A bullet chimed the horse’s right cheek, ricocheted, and struck the pickup truck, shattering a headlight.
Drummond appraised the damage with a thin smile and said, “As Churchill put it, ‘There is nothing so enjoyable as to be shot at by one’s enemy without result.’”
Charlie asked himself, How did it come down to this? “Didn’t Churchill have a drinking problem?”
“Give me the Colt, please.”
Charlie saw a glow in Drummond’s eyes. Had a mental association with Beauregard the dog triggered him?
It could have been an association with raven crap, for all Charlie cared. Electrified, he handed over the gun.
Drummond pivoted to his left and squeezed off two quick shots.
The first missed by a wide margin, judging by the puff of dirt. Still, it sent Flattop diving for the cover of high grass. The second met him there. Red spouted from his leg, and he dropped from sight.
If not for fear of breaking Drummond’s concentration, Charlie would have cheered.
Whirling to his right, Drummond trained the Colt on Scholar, now scurrying across a patch of barren ground about forty yards away, and fired. The bullet merely trimmed the high grass to Scholar’s left.
Not an ideal time for Drummond to prove human, Charlie thought.
Drummond tweaked the barrel and snapped the trigger again. The result was a feeble click. “It wasn’t fully loaded,” he told Charlie. “Give me the Walther.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where is it?”
“The glove compartment.”
“This isn’t the time for your jokes.”
“In the car, you were rocking back and forth, obsessing with ketchup, and the gun was just kind of balancing there on the seat, so I thought it’d be for the best…”
Drummond’s eyes slitted, which Charlie read as fury.
“It might have been for the best, actually,” Drummond said.
He outlined their escape plan.