by Kaki Warner
“Watching you.”
The look of panic increased when Thomas started down behind Ethan, the war ax in one hand, his rifle in the other.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Weems,” Brodie called. “Just come down and let us look around, then we’ll be out of your hair.”
The prospector’s head swiveled as he looked at the men in the clearing, then up at Ethan, who had already drawn level with the boulders. Muttering under his breath, Weems headed back down to his camp. “Don’t know what you expect to find, Sheriff. Already told you she ain’t here.”
“Then you won’t mind us checking for ourselves.” When the prospector reached level ground, Brodie motioned to the rock by the fire. “Have a seat. And keep your hands where we can see them.”
Ethan came to stand beside the prisoner, gun in hand, while Brodie went into the tent and the other four men spread through the camp and into the trees where the mule stood watching.
He wished Weems would try something. Wished for any excuse to get his hands around the man’s throat. But until they found out where he had hidden Audra, they had to keep the bastard alive.
Brodie came out of the tent, a burlap bag in his hand and a look of triumph on his face. “Come look what I found, fellows.” As the men gathered around, he dumped the contents of the bag on the ground by the fire.
A long black pigtail. A beaded pouch. A pocket watch. A faded tintype of two children. A gold medallion. A couple of crumpled envelopes addressed to someone other than Weems, and several other items Ethan had never seen before. “I also found Gallagher’s whip and that thing that goes on top of a survey tripod. The gold nugget is probably in there, too.”
Rylander studied the man watching them with dark, darting eyes. “Looks like you’ve been at this for a long time, Weems.”
“I found that stuff. In a trapper’s cache other side of the canyon.”
“And this?” Ethan picked up the brass disc. “This belongs to Audra’s father. How’d you get it, Weems?”
“Found it,” the prospector said with a nasty laugh. “At the Arlan place. Right there beside your fi-an-say’s lacy underthings in the bureau drawer.”
Ethan’s fingers closed so tightly around the medallion, the hard edge dug into his still-sore palms. “You were in her house?”
“Maybe. Maybe she invited me in. Maybe she even spread her legs for me.”
Ethan cocked his pistol. It took monumental effort not to ram it into that rotten mouth and pull the trigger. Instead, he hunkered on his heels in front of the sweating man. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Audra Pearsall.”
“The little newspaper whore?”
Ethan jammed the barrel of the Colt against the top of the prospector’s fur boot and squeezed the trigger.
Noise exploded. Weems screamed. The stench of blood and singed fur mingled with the acrid odor of spent powder as the injured prospector rocked back and forth, clutching his foot.
“Damnit, Hardesty!” Brodie stomped forward, but Ash held him back.
“You can tell me now, Weems,” Ethan said, ignoring the others. “And face a judge. Or you can delay and face another bullet. Either way, you’ll be telling me where she is.”
“I don’t know where she is!” Weeping, the prospector slipped a hand into his boot to staunch the blood seeping through the hole.
Ethan lifted the gun again.
“Stop it, Hardesty!” Brodie shouted. “You’re a duly sworn deputy. You can’t go around shooting people.”
“He’s right,” Ash said. “Waste of bullets. Thomas, you bring that skinning knife with you?”
In a move so fast it caught them all unawares, Weems lurched to his feet, his arm slashing out.
Pain shot down Ethan’s arm. The gun fell from his grip. He looked in astonishment at blood welling from a cut in the sleeve of his jacket. Then Weems was on him, throwing an arm around his neck from behind, knocking off his hat and jerking him off-balance.
“I’ll cut him,” Weems shouted in a panicky voice, hopping on one foot as he pulled Ethan away from the others. “I swear it!”
Gulping for air, Ethan reached up to pull Weems’s arm from his throat. Another slash, another searing pain across his arm. His fingers went numb. Dimly, he heard hammers cock. “No!” he gasped. “Don’t shoot!” If they killed Weems, they would never find where he’d hidden Audra.
