CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER

by Linda Lael Miller

  One of the men opened the door and set a bucket of water inside, but no words were spoken. Caroline collected the bucket and set it on top of the stove, adding a few chunks of wood to the fire before she claimed a pint bottle of whiskey from a shelf near the bed.

  “You’d better have a sip of this,” she told her recalcitrant patient. “And you’re not the first man who’s ever been cheated. It didn’t give you the right to go bad.”

  Willie unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle, grimacing as the liquor coursed over his tongue, coughing when it went down. That caused him pain; he gripped his wounded side and his hand came away bloody. “If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I could do just as well without the sermon,” he said, rubbing his crimson palm down his pant leg.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to look to the welfare of your immortal soul,” Caroline replied, going to the stove to check the water. It wasn’t hot, but the chill had been taken off, so she dipped a piece of Seaton’s torn shirt into it and went back to the bed to begin cleaning Willie’s wound.

  “Why would you want to help the likes of me?” Willie asked, without a sign of remorse for his earlier intentions. “If McDurvey hadn’ta shot me, it’d be you lyin’ on your back on this bed, not me.”

  Caroline didn’t even attempt to hide her shudder of disgust. “A person has to do what’s right, even when they’d rather turn away and pretend not to see.”

  Willie flinched as Caroline tried to clean the wound. It was deep, and more internal damage had been done than she’d thought. She turned the outlaw onto his side so that she could get a closer look, and one of his hands locked on the back of her thigh.

  She slapped it away and went back to check the water again. “The bullet went right on through,” she said. “I guess you’re lucky that happened.”

  At last, Willie was beginning to get a grasp on his future, and he was panicking. “I need a doctor! You send one of those weasels out there to fetch me a doctor!”

  Caroline decided the water was hot enough and carried the bucket to Willie’s bedside. He’d bled so copiously that the filthy old mattress was soaked with crimson stains. “They’re not going to do that, Willie. If they did, the doctor would know where the hideout is.”

  “I don’t give a damn!” Willie cried, straining to sit up. “For all I care, they can shoot the bastard between the eyes, once he’s sewed me up.”

  Caroline pressed him back onto the mattress. The sharp, salty smell of Willie’s blood filled her nostrils, and she felt sick. “I’m the best you’re going to get, Mr. Fly, and you’d better accept it,” she said, moistening her lips with the end of her tongue.

  She cleaned the wound the best she could and applied compresses in an effort to stop the bleeding, but it was like trying to soak up a river with her Sunday handkerchief. Willie’s wounds required a surgeon, not a schoolteacher who’d nursed two gentle old maids through periodic bouts of rheumatism and the grippe.

  “I’m going to die,” he rasped out, and his color had gone from pure white to a sickly gray. “Damn it, McDurvey done killed me!”

  Privately, Caroline agreed, but she didn’t think saying so would do any good. “Please try to lie still.”

  Willie began to shiver. “I’m cold!” he cried, hugging himself as his teeth started to chatter. “Sweet Jesus in heaven, I’m so cold!”

  Caroline found a blanket and covered him. “If I were you,” she said quietly, “I’d be asking His mercy, not taking His name in vain.”

  Willie’s shivering progressed to a sob. Then he suddenly went still, and his eyes rolled toward the ceiling in a glassy stare.

  Caroline knew before she touched the pulse point at the base of his throat that Willie Fly was dead. “God have pity on his wayward soul,” she whispered, and then she closed his eyes and pulled the blanket up so that it covered his face.

  After washing the blood from her hands, Caroline went to the door and opened it. “Your friend is dead,” she said to the shadowy figures keeping their vigil outside.

  “Weren’t no friend of mine,” muttered a voice, and those were the only words to be offered for the misguided boy from Kansas.

  Caroline closed the door and looked back at the covered figure lying on the bed. Willie Fly seemed so small now, hardly more than a boy, and she hoped he’d somehow managed to make peace with his Maker before the spirit left him.

  There was a broken-backed chair at the table, and Caroline sat down and rested her head on her folded arms. Wherever Guthrie was, she just hoped he had the good sense to stay clear of Seaton Flynn’s hideout.

