Attached to the back of the guard’s van were three freight wagons, all closed in except for an open section at the top. Perfect for her needs. Another furtive look around and she crept over to the last wagon and tried the door. It wouldn’t open. Nervous perspiration broke out on her brow.
She sneaked along the platform and tried the second wagon, sending up a silent prayer to God above. It opened with a grinding sound. Hesitating for a moment or two, she tossed in her bedroll and clambered on board, sliding the door shut behind her. Made it. She staggered over to the farthermost corner and slumped against the wall.
The wagon was empty thank goodness. Her heart’s frantic beating slowed down until it was normal. She would never make a criminal she just didn’t have the nerve for it. A large piece of canvas lay on the floor. She picked it up and hid under it in case some railway worker peered in before the train departed.
Time passed, she didn’t know how long, although she could now hear male and female voices. Sounded like passengers were starting to board.
A sudden loud click caused fear to lodge in her throat. Someone had locked the door. Visions of suffocating, dying of thirst and hunger while locked up in here had tears springing to her eyes and a sick feeling invading her stomach. You fool. You’re not trapped she scolded herself. You could easily climb through the gap near the roof if you had to.
It was ridiculous the way these crazy thoughts buzzed around in her head. She was obviously more agitated than what she’d realized. If only the train would start moving, she could crawl out from under the smelly canvas.
A whistle pierced the air followed by a whoosh of steam and with a groan they slowly started to move forward. She kicked the canvas away, trying not to think of where it might have been and what it had once covered.
The train started to pick up speed, she could tell by the slight swaying of the wagon and the clatter of wheels on the steel rails. Her eyes felt sore and gritty as she had barely slept last night, too afraid of sleeping in. What was she heading into? What fate awaited her in Austin?
Chapter Five
Marshal Kyle Lovitt watched the trail from behind a rocky outcrop. Seth Arnold, and his notorious partner, Black Bart, would pass close by on their way to the railway siding according to his informant. They were probably going to catch the train to New Orleans and hide out there for a while. He had dealt with many outlaws when he was with the Texas Rangers, but was never alone when he did it, although Frank, his deputy was hiding somewhere close by to back him up.
I shouldn’t have taken that Marshal’s job in Coyote Crossing. A couple of his fellow Texas Rangers had warned him about the town being corrupt. He had to get a job quickly and it had seemed ideal, being around thirty miles from the ranch he had inherited, rather than the over two hundred miles from Austin. When he got a few days off he could go to his ranch now and do a little work on it. Deserted for so long, it had virtually returned to its native state.
Grandpa Lovitt had settled there years ago and Pa had inherited it. How could his father have let his childhood home be claimed by the wilderness when the old couple who lived there left? He hadn’t even known the place existed until he had been sorting through papers after his father’s death.
The Rangers had been good for him over the years, but the continuous moving around had begun to pall. At nearly thirty, he wanted a place of his own and now he had one. He might even consider marriage if he could find a nice gal. At least he had something to offer a prospective bride now.
Seth Arnold ran the bank, well just about the whole town really, which is why he hadn’t told anyone except his deputy Frank, of his plans to catch the outlaws or of the evidence he had that would send Seth to the hangman. In a town like Coyote Crossing it paid to trust no-one.
He didn’t particularly like Frank, there was something about the man that didn’t sit well with him. He was lazy and spent half of his time in the saloon or at the local cathouse.
At least it gave him a free hand to poke around and what he had found out about Seth had been shocking. Along with Black Bart he had run an extortion racket in a previous town and had killed a storeowner and his wife who had refused to pay him protection money. Somehow, he always seemed to escape the law. Now he had money and power it was even harder to pin anything on him.
Dying men don’t lie. On his deathbed a one-time partner of Seth had pointed the finger at him and told Kyle where a ledger was kept with names and addresses in it. The amounts of money Seth had extorted from people, the kinds of punishment he had ordered for anyone who defied him, plus details of numerous other crimes he had committed. The man seemed to take delight in writing all his evil exploits down.
Dust kicked up by horses alerted him the men were coming. It had to be them. No-one else would be out this way.
Squinting into the distance he spotted two riders and as they neared, he recognized Seth’s palomino.
When they were almost up to him, he stood, raising his Winchester as he did so.
Suddenly something slammed into the back of Kyle’s shoulder. It burned like a red hot poker. He spun around and saw Frank, taking aim again. Frank had betrayed him. This time the bullet slammed into his chest with such force he collapsed to the ground.
“Thought you were so smart didn’t you, Lovitt?” Frank kicked him in the stomach. Pain burned his chest and he could feel the blood pumping out of his body. As blackness overtook him, he heard Seth ask if he was dead.
“Course he’s dead,” Frank replied. “I shot him in the chest, plum through the heart.”
***
Kyle woke up and screamed with pain as he tried to move. It was midday by the position of the sun. I’m going to die he thought. He wasn’t dead, well not yet anyway, although he had a raging thirst. When Christ hung on the cross near death, he had cried out for water. Why did he remember that right now?
