by Janie DeVos
“There are a couple of things I don’t like doing in this world,” Rayne said. “The first thing is I don’t like sitting with my back to the room in a poker game. The second thing is I don’t like killing women.”
“Yeah, but you’re willing to kill that Ivy girl,” Tom corrected him.
“I said I don’t like to. I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Besides, I might just let you have the honor. Now, if you want to get a little target practice in, you can pull the trigger on this one here, or you can just let her go on home. I don’t believe she’s going to cause any trouble for us, so I think we ought to just let her be.”
“How do you know that, Rayne? How do you know that she won’t get mouthy about what we did to ol’ Max, there?”
“You really think anyone’s going to give two damns? Folks around these parts hate injuns just about as much as they do the coloreds! Now, let’s get movin’. But, ya know…” He stopped as if he’d just thought of something, then turned, and looked at Sampson. “I’m gonna take this good-looking horse. Lord, he’s a strong son of a bitch.” He reached across his own horse to stroke Sampson’s muzzle. “And he’s a lot fresher than my horse is,” he said quietly, as though he was remembering what Max had said about riding their horses into the ground. He straightened and dismounted. “Switch with the girl if you want to. I’m sure she won’t mind, would ya?”
Rayne grinned at me and he looked evil. I’d never noticed the dark countenance of the man over the years, but it was all too clear now, and I wondered how I could have missed it. This was a cruel man, and he seemed to immensely enjoy being so.
I didn’t want them taking Maggie. Maggie was part of my family. I wanted to keep both horses, though I knew there wasn’t a chance of that happening. But I had to try to hold on to Maggie, at least.
“Mr. Longwood, please, let me keep Maggie. I raised her.” I automatically backed Maggie up, putting a few more feet between us and the men. “Besides,” I continued, backing up a few more feet, “she can’t be run hard ’cause she was bitten on her leg by a moccasin when she was just a year old. We thought we’d have to put her down, but she recovered. Still, that leg isn’t the strongest. We use her for pullin’ the wagon to town and that’s about it. It’s all she’s really good for.”
“Then why’d ya ride her all the way out here?”
“There weren’t any other horses at my house when I had to leave.”
“Keep your damn horse, then,” Rayne said then spat. “But I’m taking the big guy, here. Tom, stay on the one you’ve got. You’ll do better on him than on one that’s been snake bit.”
Suddenly, I thought of something I might need. Though there was the slimmest of possibilities that I would, if I did need it but didn’t have it, then nothing more could be done. The question was how to go about getting it. I had to do this just right or they might catch on to what I was thinking, and then there wouldn’t be a chance of this working at all.
“Mr. Longwood,” I called as I climbed down from Maggie. “Before you take Sampson, please let me get some of my clothes. Max was carrying my dirty clothes for me.” Holding my breath, hoping that Rayne wouldn’t object or be suspicious, I walked over to the leather bag attached to Sampson’s saddle. Rayne had dismounted from his own horse and was standing there by Sampson, holding his reins. I was terrified he’d see what I was pulling out of the bag, but he started examining Sampson’s teeth instead.
“Good-lookin’ horse,” he said under his breath. Then he began attaching a rope from his own horse to Sampson. He wasn’t going to leave his own horse behind.
While he connected the two animals, I quickly lifted the flap on the leather bag and pulled out a huge armload of clothing. Able to feel through the wad of material that I’d gotten exactly what I was after, I hurried back to Maggie.
“You head on home now,” Rayne said as he mounted Sampson, and then he and Tom turned their horses to the east. “It’s not good for a female to travel alone in these parts. Ya never know what scoundrels you might meet along the way.” He smiled that cruel smile again, then slapped the end of the reins hard against poor Sampson’s haunch, and the two men rode off.
