Judith E French (33 page)

The thunder of hooves drowned her screams.

Horses and mules stampeded through the camp, scattering the fire and engulfing Caitlin, Beau, and Justice in
clouds of smoke and dust. Beau heaved Caitlin aside and cocked his weapon, but he could no longer see the boy in the river of churning horseflesh.

Caitlin grappled with Beau, beating him with her fists, trying to knock the gun from his hand. But he was too strong for her. He clamped an arm around her throat and began to drag her away.

Choking, unable to draw breath, Caitlin clawed at his arm and kicked his legs. Then, as her strength failed and she feared she was losing consciousness, a man on horseback appeared beside them.

“Give her to me!” he shouted.

“The hell with her!” Beau yelled back. He shoved Caitlin aside.

She would have fallen if she hadn’t slammed into the rider’s horse. Gasping, she sucked in ragged gulps of air and tried to keep from tumbling beneath the feet of the passing animals.

Beau seized the cowboy’s saddle horn. “Get me out of here, Nate!”

Nate’s horse leaped forward, and Caitlin staggered sideways. Another animal dashed toward her, and she grabbed the trailing reins amid the tangle of hooves. Her fingers closed around the leathers, and when she saw Gabe’s saddle, she realized that this was the paint the wrangler had been riding.

For a second, she thought she could hold on to the reins, but the pony’s terror made him uncontrollable. Her heart sank as the leather tore out of her grasp.

“Catch that horse!” Nate shouted at Beau. Then his hand closed on Caitlin’s shoulder, and he dragged her up across the front of his saddle.

She screamed and tried to shield her head as Nate drove his horse into the melee. Then the animal beneath her was galloping with the rest. Caitlin groaned in pain as
Nate’s saddle horn pounded against her ribs, and the dust rose in choking clouds.

She was going to die, Caitlin realized. She was going to die there without ever seeing Shane again. That was the last lucid thought she had before blackness closed over her.

It was midmorning the following day when Shane McKenna came upon Rachel kneeling in the ashes of Gabe’s campfire and holding her brother’s dying body.

“Where’s Caity,” McKenna demanded.

Rachel flinched under his gaze. She’d looked into the eyes of killers before; she’d even watched one hang in Saint Louis. But she’d never felt the chill she did now as she faced Shane McKenna’s merciless stare. Gabe had told her that McKenna was dead, and from the looks of him, he might well have ridden back from hell’s gate.

“No sign of her or Gabe.” Rachel lowered Beau’s head onto her lap. Her brother was past knowing whether she talked to him or not. He was past everything but meeting his final judgment.

McKenna couldn’t miss seeing Beau beside her, and Rachel knew he didn’t need to be told that Big Earl’s only son had been trampled beyond redemption. The animal tracks and the ruin of Beau’s body were plain to see.

“My boy?” McKenna asked.

McKenna’s skin was the color of old tallow, and he was hurting bad. Rachel noted the stained bandage around his waist and the blood seeping down his trouser leg. But he sat there in the saddle as proud and straight as a Comanche chief outlined against a clear blue sky.

She shook her head. “I tracked Beau, Long Neck Jack, and that useless piece of dog shit, Nate Bone, back here from our herd. When they cut out, I guessed they were up to no good.”

McKenna waited, his Black Irish features as hard and cold as the gray steel of his rifle barrel. His cheeks were sunken in, his lips dry. She wondered if he’d eaten or slept since he’d ridden off Kilronan.

“Beau could still talk when I found him,” Rachel said. Funny how a body could say the words as easy as if they were talking about frying up a chicken for supper. Maybe Big Earl was right, and she wasn’t a natural female. Or maybe, as a kid, she’d shed too many tears when she’d had to wash her dead mother’s ravaged body to make it decent for the coffin. Could it be that God only gave her one bucket of tears to last a lifetime and that her pail was empty?

Most folks thought her hard and mannish, but it was difficult to act like a woman when she’d had none to teach her how. And it was harder still to mourn a brother she’d had to fight away from her bed ever since she’d sprouted breasts.

Beau jerked and stiffened in her arms. He gasped once and sighed a hollow, whistling sound. When Rachel looked down at his eyes, she saw that the light had gone out of them like an extinguished candle.

For a minute she went numb, and then she realized that her tears were dripping onto Beau’s forehead. “Rot your greedy bowels.” She sniffed, ashamed of her own weakness. “You never were a brother, and you never were worth the powder to blow you away.”

