Read Once Upon a River for Free Online Page A

could elicit them, but they were also scared of her because she always evened the score. Except that she had not done so with Cal.
    As Crane reached the place where the path widened, Margo realized he had left his shotgun in his truck. Seeing him unarmed now was as shocking as first seeing him without his beard a year ago at the hospital—they’d shaved his face for the stitches on his cheek and along his jaw, and he’d never grown it back. The grocery store didn’t allow employees to have beards. Under his Carhartt jacket he still wore his aqua smock. He hadn’t left work for the day—he had only come home to check on her. And he had not come to get revenge—he was here to bring her home by her ear as he’d said he would. Her daddy, angry as he might be, was never going to shoot Cal, never in a million years. And it was better this way, better that she would do this thing herself.
    Her father would beg her, Think before you act , but she had thought long enough, and now she had only a short time to do something.
    Margo fed a cartridge into the breech silently and the bolt made a gentle tap when she engaged it. Cal was still concentrating on peeing. He looked out over the river. She studied the side of his head and knew an apology was not what she was looking for. She lowered her sights to a patch of Cal’s chest and then looked away again, at her father approaching, empty handed. It was amazing Crane had been able to hurt such a big man last year. If they fought again, Margo feared her father would get more than a broken jaw.
    Margo had made a shot like this from ten paces a thousand times with these Winchester long-rifle cartridges. She had shot from this very tree stand in years past, had shot and missed running squirrels, but Cal was a nonmoving target. Margo aimed the muzzle of her rifle down at Cal’s hand, still loosely clutching his pecker, from which a poky stream dribbled. She aimed just past the thumb of that hand. Cal had taught her to shoot tin cans, crab apples, and thread spools off fence posts, and she was steady enough to take off the tip of his pecker without hitting any other part of him. And then Cal let go with his hand, lifted his beer off the windowsill, and took a drink, leaving her a clear shot.
    The shout of her rifle was followed by a silent splash of Murray blood on the shed’s white wall. She kept her arm steady through the shot, did not blink, and heard one last horseshoe clink from the pit. Cal’s mouth was open in a scream, but it must have been a pitch discernible only by hunting dogs. Margo grasped the branch above with her free hand to steady herself. She gripped the rifle firmly in the other. She closed her eyes to lengthen that perfect and terrible moment and hold off the next, when the air would fill with voices.

• Chapter Four •
    For several seconds the job seemed done. She and Cal were even, and they could all resume their lives as before the trouble. She saw her father arriving, but didn’t notice Billy running toward them, gripping a shotgun in one hand. Crane reached up into the tree and grabbed Margo’s hand. He pulled, and she fell onto him. He took the rifle into his own hands awkwardly as he tried to get her on her feet, despite her jacket being twisted around her. Billy saw Crane holding the rifle. He saw his father down and blood splashed on Cal’s pants and the shed wall. Blood was smeared on Cal’s face. Billy aimed his shotgun at Crane’s chest.
    “Put that down, Billy!” Crane yelled and moved toward him. “You hyperactive punk!”
    “You shot my dad, you bastard.”
    Cal was trying to zip his pants.
    “Put the gun down now,” Crane said.
    “Billy, no,” Margo said, but her voice didn’t carry. Maybe Crane didn’t realize how he was pointing the Remington as he approached Billy. And Billy was focused only on Crane, so he did not see how Cal was getting to his feet and urgently gesturing to him.
    “Put the damn gun down,” Crane said,