River 0f Death: Cassandra Wilde Adult Western (Half Breed Haven Book 13)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  The minute that they heard the crash, she was sure they would be hot on her trail. She could try to outrun them, but they had guns, and if they caught sight of her, they would likely weight her down with lead this time rather than capture her. One thing was clear; she needed her guns back. When they'd first forced her into the house, Coltrane had stripped her of the gun belt and tossed it on a couch in the living room they passed through to get to the adjoining bell foundry where she had been bound. Now there was only one way to get them.

  Cassandra bolted to the well and tossed one leg over the side and then the next. She hastily released the catch, and the bucket on the rope dropped away, landing below in a splash. Her strong arms reached out for the rope gripping it, and then she began to lower herself out of sight. As she reached the bottom and found herself standing in knee-deep, chilly water, she knew she had made it just in time, as above she heard the sound of the front door flying open. She let go of the rope, so it would be stark still and not draw the men’s attention. Standing motionless, she listened to the pure rage unleashed above her.

  “Get her Coltrane, god damn it! This time put a bullet between her eyes!” Holt was shouting. “Count on it!” came an equally furious reply.

  The sound of footsteps receding away buoyed her heart, but then a cloud dropped back down over her at the sound of the front door closing. Holt had gone back inside instead of joining the pursuit! Cassandra bared her teeth in a frown that she knew Lijuan would have felt right at home giving. She’d wanted the house empty when she went back in for her guns!

  With nothing she could do about it, she quickly scrambled back up the rope and made her way back into the house, treading lightly, not knowing where Holt might be at any given moment. Cassandra made her way past the still-locked kitchen door, down the short hallway, and into the living room with its moth-eaten couch and heaps of clutter everywhere. Truly, Holt was a dreadful housekeeper. Relieved to find the door to the foundry closed, she dashed for her discarded guns and cinched the belt around her waist. Near the couch was the entry into the shop, and she heard Holt's footsteps, moving about.

  For the briefest of moments, she'd considered bursting into the bell foundry and apprehending Holt, but she knew it would be wiser to deal with Coltrane first. The man was as dangerous as the day was long, and it was time to take him out of the equation. For a moment, she halted by the door. The footsteps had stopped, and only complete silence emitted from beyond the door. That wasn't important. What was right now was arresting the fugitive California was being turned upside down in search of. Spinning around, Cassandra raced back down the hallway until she was clear of the house and turned in pursuit of the man who had robbed the San Francisco Mint blind.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jeb Holt had a very good reason for having stopped moving about the bell foundry, leaving it in the silence that Cassandra had heard. Even as one woman hustled away from the building, another had gained entry. Standing in Holt’s workshop with a Winchester rifle trained on him with rock-steady hands was Lijuan Wilde. The man’s face was turning a deep shade of crimson as he stood there with his hands in the air. The look on Lijuan’s face was a counterpoint to his with a self-satisfied smirk for having gotten the drop on the man.

  Her glee was a recent development and quite a change from the constant clenching of her jaws that had accompanied her the past hour from the stress of seeing her beloved sister taken hostage. She was going to see Cassandra rescued. There had been no question about that. It was just a question of how she was going to penetrate the bell foundry to do so. Earlier her canvassing of the back of the Holt residence had paid quick dividends. Her search had been over almost before it began.

  As Cassandra had instructed, she’d reached the end of the ridge and made her way down the gentle slope until she was at the edge of the Colorado and began sneaking her way towards the bell foundry. The building was built atop a bank, and it had provided excellent cover for anyone who happened to be on the shore. The only way she could have been spotted was through one of the few windows on the back of the house or from the roof. The one-story bell foundry addition she couldn’t even see over the bank, and that meant no one in it could see her either.

  She’d taken note of the two vessels tied to the dock, but her focus had immediately shifted to the little shack-like structure. The rear part of the construction was partially built directly into the river bank, and it held a single door with a padlock on it. Her eyes took in the worn path leading from the door to the dock. Instantly, she saw it for what it was. It had to be an entrance to a tunnel leading to the bell foundry which Holt had likely used back in the day to get his bells down to any waiting boats on the river for transport. Now, here in the present day, it had become clear to her that it had been pressed back into service to get the stolen silver up to the workshop. Quickly, she had hoofed it back up onto the ridge to await Cassandra. Curious to see how her older sister was making up, she had begun observing through the field glasses until she’d seen Cassie’s desperate attempt to escape the roof and her capture.