Rachel closed his eyes. He almost looked asleep, if you didn’t notice what he looked like below the neck. “You’re s’posed to put pennies on their eyes to keep them shut,” she said. She dug in a pocket and came up
empty, then glanced at McKenna. “You got any coin on you?”

He tossed two quarters into the dirt.

“Obliged.” Rachel wiped them on her pant leg and laid them on her brother’s eyelids. “I know he wasn’t no good,” she said. “But he was blood kin.”

McKenna nodded, but his fierce look didn’t soften. “Did Beau tell you what they meant to do?”

She took a breath and then let it all spill out. “They meant to steal your herd, I reckon. The same way they stole Big Earl’s Natchez. Beau told me, not an hour ago. Him and Nate Bone sold that horse to a Frenchman headed for New Orleans. The slimy little worm stole his father’s prize stud, stared him right in the face, and blamed it on you and Gabe.”

“What did I ever do to your brother to make him hate me?”

“Nate hates you, sure enough, but it was pure greed drivin’ Beau. Nate told him that he’d inherit Kilronan once you and Big Earl were dead.”

“Ahead of my wife and son?”

Rachel shrugged. She’d never been frightened of McKenna, not even when she was fifteen and lied to Big Earl about McKenna trying to force himself on her. She’d always thought McKenna was too decent of a man to hurt a woman.

Today was different. McKenna was different, and the icy sensation running down her spine was fear.

“Sorry’s too small a word to use, McKenna. But it wasn’t me done this wrong, and it wasn’t Big Earl. My father’s pigheaded, but he’s no horse thief, and he sure ain’t no murderer.” She went to her horse and took a canteen off the saddle. “You look like you could use a drink of water.”

He took the container and uncorked the neck. He drank
long and deeply, and when he was finished, he wiped the stray drops off his mouth. “Thanks. Mary’s maybe a half day behind me in a wagon. She’s got Derry with her. If you want to wait, I know Mary will help you dig a grave.”

McKenna didn’t offer to help her himself, but Rachel didn’t need to ask why. A man in his shape could ride, but he couldn’t dismount and then get back into the saddle again.

“I wasn’t plannin’ on takin’ the time to bury him,” she answered. “There’s a tree yonder, and I’ve got a rope. I thought to pull him up high enough to keep the coyotes away from him and ride on to look for Gabe.”

“If he’s alive, he’ll be trackin’ the herd.”

“Beau said Nate was supposed to shoot Gabe while he grabbed Cait. I looked for blood, but if there was any, the horse sign covered it.” She let her breath out slowly. “I didn’t find no bodies. Only Beau’s. Maybe Nate’s got Justice and Cait.”

McKenna’s gray eyes narrowed. “You and Gabe?”

She nodded. “Injun or not, he loves me and I love him.”

“Big Earl won’t—”

“To hell with my father. I would have helped Beau if I could, but he’s dead and Gabe’s alive. I’m goin’ after my man.” She took the rope off her saddle. “I’ve got to finish here, but if I can catch up, would you mind if I rode along with you?”

McKenna removed his hat and wiped the sweat away from his forehead. “It’s a free country.”

“I can shoot straight, you know the truth of that,” she said. “You might need another rifle.”

“I might,” he admitted, “but if my family’s come to harm, I mean to take Nate Bone apart Osage fashion, one inch at a time.”

*   *   *

Caitlin vomited until she was reduced to dry heaves. She crouched on her hands and knees at the edge of a clearing in the woods. Nearby were the thirty horses and four mules that still remained of Shane’s herd. The others had been lost in the wild chase over rocky ridges and moor that had lasted until midafternoon.

Some of the animals had bolted away from the herd; others had simply vanished. One mule had broken a leg; Nate had left the animal braying in pain beside a ground-squirrel burrow, and Long Neck Jack had doubled back to shoot it.

Sometime around dawn, Nate had dropped a loop over Gabe’s pony and put Caitlin on it. He’d tied her ankles to a rope that ran under the paint’s belly and her wrists to the saddle horn. The hemp had cut into her flesh so tightly that her hands were streaked with blood.

Once during the day Nate and Long Neck Jack had driven the herd across a river. Water had risen up to Caitlin’s knees, but she’d been unable to drink. It was thirst that tortured her now.

Nate had water. She’d watched him drink from a leather flask, but he hadn’t given her any, and she’d been too proud to beg.

