Oddly, I did not overtly fear that either of them would attempt to force me into the act of sex; Jack was too nervous and jittery this night, and I further considered that despite numerous opportunities, he had never purchased my services at Ginny’s. Though I felt Yancy’s gaze rake over my breasts and hips a time or two, I sensed he was too businesslike to attempt to force himself upon a woman in his “custody”—even a former whore, certainly lesser in his eyes than a woman who had never been so employed. The knowledge that I would be safe from that sort of brutality did not in any way diminish my loathing of them, but it offered a shard of comfort, as did what I had spied earlier.
There was a knife in Yancy’s right boot.
I noticed the tip of the protruding hilt as we rode hard miles south over the course of the long July evening. In addition to this weaponry he carried a .44 pistol, similar to Sawyer’s Colt, and a repeating rifle in a saddle scabbard; Jack was similarly armed. I kept my eyes from the knife just now, unwittingly close to Yancy, the rope hobbling my ankles a bristly discomfort against the bare skin of my calves. This evening’s ride had not chafed my flesh too badly, as I’d been able to tuck my skirt as meager protection; when I was Sam Rainey’s prisoner, my wrists had been bound, even less attention paid to my state of wellbeing.
At the moment I sat quietly, damp with fearful sweat; the sour smell rose from my clothing and beat at my nose. So different was this fire than that to which I had grown so happily accustomed, the fire where I longed with my entire soul to be this night—tucked near Sawyer, listening with joy to Malcolm’s chatter, and Boyd’s jokes, the four of us watching the stars rise. Tonight the moon was waning, its face grim and cold. Pain wrenched my heart, leaving weakness in its wake, and aching despair, which would swallow me whole if I allowed it—and I could not allow it yet. Yancy’s words plagued me—his calm assurance that another marshal would apprehend Sawyer sooner than later.
They are going to kill you, Lorie, my mind intruded, whispering with a rattle as of dead leaves. You must realize this. You are unable to prevent a thing.
I hardened my thoughts against what was surely the truth and instead entertained a picture in my mind of slipping to Yancy’s side as he slept and sneaking the knife from his possession; a part of me realized that even imagining such a thing was a wasted endeavor, a study in the vain, but I clung to the thought regardless, pretending that perhaps I would be fortunate, that Yancy slept soundly. Clinging to this hope of escape assisted me in utilizing every dram of willpower in my possession to stop from reaching out to Sawyer. He, Boyd, and Malcolm remained in Iowa City, searching the town for any word, of this I was certain, and Sawyer’s pain was equal only to my own. My heart had shrunk, wrinkled upon itself into a small, tight knot of self-preservation as I battled my deepest instinct, that of the desire to reach out to him in my mind; even still, his voice breached my defenses.
Lorie, where are you?
I know you hear me!
So plainly could I sense his tortured words, his anguish, that I brought both hands to my face, squeezing brutally against my temples, displacing the sounds, the images.
You cannot call out to him, Lorie. You cannot.
You cannot.
Think of the knife…
Think of cutting loose these bindings…
My gaze flickered to the blade, without my intending; Yancy removed it to slice a chunk of hard cheese, just earlier, and it lay now on the ground near his hip.
Look away—quickly—
Before I could obey my own order, Yancy invited, “Take it.” With effort, I kept my gaze lowered, angling it back to the fire; my heart thrust in fright. He said, low, “Go on,” the challenge in his voice laced with taunting. Jack looked our way with a certain amount of interest.
Yancy caught up the knife and held it directly beneath my nose, mere inches away, offering it hilt first, in a mockery of politeness. The contents of my stomach, meager though it was, curdled. The old scar on my face, where Sam Rainey’s blade once sliced a jagged line, seemed to burn; only for a second, less than that, did I envision the lunacy of curling the proffered weapon into my grip and stabbing at whichever part of him I could manage to strike. Instead, I kept my eyes upon the flames. Yancy’s face loomed to my right and I could not restrain a sharp gasp. The smell of my fear was more potent than ever. He touched the hilt to my cheek and I closed my eyes. He forced the handle inward until I could feel it making contact with the sides of my teeth; I sat unmoving, the firelight burning upon the backs of my eyelids with a nightmarish flicker.