I stood there holding the load of clothes in my arms as I watched them ride away. Finally, when I couldn’t see any more dust being kicked up by the horses, I dropped my load. There, among the clothing, which were actually only Max’s, was what I’d really been after: the rope he’d used in the mecate rein. Snatching it up, I ran as hard as I could over to the sinkhole, praying the whole way. As I neared the edge of it, I hesitated for the slightest second, terrified of what I might see, then threw myself onto my stomach, and peered over the edge. There, about ten feet down, looking half dead but still alive, was Max, hanging on to a small crevice that was just deep enough to get his hand into. His left arm hung down below the waterline, and his face was turned up to the light, though his eyes were closed. He didn’t know I was there.
“Max? Max! Can you hear me? It’s Eve! Max!” Though he wasn’t dead at the moment, I wondered how weak he was. If he couldn’t continue to hang on…Suddenly, he opened his eyes, and focused them on me.
“Eve.” He spoke softly, but I could still hear the relief in his voice. “I kind of dug myself into a hole, didn’t I?”
He tried to smile at his joke but grimaced instead. He was clearly in terrible pain. His lucidity was a good sign, though I knew his strength couldn’t hold out forever. The walls of the sink were covered with slime and algae, so even if he’d had two good arms, it was going to be difficult getting him out. The fact that he had just the one arm to help himself was going to make a bad situation even worse. But getting him out was just the first of our problems. He had a life-threatening injury, and without proper treatment, his chances of surviving were quickly diminishing.
“Hold on, Max! Hold on! I have your rope. I’m going to drop one end of it down to you, then tie the other to Maggie. This time, she’s going pull you out of the water!” I smiled, trying to reassure him.
“Good,” he whispered. “Good girl.”
“Can you manage with the end of the rope? Should I jump in so that I can tie it around you? I can climb back up on it.”
“No!” he said with a louder voice than he’d used before. “Don’t jump in! I’ll wrap the end of the rope around my wrist and then hang on to it.”
Wasting no more time, I dropped one end of the rope to Max and tied the other to Maggie’s saddle horn. As she backed up, I watched the rope pull taut as it took on Max’s weight. Maggie hesitated, unsure as to what was stopping her, but I kept urging her on. She struggled with the unusual task and Max’s weight, but, finally, I saw a hand, forearm, and elbow rise above the top of the sink. “Keep going, Maggie! Back, back!” I ordered, watching Max’s head, shoulders and torso appear, and he was finally dragged out of the sinkhole and onto the blessed ground.
Max lay there, exhausted. I rushed over to him and began brushing leaves and other debris off his face and out of his hair.
“What made you go back to the sink?” Max asked. “What made you think I’d still be there?”
I stopped cleaning him off and looked him in the eye. “Because you’re the most stubborn man I know, Max Harjo.” Then I pulled another twig out of his hair.
Smiling, he closed his eyes.
Chapter 30
The Day of Reckoning
We found Tom Bigelow’s body about nine miles east. He’d been shot in the back of the head and left to bake on the ground in the broiling midsummer sun. Ants had already begun crawling over the carnage, while vultures circled in the sky above as if they were drawing a target over the bull’s-eye below. Just from the location of the bullet hole, we figured Tom didn’t know what hit him. And considering that Rayne was nowhere to be seen, Max guessed that he was the killer, but I couldn’t understand why. Why would Rayne have traveled all this way with Tom, only to kill him when they’
d gotten this close to their catch?
Max shifted around in the saddle behind me on Maggie. He was obviously in pain. But, thankfully, the bullet had spared his heart, entering the area just above it, though it had torn through muscle and had caused a significant amount of bleeding. Other than wrapping the wound in strips of material to staunch the blood flow, there wasn’t much more that could be done until we were someplace where the bullet could be removed, and the wound thoroughly cleaned and sutured. But Max was beginning to get glassy-eyed, and I was afraid a fever was setting in. God only knew what was in the water of that sinkhole. Undoubtedly, it had been the unsuspecting grave for creatures of all kinds, and the water was fetid because of it.
“Rayne wants that bounty money all to himself,” Max reasoned.
