Bound for Glory

by Tess LeSue

  “The packhorse only cost twenty-five,” Becky admitted, “but the other one was fifty-five dollars.”

  “Which one’s the packhorse?” It was impossible to tell. They were both solid little things, built for pulling wagons. Neither of them looked in their prime.

  “The roan. The speckled one is for riding.”

  Ava and the speckled horse eyed each other. “I might stop by and pick up my old nag on the way out,” Ava said dryly, refusing to take the reins from Becky. “I hate to waste a good horse.”

  “There’s no time.” Becky’s limpness had turned to crankiness. Ava followed her gaze and saw why. Pierre LeFoy had emerged on the balcony of the Palladium, flanked by his daughters, the redheaded moppets from the night before, who were again attired in their spangly stage clothes (which had apparently once been Becky’s nice pink dress). LeFoy was holding a bottle of champagne and a pistol. The moppets were climbing the railings, their sequins blazing in the bloodred dawn.

  “I can go and get your horse for you,” Lord Whatsit offered, oblivious of both LeFoy and his moppets and to Becky’s pique.

  “Then you’ll miss the start.” Becky was turning into a regular thundercloud. Ava guessed she’d had a stressful morning—after all, she’d broken up with her lover and quit her job. And now she was out eighty dollars (because there was no way Ava was paying for these wretched animals—Becky was welcome to use them as packhorses).

  “I’m sure they’ll wait for us,” Lord Whatsit said.

  “Said like a true gentleman,” Ava observed as he mounted his high-stepping Arab and picked his way through the crowds.

  Once Lord Whatsit was directly in LeFoy’s sight he called up to him, “I say, LeFoy! Miss Archer needs to collect her animal—would you mind holding off on the start of this hoo-ha while I go rustle it up?”

  “Hoo-ha?” Ava echoed. The man was too much.

  Meanwhile, the crowd set to with a mighty booing. LeFoy laughed and hushed them. “Now, now, you wouldn’t want Miss Archer to miss all the fun, would you?”

  “She don’t need no horse. She can ride with me,” a voice called. Ava jumped a mile. It was Kennedy Voss, and he was right behind her. Or, rather, above her, as he was already mounted on a horse that must have stood sixteen hands high. She shrieked as he went from being behind and above her to being all over her. He had the sheer gall to yank her bodily off her feet and across his saddle. The crowd cheered at the spectacle. They loved watching her cowed.

  Ava felt the blood rush to her head. She could hear her pulse thudding in her ears. Goddamn it. They hadn’t even started the damn race, and she’d lost control.

  “I am not a piece of meat!” she yelled, writhing on the saddle until her elbow found Kennedy Voss’s tender parts. He squawked in pain, and the crowd started laughing. At him. She much preferred that to them cheering her humiliation. That was until it occurred to her that there would be a price for humiliating Kennedy Voss. In public.

  Not that he’d cared about publicly humiliating her. He wasn’t afraid of her, was he? The thought had her elbowing him again. He swore and clamped a hand on the back of her neck. Goddamn, he was strong. Ava had a sudden fear he would choke her right here, in front of the whole street.

  But then there was a blast of gunfire, and his hand flew off her.

  “Damnation!” Voss yelled. He shoved Ava off his saddle, and she went sprawling onto the hard-packed dirt of the street. It took her a minute to regain her wits. The world was a mess of dust and hooves, and her ears were ringing from the gunfire.

  Coughing from the dust, she managed to get to her feet in time to register that Lord Whatsit had apparently shot Kennedy Voss’s hat plum off his head.

  “You, sir, are a rascal,” Lord Whatsit bellowed, still aiming his weapon at Voss. “One does not lay hands on a lady.”

  He was far stupider than she’d given him credit for. Ava speedily assessed the situation. They were blocked in by a solid circle of heavily armed men, trapped in the center of it with Kennedy Voss—who had lost all trace of the innocent farm boy and now just looked like a hot-blooded killer. Dear God, that was the face his victims must have seen right before he silenced them forever.

