by Judith Pella
CHAPTER
51
BENJAMIN WAS NO TRACKER, BUT he didn’t have to be because Maurice was taking no pains to hide his passage. They were keeping to what passed for a trail in these parts. What Benjamin couldn’t tell, however, was how long since the signs had been left. He could not judge how close he was to them.
Then the unthinkable happened. It started to rain. The water fell in thick sheets, and when it stopped an hour later, not only had it washed away any trail signs, but it slowed Benjamin’s progress considerably, especially when he came to a creek he must cross. An hour earlier he could have walked across on his horse without trouble. Now the water raged in a torrent down the narrow creek bed.
There might be a better crossing, but it could be miles down the creek. For one panicked moment he considered fording the water anyway.
“What am I going to do?” He stared at the creek, as if God might part the waters for him.
But the torrent just kept on its roiling and boiling journey, unaffected by his despair, untouched by his prayers.
“Benjamin, is that you?”
It was a miracle in itself that Benjamin heard the voice over the rage of rushing water. But it was unbelievable that the voice, as if from heaven itself, was that of his friend John Hunter. Hunter was carefully directing his horse down the steep bank.
“John!” Benjamin shouted, full of glee. “It is me. I’ve got to get across the creek.”
“I’m gonna go down a few miles and see if I can find another crossing.”
“There isn’t time!” Benjamin wondered if he could convince his friend to be party to a suicidal attempt.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a long story, John. Elise’s in trouble. I have to find her.”
Thankfully, John restrained what must have been a natural urge to question further. “Well, we won’t get far here—”
“I’ve got to try!” Benjamin cried frantically. “Even if there is another crossing, it might be flooded, too.”
John grasped his arm. “Listen to me, Benjamin, you are not going to do her any good if you get yourself killed. That river we crossed when you first came here ain’t nothing compared to this. I’m not even sure the horses can swim it.”
But Benjamin’s wild-eyed gaze was proof enough that he was willing to take that risk.
John studied the creek for a few long moments. Then he scratched his head. “You determined to do this?”
Benjamin gaped at his friend as if he had just sprouted horns. “She’s at the mercy of a man I doubt knows the meaning of the word. God only knows what he’ll do to her if I don’t get there.”
“All right, then. You got rope?” John dismounted, taking his own coil of rope from his saddle. Benjamin handed him his rope, and John tied the two ends together, giving the knot a yank to test its soundness. “That ought to hold.”
Benjamin marveled at the man’s skill. In awe he watched as John made a slip knot around one of the loose ends of the rope to form a lasso. “I’m gonna try to lasso that stump over yonder.” He gestured across the creek to the opposite bank. Benjamin saw the stump, and it appeared sound. The last thing they wanted was to have their lives depend on a rotten tree.
John hoisted the coil of rope over his head and gave a mighty heave. He missed. It took three more tries before the noose finally fell evenly around the stump. Benjamin let out a whoop.
John smiled but said cautiously, “That’s the easy part.”
After securing the other end of the rope to a sturdy tree on their side of the creek, they were ready to cross, using the rope for guidance and support. Not wanting to trust the rope entirely, Benjamin suggested they add a few silent prayers.
“I been praying all along,” John said.
“Then we can do no more.” Benjamin took a breath. Though the words had not come to his mind in a formal way, he knew he’d been praying since leaving his cabin yesterday.
Benjamin went first. If this makeshift pulley wasn’t going to work, he’d be the first to be swept down the creek, and maybe John would have time to get back to safety. His heart was pounding both in fear and in frustration at the painstakingly slow pace he must progress. But he dare not urge his horse too much lest he spook her. She was already shy of the rushing water; in fact, it took some doing just to get her to step into it. She grew skittish in the middle of the creek where the current swirled wildly, and Benjamin had to stop completely.
He rubbed the animal’s neck and murmured encouragement into her ear. “It’s all right,” he lied. “You’re doing fine, just take one step at a time.”
