“I know,” she replied. “I heard him and Sheriff Rupert talking outside. They aren’t as good friends as they seem to be. Martha found out about the treasure. Wendell killed her to keep her quiet. They’re circulating that story about him attacking her out of lust to cover up the real reason they killed her and your father.”
Jed started. “What?”
“It’s true,” Betsy replied. “I heard them discussing the whole thing. Wendell was acting under orders from his father.”
“Well, never mind about that now,” Jed replied. “I found out you went to Abigail’s laundry asking after the Sheriff’s activities. That’s what made me think he had something to do with this. He must have jumped you outside the door and brought you here.”
“Aren’t you running a terrible risk coming here?” she asked. “If they catch you…”
“They won’t catch me because we’re leaving.” He took her hand. “Let’s go.”
“How are we going to get out?” she asked. “Those windows are way too high.”
“I’ll boost you out first,” he replied.
“What about you? I’m not leaving you in here.”
He looked around. The high windows posed a serious problem. He might be able to boost her high enough for her to scramble out. Then he would be trapped in here with no way out himself.
“Maybe you could run home to the forge and come back with a rope,” he suggested.
“What if the Sheriff comes back before then?” she asked. “How will you deal with him?”
“I’ll be better able to deal with him than you will be,” he countered. “I’ve got my guns, anyway.”
“That won’t work,” Betsy replied. “I’m not leaving you down here to face them alone.”
“Hmm,” he muttered. “I should have thought of this before. I should have brought a rope with me.”
“You could go back for one,” she offered. “You could come back here, and then we’d both get out.”
“That won’t work, either. First of all, you’re not strong enough to boost me up, and I’m not leaving you alone down here, either. I just spent the last day and night searching for you. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
Betsy burst out laughing, she was so happy to see him. She didn’t care what else happened as long as they stayed together.
Jed, on the other hand, didn’t look happy at all. He surveyed the basement with a frown. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to boost you up. You’re going to go home to the forge and get a length of rope. You’ll find one in the stable, right next to the sliding door. Understand? Then you’ll come back here. You’ll tie the rope to the post outside that window and throw it in. Then I’ll climb out and away we’ll go.”
“I can’t do that,” Betsy began.
“You can, and you will,” Jed returned. “It’s the only way, and we have to move fast before someone comes and finds me here. Now go. I’m not asking. Just go.”
“Don’t make me leave you here,” she pleaded. “I just can’t stand it.”
“If you don’t want to see me killed, you better go now,” he replied. “Now come here and give me your foot.”
He hustled her to the window. “I don’t like this,” Betsy moaned. “I can’t stand leaving you after being on my own all night last night.”
“Just go,” he replied. “If you move fast, you’ll be back in no time, and we’ll be on our way home together.”
She raised her foot and set it into his laced fingers when a male voice boomed across the basement. “Neither of you is going anywhere.”
Jed and Betsy spun around to confront Sheriff Rupert standing in the door. He aimed a pistol at the pair. Jed’s hand flew to his holster, but the Sheriff raised his gun and cocked back the hammer. “You low-down, rotten…,” Jed hissed.
“You don’t want to do that,” Sheriff Rupert replied. “Just imagine what could go wrong if bullets start whizzing around the room. These walls are solid rock. Bullets will ricochet. Miss Betsy could suffer an unfortunate accident.”
“It wouldn’t be an accident, since you kidnapped her in broad daylight,” Jed shot back. Now get out of my way before you wind up dead like Wendell.”
“If anybody winds up dead here, it’ll be you, son,” the Sheriff replied. “You might be pretty good in a gun fight. I’ll admit I didn’t think you’d best Wendell, but even you must realize you couldn’t draw fast enough against me. You’d be dead before you got your gun out, and then this pretty little lady would be a widow after only two days of marriage. You don’t want that, now do you?”
Jed bared his teeth. He pushed Betsy behind him to protect her, and she was never so glad to oblige. She didn’t want to look at the Sheriff’s hideous face. He leered at the couple in malicious hatred. Betsy never knew anyone could be so hateful, not even her drunken, violent father.
