Harnessed Passions

by Dee Jones

  The silence brought with it an explosion of pain when Julia tried to open her eyes. Her mind was spinning and her stomach jerked, but she couldn't comprehend where she was, or what had happened to her. She raised a shaky hand to her head, but dropped it before it reached its destination. The pain was too great and the confusion was too consuming to allow anything else to interrupt it. She wasn’t even sure if she was alive or dead.

  Dead. Death. Now she remembered; the woman in white, the feeling of terror, the pain of being struck and then water. Cold, unforgiving revenge echoed all around her. Her best friend calling to her, blaming Julia for something she had convinced herself wasn't her fault. Had she caused Heather's death? Was she now dead, herself?

  "Heather," she whispered, hearing her own voice in the stillness around her. She tried to open her eyes again but didn’t seem to have the strength to pull it off. Was she at the bottom of the pond? Was she doomed to remain there until the end of eternity?

  "I'm sorry," she gasped, pleading softly to the ghosts haunting her, her voice weak and raked with unshed tears. "I didn't mean it...please...forgive me." The pain was so engrossing she didn't hear the voice calling her name, or feel the hand softly caressing her cheek. She allowed the feelings of dread and sorrow to carry her back into a state of oblivion.

  Daniel watched the anguish and confusion twist Julia's features. He wiped the tears from her cheeks and heard the whispered pleas from her dry lips. He listened to her for a few moments until she again fell silent, her lungs heaving softly for air.

  Who was Heather? Rally Overton had spoken about her the night they found Julia at the swimming hole; he said she was Julia’s best friend and that she'd died at the swimming hole, but why would Julia plead for her forgiveness? Rally said she’d never forgiven herself for Heather’s death; was Julia somehow responsible for it? Was that why she was there that night; to make amends for the past?

  There were so many unanswered questions and no possible explanation for any of them, but then he thought of a way to find out. There was one place where he could start looking for the answers; the swimming hole. He had to find out what happened that night and who had attacked his wife, leaving her for dead.

  With a reluctant, gentle kiss that was little more than the touch of a fairy's wings, Daniel slipped out of the bedroom leaving Julia asleep and under the close eye of Bridget, who had brought more hot water in. He headed down to the dining room where he found Jeremy and Louise, the remnants of their dinner still in front of them. He shook his head when offered his meal; it had proven to be a long emotional and physically draining three days.

  Daniel spent every hour in literal torment; reliving the nightmare of finding Julia by the water, over and over in his mind. He thought about what he would have done if he had found her dead, what life would be like if he ever lost her. He actually found himself thinking about their countless arguments and how much he missed them. Perhaps it was how they usually ended he found most intriguing. Julia always found her way into his arms and he would supply her with an abundance of passion. His had to stop thinking about how close he came to losing her and concentrate instead on the swimming hole.

  The doctor seemed to think it was an accident, but Daniel knew better. He had seen her riding and knew she could handle a horse; even Victor said she was an expert rider, so it was very unlikely that Biscuit would have thrown her. Something, or perhaps someone had caused that wound on her head and the wet footprints showed that she had been pulled out of the water. She didn’t do that herself.

  After three days of thinking, pacing and reliving all he had seen that night, Daniel knew there was more behind this than face value and he had to find out. It could have been a drifter, perhaps someone hiding out from the law, but he had to find out. After all, wasn't it written, for every mystery there was a solution?

  "If you don't mind Louise," Daniel began sitting down and accepting the cup of coffee from Thompson. "I'd appreciate it if you would stay with Julia for a little while. I have some things to check out and it can't wait any longer."

  "I was planning on staying with her so you could get some rest yourself. You look like hell, Daniel."

  "Thanks, but there's no time," he answered with a soft chuckle, running a tired hand over his bearded chin.

  "Where are you going?" Jeremy asked, pushing his coffee cup aside.

  "I want to go back to the swimming hole and have a look around. Maybe there's something there that can tell us what happened that night."

  "Do you really have to go now, it’s late? Couldn't the sheriff investigate it?" Daniel smiled at Louise's concern, but he knew there was no waiting on this. If whoever it was that had assaulted Julia thought for one minute he may have left a clue, he'd go back and cover his tracks, if he hadn’t already done so.

  "It can't wait for the sheriff. I have to look around tonight."

