“Did this man rape you?” he demanded with a snarl.
“No!”
“No?! Does that mean he didn’t rape you or he didn’t have to?” Younger asked, his face dark with fury.
“Get your hands off me!” she hissed. “I won’t be talked to like that by you or anyone else!”
Younger glared at her angrily. “You’re pretty uppity considering what you been doing with Cantrell.”
Nieves stepped forward, placing himself beside Leslie. “Let her be,” he said quietly.
Younger shot her a look full of venom. He dropped her arm as if it burned him and turned his attention back to Cantrell’s limp form. “Wake that bastard up! I want him to know it when we hang him! Get the rope!”
Men were rushing to comply.
Leslie turned to Nieves. “You’re not going to let them hang him, are you? He’s a train robber. There’s a reward for him—but not dead.” She was improvising now, desperately. “Please, Mr. Nieves, stop them. This is all a mistake.”
Younger placed the rope around Cantrell’s neck, and they brought the horse forward, steadying Cantrell’s slumped, lifeless form.
“Please, Mr. Nieves!”
She had a strange accent. He looked at her appraisingly. “You’re not from out here are you?”
“I’m from Massachusetts, but please, stop them. They’re going to hang him!”
Cantrell was sagging in the saddle they had forced him onto, still unconscious. His face was shiny with bruises; blood trickled from half a dozen cuts. She had the insane urge to take his battered head and hold it to her breast. She knew that if she lived to be a thousand years old, nothing would ever move her as strongly as that sight.
Younger’s men positioned the horse and rider under a sturdy limb and threw the rope over it. Three men braced themselves, and Leslie felt her heart stop and then lurch wildly and sickeningly.
“Hold on here!” Geronimo Nieves finally stepped forward. “I’m taking this man in so he can stand trial.”
“Like hell you are!” Younger roared.
Nieves held out his hand, and one of his men slapped a shotgun into it. He pointed it at the three men holding the rope. “Drop that rope or you’ll die with him.”
“He hangs, damn you!” Younger snarled, lunging forward to slash at the horse, sending it forward. Nieves fired point-blank into the three men and the rope slid through their fingers. Leslie threw herself forward, trying to reach Cantrell, but Younger caught her, jerking her against him, peering angrily into her face before he flung her away from him with a curse. “I’ll deal with you later.”
The horse Cantrell had been on lurched forward, and he fell to the ground unharmed except for the fall, which must have been painful. Fortunately, he was already unconscious. Heart pounding wildly, she sagged against the tree while the sheriff and his posse loaded Cantrell across a horse and left without further incident. She watched until they were out of sight, then turned her attention to the men who had been shot.
“Get ’em on their horses,” Younger snarled. “Ain’t no use trying to doctor ’em here.”
He grabbed Leslie’s arm and put her forcibly onto her horse. His gray eyes were flat, unemotional slate. She’d never been afraid of Younger before, but now, suddenly, looking into those relentless, angry eyes, she realized that he no longer considered her a lady. She felt the steely grip of his hand on her arm, and knew soul-shaking, gut-deep fear.
Chapter Twenty
The ride to Flagstaff, with four wounded men, was slow, but Leslie barely noticed. She felt immune to her surroundings, dazed, as if her mind had gone numb. Her head was filled with an angry buzzing sound, and her heart was beating far too hard. Her hands on the reins trembled as if they belonged to someone else, perhaps a fearful old woman. Surely they could not belong to Leslie Powers.
The sun was still bearing down on the trees that grew thick and green to the very edge of the rutted red clay road. It shone on the pale pink rocks that jutted out of the mountain, on the men who rode all around her but hopelessly separate from her. The air was cool; even though it was midday the weather had a crisp mountain feel to it. September? Or was it October? She would have recognized October in Wellesley…Could she ever get back there? How many thousands of miles lay between her and her past? She sagged in the saddle with the hopelessness of it, so much distance, so many miles stretching out…She could not imagine ever finding her way back there.