The Sheriff waved his gun in Jed’s face. “Now, if you want to live to walk out of here, back up over there against the wall and turn around—both of you. Turn your faces to the wall and don’t try anything, or I’ll shoot you both down right here and now.”
Betsy clung to Jed. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t end this way. She couldn’t experience the heights of exhilaration when he came to rescue her, only to watch their chance slip away at the wrong end of a gun.
To her horror, Jed extended his arms on either side to back her up toward the wall. He couldn’t be capitulating like this. He couldn’t give in, but that’s exactly what he was doing. He steered her back toward the wall. Then he turned around to place both his hands against the cold, unforgiving stone.
Betsy’s heart sobbed when she saw that simple act of resignation. He was giving up. He stood with his back to the Sheriff and waited for the demon to come up behind him. Jed closed his eyes.
Betsy wanted to hide her face away in anguish. She, too, turned her back to Sheriff Rupert and waited for the inevitable. What would Sheriff Rupert do when he came up behind them? He would tie them up. Then he would summon Merrill Fox to take his revenge on Jed.
Sheriff Rupert walked across the basement. His boot heels clipped on the hard floor. He stopped behind Jed first. Then came the unmistakable sound of his gun sliding into its holster. Sheriff Rupert raised one hand and took hold of Jed’s wrist to wrestle his arm behind his back.
At that instant, Jed spun around fast. The Sheriff’s strength guided him. Jed let his left arm hook behind his back while his right whipped around. His fist slammed into Sheriff Rupert’s face and knocked the Sheriff back.
Sheriff Rupert stumbled, and Jed pounced on top of him with both fists flying. Betsy jumped back with a screech. The two men wrestled and rolled across the floor, but Jed had all the advantage. He pounded down on the Sheriff in deadly rage. He pummeled the Sheriff’s head into the floor again and again.
Betsy watched the fight in breathless anxiety. Could she be witnessing Jed’s downfall unfolding before her eyes? If Sheriff Rupert survived this, he would never let Jed get away with this. He would hound Jed until the end of his days to pay him back.
She held her hands to her face, but she couldn’t cover her eyes. As much as she wanted to hide and make it all go away, she had to watch.
Just when she thought Jed would pulverize the Sheriff to a pulp and leave him senseless on the floor, the Sheriff’s arm shot out. He seized Jed by the throat.
Jed’s fists kept flying, but his strength began to ebb. The punches no longer snapped the Sheriff’s head back and forth. The Sheriff glared up at him with murderous intent. Jed’s hair waved in his eyes. All of a sudden, he stopped punching. His hands flew to the Sheriff’s wrists, and he tried to pry the iron grip off his neck.
Jed shuddered there for a moment. He straddled the Sheriff’s prostrate body, but the tide had turned. The Sheriff’s arms shivered with the effort of cutting off Jed’s breath. Then, out of nowhere, the Sheriff launched himself off the floor. He tackled Jed back and lunged on top of him.
I
n front of Betsy’s eyes, the Sheriff slammed Jed onto his back and crushed his throat to suffocate him.
Chapter 11
Betsy charged the Sheriff. She screamed in fury and pounded him with her fists, but she couldn’t make a dent in his arms or head or back. He knelt over Jed and snarled in his face. He squeezed Jed’s neck in a white-knuckle grip.
Betsy raced all over the place, but she couldn’t stop this horror unfolding before her eyes. Her pathetic efforts couldn’t budge the Sheriff. He bared his teeth and hissed in Jed’s face. Jed stared up at him in horror. He couldn’t move. If he was going to live through this, Betsy had to do something.
She didn’t think. She groped for the first thing she touched, which turned out to be a wooden crate sitting on a shelf nearby. She grabbed it in both hands and brought it down with all her strength on the Sheriff’s head.
