She Shall Be Praised

by Ginny Aiken

  The overwhelming sense of remorse drove him to move faster. “Emma!”

  His voice echoed off the trees in waves. It came back at him with haunting emptiness. He knew, though, the forest wasn’t empty. Emma was out there. And she’d called for help.

  “Mr. Lowery!” Ned cried, rushing up to his side. “Mr. Lowery, sir. You gotta come—now. Sawyer’s gone!”

  “What?” His thoughts spiraled down the worst path and made him sick. “We had him tied up. How could that be?”

  “I found this,” the younger outlaw said, holding a white shard in the light cast by the lantern. “Looks like it might could be a cup or a plate or something. I reckon he broke it, see? Found it right by his bed.”

  The sick dread in Peter’s stomach curdled into pure worry. He remembered the way Sawyer had rubbed up against Emma, the leering looks he’d sent her way, the fear she’d revealed in her pretty green gaze. Meeting up with that—that animal in the dark forest would no doubt provoke screams like the ones he’d heard. His urgency grew.

  “Come on, Ned. I need your help.” As hope bloomed on the young man’s face, Peter raised a finger. “I warn you. You must do what I say. There’ll be consequences if you bolt. I will find you, no matter where you run.”

  “I ain’t dumb, Mr. Lowery, sir.” Ned’s voice rang out in earnest if somewhat out of breath from trotting by Peter’s side. “You’re a right fine sorta man, an’ Sawyer’s not. I ain’t sure I wanna come up an’ find him in the dark, myself. Never know what that snake might could do a body, you know.”

  The blood drained from Peter’s face. “Come on. Emma’s out here. With Sawyer loose now…”

  He didn’t have the strength to finish the thought.

  It didn’t look as though Ned wanted him to waste time either. “Let’s us be movin’, then, Mr. Lowery. There ain’t no time to let go wastin’.”

  Peter set off again toward where he thought he’d heard the cries, Ned at his heels. But that didn’t strike him as productive. “You go that way.” He pointed back toward the clearing. “Stay on the edge of the road. I’ll call you when I find anything. And you can—”

  “I’ll call you when I find that good-for-nothin’ Saw—”

  “HELP—”

  The cut-off scream sent ice through Peter’s veins. “Let’s go!”

  His boots pounded the ground as he ran toward the cry. Ned followed, only a pace behind. As he ran, however, Peter caught what sounded like someone approaching. He hoped it was Wade. He had no idea what they’d find when they reached Emma’s side, and he wasn’t sure how reliable Ned would be.

  Peter cast a glance over his shoulder, but saw nothing. He kept running, the spring-cold air cutting in his lungs like a knife. He’d never forgive himself if Sawyer hurt Emma.

  “You see anything, boss?” Wade called out of the dark.

  “Nothing yet. But we heard her yelling out this way.”

  “I heard her, too.”

  The three men pushed their way through the underbrush, darted between the trees. Fear tightened the knot in Peter’s gut.

  Another cry tore the night.

  “There!” he called to his two companions. “We’re closing in. At least we’re not moving blind anymore.”

  Heart racing, he braced his forearms before him, using them as a fence against the whipping of the branches in his way. He prayed he and the others weren’t too late, for Emma’s sake.

  Step after step, heartbeat after heartbeat, Peter prayed for light, for the sun to rise soon, for them to find Emma.

  Emma’s nightmare began in earnest when they landed in a tangled heap in a bed of debris on the forest floor. She tried to roll away, but only brought Sawyer fully on top of her, pinning her against the side of a felled tree. One of his legs bound hers to the old trunk, and Sawyer let out an unholy cackle she took for his sick laugh. She bucked and jerked her shoulders from one side to the other, doing everything she could to dislodge the foul creature from on top of her.

  All her fighting did was present him with the opportunity to grab her cloak at the neck and drag one half to a side. She feared she knew what was coming, and she let out another scream. “Help!”

  Sawyer slapped his mouth full on hers. A fist grabbed the neck of her lace-trimmed blouse, twisted, and pulled. Horror filled her when she heard the delicate fabric give in a sickening rent. Cold assailed her neck, her chest, and even the top of her bosom, bared by the edge of her corset cover.