Occasionally Dallas Younger glanced angrily in her direction, and she felt drenched in the hate lashing out at her from his dark eyes. It was another pressure on her numb brain, but she did not ask herself what right he had to hate her. She accepted his hate. An angry buzzing sound in the distance was growing louder now, so loud she could no longer hear the sounds of their horses’ hooves smacking into the hard-packed dirt road.
Flagstaff was a lumber camp. The town was much smaller than Phoenix, without the boisterous air of a cowtown. A town of workers. The shrill whine she had been hearing was the saw from the sawmill, out of sight. Flagstaff did not seem real to her. Merely a small noisy town at the base of a massive mountain whose topmost peaks were already dusted with a thin cap of snow. No railroad there. Heavy wagons loaded with trees that had been reduced to naked poles rumbled past, heading for the source of that shrill whine.
Younger dispatched his men to see to the wounded while he took Leslie to the only hotel in town, the Orlando, which was a tall, awkward rectangle of a building, two-story, with the inevitable awning. He signed the register as if he would take out his anger on it, and then took her by the arm, roughly, to lead her up the stairs to her room. He unlocked the door and then turned on her, his dark eyes narrowed with fury.
“What did you do, fall in love with that bastard? He was going to sell you to the Indians! Didn’t you know that? To a bunch of filthy Indians who live on reservations like so many dogs penned up! He didn’t take you because he fell for your big green eyes and your milk-white skin!” He caught her shoulder, and she cried out instinctively, angrily, twisting away from his hands.
“Get your hands off me! You either treat me as a lady or leave me alone!” she snapped.
A sneer spread across his face, curling his lips down. “Pretty high and mighty for a piece of used goods, ain’t you, missy. A lady don’t do what you did.”
Younger was rewarded with a white-hot flaring of passion, a starburst of heat that lightened, then darkened, her eyes. Fury blinded her to everything except his sneering face. The rage, fear, and frustration that had been building for days exploded. Her arm seemed to move of its own accord. She didn’t realize she had hit him until she saw the stunned look on his face and felt the pain, like a burn, on the palm of her hand.
She should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. She felt a surge of joyousness at the way it felt when she hit him. Her muscles seemed to swell with strength. With unbounded energy. This was what she had been needing—someone to strike out at, someone to take out fear, anger, and frustration on.
She lunged at him as if she really believed she could kill him, as if she thought she was seven feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds, the way some of those lumberjacks had looked on the wooden boardwalks below.
He didn’t seem to notice her wonderful strength. He took hold of her with rough hands, glaring into her face like he had always hated her.
“You won’t be so high and mighty when I get through with you, missy,” he growled viciously, jerking her around and shoving her at the door he had unlocked.
Leslie staggered into the room, finally caught her balance, and faced him again, her face pale but defiant. “Get out of my room! You have no right to be in here!”
Dallas Younger’s face was a mask of hatred, his voice a sneer of condemnation. “I was willing to marry you, you little slut! I have every right! He took something that belonged to me, something I was saving. I was gonna marry you—proper—in a church! I was gonna treat you like a lady! You weren’t a little whore till he got
his filthy hands on you.”
He slammed the door, closing them in, and it sounded to Leslie like the closing of a tomb. His eyes were filled with fury, revenge, and lust, and it was all directed at her. She stepped back, opened her mouth to scream, and he lunged at her like an enraged panther, knocking her onto the bed that dominated the small, barren room.
Her scream turned into a gasp of panic that he shut off with his hard mouth while he forced her down onto the bed. She fought like a wildcat, her eyes spitting fury, but he was just as determined as she and far stronger. His hands ripped her gown aside. Screaming, she slashed at his face, trying to take his eyes out. She missed, but clawed a bloody furrow down his cheek. He slapped her hard and she reeled away from him, barely feeling it, and came at him again, teeth bared, nails curved into claws.
“Ow! Dammit! You…damned cat!” He yelled, backing away.
“Get out of here!” she screamed hysterically.
“All right!” he shouted, backing away from the fury in her green eyes. “All right.”