  Guthrie’s frustration was supreme.

  He and Tob had been following Flynn for a day and a half, waiting for the right moment to strike. When the murdering thief had stopped the stagecoach, Guthrie hadn’t been surprised. But seeing Caroline step down from inside it had set him back on his heels.

  He’d had to watch, not daring to let so much as a single muscle twitch, while Flynn pulled her up onto his horse. Although he’d wanted to move in, he’d known Caroline and his child could well be the first casualties of such a rash action.

  Guthrie had tailed Flynn and his gang to the hidden cabin. By then, it had been dark, but he’d known Caroline was alone in the shack with the man who’d sworn to avenge his alleged betrayal.

  A cold sweat stood out on Guthrie’s flesh as he checked the chamber of his rifle for the hundredth time and prepared to bring down anyone who got in his way.

  But then, just when he’d been about to risk everything, just when he thought he was fresh out of choices, Flynn emerged from the cabin like a bullet out of a red hot stove. Guthrie watched and listened, holding his breath, while the leader argued heatedly with his men.

  When Flynn rode off, Guthrie waited as long as he could bear to, then followed. Tob remained behind, whimpering low in his throat and staring at the cabin where his mistress was being held.

  It was nearly dawn, and Flynn was crouching beside a mountain stream, drinking water from his hands, when Guthrie finally closed in. Approaching soundlessly from behind, he pressed the barrel of his .45 into the back of Flynn’s neck.

  Flynn eased his hands out from his side, and Guthrie bent to pull the pistol from his captive’s holster and toss it into the stream.

  “Hayes?” Flynn asked, and he sounded resigned and even a little amused.

  “If I didn’t think it would be a waste of good tobacco, I’d give you a cigar,” Guthrie answered, by way of congratulations. “Lay down on your belly and put your hands behind your back.”

  “We can work this out,” Flynn offered, remaining upright. “All you really want is the woman, right? And I can give her to you.”

  Guthrie planted one boot between Flynn’s shoulder blades and gave him a little help lying down. He landed sprawled in the chilly creek, sputtering and cursing.

  Dragging him back out by his feet, Guthrie repeated his earlier request, though less politely than before. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  Still swearing, Flynn drew both wrists together at the base of his spine, and Guthrie bound them with a piece of rawhide from the pocket of his coat. Then he took a handful of the outlaw’s wet hair and jerked him up onto his knees.

  “I want the woman,” Guthrie clarified, as if there had been no break in the conversation, “but there’s something else I’ve got a fancy for, Flynn—seeing you hang.”

  “There are six men standing guard over Caroline, Hayes. How do you plan to get past them?”

  Guthrie took a cheroot from his pocket, clasped it between his teeth, and lit the end with a wooden match. “If I thought there was a shot glass full of loyalty between the whole half dozen, I’d use you to get in. Since those bastards would probably poison their own mamas for a beer token and five minutes with a whore, I’ll have to come up with another plan.”

  Flynn started struggling to his feet, and Guthrie waited until he’d almost made it, then kicked him back into the stream again. He came up screaming profanity. />
  Guthrie smiled slowly and flicked the ashes off his cheroot. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand you right,” he said indulgently. “But it sounded like you called my mama a nasty name just now.”

  “You heard me right,” Flynn spat.

  After drawing deeply on the cheroot and exhaling the smoke, Guthrie sighed. “That’s a real pity,” he said. And then he returned the .45 to its holster, unbuckled his gunbelt, and set it aside. After that, he took a knife from the top of his boot and bent to cut the rawhide that bound Flynn’s hands.

  While the outlaw was still recovering from that development, Guthrie caught him in the jaw with a hard right cross and sent him tumbling into the creek for the third time.

  Flynn came up fighting; his fury gave him a maniacal strength. It also made him reckless.

  The battle began in earnest when Flynn landed a hard punch in Guthrie’s midsection, and it raged on one side of the creek, then the other, and, for a while, in the middle. Finally, Flynn went face down in the water, and he didn’t get up.

