Fern

by Greenwood, Leigh

  "What kind of land did you have in mind?" she asked.

  "Homesteads for farmers. Ranchers won't pay for grazing land. They use government grass, then move farther west when things get crowded. But homesteaders will pay well for anything, even marginal farmland. How about the old Connor place."

  Fern didn't want to go to the Connor place. It had too many unpleasant memories and was too far away. However, it was about as far away from Rose as she could get and still be on her own land.

  She tried to decide if Belton was acting unusual -- nervous, tense, watchful, furtive -- anything that might help her guess how much he knew. But he seemed perfectly normal. She wouldn't have acted any differently if she'd been in his shoes.

  She always carried a rifle in her scabbard, but even though Belton wasn't wearing a gun, she couldn't relax. Like Madison, he wore city clothes. She couldn't tell what he might have in his pockets.

  Belton kept up a steady conversation as they rode, asking about the soil, water, grass, the kinds of crops that grew best, all the kinds of questions a land agent would ask. By the time they drew up before the Connor home place, Fern had begun to wonder if Sam Belton even remembered he had tried to rape her eight years ago.

  "The house looks to be in pretty good condition," he said. "Looks like a family could move in right now."

  "The roof leaks. See for yourself."

  Sam smiled uneasily. "This isn't going to make you think very well of my courage, but I don't like going into dark places. One never knows what may be lurking in the corner."

  "There's nothing in that soddy," Fern said, trying not to show her scorn. "I've been inside a dozen times. Even at night."

  "I'm sure you're right, but would you mind sticking your head inside just to make sure."

  Fern almost snorted in contempt. He may have been a danger to a young girl eight years ago, but she had nothing to fear from him. He was a coward. Madison hadn't been in Abilene twenty-four hours when he walked into that soddy without a second thought.

  But even as she gathered her muscles and shifted her weight preparing to dismount, some instinct warned Fern to stay where she was. Maybe Belton was acting too much like a coward. She couldn't be sure, but as long as she remained in the saddle, she had the advantage of her rifle and a speedy getaway.

  "I don't need to look," she said. "There's never anything inside."

  "Nevertheless, I think I'll carry a weapon," Belton said, dismounting with riding crops in hand. "A small protection but better than nothing."

  Fern remained alert. "Don't take too long. It's getting late, and it's a long ride back to town."

  Fern could hardly believe her eyes when Belton paused to roll up his pant legs so they wouldn't get dirty. Why had she ever been so afraid of him?

  "I didn't know you still had buffalo," Belton said as he stood up.

  "We don't. I haven't seen any in years."

  "You've got some now," Belton said, pointing, "a whole herd of them."

  Turning her gaze, Fern spied three buffalo lumbering up an incline. "They probably wondered off from the herds in western Kansas," she said. "They--"

  She never finished her sentence. When she turned toward the buffalo, Belton gave her pony a vicious jab in the belly with the butt of his riding crop. Squealing in pain, the pony bucked, rising high in the air and twisting his body like a whiplash. Fern, caught unaware and turned in the saddle, was thrown off.

  Even as she flew through the air, Fern realized what Belton had done. Landing on her hands and knees, she rolled over in the grass. She scrambled to her feet, but Belton was on her before she could stand up.

  Fern had never actually been in a fight, but she'd seen several. Being used to doing a man's work, she felt certain she could overpower him. But the moment Fern felt her arm tense against his, she knew Belton was as strong as an ox. And her weeks out of the saddle had caused her muscles to go flabby. In a contest of strength, she would lose.

  Feinting to the side, Fern attempted to break away from Belton. Not being on her feet, she was too slow. Belton grabbed her leg and threw her off balance. Fern rolled to one side, scrambling frantically to get her feet under her, but Belton jumped on her back, and both of them went down on the ground.

  Then Fern got angry.

  This man had already ruined eight years of her life. Now he wanted to kill her and deprive her of the rest. She wouldn't let him.