“Take it,” he said again, his voice rough. “Take a stab at me, you pretty little whore, and see what happens.”
No, I tried to say, but the word seemed stitched into the flesh of my throat.
The pressure was removed from my face, but I did not open my eyes. Just before Yancy continued speaking, I knew, somehow, the essence of what he was about to say. The memory of the night Sawyer and Boyd constructed wooden crosses for Angus and the child stirred within my mind; later, just before the dawn, Sawyer told me a story…
Yancy’s spoke only inches from my face. I imagined how close he was leaning; I could smell his stale breath as he said, “Funny thing is, Corbin pulled that saber off a dead Reb soldier. Would have killed Davis with a Confederate blade if he’d leaned forward in the saddle just a cunt hair farther.”
Everything within me went still as a corpse, dreading what I was about to hear.
“Goddamn Reb dragged Corbin from horseback and stabbed him,” Yancy continued, low and yet somehow gaining momentum. “A half-dozen times, maybe more. I still recall that moment as though it was yesterday. It will be with me until the day I die. I served with Corbin in the Fifty-First. He was my elder brother, my blood, for Christ’s sake. And Davis butchered him like a hog.”
I opened my eyes and the fire’s light was too intense, as though my face was being forced into its heat. I squinted at the sudden brightness, my mind galloping as would a spooked horse, attempting to process Yancy’s revelation. Sawyer had not a hope of realizing Yancy’s personal stake in all of this; he had no way of knowing I was with Yancy now, or that Jack remained alive. Yancy’s animosity at the Rawleys’ homestead—he had recognized Whistler the instant he saw her in the corral, the very horse he had once attempted to steal—made sense now. Beyond the fire, where our three mounts were staked out for the night, the pony I had ridden all afternoon and into the evening gave a low, snorting whicker.
“Thief,” I said, without intending it, and could have bitten out my tongue.
“Come again?” Yancy responded in a hiss, crouched close to my side, the knife still backwards in his grasp. Neither he nor Jack had removed their hats, leaving their eyes in shadow while the lower halves of their faces were cast in scarlet by the flames.
“You are a lawman, and you were a soldier then,” I said, speaking around a husk. But I wanted him to know that his words did not have absolute power over me, and forced myself to look at him. The fire lit flames in his pupils. I whispered, “And yet you’ve stolen horses.”
“I’ve done no such thing.” He spoke through clenched teeth.
“You attempted to steal horses from the clearing outside Chattanooga, in the days after the Surrender,” I insisted; I was foolish to assume that anything I said would alter his point of view, make him question his culpability. Jack angled his body away from the fire to spat, and then fixed his eyes on my face. I maintained, “You came upon them in the dark of night and would have stolen their mounts. And when they resisted, you and your men attempted to kill them.”
“Listen to Lila paint a picture,” Jack said, hiccupping a laugh. He belched and laughed again, then drew a long pull from his flask.
Yancy’s upper lip curled, as though unconsciously, but he regained control of his emotions, however tentative. Refusing to confirm or deny, he said, “Nothing changes the fact that your husband is a murdering wretch, and I aim to see him hang. I would have taken great pleasure in sh
ooting him dead this very afternoon, as I told you, but I believe this will be more entertaining in the end. No more chance for suffering, once dead.”
“He killed them to save me,” I whispered, pleading now. My heart felt raw as a gaping wound. Nothing I said would be sufficient to persuade Yancy or Jack from their unanimous mindset. Sawyer was their enemy, flesh and blood, the three of them horribly connected by the undead past. By a War that refused to stay buried, that had perhaps never truly been put to rest at all. More than three years had passed, but surely decades from now the old hatreds would yet boil, requiring only the smallest provocation for ancient recriminations to flare, straightaway burning any good sense that had sprung up in the wake of the conflict.
Yancy studied me, unblinking, and I dared to hope—but then he dashed all such, confirming my initial inkling, that of wishing us only harm, as he said softly, “I hope he thinks you left him for another fella that came along.”
