To Hell and Back

by P. A. Bechko

  Wrapped in her own cold misery. Amanda did not even notice Hollander had not climbed back into the saddle. Waiting patiently, she listened to the far off call of coyotes, then felt Hollander’s insistent hand upon her arm.

  “Thought I cured you of that,” he said, lightly reprimanding her for her inattention. He felt her shivering beneath his hand. “There’s not enough light to see the trail. Don’t like stopping, but we’re going to have to sit it out here until sunrise. They’re gonna have to stop too. Unless they don’t mind risking having one of their horses step into a hole.”

  The cold was settling in so intensely, Amanda could see small clouds of word vapor hanging suspended on the air. Hugging her warmth to her, Amanda was hesitant to move any part of her body, fearing she would admit the chilled air to some small spot which had remained warm in her tightly huddled position. But, after a few moments hesitation, move she did. The crisp, night air washed over her like an icy splash of water as she swung down. She said nothing, determined he would not have the opportunity to hear her teeth chatter around the words.

  Hollander untied the saddle strings and dragged the bed roll from behind her saddle, pressing it into her hands. “Go ahead,” he told her, “I’ll take care of the horses.”

  A sharp retort about her abilities to carry her share of the load rose quickly to her lips, but this time she didn’t utter the words. Instead, she opened the bedroll, swinging its heavy layers about her shoulders as she walked a few steps, then gratefully dropped down in the sand beside a couple of large rocks that still radiated a faint memory of the heat of the day. She wished they could light a fire, but she already knew the practical answer to that fantasy. Cold camp.

  “No fire tonight.” Hollander dropped their saddles, flipped open his bedroll and sat down beside Amanda, wrapping the blankets about his shoulders. “Open flame can be seen for miles in this country.” He paused. “Send them hi-tailing it for Mexico sure as anything, caution be damned.”

  Amanda nodded, leaning her back against one of the rocks for the warmth it offered. Nonetheless, the chill in her bones did not abate though she now had the edge of the blankets wrapped up over her ears.

  Between the quaking of her flesh and the chattering of her teeth, Amanda felt she would never be warm again but she wasn’t going to complain and she wasn’t going to whine. She had known what this quest would entail from the beginning. Abruptly, she became aware of Hollander’s gray-eyed gaze upon her in the darkness. She turned toward him. He had fished out some of their jerky, hard bread and dried bits of cactus fruit. And, with a gesture which could not be mistaken, he was holding one side of his blankets open for her to join him, a colorful grin curving his lips..

  “You are the damnedest woman,” he said softly. “You want to sit there and shiver or shall we bundle and share our warmth?”

  Amanda hesitated, then, with a sigh, she slid across the few feet separating them. His arm, sheathed in blanket like a bat’s wing, settled around her, enclosing her within a cocoon of warmth. He handed her some food and they both began to eat, chewing in silence. Some of the chill began to leave Amanda’s body as the warmth collected beneath the blankets.

  She glanced up, enthralled by the bright thatch of his blonde hair catching what pale light the sliver of moon offered, his face a collection of dark shadows against the darker backdrop of the night. Night sounds were all around. Soft scrapings, quiet chirpings and a distant shriek.

  Her trembling stopped. Hollander chewed his dinner of jerky and cold, brick-like biscuits thoughtfully, staring down at the top of her head. She’d removed her hat and the thick, wavy hair, interlaced with starlight, shone blue-black and fell heavily over her shoulders.

  “I’ve been a drifter of one sort or another most of my life,” he began, “but you, I don’t understand.”

  She turned her face up to him.

  “Why wouldn’t you go back East?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Nothing for me to go back to.”

  “Your family?” he probed. Have to have family somewhere.”

  Not liking the direction their conversation was taking, Amanda gave a little snort and tried to pull away from him. Hollander grinned and shifted his arm to wrap tightly around her, holding her where she was.

  Amanda found pushing against his arm was like trying to break through a split rail fence. Leaning back against him, she stopped struggling.

