Sophie's Daughters Trilogy

by Mary Connealy

  Cord felt that witch woman taking aim at the dead center of his back. He felt her tightening her finger on the trigger. Felt a bullet seconds away from slamming into his spine.

  He drove his horse with a vicious continual goad of his spurs. He’d seen Fergus go down and knew J.D. and Dugger were down and dead. All three of them killed by that woman and her wild, whirling gun.

  Reaching up with a shaking hand, he found the slits on his face and blood pouring down. His eye was already swelling shut.

  Kicking his horse brutally, he rode and rode until his horse stumbled on a talus slide and went down hard. Cord flew over the horse’s head and landed flat on his belly. He slid, twisting his body, clawing at his six-gun to aim at … nothing.

  Seconds passed. No one came.

  Waiting, waiting, knowing she was coming. His hands shook. The muzzle of the gun wavered.

  He’d never seen anyone handle a rifle like that. He trembled, smashed into the dirt and rock, and waited for her to come roaring out of the woods, that witch woman with her whirling guns and deadly accurate bullets. The noise and the sulfuric smoke made him think of the afterlife and how Hades would be. The memory of how she looked grew until she was magic, pure deadly black magic.

  She’d seen through rock. Aimed and hit an opening twenty yards away that was a three-inch circle. His rifle had saved his life because she’d hit it, jammed it back into his shoulder. The gun had been destroyed, and Cord had staggered back, slashed by fragments of metal and shards of shattered rock. He’d still been able to see her through that hole, stunned into frozen awe. She knew he was no longer a threat and whirled from him and unloaded that gun at J.D. and Dugger, coming from the opposite direction. He saw the bullet hit J.D. and kill him. A gun she’d had one split second to aim. Then she’d turned as Fergus had opened up from yet another direction. She was just as deadly.

  Cord had been only slightly aware of Tom Linscott also firing. What Cord saw in that woman stunned him beyond noticing much else. Her Winchester seemed like a living thing with its own mind, flaring in all directions, almost at the same time. Her gray cloak flew as she turned and fired until she was a dark cloud, thunder and lightning with a Winchester.

  He lay shuddering on the ground now and stared at the trail and heard her coming. His chest heaved. His hand trembled. His eyes, burning from oozing blood, riveted on the place he expected her to appear.

  But she didn’t.

  The seconds stretched to minutes, and slowly the panic receded, and Cord realized she wasn’t coming. When his blood quit thundering in his ears, he knew the pursuing hoof beats coming at him like the hounds of Hades were in his own head.

  His breathing slowed. His heart rate slackened to as near to normal as he was ever going to be again.

  She’d killed three more of his family. Three more Cooters dead at the hand of that witch woman.

  And now he lay here on the rocky trail, crushed into the ground like discarded trash. She’d made a fool of him. Terrorized him. And his fear shamed him. So he changed the fear to hate.

  Hate wasn’t shameful. It was strong because it made a man do what he needed to do.

  Gathering his scattered courage, he slowly rose. He fumbled for his kerchief, tearing it off his neck and sopping up the blood. His face was clawed up, but he wasn’t blinded. The wounds were little more than deep scratches, and the bleeding had stopped.

  The horse that had stumbled and thrown him stood just a few yards down the trail, trembling with exhaustion, its sides heaving, its head down.

  Cord wanted to get on that horse and ride away, defeated, beaten into rubbish. But he couldn’t quit. And he couldn’t go back and face her alone. The cousins he’d sent for might be in Helena by now, awaiting him. There might well be dozens, and even Lady Gray couldn’t defeat that many men.

  With grim determination, Cord stalked to his horse and was astride. He didn’t spur the horse this time, contented to walk. Cord was as exhausted as his mount.

  He’d get to Helena soon enough. Give himself a few days to heal so the cousins wouldn’t think he’d been bested. Then he’d gather his family and come back with overwhelming strength to avenge his name.

  Dugger, J.D., and Fergus, all dead. That was enough to keep the feud alive. He’d use that to inspire his cousins.

