Free Outnumbered (Book 6) by Robert Schobernd Page A

location of their compound. The hammer and nails in my hands gave my threats impetus. He swore he'd told the truth. I read the fright in his wide eyed stare and believed him. Well after dark, Richard and I rode back to where we'd found and abused Everett. We rode ahead under a clear sky and a full moon until we saw an old, weatherworn sign pointing left toward the Pleasantdale Baptist Church . It was difficult to read in the feeble moonlight because of the large number of bullet holes in it. So far our directions were spot on.
    At the second road, we stopped and listened for ten minutes before turning right. All we heard was the chirping of night insects and the hoot of a hunting owl. Our pace was slow and cautious up to the fourth lane on our left. We turned into it and followed the rutted trail through brush and saplings for what we judged to be approaching a quarter mile. The saplings beside us grew close together and many were over fifteen-feet tall.
    Ahead in a clearing, a two-story frame house stood silhouetted under moonlight. Outbuildings lay scattered around it, and a large ramshackle barn overlooked all of it. Looking closely, we saw the barn's roof was swaybacked and partially collapsed on the near end. We dismounted and tethered the horses to the post of an old, rusty barbed wire fence. Cautiously, we approached the house with rifles in the ready position. Up close it was apparent the farm site was uninhabitable. I pointed in the direction of the fifth lane and set off with Richard covering our rear. We stepped over the decrepit wire fence strands and moved stealthily through the dense stand of weeds and saplings.
    In twenty minutes, we passed through a fifty-foot stand of mature trees to another clearing; it matched the description Everett gave us. We moved back ten feet and took positions behind a dense, fully leaved deciduous bush. The luminous dial on my old wind-up wrist watch showed the time was twelve minutes past two a.m. I whispered to Richard to try to nap and I'd wake him at four. I counted six cabins beside the barn. All six had roofs at a steep enough angle to accommodate lofts inside. Usually that would be where children would sleep. From where I sat, it appeared they'd been built haphazardly with no logical pattern to their placement.
    At six, Richard gently placed a firm hand on my shoulder and pulled me from a shallow, uneasy doze. He pointed through an early morning mist at a single male figure as it stumbled through dawn's half-light to an outhouse.
    Close to my ear, he whispered as he pointed, "I saw dim light in that building on the far end a little after you went to sleep. Then seven women went to the outhouse. Two of them had guns, guarding the other five. I'm sure I recognized our women, so this is the right place. After they finished, lights were lit in that building in the middle. I imagine they're up early to cook breakfast because of the smell of wood smoke."
    I threw him a thumbs up in the shadowy, subdued light, blinked and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. My butt squirmed on the rough ground, and I settled in to wait and watch.
    Shortly after five, another male made the trip to the outhouse. Ten minutes later, three more women and a gang of kids from toddlers to teens made the walk to the stinky two-holer shack.
    Near six, a woman left the kitchen and stopped at a brass bell the size of a large watermelon mounted on a vertical post in the yard. She clanged it four times. Over the next ten minutes, two men, a women and the gang of children of all ages hurried to the kitchen for breakfast. The sun poked above the horizon to our right. We reassessed our position and agreed to stay where we were.
    The thought of breakfast caused hunger to set in. I pulled two strips of jerky from a pocket; Richard did the same. As we chewed, several big mongrel dogs appeared at the kitchen to eat the first of the morning food scraps tossed by a young woman I didn't recognize. They barked, snarled and fought