Plains Crazy by J.M. Hayes Page A

seems to have slipped off. Oh, and did you hear about the pipe bomb here at the courthouse?”
    Jaws dropped. Before anybody could respond, the windows rattled with the sound of an explosion.
    â€œLord,” the younger Wynn declared. “You don’t suppose that could be another one?”
    ***
    Slipping away from Wynn Some hadn’t been hard, though Mad Dog’s initial attempt to follow Deputy Parker through the back door was blocked.
    â€œNo siree Bob,” Deputy Wynn had told him. “Parker said to keep you here and that’s what I aim to do.”
    Mad Dog knew Wynn well enough not to argue. But he intended to make sure Hailey was all right. “Okay, then,” Mad Dog said. “I’ll go wait in the office with Mrs. Kraus while you keep Parker’s back covered.”
    Wynn had squared his shoulders and looked proud about securing Parker’s back. He’d continued to look proud clear to where Mad Dog exited the hall and could no longer see or be seen.
    The front doors were just across the foyer. After that, it was only a matter of ducking around the outside of the building. Mad Dog got there in time to see Parker work her way along a hedge between the houses in back of the courthouse. Since she was doing so behind a raised pistol, Mad Dog decided not to come up behind her and provoke an unpleasant surprise. Instead, he trotted through a rose garden at the south end of the back yard of one of those houses, hopped a fence that let him out on Oak Street, and proceeded west toward the corner.
    A row of catalpa trees lined the block ahead. Pale blossoms turned their thick foliage a ghostly shade of green and left the street in deep shadow. The north side of the street, past Monroe, was a green-gold wheat field, out of which a small figure ran, pell-mell, to where a motorcycle waited. The figure vaulted aboard, gunned the engine, then did a block-long wheelie, closely pursued. If the biker’s torn pant leg was any indication, Hailey had crossed his path while he was up to no good.
    Mad Dog whistled for her. She didn’t come and it didn’t surprise him. Even when she wasn’t busy protecting him from bad guys, or evil squirrels and rabbits, she didn’t obey commands and only occasionally met requests. She was his friend and partner, not his pet.
    Mad Dog couldn’t imagine what was going on. Apparently, someone had been shot by an arrow on Catfish Creek this morning. It had happened at the same time he was jogging by and Deputy Parker, whose opinion was not to be taken as lightly as Deputy Wynn’s, thought Mad Dog might have been the intended target. The manifest absurdity of that had to be weighed against the evidence of the two arrows he’d seen protruding from the back door to the courthouse. A motorcyclist had been present on both occasions. There didn’t seem much doubt the arrows at the courthouse had been meant for him, especially if Hailey was in full pursuit of the archer. The figure that had hopped on the Japanese crotch rocket had something slung over his shoulder. It could have been a bow.
    Hailey wouldn’t catch the motorcycle. Not unless she realized it had to turn south where Oak ended two blocks down at Van Buren. If she cut across a few yards, leapt a fence or two, and if the biker had to slow for traffic on Main, she just might catch him at the intersection. If she did, Mad Dog’s money was on Hailey. But, he didn’t want her hurt. In Buffalo Springs, there was always the chance of a farmer happening along with guns in the rack in his pickup’s back window. None of them was apt to stop and ask whether Mad Dog’s wolf-hybrid had good reason to be attacking a motorcycle rider. Most figured it was only a matter of time till she began killing their livestock or raiding their hen houses anyway.
    Mad Dog considered going back for the Mini, then abandoned the idea. He could get there faster taking his own shortcut