  “What the hell business is it of yours why I don’t want to be back in the bosom of my loving family?” Her voice dripped with honeyed sarcasm.

  “Oh, so there is a loving family.” He paused. “It’s none of my business and you don’t have to answer my questions. But you don’t have to run away either.”

  He loosened his grip. A long silence settled between them, but Amanda stayed where she was. The warmth was, after all, much more pleasant than the chill of the night air. Strangely, she felt closer now to this man, whom she was barely beginning to know, than she had ever felt to anyone in her life, including her good friend Laura back in Phoenix. To Laura she’d told a few bits and pieces, like misplaced pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but she knew far from all of it.

  “Do you have a family?” she asked Jake.

  “Had a wife and son. They’re both dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “That doesn’t make it less tragic.”

  “It dims the memory, but I know I can’t return to them. You can. So what was so bad that you won’t?”

  “They consider me dead, and it’s just as well not to try and change it,” Amanda’s words were bitter. “In fact, those were my father’s final words to me just before I left.” She couldn’t look Hollander in the eye when she uttered the rest of it for the first time. “I have no daughter, he told me. My daughter is dead.”

  “You sure he meant it?”

  “He sure did,” she said in a husky voice. “And I hadn’t even done the worst yet. When he said that I had just refused to marry the man he wanted for a son-in-law. He didn’t know I was leaving. He might have killed me if he had. God knows he beat my Mama often enough and she was too much of a rabbit to ever defy him. He had big plans for me.”

  “Plans?” Hollander was puzzled. She acted as if she was already on the run before their troubles had begun in Phoenix.

  She was much like him. Not one to tell someone about herself. It created an air of mystery about her, an almost palpable thing, and was what had undoubtedly drawn him to her so strongly back at the bank when he had first spotted her there framed by the teller window.

  Amanda looked at him, seeing little more than the glint of his eyes reflecting the night’s faint light. “You loved your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You met her out here?”

  “Yes. She was Comanche.”

  She absorbed that for a few moments, hesitating to reveal the final chapter of her story. Fearing how he would react, yet needing the cleaning the telling would give.

  “Dear Papa,” Amanda said bitterly, “expected me to get married. But only to a very special man. The man he chose for me. Andrew Canan. All of Boston knew about the wedding before I did. I was so naive. I told anyone who would listen that I wouldn’t marry Andrew—including Papa and Andrew—but they all just laughed and said I would come around by the time the wedding took place. But,” she added, “just to make sure, Papa started, throwing Andrew and me together alone, frequently. Then, one night when we were returning home from a dance and we were together in the stable while he put the horses up, I found out why Papa was so determined I should marry him. Andrew was a very wealthy man. and Papa, unfortunately, had never been very good in business. Andrew let me know in no uncertain terms that after the wedding Papa was to become his partner. It was part of their bargain. That night he told me he intended to find out what he had bargained for before the marriage took place. He was going to make sure I was everything my father had promised. After all, we were going to be married, so wh
at difference would it make?”

  Amanda shuddered and drew a deep breath. “He found out everything he wanted to know. There was no use in telling my father. He would have viewed it as another way of cementing the marriage. Andrew Canan was a cruel, evil man, and I planned to kill him.” Amanda said flatly, not meeting Hollander’s eyes.

  “Did you?”

  Amanda shook herself as if coming out of a trance. “Did I what?”

  “Kill him?”

  “No.” She sighed. “It turned out I was as pitiful a mouse as my mother. I swore to my father I wouldn’t marry Andrew. He beat me. Promised to disinherit me if I said another word about it. Two days later I took the small savings I had, got a train ticket west to the end of the line and worried about stage connections later. I had barely enough to get me to Phoenix.”

  “Canan’s really the reason why you wanted to learn to handle a gun.”

  “Yes. Well, no. Actually he was only part of it. Andrew Canan is my past. I’d kill him now, and gladly, but I’ll never see him again. More importantly, I’m not that helpless mouse any more.”