  Lijuan had retreated to where Lily and Kong were tied up, intent on retrieving her Winchester, wanting to have a repeater rifle at her disposal, as she could be going up against an unknown number of bandits. As she had liberated her rifle from its sheath, she had made her choice. Her other option had been to attempt to enter through the trap door she had seen Cassandra discover, reasoning that Coltrane and his gang wouldn't suspect someone making a second attempt at entry the same way. Lijuan dismissed that because it was too risky making that assumption. No, the best way would be for her to get inside through an entry that those inside would believe was locked … and locked it was.

  That had been the one fly in the ointment to her plan to use the tunnel as an entry point. The padlock would be the loser when she brought her favored weapon to bear, the twelve-inch-long blacksmith’s hammer that rested in a loop on her belt. The problem was, the noise it would make would give her away. Frustration raged within her as she had run her hand through her blackish/brown hair and surrendered to the fact there was only one thing she could do.

  Lijuan had waited impatiently until only a few minutes before the hour to make her way down to stand outside the door she believed led to a tunnel. It had been less than an hour’s wait, but truly, it had felt like an eternity out of her concern for Cassandra. She had been biting her lips the whole time awash in guilt. Anything could be happening to Cassandra as she was forced to wait. Her only consolation was how adept her sister was at handling situations like this, having been a lawman for so long now and surviving some scrapes that would have sent most people on a date with a pine box.

  Finally, the top of the hour drew close, and she stood poised with her hammer clutched in her right hand. As soon as the first chime of the bell atop the roof rang out, she delivered a thunderous blow down on the padlock. With the second ring of the bell and the fall of her hammer, the clasp began to fail, and as the bell finished sounding off the three o’clock hour, her hammer smashed it open, and it fell to the ground. Lijuan was certain that the loud bell had obscured the hammer’s blows, and now the time was at hand to come to Cassandra’s rescue.

  Lijuan had dropped her hammer back in its loop, picked up the rifle, and used the end of the barrel to gently nudge the door open, first a crack, and then a little wider until it swung completely open. Two things had hit her almost simultaneously. First, a rank smell came rolling out the tunnel that made her crinkle her nose, but that was the only reaction she had time for as a swarm of bottle flies came bursting out of the black maw that lay ahead. Lijuan jammed her eyes shut and ducked her head down as they bounced off her face as the swarm scattered.

  Once their buzzing had faded away as they flew off, she silently voiced a few choice swear words that would have been right at home in any rough and tumble saloon in the West. Gripping the rifle, she had made her way into the tunnel as the smell continued to grow stronger. As she made her way through the brick-lined
tunnel, she noticed a door to the right. In the dim light, she had looked through a little window in the door that held no glass and saw that it was some manner of empty storage room. Perhaps here Holt had kept some of his bell-making raw material.

  A short way further down the tunnel, she saw another doorway, this time to the left, and it was open. The stench seemed to be almost beyond measure now, and she stopped and peered into the storage room. In the near blackness, she could make out three figures sprawled on the floor being scurried over by small, dark forms that could only be rats. Lijuan spun away, and as tough as she was, she couldn’t fight it. She felt a surge from her stomach, and heaving, she returned the breakfast she’d consumed that morning. Lijuan had used the back of her hand to wipe across her lips and hastened away from the three decomposing corpses.

  So much for honor among thieves, she thought. Taking along the Winchester had been rendered moot as she did not doubt that the trio of rotting, stinking carcasses was the signpost of a double cross of his gang by Coltrane, no doubt to increase his share of the profits. Happily, she had quickly come to the end of the tunnel where a set of five wooden stairs led up to a large rectangular door in the ceiling.