  “Good thing she ain’t no lady, then,” Voss snarled. As he and Lord Whatsit continued to stare each other down, Ava unpinned her fob watch from the pocket of her vest. This was probably even stupider than Lord Whatsit’s heroics, but she had to do something. Lord Whatsit was about to get himself shot through. She took a deep breath, and with absurd daintiness, she stuck the pin into Kennedy Voss’s horse’s ass.

  The horse screamed and reared, and Voss went ass over teakettle into the dirt at her boots. He rolled several times and leapt straight to his feet. Shame. She’d half-hoped he might have broken an ankle and would have to sit out the Hunt.

  Now the crowd was laughing in earnest, and Voss was the color of a ripe beet.

  Ava took a step back. He wasn’t to know she’d stuck his horse . . . but she had a feeling he was just rodent smart enough to guess.

  “Enough!” A pistol fired from the balcony of the Palladium. LeFoy recaptured the crowd’s attention. He was looking amused but only just. There was an edge of impatience in his voice. “Are you forgetting why we’re here? No more delays! This is a Hunt, not a circus!”

  He was more than a little undercut by his moppets, who were climbing all over the railings, looking for all the world like they did belong in a circus.

  “No! We’re not starting until Miss Archer has received an apology from this ape!” Lord Whatsit shouted. He had an authoritarian air, like he thought he was the president himself. That wasn’t going to serve him well in these parts.

  Luckily, he backed it up by being a crack shot, she thought dryly, remembering how Voss’s hat had gone flying into the dirt. But then again, maybe he’d been aiming for Voss’s head and missed. In which case, his days were certainly numbered. But he had gumption; Ava had to give him that. He hadn’t lowered his rifle; it was aimed straight at Voss’s head. And he was still issuing orders.

  “And then I insist she be allowed to collect her animal!”

  “Shut up, you flouncy Yankee!” someone shouted. And then abruptly Lord Whatsit found himself at the wrong end of two dozen drawn pistols. The crowd was sick of the circus apparently.

  “Yankee!” Lord Whatsit was outraged. “I’m an Englishman!”

  Ava stepped in before he could get himself shot through. “Thank you, Your Majesty!” she interjected loudly, stepping between him and at least half the drawn weapons. “I appreciate your chivalry. But we should let these, uh, gentlemen”—here she stole a glance at Kennedy Voss, who was giving her his rattlesnake stare—“get on with their Hunt.”

  “Not until you have your horse!”

  “She’s got horses already,” Becky snapped, completely out of patience. She brandished the reins of the two packhorses. “And they’re already packed with her gear. I did it myself.”

  “Problem solved!” LeFoy called from his balcony. Ava saw Becky flinch at the sound of his cheery voice. “There you are, Miss Archer—you’re well mounted after all!”

  There were snickers at that. Filthy bastards. Ava kept her head high and refused to look at Kennedy Voss—she had no doubt that he’d be smirking.

  “Saddle up, gentlemen!” LeFoy called. He was escalating into full-blown-showman mode again. “Day is breaking!”

  As if on cue, the sun cracked the clouds, sending shafts of brassy light over the street. Now Ava had a clearer view of the crowd and, Jesus wept, there were a lot of people. All of them armed to the teeth.

  The residents of San Francisco had turned out to watch the show. The porches and balconies and sidewalks were crammed with spectators, and even more people clustered at the junctions. Wonderful, Ava thought as she took the reins of the fleabags from Becky, more witnesses to Kennedy Voss’s humilia
tion. He was going to kill her for sure.

  Oh God, here he came again.

  He’d remounted his monstrously tall horse and was towering over her. He leaned on the pommel of his saddle and fixed her with his flat stare. “Lucky for you, I’m not one to hold a grudge,” he told her.

  “Lucky for you, I’m not either.” Her mouth ran away with her. She could have kicked herself as she saw him blink in surprise. She kept losing her poker face lately—it made her nervy. She’d get herself killed if she didn’t get it back in place permanently. She had the holy horrors that she was losing her edge. But maybe it was just exhaustion. She’d been on the trail for a very long time, and she wasn’t as young as she’d once been.

  “You know what, Miss Archer?” Kennedy Voss drawled, leaning in even closer. “I like you.”

