Before the Dawn

by Denise A. Agnew

  Elijah saw the cabin and waited. As he crouched down along the ridge, he wondered if old timers built cabins below ridges for a reason. This scene reminded him too much of coming upon Mrs. Connor’s abode. He’d followed the trail to the campfire and Mary Jane’s signs. Apprehension held him immobile. He cocked the rifle and waited for the right time to approach. Night would do it, he figured. That meant he would stay on this ridge for quite a few hours. Or he could think of another way.

  His thoughts wrestled with possibilities until his head ached again. He’d changed the dressing as best he could last night, then rode in the moonlight, hoping to come upon Mary Jane and Amos. What he’d do when he found them had gathered strength as he moved through the trees last evening. His plan, fully formed, promised to break when he recognized its fatal flaws.

  One thing didn’t falter.

  His overwhelming desire to get Mary Jane back.

  He needed Mary Jane, and maybe if things went his way, she would need him, too. He wanted to have another chance to show her what she meant to him. Knowing that, he’d act on the plan, imperfect or not. His gut burned thinking about what his brother might have already done to Mary Jane.

  If he’d touched her…

  If he’d raped her…

  Damn you, Amos. I will feckin’ kill you. I will feckin’ kill you.

  Knowing Amos the way he did, Elijah had no doubt Mary Jane must have already suffered greatly at his brother’s hands. Self reproach piled upon the fear in Elijah’s heart.

  I didn’t keep Mary Jane safe. I’ve let her down.

  No matter now. His brother would die one way or the other, and Elijah would have his revenge.

  Hours went by under a hot sun, and storm clouds rose over the mountains and threatened towards late afternoon. He worked his way down the way he had come. He would have to find a way to the boulders nearby the cabin without Amos seeing him. He’d left his horse near a tree, out of sight.

  Time crept by as Elijah worked his way to the boulders. They looked insignificant from the ridge, but they towered over him by a good twenty feet. He wormed his way between two rock formations until he spied the back of the cabin. He heard a sound that made his heart stop. A laugh. His brother’s cold, dark laugh. Damn him all to hell.

  Blood rushed through Elijah’s system as his heart raced into action, his muscles tightening with the need to spring. Yep, Amos must think he was dead, otherwise he would have high-tailed it out of the area far faster.

  Step by step Elijah cased the cabin. He drew alongside one of the windows in the back and when he took a swift glance, he absorbed the entire situation in a heartbeat. The situation confronting him made rage inside rush forth like a huge wave threatening a beach. It crashed in upon Elijah, and without further hesitation, he made his move.

  Mary Jane twisted in the bonds that held her wrists to the bedposts. She wanted to scream, but no one would hear her. Amos sat on the edge of the bed as he finished the last knot in tie holding her left wrist to the bedpost.

  “There. That ought to hold you while I hunt up some game.”

  She tugged on her left wrist, but it only made the material tighten. “Please, let me go. What if something happens to you out there? I will be stuck here. Defenseless and…I could die.”

  He nodded. “You? Defenseless? See, that’s where I think you made your first mistake. Thinking that I’d believe you’re defenseless. Nope. I’ve seen too many women like you manipulating a man. I know the signs.”

  She almost screamed in his face. Mary Jane hated him as much as she could hate anyone, a feeling she once believed she could never have.

  In desperation she growled her next words, so incensed she wouldn’t have been surprised to see flames shooting from her own mouth. “So help me God, Amos McKinnon, I am going to kill you myself.”

  A loud laugh burst from his throat, and he started out the front door. “I’ll be back, don’t you worry your pretty head.”

  She screamed again, this time high-pitched and filled with impotent wrath.

  Amos stepped out the front door, and after a short while all sounds of his presence ceased. She struggled against the bonds, drained from her outburst, half tempted to cry again. She breathed deeply through her nose, let it out slowly, and started once more. Her heartbeat had started to cease its frantic thumping when the back door opened. She jerked in shock as she saw who stood there with a rifle at his side.

  He could not be real.

  He simply could not.

