CHAPTER 43

COLE had been scouring the maze of back roads for almost an hour, but his efforts had yielded no sign of his teammates. For a while he had been able to follow a trail of slaughtered cattle, which had extended north onto properties miles beyond the Blunts’ fence line. The trail had long since gone cold.

Twice he’d passed cattlemen sitting on horseback in the rain, peering under low hat brims at the mutilated remains of their livelihood. Cole imagined the horror on their faces. The bewilderment. As much as he felt obliged to stop and explain, he had driven past without a look, taking care to keep the Winchester low across his lap and out of view.

He checked his watch again. Midday was fast approaching. He cursed under his breath and increased his speed over the rutted dirt. More miles ticked away before he saw a locked gate and cattle guard blocking his path a short distance ahead. Dead end. He screeched to a stop and jammed the truck into reverse.

Something moved on the horizon behind him. A human figure. A second look in the rearview mirror showed a group of figures. He rolled down the window and stuck his head into the rain. A half mile back a line of silhouettes crested a rise in the rolling terrain, some three hundred yards inside a property fence.

Cole’s foot tromped on the pedal. He weaved backward until the road widened. Jerking the steering wheel hard, he spun the truck around and continued forward. The truck’s grille snapped through the fence posts seconds later.

His progress then slowed to a near halt. The field he had driven onto was not grazing pasture but fallow cropland. Parallel rows of plowed dirt stretched the width of the property. Gullies two feet deep brimmed with rainwater.

Cole gripped the wheel hard as the ruts pitched him across the cab. The bed of the truck bounced behind him with a life of its own.

Through sprays of water he saw his teammates looming in the distance, facing him now, unmoving.

Ahead and to his right he spotted a small house. Sprawling willows swayed in the wind on either side of it. Two figures were huddled under an umbrella about a hundred yards away from the front door—a man and a woman. Cole saw their faces shifting between his truck and the strange gathering of men on their property.

The Jackrabbits clearly saw them, too. They began to move en masse toward the couple.