Bittner, Rosanne (8 page)

"Get
off me, you stinking half-breed coward!" she screamed. She spit at him
several times, until finally a big hand came around her throat, just tight enough
to cut off most of her air and quickly bring her struggles to a halt.

"Now,
you listen to me," he said through gritted teeth, keeping his voice low.
"You've got to do exactly as I say!"

She
lay there with her eyes wide from terror and lack of air. John kept one hand on
her throat and used the other to carefully lift the canvas at the side of the
wagon to look out. Chino and his men were gathered around Juan's body, talking
and laughing. He looked back down at Tess, trying to keep his mind off the fact
that she lay naked beneath him, although she was so bruised and burned it was
not so difficult to ignore her nakedness. He noticed teeth marks around her
breasts, and his hatred for the men outside burned deep. He leaned close,
talking into her ear so it would seem he was making love to her if someone
looked.

"I'm
a Texas Ranger," he told her. "I'm going to get you out of
here."

If
not for the horror of her situation, Tess thought she would actually laugh.
Surely the man was joking. He finally lightened his grip on her throat, and she
took a few deep breaths before spitting in his face again. "No Texas
Ranger ever looked like you!" she whispered, sneering.

"You've
seen me in El Paso, and you don't even know it. Women like you don't give my
kind much attention. Either way, if I wasn't a Ranger, how would I know your
name is Tess Carey, and that you were abducted from your ranch five days ago?
Everything was burned and your pa and husband were killed."

Tess
gasped at the sudden reality of it. Her beloved father was dead. Abel was dead.
Everything was gone, and now she'd been so abused and shamed she could never
again hold her head up in society, never find a decent man. But then, after
what she had been through, she never wanted a man in her life again. Her eyes
began to tear. "A Ranger wouldn't come clear down here after one
woman," she said, her lips beginning to quiver.

"This
one would. And don't go all soft on me. I'm supposed to be raping you, and
you're supposed to be fighting it. Make some noise."

She
managed to pull her arms out from under him, and all the horror and frustration
surged out of her then in a fit of screaming and pummeling. She punched at John
over and over, needing to hit, wanting to hurt, aching to cry but still
unwilling to completely break down.

John
was amazed that a woman her size could be so strong, especially after what she
had already been through. He admired her grit and had to literally struggle
with her to make her calm down. "All right! All right!" he growled,
forcing her hands back underneath him again.

Tess
kept struggling, seeing only a dark-skinned, longhaired Indian on top of her,
remembering all the horror. Finally he wrapped his arms around her in an
embrace that surprised her in its sudden gentleness.

"I
swear to you I'm here to help you," he said quietly, his mouth near her
ear again. "All I want you to do is go along with me in whatever I do. I
have to wait until they all settle down for the night. Do you understand?"

He
raised up just enough to look into her blue eyes. They looked back at him with
doubt, curiosity, surprise. "Yes," she finally said.

"And
whatever you see happen tonight, you can't cry out. You can't make any noise. I
could have picked these men off from hiding, but one of them would have
deliberately killed you before I got them all."

"I
would have been better off," she whispered. "Chino... Chino..."

John
could see the horror building into hysteria. He clamped a hand over her mouth.
"You were just an object. They didn't touch your soul," he said.

Tess
thought the statement odd, coming from this man who seemed to be someone who
knew nothing about soul, nothing about how a woman would feel in a situation
like this. And how was he, one man, going to save her from seven of the most
ruthless characters who ever walked the face of the earth? He could only if he
was even more ruthless, so how was she supposed to trust him? She thought hard
about his statement that she had seen him in El Paso. She didn't remember it at
all. Maybe that was a lie. Still, he seemed to know all about her. She couldn't
believe, though, that a lawman would do what he'd done to Juan, no warning, no
feeling. She had no choice but to believe him for now, pray that he was not
lying about any of this. Maybe he was just trying to steal her for his own
profit. Maybe he really had stolen his horse and rifle and wasn't a Texas
Ranger at all.

"Hey,
it is getting too quiet in there, Chino," someone outside said.
"Maybe the woman likes that man. Maybe she is enjoying him instead of
fighting him like she did you, no? Maybe you should go and see."

Someone
cussed, and John peeked out of the wagon again. "Shit," he swore.
"Chino is coming. Spread your legs!"

Tess's
mouth dropped open.

"Damn
it, I told you to go along with me on whatever I do!" He rose up and grasped
her thighs, sorry about the bruises already there. He forced her legs apart,
and she began hitting at him again. He fumbled with the buttons at the front of
his pants, pulling himself out of them; then grasping her tied wrists and
forcing her arms over her head with both hands, he began making movements as
though he was having sex with her. She arched against him, butting at him with
her head. He was finally forced to let go of her arms with one hand and hit
her. "Shut up, bitch!" he shouted, wanting the others to hear. God,
he hated this. He'd never hit a woman in his life—except once, a Mexican girl
who had tried to knife him when he was arresting her boyfriend.

He
heard laughter near the tailgate of the wagon then, knew Chino had looked
inside. "She likes him no better than the rest of us!" Chino shouted.
"But he is having a good time anyway, just like I did!"

The
others laughed and hooted and shouted dirty suggestions for things John could
do to her. John looked through a crack in the canvas to see Chino had rejoined
them. He glanced down at Tess then, realizing she had quieted again. She was
just staring at him in stunned silence, and it hit him that his privates had
reacted to the stimulation of moving between a woman's legs, his hardness being
pressed against her soft flesh. Her full white breasts brushed against his own
bare chest. How easy it would be to go ahead and take her, pretending he had to
do it to make things look good.