  "You don’t think it was an accident, do you?” the older woman asked; the look of concern etched deeply on her aging face. “Daniel, do you really think someone did this to her?"

  "I don't know, but I'm damn well going to find out." Daniel stood up from the table and headed toward the door. “It may be nothing, but I have to know for certain and I can’t sit around waiting any longer.”

  "Wait for me," Jeremy called after him. "If somebody's out to get my sister, I want to help find out who it is." The two men left the house and headed down to the stables, while Louise went to her daughter's room.

  The idea of Julia being attacked didn't set well with her any more than it did with her son or son-in-law. She remembered what Julia said about her so-called accident the day of Victor's wake. With everything else going on, she had forgotten to mention it to Daniel, but she had to remember to talk to him about it when he returned. If there was someone out to harm her, it may have been the same person both times.

  Louise frowned as she pushed her daughter's bedroom door open. The thought of a possible lunatic running loose at Turner Stables, wasn't only frightening it could prove disastrous if they didn't catch him - or her - before the annual sales. Julia may not be the only one who could get in the way, if this maniac was allowed to roam free.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The swimming hole was much as it had been the night of the accident, with the exception of the setting sun that peered through the tall treetops. Daniel and Jeremy pulled their horses to a clearing and tied them to a nearby tree limb, then walked silently through the brush and trees, down to the muddy embankment surrounding the small pond. They weren't certain where to begin searching or exactly what they were looking for, but they agreed to split up and began inspecting the area all the same.

  Jeremy walked cautiously into the bushes as though he was anticipating trouble, and almost immediately noted a number of footprints in the thick muck. He couldn’t tell if how old they were, but somehow felt they were new. If they had been there for weeks or months, the rain and the wind would have dissolved them, not to mention the wild animals that stopped by the water for a drink. There would always be an occasional deer or wolf seen around the trees, so the fact that the prints were unharmed made him think they were fresh, though nobody would have reason to be here.

  Since Heather Farnsworth’s death, nobody had come to the swimming hole that he had been aware of, including stable hands. With the story of the young girl being killed here, superstition had taken hold and frightened away the local youth who had otherwise come by from time to time to swim and cool off during the heat of the summer. It had been left abandoned and unused by anything larger than a field rat or bird.

  Two separate sets of footprints caught his attention and peeked his interest, causing a frown to pull his brows together. One set was large and heavy with a wide stride, like that of a man's step, in fact very close in size to the prints Jeremy’s own step left in the dirt. The second was smaller, lighter and closer together with a distinct imprint of a small heel and pointed toe.

  Both tracks appeared to be heading toward the pon
d and looked as though the heavier tracks were made last. The larger steps nearly fell single file behind those of the smaller ones, and had in fact overstepped the small prints several times, leaving only the depth of the heel or point of the toe to show there had been two. Jeremy's stomach lurched and knotted uncomfortably; he thought of how those more delicate prints could have very easily been made by Julia, perhaps moments before her alleged accident.

  Jeremy examined the prints closely noting how both sets took off in a separate direction, once they came closer to the clearing. The heavier prints went off around the edge of the brush and down the small hill on the opposite edge of the pond, than back out again mingling among the dense shrubs encasing the area. The second set - those Jeremy believed to have been made by his sister's foot - went out to the small lake where they became a shuffled mess, undistinguishable one form another. The only thing linking the two sets of imprints was the destination of their direction. Each led straight to the pond's embankment.

  Daniel inspected the area where he had found Julia three nights before. There were several leaves on the ground tinted with small droplets of dried blood and the imprint of where Julia’s head had laid in the drying mud. The sight of it and the memory of the horror he had felt when he found his young wife unconscious, began to swell up inside his chest. The silence of the pond’s surroundings made him feel the overwhelming dread he had felt that night, and for the first time since finding her, he actually felt nauseous.

  He sat down on a small rock not far from where Julia had laid unconscious and near death, and tried to pull himself under control. He looked around seeing the boot imprints of his and Dourn’s footsteps still embedded in the thick soil. He saw the imprint of where he had knelt beside Julia and the slightly discolored dirt from the water she had vomited out. He saw the imprint of Julia's boots near the pond's edge and their decent from the brush in the same direction Jeremy was investigating. But what he saw next caused him to forget all about the gut wrenching feeling he was experiencing, and forced a frown to mold his brow.