They started again, and as the opposite bank grew closer, Benjamin had to resist every urge to dig his heels in and hurry from that dangerous torrent of water. But even as he reached the bank and stepped onto solid ground, he knew the drama wasn’t over yet. He had to watch the process all over again as John crossed.
Only when his friend came up on the bank safely did it occur to him to wonder what was John’s need to be crossing the flooded creek.
“I was just going into Cooksburg to have Albert fix the blade on my scythe. Harvest will be coming along soon.” He answered Benjamin’s inquiry.
“You could have waited until the river went down.”
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want my help?” John asked matter-of-factly.
“Well I—”
“No matter. I ain’t gonna let you go off on no rescue when I’m here to help. Now, we best get going.”
As they rode along, Benjamin filled John in on a few more details of what had happened. He had never told John the full circumstances of Elise’s past, but he felt if John was going to place himself at risk, he ought to be informed of the whole story. It really didn’t surprise Benjamin that when John heard the story, he responded with hardly a wink. He had no more thought to judge Elise than he had to decline rescuing her. He knew only that she was a good woman and Benjamin’s wife, and that was enough.
They rode hard for several hours before they spotted the smoke of a campfire. It was a couple of hours before sunset, so Thomson—if it was Thomson—and his party had made camp early.
“If that’s your man,” John observed, “then it’s pretty careless of him.”
“He doesn’t think he has anything to fear.” Benjamin stared hard at the stream of smoke. “I mean to make him regret that.”
John did a double take, both at Benjamin’s words and the hard resolve of them.
Benjamin added, “I mean to kill him if I have to.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” John replied evenly, with just as much conviction.
They loaded their rifles, then split up, each to approach the camp from opposite directions. Benjamin would make the first move, hoping Thomson would think him alone, thus saving John as a surprise, an “ace up your sleeve,” as John put it, forgetting that Benjamin knew nothing of card playing. Benjamin did know what the phrase meant. He only hoped he could maintain enough of a poker face to make the best use of the subterfuge.
CHAPTER
52
BENJAMIN TRIED TO STEP QUIETLY through the brush. He remembered how stealthily the Karankawa had come upon him that day in his camp. Unfortunately, Benjamin only got within twenty yards before he stepped carelessly on a branch, snapping it loudly. He stopped in his tracks and held his breath.
Away in the camp he heard voices.
“You hear that, Maurry?”
“We got visitors.”
“Maybe it’s Indians.”
“Shut up a minute!”
Benjamin had to move fast then in order to beset them before they could get to their weapons, if they didn’t already have them. He barreled into the camp, gun ready, breaking into the clearing just as Maurice was reaching for his pistol. The other man was busy loading his musket.
“Drop it!” Benjamin yelled, aiming at Maurice.
Thomson’s fingers had just barely touched the pistol, but he instantly jerked his hand aw
ay. In that same instant, the second man, whom Benjamin had only a peripheral glimpse of, moved. Benjamin could not know for certain if the man had finished loading, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the weapon raise. He started to turn, intending to fire, but before he could take aim, another shot rang through the air.
He gaped in shock as his would-be target jerked violently, then fell back to the ground. He stared dumbfounded as a circle of blood spread on the man’s shirt in the vicinity of his heart.
Then Benjamin shook away his shock, realizing he had not finished his rescue. But he didn’t shake it away soon enough. He’d left enough time for Maurice to retrieve his pistol. Thomson took aim. Benjamin could not expect another reprieve from John, who needed time to reload.
As Thomson squeezed the trigger, Benjamin made a desperate lunge to the left. The shot whizzed past Benjamin, tickling his right ear. Sprawling in the dirt, Benjamin hit something solid. The form made a pitiful groaning sound. At that same moment John stepped into view, came up behind Thomson, and jabbed his rifle into the back of his head.
“Put that pistol down now,” John drawled in that matter-of-fact way Benjamin was finding so admirable.
The pistol clunked into the dirt. Benjamin sat up and turned to inspect what he had struck. With trembling fingers, fearing what he would find, he lifted the corner of the blanket covering the moaning woman he was certain must be Elise.