  Guthrie dragged him ashore by the back of his shirt and flung him down into the slippery pebbles, where he coughed and spit and vomited creek water. When he was through, Guthrie bound Flynn’s hands again and then hauled him upright by his hair.

  Flynn glared at him. “Why don’t you just kill me?” he said, and Guthrie wondered if his own face was as bruised and misshapen as Flynn’s. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

  Guthrie grinned and slapped him on the back. “You’re damn right it’s what I want to do,” he answered, “but the law’s got first claim on you, so I’ll have to settle for watching you choke when the rope tightens.”

  “I’ve got money,” Flynn offered, and now there was a frantic note in his voice. Thanks to all those baptisms in the creek, he was even wetter than Guthrie, and that was saying something. “I can get you the woman back and give you enough gold to last you the rest of your life.”

  Guthrie pretended to consider the offer. “Where is this gold?”

  Flynn stumbled in the rocks as Guthrie flung him toward his horse and then helped him up into the saddle. He spat onto the stony ground. “You don’t think I’m going to tell you that before we work out a deal, do you?”

  Guthrie reclaimed his gunbelt and strapped it on. “You couldn’t offer me enough money to let you go,” he said. “I’ve got a front-row seat at your funeral.”

  “You’re a bastard, Hayes.”

  Guthrie touched the brim of his hat, after picking it up off the stream bank and settling it on his head. “Coming from you—and you’re one notch below the stuff that sticks to the bottom of my boots—that’s a compliment.”

  When they began to draw near the cabin, Guthrie stopped, wrenched Flynn off his horse, and tied him to the trunk of a birch tree. Then he gagged him with a dirty sock taken from the depths of his saddlebag.

  “You just sit right there and enjoy yourself, Flynn,” Guthrie told his captive, as Tob trotted over to lick the bruises and cuts on the man’s face. “I’ll be back real soon.”

  There was smoke curling from the chimney of the shack, Guthrie observed, from his vantage point on the ridge, and he counted six horses. There were two men keeping watch in front of the house, and two men in back.

  Guthrie’s stomach churned. That meant two more were inside, with Caroline. His heart stopped cold in his chest when the door opened and a tall, slim man came out carrying a blanket-wrapped corpse over one shoulder.

  But then Guthrie caught a glimpse of yellow hair sticking out from under the blanket, and relief swept over him. As if in answer to some silent summons, Caroline appeared in the doorway.

  She was rumpled, and her clothes were stained with blood, but Guthrie knew by her bearing that she was all right. She scanned the hillside anxiously, as if expecting someone, and as her eyes moved over the rocks at the top of the ridge, they linked with Guthrie’s.

  He was sure she’d seen him, since she looked away so quickly. He smiled to himself. Don’t give me away, Wildcat, he thought. This isn’t over yet.

  Guthrie had found her.

  Caroline’s heart leapt with the knowledge, but she was alarmed, too. The man was just enough of a brazen fool to try to take on five outlaws by himself and, if he did, he’d probably get himself killed. She approached McDurvey as he began to dig a grave for Willie Fly.

  “Shouldn’t one of you go and find Mr. Flynn?” she asked, surprised at how bright and happy her voice sounded when she was forcing it through her constricted throat. “He’s been gone for sometime.”

  McDurvey, a homely man with a mournful, pitted face, eyed her as he pushed the shovel into the soft earth with his foot. “You missin’ Flynn, ma’am?”

  Caroline swallowed, and her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it in the bones of her face. “Well,” she replied, “he and I were engaged to be married at one time.”

  “I don’t think marriage is exactly what the boss has in mind,” McDurvey remarked, proceeding with his digging. The body of Willie Fly lay a few feet away, still covered with the blanket.

  It took all Caroline’s strength of will not to turn and glance at the hillside to see if Guthrie was in plain view. “Maybe he’ll be angry with you for killing poor Willie,” she said, folding her arms.

