Beverly Jenkins (38 page)

Chase dropped his head. He was sorry Laura had come to such an end, but glad the body had not been his Cara Lee’s. Chase looked up at the sun to gauge the time. “It’ll be dark soon. What do you want to do, Sheriff?”

“I think we need that posse!”

“I’m going on,” Chase told him firmly. “Sutton already has almost a day on us. Get your posse, if you want, but I’m not going to get off this trail.”

“You sure you can make it alone?”

“No, but I have to find Cara.”

The sheriff nodded. “Well, I’ll take the girl’s
body back to town and rustle up the posse, and we’ll catch up to you somehow.”

Chase had Carolina kneel so he could mount.

The sheriff walked back toward the sunflowers and Chase rode on.

Chase picked up the tracks of the two horses, following them west.

By the time Miles halted the horses it was near dark. Cara’s arms and shoulders were burning from the strain of being tied. She’d tried to get away from him earlier, but he’d caught up with her nag of a horse and as punishment, he’d tied her hands in front of her body, attached her to a lead, and made her walk behind her horse. She’d walked until she dropped, and only then did he let her ride again. When she’d remounted, he’d tied her hands to the saddle horn. Cara could no longer remember how long ago that had been.

She waited on the horse while he dismounted. He came over and helped her down. Her legs buckled instantly; but for his hands she would have fallen. When he seemed certain she could stand on her own, he untied her hands. He left her to stand beside the horse while he strode off about fifteen paces into the fallow cornfield beside the road, where he looked around for a time, then found the trap door of a dugout. He returned to her and dragged her roughly through the field to the raised door. The pain in her arms and legs made her wince, but she bore it silently, consoling herself with the fact that at some point an opportunity to escape would present itself again.

The steps leading down into the dugout were rotten and split, the earth anchoring them soft and eroded. Cara had trouble sensing the supports as she hesitantly made her way down, and her hands
were incapable of gripping the step above her head for purchase.

She made it down without mishap, though. Her hands, face, and clothing were covered with mud.

Miles had lit a lantern before descending. “You look lovely,” he offered. “Make yourself at home. Be right with you.”

Cara ignored the sarcastic compliment and surveyed her surroundings. A pile of supplies stacked in a corner proved he’d used this place before. He knelt before them now, evidently deciding what to take. The lantern beside him offered just enough illumination for Cara to see the dugout’s deteriorated state. At one time the place might have easily sheltered a family of five or six, but now one wall had completely caved in, cutting off access to whatever rooms lay beyond. Beside her stood one of the old black potbellied stoves. The rusted-out hulk had lost its signature stovepipe long ago, but Cara dearly wished it could be fired up to counter the shivers brought on by the chilly night air and the underground dampness.

“Miles, where is Laura?”

He turned. “Laura decided to return home. She’ll meet us later.”

Cara didn’t believe him for a minute. Laura hadn’t returned after Cara heard her calling Miles’s name during the argument back at the soddy. Cara had been left alone for quite some time after their voices faded away, and when Miles returned, he’d returned alone. Cara had asked then about Laura, and he’d given her this same explanation. She tried another tack.

“Why don’t you just let me go?”

“Because, my dear Cara, I need you to get my dear dead mother’s money.”

“And then what?”

“Who knows? Maybe we’ll sign on for Liberia.” He laughed.

“One more question?”

“Certainly.”

“How did you know about the gold shipments?”

“My poor ignorant mother, of course. I was helping her with her mail, since she couldn’t read, and I found a letter from a bank in Topeks. It showed a tentative schedule of when the coaches would be making the circuit to pick up or drop off gold. I waited about a week for the Topeka bank to send the definitive schedule they’d promised in the original letter, but I never saw it. Mae Dexter was also handling Mother’s mail during that time. My guess is Mae got to it first and took it straight to Mother. I searched her office and never found it, so I called Laura.”

“And she did it just because you asked her?”

“She did it because I told her I wanted to marry her.”

Cara stared. So Laura had been duped.

