Hutch grabbed his downed comrade and pulled him into safety. The others were all hidden behind the treeline. “I’m alright! I’m alright,” Moses reassured Hutch.
“A rifle round went clean through your shoulder! I gotta stop the bleeding!”
“Don’t worry about it!”
Squatted behind a tree, the sheriff reached for his .44. He peeked out through the sweltering heat waves and scanned the flat grassland. “Did anyone see anything?!” he shouted.
“Man I didn’t see shit!” Hutch yelled.
DuPont squinted harder and deduced that the shooter had to have been posted up in the treeline on the other side of the field. He shook his head and spat. “I should call in an airstrike,” he said.
“That’s not an option,” Oren told him. “Radio Chaz. Tell him we’re calling it off.”
“No!”
“Sheriff, between the explosion and rifle shots, they already know we’re here! We should abandon this route and find another way in!”
“There’s no time.”
“Sheriff,” the priest interjected. “He may be right. That rifle shot was from a Mauser SP66. There’s only one man I know of who uses that weapon.”
“The nine?” Oren asked.
“You betcha.”
“I don’t give a goddamn if it’s Lee Harvey Oswald up in them trees,” said the sheriff. “This is the only way in!”
DuPont poked back out from his position. Rifle rounds rained down on him kicking up mounds of dirt and grass. He swiftly took cover. “Fuck!” he yelled.
“We appear to be trapped here, sheriff,” the priest said while gnawing on a carrot.
“We ain’t trapped here!”
DuPont looked away from the direction of the sniper and towards the east just off of the judge’s property. He could see the cloud of dust barreling towards them with the beat up Honcho leading it. He had seconds to think. “When Chaz rounds the corner,” he said to the others, “fire every round you have towards that treeline.”
TO BE CONTINUED…