Chapter 13
It took every bit of strength and determination Eden possessed to keep herself from giving in to her fear and screaming hysterically.
She didn’t want to give this bastard the satisfaction of seeing her react like that.
His name was Caleb; she knew that because she had heard some of the other outlaws address him that way. He was also the leader of the gang, giving the orders that made them speed up and then slow down to rest the horses.
He had his left arm around her as she rode in front of him. His forearm sometimes pressed against the underside of her breasts, but at least he hadn’t groped her as blatantly as he could have. At this point, Eden supposed she should be grateful for small favors…such as being alive and still relatively unharmed.
The worst part about it, other than the fear she felt for her own future, was not knowing whether Bill was all right. She had seen him pitch head-first off the boardwalk into the street as if he’d been shot. She hadn’t had a chance to see how badly he was hurt. Before she could, this bank robber had grabbed her and ridden off with her.
The hope she clung to was that she hadn’t seen any blood on Bill’s clothes in that brief second when Caleb galloped past him. Eden kept telling herself that he was all right, he had to be all right, and he would be coming after her.
“How are you doing?” Caleb asked her, breaking into her thoughts as they loped along, heading northwest now, Eden thought. This was the first time he had actually talked to her, other than yelling at her and telling her to stop fighting and settle down.
“How do you think I’m doing?” she asked icily. “You kidnapped me.”
He chuckled.
“I’d rather think of it as taking you along for the ride,” he said, “although I guess if you want to get down to brass tacks…Anyway, I don’t have any interest in hurting you. You’re a lot more valuable to us if you’re safe and sound.”
“As a hostage, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
Without looking back at him, she shook her head.
“That won’t do you any good,” she said. “My—”
She’d started to say “my husband,” but she stopped herself in time. If Caleb knew that she was married to Redemption’s marshal, that would give him even more reason to think that he could use her as a hostage.
Instead she said, “The marshal is going to come after you and kill you. He’s a gunfighter from Texas, you know.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard he’s just a kid cowboy.”
“He’s fought outlaws and Indians,” Eden insisted. “You’re no match for him.”
That drew an outright laugh from Caleb.
“We’ll see, we’ll see.” He paused, then asked her, “What’s your name?”
“You don’t need to know my name,” she snapped.
His arm tightened around her. Not painfully, just enough to remind her that she was in his power.
“I don’t like talking to a lady without knowing her name,” he said. “There’s no reason we can’t be polite to each other.”
“You call it polite to grab a woman off the street—”
“Just tell me your name.”
It wasn’t worth making him angry, she decided. She said, “My name is Eden…Eden Monroe.”
She left off her married name, just in case he knew what Bill’s last name was. That seemed possible, since judging by what he had said earlier, he had checked to see who the law was in Redemption.
“Eden,” Caleb repeated. “That’s a mighty pretty name. It suits you.”
“Are you trying to pay me a compliment?”
“Like I said, there’s no reason we can’t be polite to each other.”
Something about the way he spoke struck her as being more educated than she thought of most outlaws as being. On the other hand, what did she really know about outlaws? Nothing, really. She had been acquainted with another cold-blooded killer, and he had been fairly well-spoken, too.
They were riding toward a line of low bluffs that rose from the prairie in an irregular line maybe thirty feet tall. As they came closer, Eden realized they were heading for a gap in the bluffs that led to a small canyon. That canyon formed a little pocket hidden from the view of the surrounding plains.
The gang had been pretty spread out, but they converged on the gap with Caleb in the lead. As he trotted his horse into the canyon, Eden spotted movement up ahead. A dozen horses were picketed at the far end of the canyon.
Someone stepped out from behind a clump of brush. At first Eden thought the person was a man, because of the boots, whipcord trousers, and flat-crowned hat. Also, the figure held a rifle ready for use.
But no man was shaped like that, and when the sentry pushed her hat back so that it hung by its chin strap behind her head, long, fiery red hair spilled down past her shoulders.
“Who the hell is she?” the woman demanded as she glared at Eden.
Caleb reined his horse to a stop and grinned.
“A hostage,” he said. The other outlaws came to a halt behind him.
One of them, a darkly handsome youngster with obvious Spanish blood, called, “Yeah, Caleb picked himself up a play-pretty in Redemption, Hannah.”
The redhead continued to scowl.
“Since when do you take hostages?” she asked.
“I thought it would be a good idea.” Caleb’s voice hardened as he went on, “And I don’t cotton to having to explain what I do, Hannah. You ought to know that.”
Hannah sniffed. She lowered the rifle.
“You got the money from the bank?”
“Cleaned it out,” Caleb told her.
“Then I guess that’s all that really matters.” She jerked her head toward the picketed mounts. “Eugene and I brought the horses.”
“Where is he?”
“Up on the rim, checking your back trail.”
“Good idea.” Caleb turned his head to look at the others. “Let’s get these saddles switched. I want to put a lot more miles between us and Redemption by nightfall.”
This made sense to Eden. The gang had stashed fresh horses here. Switching mounts like that would give them an advantage over any posse that came after them, unless the pursuers had extra horses as well. She didn’t know if Bill would have thought of that in his hurry to get started after the outlaws.