He wasn’t a particularly religious man now. He had seen too much evil, although his mother had been. He always wore the bronze St. Christopher medal that had belonged to her, never took it off as a mark of respect to her.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, Ma,” he croaked. He glanced around. His canteen lay about three feet away and he couldn’t reach it. So near and yet so far. Once he was dead there would be no-one of his blood left to walk the earth. Sadness overwhelmed him.
The sun burned his eyes and he closed them. He didn’t want to die, particularly here in the wilderness where his body might never be found and buried in consecrated ground. There was no-one to search for him. No-one to mourn his passing. That was the worst part. The whole top of his body burned with such intensity he wondered why he didn’t burst into flames.
His life flashed before his eyes even though they were closed. It hurt too much to open them. His father had been a Bank Manager in Denver and did everything he could to hide the fact he had been brought up on a small ranch in Texas.
How could a man renounce his birthright? Kyle’s biggest regret was that he hadn’t known his grandfather, and that the old man had died without any of his kin around him. It had been left to an old couple who had worked on the ranch to arrange the burying at the nearest cemetery in Long Bow, four miles from his ranch.
I won’t even be afforded that. Strange how a man knew when he was mortally wounded and his time on earth was running out.
***
Jemma awoke with a start. Surely that wasn’t a gunshot? Strange, the train wasn’t moving. They couldn’t have arrived in Austin yet.
Stiffly she climbed to her feet and dusted down the pieces of straw clinging to her pants. Horses and cattle had been transported in this wagon. She wondered why she hadn’t realized before. It had been too dark to see properly when she had boarded, although the smell should have alerted her. Too tired and nervous to notice most probably.
Surprisingly, she had slept reasonably well on the hard floor, whereas on the soft mattress at the Centurion Hotel she had only dozed for fear of sleeping in and m
issing the train.
How strange, they still weren’t moving. Worry descended on her in heavy, suffocating waves. She clambered up the side of the wagon using the gaps between the boards as footholds until she could see out.
A shocked breath whistled through her teeth. The three end rail wagons sat on the railway line in the middle of nowhere. The rails heading away from her in a straight line, gleamed in the sunlight, while she was on a small section running off the main line. While she slept, the wagons had been shunted off at the siding and left here. Only a wooden building, corrals and a large water tank could be seen.
Dropping to the floor, she grabbed up her belongings and stepped over to the door. It remained locked. There was nothing else for it except clamber out through the gap at the top. She tossed her bedroll and the piece of dirty canvas on to the dusty earth then clambered out of the wagon and dropped to the ground.
Picking herself up, she dusted her pants and glanced around. Not a soul could be seen, not even an animal. What had she got herself into? How could she not have noticed the rail wagons being shunted off the main line?
The only building was closed in on three sides and when she stepped closer, she realized it contained heaps of coal. A blackboard on the side wall near the entrance caught her eye. It was some type of timetable. Hopefully it would tell her when the next train stopped here. She would probably have to buy as ticket from the conductor. No way could she sneak aboard in daylight.
She read the board and felt sick. “Five days,” she cried out. “I can’t stay here five days, I’ll run out of food.” She did have her six gun and had been a good shot when she roamed around Texas with her parents. Since living with Viola, she hadn’t touched a gun, let alone fired it.
At least there was plenty of water. What a mess she was in. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them back. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces now. Her life depended upon keeping her mind on her perilous situation and finding a way out of it.
She slumped to the ground and sat with her arms wrapped around both knees. Staying here was not an option. Maybe if she walked along the railway track, they would eventually lead her to a town. The nearest town could be twenty or thirty miles away, more even. She would never make it with her meager rations.
Pulling out a stick of beef jerky she nibbled on it not only to appease her hunger but to steady her nerves. Horses or cattle driven here had to come from somewhere. It could be five miles away or fifty miles, there was no way to know. These rail wagons wouldn’t hold many animals, probably why the train didn’t stop very often. Maybe there would be a ranch not too far away.
She scanned the horizon for smoke and saw nothing except circling buzzards. Something was dead out there. A shiver of dread shook her body. “Was it man or beast?”
Stop it, Jemma, you’re behaving like a stupid hysterical woman, like Viola. She whipped up her anger. Selfish, demanding, greedy, unprincipled and with not an ounce of courage in her whole body. Thinking on it, most of her haughty friends were of the same caliber. I’m better than those spoiled yellow-bellies. She washed the last bite of jerky down with a couple of swigs of water.
Leaving her belongings, she wandered out of the building. A dusty trail led away from the siding. Livestock had passed through here, she didn’t doubt it for a moment. A battered piece of tin nailed to a tree proclaimed ‘Coyote Crossing – 8 miles’. She could walk that far if she had to.
Even if it got dark before she made it into town, no reason why she couldn’t sleep out overnight. It was the only viable option. It meant she would be walking during the hottest part of the day, which still had to be better than stumbling around in the dark. With any luck she might pass a ranch house before she got to Coyote Crossing. It was the only idea she could come up with.
Taking off her hat, she walked over to the water tank and dipped her kerchief into it to wipe her perspiring face, before soaking her shirt. Wet clothes would help keep her cool. Luckily, she had a wide brimmed hat. With her canteen slung around her neck, she carried the bedroll under her arm and the canvas bag in her free hand and set off.