  Dear God, no!

  Fear unlike anything she’d ever imagined filled her, and while she recognized her own vulnerability, she refused to give in to what felt like the impending inevitable. She refused to surrender.

  With what had to be the greatest spurt of strength she’d ever produced, she wrenched her arm free from between their tangled bodies and clawed at everything she touched. She knew she’d struck success when Sawyer cried out like the animal he was.

  “Why, you… ya think yer too good for the likes of me—”

  Again he latched his repulsive mouth to her, this time landing blindly on her brow. She grunted with her effort to dislodge him, snarling with frustration at her failure to escape her attacker, no matter how dogged her fight.

  His rough handling, the evil twisting of his expression, made Emma fear for her life. If he carried through his carnal intent, he would rob her of her sanity. Then, if the vicious violence in his actions went through to the end she feared, surely he wouldn’t give up until all her fight was gone. And that would only happen when…

  When her life was done.

  But she still had fight in her. She arched her back, pulled her chin toward the sky, and gave out another scream. “Help—”

  He clamped his dirty hand over her mouth. “Shut up!”

  Whimpers of pain rose in her throat and came out in guttural sounds. Tears burned her eyes. But she refused—

  “GET OFF HER!”

  At first, Emma thought she’d imagined Peter’s command, but when the pressure of Sawyer’s body lifted from atop hers, she opened her eyes and looked right into the sheep rancher’s storm-dark ones. At that moment, not only were his eyes dark, but his enraged expression evoked a gale.

  Unaccountably, while she knew help had arrived, tremors set off from within her core. “How…?” Her question died when Peter landed a blow to Sawyer’s gut. The outlaw bent double as his breath whooshed out, yet he still managed to kick out. As he did, his heavy boot clipped Peter’s shin.

  The rancher grunted in pain.

  Emma’s tremors grew. Soon, her body quaked out of control. Tears poured from her eyes and down her temples, where the dead leaves on the forest floor caught them all.

  The men continued to battle, but she knew Sawyer wouldn’t fight fair.

  He hadn’t thought to deal decently with her.

  “Go on, Emma!” Peter yelled, his hand still clenched in the fabric of Sawyer’s shirt. “Get back to the cabin.”

  Emma didn’t know if she could move, much less find her way back, but she knew she couldn’t stay where she was. With shudders still wracking her, she sent up wild, formless prayers.

  “Lord… the sunrise! We need light…”

  As she tried to move, she felt weaker than before, fought for a breath… then knew no more.

  Drawing his arm back, Peter landed a punch on Sawyer’s jaw. As he wound up again, he got the wind knocked out of him. Sparks burst before his eyes, and he gasped for air, furious he hadn’t seen Sawyer’s arm. Bent over, gasping, he tried to draw in air, but the outlaw took advantage of his momentary weakness. Sawyer stunned him with a blow to the side of the head.

  On his way down, Peter used his last bit of strength to fling Sawyer toward the ground. He heard the crash as his head spun, his lungs burned for lack of air. He tried to cling to consciousness, his mind on Robby, but in the end, the dark rose up, and he felt himself drown in the pain.

  When Peter opened his eyes, the slightest hint of gray peered through the lowest boughs of the
nearest evergreens. Dawn wasn’t far off. Fortunately, he’d be able to get a better idea of what he faced with the increasing light. All he remembered was the fight with Sawyer and going down, to his shame and vexation.

  Emma!

  He rose to his elbows, needing to see if she’d left safely, as he’d told her to do, but the movement made his head swim. He fell right back. “Ooof!”

  From somewhere to his left, he heard a soft, “Owww!”

  “Emma!” he called. “Wh—why are you… still here?”

  Silence.

  Then the rustle of underbrush.

  Finally, “Because I… I had”—shock cut into Emma’s words—“the vapors! For the first time ever, I’ll have you know, Peter Lowery. I’m not some silly, simpering—NO!”

