Dizzy as a speeding top, the whole world started spinning around and going black, like she was shut up in a box with no way out.
“Mama,” she tried to say. But she just didn’t have enough air left to force the plea for her mother to come help her. Her lips were frozen shut, cold as on a winter day.
Not that her mother could’ve helped anyway.
His grip never wavering, the slant-eyed man wrested Ketta away from the others. In Ketta’s last moments of consciousness, she glimpsed her mother, Magdalene, lying on the porch, her skirt pushed up around her hips. The house was on fire behind her, flames licking at the window sill, Magdalene’s blue calico curtains blazing up until they disappeared into charred rags.
All the men but the one holding her were fighting over Mama as she writhed and bucked against them. Innocent as she was, Ketta knew what that meant.
“No,” she squeaked, so faint the word turned to wispy air. “No. Mama.”
“I’m first,” the scarred man said.
Another, the ugliest one, said a very bad word. “You’re always first.”
But they weren’t really fighting. They were laughing. That was what Ketta saw.
Then Mama’s scream was cut short, and Ketta’s world finally went dark.
CHAPTER TWO: YESTER
Maybe Ma had been wrong. Maybe Ketta had got away.
The hope filled Yester’s mind as he ran. His sister was a wily little fox. Had to be, ever since she was old enough to run.
Ketta’s special place, her “HideFromPa” place, lay only a quarter mile from the house. Close enough that, if necessary, a feller could hear her scream. Could’ve if she’d been a screaming sort of girl, that is.
Which she wasn’t. Silent most times to the point of being mute, Pa, maybe because of this, called her stupid. Yester knew different. He figured—no, he knew—she was smart, maybe even as smart as one of those geniuses. Smarter than him, by far. Smart enough to hide behind silence when around Pa. She could sure enough talk plenty when she wanted to. To him and Ma. And to Barney and sometimes the chickens, horses, and even the milk cow, one of Ketta’s chores being to milk Ol’ Bossy twice a day.
Yester, his long legs pumping, scrambled over the basalt boulder that guarded the cave’s entrance from view. His ma said the boulder had been rolled here by an ocean of water headed for the big river but had left a crack behind it. That had been at the end of the last ice age, a long, long time ago.
His boots slipped in a patch of small stones and he fell, skinning a knee. The stones hadn’t been here the last time he’d been around looking for his sister. They made a lot of noise, and he figured she must’ve scattered them as a way to hear anybody trying to sneak up on her.
Smart, for sure, if painful to the unwary.
“Ketta,” he called real gentle-like, breathless from his run. What if those buggers who’d violated his ma were still around? “Ketta, you here? It’s Yester. Come on out.”
Nothing. No soft little voice replied.
Damn.
Ketta’s cave was really only an indentation in the bank of a dry river, not really a cave at all. Big enough for a small girl and the boy Yester had been only a couple years ago, with Barney squeezed in with them. Now Yester dwarfed it. Which meant he needed only a glance to see the space was empty, the dust undisturbed for many a day.
“Ketta,” he called again, louder this time.
But, though he called and searched around and about for several minutes, he found no trace of his sister.
Ma had it right. Ketta had been taken.
“Yester,” his father’s voice boomed out from down the draw. “Where the hell are you. Getcherself back here. We got work to do. Your ma needs you.”
Ma. It was probably the only thing he could’ve said to bring Yester in as quickly as he did.
“I can’t find Ketta,” Yester said, running back into the yard.
“Don’t matter,” he said. “Got more important things to worry about than your ma’s crossbreed.”
Big Joe, shovel in hand, was busy flinging dirt over the last few flames still licking at the house’s bottom row of cedar logs.
It seemed to Yester he was throwing most of it away.
“Outlaws opened the gates and ran the horses off.” Big Joe stood up, breathing hard and canted a little sideways, like he still wasn’t seeing too straight. “What they didn’t steal. Another couple hours and the herd’ll be scattered from here to hell’s breakfast table. We gotta get them rounded up.”