  But Cord’s real thirst for blood came from knowing there was a woman who could defeat him, humble him, and make him fear.

  That woman had to die.

  Eighteen

  Mandy, this one’s alive.” Tom’s heart picked up speed. He’d seen Mandy hit this guy hard. It had looked deadly. Tom didn’t want this scar on her soul, and when he saw the man’s chest rise and fall, he rushed to him, hoping he could be saved. Tom knew what it had cost her to kill once before.

  Mandy appeared from the woods leading two horses. Her eyes sharpened. She walked quickly toward where Tom rose from the man’s side.

  “I know I hit him in the heart, Tom.” Mandy sounded grim.

  “It’s dead center on his heart.” Tom swallowed hard to think of his wife’s aim, in the middle of a gunfight. “But there’s something in his shirt pocket. The bullet’s nearly stopped by a little book.”

  “Nearly?”

  “He’s bleeding.” Tom unbuttoned the man’s blood-soaked shirt. “It went through. It’s lodged in his chest, and I guess it knocked him cold, but it wasn’t a killing shot.”

  Mandy knelt beside Tom. “Yes, it was.” Mandy looked up from the wound.

  Tom met her eyes and saw the guilt and pain and danger of his wife. “Yes, it was. And I’m glad you’re as fast as you are, or we’d both be dead. In case you didn’t notice, I never hit a thing.”

  “You kept their heads down. You messed up their aim.”

  “While you finished them. And now we’ve got three of them in custody, and you haven’t had to commit murder.”

  “Then why do I feel like I have?”

  Tom looked at the still man on the ground. He lifted his head to study the man slouched over his pommel, apparently unconscious. “I don’t think you do feel like you have.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, I don’t think you know what you’d feel like if you committed murder. As awful as you feel now, that would be worse, and a different kind of pain. Uglier.”

  Mandy’s eyes went to the freely bleeding wound in the man’s chest. “This is pretty ugly.”

  “Then be glad it isn’t worse, woman. Be very glad.” Tom made quick work of digging the bullet out of the man’s chest and wrapping a rough bandage over the wound. The man never woke up, and Tom noticed that he had a knot on his head the size of a chicken’s egg. That was the reason he was unconscious.

  Tom boosted this man as well as the dead one on the horses Mandy brought. “Let’s haul them to town. That’s the end of this bunch, except for the one who rode away, and he’s wounded. And one man alone, especially a coward like these Cooters, isn’t much danger. Alone, he won’t even come at us from cover.”

  They made a quick trip back to Divide and left the men with the doctor, who thought both could survive. Then they made a report to the sheriff.

  Tom finished being questioned then went outside to find his sharpshooter of a wife.

  Mandy sat on a bench outside the sheriff’s office, staring into space.

  Sitting beside her, Tom said, “You want to tell me about it?”

  Pulling herself with visible effort out of whatever daze she’d been in, Mandy turned to look at Tom. “About what?”

  “I saw you in action. That’s the first time, though I’ve heard tell. It’s somethin’ to see.” Tom smiled. He was careful not to touch her because she looked like she might just explode.

  Pulling in a breath so deep her whole body shuddered, Mandy said, “I’ll understand if you want to get me out of your life. Any man would want to—” Her voice broke. She lifted her chin and stared straight out into the middle of the street.

  Tom saw the fight for control. “If a
woman can’t shed a tear when she’s been attacked and nearly killed and forced to fight for her life, then when can she?”

  Tom saw tears brimming in her eyes as she turned to face him. Her shoulders, so square, so strong, shuddered, and she threw herself into Tom’s arms. “I hate what happens to me. I’m evil.

  I’m—”

  Tom kissed her quiet right in the middle of the day in Divide, Montana. Once he thought he’d taken her mind of that “evil” nonsense, he pulled back. “The sheriff said we can leave town. One of the outlaws, the one who shot his kin, is a wanted man. The others were riding with him, and that’s enough. We can go”—Tom leaned so close no one could overhear—“on a treasure hunt.”

  Mandy set a blistering pace.