“Let him go,” Brodie ordered the prospector.
“So you can kill me?”
“We won’t shoot, I give you my word.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Ethan struggled to breathe. Darkness pressed against the edges of his vision. Where is she? he cried, but no sound came out.
The men advanced, coming from three sides, driving Weems and Ethan back toward the edge of the drop-off. Dimly, Ethan saw that the only one not holding a weapon was Thomas.
“Stay back!” Weems shouted, pressing the knife against Ethan’s chest. “I’ll gut him like a trout. I swear it!”
The others stopped, but Thomas continued on, his steps calm and measured, forcing Weems steadily back. “Where is the woman?”
“Dead and buried.”
Ethan went cold. An icy fear spread through his chest.
“Where?” Thomas asked.
“You’ll never know.”
Another step back. Warmer air swept up the cliff face from the jagged rocks below, cracking the ice that numbed Ethan’s mind. “She’s dead?” he choked out.
“As a stone.” Weems laughed in his ear. “And a lively little virgin, she was. Tight as a banker’s fist.”
Fury exploded. Ethan slammed his head back. Heard bone and cartilage snap. Weems staggered, his arm still locked around Ethan’s throat.
Ethan grabbed the prospector’s knife hand, and using all the strength he had left, shoved it up and into the face of the man behind him.
A scream. Weems lurched backward, dragging Ethan with him. The ground gave way. Locked together, they started to slide.
Thomas lunged, caught Ethan’s ankles. Others grabbed his belt, his legs. For a moment he hung stretched between the hands that kept him from falling, and the arm dragging him down. Then just when he thought his head would come off and his lungs would collapse, the arm around his throat fell away and he was free.
Coughing and choking, he felt himself pulled back up onto solid ground, where he lay gasping, air whistling through his bruised throat. After a moment, he looked over at Thomas, stretched on the ground beside him. “Is he dead?”
Thomas nodded, his own chest heaving.
Jesus, no . . . Audra.
The realization that she was lost to him forever sent his mind spiraling away.
He became vaguely aware of someone working on his cuts. His jacket was off, and he started to shiver as cold from the ground seeped into his back. Voices warbled around him—someone saying he had lost a lot of blood and they needed to get him to Doc—Brodie telling Rafe to untie the mule and Thomas to get the horses.
“No!” he rasped, struggling upright. “We have to find her!”
“Lad.” Ash hunkered beside him. “It’s too late.”
“No . . . she’s here. She’s . . .” He looked around, his mind starting to spiral again. “She’s here . . . somewhere.” He looked up at the men standing over him, their faces grim. “I can’t . . . I can’t just leave her.”
“We’ll come back,” Brodie promised. “As soon as we get you to Doc, we’ll gather searchers and find her and bring her home.”
Tears clogged Ethan’s aching throat. He could make no sense of it—the madness that had driven Weems—Audra’s suffering—why God had taken her and not him. Better if he had gone over the cliff with Weems.
Audra . . . I’m so sorry . . .
Time passed in a haze of pain and despair
. Somehow, he kept breathing despite the emptiness inside. Moving by rote, he did what he was told to do—mounted Renny, fell into line when the others started back down the canyon—held on with one hand to keep from sliding off.
But with every step away from Audra’s resting place, a voice in his mind whispered that it was wrong, he shouldn’t leave her, she still needed him.
* * *
The candle guttered out. Clutching the broken pieces of metal in her bleeding hand, Audra watched the lingering halo of the flame fade from her vision.
Hope dimmed with it. With the tine broken, she had no leverage to turn the bolt, and her fingers weren’t strong enough to unscrew it from the stone. Using the last of her light, she had searched every inch of the cavern that her tether would allow her to reach, but she had found nothing else she could use.
She had failed. Soon Weems would come. He would humiliate her again, force her to do things that would degrade her to the point that she no longer cared whether she lived or died. And then it would be done.