  Hollander shook his head. He captured the small, defiant chin in his hand, turning her head firmly so he could gaze down into her eyes.

  “You’ve never been that. You just have a well-honed sense of justice and no way to do much about it. You’ve had more than your share,” he commiserated, brushing the hair back from her face, studying her fine profile in the darkness while she determinedly kept her face averted.

  Her voice was brittle, but Amanda had a few questions of her own. “How did you lose your family?”

  “I don’t talk about it.”

  “I talked about it when you asked.”

  “You better get some sleep.”

  “As soon as you tell me.”

  Somehow he couldn’t break eye contact with Amanda, and he couldn’t leave her question unanswered. His pain, too, had festered within him far too long.

  “We were camped with her people along the Mississippi. It was early summer. There must have been incredible rains far up-river because we never saw a cloud. One day the river rose abruptly, turning into a wall of water washing everything in its path from the riverbanks. My wife and son were on the shore when it came as were many of the other people of the village. Those who survived followed the river south for days, collecting bodies where we found them and burying them Indian fashion. I couldn’t stay with them after we found the bodies of my wife and son. I came West again and haven’t been back.”

  “That wasn’t your fault either.”

  “I know. Now get some sleep.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll sleep some,” Hollander admitted with a raw chuckle. “Just not as hard as you do. We’ll pull out in a few hours.”

  With a deep sigh, Amanda curled up tightly against him, the blankets pulled nearly over her head, blocking out the cold of bad memories and the desert night.

  Chapter 13

  It was still dark when Hollander nudged Amanda awake with a less than gentle elbow. He was up and saddling the horses before Amanda sat up. Consciousness hit her like a dash of cold water. She sat back on her heels and braced by the breath-taking bite of the morning air, rolled their bedrolls into tight bundles for travel. She pulled on her blanket poncho, tying it tightly about her, then stood, buckled on her gunbelt and found the sack that carried their supplies. By the time she dug out their meager morning fare, a cold, jaw-exercising repeat of the dinner they’d shared the night before, a spill of golden orange and honey rolled up from the eastern horizon to wash down over the mountain peaks.

  “It’s going to be a wall-banger of a sunrise,” Hollander noted when Amanda shoved some of their jerky and hard biscuits into his hand.

  A couple of stray clouds drifting high above rode the winds with reddened underbellies as Amanda skip-vaulted into the saddle.

  She smiled warmly at him. “You’re an amazing man.”

  Hollander almost choked as he both chewed and swung into the saddle. He didn’t reply, but instead raised an eyebrow.

  “No, it’s true. I’m awake, but you’re as alert as a hunting cat. And you’re that way from the moment your eyes open. I can move, do things, even keep an ear tuned to danger, but you’re able to see the beauty in a sunrise as well.”

  He grunted. “You’ve got a lot of years of sleeping in a quiet, peaceful place to overcome before you can wake up like that. You’re learning.”

  “Was that a compliment? At night, even when I’m standing watch, a sound that doesn’t belong rouses you as fully as if you’d never been asleep. I swear to God you know what’s going on in your sleep.”

  “I do mostly. It’s how you stay alive out here.”

  “But how do I learn to do that?”

  “You just tell yourself before you go to sleep to hear anything that isn’t normal night sounds.”

  Amanda held her reins in one hand, the animal beneath her fresh and ready to go, and munched on her breakfast. He gave her a crooked grin.

  “You do just fine when you’re awake.”

  Hollander picked up the trail of those they pursued again as the sky turned brilliant yellow-washed gold, fading into the sky-blue of the desert morning. Amanda loped her horse right alongside his crossing the open country.

  No more had passed between them on the subject of her past or his since she had told him about Andrew Canan in the quiet of the night past. He had listened and pursued it no further. She hugged that memory close to her. It was possible too, in the fresh, clean light of the new day, that some of her other memories held some merit. That her mother had been right. That once she hooked up with the right person, she would settle down, and be happy. It cast Hollander in a new light.