He folded in half and collapsed on top of Jed. Betsy snatched a handful of the Sheriff’s jacket and heaved him off. She tossed him aside and fell on her knees next to Jed. “Oh, my goodness! Are you all right! Oh, please say something to me. Tell me you’re all right. Tell me he didn’t kill you. Oh, please!”
Jed coughed. “It’s all right, darlin’. I’m not dead—not yet.”
Betsy threw herself on top of him in blessed relief. She couldn’t stop hugging him and kissing him. She probably did more to suffocate him than the Sheriff had.
Jed groaned and pushed her off. “It’s all right, darlin’. Give me some air.”
He rolled onto his side, and Betsy helped him sit up. He panted for breath. Betsy did her best to get him to his feet, but he shrugged her off. “We have to get out of here before Merrill shows up.”
“What are we going to do about him?” Betsy pointed to the Sheriff.
“He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.” Jed staggered across the basement. He picked up a length of the rope he untied from Betsy’s wrists and he wound it around the Sheriff’s wrists. He bound the man’s hands behind his back. Then he took the guns from the Sheriff’s holsters. “There. That ought to do it.”
“We still haven’t figured out how to get out of here,” Betsy remarked.
“That’s easy,” Jed replied. “We’re walking straight out through the front door.”
“What about Merrill?”
“Merrill won’t stop us,” he growled. “Merrill can’t do anything without his stooge Sheriff. Come on. We’re leaving, and nobody better get in our way.”
He took her hand and headed for the door. They both paused on the threshold to look back, but the Sheriff didn’t move. He was out cold.
Jed pulled the door closed and locked it with the key. He slipped the key into his pocket. “Don’t let me forget to close that window on our way home.”
He ushered her up a flight of stairs and out into a magnificent entrance foyer of what must have been a huge mansion. Decorative statues rested on carved pedestals, and paintings covered every wall. Betsy didn’t have time to admire the place, but Merrill Fox must have more money than the Western Union Bank.
Jed opened the carved front door, and sunshine blinded Betsy. She raised her hand to shield her eyes when she saw five men striding up the long driveway toward the house. Jed froze at her side, and her heart spasmed. She should have known she couldn’t just walk out of here, just like that. Merrill would never let them leave here alive.
Betsy didn’t recognize any of the men, but she didn’t have to. Their faces told her everything she needed to know. The men lined up in a semi-circle below the front steps. They all wore guns, and they fixed their flashing eyes on the couple.
Jed didn’t move to touch his guns. All the men sized each other up and gauged each other for a long tense moment. Two of the strangers fidgeted in anticipation, but the others didn’t move.
Betsy never encountered so much hostility in her life. She didn’t know the first thing about confronting armed men bent on killing her. She had no idea what to do. She trusted everything to Jed.
All at once, one of the fidgety men made a grab for his gun. All the others acted at once. Their hands whipped back to their holsters in a rush to get their guns out fast. Betsy expected Jed to pull his pistol and start shooting, too, but he didn’t. He dove sideways and slammed his hand against Betsy’s shoulder.
Betsy pitched over sideways and landed on her side on the porch in front of Merrill’s house. As luck would have it, a low stone wall surrounded the porch with steps leading down in the middle. The wall protected the pair from the hail of gunfire that peppered the house from below.
Jed covered Betsy with his body. Betsy hid under her arms and screamed, but she couldn’t hear her own voice over the noise. Hundreds of bullets hammered against the wall behind her.
Jed pulled his guns. With his body sheltered behind that wall, he raised his guns and fired without looking on the men below. He emptied both his pistols. Then he flipped over on his back to reload them from his belt.
He popped open the cylinder of one gun after the other. He dumped the empty shells onto the porch and slotted fresh ones into their chambers, but he didn’t fire. He thundered in Betsy’s ear. “We have to get out of here. They’ll gun us down if we stick around.”
“How?” she bellowed. “We can’t escape.”
He nodded behind her. “The door. We have to get into the house and find another way out.”
“Are you insane?” she shot back. “Merrill is in there.”