Assuming, of course, that Bill was still alive…
Eden banished that thought. She wasn’t going to allow herself to believe anything except that Bill was alive and coming after her.
“Stay where you are,” Caleb ordered her. He dismounted, then reached his hands up toward her. “I’ll help you.”
“She looks like she can get off a horse by herself,” Hannah said. Eden could feel the dislike in the way the redhead looked at her.
But it wasn’t just dislike, she thought. It was jealousy, too. Maybe even a little hatred. It wasn’t hard to guess that Hannah was Caleb’s woman, and she didn’t appreciate even a potential threat to that position.
“She’s right, I can dismount,” Eden told Caleb. She had felt his hands on her body enough already. She didn’t want any help from him.
He shrugged and stepped back.
“Suit yourself.”
Eden grasped the saddle horn to steady herself and swung down, acutely aware that her dress was hiked up because of the way she’d been riding and she was showing a considerable flash of leg to these men.
But given her circumstances, she thought, a little minor embarrassment wasn’t really much to worry about. With the redhead giving her a cold, baleful, narrow-eyed stare, she moved aside to get out of the way as the men began switching their saddles to the fresh horses.
With a rattle of rocks, a man slid and jumped nimbly down the sloping wall of the canyon. He had a spryness that belied his age, because as he approached, Eden saw the lined, leathery face of an old-timer.
“Anybody on our trail, Eugene?” Caleb asked as he started loosening his saddle cinches.
> “Nope,” the lookout replied in a raspy voice. “You know these ol’ eyes o’ mine are still pretty keen. No dust as far back as I could see.”
Caleb nodded in satisfaction.
“That’s good. Those folks back in Redemption won’t give up, though. Some of them will be coming after us. You can bet all that bank money on that.”
“We headed for Castle Rock?”
“That’s right. If we can get there, a posse will have a damned hard time rooting us out.”
Eden had heard vaguely of Castle Rock. It was part of an area of badlands somewhere in the northern part of the state. A long way from Redemption, and she had never been there. It would probably take several days to reach that destination.
Good, she thought. That would give Bill time to catch up to them.
For a second she considered trying to get away, since all the men were busy switching mounts and weren’t paying attention to her. Hannah was still watching her, though, and from the look on the redhead’s face, if Eden made a break for freedom, Hannah might just shoot her.
Besides, where could she go? They were in the middle of nowhere, and on foot she would stand absolutely no chance of getting away from outlaws on horseback.
No, Eden told herself, she would just have to be patient and hope that nothing too bad happened in the meantime. She would do everything in her power to stay alive until help arrived.
Because help was on its way. She was sure of that.
She just wished she could quiet that nagging voice of fear and despair in the back of her head.
Chapter 14
Bill had to admit, being on horseback and moving fast over the prairie made him feel better. He didn’t know if it was the wind in his face or the familiar sensation of sitting in a saddle, but whatever the cause, his head was clearer and he felt less like he was on the edge of panic. Ever since he’d seen that outlaw grab Eden and jerk her off her feet to ride away with her, it had seemed to him like he was on the edge of losing control.
Now that he was taking action, he had reason to hope again.
Those optimistic feelings lasted for a couple of miles as the posse followed the welter of hoofprints left by the bank robbers’ horses.
Then Bill spotted something lying on the ground several hundred yards ahead of them and his insides were suddenly clenched hard with ice-cold fear again.
Could the outlaws have killed Eden and dumped her body this soon, he asked himself? Surely not. If they were going to do that, what was the purpose of taking her along in the first place?
But that sure looked like a body. As Bill slowed his horse and pointed it out to Josiah Hartnett, the liveryman agreed.
“But it couldn’t be Eden, Bill,” Hartnett argued. “They wouldn’t have grabbed her like that and then killed her so soon.”
“Yeah, I thought the same thing,” Bill said. “But what if she fought ’em so hard they didn’t have a choice? She might’ve gotten her hands on a gun—”
“Let’s just go see,” Hartnett suggested.
That made sense. The body lay in the direction they were headed anyway.
Bill had been trying to pace them starting out, so the posse’s horses wouldn’t get worn out too soon. The outlaws already had a good lead, so catching them wasn’t going to be a matter of speed as much as it was of persistence.
Faced now with this grim discovery, Bill kicked his horse into a run and pulled out slightly ahead of the others. This wasn’t a trap, so he wasn’t worried about that. On these plains, a man could see for a mile or more in every direction, so there was no place for bushwhackers to hide.
As he came closer, a mixture of relief and apprehension flooded through him. The person lying sprawled on the ground was too bulky to be Eden, he realized. But Bill recalled now that Perry Monroe had galloped out of Redemption ahead of the posse, and so far they hadn’t seen any sight of him.
Until now. Bill saw something white moving and recognized it as Monroe’s long beard fluttering in the wind that sighed almost ceaselessly across the prairie.
He hauled his horse to a halt and was out of the saddle almost before the animal stopped moving. After running the last few feet, Bill dropped to his knees beside the still figure. Monroe lay on his back with his eyes closed. Bill looked for blood or other signs of a wound but didn’t see any.
