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“Don’t know!” Boyd yelled back. “Shots came from behind us!!” There was a long pause, then a cautious, “Don’t hear nothin’ now.”

  Skinner didn’t answer. Rising slightly from his crouch, he peered over the side of the wagon up toward the rocky, forested rise. Glancing back at Annie to be sure she hadn’t moved, he took careful steps backward, ducking down for cover.

  He never saw the hand that grasped his gun belt and hauled him hard and fast backward over the side of the buckboard, slamming him to the ground.

  The gun flew from Skinner’s hand on impact, his breath knocked from his lungs, but within seconds he was scrambling up, twisting and kicking at his assailant.

  Instantly the other man dodged and brought his own gun down hard, cracking against the side of Skinner’s head. He grunted and went to his knees, shaking his head like a dazed bull. The stranger, still faceless and barely seen ⎯ Skinner’d had only a glimpse of a tall man with a shaggy mane of light hair ⎯ hauled the gunman to his feet, spinning him around and clamping a rigid arm across his windpipe from behind.

  “Wait! Wait!” Skinner gasped. “Nobody has to get hurt!”

  “Too damned late for that,” a cold, gravelly voice drawled. “One of your men’s already dead. Make your peace, mister. Hell’s waiting for you with the door wide open and the mat out.” The stranger shoved the barrel of his pistol high under Skinner’s jaw, pressing it painfully into the outlaw’s neck.

  “No, wait!” Skinner gasped. “Listen, we can deal...”

  “Like hell. Call your last man out. Tell him to throw down his weapon and bring the boy out where I can see he’s alive. Now!”

  Trying painfully, unsuccessfully to swallow, Skinner obeyed, his teeth gritted. “Boyd! Show yourself! Bring the kid.”

  “The gun.”

  “Throw down your gun! Do it, dammit!”

  A long, terrible moment passed in which Michael Cantrell thought they would surely call his bluff. In the earlier exchange of gunfire, Boyd had made a lucky shot. Michael carefully held Skinner angled to the left so he could neither see nor feel the widening bloodstain soaking the right shoulder and sleeve of his coat. The Navy Colt was heavy in Michael’s numb right hand. It was beginning to tremble. Skinner wouldn’t be long in noticing.

  “You’re a dead man,” Skinner swore, his voice shaking with fury and fear.

  “Better a dead man than no man at all,” Michael retorted, his low tone dangerously even. “Appears your mama hatched nothin’ but snakes.”

  Skinner’s body jerked with an impotent rage, and Michael felt the man’s sweat-slick, bulging neck flush hot. All at once the half-conscious woman in the wagon bed moaned. Startled, Michael glanced up, reflexively loosening his hold. As Skinner squirmed, Michael clenched his jaw against the shock of pain that exploded in his shoulder. He flexed his elbow hard, tightening his grip with all his remaining strength. Skinner choked, arching his back, nearly dancing on the toes of his boots. Michael felt his own boots slip in the greasy mud, and in desperation he dug in harder.

  “Send the boy out now, Boyd!” Michael called. “Your compadre here is runnin’ out of time!”

  When he thought he would surely lose his grip on Skinner, Michael suddenly saw a movement in the dense shadow of the trees. A small, wiry boy, his forehead and cheek bruised, his hair and clothes matted with mud, stumbled from the trees. He half slid down the slope and stopped, staring with wide, shocked eyes at the wagon and the two silent, fiercely struggling men.

  “A-Annie?” he cried, his lips trembling.

  Michael scanned the thicket of pine. Almost too late he saw the reflected glint of sunlight as Boyd raised a rifle to fire. The bullet smacked into the wagon, scattering wood shards like shrapnel.

  “Get down, boy!” Michael yelled, and Robbie instinctively obeyed, diving blindly into the mud.

  Michael hauled Skinner sideways, seeking greater cover, but the gunman twisted suddenly and slammed an elbow into Michael’s ribs, driving the air from his lungs, doubling him over and finally breaking his hold. Michael cried out as pain seared his right side from neck to hip.