Geronimo Nieves paced back and forth in the outer part of the jail until the doctor came out, closing his black bag.
“Well, Ben, he gonna make it?”
“Reckon that’s between him and his maker. I stopped the bleeding. He’s lucky he wasn’t awake for that. If he has a strong constitution and if he don’t get infected and if he ain’t already lost too much blood…”
“How soon can we move him to Phoenix?”
“Can’t say—three weeks or a month, maybe. What’s he charged with?”
“Eleven counts of murder, kidnap, and rape.”
“Should’ve just let them hang him,” Ben grunted.
“Now, Ben, you know I couldn’t do that any more than you could let him bleed to death.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, but maybe I wonder how smart we are sometimes,” he growled, waving his hand disgustedly. “See you later tonight. I’ll look in on him to make sure the bleeding doesn’t start up again.”
“Thanks, Ben. Night.”
The ride back to Phoenix with a sullen Dallas Younger and a cadre of crippled gunfighters was far from pleasant. Leslie would have welcomed any sort of natural disaster to distract her from the outrage that still bubbled and boiled within her, but the weather was disgustingly pleasant.
They had been riding for a long time—she couldn’t tell how long. The sun was high overhead, preparing to start its descent toward the horizon, which was far off and ragged with the silhouettes of majestic fir and pine. They were in a high, rough canyon, traveling south. Copses of aspen and oak, brilliant with their burnished autumn golds, yellows, and reds, were fiery against the somber green of the conifers and the smooth swirls of pink sandstone cliffs.
At last she found something she remembered. The configuration of trees that overlooked the Powers fortress. She had been riding numbly for hours…or days—she couldn’t tell which—and suddenly they were on the narrow dirt road that led through the trees…
They descended the long, slow incline impatiently, as if all of them were eager to get back. Halfway down the road she saw the gates of the fortress swing open, and her heart did tiny flip-flops. Another confrontation to be gotten through before she could start that long trip back home. So many miles back…
Her uncle came out onto the long porch, shading his small, narrowed eyes from the sun. She returned his look, expecting some sort of greeting but ready to take him on as well as Younger, if need be. Mark Powers merely turned and walked into the house. She and Younger followed him to his office, and by the time she reached there it had dawned on Leslie that her uncle was not exactly overjoyed to see that she was safe. He looked from Younger’s sullen face to hers.
The scene that followed was not believable. Mark Powers was stiff, formal, and deaf to anything she had to say. He cut her off by holding up his hand, and then nodded to Dallas Younger to tell him what had happened. He listened gravely and shut Leslie off angrily when she tried to interrupt.
“That true?” he asked, squinting at her suspiciously. “You talked the sheriff into saving that bastard Cantrell?”
“Yes, but…”
“Speak when you’re spoken to, Leslie,” he interrupted, his eyes as bright and hard as jade, his mind closed against her. “You sure he raped her?” he asked, turning to Younger.
Younger’s sensual mouth curled into a sneer.
Something snapped in Leslie’s head. “Why ask him?” she screamed, oblivious to ears that might be pressed against the walls of her uncle’s study. “Don’t you think I would know?” She pointed at Younger. “He’s the one who tried to rape me!”
“What did the sheriff do with Cantrell? What did he do with that bastard?” Powers demanded, ignoring her.
“Nieves took him to Flagstaff. Said he’d bring him to stand trial when he’s well enough to travel,” Dallas replied, also disregarding the girl who faced them like an angry tigress.
Leslie still couldn’t believe her uncle meant to ignore what she had told him. She faced him, incredulous but still determined, demanding his attention. “What are you going to do about this man? He hit me, ripped my clothes, and treated me in an abominable fashion.”
Mark Powers pursed his lips into a tight little wrinkled slit. “That true?” he asked Younger, who still looked sullen and snarly.
“I reckon,” he said gruffly. “She came at me like a damned wildcat.”
“You still willing to marry her?”
