I let my breath out slowly, popped the gun up and squeezed the trigger. I still missed.
“Actually, that was pretty close,” Juice said.
“Try again,” Colt said with a nod support. Keeping my eyes on the can, I brought the pistol up and fired. The can jumped, but it didn’t go far. “Winged it!” Colt cheered. “One more try.”
I tried again… and missed. “I think I’ll take that and call it a win.”
“You just need practice.”
“Yeah. Lots of practice. Let me see how to do it.”
With a grin, he pulled the muffs off my head, put them on, and took his weapon from my hand. He held the gun at his side, and then quickly brought it up and fired. The can flew into the air. The moment it was still, he fired a second time, and the can jumped again. And again. And again. I lost track of how many times he fired, but he only missed twice out of ten or fifteen shots.
I pulled my fingers out of my ears when the slide stayed back, indicating the weapon was empty. “Damn…” I drawled.
He smiled at me, and for the first time since that fateful day at the rig, the old Colt was back. He pulled the muffs off and handed them to Juice. “I’ll let you pick them off at long range, then I’ll handle any you miss.”
It felt good to do something fun and to forget about what had happened, if only for a few minutes. “Maybe you can give me some pointers?”
“Love to, and you can teach me to shoot skeet. I can’t hit shit with a rifle or shotgun.”
“We got dust coming,” Big Dick said, looking down the road.
We all turned to look. “Somebody coming to see who was doing all the shooting?” Fish suggested.
“Maybe. It’s probably nobody, but we better get her inside, just in case,” Colt said.
I didn’t want to go inside. I wanted to see how I compared to the men with the rifle, but Colt was right. Maybe they’d drive by and then I could come out and play some more.
Colt and I walked along the side of the RV and then went inside. As soon as we were inside, Colt dropped the magazine on his weapon and began to reload from the box he’d brought and left near the chair he slept in. He wasn’t rushing, but he was wasting no time feeding the bullets into the magazine. He finished and slapped it home, worked the slide to prime the weapon, then dropped the magazine and replaced the bullet, slapping it back into the gun as a truck slowed to a stop in the road. I carefully pulled back the blind so I could peek through the crack.
“Get back,” he said softly, motioning me away from the window.
“Two guys in a truck,” I said as I moved away and sat down, waiting for the truck to leave.
I sat, listening to the two men in the truck talking to the brothers outside as Colt stood in the stairwell, watching through a gap in the blinds. It was hard to make out the words, but the tone was conversational and pleasant. From what I could pick out, it sounded like the men were hired hands for one of the local ranchers, and they’d come to check out who was shooting. I began to relax.
“More dust coming from front,” Colt said, his voice tense. “This doesn’t feel right. We haven’t seen another vehicle in days, now two at the same time?”
“Maybe they’re coming to see who was shooting too?” I suggested, my tone hopeful. Colt was on edge and wary, and that made me uneasy.
“Maybe,” he allowed. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, my heart starting to hammer.
“Nowhere. I’m just going to check it out.” He opened the door, holding his pistol out of sight beside him. “Hey! You guys want a beer?”
.
.
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COLT
The brothers looked at me an instant before Juice’s head exploded and he fell away from the truck. As my brothers dove for safety, I fired into the cab of the truck from the steps of the coach. The truck roared backwards, throwing dirt everywhere as the driver tried to gain some distance. Everything forgotten except my need to avenge Packard and to protect my brothers and Willow, I stepped out of the RV and continued to fire into the cab of the truck as it raced backwards before the driver swerved around behind the RV for protection. Fish, Grace, Goose and Big Dick were closer and leap to their feet, charging after the truck with weapons drawn as I ran to help, but then there was the buzzsaw staccato of an automatic rifle.
“Shit!” I snarled as I skidded to a stop.
We were going to get cut to pieces by the full-auto and our only chance was to run. I turned and ran back the way I came, charging up the steps and threw myself into the driver’s seat as my brothers returned fire, pistol shots mixed with short bursts from the machine gun.
“We have to go,” I yelled as I looked around until I found and twisted the ignition key to start the engine.
“Wait! The jacks are still down and the slides are out!” Willow cried as she dashed to the wall in the kitchen that held the RV’s control panel.
The big diesel coughed to life at the rear of the coach. “Hurry up!” I yelled as I repeatedly raced the engine, hoping the brothers would understand and come running as I tried to figure out how to put the coach in gear.
“Go!” she screamed as I felt the coach settle and roll off level.
The slides were still pulling in but I didn’t care. I poked the button marked with D to my left as Fish, Goose, and Big Dick piled into the RV. There was another round of thudding gunfire, the interior splintering as the bullets ripped into the coach. Big Dick roared then fell to the steps as he grabbed at his leg, blood leaking between his fingers. With Goose helping pull Big Dick up the steps, Fish leaned out the door and fired wildly, trying to pin the men down as I floored the accelerator pedal. The engine revved, and I could feel the coach straining, but it didn’t move.
“Parking brake!” she yelled as she rushed forward and slammed a yellow button down, but it immediately popped back up. “No air pressure!”
I put the coach in neutral and raced the engine to redline, trying to build pressure as fast as possible.
Fish and Goose leaned out and fired several shots through the door before ducking back in. “We need to go!”
“Where’s Grace?” I yelled.
“Dead!”
“Slides are in!” Willow yelled as I heard and felt thumps.
I lifted my foot off the throttle, punched the button to put coach into gear, and then tromped on the accelerator as I slammed parking brake button down and held it. The bus began to move. I removed my hand from the parking brake and grabbed the wheel. It stayed down. There was another burst of fire from the automatic gun, glass and bits of wood flying as the gunman hosed down the RV. As the coach struggled for the road, lurching and heaving like a wounded animal, a man appeared outside the door, some kind of machine pistol in his hand. He was trying to trot alongside the moving coach while aiming into the narrow opening of door. Before he could open up with the machine gun, Fish shot him. With a cry of pain, the man tumbled to the ground and disappeared.
“Go!” Fish screamed over the roaring engine.
I said nothing. I’d never driven an RV before, my experience driving large vehicles limited to my drilling rig, but the coach felt sluggish, as if it were stuck in mud, but we were moving so I kept the throttle pinned to the floor, the engine howling its war cry as the coach shuddered and lurched. I finally realized I was spinning the tires, but I was afraid reduce power lest we become mired, making us an easy target. After what felt like hours, the coach finally hauled itself onto the road and began to pick up speed more quickly. We were going in the opposite direction of what I wanted, but I couldn’t stop to turn around.