Wilderness Double Edition 19, page 26
Her hypocrisy was like a slap in the face. How dare she brand them as thieves when she and her sons were guilty of the same sin!
Maybe they posed no threat whatsoever, although her intuition hinted otherwise. And long ago she had learned, often the hard way, that her intuition was more often reliable than not.
Fifty yards they traveled. A hundred. Rosemary began to relax, believing they had given the quartet the slip. She rounded a bend and was considering stepping out onto dry land, when Eddy suddenly squeezed her fingers and yanked on her arm so hard, she winced.
“A snake, Ma!”
Rosemary saw a sinuous brown form gliding off into the river. A harmless water snake, but the harm had been done. Eddy’s cry might have been loud enough for Chaco’s bunch to hear.
“Dang you, Eddy!” Sam whispered.
“It’s not his fault,” Rosemary said, slogging swiftly forward. And it really wasn’t. Her youngest had been deathly afraid of snakes since he was old enough to toddle. One day while she was off shopping in Holstein, Bert had found a garter snake and shown it to the boys. When Ed handled it too roughly, the snake bit him. He’d bawled and bawled even though the bite hadn’t broken his skin, and ever since, the sight of a serpent was enough to induce a panic.
Sam kept glancing over his shoulder. “No sign of those polecats yet,” he reported.
“Let’s hope they didn’t hear.” Rosemary slanted onto a gravel bar that jutted into the river like an accusing finger. Their feet dripping wet, they were soon huddled in a stand of timber. “How are you holding up?” she asked her youngest.
“Just fine, Ma.” Eddy avoided meeting her gaze. “Sorry about yelling like that. I didn’t mean to.”
“What’s done is done,” Rosemary quoted her grandmother’s favorite saying, and hugged him. “Now let’s light a shuck before I see a mouse and do the same thing.” Her fear of mice was a long-standing family joke.
Eddy grinned and whispered, “Thanks, Ma.”
It was forty-five minutes before they reached the Conestoga. Rosemary repeatedly stopped to listen and scan behind them. Once she thought she heard hoof beats on the Oregon Trail, but she couldn’t be sure. Her joy on reaching the wagon was unbounded. They were safe! She leaned against it, giving silent thanks for their deliverance, but her elation was short-lived.
“Where’s Mr. King?” Sam asked. “Shouldn’t he have been back by now?”
Rosemary straightened, her intuition blaring again. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong. Nate King struck her as a man of his word. When he said he wouldn’t be gone more than an hour, she could take it as gospel. He was long overdue, and the only possible explanation was that he had run into trouble. She shuddered to think how they would survive without him. He had to return. He just had to.
Sam and Eddy materialized beside her. “We’re mighty hungry. Do you mind if we rekindle the fire and warm up the rest of the meat?”
“The scent of smoke carries a long way,” Rosemary reminded them. “It’s best if you hold off a while.”
“But the wind is blowing from the northwest to the southeast,” Sam observed.
The tops of the trees confirmed his statement. They were, indeed, bending slightly to the southeast with each gust. So the smell of smoke would be carried away from Chaco and his friends, not toward them. Still, Rosemary didn’t like the element of risk involved. “Hold off another half an hour, to be safe.”
“How about some jerky, then?” Sam asked.
“Help yourselves.”
The boys climbed into the Conestoga, and cradling her rifle, Rosemary walked toward the Oregon Trail. Once there she would have a clear view to the east and might spot Nate King. The woods around her were uncommonly still, which she attributed to her presence. A weeping willow towered before her, its leaves shimmering, and she passed under it into dappled shadow. It was so quiet, so peaceful, that Rosemary leaned her rifle against the trunk and sat down. What with losing Bert, and losing sleep, and their morning trek, she felt tired and drained. A nap would perk her up, but she wasn’t about to sleep. Leaning back, she closed her eyes. She would rest a minute. Only a minute. Or maybe two. Then she would get up and go look for Nate King.
Only a minute ...
Rosemary’s eyes opened. Something had awakened her. She was uncertain what, exactly, but she was glad it had, because judging by the shadows she had slept the better part of an hour. She placed her hands flat to push to her feet, then paused.