  Skinner snatched up his pistol from the muddy track and bolted across the road for the cover of the evergreens. As he scrambled up the rise, Boyd stepped suddenly from cover. Skinner sprinted past him and disappeared into the trees. Michael leaned heavily against the edge of the wagon, wheezing, still unable to straighten up, his eyes filled with tears of agony. Desperately he transferred his revolver, slippery now with his own blood, to his awkward left hand and willed that hand to rise, aim, and pull the trigger. The Colt might as well have weighed fifty pounds. A sick black dizziness swamped him as Boyd raised his own weapon, aiming to finish it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lorrie Farrelly is the author of a Western historical romance trilogy, contemporary romantic suspense novels, and sci fi/paranomal romantic suspense novels. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Northwestern University, she's been a Renaissance nominee for Teacher of the Year, a ranch hand at Disneyland’s Circle D Ranch, and a “Jeopardy!” television quiz show champion. Her novels have earned Readers’ Favorite 5 Star Awards, and Terms of Surrender is an Orange Rose Award finalist.

  Lorrie and her family live in Southern California.

  LINKS:

  https://www.facebook.com/LorrieFarrellyAuthor

  https://enovelauthorsatwork.com/153-2/

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4351229.Lorrie_Farrelly

  https://twitter.com/@lorriewrites

  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LorrieFarrelly/posts/p/pub

  https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lorrie-farrelly/27/5a0/64

  TRUCKING IN ENGLISH

  An armchair emigration tale

  by

  Carolyn Steele

  Copyright 2014 Carolyn Steele

  Cover design by Rebecca Poole of Dreams to Media

  What happens when a middle-aged mum from England decides to actually drive 18-wheelers across North America instead of just dreaming about it? From early training (when it becomes apparent that negotiating 18 wheels and 13 gears involves slightly more than just learning how to climb in) this rookie overcomes self-doubt, infuriating companions and inconsiderate weather to become a real trucker. She learns how to hit a moose correctly and how to be hijacked. She is almost arrested in Baltimore Docks and survives a terrifying winter tour of The Rockies. Nothing goes well, but that's why there's a book. 

  Please press “Next Page” on your e-reader for the first chapter of Trucking in English.

  TRUCKING IN ENGLISH

  by Carolyn Steele

  IF ALL ELSE FAILS

  It was slick, slippery and dark. We were hauling the maximum allowable load, 80,000 lbs gross. The snowploughs had been by clearing surface drifts but snowploughs leave icy droppings. As they passed they mashed the remaining mess of snow, oil and gravel down into a solid layer of scariness.

  The road east from Marathon, Ontario was windy, bendy and hilly as well as icy. I bravely managed about 80 kph on the straight runs, a lot less on the hills and bends. I slowed to an irritating crawl on the downhill grades with bends at the bottom. We’d been warned in school, trucks can end up in trouble on slippery hills with bends at the bottom. Apparently they can end up in lakes and/or ravines as well as the vaguer sorts of trouble. Overtly I was being responsible but truthfully I was being pathetic. No, what I was being was terrified.

  Other trucks with presumably more experienced and less wimpy drivers flew past us when and where they could. This wasn’t frequent. I switched off the CB, not really wanting to hear what everybody thought of my speed, my mother or my physical attributes. After a couple of hours we were stopped by yet another police cordon... another road closure.

  A day’s worth of Highway 17 traffic was neatly corralled into the nearest truck stop. Should you wish to consult a map with a magnifying glass you may spot Wawa, Ontario, somewhere north of Lake Superior. It has a truck stop. That is all. As we drank tol
erable coffee and ate tolerable chips we heard the gossip, a truck had ‘parked in the ditch’ in front of us. Behind us the road that had held us up all night—having been closed by the police due to snowdrifts and whiteouts—was closed again, a seventeen truck pile-up with fires and people killed. All of a sudden I didn’t mind being the sort of cowardly rookie who drives slowly on ice. Not dying seemed to be sufficient achievement, careful wimps might live to drive this awful road again.