  Shock assaulted her, and she gasped. Perhaps he was a ghost. A very roughed up, dangerous-looking ghost with a dirty face, hair sticking up everywhere, and a bandaged head. He stared at her as if she were the apparition, his lips parted and chest heaving up and down with emotion. He held a rifle in one hand.

  Joy crashed in on her with crushing force. “Elijah.”

  He rushed towards her, placing the gun on the small bed long enough to work frantically at the restraints.

  “Darlin’, are you hurt?” His voice roughened with worry.

  “N-no. I—you—” She choked on the words, breathless. “I thought you were dead.”

  “An inch to the left and I would’ve been. Good thing Varney wasn’t a good shot and I run fast. No time to explain. We’re getting out of here.”

  He cursed as he ran to the other bedpost and undid the tie around her wrist. Within seconds he freed her. He grabbed her hand, pulled her off the bed, and headed out the back door.

  They barely made it outside when she heard footsteps come around the side of the cabin. Her heart banged, her pulse rushing in her ears as they came face to face with Amos.

  Elijah’s rifle came up.

  Amos did the same.

  With a sinking heart, Mary Jane didn’t have time to feel more fear as the inevitable rolled up and seized them by the throat like a rabid dog.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Well, look what we got here.” Amos’s voice held contempt as he snapped out his words. “It’s my baby brother.”

  Mary Jane dared look at Elijah. His mouth thinned into a grim line, eyes piercing as he kept his attention on the other man. The air crackled with electricity, and thunder rumbled. Clouds hung low over the ridge, dark and roiling, threatening a different sort of violence.

  “Let her get on a horse and ride out of here, Amos. This is between you and me.”

  Amos’s glance darted from Elijah to Mary Jane and back. “You got her mixed up in this, baby brother. How you going to get her out?”

  How, indeed? She had believed she could extract herself from the situation, had made plans, but now things turned from bad to worse. Terror threatened, ripping at her control.

  “Let her go. Now.” Elijah’s demand bit out strong and hard.

  Amos shook his head. “She takes a step away, and I shoot her. Hear that girl? Run and you’re dead.”

  “Why would you do that, Amos?” She kept her voice modulated and calm. “I will go with you, Amos. Let us leave now.”

  His gaze darted to hers. Held a few tension-filled seconds. “You must think I’m mighty stupid and whipped. There isn’t a thing you can do or say to make me think you’re stuck on me, girl. Not a thing. Wasn’t more than a few minutes ago you were shrieking like a banshee at me.” His voice thickened a little, his Irish heritage breaking through. “And she’s a fine prize, baby brother. Varney is a horrible liar, and I knew you weren’t dead.”

  “You knew all this time?” she asked, surprised. “But even I thought he was dead.”

  Amos’s eyes stayed cadaver cold even as his mouth curved in a wide smile. “You don’t know Elijah that well if you think a man shooting at him would be enough to kill him. No, it would take a passel more than that. I figure if a man can make it through five years in that prison, he can make it through a bullet. Isn’t that right, brother? You see my baby brother has larceny in his heart, even if he doesn’t show it to a woman. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be trying to murder me now.”

  “
Wouldn’t be murder.” Elijah’s voice snarled low with contempt. “It would be justice.”

  “For taking your woman? You could beat me up for that and leave me to the bears. Kill me now and you’ll end up right back in the pen. This time you’ll stay in there twenty-one years for certain. No governor will pardon your arse this time.”

  “Who says? Maybe they’ll give me a medal for wiping your ugly face from the earth.”

  Mary Jane tensed as their words grew sharper with hate, and thunder rumbling in the clouds grew nearer by the minute.

  Amos’s smile held icy confidence. “No, I don’t think you’re as all-fired sure on killing me as you say. I don’t think you want this pretty woman here seeing you at a necktie social.”

  She shuddered at Amos’s slang for a hanging.

  “That so?” Elijah said. “Did you make off with everyone’s money from the train? Or were you more intent on killing me and forgot to?”

  Amos frowned and his eyes flashed. “You could say that. Screw Claypool and Hoop for making this a damn sight complicated.”

  “So you’re out of money and on the run. How far do you think you’ll get without funds, Amos?”