  Calling on all her strength, Fern gathered her hands and knees under her. Then pushing with all her might, she rolled over, catching Belton between herself and the ground. He gave a satisfactory grunt as her weight smashed the air out of his lungs, but his grip remained unbroken.

  Using her elbow, Fern jabbed in him the stomach as hard as she could. Before he could recover, she used her weight to knock the air out of him once more. That broke his hold, and Fern scrambled to her feet.

  "Only a coward attacks a woman," Fern said, and drove her fist into his jaw.

  Belton collapsed on the ground.

  "Now get off my land. I wouldn't sell a single square foot to you if I was starving."

  Fern walked over to her horse and gathered up the reins. Obviously still hurting from Belton's jab, the animal didn't want her to mount him. He danced in a circle around her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Belton come to his knees.

  She turned time to see him throw the rock but too late to get out of its way.

  * * * * *

  They came out of the night like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, sparks flying from the hooves of their powerful steeds, their faces set in grim resolve, their eyes cold with rage. They carried not the sword and shield of conquest, slaughter, or famine, but death rode on their shoulders with vengeance for a companion.

  It had been ten years since Madison had ridden with his brothers. Time and Fate had conspired to separate them by rivers of life whose turbulence they could not tame, but on this night their differences were forgotten. They rode with one mind, a common goal, a single fierce and deadly determination to defend the women they had chosen as their own.

  It was the same single-mindedness that had defied the rustlers and bandits of Texas, the same will to survive that had enabled them to endure a childhood that would have left weaker men crippled and useless.

  And now it was focused on the person of Sam Belton.

  "Do you think he might be holding them inside the house?" Hen asked as they thundered up to the farmhouse.

  "Fern would never let him get inside," Madison said.

  George vaulted from his horse ahead of his brothers. He exploded through the door with such force he broke one of the hinges. The door fell at an angle which pulled the remaining hinge from the wood. Madison followed hard on his heels.

  "For goodness sakes, George, don't you know how to enter into a room?" Rose asked. A baby's soft cry filled the air. It was immediately joined by a second. "Now you've waked your daughters."

  "D-daughters?" George stammered. He crossed the room in three strides and, apparently beyond speech, looked down at his family.

  Not seeing Fern, Madison began to check the other rooms.

  "By damn, you swore you'd have a girl," Hen said. He had come through a back window. "But I never expected you'd go and have two of them. What are we going to do with that many females around?"

  "You'd better get used to it," Rose said. "Who's to say Fern won't present Madison with twin girls within the year."

  "Where's Fern?" Madison asked, puzzled at Fern's absence.

  "She went to send one of the men for the doctor," Rose said, recalled from her preoccupation with her daughters. "She should have been back by now." The beatific smile disappeared and worry creased her brow. She turned to look at Madison. "She knows who killed Troy."

  "It was Sam Belton, wasn't it?" Madison asked.

  "How did you know?" Rose asked in surprise. "Never mind, you can tell me later. I came to warn her Belton meant to come see her about selling the farm. But my labor started, and I had the babies.
Afterwards she went to send for the doctor. She should have been back by now. I'm worried she may have run into Belton on the trail."

  Madison felt as though the earth moved. The hate and the contempt he had carried in his heart for Fern's assailant coalesced into a terrible need to kill, a need to kill Sam Belton.

  "I'm going after her," Madison said.

  "We're going with you."

  "Not you, George. You stay with Rose. Someone has to stay," Madison said, when George looked uncertain. "Besides, three of us ought to be enough for one man."

  "Come meet your daughters, George," Rose said, losing interest in her in-laws. "We've been waiting for you all afternoon."

  George drew closer and knelt down beside the bed.

  "This is Aurelia," Rose said, indicating the baby in her right arm. "She's the older. She's named after your mother. And this is Juliette," Rose said, turning to the other twin. "She's named after your sister."

  The brothers tiptoed outside.