Chapter Six
On one side of the trail was flat grassland, well there wasn’t much grass on it and what there was of it was dried out. On the other side large stretches of land dotted with trees ran into a hillside with piles of rocks and boulders. Some parts of the hill looked as if a giant hand had gouged a hole in the earth leaving a yawning, reddish brown hole. What a strange looking place it was.
The hair suddenly stood on the back of her neck as she closed the gap between herself and the buzzards. Something out there was dead, that was a certainty. She wanted to scatter the marauding scavengers with a shot or two in the air but didn’t want to waste bullets.
She stepped into the shade of a tree and uncapped her canteen. By her reckoning she had been trudging along for an hour or so. Pace yourself, you can’t afford to get exhausted or you might collapse and end up like the poor thing the buzzards were circling.
Something glinting in the sunlight suddenly caught her eye. Curiosity got the better of her. It was foolish to leave the trail, but some invisible thread pulled her toward the glowing object.
A huge piece of rock had broken off the hillside. It had to be seven feet high at least and was surrounded by several other large rocks. Her movement scattered the buzzards and the ugly things flew off. As she drew closer, she saw a man’s boot. “Who’s there?” No answer.
Snatching her gun out of her belt she held it between wavering hands. “I….I’ll shoot.” Still no answer. She touched the boot with her foot. It didn’t move.
Edging her way around the rock, the breath caught in her throat. A man lay sprawled in the dust with a bullet wound to his chest. Her shocked eyes were drawn to the Marshal’s badge pinned on his black vest. This is what had glinted in the sun. Apart from the chest wound which was seeping blood, he appeared to have a wound in the back as he lay face up in a pool of blood.
Did dead people bleed? She squatted down next to him and rested the back of her hand against his forehead. It wasn’t icy cold. Maybe he had only recently died.
“Hey, Mister.” Her shouted words were rewarded with a faint groan. The man was still alive.
She unscrewed the lid on her canteen and emptied some on her kerchief and dribbled the liquid on his dry lips causing him to groan again. What was a Marshal doing out here? Who had shot him? Fearfully she glanced around and saw nothing or no-one. Where was his horse?
She unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was tanned and covered in whorls of brown hair. He wore a medallion around his neck. It had taken the full force of the bullet and not his heart. In fact, she could see part of the bullet sticking out. This lucky charm, if that’s what it was, had saved his life.
She emptied water from the canteen on the wound and cleaned the blood away. It was not bleeding too much. The back wound seemed worse, the blood from here had pooled on the ground beneath him and spread out.
She didn’t want to do it, but there was no choice, she would have to sacrifice her spare shirt and use it as a bandage. The man’s sweat stained hair was dark, slightly overlong, his eyes were closed so she had no idea what color they were. He was tall, his skin tanned, was about all she could tell.
Dashing back to where she had left her things, she gathered them up and raced back to him. He hadn’t moved. “Don’t die on me,” she pleaded. “Please don’t die.”
She took her shirt out of the canvas bag and started to rip it into pieces. “Don’t you die. I’m sacrificing my spare shirt for you. Do you hear me, Mister, um Marshal?” A groan was the only reply she received. At least he was showing a tiny flicker of life now.
He needed to be moved out of the sun. A clump of trees twenty or so feet away down the slope would afford some shade for him. How could she get him down there, though? She had to stop dithering and tend his wounds. Better to leave the bullet in until she moved him somewhere else. Ripping the tail off
the shirt, she folded it up to make a pad. Rolling the rest of the shirt up into a strip, the sleeves would make it long enough to tie around his body. She would have to try and roll him over. If she had to do that to get to his back, why not roll him on to the canvas sheet and drag him over to the trees? Could she do it? She had to or he would die.
She spread the canvas out, wrinkling her nose at the smell of it. “I’m going to roll you onto this piece of canvas and tie my shirt around your wound. Can you help me?” He remained motionless. She lay the make-shift shirt bandage across his chest, leaving the sleeves dangling. He groaned loudly as she pushed him with all her might and rolled him over. The bandage now covered his chest and back, all she needed to do was tie the ends together. Using strength dredged from God alone knew where, she maneuvered one of the sleeves under his arm pit and tied the two sleeves together.
Perspiration poured from her as she swallowed a few mouthfuls of water even though she felt dry enough to guzzle the lot. Leaving him, she walked the path she was going to drag him to clear it of as many stones as she could by kicking them to one side. The smaller stones were too numerous to do anything about. This could be her finest hour or her worst.
“Please, God, help me.” She gripped either end of the canvas and took a couple of steps. The force nearly wrenched her arms out of their sockets. Once I start to really move him maybe I’ll gain momentum as it is downhill. This was going to be a long and hard job. If only she were stronger.
“You can do this. You have to,” she muttered. Going backward could work better. After every couple of feet, she took a rest.
If she lived to be a hundred Jemma would never know how she managed to drag the man to the trees. She was absolutely spent. Her trembling legs gave out on her and she sank to the ground. Her heart was pounding so hard she could almost hear it. Her breath came out in labored pants.
Rejected Bride Page 3