Rafe was still on horseback and he turned to Julia. “We’ve gotta go.”
Then Rafe had a vision of bad men getting past him in that cavern and threatening Julia. “Nope, not we. Just me. Steele, you stay here and stay on guard.”
Julia was busy getting Connor into her own hands.
Rafe took off at a full gallop for the cavern entrance. Just minutes later he was running into the cave mouth with a lit torch in his hand, down into that awful hole that had tried to swallow Seth alive.
Swept back by the river of fire into the past, Seth beat at the flames and in doing so must’ve knocked some sense into his head. Getting a tenuous grip on reality, he saw his lit torch on the floor. That was the only fire. No river. No burning stone. Shaking, he thought of Callie. She needed him. He didn’t have time for anything but her.
He separated himself from the madness. He breathed in and it was dank air, no fiery smoke. No burning flesh.
Once he corralled the madness that sometimes overtook him, he had Callie back in the front of his thoughts. A new beat of panic rushed along his spine—but being scared for her was reasonable when some desperado had kidnapped her.
“Find her. Think. Use your head. Stay in control,” he told himself.
He picked up the torch and went to the spot where the tunnel split off. Hunkering down, he studied the floor. Close to the tunnel wall he found a footprint. Not a clear one, but someone had definitely been down this way very recently.
They’d gone straight rather than turn off toward the tunnel that led to Rafe’s caldera. He marked the wall for Ethan and Rafe. Then, even knowing it was dangerous, he kept the torch burning. Speed outweighed caution. As he thought that, he realized it was the kind of reckless choice he’d made a thousand times in his life. The kind of reckless choice that had ended with him falling through a stone floor, burning himself. Upsetting his brothers until they couldn’t love him anymore. Driving his father away. Killing his mother. His eyes went to the torch and it seemed to grow, flow, run like a river.
Fighting down the image, he tore his eyes away from it and hung on when he wanted to hurl it away from him.
“I’m not thinking right because I’m scared for Callie.” Saying her name out loud helped. “I just need to find her.” His words became a prayer. “Find her, and once I know she’s all right, I’ll be fine.”
He clung to the light and hurried down the tunnel. Listening with every bit of strength for any sound, however faint, watching the floor carefully for tracks when a tunnel divided. Marking the walls to show which way he’d turned.
He was confident he was on the right track, but where was she? Who had her? Seth rushed on, his stomach twisting to think maybe that footprint was an old one and he was going the wrong way.
What if she wasn’t even down here?
The fear for her grew.
The torch flared up. It seemed to billow smoke.
Who had her? The fire in his hand crackled so loud he couldn’t hear anything else.
Was she still alive? Fire seemed to crawl toward his arm, and he shook the torch and watched it even as he kept walking.
Would she be lost down here, dragged even deeper than Seth had ever gone? The fear was so strong it was like a wall of fire in front of him that he had to push through. Each step was harder than the last.
He thought of the place he’d fallen through. There was a ledge at the bottom of that hole. He wondered how deep it was. For all his hunting around, he’d never explored what was over that ledge. Thinking of it pushed away the fear for Callie.
Why hadn’t he ever tried to reach the bottom of that hole? Maybe he’d find beautiful things down there. Maybe he’d find the part of himself he’d left behind.
He heard someone call out.
Callie? Shaking his head to dislodge thoughts of that black hole and the wall of fire, he heard it again. It sounded like a child’s voice. His own. But he hadn’t called out and his voice was deep. It was as if the child from so long ago called to him. Or maybe not the child, maybe the part of himself he’d left behind. Maybe today he’d finally find his soul.
He stepped into a large room, lifted the torch high, and saw those stunning pillars of white. The steady quiet drip of water soothed him. The fear receded and the fire was more comfort than threat now. This was where he always wanted to be when things were bad. And now he was here. He found calm and serenity.
His shoulders squared and he breathed in the cool air and listened to the echo of his footsteps and the aloneness of his cavern.