I whispered, “Sawyer would never believe that.”
Unmoved, Yancy returned the knife to its sheath in his boot, saying, “Don’t be too certain of that.”
Jack belched again and muttered his agreement, “After all, whores’ll be whores.”
* * *
The embers burned to a dull glow; I lay in bitter sleeplessness, wrists now bound in addition to my ankles. Jack snored lightly and I had just enough reach to tug the single blanket I had been given around my ears, in attempt to simultaneously muffle the sound and collect close my faint warmth. I fantasized briefly about crawling on my belly to Jack’s side and winding the blanket about his face, assuming I possessed the physical strength to smother him before he could fight me away.
You should be dead, you bastard, I thought viciously, aiming my black thoughts Jack’s way. You should be dead.
The waning moon hung low on the western horizon and I rolled that direction to study its pale face. In my current state of mind, it bore a maddeningly smug countenance, cast in partial shadow by its brighter cousin, reproaching me with a vengeful, unwavering gaze.
I hate you, I thought, inane with irrationality, screaming the words in my mind. You’ve watched me every night of my life, always silent. You watched the War unfold beneath you. All that suffering, years’ worth. You care nothing for anyone. Fall from the sky and crash to the earth. Burn to pieces and see who here would care for your fate!
My skull ached with the pain of blocking out Sawyer’s voice. The minutes ticked away with increasing agony—he was miles from me, stalemated in Iowa City, floundering with the lack of any clues left to him. There was no appreciable reason for my disappearance and I knew my sweet Malcolm was wracked with guilt for having disobeyed me, when in truth his minor rebellion had likely saved Sawyer from Yancy’s grasp. If I had not alone blundered into Yancy at the hanging, he would have found the four of us shortly thereafter, and Sawyer would be currently in his custody. Had that occurred, I would be even more helpless than I was at this moment. Yancy apprehending me instead bought a few days, at the very least.
Lorie, answer me, I suddenly heard Sawyer whisper, his determination destroying my defenses, the strength of his plea driving into my mind. Surely if I turned the other way, he would be there; my heart felt clamped between the two halves of a hot iron. I closed my eyes on the moon and was subsequently pelted with an image of him, kneeling on the prairie and clasping his hands, as one praying. Each breath I took became a struggle. I curled inward around my belly.
It’s the strength of what binds us, I had said, back in Missouri, the night he saved me from sure death at the strangling hands of the man called Dixon.
It’s stronger than anything I have ever known, he had said in return.
I knew if I called to Sawyer, he would find me. He would come to me.
Tell me where you are, he whispered now, tears streaming his face in the glow of the hateful moon. Please, darlin’, please answer. I feel like I am dying and I do not know where you are.
I clenched my teeth, his quiet desperation scouring me as would knife points.
Lorie…
I released a strangled gasp before I could stop the sound. I could not risk calling back to him, not even in my thoughts.
Behind me, Yancy shifted, also awake. His footfalls were nearly silent as he strode perhaps a dozen paces away to make water, the sound unmistakable. I covered my ears, revulsion and hatred grappling for the upper hand. When he returned to his blankets with a grunt, I had a question for him.
“Why not at the Rawleys’ farm?”
Because I was facing away, my whispered words startled him; he took a moment to reply, and I thought perhaps he had not understood the nature of what I was asking, but at last he explained in a low voice, “My boys. I wanted to slip into your tent and slit Davis’s worthless throat that very night. I even doubled back and watched it for a spell in the moonlight, after everyone was asleep, considering. I came so goddamn close to killing you both. But in the end I couldn’t jeopardize my boys that way. If I got carted to jail they’d starve. They haven’t anyone else, for Christ’s sake, and if they passed, there would be no Yancys alive but for me. Not a soul to carry on our family name. I don’t intend to leave them alone for more than a week or two.”