  The offending truck was winched out of the ditch eventually and we all trooped off in a grumpy conga line of tired and late freight. I waited for the back of the line, who needs more abuse? The road remained slick. It snowed. The whiteouts came and went with every turn into the wind. In brief moments when the visibility cleared, you could see waves on the lake flash-frozen into little grey mountains.

  It took all day and most of the night to round the rest of Lake Superior and emerge from the dreaded weather system that is a Lake Effect Winter Storm. We were exhausted, anxious, and late. But we emerged, which is more than some did.

  ~~~~

  Why would a fifty-something, nicely brought-up mother suddenly decide to go trucking? It was a good question and like most good questions it had answers both simple and complex. “It sounds like fun,” just made people who didn’t know me roll their eyes. I did a bit better with “it’s a traditional immigrant job,” and with “well, I can earn more money in a truck than I can with a Master’s degree.” These explanations merely made me sound serious about finding work and supporting my family, not defiantly odd, just a traditional immigrant to Canada indeed. And they were partially true, since emigrating from England I'd struggled to find employment in the things I was actually qualified to do.

  My son and I had arrived in Ontario from London posing as entrepreneurs five years earlier. The bed and breakfast I’d bought as my ticket to Canadian citizenship had bitten the dust when I’d realised there was more to running a successful business than looking up entrepreneur in the dictionary. I did need a new project but to be honest the trucking thing was more about preferring to play with wheeled toys than do real work. I’d driven ambulances and stretch limos in the past so if I wanted to get bigger and better it was going to have to be something like a truck or a plane.

  Trucking school was cheaper, and I’d been eyeing those massive beasties on the roads ever since landing here. I blame my Dad. He wanted a boy. Psychotherapy aside, adding to my list of excuses that it seemed like a great angle for a book helped a bit when explaining to people with no imagination, but not much.

  “Ben, have you got a minute?”

  “Yes Mum, what’s up?”

  “You know how I try not to embarrass you accidentally?”

  “Yeah, just on purpose because it’s good for me. I know.”

  “Well, I’ve got this idea.”

  The seed for my future career as a truck driver had originally been sown back at the B&B. Three lads from England had arrived in search of a year’s accommodation, which we provided. They took over our basement and came and went as they pleased, driving their monsters at odd hours and to exciting-sounding places. We spoiled them with random bacon butties when they turned up, temporarily back from Having Adventures. During that year we shared all the tales…we heard about the people, the trucks, the nightmare border crossings, all those great trips, and we enjoyed it all. We laughed, cried and fumed along with Jim, Owen and Mick on their infrequent stops back ‘home’, agreeing that dispatch were stupid and that Homeland Security were mad but that getting paid to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge made it all worthwhile. And we developed an impression that this job might be fun. (Well, one of us did.) The seed was buried fairly deep back then, a sort of barely acknowledged, I suppose, if all else fails I can always drive a truck.

  When all else did fail, the idea resurfaced. The B&B was a distant memory and the fifty-something mother found herself empty-nested and wondering what to do next. Why not get paid to see North America? I’d driven for a living before, I’d seen little of Canada and nothing of the States, how hard could it be?

  “I’ve been looking into what to do now you’re away at uni most of the year.”

  “Umm hmm.” He gets that look on his face.

  “I thought I might learn to drive a truck.” The relief is visible.

  “Is that all?”

  “You don’t think it’s nuts?”

  “Well, yes, obviously it’s nuts.”

  With the familial seal of approval, nuts enough to be interesting but not so nuts as to be embarrassing, I allowed the seed to see the light of day elsewhere. To begin with I introduced it into conversations as a joke, “If all else fails I can always drive a truck (ho, ho).” It was, of course, more of a test than a joke. People who knew me well would eye me strangely, give it a moment’s thought and respond, “I wouldn’t put it past you (ho, ho).” Frequently these were the same people on whom I had tested out the whole mad idea of moving to Canada and buying a B&B in the first place. As a joke of course.

  All of a sudden I was bumping into people from the freight transport industry, I probably had been before then but you know how you suddenly start noticing things when they can serve a purpose. Specific questions began to leave my head via my mouth involuntarily. Which were the best schools? How long was the course? What would it cost? What could you earn? How much work was there out there? Did trucking companies employ women?

  It didn’t help the growing inevitability when my early questioning unearthed the coincidence that the finest trucking school in town belonged to my old neighbours from the B&B. We’d connected briefly when I’d toured the neighbourhood with bottles of wine to apologise after a particularly noisy pool party but the subject of trucks hadn’t cropped up back then. It did now and I got most of my trucking answers from people who knew me and those answers were worryingly positive. Ours, two months, not a lot, lots, lots and yes. They appeared mildly surprised when I asked about the women thing, apparently it’s the 21st century and that trail has already been blazed.

  I was surprised but encouraged. The London Ambulance Service had taken some persuading to employ me and my fellow lady paramedics in the very early ‘80s, we had blazed the trails back then in heroic manner. We’d considered our task complete when women began to appear driving ambulances on TV shows and we’d subsequently reserved the right to tell female rookies how lucky they were we’d fought their battles for them. Apparently we hadn’t been unique.

