Chapter 6 - The Iron Gate
The moon had slipped behind a heavy bank of clouds by the time I reached the perimeter of the Morrison spread. The ranch house sat back from the timberline, a sprawling two-story structure of whitewashed stone and seasoned pine, dark and silent except for a yellow spill of light leaking from the ground-floor office window. Beyond it stood the barn—a massive, weathered structure with double doors reinforced by iron brackets and a heavy padlock.
Zora’s brother was in there. I could feel the weight of that old requisition paper in my vest pocket like a live coal.
I didn't try the front doors of the barn. Dutch or one of the night hands would be sleeping in the tack room, and a padlock doesn't open quietly without the key. Instead, I moved along the side of the structure toward the rear, where a high, barred hay-loft window looked out over the dry creek bed.
The ground beneath the loft was soft with old hay and manure. I holstered my Remington, grabbed the edge of the lower window frame, and pulled myself up, testing the aged pine before shifting my weight. The wood groaned softly, protesting the intrusion, but held. I slipped my fingers through the vertical iron bars, braced my boots against the siding, and squeezed through the narrow opening into the dark, sweet-smelling cavern of the loft.
Dust motes danced in the faint sliver of moonlight filtering through the cracks in the roof boards. Below me, the interior of the barn was pitch black, save for the pale glow of a lantern burning in the feed alley near the front office.
"Who's there?" a raspy voice called out from the darkness below.
It wasn't Dutch. It sounded like an older hand—someone stationed to watch the captive through the night.
I didn't answer. I crouched silently by the edge of the loft floor, my hand resting on the smooth wood of a ladder leading down into the shadows.
"If that's you, Dutch, bring some coffee," the voice muttered, shifting in the straw. A match struck, flaring bright and yellow as the night hand lit a short-stemmed pipe. In the sudden flash of light, I saw him—a middle-aged man with a graying beard sitting on an upturned feed bucket near the heavy rear holding pens, a double-barrel shotgun resting across his knees.
I waited for the match to die, plunging the barn back into a dim, amber haze from the distant lantern.
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"I said who's there?" the man growled, standing up slowly and hefting the shotgun. "Show yourself before I load buckshot into the dark."
I swung my legs over the edge of the loft ladder and dropped six feet into the straw, landing with a muffled thud just as he swung the barrel around.