“How—” Yester began, but his pa interrupted.
“Found some loose nags that’ve been rode hard. I figure the fellers done this are on the run. We gotta get our horses back. Soon as you get the woman inside, I want you to ride over and fetch Fontaine and his boy. I need help, and I need it quick.”
“What about the sheriff?” Yester asked.
“No time to ride back into town. Go on now. Do as you’re told.” Satisfied the fire was out, Big Joe wiped away the sweat rolling down his face with a filthy hand. “We gotta get a handle on this.”
Yester figured that was no lie. “Yes, Pa,” he said.
But Pa calling Ma the woman rankled. He hated when Big Joe spoke like she was some stranger. And Ketta? She might never have existed. Pa wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. Shoot! Worse, he’d not mention her even if the sheriff did get called in. Probably not to Fontaine, either, whose wife most likely would come help Ma when asked.
The sheriff, though, he needed told what’d happened here. If the sheriff and a posse rode with Big Joe, they’d see no harm came to Ketta and that she was returned to her family. To Ma and him, he meant. But if nobody informed the lawman, then Pa would let Ketta go and say good riddance.
Magdalene Noonan, although a lightweight woman—she worked too hard to have a lot of meat on her bones—still proved more than Yester could carry far on his own. He fetched a blanket stinking of char from his ma’s bed in the unburned part of the house and brought it out. Rolling Ma onto it, he tugged the makeshift travois inside. By then his mother was stirring, her wits slowly coming back. She was able, with his help, to crawl into bed, a single low moan escaping her clenched lips.
“Don’t bother with me. I’m all right,” she whispered. “It’s Ketta . . .”
“You ain’t a bother.” He pulled the blanket over her battered arms, found a cloth and some water and wiped a smear of blood from her chin.
“You’re wasting time,” she said to him, turning her head away. “Go after her. Go right now.”
“Me?” A little confused, Yester’s mind whirled. “Who’s got her, Ma? Where are they taking her? What do they even look like? Pa’s—”
She hushed his flow of questions. “I heard your father. He won’t look for Ketta. He’s after his horses. It’s up to you, son.”
“I can’t leave you here alone, Ma. Not when you’re hurt and all. You need somebody to help you.”
“Yellow Bird Fontaine. She’ll come.” Her skin shown as pale as the sun-bleached sheet pulled to her chin. “I’ll be all right,” she said again, although Yester didn’t believe her. Not for a minute.
Taking in a shaky breath, his mother grabbed his hand, arresting it as he rinsed the rag and started to bathe around her ear where a thin trickle of blood had dried.
Magdalene winced. “It was her father who came for her. Oh, he didn’t do this,” a weak gesture indicated her battered self. “You can blame those three ruffians with him. But he didn’t stop them. It was Ketta. He came for Ketta.”
“Her father?” Yester could hardly believe it. After all these years? They—he and Ma—had talked about him once. They’d thought, hoped, he was dead. “Who is he, Ma?”
She winced when she tried to shrug, a quickly muffled moan escaping through clenched teeth. “A Celestial man with slanted eyes. You know that. God knows your father has raved about it often enough. Only his skin is much darker than Ketta’s and has a yellowish cast. He’s not all Chinese or whatever foreig
n land he comes from, though. I think he must be some white. He talks white.”
Yester froze. He’d seen someone like that in town yesterday.
“Do you know his name?” Yester asked, an idea forming in his mind.
“No. Not really. I never wanted to. But one of the men, he called him Ko. I think. I’m not sure.”
Ko? Or Kuo, like he’d heard? The idea hardened.
While Big Joe had been drinking and bragging and carrying on with a saloon girl, that foreign-looking man had been listening in. Pa had laughed about his woman at home taking care of the ranch and something about her abomination of a kid. The Celestial had been all ears. Yester knew because, drawn by some of the man’s features resembling Ketta’s, he’d been watching him. One of the rough group surrounding him had called him Kuo, pretty close to what Ma thought she’d heard. And, worse, the Celestial had known Ma and Ketta were alone and unprotected here at the ranch.
