by Maren Smith
“And you’re a brat, so don’t think for a second I won’t put you back over my knee and paddle your bottom raw, right here in front of all these nice people, if you push me to it.”
There were only four other people in this car, but he knew as they went from stop to stop, they’d likely pick up more.
Katy must have known it too. Her cheeks flushed and she lowered her voice to a whispering hiss. “I’m eighteen! I can go where I want to!”
The temper he thought he had firmly under control flared hot behind his face, burning in his eyes. He only just managed to lower his voice too. “What would your father say, hm? Seeing you like I did, flashing your fanny to a bunch of ogling ne’er-do-wells, kicking your pins in a place like that. He’d be ashamed!”
“My father’s dead!”
“That still doesn’t make it right!” Someone two seats ahead of them turned around and looked their way. Cal swallowed hard, forcing himself to lower his voice even more. “And you know it doesn’t.”
She did, too. He could see the truth of it in her eyes when she cast her mutinous glare at him, cheeks all flushed with burning guilt. She opened her mouth, but then shut it again without a word and snapped her furious eyes back to the window, though not before he thought he saw the glimmer of tears.
Good. She ought to be sorry.
Folding his arms across his chest, Cal settled himself to endure the long train ride north to Wyoming. It had been ten years since he’d said goodbye to the Furlow ranch. He’d been…what, Katy’s age now? Maybe a little younger. Hell, she’d been eight the last time he’d seen her. It was hard to match the young woman he saw before him now with the little slip of a girl that he remembered—all bouncing braids, scrawny arms and legs and dusty pinafore dresses. Well, she wasn’t a little slip of anything anymore. She was all grown up and she looked it, both in her face and her body. The palm of his hand twitched. Though he hadn’t been paying much attention at the time, the bottom he’d paddled so vigorously had definitely not belonged to a little girl.
Another blow of the whistle and suddenly the train gave a groaning lurch as the wheels began to turn.
Katy shifted slightly beside him, her cheeks flushing all over again. “I need the loo.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Just hold your water.” Leaning out into the aisle, Cal glanced to the rear of the car at the closed washroom door. At the absolute rear of the car, it was also right next to the exit. Sitting back again, he watched the station drift past the window, only to be replaced by a veritable city of white canvas tents. They began to pass faster as the train gradually picked up speed and soon all signs of Dustwallow were gone. The windows looked out now upon a sea of brown grass, sage and scrub. It was fifty miles to their next stop and it would be nightfall before they reached it.
Katy shifted again, and then again.
He tsked, not completely without sympathy. “Guess you should have gone back at the Abilene when you had the chance.”
“I didn’t have to go back at the Abilene,” she hissed. “And it’s none of your business what I do or where.” She glared outside, frowning fiercely, arms folded across her chest.
“You used to be the sweetest kid.”
“You think I don’t remember you too?” She snorted, a very unladylike sound. “You spent all day yelling at me. I mean, how dare you! You think you can walk back into my life after ten years, kidnap me, drag me home by my ear as if I were a recalcitrant child—”
He snorted right back at her. “You are a recalcitrant child.”
Her arms came unfolded, color flooded her face and she vaulted to her feet almost faster than he could follow. He only just blocked her way before she shoved past him and walked away.
“Move.” Her teeth were clenched. Her lips barely moved.
“Set your fanny back on that bench,” he snarled back. “Or I promise you’re going to spend the rest of this trip standing up.” He wasn’t playing with her. All he could feel right now was his itching palm, but Katy did not back down. She didn’t even flinch. If anything, she leaned in closer, bringing her pretty face to just within inches of his. All he could see now was the flashing blue of her beautiful eyes. If he wasn’t already so angry, he might have found himself spellbound by them.
“Get. Out. Of my way,” she seethed. “Or I promise I am going to pee right here, right now, and with all of my being, I intend to aim for your boots.”
They stared at one another for almost a full minute. One old man was making a point of not staring at them; no one else was that polite. One young lady toward the front of the car giggled, but was quickly shushed by her mother. It made Cal want to hold his ground, but that was only stubborn pride and he knew it. Dustwallow was well and truly behind them. The train was moving along at a good clip and there was no way off. He could afford to be a gentleman, especially since the alternative would not have benefitted anyone. Especially not his boots.
Cal moved, waving the way toward the waiting washroom. “Don’t fall in,” he warned as she huffed past him. The point of her elbow caught his midriff. It might have been an accident; he kind of doubted it.
It was going to be a long trip to Wyoming.
Head held high, Katy disappeared into the washroom and quietly closed the door.
Folding his arms across his chest, Cal propped himself against the side of the bench to watch the door and wait. And wait.
And wait.
He pulled his watch from his vest pocket to check the time. A flutter of falling motion out the window two rows down from him caught his eye—a cloud of kicked up dust and a flag-like flap of skirt. It took him a moment before the unlikeness of seeing either one of those things so close to the train and yet out in the middle of nowhere suddenly struck him.
