There was something about him that made me uneasy. I had seen drifters like him coming through the fort, hunters, ex-rivermen, prospectors, a seedy lot I avoided on general principle, though they never gave me cause for complaint. But this one disturbed me. Perhaps it was the grin, the way his eyes traveled over my body.
I was turning the horse away when he said, “The mare’s got a cut on its foreleg, did yuh know that, ma’am?’’
“No,’’ I said, bending over to have a look.
The next thing I knew I was being pulled from the saddle by rough hands. I screamed and kicked, trying to free myself, punching, hitting flesh, knocking my captor and myself to the ground.
“Shut up, damn you!” He let go long enough to give me a resounding smack across the face. Then he yanked me to my feet.
Another man emerged from the tent. Tall and lean almost to the point of emaciation, he wore a farmer’s overall but no shirt. His exposed bare arms were like sticks. He gaped at me, his slack idiot’s mouth falling open.
“Help me with this bitch!” the red-shirted man ordered. “Don’t stand there like a dummy!”
The idiot took one of my flailing arms and wrenched it behind my back. The pain made me scream. The red-shirted man slapped his hand over my mouth. “You do that again and I’ll bash yer brains in!”
I went limp, head hanging, tears of pain glazing my eyes.
“Thass better.”
I raised my face and glared at him. The terrible thing was that I could still see the Lowery house. Distant but there.
“My friends are coming after me,” I said through clenched teeth. “You’d best let me go.”
The red-shirted man looked over his shoulder. “Ain’t no one comin’.” He drew a revolver from the belt of his trousers. “Git!” he ordered, prodding me toward the tent. When I refused to move he put the gun to my temple. “Git, or I’ll shoot.”
“Shoot and be damned!”
Calling my bluff he drew the hammer back with a small click that went through me like a thunderclap. My imagination leapt ahead to the detonation, a loud, acrid-smelling bang that would shatter my skull. (Strange how the mind works even in panic, for I thought, If he kills me I won’t have to decide about Ward.)
But he must have changed his mind. He lowered the gun and struck me again, an open-handed blow that knocked me backward. Then he pushed me into the tent and threw me to the ground. Before I could lift myself he fell on me, pinning my shoulders down.
“Phil!” he shouted. “Phil, git in here!”
I twisted my head and sank my teeth into his hand. He struck me with the other one, a jaw breaker bringing the taste of blood to my mouth.
“Phil! Hold this she-devil down!”
Phil obliged by grasping my arms and stretching them over my head with a jerk that nearly pulled them from their sockets.
I tried to kick, to wriggle free, but the red-shirted man had settled himself on my knees and I could only drum my heels on the dirt floor.
“You gonna lay still, little lady?”
I spat at him.
He laughed. Then reaching over he wrenched my blouse and camisole open to expose my naked breasts.
“Mmmm. Look at them ripe tits and them pink little buttons.” His dirty paw reached out and tweaked my nipples. “Phil— damn if I ain’t gonna have a sip of ’em.”
I spat again, raging at my helplessness.
Phil whined, “Josh, ain’t I gonna have a tit too?”
“Sure, sure. Just hold on there.”
Josh unbuttoned his trousers, bringing out a thick, enpurpled organ. He patted and caressed it with a sly grin. “Wooden you like that between your legs, sweedhard?”
I turned my face away in disgust. The tent reeked with the odor of rotting leather and uncured fur pelts. No one was there to help me. I was alone with these two renegades.
“First, I’m gonna enjoy me them tits,” Josh said.
He leaned over and took a nipple in his mouth. As he sucked, making guttural sounds in the back of his throat, a surge of green bile rose to my tongue. I made a gargling noise, then found my voice and screamed.
He lifted his head. “Damn bitch! Spoil my fun.” He slapped me. Then when I screamed again, he undid his filthy neckerchief and stuffed the sweaty rag into my mouth. He inched himself up on my legs and placed the tip of his ugly organ between my thighs.