He grunted, as I sat in cold stupefaction at his words, and then said, “And I’ve enough sense to realize I couldn’t pin Corbin’s murder on Davis. It would be my word against his, and Davis has a witness in that fiddle-playing son of a bitch.” Yancy paused briefly, before concluding, “But now I do believe that God is giving me a second chance, putting you and your murdering Reb husband into my path. It’s Providence, I tell you, goddamn Providence. Davis was gracious enough to kill two more men in cold blood and is now a fugitive in my territory. Of course I volunteered to apprehend him.” He laughed, low and with little humor, commenting, “Still riding that very same paint mare, I’ll be damned. And now I’m in possession of his wife. Jesus, life’s a funny thing.”
“Please,” I begged, hoarse with desperation. “Please understand. Sawyer killed them to save me. Sam Rainey meant me nothing but harm. Dixon would have—”
“Save your breath,” Yancy interrupted. “Your words aren’t worth a goddamn brass farthing to me. Jack can ride you back to St. Louis and claim his prize from the Hossiter woman once he testifies against Davis. She sounds a rather rough character, but nonetheless one who pays in gold. Or he can ride you all the way to Old Mexico, for all I have an interest in it.” He let these words sink into my skin before saying, “Jack wanted to trade Davis to a man I served with, Zeb Crawford, lives not a dozen miles from my homestead. Zeb offered us gold, no less, which is tempting, I’ll admit. We spoke of it not two nights past. And you know what Zeb had planned for a murdering Reb?”
I rolled his way, unwillingly, rising clumsily to one elbow, a chill of sweat erupting as slick moisture along my hairline and down my nape. Yancy sat with one leg bent, watching me. When I didn’t respond, he answered his own cruel query. “Zeb aimed to burn him alive, that’s what. I don’t usually condone such barbarism, but Zeb’s a changed man since the War. Lost all four of his boys to battle. Claims a band of Rebs pinned down his two eldest sons in a shanty cabin and set fire to it, not long after Shiloh. He’s rabid as a hound. S’pose he’ll have to be satisfied watching Davis hang.”
I heard Fannie Rawley’s voice saying, To this day I am not certain if that was a tall tale.
Jack spoke up from behind me, his voice dry, as one who is recently disturbed from sleep, muttering, “Zeb’ll be angered that we ain’t got the Reb. And he ain’t gonna like being stuck with this here whore.”
Yancy made a dismissive sound and replied, “His anger is hardly my concern.” He ran a thumb over his mustache and mused, as though thinking aloud, “Though there mighta been a bit of satisfaction in watching a Reb burn like a heretic in the days of old.”
My lips were too numb to respond. Yancy could have been bluffing, terrifying me with lies for the sport of it, but I believed h
is every word. I was weak with the knowledge of what Sawyer may have faced, were he here with Yancy—who was to say that Yancy would not have changed his vengeful, fickle mind and allowed Jack to trade Sawyer to this Zeb Crawford? And what had Jack meant, stuck with this here whore?
Sounding more fully awake, Jack repeated, “He’ll be angered. He’ll want to burn up Lila, in exchange. And she’s worth money to me, goddammit.”
“As you’ve mentioned without let-up,” Yancy said irritably, as I sat with a hollow gut. “Zeb will keep this whore outta sight until after Davis hangs. He owes me a favor or two. Then she’s no longer my concern.”
“Davis shot me. I still ache across my goddamn guts. I aimed to see him burn,” Jack complained, with a tone of petulant irritation.
“We never agreed to the burning,” Yancy said, studying Jack with hard eyes. “You take orders from me, not the other way around.”
“What’s it matter how the bastard dies, long as he’s dead?” Jack fired back.
“Because I would have to answer for his disappearance, that’s why. He’s a wanted man,” Yancy said acidly. “A shooting, a hanging, I can justify in the eyes of the law.”
Jack’s mouth distorted into a sneer but he abandoned the argument, turning his back on Yancy and me with a snort of disgust.
“We’ll see Davis dead one way or another, sooner than later,” Yancy said to Jack’s now-prostrate form. “Think on how he’s suffering just now, to have his little whore wife gone with no word.”
Jack grunted.
Yancy stretched to his full length, turning away and scraping close his single blanket. He muttered, “You think on that, too, whore.”
Soul of a Crow Page 20