Three—or was it now two?—days of torture and abuse, followed by a brutal death. That was her future. All she had left.
In some distant, detached part of her mind, she wondered how she should use her remaining hours. Relive memories? Pray to the God who had abandoned her? Devise a way to end her life before Weems could, even if it meant eternal damnation?
A wobbly laugh broke from her throat. No use burning bridges, old girl. God might still be out there somewhere. Pulling the foul blanket over her shivering body, she closed her eyes and began the prayer her mother had taught her so long ago.
“Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”
* * *
By the time they rode past Audra’s burned-out cabin, Ethan’s numbness had faded and the whispered voice in his head had risen to a shout.
He shouldn’t be riding away. He shouldn’t give up so easily. What if Weems was lying, and saying she was dead had been the final cruelty of a brutal, deranged mind? What if she was still alive?
“No.” He pulled Renny to a stop. “I’m going back.”
Horses bunched up behind him. Ahead, Brodie reined in his sorrel and turned in the saddle. “What’s wrong?”
“Weems was lying. She isn’t dead.” Saying the words aloud destroyed any lingering doubt. Audra was alive. He was certain of it. He looked from face to face as the other men reined in beside him. “Weems only kills on the full moon. That’s three days away. He wouldn’t break his cycle now.”
“Maybe he didn’t intend to,” Tait argued. “Knowing Audra, she would have fought hard. It could have been an accident.”
“Or maybe he was lying,” Ethan insisted.
“If you want, lad. We’ll bring Tricks back with us. He has a verra keen nose, so he does.”
“There’s another reason I think he was lying.” Ethan hesitated, then realized disloyalty to Audra was secondary now. “She’s not a virgin. She told me she wasn’t, and I believe her. Why would Weems lie about that?”
“Maybe just to goad you,” Rafe said. “The man was demented.”
“Exactly. So why would we believe anything he said?”
No one responded. The horses moved restlessly, apparently as ready to head home as their riders were. The men had been out all night and half the day. They were tired, hungry, disheartened. And Ethan could tell by the way they avoided looking at him that they thought he was speaking now from emotion, rather than logic.
It didn’t matter. She was alive and he would find her. “I’m going back.” He started to turn Renny.
Ash grabbed his reins. “I know this is hard, lad. If something had happened to my Maddie—”
“There is something else,” Thomas cut in. “I thought it was another foolish thing that white people did. Now I am not so sure.” Turning to Ethan, he asked, “When is the only time Weems was out of our sight?”
Ethan curbed his impatience. “When he was at the latrine or in his tent.” But then a sudden image flashed through his mind—Weems pissing into the bushes by his tent. Why hadn’t he gone up to the boulders like before? The buzzing started again, almost drowning out Thomas’s voice.
“And would a man—even a white man—put his latrine above the source of his water?”
“No.” Jerking the reins free, Ethan spun Renny around.
“Bollocks.”
“Rafe, take the mule on to the livery,” Brodie ordered. “Tell the ladies . . .”
There was more, but Ethan already was racing back up the trail to the camp.
Thirty-three
A voice called her name. She lurched up, not knowing if she was awake or dreaming. It was so dark she couldn’t even tell if her eyes were open. Holding a hand before her face, she blinked and felt her lashes brush against her fingers. Awake. Or dreaming she was awake.
The voice came again. Distorted. Hollow-sounding. Like an echo.
She scrambled to her feet and looked in the direction where she knew the opening to be. Was it growing lighter? Was someone coming? Weems?
Or maybe help had come at last. The thought made her heart pound so hard it made her dizzy.
Please God.
She stared into the darkness.
Again. Closer now. “Audra!”
Ethan? “Ethan! I’m here!”
Footsteps. Voices. Not Weems.
“In here!” she cried.
Light burst through the opening, blinding her.
“Oh, Jesus—Audra!”