  Lijuan had listened for a moment but had heard nothing from above. Perhaps, she had reasoned, the men were not in the bell foundry at the moment working on smelting. They certainly had been before, given the black smoke that had been churning out of the chimney they’d seen earlier. Dread had mushroomed through her, though, because if they weren’t working, they could be attempting to do some very bad things to Cassandra. Throwing caution to the wind, she grabbed the handle, slowly raised the door, and peered out. She had seen no sign of the men, but she had been greeted by the perplexing sight of a fellow Chinese sitting at a table painting something. The woman had frozen with a brush in her hand, her eyes had grown wide in astonishment.

  Lijuan had quickly slid the rifle out onto the floor before she scrambled out of the tunnel and gently lowered the door to the floor noiselessly to not alert anyone, leaving it open in case a hasty retreat was called for. Plucking the rifle back up in her hands, she raced over to the table. The woman's look of shock had abated, replaced by sorrow and tears welling up in her eyes, and she had begun to pepper Lijuan with words spoken in the Chinese language. It had taken Lijuan a moment to sort of whether it was Mandarin or Cantonese, both of which Old Mrs. Chow had taught her in her youth.

  The woman’s rapid-fire words had one refrain to them. To be rescued and be freed from the horrible men that had captured her and forced her to work. Lijuan’s eyes had narrowed, and she’d asked what else they had done to her. She had seen the shame emblazoned on the woman’s face when she said the older of the two men had made her do things when she wasn’t working, things that she couldn’t even describe. Lijuan’s eyes grew cold and flinty; she knew full well what those things had been. The woman again begged her for rescue. Her reassuring response had managed to bring hope to the woman’s tearful eyes and even the ghost of a smile, as she had said that she was already rescued, and the only thing left was payback.

  The sound of a man’s clomping boots approaching from beyond a door had snapped Lijuan into action. She had ducked behind a crate, taking a moment to peer in at the bars of silver within it, just before Holt entered and closed the door behind him. Lijuan’s lips had curled back in a smile as the man had planted his hands on his hips and was shaking his head muttering, “Fucking blonde! I can’t believe she got away!” A thrill swept through Lijuan, knowing that was so Cassandra to have engineered her own escape. She also knew that her foray into the bell foundry hadn’t been for naught, however, especially given how the man suddenly stiffened and looked at the Chinese woman sitting at the table, stock still.

  “Why aren’t you working? Get busy, you yellow bitch, or I’ll make you scream later when you’re in my bed!” When she didn’t move, he had charged over to the table and leaned in on his knuckles. If Lijuan could have seen his face, it would have been one of utter puzzlement as to why the Chinese woman was no longer cowering as she had done for weeks since they had stolen her away from a coolie camp working on a nearby railroad project.

  The man's hand had raised in the air about to deliver a devastating slap when he froze, the open trap door he’s swept past suddenly registering in his mind, but it was too late. Lijuan had coolly finished creeping from her place of concealment to draw up and jam the barrel of the repeater rifle against the base of his skull. In a low voice, she ordered him to back up slowly and move away from the woman at the table. Slowly, the man had walked backward, and Lijuan kept pace walking backward as well until they were ten feet away from the woman. For a moment she thought she heard faint footsteps on the other side of the door leading into the forge, but they quickly receded. That had been when she ordered Holt to turn around.

  CHAPTER 7

  Now they stood there facing each other, Holt with his scarlet face and she with her look of joyful contempt. The man pinched his eyebrows together and sneered at her.

  “Well, what do you know? Another one of you yellow bitches. You come all the way from that railroad camp to rescue her? That what you and that big-titted blonde are doing here? How did you track us?” She ignored him, and that seemed to stoke his fury even further.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you speak English, chink? At least that bird over there can say a few words. Guess you’re an ignorant one. I swear you yellow devils are almost as dumb as the nig-”

  “Shut the fuck up!” she screamed, cocking the rifle. Lijuan had had enough of this man. The brutality he had inflicted on his captive, now him insulting her people and those of her sister Honor Elizabeth who she so dearly loved. No more, she wouldn’t allow it.

  The man’s captive suddenly began screaming in her native tongue how Coltrane and Holt had killed her brother when they’d broken into their home to abduct her.