I arched my back, trying to pull myself free. But Phil gave my wrists another pain-wracking twist. Josh in the meanwhile had squeezed my thighs together and was sliding his wet organ back and forth through them. It was perverted, horrible; I wanted to die. As he grew more and more excited, his breathing became heavy, the stink from his yellowed teeth suffocating.
Phil, transported, slobbering, urged, “Come on, come on! Put it inside!” In his jubilant, mindless agitation, he let go of my arms. I brought my hand down, trying to reach for the gun in Josh’s belt, my fingers plucking uselessly at his trousers.
Josh, reaching the bursting point, shoved my legs apart, but before he could enter me he finished, releasing his moist stickiness over my bare skin. I balled my fist and hit the side of his hanging head.
“Phil, damn you! I tole you to hold her.”
Phil retrieved my arms just as the horses outside whinnied.
Josh sprang to his feet. Fastening his trousers, he stepped to the tent’s flap and cautiously peered out.
“Whass it? Whass it?” the idiot demanded. “Who’s there?”
“Nobody I can see. But we oughta make tracks. We’re too close to that damned house.”
“But I ain’t had my turn,” the idiot complained.
“We’ll take her with us. I ain’t finished myself.” He turned to me with a grin. “I gotta million ways I’m gonna do you. Front, sideways, and back.”
He plucked a rope from some dark recess and quickly bound my wrists, then with a swift turn hobbled my ankles.
“While I git her set, you pack things up. And hurry, damn it!”
Trussed like a hind, I was thrown over the mare. A smothering blanket was whipped across my inert body, tucked in, and fastened to the saddle. The sudden blackness contracted my throat muscles in a silent cry as a feeling of utter despair and helplessness threatened to swamp me. But I held it back. I had to. I couldn’t give way to futility. I had to go on with anger, if nothing else. Survival depended on fury, outrage, the will to deny.
When we began to move, the jarring jogging motion of the horse added to the pain of a swollen jaw and broken lip. I could see nothing but guessed they were taking me farther away from the Lowerys, away from the wagon trail, off the beaten path. If I had been a man they would have shot me and stolen the horse. Perhaps they would shoot me after . . . But I wouldn’t let myself think of that.
We had gone some way when I heard the rumble of wheels approaching.
“Now keep yer mouth shut, Phil,” Josh warned. “Let me handle this.”
“There’s two of ’em, Josh.”
“ ’S’all right. Just don’t jabber.”
A few minutes later a man’s voice called, “Howdy! Seen any buffalo?” The accent was British.
“Nope,” Josh answered. “You and yer friend there must be strangers. We got no buffalo that amounts to much in this part of the Dakotas.”
Using all my strength, I began to push, to wriggle, humping my back, trying desperately to loosen the blanket.
“What have you there?” the Britisher asked.
“A mule deer,” Josh answered. “We kilt us a mule deer.”
“But . . . My God, it’s a woman’s foot!”
A shot exploded, a crackling, thunderous discharge that stunned my ears. Then a volley, a sputtering cannonade. There were cries, shouts, a high piercing scream. My horse nickered, bucked, and tearing itself from the lead rein began to gallop free. Only the tightly tied blanket kept me from being thrown. As it was, the blanket began to come loose and I could see the ground passing swiftly under me. With my hands tied I was unable to check the horse
’s speed, and the gag prevented me from shouting an order to her. Bouncing like a sack of meal, I was witless with fright lest I fall from my perch under the mare’s panicked hooves and be stamped into the dust. My only hope was that she would soon tire.
Suddenly above the pounding and jarring I heard another set of hooves. “Whoa! Whoa!” a voice commanded. The next moment the mare came to a slamming halt.
The blanket was loosened and removed. Strong hands brought me to my feet, untied me, took away the gag, and then wrapped the blanket about my shoulders to hide my tattered bodice. A wave of black dizziness engulfed me as I leaned against my rescuer.
“Are you all right. Miss?”
The British voice belonged to a man of medium height, crisp brown hair, drooping moustache, and gray eyes.
“Yes . . . thank you,” I managed weakly.
“The name’s Billings. My friend . . .’’He waved his hand vaguely in the direction from which he must have come. “My friend’s hurt. Can you sit in the saddle?”
