Wayward Wind (45 page)

“Ya little bitch! I’m agoin’ to beat yore ass fer shootin’ at me—”

The knife shot out of her hand with the speed of an arrow and landed exactly where she wanted it to land—the middle of the
pocket on his shirt. Hollis gave a hoarse cry as he was flung backward, clutching at the hilt protruding from his chest. He
looked stunned as he stood for an instant on spread legs before he fell heavily. He lay sprawled in the grass, shuddered violently,
and then was still.

Lorna looked at his crumpled body coldly without a trace of regret for having killed him. It was as if she had killed a deadly
snake that was coiled to strike. She was glad the man who had killed her father was dead. Her only wish was that she could
get her knife back without having to expose herself.

There was silence again. Nothing moved. Lorna felt as if she were in a faraway place looking down on what was happening to
her in this clearing. The sky above was an odd color, she was to remember later. It was a weird yellow, like nothing she’d
seen. It was higher, vaster, and emptier than ever before. It seemed to her that the world was a great hollow bowl and she
was in the center of it.

A heavy rustling among the sumac drew her attention and she watched it intently. The movement seemed to have no direction
and she concentrated intensely on trying to figure out if it were an animal or a man disturbing the red-gold leaves.

There was not a breath of a sound to warn her. A rope, held by two hands, flipped over her head, looped around her neck and
jerked her backward. She dropped the rifle and her hands clawed at the cord trapping the air in her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
Panic beat up into her mind as she writhed and struggled. She kicked out helplessly. The blood swelled in her face, burning
the skin, beating at her throat. In a suffocating red haze, she felt herself grow weaker and a darkness deeper than the night
closed in. Her last vestige of reason was that she was going to die, and she hadn’t told Cooper she was sorry about the horses!

Lorna was first conscious of her raw throat. She drew fresh, cold air in through her open mouth and whimpered at the pain
as it passed through her windpipe. Gradually the haze lifted and she realized her arms were pulled up over her head and she
was hanging by a rope looped over a branch well away from the trunk of the tree. She stiffened her bent knees and stood swaying.
Sharp pricks on the bottoms of her feet brought her to full consciousness and she looked down.
She was naked!

Wildly and frantically she pulled at the bonds holding her wrists and whipped the hair back from her face so she could see.
A boot grated in the gravel. Lorna saw the boot and then another, and somebody laughed.

“Now ain’t that funny? I allus thought she was a skinny bag a bones, but she ain’t. Whooeee! Look at them titties ’n that
black patch a hair. She’s round ’n soft ’n got enuff meat on her to
last!
”

“I ain’t likin’ hangin’ around here, Fulton. If’n it gets out what we done to her, they’ll string us up sure as shootin’.
Folks don’t hold with botherin’ women.”

Sick with humiliation, Lorna’s wavering gaze found Dunbar sitting on a boulder, his legs spread. He was tossing the knife
he’d pulled from Hollis’s chest into the ground between his boots. She glanced at the still body of the man she had killed.
He had been rolled over onto his back and the pockets of his coat and britches were pulled inside out. His
friends
had lost no time stripping the valuables from his body.

“I said I’d have ’er naked ’n beggin’. Didn’t I say that, Dunbar? I got ’er naked, ’n I ain’t leavin’ till I got her beggin’.”

Brice walked around her and his fingers pinched her bottom and poked obscenely between the cheeks of her buttocks. She clamped
her teeth together and stood as still as her frightened heart would allow.

“I’m agoin’ to beat that little ass till it bleeds. Then I’m agoin’ to screw’er into the ground.” His rough fingers trailed
through her pubic hair, across her stomach and up under her hair to pinch her nipple.

Lorna held her head erect and looked him in the eye. She’d die before she cowered before this swine or let him know how she
burned with humiliation as his eyes and hands crawled over her nakedness! She vowed, at that moment, that she’d never give
him the satisfaction of breaking her spirit.
Never!

