Shadowfires

mayonnaise jar. For a moment he could not imagine what it was, then
realized Sharp was taking the silencer off his pistol.
    Sharp confirmed that suspicion. “Maybe the shotgun still gives him
the advantage-”
    “Maybe?” Peake said with amazement.
    “-but there's two of us, two guns, and without silencers we'll get
better range. Go on, Peake. Go down there and smoke him out for
me.”
    Peake seemed on the point of rebellion, but he went.
    Ben waited.
    A couple of cars passed on the road.
    Ben remained very still, watching Anson Sharp's shoes. After a while, Sharp moved one step away from the car, which was as far as he could go in that direction, for one step put him at the very brink of the embankment that sloped down into the woods.
    When the next car rumbled along, Ben used the cover of its engine
noise to slip out from under the Dodge wagon on the driver's side, where he crouched against the front door, below window level. Now the station wagon was between him and Sharp.
    Holding the shotgun in one hand, he opened a few buttons on his
shirt. He withdrew the rock that he had found in the forest.
    On the other side of the Dodge, Sharp moved.
    Ben froze, listened.
    Evidently Sharp had only been sidestepping along the edge of the
embankment to keep Peake in sight below.
    Ben knew he had to act swiftly. If another car came by, he would
present quite a spectacle to anyone in it: a guy in filthy clothes,
holding a rock in one hand and a shotgun in the other, with a
revolver tucked into his waistband. With one tap of the horn, any
passing driver could warn Sharp of the wild man at his back.
    Rising up from a crouch, Ben looked across the station wagon,
directly at the back of Sharp's head. If Sharp turned around now, one of them would have to shoot the other.
    Ben waited tensely until he was certain that
Sharp's attention was directed down toward the northwest portion of the woods. Then he pitched the round fist-sized rock as hard as he could, across the top of the car, very high, very wide of Sharp's
head, so the wind of its passage would not draw the man's attention. He hoped Sharp would not see the rock in flight, hoped it would not hit a tree too soon but would fall far into the forest before impacting.
    He was doing a lot of earnest hoping and praying lately.
    Without waiting to see what happened, he dropped down beside the
car again and heard his missile shredding pine boughs or brush and
finally impacting with a resonant thunk.
    “Peake!” Sharp called out. “Back of you, back of you. Over that
way. Movement over there in those bushes, by the drainage cut.”
    Ben heard a scrape and clatter and rustle that might have been
Anson Sharp bolting off the top of the embankment and down into the
forest. Suspecting that it was too good to be true, he rose
warily.
    Amazingly, Sharp was gone.
    With the state route to himself, Ben hurried along the line of
parked cars, trying doors. He found an unlocked four-year-old
Chevette. It was a hideous bile-yellow heap with clashing green
upholstery, but he was in no position to worry about style.
    He got in, eased the door shut. He took the.357 Combat Magnum out
of his waistband and put it on the seat, where he could reach it in a
hurry. Using the stock of the shotgun, he hammered the ignition
switch until he broke the key plate off the steering column.
    He wondered if the noise carried beyond the car and down through
the woods to Sharp and Peake.
    Putting the Remington aside, he hastily pulled the ignition wires
into view, crossed the two bare ends, and tramped on the accelerator.
The engine sputtered, caught, raced.
    Although Sharp probably had not heard the hammering, he surely
heard the car starting, knew what it meant, and was without a doubt
frantically climbing the embankment that he had just descended.
    Ben disengaged the handbrake. He threw the Chevette in gear and
pulled onto the road. He headed south because that was the way the
car was facing, and he had no time to turn it around.
    The hard, flat crack of a pistol sounded behind him.
    He winced, pulled his head down on his shoulders, glanced in the
rearview mirror, and saw Sharp lurching between the sedan and the
Dodge station wagon out into the middle of the road, where he could
line up a shot better.
    “Too late, sucker,” Ben said, ramming the accelerator all the way
to the floor.
    The Chevette coughed as if it were a tubercular, spavined old dray
horse being asked to run the