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The Ridge: The Whisper of the Leaves - Chap. 45

Standoff

By Dan BrawnerPublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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Like Lawrence, the four officers didn’t see any sign of life at the front of the house, so they went to the back, shotguns, rifles and pistols drawn. Two left, two right.

They came to the back of the house at the same time and saw the body simultaneously. Lawrence’s rifling of the man’s pockets had left him uncovered enough that the snow wouldn’t obscure him for a while. Steve Frost got to him first.

“It’s Ralph,” Frost whispered loudly.

The other three moved over quickly to view the body and a sob broke from Lampkin’s throat as he saw the officer laying there. He and Ralph Barnes had been friends and co-workers for more than twenty years.

“Lord, Ralph,” Lampkin’s voice quivered. “How’d ya let ‘em do this to ya?”

Talmadge let Lampkin stand there a moment as he motioned Frost and Jim Champion to go in and search the house. All four had flashlights, but were reluctant to use them yet. By the time the men came back from inside the house, finding nothing, Lampkin had regained his composer.

“What’da’ya think?” Talmadge looked at all three men.

“Probably took off when they heard us comin’.” Frost said.

“Okay, but which way.” Champion asked.

Frost shrugged and shook his head.

“Any ideas, Homer?” Talmadge asked Lampkin

“Hey,” Frost whispered. “Did ya hear that?”

All four men fell silent and waited.

“There it is again.” Frost said.

“Yea, I heard it.” Champion said. “Sounds like a girl’s voice.”

“Where did it come from?” Talmadge asked.

“Over there, I think,” Frost said pointing away from the house, west across the Ridge.

“Yea, it came from over there,” Champion agreed, nodding to the west.

Marshall was coming up directly from the west not fifty yards over the Ridge, when he heard the sound. He had been mounted on Sandy, the youngest saddle horse they had. A quarter mile back, though, he had dismounted and was now on foot, Sandy tied to a tree limb.

He had gone a couple of hundred yards when he first heard the sound. Another hundred and fifty yards of rushing through the woods as quietly as possible and he saw what the sound was.

“Marshall,” Jenny squealed when she saw her brother. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around his legs.

“Hey, Sis,” Marshall whispered. “Talk quiet, now. No tellin’s who’s around. How did ya get here?”

Jenny continued to cling to Marshall’s legs with one arm while she pointed behind her with the other. Marshall could see that there was something on the ground. A dark silhouette, but he couldn’t make it out.

“Com’on,” He said. “Let’s go over there and you show me.”

Jenny held on to him as they walked. When they got there, he saw the woman lying on the ground. Marshall knelt beside her and brushed her hair away from her face. One eye was open and fixed while the other was closed. Blood covered half of her face from a huge gash in her scalp and her head was twisted at an impossible angle.

“This limb came out’a tha tree,” Jenny started to cry as she pointed to a huge limb now lying a couple of feet from the body. Marshall guessed it weighed at least three hundred pounds.

“She pushed me out of the way,” Jenny bawled and buried her face in Marshall’s wounded side. It caused him to wince, but he said nothing and just cradled his sister with his arm.

“I think we need to g.......”

Marshall did not realize he had been hit until his face smashed into the snow.

Carl, Edna and Gerald got the story from Conners and Miriam. Edna immediately took over the chore of trying to doctor the Ranger. Carl, followed by Gerald, went out to the feed room to check on Katie. At first, they didn’t hear any sound, so Carl called out.

“Hey girl. Ya all right in there?

A torrent of cursing immediately followed along with the sounds of the walls being kicked. Carl didn’t say any more but just looked in the stalls and noticed that Sandy’s was empty. He went back into the house to his and Edna’s bedroom, opened the one small closet and took out his only remaining firearm. He hadn’t shot the lever action Winchester 45 in over a year.