  Then Madison told them about the time Sam Belton tried to rape Fern.

  "But that doesn't explain why he killed Sproull and tried to pin it on me," Hen said.

  "Troy had to be blackmailing him," Madison explained.

  "So?" Hen prompted.

  "So Belton had to get rid of him, but he needed a scapegoat. When you and Troy got into that fight, he had one."

  "And I spent three weeks in that miserable jail. Come on," Hen said, spurring his mount into an easy gallop. "I've got a debt to repay."

  * * * * *

  "She left here more than an hour ago," Reed told them. "Pike left pretty soon after that. I expect the doctor will be at the house about now."

  "Where did she go when she left here?" Madison asked.

  "Back to the house," Reed told the brothers. "She said she couldn't leave Mrs. Randolph and the babies for long."

  "Something's happened," Madison said. "We'll have to separate and look for her."

  "I can search along the trail to town," Jeff offered. "At least I won't get lost."

  "I can search to the south," Hen said. "I had plenty of opportunity to study the country the night Belton killed Troy Sproull."

  "I'm going toward the Connor place," Madison said. "I know it sounds crazy, but I've got the strangest feeling that if something went wrong, that's where she'd go. If you don't find her, meet me back at the house in two hours and we'll decide what to do next."

  But Madison hoped they wouldn't have to do that. If something was wrong, every minute was crucial. Two hours might be too late.

  * * * * *

  Even only half conscious, Fern was aware of a terrible pain in the side of her head. She tried to raise her hand to investigate the cause of the pain, but she couldn't move her arm. She couldn't move anything.

  Fern opened her eyes to find herself tied to the bed. Sam Belton stood at the window. He had wiped one pane clear so he could see any horseman who approached the soddy. Fern's groan of pain attracted his attention.

  "You didn't stay out very long," he said.

  "Why did you attack me?" she asked. "What are you going to do?"

  "You know who I am."

  "You're Sam Belton," Fern said, trying desperately to think. "I saw you at the McCoy's party."

  "That wasn't the first time we met."

  "I saw you get off the train the night Madison Randolph arrived," she said.

  "There was another time, eight years ago. I knew the moment you saw me at the party."

  So it was useless to try to pretend she still didn't know he had tried to rape her. Even if she hadn't remembered, he wouldn't be able to let her go now.

  "I didn't," Fern said.

  "Maybe not, but you've remembered since then. I saw it in your eyes tonight."

  So she hadn't been able to control her features. If he just hadn't surprised her.

  "Why did you kill Troy? Was he blackmailing you?"

  "The bastard!" Belton exploded. "My father died a couple of years ago and left me a lot of land. I should have stayed in Chicago and sold everything, but I thought I'd be safe in Topeka. I never planned to come near Abilene. Then a few months ago I stumbled into Troy. He was drunk, but he recognized me. By that time I'd made a place for myself, built a reputation as a solid citizen. But he didn't want to expose me. He just wanted a bottomless source of money for as long as he lived. He forced me to give him a job, then the bastard did his best to talk people out of buying land."

  "So you killed him. Why did you blame it on Hen?"

  "If I could set the town against the Texans, it would kill the cattle market. Without Texas fever, my land would double and triple in value."

  "That's what I thought," Fern said.

  "You're as intelligent as you are beautiful. I can understand why Madison Randolph wants to make you his mistress."

  "Piss and vinegar!" Fern exclaimed. "He wants to marry me."

  "Maybe he does," Belton said, looking at Fern more closely, "but it's too late now. He should have taken you to Boston before that party."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to finish what I started eight years ago."

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Belton licked his lips, then pulled them back from his teeth like a wolf about to savage its prey. "After that I'm afraid you'll have to join your cousin. Who knows when you might decide to blackmail me, too."

  "I might denounce you," Fern said, her voice vibrating with the hatred she felt for this man. "I might even kill you, but I'd never take any money defiled by your touch."

  Belton flushed. She could see the kindling anger in his narrowing gaze.