Cal ducked down. He grabbed the wall and back of the bench, very nearly cracking his forehead against the glass as he got right up next to the window, his jaw dropped when Katy picked herself up off the ground where she’d stopped rolling. Without bothering to dust herself off, she glanced once back at the train and then she took off running. Not back along the tracks toward Dustwallow, but straight out and away from the train, heading toward the rocky hillside that flanked them along the west.
He remembered the mother and her young daughter only just in time to keep from swearing out loud. Cal kept it all internal as he raced for the rear exit, throwing open the door and dashing out into the heat and wind that buffeted him. He grabbed the back rail, rocking as the train rocked. There she was, holding her skirts up almost to her knees and putting more and more distance between them with every second that he just stood there. Staring. Incredulous. What kind of idiot jumped from a moving train?!
“Son of a…” Cal caught his breath. He glared at the rapid passing of the scrub. That ground didn’t look anywhere near soft enough to consider leaping.
Katy had done it.
And with every passing second that he stood watching all that semi-soft ground rushing past, she was getting further and further away.
“Aw hell,” he said, and then he jumped. He covered his head, hugging his hat in hopes it might provide at least some cushion for his skull, and prayed he missed the rocks and cactus patches. At this point, hitting them or not wasn’t going to make much difference. When he caught up with Katy (and he would), he was absolutely going to kill her.
* * * * *
Katy ran as fast as she could. She tried not to look back—looking back only slowed her down and that was a good way to waste what little head start she so desperately needed to get away—but she couldn’t help herself. A quick glance over her shoulder showed Cal leaping off the train. She bit back an involuntary shriek. She couldn’t help it. Watching someone leap off a moving train was not funny and no small thing. Katy had heard of people being killed doing that, and for a moment, she actually stopped running.
He hit the ground in a cloud of sand and fine dust, bouncing once and rolling, his body and tan ha
t violently parting company, and her first instinct was to go back and make sure he was all right. She stood, frozen with concern and indecision as Cal pushed himself up on hands and knees and shook the earth out of his hair like a dog. He staggered when he first stood up, but with every new step he took, he steadied. Retrieving his hat first and with the rattling of the passing train at his back, he then looked for her. She could feel his anger from here. And when those dark, hat-brim shadowed eyes locked on her, a tiny electric jolt shocked up and down her legs. He stabbed his arm out, pointing at her, and then jerked it back again and thrust that finger down to gesture the ground centered between his pointed-toe boots.
Katy suddenly found she could move again then, but it wasn’t to go back to him. Snapping around toward the rocky face of the towering hills, she took off running and this time she didn’t have to look back to know Cal had fallen into swift pursuit.
She had a good start, but Cal had longer legs and head full of hot steam and fury driving him on. Katy had only just reached the gentle sloping base of the first hill when the pounding of her own pulse in her ears gave way to the pound of cowboy boots coming up fast behind her.
Katy hauled her skirts up higher, ignoring the whip of the tall grass and weeds that slashed at her passing legs. She pushed herself to run faster, but already a burning stitch was chewing up her side, making it hard to breathe. Cal was going to catch her, she knew that as surely as she knew she didn’t want to go back home, but she just couldn’t make herself go any faster.
One foot pounding in front of the other, she heard his panting, growling breathes and felt the brush of his straining fingertips in the tangles of her long hair almost a full minute before he seized the scruff of her dress. When he yanked back on her, they both fell tumbling to the sandy, rock-strewn ground. She fought to crawl away, but the attempt was over before she’d truly begun it. Cal didn’t stop running, it seemed, until he’d crawled on top of her, straddling her waist and sitting to keep her pinned stomach-down against the ground. They both fell still, panting and gasping and trying to work the stitches out of their respective ribs.
“Don’t…” Shaking his head, Cal was the first to speak. “Don’t you just…beat all.”
Rolling partway onto her side (that being all the farther she could move under his restraining weight), Katy snapped her elbow back. She’d hoped to catch his side, but the back of her arm butted harmlessly up against the top of his thigh and she just didn’t have the strength to fight any further.
“You…conniving little…hellcat!”
He swung his leg up off her, and for a moment, at least Katy could breathe easier. She tried to sit up but he clamped his hand to the back of her neck and jammed his knee into the small of her back, and suddenly Katy felt sunshine and the whisper of a slight breeze caressing the backs of her legs. She also heard the unmistakable rattle of a belt buckle unclasping and the sound of a snake’s length of supple leather yanking free of belt loops.
There was no getting up; Katy fought to roll over instead, but that knee in her back kept her flat and all she did was flail and wallow in the dirt. At least, that’s what she did until that first burning stripe lashed down across the mounds of both buttocks, hugging them in a line of what felt like pure fire and yellow jacket stinging. Katy gave up trying to roll over and launched both hands back behind her. One smacked uselessly into Cal’s spine, scrambled to get around him and couldn’t; her other tried to catch the belt.
Letting go of her neck, Cal caught her wrist and pinned it to the wad of skirt and underskirt lying in a cloth pool across her back. Katy yelled, but he still took his belt to her and, from first stroke to last (a duration that, realistically, probably wasn’t more than ten or twelve licks), it felt as if he were skinning her alive.