  They were three days on the trail and getting close to their destination, when Tom pulled up abruptly. “Tracks!” He pointed at hoof prints of an unshod pony obviously carrying a load.

  Indians.

  “We walk from here.” Tom snapped out the order, even though he was whispering. He dismounted.

  Mandy didn’t even consider disobeying. She’d found it didn’t suit her much to take orders from anyone, especially a man, but why bother squabbling about such a thing when the man in question was right?

  “How close are we?” Tom eased off a barely visible trail into the thick woods that surrounded them.

  Mandy pulled the map out in the waning light. “Close.” She looked up. “I’d say it’s right up at the top of that rise. Then there’s a mountain valley and directions where the gold is hidden.”

  Tom looked at the peak. It was still miles away and only visible through the heavy forest because it was so high. He turned to Mandy. “Let’s pull back, set up camp for the night, and figure out how we do this tomorrow.”

  Shaking her head, Mandy said, “I’ve already been gone from the children too long, Tom. I just can’t wait any longer. Worrying about them is eating me up inside.”

  With a long look, her cranky, bossy, short-tempered husband seemed to take her word for it that she was telling the truth. She really was about ready to snap.

  Nodding, he said, “Let’s see that map.”

  They found a spot and sat side-by-side on a boulder.

  “The trail that rider was taking looks to lead to that low spot on the mountaintop.” She studied the map and the mountain. “But Sidney says the treasure is far to the northeast side of a huge mountain valley, just beyond that rim.”

  “Maybe we can go north and slip into that valley without the Indians knowing.” Tom sounded doubtful.

  “That’s not what the map says to do.” Mandy tapped her lips as she considered that. “In fact, the map seems to follow the exact trail of those unshod hooves.”

  “Your husband isn’t the kind of snake who would leave a treasure map behind for his wife that would force her to risk her life to find the gold, is he?”

  Mandy set that thought aside as she remembered how well the Shoshone folks who lived around her knew what went on around them, even in the dark of night. “It’s possible those are Shoshone tracks. If they are, the people may know of me, even protect me. We might just be able to ride in there and tell them what we want.”

  “There are other tribes in the area, though. I think this used to be Flathead land. In fact, I think these might be the people my sister lived with for a few years after my parents died.”

  “Your sister? Abby? She lived here?”

  “Yes, and they were good to her. She doesn’t talk about them much but I know it ended badly. Her village was massacred by a gang of outlaws. She was left alive because she was white. Because of that, there was bad blood between her and the few native folks that survived.”

  “Can you speak their language?”

  “A few words. My sister tends to lapse into Flathead when she’s mad. And she spends a good part of her time mad, so I’ve had a chance to learn what some of it means.”

  They shared a look that stretched long. “Do we dare just ride into the middle of a Flathead village and hope they’ll be friendly?” Mandy’s heart sped up with fear.

  “Do we dare try and sneak past a bunch of trail-savvy Flatheads and hope they won’t notice?”

  Mandy finally shrugged her shoulders. “How about we do both? Sneak and, if we get caught, try and talk to them.”

  “How about we ride back to Divide, abandon the gold, and forget this ever happened?”

  Shaking her head, Mandy stared at the mountain for a long time, thinking. What was bothering her about this? “It’s so far from where our cabin was when Sidney was gold mining. How did he ever find this place?”

  After an extended silence, Tom said, “Is it really that far?”

  “We’ve ridden for days, and this map starts from Divide. It’s shown us every step from there.”

  “But how about from your castle? We rode for days south from your place to Divide. Now we’ve ridden west and north from Divide to here.”

  Mandy’s brow furrowed. “We might be closer to my house than I think, but I can’t be sure from this side of the mountain.”

  “Maybe your husband deliberately laid out a hard path, thinking no one would ever understand where he was sending them, a way to make it even harder to find his gold. A way that would lead into the heart of a hostile Indian village.”

  “But he left this map where I’d find it. It wasn’t easy to find, but it wasn’t impossible either. That would mean Sidney wanted me to never find the gold, and if I did, he’d put me in danger.” Unfortunately that did sound like her husband, the sneak.