  "You've been getting above yourself hanging around those Randolphs. You're nothing but a common farmer's daughter."

  "I may be a farmer's daughter," Fern spat at him, "but there's nothing common about me. I don't prey on innocent girls, jumping out at them in the dark like a yellow-bellied coward."

  She could see the tightness around his eyes as he struggled to keep his temper under control. He smiled, but it was the smile of a rabid coyote before it strikes. Fern felt cold fear in her belly, but she refused to allow it to overpower her wits. She had been a fighter all her life. Now, more than ever, she needed all her skills.

  "There's nothing common about your looks," Belton agreed.

  He left the window and approached the bed. Fern almost panicked when she saw the bulge in his pants. He had tied her spread-eagle to the bed. She couldn't even twist away from him.

  "You could have bowled me over when I saw you the other night. I had no idea what you were hiding under that vest." He stood next to the bed staring straight at her chest.

  Fern wondered if Madison and his brothers had gotten back from Topeka. Certainly they would head for the farm the minute William Henry told them where his mother had gone. They would find Rose. She would be safe, but Madison wouldn't know where to find her. She was on her own.

  "Why did you hide yourself?"

  "I hid from people like you," Fern answered.

  "Then you never should have worn that dress."

  Fern didn't trust the gleam in his eye. But even as she made up her mind she wouldn't let him rape her, that he would not defile an act which Madison had made so beautiful, she realized it was more important that she come out of this alive.

  The man might be crazy. If so, the wrong word or movement could cause him to kill her right now.

  In a sudden move, Belton's open hand flew toward Fern's breast. Involuntarily her body became rigid. His hand stopped just short of touching her. He smiled cruelly, taunting her, enjoying his kind of torture.

  Fern expected waves of suffocating fear to wrap her in its coils, but hatred of his touch no longer had the power to paralyze her. She felt nothing but fury that this man should think he had the right to use her body against her will.

  She felt his fingers brush her as they moved from one button to the other. She fought the rigidity that stiffened her muscles. His gaze bore into her as he chose a
button and undid it. She refused to blink, to back down, to allow even a trace of fear to flicker across her face.

  With agonizing slowness, his hand moved among the buttons once more, pausing, choosing, then moving on. He was deliberately trying to destroy her self-control. But she was no helpless teenager now. She was a woman, and more than a match for him.

  Fern waited.

  With a swiftness that caught her completely by surprised, Belton grabbed the yoke of her chemise and ripped it open to the waist. The sound of popping buttons and rending cloth covered her gasp of shock, but she was certain he could see the fear in her eyes.

  It took all her will power not to cry out.

  A sadistic smile played across Belton's mouth as his fingers snaked their way across the torn material, brushed her ribs, slithered across her abdomen until they were only a hair's breath from her breast.

  Belton sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn't move his hand.

  The breath caught in Fern's throat.

  "I've been thinking about you ever since that night," Belton murmured, his eyes on her chest, "thinking about touching you."

  Her throat felt parched, constricted, but she managed to rasp, "If it's touching you want, the girls at the Pearl Saloon will let you do all the touching you like."

  "Painted whores!" Belton exclaimed. "Sluts! Harlots!" He had drawn his hand back, but now it returned. "I wouldn't soil myself with those Jezebels. But you're pure, untouched." His fingertips brushed her skin. "Your skin is so white."

  He must to be fixated on her white skin, the purity of her body. If she could make him think she had been defiled, he might let her go. Or he might kill her. She didn't know how he would react, but she had to try.

  Uttering a silent prayer and watching him very closely, she said, "I'm not pure."

  His expression frightened her. She had seen anger and rage many times, but she couldn't be certain she wasn't seeing madness as well.

  Abruptly his hand closed on her breast. He squeezed until the pain brought tears to her eyes.

  "You're lying," he hissed. "I've watched you. No man came near you while you stayed Mrs. Abbott's house."