After the war, Carl had decided to get rid of all his weapons except for this one. It was a present from his grandfather and the only times he shot it now was to just keep it in good working order. He was sure, though, it would still serve him as well now as it had when he was a teenager hunting deer in North Carolina.

He slung the rifle over his arm and grabbed a handful of shells from a box on the shelf then went back into the living room.

“I’m gonna go see if I can help Marshall,” He said, looking directly at Edna. “Be back with both of ‘em in a while.”

He then walked out the door without waiting for a response. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gerald following him.

“Ya goin with me, Gerald?”

“Yessir!”

“Ya know what ya doin?”

“Yessir!”

“Okay,” Carl said as he opened the car door and threw the rifle into the back seat. “Need ta make a stop first.”

Lawrence had heard Jenny’s call for help at the same time as the officers and Marshall. He rushed to the spot with amazing speed for a man his size and saw the girl before he even knew her brother was anywhere around. Lawrence also saw a body beside the girl that he knew had to be Sally’s.

The girl was lying next to his daughter, her head on Sally’s stomach, whimpering. The fury he felt at seeing his second child dead almost blinded him. But not before he saw Marshall jogging through the woods, rifle held low.

The boy’s sister had seen him too and run to him, then they both came back to where Sally lay. The boy was paying so much attention to his sister to hear Lawrence come up from behind him and slam him in the back of the head with the gun butt.

“Hey, boy,” Lawrence said as he stood over Marshall. “Looks like your gonna get ya comeuppance after all.”

He reached down and pulled the 45 from Marshall’s waist and with the same hand grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and jerked him to a sitting position. Jenny had crawled under the tree at the sight of Lawrence. She lay on the roots of the tree in a fetal position, shivering.

“Don’t feel too good to get whopped with a gun butt, do it, boy.” Lawrence grinned and shook Marshall, his head wobbling back and forth. Then he looked up to see if the four officers had come up yet. He saw nothing, so he looked back down at Marshall.

“I got two kids dead cause’a you, boy and ya know, ya gonna pay. You and ‘at sister uh your’n, there, gonna see what it feels like.”

“Lawrence!”

The voice came from toward the direction of his house, directly in front of him. Suddenly, the light from four flashlights fell on Lawrence. The four officers were spread out about five feet apart.

“Lawrence! Put the gun down.”

Lawrence could tell that it was Leo Talmadge.

“Sheriff,” he called out, putting the .45 almost in Marshall’s ear. “What’chu doin’ here. This ani’t none uh ya business. This boy here done killed mu son an one uh mu daughters an he’s gona pay fer it. Ya kin do what’cha want with me, I don’t care, but this boy’s gonna pay.”

“Can any of you get a shot?” Lampkin whispered to Talmadge.

“Not a chance,” Talmadge whispered back. “Bunched to close together. How bout you?”

Lampkin shook his head. He never normally carried a gun because he wasn’t a very good shot. Barnes had always been the one called on if any sort of marksmanship was needed.

As far as he was concerned, the best thing that they could do at this point and in this situation was to try to talk Lawrence out of doing what he was threatening. Unfortunately, he did not hold out much hope of Lawrence being reasonable, but he had to try.

“Look, Lawrence,” Lampkin said. “We got ya for kidnappin’ the girl. Don’t put murder on ya plate, too. If ya do that and even if ya manage to stay out’ta the electric chair, you’ll die an old man in prison.”

“Hey,” Lawrence jammed the gun harder into Marshall’s head. “I am an old man and I tol’ ya, I don’t care. This boy’s gonna die. And ‘sides, I know yall. Ya’ll’re gonna charge me with killin’ ‘at Barnes fella. I did not do it, but that ain’t gonna matter. Ya’ll still gonna pin it on me.”

The officers could see Lawrence was not going to be persuaded away from his act of vengeance. His face had the look of a madman. And at that moment, none of them was sure they could do anything to save either one of the Bentwood kids. But then Marshall got back into the picture.

Historical
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