An arm closed around her, pulled her hard against a solid chest. His whole body shook with his ragged breathing. “God . . . you’re alive . . .”
“Ethan . . .” She clung to him, her legs trembling beneath her. “You found me, you came . . .”
“Are you all right?”
She couldn’t answer, couldn’t stop crying, didn’t want to let him go. Other voices rose around her, but she was weeping so hard she couldn’t make out the words. “Weems said—”
“He’s dead. He’ll never hurt you again. Let me look at you.” He drew back, then stiffened when he saw the collar around her neck. “Somebody get this off of her,” he said hoarsely, his voice unsteady. “Now!”
Thomas appeared beside her. She saw the knife in his hand and shrank away.
“Do not fear me, katse’e—little one. I will not hurt you. You know this.”
Ethan turned her face into his chest. “Let him, sweetheart. It will only take a moment.”
She felt the blade slip between the collar and her neck, but Ethan’s heart drummed so loudly beneath her ear she couldn’t hear the sawing of the knife on the thick leather. A moment later, she was free.
Free. Alive. Whole.
If Ethan hadn’t been holding her, she might have fallen. “T-Take me out of here.”
He bent to peer into her face. “Can you walk?”
She gave a choked laugh. “I can run. Hurry. I want to see the sun.”
They seemed to weave forever through the rocky passageways. It was a miracle they’d found her with all the twists and turns. The uphill slant left her winded and unsteady in the knees, but when she saw the sunlit opening ahead of Declan, who held the lantern, she wanted to push him aside and run the rest of the way. Yet, at the last moment, she had to slow, blinded by the brightness after so many hours in the dark. She stumbled forward, one hand shading her eyes, then felt Ethan’s hand on her shoulder.
“Keep going,” he said at her back. “I’ve got you.”
Tears streaming from beneath her closed lids, she let him guide her out of the mine shaft. Once everyone came through the entrance behind her, she stopped and waited for her eyes to adjust.
She felt the heat of the sun on her face—smelled juniper and pine as a gentle breeze swept away the dank mustiness of her prison—heard the distant cry of a hawk circling on updrafts rising off of the sun-w
armed earth.
Life.
A hand gently brushed the tangled curls off her face. “Now let me see how badly you’re hurt.”
Blinking fast in the glare, she squinted at the slits in Ethan’s jacket. “Why are you bleeding?”
“It’s nothing. A couple of cuts. Ash put on a field dressing until I can see Doc. What about you? That bump on your head looks nasty, and your face is bruised, and I can see you’re favoring your arm. How bad?”
She forced a smile. “Not bad. Just sore.”
“And those cuts on your hands?”
“I found a piece of metal and tried to use it to loosen the bolt on the chain, but it broke. They’re only scrapes.”
Noticing that the other four men were clustered around her, faces grim, she gave them a tremulous smile. “Thank you . . . all of you . . . for finding me. I-I . . .” Her voice cracked.
A moment of awkward silence as she struggled with tears, then Maddie’s husband said, “When Weems told us you were dead, lass, we almost lost hope. But the lad wouldna give up. Thank him.”
“Will you be able to make it down the hill?” Sheriff Brodie asked. “Or would you like one of us to carry you?”
She glanced at Ethan’s bloody sleeve, and decided if he couldn’t carry her, she would make it on her own. “I’ll walk.” But when the others headed down toward the slope, Ethan held her back.
“Are you all right?”
She saw the pain and worry in his beautiful blue eyes, and some of the fear that had locked her in its grip began to crack. “You mean did Weems force me?” She shivered as the memory of that humiliating moment in the cave swept through her. “No. He never touched me . . . not that way.”
“Thank God.” His arm came around her again, so tight she could hardly breathe.
And suddenly she was crying again. “I love you . . . I love you . . .”
He held her for several minutes, his body trembling, his breath harsh in her ear. “Audra, I’m so sorry you got caught up in this,” he said in a broken voice. “I should have protected you better. I should have—”