A shot rang out in the distance, and Nate gave a grunt of approval. “Reckon Long Neck has got us some supper.” He pulled a hunting knife from a waist sheath, strode over to Caitlin, and leaned down. In one quick motion he slashed through the ropes that bound her wrists. “Get on yer feet, bitch, and build a cook fire.”

She stood up and rubbed her lacerated wrists. Her back ached, and her head was splitting. She knew she needed water soon, or she’d be too weak to fight him.

“Why?” she asked. “What did I ever do to you?”

In answer, Nate seized the high neckline of her russet
wool riding habit and ripped it, exposing the rise of her breasts above her camisole. “Nice tits,” he said.

Face flaming, she turned away and tried to cover herself, but a blow to the side of her head made her ears ring.

“I told you to build a fire,” he reminded her.

Caitlin bit back a retort and decided that staying alive was her best option. As a child she’d heard stories of her great-great-grandmother, who’d saved herself from ravishment by killing an English soldier with a knitting needle.

If she could be so courageous, so could Caitlin. She was Irish, and the Irish were survivors.

She would do whatever she had to. She carried Shane’s child under her heart, and so long as she bore that precious burden, she would put self-preservation before any other consideration. She would get the best of Nate Bone, and she would live to go home to her husband and children.

And when I get the chance, Caitlin thought, I’ll kill the bastard.

Gabe caught the big pinto gelding easily. He saw the horse nibbling grass in a gully and whistled. Babe nickered in reply and came trotting up to him. The wrangler fashioned an Indian bridle of wild grape vine and mounted despite the bullet wound in his arm.

He turned the horse’s head in the direction Nate Bone and the herd had gone, and kicked Babe into a gallop. He hadn’t gone an hour before he heard a shout, and Justice slid down out of a tree almost under the horse’s front hooves.

“Gabe! You ain’t dead!” the boy shouted. “I thought you was dead.”

Gabriel’s chest lost some of its tightness as he looked at the child he loved as much as he would a son of his own blood. Justice’s left eye was swollen almost shut, his
lip was split, and his jaw was black-and-blue, but he didn’t seem to have any injuries that wouldn’t heal as right as rain.

He motioned for the boy to leap up behind him on the paint. “What did you think you were doin’?” Gabe asked once Justice was mounted and his arms were locked around his uncle’s waist.

“Trailin’ the herd,” Justice answered. “McKenna would expect me to get them horses back …” His voice cracked and the man faded, leaving only a frightened child. “…  get her back,” he finished. “Beau Thompson was with them, but he’s done for.”

“Nate Bone’s got Caity.”

Justice swore. “Devil take’m.”

Each jolt of the horse made Gabe’s arm hurt something fierce, but the bullet had gone in one side and out the other. He knew he was lucky. “You tracked them this far on foot?”

“Course I did,” Justice said. “What took you so long?”

“I took a slug through my upper arm. It knocked me off my pony just before they stampeded the herd. And then, when things quieted down, I had a talk with Beau.”

“He talked to you?” Justice asked.

Gabe didn’t explain. Better the boy didn’t know what he’d done to get Beau to tell what he knew. “He said Nate wanted McKenna dead because that rustler McKenna hung was Frank Bone—Nate’s brother. After McKenna threw Nate off Kilronan, Nate and Frank took up thieving. The one that escaped the noose that night was Nate.”

“You were right,” Justice said. “McKenna should have shot them both last summer.”

Gabe nodded. “Shot them, buried the bodies, and driven the horses over the graves to hide the fresh dirt.”

They rode in silence for a while, and then Justice tightened his arms around his uncle. “I’m glad you ain’t dead, Gabe.”

“Me, too.”

Gabe smiled as the boy laid his head against his back and slept.

Caitlin looked at the bloody strips of venison with disgust. “You can’t expect me to cook this with all this dirt and hair on it,” she said to Nate.

The other man, the one Nate called Long Neck, pointed to an opening in the trees. “There’s a spring back there,” he said. “Wash the meat off.”

“And wash your face while you’re at it,” Nate taunted. “You’re filthy as a pig, and I like to see what I’m forkin’.”

Ignoring the threat, Caitlin straightened her shoulders and walked away with as much dignity as she could.

“And don’t think you can run away. There ain’t no place to run!” Nate shouted after her.

Her steps quickened as she smelled water and heard the gurgle of the spring. She dropped the piece of deer meat and ran to plunge her head and arms into the small clear pool below a rocky outcrop.