“Wal, do what yo’re set to do ’n let’s go. I thought we was agoin’ to take ’er as bait—”

“
You
might a thought it, but
I
had another idea. ’Sides, there ain’t agoin’ to be enuff left for bait when I get through with ’er.” Brice tangled his hand
in Lorna’s hair, jerked her head back and spit in her face. Her violet-blue eyes stared unwaveringly into his, and her straight,
dark brows lifted slightly in a gesture of contempt as the spittle ran down her cheek. “Ya stuck-up bitch! Ya ain’t on Light’s
Mountain, now, alordin’ it over ever’body. Ya looked down your nose at me like ya was a queen ’n I was a dog. I’ll have ya
lickin’ me like a bitch in heat, but first I’m agoin’ to give ya a taste of the lash like ya done me when I come to ask ya
a civil question ’bout my woman.” His fingers worked at the scar on his face before going to the buckle at his waist. He jerked
the thick leather belt loose from the loops in his britches and wound the end around his hand.

“Don’t ya kill her, now,” Dunbar cautioned. “That bitch owes me a few strokes with my rod for stickin’ me with a knife ’n
for keepin’ me from hangin’ that nester. The ole man chewed my ass good.”

“I ain’t carin’ much if’n I kill ’er first or not,” Brice said slowly. His eyes brightened with a fevered heat as they roamed
her naked body, his mouth went slack, and his nostrils flared. “I screwed a dead Injun squaw once ’n got the biggest hard-on
I ever got.”

“Screwed a dead red ass?” Dunbar stopped tossing the knife to look at Brice with astonishment. “Why… that’s not—that’s not
decent!”

“Who says what’s
decent
’n what ain’t? If’n it feels good, it’s decent. If’n ya ain’t tried it, ya don’t know what yo’re missin’.”

Brice walked slowly behind Lorna and she braced herself for the blow that was coming. It came sooner than she expected; a
white-hot brand across her buttocks. She grunted under its searing bite. The next blow came on the heels of the first. She
heard the sibilant rush of the strap as it came down across her back like a hot flame and clamped her jaws together so that
not a sound escaped them. The breathy hiss of the strap sliced through the air again, and her entire back was enveloped in
a sheet of agony. Brice moved around in front of her. Lorna saw the maniacal smile on his face through a blur of tears that
filled her eyes despite her effort to hold them back.

“How do ya like it? Hurts, don’t it?”

Saliva filled her mouth and she spat contemptuously.

Brice lifted the strap and brought it down across her abdomen. She clenched her teeth and almost strangled on the cry that
knotted her throat. She closed her eyes to block out his face and the strap cut into her thighs, her sides and her breasts.
The serpentine-fire engulfed her, but she refused to cry out.

She opened her eyes and saw the trees wavering, swaying and tipping dizzily.
She couldn’t bear this!
Help! Oh God, please help! She tried to close her mind against the pain and think of something dear to her. She would think
of Cooper. Darling, sweet, gentle Cooper, with hair like wheat-grass in the fall and eyes like the sky on a bright day.

The lash came down hard across her back and she bit into her lips to hold back the cry that demanded release. Somewhere in
the darkness that began to float down and around her, a soft feminine voice said, Sing.

Lorna threw her head back and her eyes, clear and tearless, looked directly into those of her tormentor. She opened her mouth
and her high, soprano voice, that had not deserted her, rang out strong and clear.

“Oh, don’t you remember sweet Betsy from Pike,

Who crossed the big mountains with her lover, Ike,

With two yoke of cattle, a large yellow dog,

A tall Shanghai rooster and one spotted hog.”

The strap hung from Brice’s hand as he stared disbelieving at the small, defiant woman.

“Ya cowed ’er, all right.”

The words from Dunbar and the nasty laugh that followed were like a bucket of cold water flung in Brice’s face. His head jerked
around to where Dunbar was sitting on the boulder.

“Shut yore gawddamn mouth, ya shithead! I ain’t through yet.” With that he brought the strap down across Lorna’s shoulders
with extra force.

A slight hesitation was her only reaction to the blow. As sweet as a bell, her clear voice rose in a great tumult of sound.

“Saying good-bye, Pike County, farewell for a—”

The strap landed across her breasts and the pain took her breath away. Separate fires of agony were kindled in every limb
and it felt as if her arms were being twisted from their sockets. She heard one of the men laugh. She was almost at the end
of her strength and so she prayed with a grim, terrible strength of will.

“Dear God, help me now. I will endure this if only you help me.”

The strength came; she never knew its source, any more than she knew why she could sing while enduring such torture, but she
accepted it gratefully. When she could breathe again her voice quivered slightly and then became stronger, more vibrant.

“One evening quite early they camped on the Platte;

’Twas near by the road on a green shady flat—”

“She’s plumb crazy!” Lorna was dimly aware Dunbar had come to peer into her face. Her entire body was wrapped in a sheet of
agony. His image danced before her eyes. “You done whipped her outta her mind.”