A horse had nickered.
Nate King, Rosemary supposed, and rose and turned toward the trail. A riderless horse was contentedly grazing grass not ten yards away, its reins dangling. A dun, not King’s big bay, a dun Rosemary had seen earlier. It was Gault’s horse, and if it was there, its owner must be somewhere nearby. She reached for her rifle.
“Looking for this, ma’am?”
Rosemary spun, and stared into the muzzle of her own rifle, trained on her by the smirking giant.
Gault’s dark eyes bore a sinister gleam. “I had to pinch myself when I saw you. I couldn’t believe you were real. How is it the Sioux didn’t slit your pretty throat?”
Too flabbergasted to reply, Rosemary dipped her hand toward the pistol at her waist.
“I wouldn’t, were I you,” Gault advised, and relieved her of the flintlock. “Why did you want to go and do that? Have I tried to hurt you? Hell, no. I’ve been watching you sleep for minutes and didn’t harm a hair on your pretty head.”
“What do you want?” Rosemary found her voice.
“Don’t you want to introduce yourself first?” Gault clucked like an irate rooster. “If you ask me, you’ve got atrocious manners, lady. You’re acting as if I’m your enemy.”
Rosemary couldn’t resist. “Aren’t you?” she bluntly demanded.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Gault lowered her rifle and stepped back. His own was propped against the willow. “Me and those I’m with are as friendly as can be. We’ll prove it to you tonight.”
The thinly veiled threat confirmed Rosemary’s worst fears. “There are others with you?” She stalled, shifting so she could see the Conestoga. That close, it was plainly visible, despite the camouflage. Her sons were nowhere to be seen. Had they been harmed? Or were they resting?
“There’s four of us,” Gault said. “We left St. Louis three months ago bound for the Rocky Mountains.”
“And you’re taking your sweet time getting there,” Rosemary remarked.
Gault’s bushy right eyebrow formed a tepee. “What is it with you, gal? You’re as contrary as a cougar with a thorn in its paw.” He motioned at the Conestoga, then snagged his Hawken. “Gather whatever you want to take along and we’ll go show you off to my brother and the rest.”
“I don’t want to,” Rosemary said. She would die before she let him get any nearer to her boys.
“It’s not as if you have a say in the matter. We’re going for a ride, and that’s that. It’s no skin off my hide if you don’t want to take anything along.” Gault swiveled toward the dun. “Move those long legs of yours. My brother and me will come back later for a look in your wagon.”
Praying her sons wouldn’t spot her and call out, Rosemary walked toward the Oregon Trail. She racked her brain for a means to disarm Gault, but he was twice her size, and from the looks of him, as strong as a bull.
“What’s in that pouch you’re toting?” Gault unexpectedly asked. “The way you keep holding your hand over it, it must be important.”
Chiding herself for being so careless, Rosemary lowered her arm and shrugged. “A few womanly things, is all.”
“That war paint you gals dab on your faces? Perfume, maybe? Hand it over. I’d like to see.”
“Later, why don’t you,” Rosemary hedged. There was no predicting how he’d react if he found the money. “We should leave while we can. I saw some Sioux in the area earlier.”
“The Sioux haven’t been here since yesterday,” Gault said. “Stop right there and give me that damn pouch, or else.” To stress his point, he touched the Hawken’s barrel to her shoulder blade. “Don’t think because you’re a lady I won’t slap you around if you give me cause.”
“I don’t doubt that one bit.” Rosemary’s bitterness was transparent.
“You sure have a mouth on you. But what woman doesn’t?” Gault jabbed her with so much force, it spun her partway around. Casting her rifle aside, he grabbed the strap to the pouch and roughly hiked it over her head and down her arm. “Don’t look at me like that. I asked you real nice.” He stepped back and shook the pouch, and it jingled noisily. “I’ll be.” He shook it again, harder, and grinned. “I have me a notion what’s in here. And if I’m right, you’re not the lady I took you for.” He dropped onto one knee, covering her with the Hawken.