  “It’s possible that if we went up over that rim and across that high valley and over the other side …” Tom fell silent studying the mountain. “That stupid Gray Tower might be an easy ride from where the treasure is hidden.”

  Mandy’s temper flared. “And that explains how my husband could get on a train, ride all the way to Denver, come home with his gold, and never let anyone see where he’d gotten it. Because he probably went up to get the gold before he even left for Denver. Sidney always was too suspicious and sly for an honest man.”

  “So do we walk in and try to deal honorably and directly with the Flatheads? Or do we turn weasel and try to sneak past them?” Tom turned to her, and in the fading light their eyes met and held as they weighed the possibilities.

  “I think we’d better sneak.”

  With a smile, Tom said, “Me, too.”

  “And the best sneaking goes on at night.”

  “And there’s no sense waiting for the next night when we’ve got a perfectly good one right here.” Tom nodded. “Let’s get on with it.”

  This train is crawling!” Clay wanted to jump out of the slow-moving train with his horse and storm the Rockies.

  “You know we’re making better time this way.” Sophie rubbed his shoulders.

  Beth sat across from him. Alex was down one seat with one baby on his lap and the other stretched out on the seat.

  Clay couldn’t believe they were taking two little children to a gunfight.

  Both women were in a fury from Mandy’s telegraph, but they were holding it inside. Clay struggled to be as strong.

  “She’s married?” Clay couldn’t believe it. Finally he’d gotten up the gumption to go fetch his daughter home, and before he could get there, the girl got herself hitched to someone else who lived half a country away from him.

  “Tom Linscott.” Beth said what they all knew. “So she’s in a little town called Divide. We can travel on the train all the way to town.”

  “Slow, slow way to travel.”

  The train labored up a grade. Clay could have gone faster on foot. “A horse can run faster than a train.” He knew he was just on edge. This was the fastest way to get there. But sitting in comfort while Mandy was in danger made him crazy. If he’d been on a galloping horse, at least he’d have felt like he was doing something.

  “But it can’t run for as long.” Sophie’s hand rubbed harder on his shoulders. “If we�
�d had a string of horses and kept changing saddles, we might have been able to beat the train, but probably not if we ran into rain or outlaws or one of the horses came up lame or threw a shoe. It all slows things down. The train goes slow but steady.”

  The rubbing changed until she was almost beating on him. He looked sideways and saw that his wife was on the brink of snapping, just like him.

  The train went around a curve ahead, and for a while he could see all ten cars. There hadn’t been a car to sleep in, so he and the family had been sitting up for days.

  Clay knew he wasn’t making anything easier with his ranting. “I’m going to check on the horses again. Make sure they’re holding up.”

  “You’re just back from checking them, Pa.” Beth gave him a level look that almost settled him down. The kind of look a young woman might give to her misbehaving children.

  He couldn’t stand it. “Then I’ll go for a walk. I need to move, or I’m going to get my horse and jump off the train and ride.” He erupted to his feet and stormed toward the front of the train. He hadn’t been up there, preferring to stay close to his horses. As he neared the door that would let him outside, between the cars, it slammed open, and he stepped back, thinking to let some other impatient person go through.

  An old man with lines cut deep in his face stepped in. He looked cranky and irritated and about ready to jump off the train right along with Clay. The only thing noticeable about the scowling old coot was the slash of pure white in a head of hair that was turning gray.

  The old man looked up, and his eyes locked on Clay’s, and they stayed there, direct and defiant, like he was looking for trouble.

  Mandy set a blistering pace on the treasure hunt.

  She glanced behind her in the shrouded night woods and saw with satisfaction that Tom was keeping up. It might have been shadows cast from a full moon, but she thought he had a look on his face just as determined as hers.

  He didn’t want the gold. He wasn’t a man to search for treasure. He expected to work for his keep. But Tom knew this was important to her. He might even agree with her that a staggering price on the head of every member of this family of feud-loving coyotes could end this almost instantly.