Pa’s fault. This was Pa’s fault.
Anger surged, white hot.
Ma raised her hand and touched one of her ears. “One of them hit me. I can’t hear very well. Everything is muffled. You must go now. Right now, Yester, before they’re too far ahead to catch.”
“Aw, Ma—” Yester was torn.
She grabbed his hand, squeezing with surprising strength. “Now, Yester.” Her bloodshot eyes swiveled to where Big Joe was still flopping a wet blanket over some embers outside the door. “Before he puts you to work chasing horses and stops you.”
Yester didn’t see that he had any choice. He just didn’t know how he was going to get his sister back from four bad men. Not all by himself.
KETTA
Ketta came awake. She couldn’t figure it out. Where was she? And why did her head hang down over the side of a horse, its front shoulder moving not three inches in front of her eyes? Powdery dust combined with the sweating odor of horse rose into her face, making it hard to breathe. And her stomach—oh, her poor stomach. A sudden lurch, and what little remained in there from her lunch spewed down the side of the horse.
“Uh,” she said, halfway between a groan and an exclamation of disgust.
Memory came back like a brick falling. Hard, heavy, and terrifying.
The bad man—the man with the funny, yet oddly familiar eyes—gripped her tightly around the waist. It didn’t make her feel any better. She’d just as soon fall off the horse and collapse onto the ground, burrowing in like a little old earthworm.
Such a respite was not to be. They didn’t even slow down, the horse continuing at a fast walk, although she heard laughter from behind them, and someone called a raucous comment to her captor. He turned and made a rude gesture at them.
Ketta couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
“Quit that,” he muttered to her, then, low so the others couldn’t hear, “No squalling. We’ll stop soon. You’ll be better.” And even lower under his breath like he was talking to himself, “Knock you in the head if you ain’t.”
Ketta believed him about that last part, and since she sure enough didn’t want knocked in the head, she fought back the tears and resolved to not be sick anymore. No matter what. Although if knocking her in the head is what this man had in mind, why’d he swoop her up in the first place? Why not leave her with Mama?
Where was her mother, anyway? Ketta didn’t see her up ahead of them. Just one of those awful men. The black-skinned one, and he was alone. Carefully, to avoid having the man clutch her around the waist again, she stretched her neck to look behind them.
No sign of Mama there, either, which meant she was all alone with these men. But that ugly one with the paunchy belly, the one with the snaggly, yellow teeth and raggedy clothes, the one who’d been pawing at Mama no matter how hard she fought, he was there. The man with the scarred nose was there, too, slouched in his saddle, which had a missing horn. He looked like a sack of potatoes and just about as lumpy. They were riding two more of Big Joe’s horses. In fact, she noticed now, they all were. Including the man who had her in a death grip. Beau was the horse’s name, a brown gelding.
Oh, my goodness. Big Joe was going to be so mad.
“I want to go home,” she announced in a small voice. “I want my mother.”
The fellow’s arm pinched her belly, although he didn’t speak.
An awful thought occurred to her. “Where is my mother? Did you hurt her?”
He didn’t answer, which she thought was an answer. They’d hurt Mama, all right. She knew they had. Tears seeped into her eyes again, but she blinked them away. She’d had a lot of practice doing that.
“Big Joe will be coming after his horses, you know,” she said. “You’re going to be in a lot of trouble. When he catches up, he’ll hang you from the highest tree.”
“Shut up,” the slant-eyed man said. “I saw your Big Joe in town earlier. Feller drank so much whiskey this morning, it’ll be a week afore he can ride.”
“You don’t know him.” Her voice turned sepulchral, if a young girl’s voice can ever be called such. “Big Joe can ride when he’s asleep. Ask my brother. And a hangover always just makes him extra mean.”
“What do you know about hangovers?”
“I know what they do to him,” Ketta said.
Her captor seemed to be thinking it over. “You don’t know nothing,” he finally said.