  “Real tough hombre, huh? Murdering people, raping a defenseless woman? Let’s see how you handle yourself against one who can defend herself!”

  The sneer on the man’s face returned having gotten over his shock at her defiance. He spat in her direction. “The only thing bigger than your talk, little China girl, is them tits of yours. I betcha wouldn’t be talking big if you weren’t toting a shooting iron.”

  “You’d bet wrong, you piece of shit. I don’t need weapons to whup the likes of you,” she snarled as she shoved the rifle into the hands of the other woman and then made a show of emptying the bullets out of her pistol. “If his friend comes through that door, shoot him dead,” she told her in Chinese as she turned her attention back to the grizzled bell maker. Pulling her hammer out, she held it out in front of her before releasing it from her fingers where it clattered to the floor.

  “Okay, broomtail. I’ve got no weapons. You ready to die for your part in kidnapping and murder?”

  Holt blinked in astonishment. “You think you’re going to beat me in a fight?”

  “I know I am,” Lijuan said, bravado ringing out her in her voice. Another voice, an inner one, however, was telling her this wasn’t one of her best ideas, and she was sure all three of her sisters would have agreed as well. Still, as tempting as it was, she couldn’t just kill the man in cold blood by pulling a trigger. Picking a fight with him would give her an opening to stay on the right side of that very thin line of morality she was always dancing on. She knew she would forever be different from Cassandra, Honor Elizabeth, and Catalina up on their high horses. Scum of the earth like this didn’t deserve their day in court. She was quite happy to be the man’s judge, jury, and executioner.

  “You damn Orientals really are an ignorant lot. You make Mexicans seem like they’ve got brains. I-”

  Lijuan kicked over the bracket used to move the vat around in the bell foundry that was leaning up against one of the floor-to-ceiling pillars. “Are you going to talk, or are you going to fight?”

  “Fight!” he frothed as he lunged at her with a sledgehammer-like fist, b
ut she feinted to one side, and he smashed it into the pillar, an angry grunt bursting from between his lips. He shook his hand, flexing his fingers, and pivoted around to rush at her, but again she managed to avoid the blow he lashed out at her. Her luck ran out, though, because the man’s other fist was already in motion and clipped her on the side of the head. As she lost her footing, she heard the prisoner scream in concern.

  Lijuan landed on her ass and looked up as Holt was instantly above her. The man was just raising his foot over her head with the explicit intention of mashing her skull against the floor of his workshop when she used her own foot. Coiling it backward and releasing it like a spring, she landed a direct hit on the ankle of the leg he was balancing on. A second later, he struck the ground landing next to her on his back. Lijuan lost no time raising her elbow and bringing it down on the man's throat. As Holt made a gurgling sound mixed with a bellow of rage as he fought for breath, she sprang back up.

  Panting, the man managed to regain his feet as well glowering at her, his lips twisted in an ugly, hate-filled snarl as the squat man and the petite Asian squared off once more. For a good minute or so, the pair stood toe to toe swinging punches at each other, but neither of the sweating, panting fighters were able to take down their intended target. The agile young woman continued to duck and parry while the bulky man had put his meaty forearms to use deflecting the blows she was trying to land on him. It was the kind of fight that ordinarily would have set a barroom roaring in excitement, taking bets on the winner, but here in the bell foundry it was only an audience of one, and the only sounds were the opponent’s grunts of exertion as they tried to score a knockout blow.

  Lijuan didn’t want to admit it, but she was tiring. She needed to end this sooner rather than later. This was underscored by the sudden sound of gunplay coming from somewhere outside the house. It was Cassandra, there was no question in her mind, and she had to find out what was happening with her sister. Taking a chance, she stepped closer to Holt. She was preparing to draw on more of the Far East fighting skills that had so impressed her father when he had witnessed them during his brief time with her mother. So remarkable they had been that Whip Wilde had insisted she be trained in them by Mr. Chow, the ranch’s handyman. Lijuan lashed out, the palm of her left hand shot upward breaking the man’s nose while her right hand pile-drove him in the stomach. The blow had no effect, but still, she grinned as she drew backward seeing blood flowing freely from both the man’s nostrils.