Annie reveled in the cold clear water that she gulped down.  She was as dry as a dead river bed.  Once her strength was restored she would set out again into the wood and find and deal with Baby Face.  Her mare swayed hotly beside her, intent herself in quaffing the sparkling, welcoming fresh water.  Neither noticed the shadowy shape that crept behind Annie.  Small and fast moving it was on her before she had a chance to turn.  A cloth was clamped across her mouth and nose.  She stiffened, ready to retaliate but then to her total horror she relaxed and collapsed backwards into the arms of her assailant.  Her nostrils full of a pungent rotten foul substance.  Her hearing felt impaired and she could feel her heart racing until at last, despite her body’s protestations, she fell into a faint.  Mockingly her mare moved several steps away before plunging her nose again into the cool welcoming water.

Annie woke to a sense that someone with large boots and an entire bagpipe band was dancing inside her skull.  Her eyes were bleary and she struggled to focus.  She was inside that was for sure.  Probably in some kind of barn.  Broken cladding allowed tiny shaft of light to penetrate her prison and she felt light winds blow across her face.  Her legs were tied around the ankle and knees and her wrists were bound together in front of her.  She tried to wipe her eyes.  But a string tied her wrists to her ankles and she could only move them less than an inch.  As is always the case in such predicaments, she needed to both attend to her eyes and wipe the dew drop that was fast appearing on the end of her nose.  A desire to go to the toilet also beset her.  Her breathing was laboured, she’d not felt like this for many years.  Swallowing was difficult and she could get little air.  Desperately trying to suppress a desire to scream she tried to sit upright.  She shuffled backwards until she hit the wall of the barn and then using her shoulders as levers, she worked her way slowly, painfully upwards.  Her mouth tasted like biscuit crumbs and she realised that she was gagged.  Whatever it was had been pushed completely into her mouth.  Like a contestant at a gurning or face pulling competition she contorted her mouth into a thousand different grimaces.  Pushing her tongue under the blockage she licked and chewed until at length, and to her utmost terror, her mouth seemed to explode into a thousand dry, crunchy, biscuity pieces.

Baby Face watched his captive struggle.  A thin, cruel smile broke briefly across his tired, pock-marked features.  His nose, beet root red from over indulging in his favourite whisky twitched as he considered what he might do with her.  His dark uniform of a chocolate brown shirt and jeans, tucked in extravagant, hand tooled cowboy boots loomed over Annie.  Her alarm filled eyes gazed up at him as he ran a single, biscuit dirty hand through her auburn curly hair.  “What am I going to do with my lovely” he hissed through broken, ruined battlement teeth stained dark and rotten from decades of sugar abuse from the millions of cookies and biscuits he’d consumed over the years.  Dirty, alcohol and biscuit laden breath caused her to wretch.  The dryness of her throat resisting her urge to spit what little bile she had at him.  “Leth me go” she croaked at him.  “Lesth me go”.  He smiled back.  “So that you can go back to Dullsville and tell them our little secret.  Our hidey hole.  Our”....., he paused, .....”biscuit heaven”.  He leaned back, pulling her hair as he did so.  Annie let out a little squeal of pain and indignation.  “No” he said.  “I think that you should stay here.  At least until I have found somewhere...” he paused for emphasis, “a little more permanent”.  Annie fought the confusion in her brain.  Surely he didn’t mean to keep her forever.  She had obligations.  Sheep, chickens, her horses!  Then, like a dead weight, the full, awful meaning of his words came home.  He wanted to kill her.  Do her in.  Silence her.  “Thnnnoo” she tried to shout.  But her dry biscuit dusty throat mocked her as the sounds formed in her throat and emerged as a choking, burbling noise.  Incomprehensible to all, save herself.

Baby Face let go of her hair and she slumped back.  He smiled at her again.  Malice and mischief etched across his thin face.  His dark brown greasy hair hung in a small quiff.  “Like Hitler” Annie thought.  “and just as unpleasant”.  He reached for a bottle.  Knocking the top off he drank deep.  “I bet you’d like a drink wouldn’t you?”.  He stopped and smiled.  She followed his gaze towards the wall.  Corrugated tin, she thought, or asbestos perhaps.    “Out there is all the water that you would ever want.  My little cowgirl”.  he hissed the words at her.  “A whole lake of water.  Not too deep, but deep enough.   Drink enough of that and you’d never be thirsty - again”.  He took another draw on the bottle.  The dreadful significance of his meaning dawned on Annie.  He meant to drown her.  Never!  She’d not give him that satisfaction.  He upturned the bottle and made a small puddle of beer beside her.  “Drink if you want”, he whispered.  “Just don’t get too drunk now”.  With that he left her.  Wiping the his mouth with the greasy sleeve of his denim shirt.  A shirt that had ridden many miles, rustled tons of biscuits, and had witnessed more devilish deeds than is good for any garment.

Annie’s throat screamed at her for moisture.  But she could not bring herself to touch a single drop of the spittle encrusted pool that was even as she thought about it, soaking into the earth floor of her gaol.  She looked around her again.  In the half gloom she could make out boxes stacked floor to ceiling.  All were marked: “Bourbon Biscuits”.  She could also see address labels made out to “Ruby, Our Lot Pub”.  She had found what she had set on her quest for.  Here lay the treasure that Sparky had wanted her to return and that even now, Ruby would be expecting to appear over the hill.  Liberated and ready to grace the smart new shelving that Myklj had installed for them.  Unexpected tears slowly oozed their way into her eyes.  Moistening them and betraying her to anyone that might have caught a glimpse of our trussed up heroine.  But these were not tears of self pity.  Annie was made of sterner stuff.  No.  She would get these biscuits back somehow.  How dare that sneaky, ferrety faced ne’er do well dare to call Sparky’s town, Dullsville.  There was nothing dull about that place.  But for all her hotheaded anger; she could not, as yet, see a solution to her present predicament.  She needed to be untied.  Only then could she plan her escape, the return of the biscuits and the downfall of Baby Face Bourbon.