Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Samantha walked or crawled the entire perimeter of the cavern and confirmed there was no way out. Except down into the water, which would probably be icy cold.

  A loud grating sound started again; the earth shook beneath her. Another earthquake. Terror for her son gripped her. Nicholas! I have to find Nicholas!

  With the ground shaking all around her, Samantha realized the true depths of her helplessness. She couldn’t save Nicholas or herself. She was trapped in this mountain cavern; the land she loved was going to bury her.

  With death at hand, the real import of Steve’s words struck home for her. We come into this world empty-handed, and we go out the same way. He was right. She had only thought she owned this land. In reality it had entrapped her, and now it was about to destroy her. The land was vastly more powerful. And more vengeful. The shaking became more violent, and she hated the land suddenly, with a passion she found almost incredible. Hatred welled up in her, and she stood and screamed furiously into the inky darkness. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  As suddenly as the shaking had started, it stopped. Samantha sat down abruptly and waited to see if it was going to start again. When it didn’t, she crawled to the edge of the chasm and looked down. She still couldn’t see anything. But she could sense that the sides of the chasm dropped straight down. The water continued to slip past the rocky walls with its own muted roar.

  She picked up a small rock and threw it at the other side of the chasm. It cracked against the rock, sounding ten or twelve feet away. This sheer drop might go straight down for a while and then be interrupted by a hard outcropping of rock, which would mean certain death for her.

  She picked up more rocks and kept throwing them until she felt fairly certain the walls were sheer and straight. She might jump into the water and survive. If she stayed here, she was surely going to die.

  Sitting in the cold darkness she hugged her knees and wished she were home with Nicholas. He’s probably home by now, eating in the kitchen with Juana. He’ll probably do exactly what I did as a child. He’ll wake up, and I won’t be there, ever again. And he’ll never forgive me.

  Samantha didn’t know where that thought had come from. It had oozed out of the depths of her. She tried to reject it, but it felt like truth. And then she realized that Aunt Elizabeth might have been right. Her mother and father might have loved her.

  And worse yet, if Nicholas lived, he might grow up in that same horrible way, hating her for dying and leaving him.

  That thought was too horrible. Samantha struggled into a standing position. She wouldn’t give up the way her mother and father had. She would keep trying to get back to her son until she died or found him.

  Samantha peered over the cliff and listened to the sound of the water far below. She weighed her sense of urgency to get back to Nicholas against her fear. The need to reach Nicholas was greater. She took off her riding skirt and pantaloons and wrapped them into a ball. She tied the ends of the pants around the ball to hold it tightly together. Shivering at her nakedness, holding the wad of clothing, she took a deep breath and stepped over the side of the cliff.

  It helped to scream. Screaming gave her something to do while she waited to see how this was going to come out. But she fell for so long her heart almost stopped.

  She hit the water so hard she went all the way to the bottom and stayed there a moment before she gathered her wits and pushed against it to surge to the surface and sputter. Temporarily, the wad of clothing helped keep her afloat. But soon it would become waterlogged and sink.

  The water was icy cold. She relaxed and let the current take her downstream. She wouldn’t last long in such cold water. She had to find a way out quickly or die.

  With the roar of the water filling her ears and its icy chill burning her skin, she rounded a bend in the channel. The roar was louder here, as if she was approaching a waterfall or rapids, but it was still too dark to see.

  Samantha tried to make her way to the side. She wanted to stop herself from being pulled over a waterfall, if that’s what was coming up, but the water speeded up. The roar grew louder. There was nothing to hang on to, no turning back. The current had her. At least the water didn’t feel cold anymore.

  One second she was floating level, the next she was falling. She screamed as she was swept over a small waterfall. All the water in the world seemed to fall on her head. Samantha went down and down…until her lungs hurt and she vowed that if she got out of this she wouldn’t scream next time. It wasted too much breath and energy.

  Her feet touched bottom. She pushed herself away from the falling water and up toward air. She surfaced, sucked in air, and tried to remember her promise as the icy water carried her toward another waterfall.