“Is he breathing?” Hartnett called as he reined in. The other members of the posse were right behind him.
Bill thought his father-in-law’s barrel chest was rising and falling, but he laid a hand on it to be sure. When he felt definite movement against his palm, he glanced up at Hartnett, who had dismounted and come over to lean above them with his hands on his thighs.
“Yeah, he’s alive, thank God,” Bill said. “Looks like he’s just out cold.”
“Where’s his horse?”
That was a good question. Bill looked around and didn’t see the animal.
“I don’t know. Maybe Perry can tell us if we can bring him around. Anybody have any whiskey?”
Bill had told the members of the posse to bring guns, ammunition, and a good horse, but he suspected some of the men had slipped a flask or a bottle into their saddlebags as well. He wasn’t disappointed. Jesse Overstreet was actually the first one to speak up.
“I, uh, grabbed a bottle at the saloon before we started out, Marshal…”
“Get it,” Bill told the young cowboy.
Overstreet took the bottle from one of his saddlebags and brought it over. He pulled the cork from the neck with his teeth and handed the bottle to Bill.
Hartnett knelt on the other side of Monroe and lifted the storekeeper’s head. Bill put the mouth of the bottle against Monroe’s lips and tilted it so that some of the whiskey spilled into his mouth. More of it dribbled down the front of Monroe’s shirt.
“Uh…” Overstreet began.
Bill glanced up, figuring that Overstreet was going to say something about being careful with the whiskey and not spilling so much of it.
“Never mind,” Overstreet said hurriedly when he saw the look Bill gave him.
Monroe hadn’t responded so far, but when Bill got more of the whiskey in his mouth and Hartnett held him up so the fiery stuff went down his throat, he began to cough. His eyelids jerked and tried to open.
“Maybe we should have given him some water,” Hartnett suggested.
“Wouldn’t have brought him around as fast,” Bill said. “I want to find out what happened.”
After a minute or so, Monroe was able to open his eyes. He looked up in confusion, squinting because the sun was in his face. Bill said, “Somebody hold a hat so it shades his eyes.”
One of the possemen complied. Monroe blinked a few more times, then his gaze settled on Bill.
“Wha…what happened?” he asked.
“That’s what I want you to tell me, Mr. Monroe,” Bill said. “We found you out here in the middle of the prairie, and your horse is nowhere around.”
Monroe coughed again, then said, “That…that damned nag! A snake spooked him…and he ran off with me! I tried…to stay in the saddle…Couldn’t do it…”
“You fell off?”
“Yeah. That’s…the last thing I remember.”
Bill wasn’t surprised. Perry Monroe was a townsman, seldom budging from Redemption, and the few times he had gone anywhere while Bill was around, he had taken a buggy. Bill wasn’t sure if he had ever seen Monroe on horseback. He had known right from the start, though, that it was a mistake for Monroe to charge off after those outlaws by himself like that. Some mishap was bound to occur.
Actually, thought Bill, Monroe getting thrown from a runaway horse wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the things that could have happened.
“Did you see the outlaws?” Bill asked. “Did you see Eden?”
“No. Never came…within sight of ’em.”
“How bad are you hurt?”
“Don’t know. Guess it knocked me out…when I fell. I don’t even know…how long I’ve
been lyin’ here.”
It had been a while, Bill figured, since they weren’t really that far from the settlement. The accident must have occurred not long after Monroe left Redemption.
And they were wasting time now, Bill reminded himself. Now that Monroe had regained consciousness, he appeared to be all right for the most part, just shaken up. There was no telling where his horse was. Spooked like that, the animal could have run for several miles before stopping.
Bill looked around at the other members of the posse and said, “We need somebody to take Mr. Monroe back to Redemption.”
Monroe struggled to sit up and said, “Take me back! I…I’m goin’ with you boys—”
“No, you’re not,” Bill told him. “For one thing, we don’t know how bad you’re really hurt, and for another, your horse is gone and we don’t have time to look for him. I hate to lose a man so soon, but we don’t have any choice.” Bill faced the posse again, ignoring his father-in-law’s sputtered protests. “How about it?”
For a long moment, none of the men said anything. Then Leo Kellogg spoke up.
“I hate to say it, Marshal, but I came along because I was so angry at those outlaws I couldn’t hardly see straight. But now that I consider it, I’m not sure how much of an asset I’d be. I’ve never ridden much, and I’m not a very good shot. I was already thinking that maybe I made a mistake…”
“I appreciate you bein’ honest enough to say that, Mr. Kellogg,” Bill told the tailor. “And I’m mighty glad you came along because now you can see to it that Mr. Monroe gets back to town all right. The two of you ought to be able to ride double on your horse for that far.”
“Yes, of course,” Kellogg agreed.
“And when you get there, have that fella Morley check him over.”
“The bartender from the Prairie Queen?”
“I reckon he’s the closest thing Redemption’s got to a doctor right now.”
Bill glanced around at the other men and started to ask if it was all right with them for Kellogg to take Monroe back to town, but then he caught himself. He didn’t need to ask their permission. He was the leader of this posse, and he had to remember that. There might come a time when hard decisions had to be made, and he was going to be the one to make them.
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