I gently slapped the reins against Maggie, leaving Tom’s body behind. We couldn’t take the time to bury it. And, in truth, we didn’t feel any obligation to respectfully dispose of his remains after he’d tried to kill Max.
“Why not just kill Tom early on? Why wait until now?” I asked.
“Why not?” Max asked. “Why not wait until now? It’s safer for two people to travel together than one. And we’re probably pretty close to that plantation now, and to Ivy and Moses, so this is as good a time as any. There aren’t any witnesses, and as far as Rayne’s story will go, he’ll say something like they were ambushed by thieves and Tom got killed. Or, he might even say that Moses shot Tom when they were trying to apprehend him.”
“But Ivy would say differently.”
“Maybe Ivy would, if she could. But if she doesn’t see what happened, then she’s not a witness. Besides, who’s to say Rayne has any intention of taking Ivy home alive? You heard Tom. Your father’s main objective is to make sure that Moses is taken care of and that Ivy doesn’t have that baby. Still lips can’t spill secrets. Rayne won’t have to split the money and no one will be the wiser as to what really happened if there aren’t any witnesses. There was no love lost between Rayne and Tom. He caught Tom trying to cheat him in a game of seven-card stud up in Tallahassee some years ago. Rayne pulled a knife on Tom and sliced off part of his left ear.”
We rode on just a little farther and saw Tom’s bedraggled horse. The poor animal was just wandering around, most likely looking for water considering the intense heat.
“Do we have any water left in that skin?” I knew the horse wouldn’t be long for this world if he wasn’t given a drink. God only knew the last time the poor animal had had one.
“Unfortunately, that water skin is on Sampson. But we can’t be very far from the plantation. We’ll take him with us. We might be able to use him. But if not, then at least we’ve gotten the horse closer to a river. Every plantation is near one—or some kind of water—and where there’s water, there’re people. Somebody’ll find the horse and take him. I’m going to ride him.” Max started to dismount.
“Wait, Max! You can’t ride by yourself. You’re too weak!”
“It’ll actually be more comfortable for me,” he said and, gritting his teeth, slid off Maggie. Then he pulled his rifle out from behind me. He was lucky to still have it after dropping it when he’d been shot. But I’d been able to retrieve it after Rayne and Tom rode off. “Not that I’m not grateful for your help,” Max continued, “but every time you slow down, I have to keep myself from bumping into you. It doesn’t feel too good.”
He attempted to smile, but I knew that if he admitted it was painful, it was agony. Before he turned to walk away from me, I could see that he’d bled through the makeshift bandages, and the bloody stain had expanded well beyond the edges of the bindings. We needed to get somewhere quickly to tend to him, or the number of deaths resulting from this trip would continue to grow. I hated to think what those numbers might increase to once we got to the plantation, where, undoubtedly, Rayne would be arriving shortly.
We had only traveled about fifteen minutes more when we came to a marshy area, and immediately beyond that was a large lake.
“Look,” Max said, pointing off to our right. “I bet that’s it.”
About a quarter of a mile from us, sitting a safe distance back from the bank of the lake, was a weather-beaten old home. A couple of large oak trees stood on each side of the house. Out front, bordering a small section of shoreline, was a very small coastal hammock. On the other side of the house, opposite from us, was where a crop had obviously been grown, for many acres had been cleared.
Behind the house were several outbuildings, including a summer kitchen, as well as a smokehouse and barn. All along the back of the property was a much larger hammock. There had probably been one enormous hammock before the plantation was built, but much of it had been cleared away, leaving just a small section in front of the house and the much larger portion in back. At the moment, we could see no signs of life.
“We’re not approaching from here,” Max said. “We’re way too visible.” He was getting paler and paler, and his voice seemed to fade along with his color. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, wheeling the horse around. “We’ll come up behind the house through the hammock. We’ll be able to get a closer look from there.”
As we backtracked, I could see how badly he slumped in the saddle. Max was usually as straight as a ramrod, but not now. I knew it was a stupid question, but I had to ask. “How’re you holding up?”