  Oh dear.

  “So, I’ll still let you ride with me.”

  “Really, there’s no need.”

  “I insist.” He sat back and gave her a smile that could only be described as terrifying. “Once you’ve saddled up, come and join me up front.”

  “Don’t feel you have to wait,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to slow you down.”

  “Oh, you won’t.” He tipped his hat at her and then shoved his way through the crowd. Not that he had to shove. The people parted for him. Because he was Kennedy Voss and he turned grown men into sniveling children.

  “Hey, Horse,” she sighed, resigning herself to her fate and confronting the speckled horse. It lowered its head.

  It looked tired. Standing still.

  “Her name is Freckles,” Becky told her stiffly.

  Ava felt again the loss of her poker face.

  “And you’re welcome,” Becky continued. “You’re welcome for the horses, and for the food and water I packed, and for saddling the animals, and for hauling your saddlebags down and cinching them on. You’re most welcome.”

  Ava pursed her lips. She hadn’t asked Becky to do any of those things. The girl had done them all off her own back. Not only that, but she was the one foisting herself on Ava, not the other way around.

  But Ava heard the hurt in the girl’s voice. And she was benefiting from all of Becky’s labor—even if the horses left something to be desired. And she could see how leaving LeFoy was stinging Becky. Mostly because he didn’t seem to care in the least.

  Well, she was better off without him. Even though it might take her a while to feel the truth of it.

  Becky had her back to her. Ava thought she heard her sniff. She put a hand on Becky’s shoulder and felt her flinch. “Thank you,” Ava said softly. There was no reply. “I mean it, Becky. Thank you very much. I’m sorry I was so ungracious.”

  “It’s fine,” Becky sighed gustily. “I reckon I’d be ungracious too if I were in your boots. Stuck with me like this.”

  “I’m not stuck with you,” Ava protested. “I can get rid of you whenever I want. All I’d have to do is ride off.” Although perhaps not on this horse, she thought as she put her boot in the stirrup. Poor Freckles didn’t look fast enough to outride Becky, even if the girl was on foot.

  “Thanks,” Becky said sourly.

  “You’re most welcome.” Ava gave her a sunny smile. Becky remained stone-faced. Jesus wept, this was going to be a long journey. “That was a joke.”

  “Was it?”

  Ava settled into the saddle. She could have sworn the horse’s legs shook beneath her. She hoped they weren’t going to give out. They hadn’t even left yet. “Come on, Miss Sullivan,” Ava cajoled, “once you’re in the saddle, things won’t be so grim. Well, they will. But you’ll at least be off your feet. You look like a girl with sore feet.”

  “Not anymore. My feet got used to hard work years ago. It’s other bits of me that are sore.” She shot LeFoy a hangdog look.

  Ava had a hard time not losing her temper. God save her from lovelorn women. She’d grown up in a house with one, and she had no patience with it. How did women find it so surprising when men scorned them? It was what men did. The history of the world was full of the proof of it. The shock would be if they didn’t behave like liars and cheats. Abandonment was the only logical end to a relationship, and that was all there was to it.

  “Up you hop, or I really will ride off and leave you,” Ava said sternly. “And that would be a shame. You’ve the makings of a good book.”

  “I do?” Becky brightened at that.

  “Miss Archer!” It was Lord Whatsit again.

  “Oh, Your Majesty! I was wondering where you’d got to.”

  “You may address me as ‘sir,’ not ‘Your Majesty.’”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Queen is addressed as ‘Your Majesty,’ and I am many things, but I’m no Queen. A simple ‘sir’ will suffice for me.”

  Ava looked at him askance, unsure if he was joking or not. He didn’t seem to be.

  “But in fact, when one does meet the Queen, one addresses her as ‘ma’am,’ as a rule.”

  “Does one?” Ava paused and then couldn’t quite resist needling him. “I mean, does one, sir?”

  “That’s it!” He looked pleased as punch.

  “Have you met the Queen?” Becky asked. She seemed utterly captivated.

