Page 61 of Runaway Hucow

“Goddamn it, bitch!” the rider snarled. “I done told you to shut up…”

Tess sensed the man raising his hand to strike her again, and she braced herself for the blow, but it never came. Instead, a different sort of scream split the air, sharper and louder than the one Tess had just made. Then the rider was screaming too, and Tess felt something warm and wet splattering against her back. The horse reared, and Tess’s stomach lurched inside her as she was thrown into the open air.

Arms caught her. Huge arms, bigger and stronger than any man’s. She saw a glimpse of dark skin marked with a shining stripe of gold.

Roscoe.

The bisonman deposited her safely onto the ground, then he whirled to face the two intruders. The rider who had been carrying Tess had been thrown when his horse had reared a moment ago. He was staggering to his feet now, clutching one hand to the nasty red gashes where the eagle had raked his face with its talons. His other hand was reaching for the pistol on his hip.

He never even got it out of the holster.

Roscoe was on him in a flash, lancing one dark horn straight through the man’s chest. The tip burst out the other side amid a spray of blood and shattered bits of spine. With a jerk of his thick neck, the minotaur sent the man spinning through the air, limp and lifeless as a child’s doll. His body hit the ground a few feet away with a thud. Tess watched it all, frozen in terror.

The other rider was still on his horse. Chase had turned after clawing the first rider, and now he swooped down on the second one, but the man ducked just in time, and the eagle only succeeded in shredding his hat. The rider already had his pistol drawn, and when he saw Roscoe charging toward him, he fired. It was a panicked shot, but a lucky one. The bullet found the meat of the bisonman’s lower leg, and he stumbled.

“Roscoe!” Tess shouted.

The rider didn’t attempt a second shot. He spurred his horse into a gallop, and within a few seconds, he had disappeared into the trees.

Roscoe surged to his feet with a growl and tried to give chase, but after only one step, his wounded leg gave out underneath him, and he fell. He was trying to stand up a second time when Tess reached him and grabbed his huge arm.

“Roscoe, stop,” she pleaded. “You have to let him go. You’ve been shot.”

“It’s nothing,” Roscoe growled. “Just a scratch. I can—argh, fuck!”

He tumbled to the ground a second time, and Tess tumbled with him. “Roscoe, please, you need to be still. Let him go.”

“Can’t… let him go,” he panted through his pain. “Seen… the valley.”

Tess heard the sound of running hooves behind her, and she turned just in time to see Spike and Peyton rushing toward them. Spike had his shotgun. After a second, they both skidded to a stop next to Tess and Roscoe.

“What happened?” Peyton said, looking back and forth between his wounded brother and the bloody remains of the dead man lying a few yards away. “Roscoe, you’re shot.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Roscoe grunted. “There was another rider. He went that way. I would chase him myself, but my leg…”

“They told me they were going to take me to Crooked Valley,” Tess said. “That’s probably where the man is heading.”

“Don’t worry,” Spike said. “We’ll get him.”

Roscoe pointed to the sky over the woods where the eagle was circling.

“Follow Chase. He’ll lead you to the bastard. Don’t let him make it back to Crooked Valley. Nobody must find out about this valley. Nobody!”

Without a word, Spike and Peyton set off in pursuit of the fleeing man, and after a moment, they too had disappeared into the shade of the forest.

And Tess was alone with Roscoe.

CHAPTER 31

As the hucow inserted the narrow metal probe into his wound, Roscoe found himself wishing that the gunman had shot him with a rifle or a carbine instead of a puny little pistol. A rifle round would have gone all the way through his leg and come out the other side. As it was, the bullet had become lodged in the muscle of his calf, and now it needed to be extracted. It was all Roscoe could do to keep himself from wincing as the tip of the probe tapped about inside the wound, searching for the embedded piece of lead.

“I’m sorry,” the little hucow said. “I know this hurts, but I’ll try to—”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Roscoe snapped.

The hucow paused briefly to give him a look, then she returned her eyes to the wound and continued searching with the probe.

They were back at the farmhouse now, and Roscoe was lying atop the dinner table, which was just barely big enough to support his weight. He couldn’t help thinking about that moment a few days earlier when he had burst through the front door and discovered the hucow lying in the same spot, getting penetrated by a different sort of probe. When he felt his cock thickening with lust, he quickly pushed the memory out of his mind and focused on the pain instead. That killed his arousal.