“’N I ain’t done—”

“I’m atellin’ ya, we better go. We been here too long as it is. There’ll be some cowhands goin’ to The House to get their
ashes hauled ’n they’ll hear her caterwaulin’.”

“She’ll break. It won’t be long till she’s beggin’. When she does, I’ll quit. Beg, you bitch!” he yelled. “Beg, if you want
a inch a white hide left on your bones.”

“Shee… it!” Dunbar went back to sit down. The bastard was plumb crazy.

“Where Betsy, quite tired, lay down to repose,

While with wonder Dee gazed on his Pike County Rose.”

The trees whirled ever slower and the raging flames on her body sank to a warm and comforting glow. Lorna wasn’t aware now
that she was singing or that other words were coming from her lips.

“I’m dying. I love you, Cooper. We would’ve been like Light and Maggie.”

Dust lifted from the hooves of their horses. The autumn sun warm upon their shoulders went unnoticed. The three men rode silently,
wrapped in private thoughts, each in his own way concerned about the girl they wished to overtake. Cooper’s eyes wandered
over the two-wheel track he had taken many times during the last few years. He had come this way when he came seeking help
from Mary Gregg, the former mistress of The House, when his mother was sick, and he’d come this way to help his brother, Logan
Horn, who had been waylaid and beaten by Clayhill men much the same as Arnie Henderson had been ambushed and beaten. These
thoughts passed fleetingly through his mind. There was no room for reminiscing when his entire future happiness and possibly
Lorna’s life were at stake.

Anxiety about her had driven him put Roscoe into a tiring pace. After several miles he pulled up and walked him along-side
the road so he could study the hoof prints made only a short time before. He reined in and spoke for the first time to the
men who rode with him.

“Gray Wolf’s tracks are here, and the tracks of three other horses as well. Lorna rode in the middle of the road, the others
side by side. She’s not far ahead of them. Do you suppose they followed her out of town?”

“Them prints there is that roan Dunbar rides,” Griff said and pointed to the ones he referred to. “I ain’t ne’er goin’ to
forgit that print. I seen it too many times.”

“If it’s Dunbar trailing Lorna, he’s got Fulton and Johnson with him.” Cooper’s throat constricted and he swallowed audibly.

The tracks they followed were clear because the road hadn’t been used since the night before. Cooper took one side of the
road and Kain and Griff the other. They put their horses into a gallop and reached the place where the three horses following
Lorna had pulled up.

“One peeled off and went up that rise,” Griffin said.

“There’s an upper trail up there.”

“He’s agoin’ fast, Cooper. It’s my guess he rode ahead to cut Miss Lorna off.”

The other two waited here long enough for one of them to finish a smoke,” Kain said. “When they left, it was on the run.”

Cooper jabbed at Roscoe’s sides and sent the stallion pounding down the empty roadway. He reined in so sharply that his horse
reared when he came to the place where Gray Wolf had come back up from the creek bank to the road and had balked, then whirled
to go back to the creek. He bent low in the saddle to study the tracks. All was quiet. He could almost hear the pounding of
his own frightened heart.

Then, from far away he heard a sound that shut off his breath for seconds while he listened. Lorna was singing! There was
anguish, desolation and pain in her voice.

“Long Ike and sweet Betsy attended a dance,

Where Dee wore a pair of his Pike County pants.

Sweet Betsy was covered with—”

The song ended abruptly and all was quiet again.

Griff and Kain had gone toward the creek. They dismounted and motioned for Cooper. He followed Kain’s pointed finger and saw
the body of Lorna’s big gray horse sprawled at the edge of the trees, its head lying in a pool of blood.

Fear such as he’d never felt before knifed through Cooper, leaving him weak. His breath left him in a grunting rush when Lorna’s
voice reached him again. It rose above the rippling of the water as it crossed smooth stones on its way to the river. Her
voice was weak and it quivered, but she continued to sing in short gasps. Cooper began to run toward it. He splashed across
the creek, went noiselessly through the sumac and up the slope, his boot heels digging into the sod. Now he could hear an
odd, steadily repeated sound.
Plop! Plop!
It was followed by a break in Lorna’s voice, and in a moment of horrible revelation he knew what it was.
It was the regular fall of a strap against bare skin.