“Elise . . .” he breathed. “What have they done to you?”
“B-Benjamin. . .” Her voice seemed to catch, and she could say no more.
At first he could not see what was wrong with her. There was a red welt on her cheek, but he saw no blood on the front of her dress to indicate a bullet wound. Then he lifted away more of the blanket and saw the most horrible sight he had ever seen in his life. The back of her dress was ripped to shreds, and the exposed flesh was crisscrossed with blood-encrusted welts.
Had Benjamin given it conscious thought, he would have known in that moment what white-hot fury was like. But he didn’t think. Instead, he was driven by animal instincts as he leaped to his feet and flew like a crazed beast at the man who would dare inflict such dreadful harm on the woman he loved. He clamped his hands around Maurice Thomson’s throat, prepared to choke the life from this evil man.
Thomson, gagging, turning red in the face, then blue, tried to fight Benjamin off, but somewhere Benjamin found the strength of ten enraged men. Thomson would have been dead in another minute had John Hunter not intervened.
“Benjamin, you sure you want to do this?” he asked calmly. “I figure you got every right, but you’re gonna have to live with it when you’re done.”
It wasn’t so much the words as it was the quiet, almost soothing manner in which they were spoken that penetrated Benjamin’s inflamed senses. He stopped, his hands loosening a slight degree from their death grip. He glanced at John, who had moved, with musket aimed at the struggling Thomson, to the front of the man and about ten feet away so he would have a good advantage.
Perspiring and shaking, still feeling he wanted to kill, Benjamin forced himself to back off. He returned to Elise’s side.
“Th-thank you,” she murmured.
He wasn’t sure why she was thanking him. For rescuing her? For not killing Thomson?
Smoothing back the damp, tangled hair from her face, he didn’t know what to say except what he had been hoping he’d have a chance to say since leaving the cabin after her.
“I love you, Elise.” He kissed the mass of hair.
“Ain’t that sweet.” Thomson’s snide voice reminded Benjamin they weren’t finished with him. He was sitting up again, rubbing his throat, but not looking too bad after his ordeal.
Benjamin tried to convince himself he had done the right thing in letting that miserable creature live.
“So you are a preacher after all,” Maurice continued. “I almost believed her when she tried to tell us you weren’t. I mean, who would of thought a preacher would take up with a common trollop, eh?”
“Shut up, Thomson, or I will kill you,” Benjamin warned. “And believe me, you try to harm my wife again, and I will do it—and do it joyfully.”
“Wife, you say?” Thomson’s eyes glinted with amusement.
“Yes, and you have no more claim on her.”
“We’ll see about that. I got a legal claim, and now I got a moral claim for you killing my brother. You are gonna pay dearly for that!”
“I am sorry about your brother. But he wouldn’t have come to harm if you hadn’t tried to bring harm to others yourself.” Benjamin glanced at Elise so that despite his regret over the death of Thomson’s brother, he could be reminded about the kind of man he was dealing with. “No law will condone what you’ve done to my wife.”
“Even if she was your legal wife, she was my property first. But last I heard, a woman can’t have two husbands.” He sneered. “It appears she’s put a big one over on you preacher, ’cause your so-called wife already has a husband back in South Carolina.”
Benjamin quickly brushed off the statement as a lame attempt by Thomson to force him to give up his claim on Elise.
“Give it up, Thomson,” Benjamin said. “You’ve lost. Even if the legal authorities uphold your claim of ownership, you are going to have to come and get her—and you’ll have to get past me to do so. I won’t hesitate again.” He then rose and glanced at John. “What’ll we do with him?”
“You won’t have any peace unless he’s dead,” John said with more logic than ire.
“Killing the other man was self-defense. It had to be done,” Benjamin said. “But neither you nor I could kill a man, even a rascal like this, in cold blood.”
John nodded, though he didn’t look any more convinced than Benjamin felt. If Thomson lived, Elise would always live under a shadow. Yet no matter how he or John felt, Benjamin knew they could not live with murder, which killing Thomson at this point would amount to.