He
bolted away from her, turning around and shoving himself back into his pants,
angry that for that brief moment he had allowed himself to be no better than
those sitting outside. God knew he wasn't much different when it came to
killing men, but he'd never mistreated a woman, and he wasn't going to start
now. "I'm sorry for hitting you," he told her. "I had to make it
look good." He turned to see her curled up on her side.

"You
wanted me, too," she said in a stony voice. "You're just like
them."

"Yeah,
maybe I am in a lot of ways." He threw a blanket over her. "I'll tell
them it's probably best to leave you in here for a while, that you should rest
or you could die. Maybe they'll buy it. You lay here and take it easy."
God, his privates ached to be satisfied. Even in her sorry state Tess Carey was
quite some beauty, and her courage and vinegar only made her more beautiful.
He'd never come across a white woman quite like her. Most would be sniffling
and begging and pleading by now.

"If
you do get me out of here, I'll have no place to go," she told him.

"I
know a woman in El Paso who would take you in."

She
turned her head to face him. "What kind of woman would a man like you know
except a whore?"

John
couldn't decide whether to feel sorry for her or hit her again. "No other
kind," he sneered. He leaned over her. "Insult me all you want. I'm
still getting you out of here. I don't give a damn if you're grateful for it or
not. I just expect you to cooperate so I don't get my ass killed. Will you do
that much?"

She
thought about that quick embrace, that brief moment when he seemed to actually
be human. And now that she took a truly long, hard look at him, she realized he
was really not a bad-looking man, for a half-breed Indian. He even had nice
teeth, a rarity for most men she'd seen out here, and a lot of the women.
Besides, he had thrown himself right into the lions' den for her, if he truly
was not lying about why he had come.

"I'll
cooperate," she answered. "If you need help and I'm able, I'll help
you."

He
moved his gaze along the form beneath the blanket. He would not soon forget how
she looked.

"Why
did you come down here from Texas just for me?" she asked.

He
shrugged. "Even I don't understand half the things I do," he
answered. He climbed out of the wagon, and Tess lay there quietly, realizing
she suddenly felt nothing, physically or emotionally. Just nothing.

Tess
heard voices. She stirred awake from the only real sleep she had enjoyed since
being abducted, and she realized she was still inside the wagon, where the man
called Hawk had taken her. She realized he had not even told her his full name,
and she still could not remember ever seeing him in town.

She
sat up, managing to wrap the blanket Hawk had thrown over her around herself.
She rubbed her aching jaw, remembering why it hurt Hawk had hit her. It was
difficult to believe that he could really be a Texas Ranger, not a man who
looked no different from the Indian renegades who had stolen her away, not a
man who could apparently be as ruthless as those he went after... not a man who
could do such a good job of pretending to abuse a woman. Even hitting her was
supposedly for show, but there had been nothing pretended about the force of
the blow. Maybe hitting a woman was not something unfamiliar to him.

She
reasoned he'd had to do a good job of proving himself to the others. After all,
if he really was a Ranger, he didn't dare let any man out there figure it out.
He was one against seven.

She
turned to lift the canvas and look toward the campfire in the distance,
thinking how every bone and muscle in her body seemed to ache. Her wrists stung
painfully from rope burns. Her throat hurt from so much screaming the past few
days. Now her jaw ached fiercely, and she yearned for water, water to drink,
water to bathe herself, to wash her hair. How wonderful it would feel to be
soapy clean, to be dressed in something comfortable... to be back home, baking
bread for her father and... and Abel. Abel! The memory of his cowardliness
would haunt her forever.

Through
the crack where she lifted the canvas she could see two men sitting by the fire
and sharing a bottle of whiskey. From what she could tell in the darkness, they
were Chino and Hawk. Five other men were sleeping in bedrolls nearby. She
wondered by what miracle she had been left alone since the incident with Hawk, worried
the whiskey would put new ideas in Chino's head about her. Hawk handed over the
bottle, as though he was urging Chino to drink even more, and she silently
cursed him for doing so. If he was here to help her, why was he getting Chino
drunk? When the man was drunk, he was even more violent.

And
then there was Hawk himself. How in the world could he complete the task of
getting the better of seven men if he was too drunk to aim at a barn? He was
surely the most worthless excuse for a Texas Ranger who ever rode north of the
Rio Grande! He seemed to have no plan at all.

She
watched him stand up then and walk around the fire. Both men were laughing
about something. Hawk sat down beside Chino and slapped him on the back. He
moved his right hand to his side, and then in the eerie firelight she saw him
raise that hand, saw what was in it, the huge knife he wore at his waist. In an
instant that knife plunged. Tess gasped when she heard Chino grunt. Hawk
continued to sit there beside him, laughed again, as though to continue the
conversation. She could tell by his movements then that he was jerking the
knife out of Chino, wiping the blade on the man's shirt. He put the weapon back
in its sheath, laughed again.

Tess
lowered the canvas and sat back for a moment. Ranger Hawk had just killed Chino
with the same ease he'd killed Juan, and apparently with the same total
unconcern for what he'd just done. It was not that either man did not deserve
to die, but she'd always thought indiscriminate, unfeeling murder was only for
the likes of such men, not a man who was supposed to be on the side of the law.

"He's
passed out," she heard Hawk yelling to someone—probably the seventh man,
who would be standing watch. She peeked back out again, saw Hawk laying Chino
down and covering him with a blanket. "I'm going to have another turn at
the woman," he continued, giving a wave to someone off in the darkness.
Tess moved back into a corner, still not sure what to think of the man. Maybe
he did intend to kill all these men, but maybe his reasons were not what she
thought. How could she trust someone who could so easily ram a knife into a
man's heart and immediately act as though it never happened? A moment later he
stood at the back of the wagon.