  Ava took the opportunity to leave them to it, urging poor Freckles to drag her feet through the crowd. Not quite to the front—she wasn’t delusional enough to think Freckles could keep up with the pack once the firing pistol sounded. Best to be off to the side somewhere where they wouldn’t get trampled. Vaguely she could hear Lord Whatsit jabbering on about the Queen of England, although what use or relevance that had to the current moment was beyond her.

  “Good luck, Miss Archer! I put a bet on you!” a woman called from a window above.

  Ava gave her a wave.

  “Give them hell!”

  Yes. Hell.

  Ava felt her pulse quicken as the pack moved forward to clump behind the wonky starting line. The air crackled with anticipation as the reddish gold rising sun cut long shadows across the street. Ahead of her, Ava could see English George and Irish George, their mean rat faces frozen in intense focus. The buoyant cheer had evaporated, and in its place, expectation seethed. The gates of hell were about to open, and the worst of its dominion were going to be loosed on the west.

  Deathrider had better be ready for this, she thought, wrapping the reins tightly around her fist, because hell is headed his way.

  Consummate showman that he was, LeFoy didn’t cheapen the moment with words. Instead, he waited until the sun broke the roofline opposite, hitting him full in the face with its bloody light. He was chased with gold as he thrust his arm toward the sky.

  Boom. The sound of the starting pistol was followed by the seismic force of a hundred horses surging forward. Ava felt like she’d been caught in a flood. There was no hope of doing more than holding on for dear life as the stampede stormed down Main Street.

  The Hunt was on.

  6

  THEY FOUND THE bodies close to the border of Mexico. Deathrider felt a heaviness settle on him as he took in the devastation. The bodies belonged to a couple of travelers who had made the mistake of camping in the heart of the Apache plunder trails. As soon as Deathrider and Micah had seen the oily black smear of smoke on the horizon, Deathrider had known exactly what they were looking at. What else would it have been out here? Micah swore when Deathrider kicked his horse in the direction of the carnage.

  “Where are you going?” Micah squawked.

  “It’s what we’ve been looking for!” Deathrider called back over his shoulder. “We need it to look like Apaches killed us.”

  “But they might still be there!”

  “Probably not.”

  “Probably not? Every time I think you can’t get crazier, you do,” Micah moaned. But he followed, as Deathrider had known he w
ould. They’d been friends for too long to let a few rampaging Apaches get between them.

  Deathrider had been stalking the Apache raiding party for a couple of days, following them right into the heartland of their plunder trail, knowing eventually he’d find something he and Micah could turn to their advantage. They needed a way out of the mess they were in, and the misfortune of these travelers might well save their lives. He pushed away the revulsion he felt at the idea. Sometimes you needed to do things you didn’t like in order to survive.

  “We’ll pass their victims off as us,” he told Micah for the fifteenth time. “We’ll make sure some of my buckskin and some of your gown are left unburned so the Hunters have something to find. They’ll put two and two together.”

  “What if they put two and two together and come up with five?”

  “We’ll spell it out plain enough for a fool to do the math.”

  “This gets worse by the minute. You’re trusting our fate to whether or not killers can do math.” Micah was still all rigged up in the whore’s dress, but he was looking ragged after a few days of traveling in the heat. The big pink bonnet, with its swatches of orange hair stitched to it, sat high on his head. He looked ridiculous, and he was hot and sweaty and sick of the whole business. He’d been bitching Deathrider’s ear off for miles.

  Deathrider was starting to regret the whole thing himself. It had been an absurd act of charity, and he was suffering for it. As the days passed, he felt increasingly oppressed. He couldn’t stop thinking about the Hunt or about her. “Brooding” was probably a better word for it than “thinking.” He’d been brooding about it. About her. That damn woman.

  A.A. Archer. He’d never once met her, but she’d made his life an unholy misery. Here they were, in the searing heat, darting about the desert, playacting a bunch of nonsense, and for what? Because some twit of a woman told a bunch of lunatic stories about him. What kind of woman went riding about the west making up lies about a man anyway? She was devoid of sense or reason. And it wasn’t like it was a brief loss of her senses, because she’d been doing it for almost a decade now. Why in hell did she keep going?