“Yes.” I ached all over. Muscles I never knew existed were throbbing with pain.
Billings lifted me to the top of the now quiescent mare. While I clung to her reins, we were led back to a small wagon that stood alone among the waving grass.
The two men who had kidnapped me were dead. Billings’s friend sat propped against a wagon wheel, semiconscious, blood seeping through a hastily wound bandage on his shoulder. Even with hair falling over the forehead and the reddish beard, I knew that face, one that had haunted me for years.
It was Ian Montgomery.
Chapter 12
I knelt in the grass beside him. “Ian . . . ?” I felt his pulse. A faint, very faint, palpitation ticked under my fingers.
Billings said, “I have to get him to a doctor.”
“Is he . . . ? Do you think . . . ?”
“The bleeding seems to have stopped. But the bullet will have to be removed, and the sooner the better.”
We lifted him into the wagon and covered him with a blanket. “We can take him to my house. He’ll be more comfortable there.” I identified myself as Mrs. Ward Gamble, saying I had been kidnapped by the two men when I resisted their attempt to steal my horse. It didn’t seem an appropriate moment to go into detail.
“Perhaps I’d better ride with him,” I suggested. “The jolting ...”
“Yes, of course.”
Mr. Billings helped me into the wagon. Then he tied the mare and the two cutthroats’ horses to the buckboard. There wasn’t time to bury the dead men, so we left their bodies for the vultures. Nor was there time to go back and tell the Lowerys what had happened. I hated to go off without saying good-bye, but we couldn’t risk a delay. Later I would come back and thank them properly.
I sat cradling the upper part of Ian’s body in my lap. The wagon was one of those tooth-jarring, springless horse carts, and I had to brace my back against the side to protect Ian from being tossed about. For a long while I was too full of worry, watching his face intently for a change of color, to think clearly. Every rabbit warren and hedgehog mound we lurched over brought a new wave of dread. Then a cold wind sprang up, whistling through the grass, hooting around my head, and I tucked the blanket about him more securely. But the hand I held remained warm, and gradually the tenseness in my shoulders relaxed.
Was it possible to love a man and not forgive him? I didn’t know. Seeing him brought back a hundred memories, a welter of conflicting emotions.
Billings, seated above me, broke into my thoughts. “You are acquainted with Ian Montgomery?’’
“I met him in Virginia years ago.” How many? A dozen? And yet when I thought of the girl in Aunt Jane’s parlor all arustle in Worth’s silken skirts, giving her hand to a man she likened to a Viking, it seemed as though a lifetime had passed.
“You’re a long way from home,’’ Mr. Billings said. “But then I suppose you can say the same for us. We were sent out by British Metals, a company hoping to make investments in the West.’’
“Then you must be the two Englishmen Mrs. Berryman told me about.’’ How could I have possibly guessed that one was Ian?
“Yes, I daresay. We had dinner with the Berrymans— charming, hospitable people.’’
“And you are here in the Dakotas prospecting for gold?’’ Why wasn’t Ian in England or Chicago tending his rich wife?
“Looking into the possibilities, Mrs. Gamble. We’ve been consulting with General Custer this past week. Today, however, we decided to have some diversion and do a little hunting.’’
“And if it hadn’t been for me . . .’’
“Don’t give it another thought.’’
Once home we got Ian upstairs with the help of Ward’s orderly. The young corporal seemed surprised to see me. He said that Ward had been suddenly ordered to leave for St. Paul, but before going he had left instructions to have me fetched from the Lowerys.
“Then I’ve saved you a trip,’’ I said. “But, as you can see, this man needs help. Please tell Dr. MacKenzie to come at once.’’
We put Ian in the spare room. Billings and I got him out of his bloodied coat and shirt. With water heated by Mrs. Sprockett (all eyes and nattering, “Who’s he? Why’s he here?’’), I tenderly washed the festering wound in his shoulder. He did not regain consciousness, and his ashy-white face lay against the pillows like a dead man’s. I had not prayed for myself during the terrible Chicago fire, nor, God forgive me, for Judah, but now I prayed for Ian. While Billings went downstairs to wait for the doctor, I knelt by the side of the bed and begged the Almighty to spare Ian’s life. It did not occur to me that to plead so fervently for a man I once swore to hate forever was ironic. I only knew I couldn’t bear to have him die.
