Free The Lawless by William W. Johnstone Page B

dangers.
    â€œBack out of here, Quinn,” Trace said. “Slowly . . . and I’ll cover you.”
    â€œNo, I’m staying right here with you, Trace.”
    The bear’s growl prowled through the morning quiet and reached out for the Kerrigan brothers like a grasping hand. Trace looked wildly around him. Where was the damned animal? “Quinn!” he yelled. “It’s you he wants. Back away like I told you.”
    The roar of Quinn’s rifle was an emphatic no!
    â€œWhere is he?” Trace yelled. “Did you get him?”
    â€œUp there, beside the fallen tree!”
    â€œI don’t see him!”
    Quinn fired again. “I saw him! I saw him!” he yelled. “Look! He’s there by the tree, standing on his hind legs!”
    Trace looked and saw nothing but shadow. He stepped to his brother, grabbed him by the arm, and yelled, “We’re getting out of here!”
    â€œDid I hit him? Did you see him?”
    â€œNo. You were shooting at a shadow.” Trace pulled Quinn by the arm. “Let’s go.”
    The bear seemed to come out of nowhere.
    Trace turned at the last second and took the full brunt of the animal’s charge. The bear slammed into him with the force of a runaway brewery horse and Trace fell on his back, all the wind knocked out of him. Turning on a dime, the bear changed direction and went for Quinn, its slavering, fanged mouth wide open.
    Boom!
    The sound of a large-caliber weapon hammered across the aborning day. Startled, but not hit, the bear broke off the attack and vanished into the trees.
    Moses Rice, his smoking dragoon in his hand, raised the big revolver for another shot, but lowered it again. “That bear is in the next county by now.” His ebony face concerned, he looked at each boy carefully. “Either of you boys hurt?”
    â€œOnly our pride, Mose,” Trace said, picking himself up off the ground.
    Quinn’s face was ashen, his Henry clutched tightly in his hands. “For a minute there, I thought I was dead.”
    â€œDon’t play around with bears, no,” Moses said. “Look what happened to Mr. Cobb, lying all tore up an’ hurtin’ in Miz Kerrigan’s best bed.”
    â€œMose, it was the same bear,” Quinn said. “He followed us home.”
    â€œLot of black bears in West Texas,” Moses said.
    Quinn shook his head. “Not like this one.”
    â€œDid you tell your Ma?” Moses asked.
    â€œNo. I didn’t want to worry her,” Quinn said.
    â€œDon’t worry Miz Kerrigan, no,” Moses said. “She’s got enough worries right now. You boys wait here.”
    Moses followed the path the bear had taken and was soon lost among the trees. He was gone for thirty minutes and when he returned his face was solemn. “We leave the bear alone.”
    Trace agreed. “Hell, that’s fine by me.”
    â€œNo,” Quinn said. “He took us by surprise this time, but we’ll kill him next time.”
    â€œLet the bear be!”
    It was the first time Trace and Quinn had ever heard Moses raise his voice.
    The Kerrigan boys walked back the cabin in silence, but Moses’s lips moved as though in prayer. When Trace listened closely, he realized the old black man was speaking in a tongue he did not understand. His was a prayer in the old language, a slave benediction that had its beginning hundreds of years before in the darkest reaches of Africa.

C HAPTER S EVENTEEN
    September came and went, and the bear sign became less evident. Trace and Quinn figured the animal had given up and was probably holed up in a hollow log somewhere to sleep away the winter.
    Frank Cobb, as tough a man as the West had ever produced, was up and about and showed little lasting effects from his close brush with death. Moses was strangely withdrawn, and took to walking the surrounding hills and forests with his Colt’s Dragoon stuck in his