Rosemary was helpless. She watched him upend the pouch, watched his eyes widen like saucers and his mouth split in astonishment, revealing teeth as yellow as com.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch! Look at all this! You’ve gone and done our work for us!” Gault laughed uproariously and slapped his thigh. “Wait until the others get a gander at your collection. You’re a girl after our own hearts. Maybe Chaco will let you throw in with us if you please him.”
Rosemary was on the verge of stating she would do no such thing when the fruit of her womb appeared behind her captor. Two rifle hammers were thumbed back simultaneously, and at the metallic clicks, Gault turned to marble.
“Be mighty careful, mister,” Sam warned in his most adult tone. “If you so much as twitch wrong, my brother and I will blow out your wick.”
“Hold on there,” Gault rumbled. Thrusting his arms out from his sides, he let the Hawken fall. “I wasn’t fixing to hurt her. Honest!”
Sam and Eddy sidled to the right, giving the scalawag a wide berth. “Want me to part his hair with lead, Ma?”
Gault looked as if he were about to lay an egg. “Kids!” he exclaimed. “Nothing but a measly pair of runts! And I fell for it.” He started to rise.
“Don’t even think it,” Sam growled. “We might be kids, but we know how to shoot. And this close we couldn’t miss if we tried.”
Rosemary had to hand it to Samuel. His face was flint-hard and his rifle was rock-steady. In the past twenty-four hours he had done a lot of growing up. They all had.
A crafty expression came over Gault. “I ain’t about to be bucked out in gore by two sprouts who aren’t old enough to shave. It would be embarrassing. My brother would never let me hear the end of it.”
“Toss your artillery,” Sam ordered. “Pretend you’re a turtle. My trigger finger is itching up a storm.”
Molasses flowed faster than Gault moved as he willingly obliged. “I’ll remember this, boy,” he said good-naturedly, yet with an undercurrent of menace. “We’ll see how you like it when it’s my turn to crow.”
Eddy was scared but bravely masking his fear. “We were napping, Ma. It’s a good thing Sam heard this lunkhead bellowing like a moose.”
“Lunkhead, am I?” Gault said, glowering. “I’ll remember you, too, you little weasel. Don’t think I won’t.”
“Spare us your threats,” Rosemary directed. Exercising care not to step between her sons and Gault, she gathered up the man’s weapons and her own rifle. She also replaced the money in her pouch and slung the strap across her chest. “Let’s take this no-account to the wagon. We’ll tie him to a wheel until we make up our minds what to do with him.”
As docile as a lamb, Gault went along. He sat with his back to the spokes and chortled when Rosemary applied rope to his wrists. “Tie them good and tight, ma’am. You don’t want me to slip loose in the middle of the night and strangle the three of you in your sleep.”
Eddy’s mask crumbled. “Would he do that, Ma? Really and truly?”
“You bet I would,” Gault answered. “I’ve planted kids younger than you. Most were Injuns. But it doesn’t make any never mind to me if you’re red or white. You’re holding a gun on me. You deserve to be fed to the worms.”
Rosemary’s resentment knew no bounds. Before she quite realized what she was doing, she had balled her fist and smashed Gault across the mouth. The blow rocked his head back and brought a drop of blood to his upper lip, but he tossed it off with another laugh.
“Not bad, lady. A rock would do better, but I don’t reckon you have it in you to beat a man senseless when he can’t defend himself.”
“Try me and find out,” Rosemary blustered. She had never killed or maimed anyone in her life. It had always been her belief that people could get along without resorting to violence. Bert always disputed her, saying the world was violent by nature and it was silly to think that just because she was kind and decent at heart, everyone else must be. “The world was the way it is long before we were born,” she remembered him asserting, “and it will go on being the way it is long after we’re gone. You can ignore the ugliness, you can stick your head in the sand like one of those ostriches we’ve read about, but that won’t make the violence go away.” Rosemary regretted that Bert wasn’t there now so she could admit to his face he had been right all along.
Gault tested the ropes, his smile widening. “I take it you’ve had a lot of practice trussing folks up, gorgeous?”
“Mister, you talk too much,” Sam said, taking a step and centering his rifle on the other’s brow.
