A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

TWO

The horses came into sight. The saddles were empty.

They knew Falcon had sent Harvey on ahead.

Dropping to his belly, Falcon listened with every bit of his wits.

Eyes sharp, smelling for anything out of place, listening for the slightest rustle of leaves while trying not to make a sound or a sudden move.

The huge, broken tree stretched into the woods. Falcon edged along it. He had to get over it to go downhill. If the men were on this side of the trail, he’d come upon them.

There were only the quiet sounds natural to the forest. An inch at a time, Falcon reached a tear in the earth that looked like water ran down it during heavy rains.

It allowed him passageway beneath the tree trunk. He scooted under. The gap was skinny enough he thought for a second he might get stuck. Sucking his stomach in and shoving hard with his feet, he got through.

On he went, downward, listening. A soft crackle of shaking leaves drew his gaze up and to the left. Close to the trail. Up and up some more. Overhead, he saw one of the men climbing a hickory tree. Hoping for a lookout spot.

Easing to the side, under a thick stand of scrub cottonwoods, Falcon watched. He didn’t want to shoot. It wasn’t his way to go shootin’ a man. He’d do it if there was no other way to stay alive, but he wasn’t to that point yet.

But close maybe.

Besides, any gunfire would bring the other outlaw down on him. The man overhead was the one he’d spotted earlier. To his way of thinking, that made the other man more careful, more dangerous.

As alert as a jackrabbit in a wolf den, Falcon heard the other man. Focusing on the source of the sound, it took all he had to make this man out. He was motionless, nearly silent. His clothes blended into the dry leaves and bare trunks like part of the woods.

Falcon might never have noticed him if the varmint hadn’t blinked at just the right time.

With care to keep hidden from the man overhead, Falcon moved straight for the one on the ground, using dips in the dirt, stones, and scrub brush for cover. The outlaw was looking at the trail, as if he expected Falcon to come walking down it. Falcon was coming at him but from another direction.

The outlaw held an aimed gun. One wrong move, one snapped twig, one startled bird, and he’d see Falcon coming. All he had to do was turn his head.

Checking the man in the tree, who was facing the trail when he had oughta be looking around him, Falcon drew in a deep breath, then launched himself rattler fast at the man in front of him. Falcon slashed his gun butt across the man’s head.

The only sound was that dull thud.

Falcon grabbed him before he collapsed. Eased him to the ground and tucked him out of sight behind the undergrowth.

Stripping him of his pistols, rifle, and knife, Falcon made quick work of hog-tying him. He had more sneaking around to do, and he didn’t want this one coming around and getting back into the fight.

Mulling what to do about that varmint perched up in the tree, Falcon examined him through the heavy thicket of branches surrounding him.

Giving the man plenty of time to settle in, Falcon watched him study the trail, then after too long, look around. Content that he saw nothing, he looked at the trail again. The man must’ve figured his saddle partner was sneaking up on Falcon and this fool was keeping a lookout.

The Tree Climber gave his long look around, then went back to the trail. Falcon didn’t think he could climb a tree without the idiot up there noticing him. But he didn’t think he had to.

He worked his way around so he was downhill, the direction the man almost never studied. Pulling the knife he’d taken off his captive, Falcon gathered himself, and then in one smooth motion, he stood to get all the strength of his legs and back involved and hurled the knife straight at the man.

Falcon dropped back into hiding just as the man howled and clawed at the back of his leg where the knife sunk deep. In his desperate grab for whatever was biting him in the leg, he let loose of the tree and fell to the ground. Landing with a painful crack, the man started firing his weapon in all directions. Falcon kept moving, heading for a large tree just a bit on downhill. He ducked behind it and waited for the gunfire to stop.

When he heard the hammer click on an empty gun, he leapt up and charged the man, who was still yelling like a lunatic.

Falcon had a notion of what he looked like by the sheer horror on the man’s face. He knew he had strange fiery golden-brown eyes. Eyes that he’d been told could go wild and mad.

Ma had called him a berserker. She had talked of such in her family history and said he had the blood of Viking warriors in his veins.

The man’s screams dropped to whimpers. Falcon slammed a fist into his face to shut him up. He jerked the knife out of the man’s leg and wiped it on the Tree Climber’s pants. He added it to the saddlebag he still carried.

Then he stripped the man of his guns and knives. Tied him up and dragged him to where the other man lay, still out cold.

Studying the two, he had no idea what to do about them.

He could take them to the sheriff, but Falcon had bested them at every turn. If anything, he’d attacked them.

They’d followed him. They’d taken their shots. They’d threatened him.

But were they men a sheriff would hold? They’d done him no harm, despite making a good effort. And Falcon had done them plenty.

A chill ran down his spine as he thought of stories he’d heard of men who had the ear of a sheriff. Such things happened up in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he’d grown up. Family roots ran deep, and a lawman might turn against an honest man and fight for kinfolk. For certain he’d do it if it was a choice between kin and a stranger.

Grimly unsure, Falcon pondered it for a while, even sat on the ground and ate some jerky while he thought it over.

Neither of them showed any sign of waking up. He wasn’t sure what he’d ask them if they did. The only real question he could come up with was, Why in tarnation did you pick me to rob?

They were breathing steadily, and he figured they’d live. He’d never killed a man before, but he’d fought plenty. He was known for fighting at the drop of a hat. And he’d been known to drop the hat himself.

Someone always needed a lickin’ back home. He’d hoped the world outside his Blue Ridge Mountains were a sight more peaceable.

Just now he wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful.

The day was wearing on, and he wanted to get on down the trail. He figured when these two woke up, they might be right behind him again.

Finally, he decided to hand out his own kind of justice. He took the men’s guns, nice ones. Frisked them more carefully and took a hideout knife that’d come in handy.

He even took one of their store-bought holsters. A sight better than Falcon’s handmade one.

He found a leather pouch full of coins in one of the men’s pockets. The other man had a bit of cash money, too. And of course, they both had horses. They’d soon fight free of their bonds, but they’d be hard-pressed to ride after him without horses. There was a brand on the critters, not the same one on each. Falcon had no notion of what the brands might mean, who they’d be connected to. Well, he’d find out if the brands were trouble when he tried to sell them, but he wouldn’t get to that until he’d put plenty of miles between him and these would-be killers.

About the time he scouted out their horses and gathered up the reins, figuring to search the saddlebags later and keep the leather along with the horses, Harvey came meandering down the trail. Falcon strung the two new horses end to end behind Harvey and rode on.

He usually set up camp before dark but not tonight. Falcon set out to put some miles between him and those two sleepy men. Maybe even a whole state.

He rode into the night a much richer man.