  “Who said I’m without money? The pretty lady here gave me hers. You trying to stall me? Won’t make any difference. One of us is dead sure as shite.”

  Elijah drew in a slow breath, and she watched him exhale. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. So what are doing now, Amos? We going to stand here all day? Or are you begging for you life?”

  Amos’s sharp gaze, so like Elijah’s, sent a shiver through her. They hung on an abyss. And the fall, when it happened, would be cruel and long.

  Amos moved enough to make her flinch. “I’ll make you a deal, baby brother. Your life for hers. I promise I won’t kill her. I’ll take her to Portage and let her go.”

  No. Oh God, no, Elijah. She couldn’t lose him again. She would rather die herself. Right then she made a determination. Another plan.

  If worse came to worse, she would die for him.

  Elijah blinked, then blinked again, but his expression never changed. The rifle in his hands did not budge. “What guarantee do I have you won’t hurt her?”

  “My word as your brother.”

  “You bastard, you aren’t my brother.” Elijah’s voice thickened with Ireland, emotion tight and charged as the thunderstorm threatening above. “You were some changeling. Our poor mother must have taken you in.”

  Amos’s chuckle sounded real, filled with condescension and mirth. “Living in that cell must have turned you mad. Pretty little Mary Jane here would be better off with me.”

  Elijah’s voice hissed with fury, his eyes narrowed, his lips curled with loathing. “You’re not going to touch her ever again. I’ll lie down and die like a dog first, do you hear me, Amos? You’ll have to shoot my head off.”

  She had never seen Elijah this incensed, and her blood ran cold.

  “Ooohooo.” Amos’s voice crooned. “Damn, but you have learned a few things in jail, haven’t you?”

  “I learned to hate you more than anything or anyone. I learned to despise you as much as you hated me all my life.”

  Amos grunted, the noise a clear dismissal. “You know, I confessed all to this girl here. Tell him what I told you, Mary Jane. Tell him why I had to kill Maureen.”

  She stared at Amos in disbelief. “No—I—no.”

  Amos lifted his rifle a tad higher. “Tell him now, or I shoot him.”

  She put up a hand in panic. “No. Please. I will tell him. Do not do anything rash.”

  “Then turn towards him and tell him everything.”

  She turned slowly, facing Elijah. But Elijah kept his rifle sighted on Amos and his body still.

  Panicky and feeling weak she said, “He thinks that Maureen was…in the wrong.” She swallowed hard.

  “Get the story right, girl.”

  Amos’s remonstration sent a wave of courage through her. She would tell Elijah, and that would give her and Elijah time to think how to escape the situation.

  She cleared her throat and started with a stronger voice. Sweat dotted her face, and the wind increased, sending a cold breeze over her body. A flash of lightning brightened the sky to the northwest. “He said that Maureen was not a virgin when she met you. That she had…”

  “Spit it out for him, girl.”

  “That she had relations with him of her own free will. That she came to him the morning she died and asked him to run away with him.” As her words flowed, she watched a muscle twitch in Elijah’s jaw, but he never took his gaze off his brother. “She was not the woman you believed. He killed her because he wanted to and because he believes she was sent by the devil to lure him into hell.”

  Amos made an indignant sound. “That’s the short version of the tale, Elijah, but she’s got it mostly right.”

  Elijah’s jaw continued to clench and release, then his voice purred out with lethal intensity. “Even if all that were true—and it isn’t—Maureen didn’t deserve to die. No one deserves what you did to her, you filthy serpent.” Amos started to speak, but Elijah cut him off. “From the first day I entered Eastern State, I lived day by day knowing that when I left that cell twenty-one years later, I would hunt you down and kill you for what you did to Maureen.” Elijah took a deep breath and let it out, some of the heat leaving his eyes, his shoulders less tense, his voice not as rough. “But I’m making a vow, Amos. I’ll lay down my rifle if you will.”

  Thunder punctuated his statement, and then all she heard was the wind tossing in the trees, gathering strength. Amazement held her silent and immobile.

  Amos kept his rifle pointed on his brother, his own eyes reflecting surprise. “What?”

