hair. The wind was chilly, but they were much too excited to be bothered by that slight discomfort.
    “Where is it?” asked Lou, running beside Diamond.
    “Shhh! Getting close, so’s we got to be real quiet. Spooks round.”
    They kept moving forward. Suddenly Diamond called out, “Hit the ground!”
    They all dropped as though attached by taut rope.
    Oz said in a trembling voice, “What is it, Diamond?”
    Diamond hid a smile. “Thought mebbe I hear something, is all. Can’t never be too careful round spooks.” They all rose.
    “What y’all doing here?”
    The man had stepped from behind a stand of hickory trees, the shotgun in his right hand. Under the moonlight Lou could make out the glow of an evil pair of eyes staring dead at them. The three stood frozen as the fellow approached. Lou recognized him as the crazy man on the tractor recklessly flying down the mountain. He stopped in front of them and his mouth delivered a shot of chew spit near their feet.
    “Got no bizness round here,” the man said, as he lifted up the shotgun and rested the barrel on his left forearm such that the muzzle was pointed at them, his forefinger near the trigger.
    Diamond stepped forward. “Ain’t doing nuthin’, George Davis, ’cept running round, and ain’t no law agin that.”
    “You shet your mouth, Diamond Skinner, afore I put my fist to it.” He peered over at quaking Oz, who drew back and clutched his sister’s arm.
    “You ’em chillin Louisa take in. Got the crippled ma. Ain’tcha?” He spit again.
    Diamond said, “You ain’t got no bizness with ’em, so leave ’em be.”
    Davis moved closer to Oz. “Mountain cat round, boy,” he said, his voice low and taunting. And then he cried out, “You want it
git
you!” At the same time he said this, Davis feigned a lunge at Oz, who threw himself down and huddled in the high grass. Davis cackled wickedly at the terrified boy.
    Lou stood between her brother and the man. “You stay away from us!”
    “Gawd damn you, girl,” Davis said. “Telling a man what to do?” He looked at Diamond. “You on my land, boy.”
    “T’ain’t your land!” said Diamond, his hands making fists, his anxious gaze fixed on that shotgun. “Don’t belong nobody.”
    “Calling me a liar?” snapped Davis, in a fearsome voice.
    Then the scream came. It rose higher and higher until Lou figured the trees must surely topple from the force, or the rocks would work loose and slide down the mountain and maybe, with luck, crush their antagonist. Jeb came around growling, his hackles up. Davis stared off anxiously into the trees.
    “You got you a gun,” said Diamond, “then go git your old mountain cat. ’Cept mebbe you scared.”
    Davis’s gaze burned into the boy, but then the scream came again, and hit them all just as hard, and Davis took off at a half-trot toward the trees.
    “Come on now!” cried out Diamond, and they ran as fast as they could between trees and along more open fields. Owls hooted at them, and a bobwhite bobwhited at them. Things they couldn’t see ran up and down tall oaks, or flitted in front of them, yet none of it came close to scaring them as much as they already had been by George Davis and his shotgun. Lou was a blur, faster even than Diamond. But when Oz tripped and fell, she rounded back and helped him.
    They finally stopped and squatted in the high grass, breathing heavy and listening for a crazy man or a wildcat coming after them.
    “Who is that awful man?” asked Lou.
    Diamond checked behind him before answering. “George Davis. He got a farm next Miss Louisa’s. He a hard man. A bad man! Dropped