Chapter 37

"Lou?"

Kid's voice came out hoarse. He licked his cracked lips as he moved his head from side to side, feeling hardness behind him. "Lou, what ...?" He slowly opened his eyes, then clamped them shut once again, trying to block out the direct rays of sunlight beating down on him.

"Oh, I almost forgot,” he signed sadly, feeling dejected at remembering the reality he was in the middle of. “Ah, Lou, I need you ... I'm comin', honey, don't give up on me." The only question was how? How could he possibly get out of here and head back to her? He didn't have a horse and he was injured. Kid was still having a hard time accepting the fact that his friends, his family, had just left without him. What would have possessed them to do that?

With each word muttered, Kid felt his strength returning. From the sun's position in the sky, he knew he'd only been asleep for less than an hour but it felt like days. He needed to get moving before he was discovered by the trapper - he wasn't that far from the cave.

He took several deep breaths to get the strength to push himself to a standing position. As he was about to move, Kid suddenly stiffened and pressed himself against the rock behind him. He heard movement off to the left and just below the path he was on. Murray! It had to be him on Kid's trail. Not wanting to wait around to find out if he was right, Kid forced himself to stand, nearly falling over as he suddenly became lightheaded.

Forcing himself to ignore it, Kid frantically looked around and came to the only conclusion he could - he needed to go down the slope. It was on the steep side and rocky, not a problem for Kid normally but he was not feeling normal at the moment. One more glance to his left and he slowly eased himself over a rock, using all the strength his good arm possessed, and was on his way down the side of the slope.

Buck climbed up over a rock and was relieved to see a path in front of him. He started to look around as he waited for Charlie to catch up. This side of the valley was steeper and denser with rocks so they'd been forced to leave their horses below. The climb was difficult but manageable. Upon getting closer to the path, Buck had thought he'd heard a voice but must have been mistaken. No one was in sight.

"What do we do now?" Charlie asked, his hands on his hips, as he looked around hopelessly. "There's no way a man with a gunshot wound would be able to climb up this high, not unless he had help anyway."

Buck whirled around and gave the blonde man a quizzical look.

"Why are you looking at me that way? What'd I do?" Charlie still couldn't figure this Indian out. When Buck looked at him, he felt like he was looking through him, into his soul. He had an uncanny ability to see what no one else did and it was starting to creep him out.

"It's not what you did, it's what you said. If Kid was ..." Buck paused, not being able to say the actual word out loud, so he tried a safer approach. "If Kid didn't survive the gunshot, we would have come across his body by now. Somehow, he got himself off the main path - we just have to figure out how."

"Could one of Marshal Cain's men have helped Kid then not live to tell about it?" Charlie suggested.

"At this point anything's possible," Buck told him. "Well, we're here now, let's see what we can find." He started moving along the path, checking out all aspects of the rock behind him. "I've been in places like this before. Sometimes there are crevices just large enough for a man to fit his body in or maybe there's a hidden cave around here."

Thomas Murray headed toward the main entrance to the path he was on, all the while cursing and muttering to himself. How could Joey have gotten this far so quickly? There was no way in hell that his injured son could have taken any other route off the ledge they were on, he was too badly hurt and in pain.

At least he didn't have to worry about those two boys getting in his way. If they had listened to him, which he was sure they had, they would be well on their way over the hill they'd first come across, heading toward home by now.

Murray's hands gripped the rifle tighter. There was no way he was going to lose his son again, no way. Joey needed to be with him and Murray would do whatever was necessary to see to it that his boy didn't get into any more trouble. If necessary, he would teach Joey that it didn't benefit anyone to disobey their father and try to shrug off what was expected of them.

With determined steps, he made his way onto the main path and headed down below. He'd check the creek first. Joey would be needing water real bad right about now.

"I've got you now, boy," he said to himself, a slow smile crossing his lips. "And no one gets away from me more than once, I'll see to that."