“She’d fallen for me back at Howard. Loved the fact that I was different from the men in her parents’ circle. I came from Texas; I ran poker games and had my firearm on the table when I played. She liked that. One of the reasons I was dismissed from Howard was because when the boys didn’t pay their poker debts, I’d go to their dormitory with my forty-five and persuade them to reconsider. She begged to go along with me on night. Ah, how that appealed to the little minx. Turned her wanton—especially on one of my debt-collecting nights.”

His eyes probed Cara and she looked away.

“So,” he continued lightly, standing now, “any more questions?”

Cara shook her head.

“Good. You can take this blanket and sleep over there. And while you’re dreaming of your soldier boy, remember this: Once we get my mother’s money and leave St. Louis, we’re going to California to be married.”

Cara’s eyes flashed.

“Wait, now.” he said patiently. “If you don’t want to marry me, I’ll turn you over to a friend of mine who owns a brothel on the Mexican side of the border. He’ll pay me top dollar for an educated brown beauty like you. Of course, once he gets his investment back, he’ll probably sell you to someone else, who will sell you to someone else. But by then, your looks will be gone—health, too, more than likely, and you won’t care.”

She couldn’t hide her shudder.

They were mounted and on the trail again just after sunrise. Cara was exhausted after a fitful night spent on the blanket in a corner of the damp dugout. Miles hadn’t offered her anything to eat and she hadn’t asked. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cringing and crying. Even with her hands tied to the pommel of the saddle, her face streaked with dirt, and her head dizzy from the lack of sleep and nourishment, she rode beside him defiantly.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Cara tried to determine in what direction they were traveling, but the ordeal had begun to take its toll. She could no longer determine south from west or east from north. The horse beneath was moving, and that’s all she knew.

Blessedly, early in the evening, Miles stopped. Cara had ridden the last few miles like a corpse,
slumped in the saddle. Only being tied to the pommel kept her from falling.

“Pretty hard ride,” she heard Miles say as if from a distance. “But you need to be broken like a wild filly. If it takes a week out here in the sun to do it, so be it, Cara dear.”

She felt the tension ease around her wrists, now tied with rope, then her arms were free. She moaned in pain as they were moved and her body was lifted from the horse.

“I’m going to set you down over here while I make camp. Don’t run away now.” He laughed.

And then later, “Cara, can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes slowly. Through cracked and swollen lids she stared up at the man’s face. She searched her mind for some explanation. Then came recognition, and she attacked him, clawing and screaming at him in a dry, hate-filled voice with all the strength she had left. She felt his hand hit her sharply across the face, sending sparks through her brain. He cursed her as he retied her hands and pushed her back down.

Leaving Carolina hidden in the tall grass, Chase approached the camp cautiously. His slow progress had more to do with his injuries than with a desire for stealth. Each step was agony as he dragged the broken limb along the uneven terrain. Sweat poured down his face; breathing had become hell, but he’d be damned if Cara would spend another hour in Sutton’s hands.

Tracking them had been a relatively easy task. Either from ignorance or overconfidence, Miles had not bothered to mask his trail. The prints of the horse had been clearly visible in the earth of the old Indian path. He’d expected to lose the tracks when it got dark, and he had for a while,
but he’d stayed on the trial. He figured Sutton would do the same until he came across a place to hole up for the night. Luckily, Chase’s intuition proved correct.

They were camped outside an old homestead not more than a few hundred yards away. Were he in better shape, Chase could simply walk down there, shoot Sutton, retrieve Cara, and be done. But he was in no condition for a fight. His only hope lay in going in after Sutton dozed off.

Chase gained the old shack without incident. His eyes swept the scene. Sutton lay snoring loudly on a bedroll by the dying embers of the campfire. It took all Chase’s willpower not to jerk him awake and stick a rifle up his nose, but he reminded himself, his main concern was Cara’s safety. He saw her, and his anger at Sutton warred with the blessed relief at finding her alive. She was seated with her back to an old fence post and her arms tied behind her. He could see the strain in her shoulders as she slept with her head tilted forward. Even in sleep she looked tired and defeated. Sutton would pay.

The hours Chase had spent on horseback had tightened his leg considerably, and the constant pain throbbed over every inch of his body. Cursing it, he moved as silently as he could around the sleeping Miles and over to his wife. Once there, he crouched as much as his injury permitted. Keeping a wary eye on Miles, he gently clamped a restraining hand across Cara’s lips. She startled awake as he knew she would. She fought him with a strength numbed by sleep and fatigue.