No sooner had the last stroke fallen than did Cal shove up off her, and Katy came scrambling, kicking and seething back onto her feet. She hopped, shoving and slapping to get her dress down over her blazing bottom, fighting with everything she had not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her rub or cry. Her eyes welled up with tears, but she slapped them off with both hands and squared off against him. He looked very somber, that belt dangling from his hand, just waiting to see if she was going to bait him into using it again.
And she was. She could feel it inside of her, a hard and desperate thing just itching to get out, even if it had to chew its way to the surface of her and leave a gaping hole behind.
Katy turned around. She tried to walk away, her legs shaking. Her whole body shaking.
“Katy, get back here. Right now.”
She kept going and didn’t look back until she heard him coming after her. She didn’t wait for him to catch her arm, raise that belt, start again. She snapped around with fists up and swinging. She slugged his arm, shoved him back two steps and beat against his chest until his arms came up. She expected him to use his belt and break her down. He didn’t; he hugged her instead, pulling her in tight until she couldn’t struggle anymore. Within seconds, she lost the will to try. She was horrified when she began to cry.
“Ah, Katy.” His chin came to rest on top of her head. His hands smoothed up and down her shoulders and her back. “I’m trying, I really am. But I just can’t believe it’s so horrible at home that your only recourse is to jump off a moving train.”
“I guess you don’t know as much as you think.” She shoved away from him, swiping at her eyes and her cheeks. The train had long since gone and the sun was hanging low to the horizon. She didn’t know where they were exactly, but she thought they had to be at least five or six miles out of town. Folding her arms across her stomach, as if that were the only thing holding her together, Katy started walking.
“Hold it right there.” Cal caught her shoulder, circling around to block her path. “If you’ve got something to say, you go on and educate me.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” Katy said woodenly. She didn’t think she could offer an explanation that wouldn’t come out sounding as if she were anything but an irrational, spoiled brat. She swallowed twice to keep her frustration from bubbling over into a whole new batch of useless, pointless tears. She tried to walk around him, but he sidestepped and blocked her path again.
“I don’t have it right, but you don’t have anything to say,” he said, summing up her situation and quite obviously growing annoyed by it.
“We’re not friends, Mr. Beckton. In fact, we’re barely even acquaintances anymore. I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to. There’s no law that says I do.” Katy feigned as if she were going to step to his right and when he moved to block that, she ducked around his left and started walking again. He just as quickly caught her arm, using her own momentum to swing her around until she stamped her foot and stopped and they were once more facing one another. “You may like sleeping in the dirt, but I don’t! I am hot, sweaty and tired.”
“So am I,” he snapped back.
“Then stop wasting time! We’ve got a long way to walk, the sun’s going down and we’ve got nothing. No food, no water, no bed to sleep in. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to spend the night in the middle of nowhere with some no-account bounder who doesn’t know how to keep his hands to himself!”
Cal laughed, though he hardly looked amused. “Sorry I’m such poor company, but maybe a little bit of hardship will help teach you not to go jumping off of trains! We do have a long way to walk. I reckon about seven miles. But we’re not going to make it before dark and I’m not about to let you go wandering when you can’t see the snakes, scorpions, cactus or prairie dog holes. Hell, we get just a little off course and we could walk right by Dustwallow—it being nothing more than a speck in the damn sand—and never see the lights of town. If you want a fire tonight, you get down off your high horse and start looking for something to burn while we still got light enough to see. You want water, there’s prickly pear all over the place. Kind of cannibalistic, if you ask me, but you can suck
on the meat. Ain’t enough to bathe in and it’s bitter as hell, but maybe that’s what suits you. As for supper…”
With a tug at the clasp, Cal unholstered his gun. He turned his back to her and stalked off, kicking over rocks as he wandered. The third rock he upset provoked an ominous rattle and a warning hiss that lasted only the few seconds it took him to point and shoot. Picking up the snake, he came marching back to slap the still writhing and smelly creature into the palm of her hand.
“Bon appetite,” he growled, and then he walked away.
CHAPTER THREE
They sat in silence on opposite sides of a very small fire, started on sage brush and currently kept alive by bits of wood scavenged from a broken, burned out husk of an old wagon someone had just left to rot, fallen branches from a spiny twist of a tree (the only one she’d been able to see in all directions) and dried chips of cow manure. Cal cooked the snake on slabs of flat rock and, once she’d got past the smell on its scaly skin and, to a lesser degree, the dark pink meat, it hadn’t been as unpalatable as Katy was at first inclined to think. Or maybe that was just because, by that time, she was really hungry.
It had taken almost one third of that snake before the aching gnaw in her belly had been sated. Now she was cold. Hot as desert days could be, the nights were lessons in opposite extremes. She wasn’t likely to freeze before dawn, but the chill was more than enough to leave her shivering and uncomfortable. She kept trying to get closer to the fire, which actually put out a fair amount of heat. Just not enough to combat the chill in the air around her.
“Get any closer and you’re going to set your skirt on fire,” Cal said.
It was the first words they’d spoken to one another in hours. Hugging her knees to her chest, Katy moved closer anyway. She huddled in on herself, trying to get small and warm.
A few minutes later, he sighed and got up from where he was sitting. “Prickly as a damn desert pear.”