  ~~~~

  My neighbours’ training school supplied me with a list of the companies they placed rookies with, so that I could call for myself and ask about the female thing. They told me how one qualified for the course; clean driving abstract and police check, medical check-up and mechanical aptitude test. With the presence of mind not to exclaim mechanical aptitude test out loud I thanked them prettily and toddled off to continue my research. I allowed the nagging sense that I might have underestimated the task ahead to bury itself under a veneer of bravery and panache.

  I called a couple of the companies on their list of employers and left voice messages for recruiters asking about prospects for women on the road. One company called back within hours and I had a cozy chat with a lady called Gwen. She was amused, apparently my concerns really did date back to the dark ages. She also confirmed, independently, that I had chosen the best school. We discussed my background...“Call me when you have your licence,” she cooed, “we’ll talk some more.”

  Thus encouraged that paid work might actually exist, I went on-line to Google mechanical aptitude tests. Memories of ambulance days flooded back. The aptitude test back then had been to watch someone strip down and reassemble an Entonox delivery kit and repeat the procedure within a time limit. I had visions of being asked to uncouple a rig (or whatever it is they call whatever it is they do) and could see my career on the open road rapidly disappearing into the black hole in my brain labelled pipe dreams.

  The internet was fairly reassuring though. I fo
und a site which allowed you to download a bookful of sample papers complete with answers and explanations for the princely sum of $19. The book explained that many occupations now use mechanical aptitude tests to check that you are trainable in practical pursuits and that practice could make all the difference.

  I cleared a work station on the dining room table, bought myself a toy truck as a visual aid and settled down to do my homework. The questions fell into several categories of IQ type thingy. I was well versed in most of them—spotting series and doing sums, finding the odd one out from loads of nonsensical diagrams—I have always liked that sort of thing, but I did appreciate the crash course in ‘O’ Level physics.

  In no time I was relearning long-forgotten rules for levers, gears and electrical circuitry. The sample tests seemed relatively challenging though. They were aimed at people hoping to be taken on by armed forces to do very clever technical stuff and, not being one of those, I sometimes didn’t manage the recommended time limits. I comforted myself with the thought that I was hoping to drive a truck not design a helicopter so presumably my impending test would have to be a bit easier than these.

  With the crash revision course in physics under my belt, and bits of paper confirming that I had a clean criminal record and nothing untoward on my driving licence, I make an appointment to be tested mechanically.

  The pre-test interview was fairly straightforward. Have I driven big stuff before? (Is an ambulance big? I had thought so but maybe not in comparison to things with many axles.) Have I used a manual gearbox before? (I’m English, that’s what we drive.) Am I beholden to alcohol or drugs? (Does an occasional gin and tonic count? See previous question, I’m English, that’s what we do.) Have I worked away from home overnight before? (Does shift work count?) Will the family miss me? (Son doesn’t care but I’ll ask the cat.) The chap who asked all the questions had adopted an almost avuncular smile. When we began to muse about arrangements I might make for feeding the aforementioned cat I had the scintilla of a suspicion I might be being humoured. But very nicely, this is Canada after all.