  Her horror-filled shriek made him ignore the shattering pain in every inch of his body and the stunning pounding in his head. He rose in one shaky motion, swayed as he tried to stand, but his determination lent him the will to struggle on. He felt weaker than the lamb that had dropped the night before, and his stomach gave a sick lurch. Still, worry for Emma made him force his eyes to focus. What he saw explained her scream.

  And nearly had him echo it with one of his own.

  Not ten feet away, he saw the outline of a man lying on his back. The grayish light cast over the trees to the east allowed him to make out the features, and he recognized Sawyer. The way the outlaw lay sprawled—head at an unnatural angle, fingers clawed at his own throat, eyes bulging, tongue protruding, one leg bent at the knee, the other jutted straight out—told him they needn’t fear Sawyer would hurt Emma again.

  On the other hand, it was clear Sawyer had met an untimely and violent death. Someone had strangled him.

  Murder.

  On Peter’s land.

  As he stared in horror-struck silence, a foreign sound began to pierce his nightmare rush of thoughts. A moment later, he realized the high-pitched keening came from Emma, where she stood near Sawyer’s corpse, her green eyes open wide, fixed on the man who only a short while earlier had meant her harm.

  Without warning, she fell silent and turned to meet Peter’s gaze. An odd, blank expression overtook her features. As abruptly as she’d faced him, she turned back to Sawyer, and shuddered right away. Then her shoulders rose with a rough breath and she trembled. She shook her head.

  He took a step toward her, not sure what he meant to do, but pain sliced through him, and his leg gave out under his weight. He let out a loud moan as he fell to the ground again.

  Emma spun toward him, this time seeming to register his condition. “Oh. Oh!”

  To his mortification, she flew to his side, one hand clenched in the wool of her cloak to keep it closed at her throat. “Peter! What’s wrong? And what happened to”—she gulped as she dropped down to her knees at his side—“to Sawyer?”

  Gritting his teeth, Peter met her frantic gaze. “My leg. I must have injured it when Sawyer and I were fighting.”

  “He’s… dead, right?”

  Peter stole a glimpse in the direction where the outlaw lay felled. “Looks that way. What happened to him?”

  “What do you mean, what happened to him? You’re the one who pulled him off me. Surely you must know.”

  Her outrage sounded sincere. “You didn’t see how he wound up dead?”

  “No!” She sniffed. “How dare you ask me such a thing? I already told you, I had my very first case of the vapors when I tried to stand after you dragged him off me—for which I greatly thank you, of course.”

  Peter blinked. She was able to think of manners at a moment like this? She’d scarcely escaped Sawyer’s clutches, she’d fainted, Sawyer had died, and unless he was much mistaken, he himself had somehow broken a leg. Yet she still managed to put courtesy first?

  “I ask, Emma,” he said, squeezing each word through the pain that made him queasy, “because he walloped me in the gut and knocked me out. By the time I could breathe enough again to come to, all I heard was you. Then I saw him there. Dead.”

  “Well, I don’t know how he died. I can assure you I didn’t do a thing to him. On the other hand, before I fainted, I saw you hit him.”

  “I only landed a couple of punches. They weren’t near enough to kill him.”

  “Very well, then, Peter, who killed him?”

  Silence fell between them as a greater glow of light lightened the canopy of the trees above them. “I don’t know, but someone did.”

  Only then did it occur to Peter that they were alone in the woods. He, Emma, and Sawyer. And yet, when he’d come upon the beast accosting her, Ned and Wade had been right on his heels. Hadn’t they?

  Where were they?

  Why had they left?

  Was one of them guilty of the crime?

  Chapter 14

  “NED!” Peter bellowed. “WADE!”

  Emma started at the unexpected yells. “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know about Ned, but I doubt Wade would have just up and left me, seeing as I was fighting Sawyer.” He shifted, and Emma saw him wince. The pain seemed to carve brackets on either side of his mouth. Before she could think of a way to help, he went on. “Wade could well have gone back for a shotgun. Ned knows—knew—Sawyer better than the rest of us. He might have had a better reason to run than anyone knows.”

  “I suppose it does make an odd kind of sense. So… what do you intend to do?”