Dr. MacKenzie’s prognosis, though given in a stern voice, was hopeful. He had removed the entire bullet with a fair amount of ease. Infection, however, remained the greatest danger. Ian needed care; he could send one of the medical corpsmen, if I liked.
“That won’t be necessary. I shall look after him myself.” Shortly after the doctor left, Ian opened his eyes. He gave me a dazed, puzzled look. “Deirdre . . . ? Where . . . ? Am I in heaven?”
“No. You’re still in the Dakotas.”
“I thought ... an angel ...” He gave me a weak smile.
“Nonsense. The doctor said you mustn’t talk. He’s left some medicine.” I poured the correct dosage into a glass and lifted his head. He grimaced as he drank. I settled him back on the pillows and smoothed the coverlet.
“Started shooting . . . before I ... I could draw.” He made a feeble gesture with his hand. “But . . . you . . . How . . . ?”
“I’ll tell you all about it if you promise to lie still.”
I gave him much the same story I had told Billings, but he fell asleep before I finished. I sat beside him, staring at the bleached whiteness beneath the tan, the faint sprinkle of freckles across the strong nose, the reddish beard. I had the most intense urge to touch him, to bend down and place my lips on his forehead. I had to remind myself that this man had once boasted of seducing me, that I would do better to have him removed to the fort hospital, that it was ridiculous to care for him, to go on nursing him. I tried to rationalize, tried to convince myself that I was acting as any decent humanitarian would, that he had been shot rescuing me, that whatever he had done in the past I owed him this now. And yet I sensed the real reason: I loved the rogue.
He got worse before he got better. The fever that Dr. MacKenzie feared set in that night, and Ian spent it tossing and turning, crying out in a delirious rage at—of all people—his father. Several times he mumbled his wife’s name, Marian. Though I couldn’t make out what he said, the very mention of her name cut through me like a knife. I attempted to cool his heated body with vinegar-soaked cloths, but they did not seem to help. Around three in the morning, worried and close to despair, I went across the compound and rousted the doctor out of bed. After examining Ian’s wound, he seemed to think the fever was not seriou
s. He gave me several packets of powder and instructed me to continue with the vinegar dressings.
“You ought to have your servant relieve you,” he said. “You look as though you could use the rest.”
“I’ll be all right.” I couldn’t see Mrs. Sprockett at Ian’s bedside.
I stayed with Ian until he ceased thrashing and fell into a deep slumber. I gazed at him for a few moments, too tired to move. Then I reached over and put my hand on his brow. It felt less feverish. As I adjusted the rumpled covers, a sudden memory flashed into my mind, of Page, and how once through a long night of childish illness I had tucked the bedclothes around him just so. Tears burned my eyes. Ian . . . Page. Oh, if things had only worked out differently!
The sun was well up when I came downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Sprockett was fussing over the stove. I had her pour me a cup of coffee.
“Is he better—upstairs?” She lifted mossy brows to the ceiling.
“I think so.”
“This Englishman is a friend of the colonel’s?”
“No. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Well! Well!” Shock curtailed further speech, but her disapproval was expressed in the scandalized look she threw me.
The doctor came at noon. “Remarkable fortitude,” he said to a weakened but lucid Ian. “You just keep abed and mind Mrs. Gamble and you’ll be on your feet in no time.”
When he had gone, Ian said, “How long have you been Mrs. Gamble?”
“Four years.” I saw no point in telling him the truth. He was married. Let him think I had a husband too.
“Marriage agrees with you. You don’t look a day older, and you’re just as beautiful.”
“Flatterer!” I shook a powder into a glass of water.
“Was it you on that horse with those outlaws?”
“Yes.” I repeated my set story, making it short and succinct.
“And now you are tending me,” he said when I had finished.
“Yes,” I answered, vigorously stirring the glass.
He grasped my wrist. “You are the sweetest of nurses, Deirdre.”
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