  The next drop-off was less steep. She scraped bottom as she fell over the rocks. This time, mouth tightly shut, she went down and used the bottom to launch herself into a dive that took her farther away from the falling water. Her tactic saved her from being pounded under the water and driven to the bottom.

  Away from the waterfall, the current slowed. She floated in smooth water. The roar seemed fainter now, and behind her. Samantha strained her ears to hear if that sound hid another roar ahead of her, but she couldn’t tell. Maybe it was over…

  She rounded another bend in the channel and suddenly the darkness thinned. She was thrilled to be able to see, even if only faint outlines. She couldn’t tell where the light was coming from, but its first faint rays illuminated a sheer rock wall straight ahead of her. Either the water flowed beneath it or it was a sheer dropoff that didn’t reach the wall at all. If the stream went underground would it ever resurface? The water seemed to speed up as it neared whatever it was.

  Samantha pushed herself to the side of the channel and grabbed a cold, wet rock protruding over the water. The current pulled at her stronger now, trying to drag her back into the center, but she held on hard.

  Panting, she used her skirt like a thick rope. She tossed it at a boulder and pulled herself up onto a narrow ledge next to a wall that soared straight up.

  No way out. She scanned the other side of the river canyon. It looked as if the mountain had split in two; the water had taken the only course it could—down into the bowels of the Earth.

  The air felt colder than the water. Samantha shivered on the wet rock. At least her shoes were still laced tightly to her ankles.

  She peered at the water and the rock until she realized that the water flowed under the sheer face of the rock. It wasn’t a waterfall, but it might hold her under water for seconds or minutes. Or the water might go straight down. Fear quickened in her. She rested for a moment, looked around, but found no other way out.

  Samantha was terrified of getting back in the icy water. But she realized she had two choices. She could die gloriously, in a valiant attempt to get back to Nicholas. Or she could die miserably, huddled on this rock, alone, cold, hungry, and cowardly.

  She dropped her clothing into the water to make its own way and slipped in beside it. The water felt warm to her now. If only that false feeling of warmth would last.

  She floated for a moment until she was almost to the rock wall. Then she gulped in a lungful of air and ducked just in time to keep her head from being banged against it. The downward current caught her and pulled her under. Count, she told herself. It’ll give you something to do. One. Two. Three. The water was icy, dark, claustrophobic. Her lungs ached for air, but her mind kept counting. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

  Eight. Her lungs burned. She looked up, but could see nothing but water above her. She had been pulled into inky darkness. Water everywhere. Light nowhere. Nine. Ten. Eleven. The pain in her chest was unbearable. She couldn’t remember the next number.

  Arden Chandler stopped what he was doing to listen. Sounded like cavalry coming. He stood up and looked out the window, though with the wind blowing it did little good.

  Finally he saw a patrol of cavalry headed straight toward him. He walked to th
e front door, threw it open, and stepped outside, squinting against a blast of sand that hit him. He fought the door closed, so Selena wouldn’t yell at him, and waited. Soon the patrol stopped in front of him.

  “Captain! Come in out of this wind!”

  Rathwick dismounted and followed Chandler inside. “Name’s Rathwick,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ve been meaning to stop by and introduce myself.”

  “Chandler. Arden Chandler. Good to finally meet you, though we haven’t been here that long that you need to apologize. What brings you out in miserable weather like this?”

  “Mrs. Forrester’s son ran away just before the storm let loose. He’s a lunger. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

  “Nope. Not a thing. You don’t think he’d come into the desert do you?”

  “Sheridan went north. We fanned out in the other direction, just in case.”

  “Sheridan?”

  “He’s Mrs. Forrester’s builder.”

  “I thought Sheridan went on to Texas?”

  “No, he stayed on to build a house on the south face of Boston House Mountain, south of the Dart ranch.”

  “Dart?”

  “You don’t get around much, do you?” Rathwick asked, wiping sand off his face with the back of his arm.