  He closed his eyes, as though by turning his attention inward he’d come up with a solution. Emma could see none. They were still out in the woods, on their own, with Peter injured and Sawyer in need of burial. Oh, and a killer to identify. Not to mention bring to justice, no matter how repugnant the deceased had been. Murder was murder, a sin.

  She shuddered at the memory of Sawyer’s evil face.

  Rising up onto one elbow, Peter met her gaze again. “You do realize I need help, right? I can’t walk back to the cabin by myself. I just took one single step, and you saw what happened. My leg wouldn’t hold me up. From what it feels like, I reckon it’s broken.”

  From his expression, she thought he wanted to say more, but instead, the effort to speak even those few words appeared to wear him out. Sympathy filled her as she read pain and irritation on his features. Frustration, too. She didn’t blame him. She supposed she would feel the same if she’d broken a limb confronting a monster.

  “I can help you back to the cabin,” she offered, even though she wasn’t quite sure how she would manage.

  He let out a humorless chuckle. “You can’t possibly think you can carry even a part of the weight I need help with, can you? Still, I do appreciate your offer. It was kind. But we can’t leave. Not yet. We have to do something about him.”

  Emma kept her gaze fixed on Peter’s face. She couldn’t bear to look at Sawyer again. “Of course we do, and I did think of that. On the other hand, we can’t just stay here, either. We need to see to your leg.”

  He gave her a brief nod. “I’d say we don’t have long to wait. I trust Wade’s on his way back.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She fell silent, but her thoughts didn’t stop. “Sawyer’s dead, right?”

  “Clearly.”

  She pressed a hand to her throat. “Well, I know I didn’t kill him. Did you?”

  Peter snorted. “You know I didn’t kill him, Emma.”

  “That’s what you tell me, but he did steal your sheep, didn’t he?” She waited until he nodded—reluctantly. “And you were quite furious about the theft, right?”

  “I had every reason to be mad. I’ve worked hard to build my flock. It doesn’t sit well with a man to have his work stolen like that.” He fell silent. A white line appeared around his clamped lips. Then he shook his head. “I know what you’re trying to say, but you’re wrong. Sure. Yes, of course, I was furious, and I went after them, but—”

  “Is she all right?” Wade ran up, clearly distraught, a shotgun at the ready. “What did that Sawyer do to Miss Emma? Where is he? Tell me!
Where is that pig of a—”

  “You can put it down,” Peter said. “Sawyer’s dead.”

  Wade shot him a questioning look, but didn’t put down the gun. “Dead?”

  “Take a look.”

  Dawn had finally arrived, and soft light sifted down between the trees. The hush of the forest seemed deeper than ever, especially in view of all that had taken place the night before. Still unwilling to view the reality of Sawyer’s death again, Emma kept her gaze on Wade’s expression as he looked where Peter indicated. His face turned a sickly shade of putty, and only then did he lower the shotgun. “But…”

  “Did you do it?” Peter asked his ranch hand.

  Emma gasped at the blunt nature of the question. She supposed, however, as Wade’s boss, Peter had every right to demand a response.

  “I took off as soon as you pulled him off of her,” the younger man answered. “I reckoned you had Ned with you, here, and the both of you could help Miss Emma. But if things did go bad for you, I wanted to be able to—well… I reckon I don’t need this anymore.” He gestured with the gun, then lowered it to his side. “I did want to warn Colley what was happening.”

  “So where is he?” Peter asked.

  Wade frowned. “He, who?”

  “Ned, of course.”

  The ranch hand shook his head. “Dunno, boss. He didn’t come back to the cabin with me. Like I told you before, I reckoned he’d stayed behind to help you with Sawyer.” He looked around. “Reckon now he didn’t, huh?”

  “I dinnent help none,” Ned said, his shaky voice scarcely above a whisper, as he crept out from behind a hefty tree. “But I dinnent do nothing to Sawyer, neither. I set off after you, Wade, a short bit after you left. Weren’t no reason for me to stay here, what with Sawyer all furious, an’ all that. I got to know all ’bout Sawyer, an’ all’s what he can do a body when he gits it in his head to do it. But when I headed back for the bunkhouse, I got lost. Been walking round for a long while since. Just heard ya running back, and now talking here. I followed all them sounds.”