So with deep reluctance, Benjamin found a length of rope from among Thomson’s supplies. The best he could do was to tie his hands, take his weapons and his horses, and let him fend for himself. He and Elise would find some way to live with the threat of Thomson.
“After I tie your hands, Thomson,” Benjamin said, “we’re going to ride off. I’ll let your horses go after a few miles, and no doubt they’ll find their way back to you. I’m giving you half a chance to survive. But if you ever show your face on my land or make any attempt to harm me or mine, like I said, I will kill you.”
Benjamin stepped close to Thomson, who was still sitting on the ground. He was about to step behind him to bind his hands at his back when Thomson’s arm shot up, a flash of metal catching a ray of the setting sun. Before Benjamin could react, Thomson’s arm encircled Benjamin’s neck with a viselike grip, the point of the knife pressed against Benjamin’s throat.
“All right, you!” Thomson yelled at John. “Drop that gun.” When John hesitated, Thomson sneered, “You’re both fools. You should have killed me when you had the chance. I ain’t leaving without my property, and I won’t hesitate to kill you both.” As if for emphasis, he tightened his grip on Benjamin. “Now drop the musket!”
John let the weapon slip from his hands too quickly. It struck the ground hard, discharging the loaded shot. John jumped back in surprise. The explosion took Benjamin and his captor by surprise also. With the knife at his throat, Benjamin couldn’t move. Thomson only jerked slightly, but that momentary distraction was all Benjamin needed. The instant he felt the tip of the knife move, he lunged his elbow back hard into Thomson’s stomach.
Thomson fell back, still gripping the knife, then quickly shook off the effects of Benjamin’s blow and made a swift lunging uppercut at Benjamin’s arm, slicing the fabric of his sleeve. Benjamin spun around and, in the same motion, caught Thomson’s knife hand and jerked it back, forcing Thomson to the ground. Benjamin tried to smash his hand against the dirt, but Thomson held fast his weapon.
The two men gr
appled on the ground, first with Benjamin on top, holding back Thomson’s jabs with the knife. Then Thomson gained the advantage and rolled on top, the knife hovering above Benjamin’s face. Out of the corner of his eye, Benjamin could see John lying on the ground. Had he been struck by the discharged shot?
Benjamin quickly forced his concentration back to his opponent, who had once again maneuvered the knife into a good striking position. Benjamin held back the knife hand, but a sharp pain coursed up his arm. It was then he realized Thomson’s earlier blow had done more than cut his sleeve. Blood dripped from the ragged fabric of his shirt.
With the strength in one arm ebbing, Benjamin made another desperate attempt to dislodge the knife from Thomson’s powerful hand. Lying on his back with Thomson on top of him, he managed to wedge his knee between them. With all his strength and concentration focused on his arms and the battle to keep the knife at bay, his thrusts with his knee were not as strong as he wished. Once, twice, slowly his effort began weakening Thomson’s hold. With the third thrust, Benjamin managed to get an advantage over the knife hand.
He twisted the arm back, drawing a loud, pain-filled bellow from Thomson. Another full body thrust, and Benjamin was on top once again. Thomson’s arm was definitely weakening, and he offered little resistance as Benjamin attempted to smash the hand against the ground.
The knife bounced from Thomson’s hand. But Benjamin made the mistake of loosening his grip in order to shove the knife out of reach. Thomson was not about to let that happen. As Benjamin loosened his hold, Thomson proved faster and smashed his fist into Benjamin’s nose. Nose bloodied, head spinning, Benjamin fell back. Then Thomson grabbed the knife, jumped up, and charged Benjamin. Either Thomson thought Benjamin was still stunned from the blow, or he was simply too full of confidence, but clear shock registered on his face when Benjamin rolled in time to avoid the charge.
His momentum having a life of its own, Thomson could not pull back in time. He hit the dirt where Benjamin’s form had been an instant earlier. Benjamin jumped up, expecting his adversary to do the same. But Thomson did not rise. Instead he lay there, his body jerking convulsively.