Not the least bit intimidated, Gault responded, “You like to squeeze the trigger, don’t you, boy? I reckon you’ve killed your share of deer and squirrels back home, is that it? Well, killing a man ain’t the same. It takes more courage than most have.”
“I can do it if I have to.”
Gault’s eyes bored into her oldest, and he slowly nodded. “I’ll be damned. Yes, you could, couldn’t you? Fair enough. I won’t take you lightly from here on out. Do me the same courtesy.”
Putting her hands on her hips, Rosemary backed off. “Enough talk about killing. I didn’t raise my son to turn out like you.”
“I doubt he’ll live that long,” Gault said, and snickered.
Eddy had lowered his rifle’s stock to the ground and was leaning on the barrel. “You sure are in a good mood, mister.”
“That’s because I know something you don’t, boy.”
“What might that be?” Eddy asked.
Gault’s next smirk was positively masterful. “I know my three pards are right behind you.”
Nine
Rosemary Spencer clutched her pistol and whirled. She envisioned the other three cutthroats with their rifles leveled, envisioned herself and her sons being shot to pieces like so many wild dogs. Acute horror seized her, more for her boys than for herself. They were so young. They had their whole lives ahead of them. She swept her pistol up and out, thumbing back the hammer as she leveled it. She had never unlimbered a pistol so swiftly in her life, but it was all for nothing.
No one was there.
Stupefied, Rosemary glanced wildly about. Empty forest mocked her. She looked at Sam, who was as confused as she was, and at Eddy, whose pallor was akin to a sheet’s, then heard Gault’s merry roar of mirth.
“You should see your faces! Three idiots, falling for the oldest trick there is!” His glee was sadistic.
Suddenly Sam sprang, gouging the muzzle of his rifle against the man’s forehead. “Enough! I know what you’re trying to do.”
Gault’s laughter died. “Figured it out, did you, boy?”
“Figured what out?” Rosemary said, at a loss.
“His friends can’t be that far off, Ma,” Sam said. “He’s hoping they’ll hear us and come to his rescue.”
Rosemary should have thought of that herself. She was the parent. But she wasn’t devious by nature, she never had been, which made her easy prey for those who were. “Not another sound out of you, Gault.”
“Or what? Your son will shoot me? My pards are bound to hear. So go ahead. I dare you.”
Sam lowered his rifle, palmed his hunting knife, and jabbed the razor-sharp tip into Gault’s neck deep enough to draw blood. “Who said anything about using a gun?”
Gault turned as red as a beet. “Gloat while you can. You’re not as smart as you think. None of you are.”
Rosemary wondered what he was alluding to. Suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, insight dawned, and she turned toward the Oregon Trail. “His horse! He left it out in the open, where the others are bound to find it.”
“Let’s go,” Sam said, already in motion.
“No.” Rosemary hurried past him. “I’ll tend to his animal myself. Stand guard here until I get back.” She smiled at Eddy, who clearly wasn’t pleased that she was leaving. “It won’t take long. Help your brother keep an eye on this ruffian.”
“Do I shoot him if he tries to hurt us, Ma?”
“You have my permission to shoot him dead,” Rosemary said, and was treated to a few choice curses from Gault.
Sparrows were frolicking in bushes near the trail, which Rosemary construed as a sign that none of the other cutthroats were anywhere near. The dun was peacefully dozing in the hot sun, and didn’t shy when she reached for its reins. “That’s a good horse,” she said soothingly. “Come along nice and quietly.” She led the animal into the trees.
No sooner had she done so than the dun pricked its ears and turned its head to the west.
Three riders had just rounded the bend.
Praying she hadn’t been spotted, Rosemary drew the dun deeper. Chaco, Garvey, and Kicking Bull were riding three abreast, rifles across their saddles. The former and the latter had their attention fixed on the ground. Garvey was scouring the adjacent plain.
Halting in the shadow of an oak, Rosemary placed a hand over the dun’s muzzle. “Hush now,” she whispered.
The three human predators came to where the dun had been and rode on by.
Rosemary grinned. “They’re not very good trackers, are they?” she whispered, and had the question figuratively crammed back down her throat when Kicking Bull swung his pinto around.