“I’ve had better days. But we can’t worry about that now.”
He was right. There was nothing I could do to help him at the moment, and both of us knew that seconds mattered when it came to Rayne, Ivy, and Moses.
We backtracked until we were out of sight and then headed into the hammock. It was blessedly cool beneath the dense canopy of live oaks, cabbage palms, and red bay. It was also the perfect place to watch the goings on around the plantation without being seen…and, apparently, Rayne thought so, too, for there, tethered to a large oak were Sampson and Rayne’s horses.
“He’s here,” Max said flatly. “Now, the question is whether or not Ivy and Moses are, too.” And dead or alive, both of us thought but neither of us said. “I’m going over to take a look inside that house.” Max dismounted, but his knees buckled when his feet hit the ground, and he had to grab the horse’s back to stay upright.
“No, you’re not,” I said as I grabbed my rifle from behind me and dismounted, too. He started to argue with me. “Listen, Max, the truth of the matter is you’re badly hurt. You can barely stand up much less make it over to that house. Now, you’re going to stay here and cover me as best you can.”
Without giving him a chance to argue any further, I ran out from the cover of the hammock. Keeping low and cradling my rifle in front of me, I ran up to the back of the smokehouse, which was the building farthest from the main house.
I took a minute to collect myself for I was shaking like a leaf, and then I took a deep breath and peered out from the corner of the building. From that vantage point, I could see some of the back of the house, but the barn and smokehouse prevented me from having an unobstructed view. The white “I”-styled house was modest for a plantation and certainly not huge when compared to the lavish ones farther north, like back in Georgia. This plantation was made of wood, instead of stucco or brick, and it was long and rectangular. It had only two stories with a redbrick chimney at each end. There was no porch on the back, though I knew that there was one on the front for I’d seen it from a distance when Max and I first arrived. In the back of the home were several windows, and I wanted to look into each one of them. For the moment, there was no one in the yard, and no one in the neglected fields to my right, so I ran out from behind the smokehouse and up to the back of the barn. The doors were slightly ajar, allowing air to ventilate the building, but no one was inside. However, Moses’s and Ivy’s horses were.
Looking out from the back of the barn, I still couldn’t see any movement, so I hurried up to the summer kitchen. I was more vulne
rable there because it was an open-air building. Food could be prepared more comfortably during the hot months while not increasing the already-oppressive heat within the main house.
Hiding as best I could behind one of the thick brick columns supporting the roof, I quickly poked my head out and could look into the house’s back windows. I didn’t see anyone, but I needed to get to the side of the house and look into those rooms, as well. Saying a quick prayer, I ran up to the back-left corner of the house. Then I worked my way down the bank of windows, standing on tiptoe to quickly peer in each, before crouching back down and moving on to the next.
I looked into the dining room, where only odds and ends remained. What had once been a lovely room for large gatherings was now just a ruin.
Thankfully, there was no one in sight. I moved on to the next window, to what looked like a man’s study, and saw no one in there either. Reaching the last window on that side, I peeked in at the old parlor, and finding that empty, too, I moved toward the front corner of the house, and the end of the porch. Carefully, I started to crane my neck to see around the corner, to make sure all was clear, but I was suddenly yanked up onto the porch by the front of my shirt. Cold steel was immediately pressed hard against the middle of my forehead.
“You should have gone home, Miss Stewart,” Rayne Longwood said, holding me so close to him that we were nearly nose to nose. “Now, drop that rifle.”
But instead of dropping it down by me, I tossed it out behind me off the porch, praying that Max would see it and know something was wrong. As close as Rayne and I were, I could smell and feel his warm, rotten breath on my face.
“You’re a bad little thing, you know that?” He smiled that wicked grin I’d become all too familiar with. “Now, here I thought I was being real nice, letting you go, when ol’ Tom wanted to blow your insides out. Like I told him, I don’t like shooting ladies, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. Now, you’re gonna tell me where that sister of yours is and her little ni—”