  “No,” Chandler said, with a sigh. “The problems here are so overwhelming they keep us tied down. When we do get out, we go to Tucson, which is closer. We know a few folks that way. Tell me about this Dart ranch.”

  “Northeast of here. Run by Chila Dart and her boy, Joe.”

  Chandler felt dizzy. “Chila Elaine Dart?”

  “Could be I’ve heard it that way. Is something wrong?” he asked, concerned at the way Chandler paled.

  “Which direction would that Forrester ranch be, exactly?”

  Rathwick pointed east. “About ten miles.”

  “And the Dart ranch is just north of it? You wouldn’t happen to be going that way, would you?”

  “Yes. We’ve come far enough in this direction.”

  “I want to see Sheridan. You mind if I ride along with you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Thank you, Captain. You need anything before we go?”

  “No, thanks. We’ve probably got more than you.”

  Arden Chandler grabbed his jacket, his revolver, and a handful of biscuits and bacon for his saddlebag. He saddled a horse. And while the men watered their horses from the trough he ran to his nearest Indian neighbor and asked the woman there to find Selena and tell her he’d gone.

  It was a crazy thing to do, riding off into the desert in a windstorm, but he had a bad feeling that was getting worse by the minute. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but it was no accident he’d just been told where he could find both Steve Sheridan and Chila Dart.

  Samantha staggered out of the water and sagged over a rock with her head and shoulders hanging upside down. Water gushed out of her. She coughed and vomited another gush of water.

  Panting, she struggled into a sitting position on the rock and noticed her riding skirt float past. In spite of her exhaustion, she slogged into the water and pulled it out.

  “I made it,” she whispered.

  She laid the skirt over a boulder and sat down until her lungs stopped hurting. Finally able to move again, she wrung the water out of her skirt, put it on, and trudged out into the hidden valley. Yellow tufts of dead grass stretched out ahead of her. The sky was heavy with sand kicked up by the passing storm, but it was lighter now in the east, signaling sunrise.

  Samantha sank down on the grass and lay back. Her blouse was torn in a dozen places. One sleeve hung by a few threads. Her skirt was torn, too. An angry red scratch burned her right arm. She was tired, but her sense of urgency was stronger. Nicholas might still be lost.

  She climbed uphill through dense brush that cut off her view of the valley floor. Sweat trickled down her face. Panting, Samantha climbed up the last incline and dropped to her knees on the ground. At first nothing registered in her. Then slowly she realized that rocks now covered the back side of the mountain. There was no way to get back into the cave that led to freedom.

  The sky was just turning pink as she scanned the rim of the valley, searching for the shortest way out. The earthquake appeared to have lowered the crest to the south. It looked like a possible escape route now. She decided on a route and began to bushwhack toward it.

  “Tie his hands,” Chila Dart ordered. She had changed into men’s pants. Her gray hair was braided down her back.

  Ham Russell complied. When Steve was securely trussed, Ham helped him back onto his horse.

  “Now tie his legs so he can’t kick.” When that was done, she walked over and pulled on heavy gloves. Then she reached into a sack she carried and pulled out what looked like weeds. She moved out of Steve’s range of vision, then he felt a sharp pain on his right wrist, then his left. It felt as if he was being stung by a dozen bees.

  “Ma!” Joe Dart stepped out onto the porch, glanced at Steve, and then at his mother. “That’s a hell of a thing to do to a man—”

  “You stay out of this, darlin’!”

  “Ma, please!” Joe Dart sounded desperate.

  “For once in your life, would you just trust me?” Chila tugged at the ropes holding Steve’s arms behind his back. “Good,” she muttered.

  A man led a horse from the barn for her. She mounted like a man, then led the way around the house and toward the mountain behind the Dart ranch.

  Roy Bowles took Steve’s reins. Steve looked back at Joe and saw Dart’s eyes were filled with regret and helplessness—but not enough to do anything about what was happening. Steve tried to see his wrists, to find out where that fiery pain was coming from, but he couldn’t see behind him.