  McDurvey turned his head and spat into the grass. “Flynn woulda done it himself if he’d been here.” He went on digging. “I can’t see why you’d be mournin’ Fly, anyway. He made it plain what he was meanin’ to do.” Sharp gray eyes studied Caroline’s face. “But maybe you’re one of them women as likes such as that.”

  Caroline retreated a step, her cheeks hot with fearful color. “What happens if Mr. Flynn doesn’t come back?” she asked.

  McDurvey smiled for the first time, and the sight was chilling. “Then I reckon the boys and me’ll have our turns at you. It’s been a while since we’ve took a woman.”

  A sour taste surged into Caroline’s mouth, but before she could think of a reply, a fight broke out between the two men on the other side of the house. McDurvey dropped his shovel and started in that direction, then thought better of the action.

  “You boys go on around and break that up,” he told the pair in front.

  They obeyed, and when McDurvey turned around to resume his work, he caught the business end of the shovel square in the face.

  Caroline felt a certain chagrin when his eyes rolled back and blood spouted from his nostrils. In the next instant, his knees buckled and he toppled to the ground without making a sound.

  Quickly, Caroline bent and pulled the pistol from his gunbelt, holding it in both hands. When she looked up, she saw Guthrie coming down the hillside on horseback, moving as fast as if he’d been on level ground. He was standing in his stirrups and using both arms to wield his rifle, and a Rebel yell rent the air just before the repeater started spewing bullets.

  Caroline ducked behind a birch tree, still clutching the pistol but squeezing her eyes shut, certain that if she looked, she’d see Guthrie and his gelding tumbling head over heels down the incline.

  There were more shots, followed by an eerie silence.

  Caroline recited every Bible verse she could remember and then opened her eyes. Guthrie’s horse was standing a few yards away, reins dangling, and Tob was nuzzling at the palm of her hand. McDurvey had regained consciousness, and he was slowly rising to his feet, his gaze fixed on Caroline.

  She pointed the pistol with both hands and shrieked, “Guthrie!”

  To her relief, he came ambling around the side of the cabin and cocked his rifle.

  “Hold it right there,” he said, and McDurvey froze.

  Now that the worst was over, Caroline was in a state of shock. “Are the others—?”

  “They’re all dead,” Guthrie answered flatly, wrenching McDurvey’s hands behind him and binding them together with a rawhide string that had held the outlaw’s holster to his leg.

  “And … and Mr. Flynn?” she choked o
ut.

  “He’s up on the ridge, tied to a tree. With any luck, the squirrels will eat him and the territory won’t have to waste a good rope on him.”

  Caroline wanted to fling herself into Guthrie’s arms but, at the same time, she was furious at the risk he’d taken. It might have been him lying there staining the ground with his blood, instead of Flynn’s men. “How could you do such a rash, foolish, crazy thing?” she demanded, making a wild gesture with her arm.

  Guthrie carefully took the pistol from her fingers. “You did force my hand a little,” he pointed out reasonably, “when you hit handsome here with the shovel.”

  Realizing she and Guthrie and their baby were safe, Caroline gave a sob and propelled herself at her husband. “I was so afraid—Mr. Flynn was going to make me lose the baby …”

  Guthrie held her with one arm, but she was pressed tight against him and that felt gloriously good. “Are you all right, Wildcat?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Yes,” Caroline wailed, clinging to him.

  He kissed her neck and simultaneously gave her bottom the kind of pat she would have found patronizing at any other time. “Take it easy,” he told her. “It’s over now.”

  Systematically, Guthrie hung each corpse over the back of a horse, then he linked the animals together with a long line of rope. McDurvey remained bound while Guthrie went back up the mountain and, presently, returned with a seething Seaton Flynn.

  Soon, Guthrie was leading this strange, macabre procession behind him like a ragtag caravan. Caroline rode in front of him, glad to feel his strong arm bent around her waist to keep her from falling.

  A few hours later, they came upon the way station, where the stagecoaches stopped when they traveled between Laramie and Cheyenne. The dead outlaws were stored in a shed, while Flynn and McDurvey, both still bound, were locked up in the fruit cellar. Caroline wanted a hot bath, eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and Guthrie, in that order.