He’d come here, in his head, during the war. He’d done so much scouting and it had taken him to lonely places where he had to lie silently for hours.
And when the tension was too much or the fear started to swallow him whole, and fires seemed to blaze all around him, he’d come—inside his head—down into his cavern. It was the only place in the world that was truly his own.
He’d been able to wait for anything in complete silence and utter stillness if he could just come here.
Seeing a favorite spot to view these towers, he pushed all his terrors away and let the peace of the cavern ease into his bones.
“I hate this stupid cavern.” Ethan slid down the ladder so recklessly he felt like Seth for a second. Then he hit the ledge. Heath was right behind him.
“Be careful here. This ledge is about a foot wide. Follow me; we can’t climb down here.”
Heath came along quickly and was beside Ethan by the time he had a torch lit. He found a second one for Heath, and then Ethan charged for the tunnel, cutting time, trying to close the gap and catch Seth so he wouldn’t have to face the kidnappers alone.
He rushed past the tunnel that led to Rafe’s, but there was no sign of his big brother. Ethan had to be ahead of him, and there was no time to waste waiting. He knew Rafe would come, sure as the sunrise.
“Seth left a trail.” Ethan, with the torch held high, pointed at Seth’s marking, which he could tell was new. “Hurry! We can get to Seth before he catches up to trouble.”
And this time Ethan promised himself, when he caught up with his little brother, they’d fight side by side. Ethan wouldn’t taunt him. Instead he’d be the kind of big brother that helped a kid in danger.
Then a split in the cavern stopped Ethan. “Do you see a marking?”
Heath studied the wall, shaking his head. “Nuthin’.”
Ethan knelt to check the ground. A thin layer of dirt on stone didn’t make a great surface for tracking. If Ethan picked wrong, he’d leave his little brother on his own down in this pit. He’d be failing Seth one more time, only this time it might cost Seth his life.
She judged the man to be wily, his eyes sharp. She didn’t move for the knife.
She needed a distraction. Until then, she didn’t have a chance with one puny knife against the two kidnappers. She prayed for something, like a runaway rock to land on the man’s head, or that fish to come to life and bite them both.
The woman knelt at Callie’s feet and unlaced her boot. It didn’t seem all that smart to let the woman take her shoe off. She’d need it to go running over rock. Callie let herself relax. She was ready, but not tense. No sense letting the couple know she was thinking of making trouble.
“It doesn’t look swollen.”
“Don’t take her shoe off. Stop it. We don’t have time for that.” Jasper raised the lantern higher, and Callie thought of this place—of lanterns and Seth’s scars. Since the lantern had been right in front of her eyes the whole time, she wondered how come that idea had popped into her head at the exact same moment she’d been praying.
The woman tugged off her boot, ignoring the man’s orders.
“Where are you taking me, anyway? If you’re going to keep me a prisoner, haven’t we come far enough?” Callie looked between the two.
“We can stay right here.” The woman held her foot in one hand and her calf in the other. She twisted the foot gently. “Does that hurt?”
“Ouch, yes!”
There wasn’t much Callie hated more than a whiner. She had no practice at it, but she was doing her best.
“We hunted around some.” The woman inspected her ankle. “We’ve got a room farther down, but no need to go on right now.”
“We had a plan.”
“Part of that plan was not to hurt anyone,” the woman said. “I saw you hit her. I’m not going to hurt her anymore.”
“She’s fine. She was just stunned for a few seconds and now she’s faking the injured ankle.” The lantern swung a bit as the man’s temper rose.
The lantern . . . A lantern could do a lot of damage without much trouble at all. Lots of light, though, if a lantern broke and fire spread. And splashing kerosene could get on her as well as on them. Would that be the kind of idea God would give her anyway, setting someone on fire? That seemed mighty mean. Though God used fire a lot in the Bible. Why not here in Colorado Territory?
“It h-hurts. I can’t walk.” Callie did her best to sound defeated.