“He won’t come near us. He’s a coward. Why do you think he has to get all these other people to do his dirty work for him? He would never show his face to us, especially not if he thought there was any chance of us standing up to him.”
“So what do you suggest?” Betsy asked.
“I’ll shoot over the wall,” he replied. “Make a dive for the door. As soon as we get through it, I’ll shut and lock the door behind us. Then we’ll make a run for it.”
“That’s the most idiotic plan I ever heard,” Betsy roared. “They’ll just run in after us and shoot us down in the hall. You know they will.”
Jed grinned at her. “It might buy us enough time to find another way out the house. Besides, what else is there? Do you have a better idea?”
She looked around. Of course there was no other idea. It was their only shot at staying alive. “All right. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Just get ready to run,” he replied. “Did you hear how they stopped shooting when I fired over the wall? They had to take cover. They’ll do it again.”
“What about you?” she asked. “You’ll have to stop shooting to run inside.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “Just run. Don’t look back.”
“You’ll be shot down. You know that.”
“Just run. Don’t think about anything else.” He readied his guns. “On your mark…. Get set….”
She interrupted him by kissing him. For a brief second, their lips exchanged all the communication they could never share at a time like this. The next minute, Jed broke away. “Go!”
He stuck both guns over the wall and fired. He unloaded both cylinders on the men below. Sure enough, they stopped firing just long enough for Betsy to bolt across the porch. She raised her skirts and ran for all she was worth. She dove through the open door, back into Merrill Fox’s house.
She veered sideways into a sitting room off the entrance hall. At the same moment, Jed tumbled into the house behind her. Bullets pounded the wall and splintered the door frame. He had to turn around long enough to slam the door shut behind him and throw the bolt.
Betsy rushed to his side. Blood dripped on the carpet from his leg. “You’re hurt!” she cried.
“It’s nothing,” he replied. “I can still run. Now let’s find a way out of here.”
He grabbed her hand, and they ran back through the house the way they came when they escaped the basement. They glanced into every room. Already they heard the men pounding on the door trying to get it open.
Betsy’s
heart thundered in her head. Then she had an idea. “There must be a kitchen around here somewhere. We can find a way out through there.”
She had no notion where to find the kitchen, but she eventually turned up a grand dining room. From there, a few steps took her into the butler’s pantry and eventually the kitchen itself.
A bony lady in a white cap and streaked apron sweated over the cookstove. She started back in surprise when Jed and Betsy entered. Betsy didn’t have time to explain. She and Jed hurried out the back door.
The world of blue sky and sunshine waited for them out there, but the minute they showed their faces in the door, three of the men from the front door headed straight for them. They must have guessed Jed and Betsy would try to find the kitchen.
Jed poked his head through the door and ducked back inside. “Looks like the jig is up, darlin’. We had a pretty good run, but Merrill outfoxed us after all. We might as well call it a day.”
“Call it a day!” Betsy cried. “You mean give up. We’re not doing that. There has to be a way out of here.”
“I might be able to get away by myself, but not with a lady hanging around,” he returned. “You couldn’t run fast enough. They would catch you, and I wouldn’t want you getting hurt. Turn yourself over to them and we’ll hope for the best.”
She rounded on him in fury. “You are NOT seriously telling me to hand myself over to those thugs. You know Merrill will do the worst he can to me to get back at you. If there’s a chance to get out of here, we’re taking it. You think I couldn’t run fast enough? You’re gonna find out I’m not the wallflower you thought I was. Now tell me what you have in mind, because anything you can do, I can do, too.”
He shook his head and turned away.
She grabbed his arm and spun him around fast. “What is it? You better start talking, ‘cuz we don’t have a lot of time.” She set her hands on her hips and waited.
“All right,” he replied. “I’ll tell you, and then you’ll realize how impossible it is. Do you see that wagon over there?”
He pointed to a wagon hitched to two horses. It sat in the sun outside the stable across the yard. At first, Betsy didn’t understand.
The Blacksmith's Bride (Brides 0f Brimstone Book 1) Page 7
