Praying for Sleep

lead his pursuers astray. Then he’d backtracked west along a different route to this outcropping, which he’d spotted on his way east.
    The son of a bitch! Owen descended slowly, forcing himself to be careful, despite his exhilaration. He couldn’t afford a broken bone now. At the bottom of the rocks he played his flashlight over the ground. He found a small patch of mud nearby and observed bootprints walking away from the rocks—the same prints he’d seen on the top of the cliff. Although they weren’t widely spaced, they were toe-heavy, an indication that Hrubek was jogging or walking fast. They led to the road then back south into the fields, where they turned due west.
    Following these clear imprints Owen walked for a short way through the grass. He decided that he would make certain that Hrubek was indeed going west then would return to his truck and cruise slowly along the highway, looking for his quarry from the road. Just another ten yards, he decided, and climbed through a notch in a low stone fence, leading to a large field beyond.
    It was there that he tripped over the hidden wire and fell, face forward, toward the steel trap.
    The big Ottawa Manufacturing coyote trap had been laid brilliantly—in a section of the path with no handholds for arresting falls, just beyond the stone wall so that a searcher couldn’t get his other foot to the ground in time to stop his tumble. In an instant Owen dropped the flashlight and covered his face with his left arm, lifting his pistol and firing four .357 Magnum rounds at the round trigger plate in a desperate effort to snap it closed before he struck it. The blue-steel device danced under the impact of the powerful slugs. Stones, twigs and hot bits of shattered bullets flew into the air as Owen twisted sideways to let his broad shoulder take the impact of the fall.
    When he landed, his head bounced off the closed jaws of the trap and he lay, stunned, feeling the blood on his forehead and fighting down the horrific image of the blue metal straps snapping shut on his face. An instant later he rolled away, assuming that Hrubek had used the trap as Owen himself would have—as a diversion—meant to hold him immobile and in agony while Hrubek attacked from behind. Owen glanced about, huddling beside the fence. When there was no immediate assault he ejected the spent and unfired cartridges then reloaded. He pocketed the two good rounds and scanned the area once more.
    Nothing. No sound but a faint wind in the lofty treetops. Owen stood slowly. So the trap had been meant merely to injure a scenting dog. In fury Owen picked up the bullet-dented trap and flung it deep into the field. He found the spent shells and buried them then, by touch, surveyed the damage to his face and shoulder. It was minor.
    His anger vanished quickly and Owen Atcheson began to laugh. Not from relief at escaping serious injury. No, it was a laugh of pure pleasure. The trap said to him that Michael Hrubek was a worthy adversary after all—ruthless as well as clever. Owen was never as alive as when he had a strong enemy that he was about to engage—an enemy that might test him.
    Hurrying to the Cherokee he started the engine and drove slowly west, staring at the fields to his left. He was so intent on catching sight of his prey that he grazed a road sign with the truck’s windshield. Startled by the loud noise he braked quickly and glanced at the sign.
    It told him that he was exactly forty-seven miles from home.
     
    Michael Hrubek, crouched down in a stand of grass, caressed his John Worker overalls and wondered about the car at which he stared.
    Surely it was a trap. Snipers were probably sighting on it with long-barreled muskets. Snipers in those trees just ahead, waiting for him to sneak up to the sports car. He breathed shallowly and reminded himself not to give away his position.
    After he’d passed the GET TO sign he’d hurried west through the fields of grass and pumpkin vines, paralleling the dim strip of Route 236. He’d made good time and had stopped only once—to place one of the animal traps beside a stone fence. He’d set a few leaves on top of the metal and hurried on.
    Now, Hrubek raised himself up and looked again at the car. He saw no one around it. But still he remained hidden, in the foxhole of grass, waiting, aiming the blade sight of his gun at the trees ahead and looking for any sign of motion. As he smelled the grass a dark memory loomed. He tried his best to