“I don’t see why we need to hurry.” The woman set Callie’s foot on the ground as if it were made of glass.
“It’s cold.” More whining, which made Callie want to punch someone just to prove she wasn’t a weakling. “Can I put my boot back on? If it swells up, I might not be able to get it on later.”
Kneeling there, the woman raised her eyes and looked straight at Callie. With Jasper standing behind, he couldn’t see her face.
The woman’s eyes said plainly that she very much doubted Callie’s act. With a sad look, almost resigned, she didn’t give away any doubts to the man but just drew the shoe on so carefully she might’ve been dressing a child.
“We want those diamonds because, well, because they belong to us.” The woman spoke, studying the boot as she laced it. “It eats at my man that he’s lost all that fortune. It’s like there’s no peace to be had as long as he knows it’s beyond his grasp.”
“Peace . . .” Callie watched the woman, who was kneeling as if in prayer. Her head was so low, Callie could see part of her hair, a faded red, with threads of gray that picked up glints from the lantern.
“Yes, I want peace,” the woman said.
The man’s hand came down on the woman’s shoulder. “Get away from her. You’ve fussed over her long enough.”
“You promised me you wouldn’t hurt her and now here she is, hurt pretty bad.”
“It’s not my fault she tripped over that rock.”
“Oh, yes it is.” The woman’s head came up just enough to look Callie in the eyes. She dropped her eyes very deliberately, down and to her right. Callie glanced at the spot where the woman had looked and saw her revolver stuck into the waistband of the woman’s skirt. Looking away quickly so Jasper wouldn’t notice, Callie saw the woman give her a tiny nod.
The strange calm that always came over Seth when he was in the cavern wouldn’t settle.
He craved it. He’d come home from the war but ended up in this cavern, not on his family’s ranch.
The cavern quieted the haunting cannons. The screams of dying men. The gunfire and blood and pain. The fire. Once he’d seen that mountain and knew how close he was to the cavern, he just had to go down. And once he was down there, the flames that burned inside his head died away, the noise faded. Then the man drugged him. Seth hadn’t figured that out until later. Most of that time was hazy, nightmarish.
But since then he’d been down in his cavern several times and the old peace had been there, waiting for him. But not today. He couldn’t be calm. He couldn’t let go of the world as usual. His eyes blinked suddenly as he remembered Callie. Like a flash of fire, the worry for her jolted him out of any wish for peace. He didn’t want peace. He wanted his wife.
Dear God, what am I doing?
Seth reached out for godly peace instead of seeking it in the cavern. Instantly he was washed with a serenity he’d never known. As if God himself had laid a hand on Seth’s frenetic, reckless mind and brought calm.
He raised his torch. The fire wasn’t an enemy; it was light and warmth. It gave him strength in a way Seth knew came straight from the Light of the World.
As if that Light illuminated his mind, suddenly he remembered everything. His memories of Callie were fully awakened. Callie caring for him after Andersonville. The almost crazed need he’d felt when she’d awakened him from a nightmare. How generously she stayed with him day and night. It seemed as if she never slept, never left his side. He remembered waking up one dark night with her in his arms, drawing him out of the nightmare and helping him to cling to sanity. A doctor had come into the room and found them in bed together. He’d demanded that Callie leave, dismissed her from the hospital for her improper behavior.
Seth had proposed on the spot, and she’d said yes immediately. They’d been married shortly after sunrise and then he’d left the hospital, leaning on her, although still on his own feet.
So many men were left behind without feet, without arms. He’d been lucky that way.
More came to him about the first nightmare after they were married, when he’d awakened and made love to his wife. He’d hated what he was putting her through, and so, thinking it would help him to sleep through the night, he’d reached for a bottle of laudanum.
He thought he could remember even more, yet he had to put that out of his mind for now. He needed to keep moving, keep searching for Callie.
His brothers would be coming. After a few frantic seconds of wondering how to let them know where he’d gone, he remembered the charcoal.
