Chapter 33 - The Siege of the Threshold
Before Rochefort’s men could take a single step toward the porch, the heavy iron hinge of the screen door swung wide.
Dorothy did not hold a shotgun. She held something far more dangerous: Gerald’s old twelve-inch butcher knife in one hand and the heavy brass hearth iron in the other, her apron tied firmly around her waist. Her white hair caught the late afternoon sun like polished wire.
"You take one more step onto these hemlock boards," she said, her voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of Rochefort’s neck stir, "and you will discover what an Appalachian hill woman does to men who believe paper buys courage."
From the shadows of the apple trees, a low whistle sounded.
Suddenly, from behind the woodpile, Kevin emerged. He was carrying a heavy iron tire iron from the tractor bay, his jaw set with the same grim stubbornness that Gerald had carried into the union strikes of seventy-four. Behind him came Laurent, whose eyes were no longer petrified; the terror had burned away into a cold, lethal resolve. He stepped out holding a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun, broken open over his forearm, the brass heads of two magnum slugs gleaming in the sun.
"Henri," Laurent said in fluent, razor-sharp French. "You have crossed an ocean to die in an American ditch. Step back into the limousine, or tell your driver to call the consular undertaker."
Rochefort’s smile vanished completely. The gray eyes beneath his silver brows narrowed into slits. "You speak with great bravado for an orphan whose father died in a debtor's cell, Laurent. Do you think this woman can protect you? Do you think this hill and these rotten apple trees can hide eighty years of blood debt?"
"She already has," Laurent replied, snapping the shotgun shut with a deafening, metallic *clack*. The sound echoed across the valley, sharp as a rifle crack.
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Rochefort’s bodyguards immediately reached inside their coats, their movements smooth and synchronized. But before metal cleared leather, the loud, grinding roar of three heavy farm trucks interrupted the standoff.
Coming up the lane at full throttle, throwing clouds of red clay into the trees, were the neighbors: old man Higgins in his rusted Dodge flatbed, the Campbell brothers in their cattle truck, and behind them, the township road commissioner with two heavy logging chains dangling from his bumper. The entire ridge had heard the church bell; in Miller’s Gap, the ringing of the north ridge bell meant only one thing—an alarm of fire, blood, or invasion.