  The outlaws obviously believed themselves secure and were making no real attempt to hide their tracks, their trail easy to follow. Hollander pondered the things that had passed between himself and Amanda the night past.

  He felt he should say something to Amanda, but there didn’t seem to be much that could be said and so he said nothing. The woman didn’t know it yet, but she’d been born to the wilderness life. There was a bond growing between them, a closeness he wasn’t sure he was ready for. When fate threw two people together with physical hardship it had a funny way of forcing them together or creating out of them the most bitter enemies. It had driven a wedge between himself and his mother long ago when his father, a dirt farmer, had died, leaving them alone on a small ranch in Texas. He’d worked odd jobs in town where he could find them. When he’d been fifteen she’d married again and Jake had taken his first job cowboying on a nearby ranch. From then on he’d drifted, never really found his way back to her and while he wished her well, he had no desire to return to that dusty little Texas town to seek her out.

  When this was over he’d be forced to untangle his feelings for Amanda. He’d drifted so long, moving from one spread to another, riding one herd, then ram-rodding another, that it was hard to think again of putting down roots. But, in all the years of drifting he’d never come across a woman quite like Amanda Cleary. She was a different breed entirely. She didn’t give an inch. At times she overstepped the boundaries of good sense, but even that was preferable to a dainty piece of fluff who wouldn’t lift a lily white hand if someone’s life depended on it. He and Amanda were partners. They could be more, but they wouldn’t know how much more until this thing was over.

  Amanda galloped her horse alongside his. They were making good time, miles rolling beneath their horses’ hoofs in an unbroken rhythm. They ate and drank in the saddle, climbing down only to water the horses, give them a breather when they walked them a while letting them blow, and to tend to their own needs. Her poncho was tied again behind her saddle and the warming rays of the sun beat insistently down upon them since they’d passed out of range of the shadows cast by the mountain peaks that lay to the East. Insects raised the mid-day chorus, and, in the distance, Amanda saw the rippling, water mirage appear on the
desert in shimmering waves.

  Hollander signaled another stop, swiftly dismounted and found the first signs of the trail they followed getting fresher.

  “They couldn’t have left here more than a few hours ago,” he said as Amanda dismounted beside him.

  He pointed first to the sharply defined hoof prints at their feet.

  “Those are fresh, the edges haven’t even had time to be worn smooth by the wind. That’s fresh too.” He pointed to some horse droppings that had not yet been dried to a powder.

  He stooped over the blackened remains of a fire which was sheltered and shaded by some large rocks. He took Amanda’s hand and held it close to where the fire had burned. “Coals are still warm. We’ll catch them before sundown if they don’t guess we’re coming after them.”

  Hollander’s statement sent a thrill of anticipation and a wave of fear washing up Amanda’s spine. Her mouth went dry with the weight of his statement. She unhooked the canteen from her saddle horn and took a small sip.

  “What then?” she asked as the reality sank in thoroughly that within a few hours they could be standing face to face with the outlaws who had so altered the course of their lives.

  Hollander’s wide mouth curved into a broad grin above that buttress of a chin. “We figure that out when we find them.”

  He looked closely at her, accurately reading the play of conflicting emotions.

  “You know which direction they took?” he asked, gathering his reins and stepping back into the saddle.

  Amanda nodded. “Still south.” She pointed to the tracks that swerved around a clump of brush and rocks.

  “You’ve got an eye like an eagle,” he teased her, preferring not to think about what they were riding into.

  “But not the courage of one.”

  “Fear will keep you alive, little eagle, don’t toss it away.”

  She collected the reins in her left hand over the saddle horn and, with a hop, Amanda was back astride Colorado.

  “Let’s ride.”

  They set a hard pace, Amanda’s smaller mount matching Hollander’s stride for stride. The terrain got rougher, but the combination of the killing pace and leg-breaking terrain little affected the two well-fed and rested horses. They galloped then trotted, then walked, then trotted again. The pattern repeated as they skirted large mountains and roamed over low hills. The time of rest in the canyon was paying off.