He’d used it, but carelessly. Now he’d leave a sign at every turn for his brothers. They were watchful men. They’d be along as fast as they could come and they’d notice the markings.
As he continued on, it seemed certain that Callie was headed straight for where they’d hidden the diamonds.
The kidnappers were forcing Callie to take them there.
Seth felt stronger with every step as he rushed forward now, racing to help his wife. His very tough wife. He picked up the pace, hoping she left something for him to do.
He wouldn’t mind being a hero in her eyes after all the times she’d been a hero in his.
Rafe went down the slope so fast he almost ran right over the edge of the pit where Seth had fallen. He scooted quickly along the side of it, then hurried on. When he got to the next turn, he saw that Seth had left a charcoal mark on a wall and had written SK beside the mark. His initials.
“I should have protected Seth and Callie better,” Rafe said. The thought hit Rafe so hard, he spoke it out loud. “Why did we have to move the cattle today? We knew those diamonds were trouble. We knew that varmint wouldn’t quit looking for ’em.”
Rafe swore an oath that once he rescued Callie and made sure Seth was out of this pit and Ethan was safe, he would be more vigilant. He’d hire more hands so no one ever went anywhere alone. He’d dynamite this cavern so no one would ever be threatened by it again. He’d get those diamonds, and no matter the weather, he’d make the ride to Colorado City and get the things out of his hair.
The more promises he made to himself, the more Rafe could hear just exactly how much he wanted to control the whole world. And he knew that wasn’t possible. Which was a pure blasted shame. Because if he controlled the world, things would start shaping up.
He rushed on, his heart beating with the frantic knowledge that he couldn’t control this and he couldn’t always protect his brothers. And he shouldn’t want to. That was a job best left to God. They were grown men, after all.
Even though Rafe knew all that, it didn’t slow his pace one bit.
Chapter
30
The woman had changed sides. At least Callie hoped she was reading the sign right. Honestly her head still hurt. It wasn’t easy to have so much to think about.
The woman finished lacing Callie’s boot and rose to her feet. She offered Callie an arm. Standing wasn’t what Callie wanted; she liked having her hand closer to her knife. But since she could think of no good
reason not to, she let herself be lifted. Jasper watched her stand with narrow, suspicious eyes.
Callie leaned on the wall, right under the fish . . . and the diamonds. There was a tunnel just a few feet to her right. She planned to dart down it if she got so much as a single chance.
Callie conjured some tears. “I . . . I’m new around here, you know. I don’t know what’s going on. Why did you take me?”
“You were bringing up the rear.”
With a frown Callie had to fight not to curl a fist. To think she’d been put through all of this because she chose the hardest job on the drive. It was purely annoying. She didn’t punch the man, though. It didn’t fit with her delicate maiden act.
“Jasper—”
A footstep echoed in the tunnel just off to Callie’s left. The instant she heard that, Callie moved. In one smooth motion she bent, grabbed her knife out of her boot, and threw it hard.
Jasper whirled toward the sound and that saved the polecat’s life.
The knife sunk deep into the arm that held the lantern. He staggered, lost his grip on the lantern, which then shattered on the stone floor. Flames whooshed high. Kerosene splashed wildly and the fire followed, running like a river of fire.
Jasper pulled the trigger when he fell. His gun thundered as he fired and fired and fired. A volley of bullets smashed into the wall of the cavern, hitting and ricocheting.
Callie grabbed the woman’s gun out of her skirt’s waistband and dived behind a stone that grew up in a cone shape from the floor. Callie slammed to the floor, her grip on her gun solid. She crawled forward and peeked around the base of the stone, taking aim. But before she could pull the trigger, she saw a bullet strike Jasper.
Bullets whined around the cave, hitting the stone near Callie and stinging her face. She saw something bright drop to the cave floor and recognized the cylinder that held the diamonds. A glance upward told her the little shelf where they’d been stashed had broken off.
Mary Connealy - [Kincaid Brides 03] Page 23