His words just went to show he was the one who didn’t know anything. She tried once to argue with the man, but he just squeezed her hard again. Without breath, she had to quit talking, which seemed to suit him better.
But they kept riding and riding, until Ketta thought she was being split apart. And still they kept going, on into the soft, purple evening, and into the full dark. Until the horse ahead of them stumbled over a broken tree limb and went to its knees.
The black man, invisible in the night except for the whites of his eyes, cursed. “I’m done in,” he said, his voice a thick drawl, “and so is this nag.”
Nag. Big Joe wouldn’t like anybody calling his horse a nag, Ketta thought.
Her captor pulled up beside the black man. “We’ll camp here for tonight, eat, and catch a little shut-eye. We’ll hit the river tomorrow along in the afternoon and split up and meet again at the cabin later. Kid here says the rancher will be coming after his horses.” He laughed. “Guess I ain’t inclined to make it any easier for him.”
Apparently, this suited them all. “I’m hongry enough my belly thinks my throat been cut,” the scarred one said, seeming to think he’d just invented the phrase. He was wrong, though. Big Joe had been saying it all the years Ketta could remember. Another thing Big Joe wouldn’t like Scar knowing, she reflected, seeing as he acted like it was brand new every time he said it.
Anyway, they pulled off into the trees, the black man leading his horse, which limped as if he’d bunged up his knee. Presently, Snaggletooth shouted out he’d found a little clearing, and they all converged on the spot, pine tree boughs forming a thick canopy overhead and shutting out the sky.
“This will do,” her captor said, swinging down from Beau. He reached for Ketta, but she slid down Beau’s shoulder by herself, landing in a heap beside the horse’s feet.
“Here.” The man grabbed her by the back of her dress and dragged her out of the way. “You lookin’ to get trampled?”
She could’ve told him Beau never trampled anybody, that he was the kindest horse imaginable, but she didn’t.
“Hey man, she stupid or something?” Scar asked. “Tell ’er to get cracking with our supper afore I start chewing my saddle.”
Ketta stayed where her captor had dropped her, not sure she could move even if she wanted to. Her head drooped, and she noticed one of her braids had come undone. Loose hair fluttered around her face like an ebony halo.
“Get up, kid,” her captor said quietly. “I’ll build a fire. You fill the coffee pot from my canteen. There’s bread and meat in my saddlebags. Check the one on the right. Took the bread right off the kitchen table.”
She remained sitting where she’d landed and put her head on her knees while the man removed his saddle and tossed it down beside her. Leading the horse into the cleared area to graze, he glanced back at her.
“I said get busy, kid. There’s plenty of wood around. Gather some up and drag it over there.” He pointed to a spot under an enormous tree whose branches would absorb the sight and smell of smoke in case anybody chanced by.
“You gonna tie her up, Kuo?” Snaggletooth asked, whereby Ketta finally learned her captor’s name.
It was a strange sounding name, the likes of which she’d never before heard.
“She’s scared,” Kuo said. “And tired and weak. She ain’t gonna run off.”
“Probably get lost way out here in the wilds,” Snaggletooth said, laughing.
“Well she better not be too scared or too tired or weak to fix me some supper.” Scar scowled mightily. “Ain’t no reason I can think of to keep ’er around if she ain’t going to work. I suppose she ain’t of a size to—”
Kuo, looking up from hobbling Beau, cut him off. “She’ll work.” He eyed Ketta. “She’ll feel the back of my hand if she don’t.”
Huh! Nothing new in that, Ketta thought. Slowly, she stood up, grabbed a medium-sized chunk of old, dried tree limb, and dragged it over to the spot Kuo had indicated he wanted the fire. She’d rather have used the limb to give one of them a good whack upside the head.
CHAPTER THREE: YESTER
His ma’s demand that Yester leave immediately and go after Ketta proved impossible when all was said and done.
Turned out Pa was waiting for him when he left the house, poor old Barney standing on three shaky legs beside him. “Your ma, how is she?” Big Joe asked with an uneasy glance toward the house.
Yester's Ride Page 2