  “I said, I’ll lay my weapon down if you will. We walk away from this alive. Both of us. Because nothing is more important to me than being with Mary Jane. And I can’t have that if I’m dead or in jail.”

  Her heart swelled, her eyes watering. She wiped at her face as tears spilled onto her cheeks for what seemed the hundredth time in the last three days.

  Amos’s rifle lowered slightly. “You would do that? After everything?”

  “I would.”

  She saw one second of softening in Amos’s eyes. One smidgen of regret. Then it disappeared like a wisp of fog.

  “Elijah, you willing to die for Mary Jane? Lie down and die like a dog?”

  Without hesitation Elijah said, “I would. I’d die for her.”

  Amos smirked. “Well then, I guess you got me, brother. I’ll put my rifle down real slow.”

  Elijah nodded, and started to lower his as well.

  Amos stooped, his rifle now touching the ground. He reached for his waist holster, jerking a pistol free and aiming the business end under his own chin. “Ah, feck this. Goodbye, brother.”

  Elijah moved. “No! No!”

  A pistol blast assaulted her ears, and Mary Jane saw Amos’s face dissolve in a splatter of blood. Stunned, she put her hands over her face, “Oh my God. Oh God.”

  “Jesus.” Elijah’s voice ached with horror, breaking as he said, “Ah Jesus.”

  Silence blanketed them. Mary Jane dared drop her hands to her sides, but she did not look at Amos crumpled on the ground. Instead, she turned towards Elijah. He stared at his dead brother, his face wiped clean of expression, his eyes glazed.

  “Elijah.”

  When he did not speak, she moved towards him. She stood in front of him and cupped his face. “Do not look at him, Elijah.”

  As if broken from the spell, he gasped. “Damn you to hell, Amos McKinnon.”

  He looked down at her, sorrow etched in his features.

  “Elijah…” What else could she say, her body and soul numb from what had happened?

  She released him, and he walked slowly towards his brother. When he reached Amos, he knelt beside the fallen man. He heaved a shuddering sigh, then hung his head. He stood and walked back towards Mary Jane until he met her halfway.

  He
tugged her close, his gaze searching, as stunned and haunted as she felt. “He’s gone, Mary Jane. He can’t hurt you again. I just wish…” His voice broke, and tears filled his eyes. “I…I didn’t want to kill him anymore, Mary Jane.” Ragged and aching, his voice cracked and tears spilled from his eyes. “I was going to tie him up for the authorities. He could have faced justice.”

  “Why did he kill himself? I do not understand.”

  “He wanted the last word, darlin’. He wanted to take my revenge away from me. The sick bastard wanted the last word no matter what.”

  “That is where he was wrong, Elijah. He could not take it from you what was already gone.”

  He buried his face in her hair, gathering her tight to his body. As he released his grief, she clasped his head and pressed him close. “It is all right, it is all right.” She murmured reassurances, her heart breaking along with his. “You did all you could. You tried to save him.”

  He leaned back enough so she could his face. Her thumbs grazed his wet cheeks. “When he took you, nothing mattered to me anymore but finding you. Nothing.”

  His words, rasping in his husky, rumbling voice, cradled her heart. “I thought you were dead, Elijah. I thought…”

  Tears on her own cheeks showed him her feelings. Feelings too deep and raw to share easily.

  Elijah crushed her against his chest as his mouth came down over hers. Immediately his touch gentled, his light, cherishing kisses soothing rather than passion filled. Shaken to the core, the terror of the hours in Amos’s presence crashed in on her. A sob escaped her lips. She knew her face was screwed up in a type of anguish she could not express any other way. Grabbing his shirt and hanging on, she buried her face in his shoulder. She allowed the terror she had experienced to erupt.

  Sobs shook her shoulders as he whispered words of comfort. “Easy now, darlin’. It’s all right. You are safe. He can’t hurt you. You are safe.”

  His fingers tangled in the hair that tumbled about her shoulders. His soothed her with as he palmed her back, rubbing life and connection into his embrace. Her eyes burned as she released each pent up emotion. It seemed forever, but she finally calmed. Quiet descended around them but for the forest birds chirping and a rumble of thunder overhead. Sunlight disappeared under clouds.