  They rode around the house and urged the animals up the side of the mountain. Steve lost track of time. Between sweating with the pain, which was growing worse all the time, and leaning forward to help the strange horse on the steep places, he watched for an opportunity to escape.

  But Russell and Bowles made no mistakes. Russell carried a shotgun across his saddle, pointed at Steve. Bowles carried a rifle. If the shotgun missed, the rifle might not. Their combined presence discouraged him from taking any uncertain opportunities.

  At last they rode into a small clearing. The pasture was surrounded by scrub pines through which the wind howled. In the middle of the pasture a pale wooden structure rose out of the yellow knee-high grass. It was surrounded by a big pile of brush. A cross and a bonfire. Steve realized Chila Dart was crazier than he’d thought.

  “Tie him up there,” Chila said.

  Rough hands jerked Steve down off his horse. The wide barrel of a shotgun in his ribs urged him forward. Steve stopped. The shotgun prodded him.

  “Get up there,” Russell growled.

  “No, thanks.” A sharp pain hit the back of his head. Steve could feel his knees buckle. He tried to hold himself up, but nothing worked anymore.

  He awoke with his arms aching dully. He tried to move them to relieve the ache, then he saw that they were tied to the cross beams, his legs to the main support.

  Chila Dart pulled a wooden step stool around behind him, near the piled wood, and climbed up it. Steve knew she was moving by the rustling of cloth, but he couldn’t tell what she was doing. He could turn his head to try and see, but since he was helpless, he felt content to wait for bad news.

  Something dropped over his forehead. A sting—like the ones on his wrists—caused him to jerk. The thing tightened against his forehead and the intense sting was repeated in a dozen places.

  “Uhhhhh…” Pain jolted through him. His body jerked. With the part of his mind that still worked, he finally recognized the sting of nettles.

  “Good,” Chila whispered, stroking Denny’s forehead with her gloved hand. She stayed behind him, because she didn’t want to take any chances on his giving her the evil eye and getting her in his control.

  “That feel tight enough?”
she asked.

  Steve panted to keep from crying out. His forehead was more sensitive than his wrists apparently. The pain came in waves, each more painful and dizzying than the last.

  “Why…are you…doing this?” he asked.

  “To stop you.” She pressed something cold against his ear; his body jerked again.

  “I never saw you…before I rode into Picket Post. Why are you doing this?”

  “You killed my baby! Now the Forrester boy is missing!”

  “Nicholas…”

  She dropped another crown of stinging nettles over his head and tightened it around his neck.

  “Unnnnn…” He jerked so hard the jerking hurt almost as much as the nettles. Pain was so intense, its source got lost.

  “Nicholas”—he panted—“is lost…His…mother…is looking—” Chila’s gloved hand pressed the nettles against his forehead. “Unnnnhh…” Steve almost lost consciousness. He fought the blackness, which part of him wanted and part didn’t. “She…needs…help!”

  “Shut up!” Chila screamed into his ear, causing that to hurt, too. “You’re trying to trick me.” She grabbed his sleeve and tore it loose from his shirt. Taking another strand of the stinging nettles and puncture vines she had sewn around strands of cotton, she wrapped it around his arm to weaken his power, so he would not be able to trick her or anyone else.

  “Unnn!” Steve jerked. “Nicholas needs your help. Instead of wasting…your time here—” She pressed them hard against his arm. “Ahhhh!” Steve gritted his teeth against the waves of fire and ice burning along his nerves.

  “Give me your skinning knife,” Chila yelled. Steve refused to think what she was going to do next. He knew he needed to convince her she had the wrong man, but she didn’t seem interested in whether he was or not.

  She moved the steps around to the front of him. He turned his head slightly; the needle-shaped hairs of the nettles bored into his flesh, renewing the viciousness of their sting. His whole body felt like an open wound.

  Chila used the knife to cut off the legs of his pants. Cold wind further confused his senses. He shivered.