Younger’s eyes raked over her. He was furious with her. He shouldn’t have anything to do with her, but like he had told Sam, even second-hand the way she was, she was still half owner of the whole Powers spread. “Yeah, I reckon so,” he said finally. “I’ll probably be sorry.”
Leslie was speechless.
“We’ll take care of it when we ride into town to watch ’em hang Cantrell. Maybe Saturday. They’ll be bringing that bastard in to stand trial. She’ll have to identify him.”
“Won’t be that soon. We roughed him up pretty damn good.”
Angry words trembled on Leslie’s lips, but none found voice.
Chapter Twenty-One
The mountains were hulking gray shadows behind a brilliant display of aspen trees flaming red and orange in the early-morning air. The sun was a pale gold ball in a hazy sky. Clouds sailed overhead on a stiff wind that smelled of sand and sage and whipped her riding hat, threatening to send it sailing away. It felt good to be out of the house and on a horse again with crisp wind on her face.
October first. She couldn’t believe she had been in Arizona less than two months. It felt like years. She was dressed in a very smart black and white hound’s-tooth riding gown with a jaunty black hat trimmed in white ribbon and a showy white egret plume. She looked very stylish. Dallas Younger had looked at her strangely, but she noticed that he had taken great pains with his wardrobe also.
Since they were going to town, she assumed Cantrell had survived, unless this trip was for the sole purpose of marrying her to Dallas Younger. Leslie rode sidesaddle next to Annette, who had come along to act as Leslie’s maid of honor. Annette rode, but it did not come naturally to her. She grumbled at every step of the horse, as if her protestations would somehow inspire the gentle mare to be more considerate of her.
The women had each packed a bag, cramming all they could into them. Leslie knew what she was going to do. Her uncle and Dallas Younger would be furious—maybe they would kill her—but they would have to do it in front of the whole town.
The majority of the population of Phoenix was lining the wide dusty street when Geronimo Nieves rode into town with his prisoner.
“He don’t look like no mad-dog killer to me,” a tall, lantern-jawed man in front of the saloon sneered.
“Killed twenty men in cold blood!”
“Naw! Twenty? I heard it was closer to thirty.”
“Hell, he didn’t kill no thirty men. Powers ain’t missing no thirty men.”
“He shoulda killed ’em all. Th
en he wouldn’t be here!”
Ward Cantrell ignored the hundreds of pairs of eyes that watched him. His fierce blue eyes raked over the crowd, looking for Younger, who was nowhere in sight. He heard some of the comments, but his face gave nothing away. His muscles tightened involuntarily. He would rather have a snake like Younger out where he could see him, but since he wasn’t exactly in control anymore, he forced his muscles to relax. There wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about anything, dragging chains on his hands and feet. The horse he rode was probably tired of them too.
The slow procession reached the jail, and Ward waited for the word to dismount. He was learning patience. Three weeks in jail had taught him something six years of outlawry hadn’t—the value of freedom. But, he thought dryly, if Powers and Younger have their way, I won’t have long to worry about freedom.
The first few weeks in the U.S. cavalry had taught him the value of keeping his thoughts to himself. His company had been blessed with a burly drill sergeant who believed that everything he said should be received with reverent respect. After watching two recruits being pounded into the turf for twitching with mirth at sheer unadulterated ignorance being verbalized, control quickly became automatic.
Now if he felt anything at being paraded through the street like a circus animal, it didn’t show on his lean face or in his still military carriage as he dismounted.
The jail was bigger than the one in Flagstaff, and the cell they put him in had a window, for which he felt a rush of gratitude. Ward settled back on the lumpy mattress with relief. He was still shaky. The ride had taken the last of his reserves. Sleep came easily, like pulling down a shade.
While her uncle was at the hotel desk, arranging for a block of rooms, with hers in the middle, no doubt, she strolled to the window near the open door. She only wanted to glance out, but two of Younger’s men broke away from the rest and followed her. Irritated, Leslie shot a disdainful look at Younger and walked out the door. The two watchdogs moved in closer. What would they do if she bolted into the street? She didn’t find out because she was arrested in her tracks by a shrill female voice:
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