“Evenin’ ma’am,” he whispered.

Chase felt her go stock-still. She turned her head to him, and in the moonlight he saw the look of wonder on her face.

Cara had never heard such beautiful words. Her only regret was that her hands were tied and she couldn’t throw her arms around him or touch the lines of his face. He was alive!

Miles’s attack came out of nowhere. One moment Chase had been holding Cara as if he’d never let her go, and the next moment they were bowled over by Miles’s charging weight. The force slammed them to the ground. Cara came to rest a few feet away. She spent a few unfocused seconds trying to clear her head while Chase and Miles wrestled violently.

The injured Chase proved to be poor sport. Miles was glad. He owed Chase a lot, especially for the ass-whipping the night the Lady burned.

Cara could hear Miles’s fist meeting the bones of Chase’s face again and again. Certain she was not going to lie there and let Chase be beaten to death, Cara began to crawl toward Miles’s bedroll.

Straddling Chase’s chest, Miles snatched the barely conscious soldier up by the shirtfront and hit him again. He’d forgotten all about Cara—until he heard the angry click of the rifle at his back.

“Move off, Miles.”

He turned slowly. The smile on his face was indulgent. Looking her straight in the eye, he pulled a knife from his boot.

“You don’t have the guts to shoot a man in cold blood, Cara. Now watch. I’m going to cut your man into little pieces.”

He brought the knife up high, intending to plunge it into Chase’s bleeding chest, but he never got the chance. Cara pulled the trigger.

Chase was resting on Miles’s bedroll. “You can take care of yourself, can’t you, schoolmarm?” he whispered.

Cara nodded solemnly.

“Remind me to be more respectful in the future.”

Cara, standing a little ways off, wanted to smile, but couldn’t. “You’ve killed men, haven’t you?”

Chase fought to keep from blacking out. She needed to talk. “In battle, yes.”

“He would have killed you, Case. I had to shoot.”

The emotion in her voice made Chase feel a new and different kind of pain. “I know, darlin’. Come here.”

She went to him, and with a gentle hand he tugged her down, then folded her into the crook of his arm.

“I killed a man,” she repeated numbly.

“You did it because you had no choice.”

“I took a man’s life.”

Chase thought a moment about how best to explain what Cara needed to hear. “Darlin’, sometimes you do what you have to. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t something you forget.” His eyes held hers in the flickering light of the campfire. “The sharpness of the memory will fade in time,” he continued in a low voice, “but you will carry it with you for the rest of your life.”

She looked back out at the horizon and saw the faint colors of dawn seeping into the heavens. She was filled with emotion—remorse over killing a man, relief that Chase was alive and the ordeal was over, and other feelings too jumbled to sort out at the moment. The overriding feeling, though, was one of quiet joy that she and Chase were alive. Alive!

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like hell.” And he did. Miles had worked him
over pretty good. There wasn’t an inch on his body that didn’t scream pain. He’d never be able to ride under his own power. “Sheriff Polk said he and the posse would be right behind me. We’ll have to wait for them. There’s no way I can ride.”

“Then we’ll wait. But if they aren’t here by later today, we’ll have to come up with something. You need a doctor.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The one I have here is pretty good.”

After dragging Miles’s dead body off Chase, Cara had rummaged through his pack for a clean shirt suitable for bandages. Using the knife with which Miles had planned to kill Chase, she’d cut the garment into strips. Cleaning Chase up had been impossible; he’d been covered with blood. It would have taken more water than they could afford to spare, so she concentrated on just his face, then wrapped the big gash on his head, repacked his shoulder bandage, and did what she could for the leg. In her opinion, it hadn’t been nearly enough.

“It’ll take more than a whipping from a two-bit gambler to put me in the ground, so don’t worry. We’ll make it.”

Cara had to admit he did feel less feverish to the touch. The bark tea he’d asked her to make seemed to be doing its job. She, too, had partaken of the bitter-tasting brew and could feel the stiffness in her limbs fading away.