  Where Julia had laid was the smooth even path he had seen the night he found her, obviously made from the weight of her body being pulled away from the water's edge. Just a few feet away was the imprint of a single foot. This one was different from the others. This one had the distinct outline of toes, instep and heel. Whoever left it was definitely barefoot and not of a great size or weight, since it was smaller in width and length, and hadn’t sank as deep into the mud as his own foot had.

  Daniel’s frown deepened as he considered who might have made it. There were rumors of outlaws in the hills and several hands at the stables insisted they found signs of trespassers among the thick brush and trees lining the outer boundaries of Turner property. Had it been an outlaw or perhaps an Indian? The Indians in these parts had been peaceful for years and very rarely seen since before the civil war. It might have been Julia's, but Julia was found with her boots still on, then again it may have been a child’s, but there were no reports of any child missing or seen wondering alone. Who could have left it and why was it right next to the path where Julia had laid?

  Daniel stood, walking cautiously to inspect the water's edge. There was nothing there, no sign of a tree limb or rock; nothing could explain how Julia had fallen into the water, or more importantly, how she could have gotten out. If she had dragged herself out of the water, there would have been hand prints in the dirt from crawling or footprints from her walking, but there weren’t any. There were no other signs of anyone coming or going, no other prints than those he had already found.

  There was no evidence of a struggle, no signs of a fight, or any visible evidence of a weapon. There were the mingled mass of footprints nearby that could have explained a possible struggle, and one set that came into the clearing and around the other side, then back again, and those appeared to be have been made by Julia herself.

  Daniel sighed, running a large brown hand through his tumbled hair. He had thought for certain he would find something that would point to the culprit, but all coming here had done was to create even more confusion and questions. One thing Daniel knew for certain, he had found Julia with her head pointing toward the water and her arms above her head. This seemed to indicate, that she had been pulled out by her ankles. This may also have explained the lone footprint, but whom did it belong to.

  He drew a deep breath to clear his mind and began to think logically for a moment. It was a habit he had formed over the many years of law school and court trials, a trick that usually worked to sort out the evidence.

  Perhaps Julia had wondered into the water on accident. Perhaps she had fallen which could explain the water she had ingested. She could have somehow managed to get back onto the embankment, where she collapsed. But that didn’t explain the position she was found in, the evidence of being dragged out of the water, or the footprint. Nothing was making any sense and the silence was beginning to grow on his nerves. Even the crickets were still, leaving the rustle of leaves in the treetops as the only interruption to the peace and eerie solitude.

  "Daniel, look here," Jeremy called from the bushes bringing the other man to his feet. Daniel stepped around the footprints so not to disturb them and pushed his way between the trees and thick brush. He found Jeremy kneeling on the ground examining a piece of cloth, ripped or torn from the object it had once been attached to. It was white silk, smooth and flawless with a tiny smudge of blood tinting its edge.

  "Where did that come from?" Daniel asked, taking the cloth to examine it more closely.

  "I found it next to this," Jeremy reported, picking up a small piece of rope about two to three inches long. "It could have been here for a while, but it seems unlikely," the young man replied.

  "I doubt it," Daniel answered cautiously. "There's no sign of weather or wear, and see here," he said pointing at the smooth ends. "It's been cut at both ends. I'd say it's recent. It looks almost brand new."

  "I don't understand any of this," Jeremy sighed with disgust, running his hand through his hair. Nothing was making any sense for either of them. "Did you find anything?" He stood and brushed the dirt from his pants as he spoke.

  "Only some imprints in the dirt, nothing you can put any stock into except for one. I found a print that may have been made by whoever attacked Julia. It's a barefoot print, very distinctive."

  "That's odd, unless perhaps Julia came up on a drifter or one of those outlaws everyone's been talking about."

  "I don't know; I doubt it was either one. There's no evidence of a camp, no fire pit, no burned timbers, nothing to indicate someone hiding out here. I haven’t even seen any signs of life outside of those bloody footprints.” Daniel drew another deep breath, glancing back to the pond.

  “Until Julia wakes up there's really nothing more we can do here," Jeremy said reluctantly as they walked back to where they had tethered their horses. They had spent nearly an hour here already and found nothing more than a few prints and a torn piece of satin to offer them aid. Daniel sighed deeply as he mounted Roustabout. Even what little they had found, didn't add up to anything more than further questions in need of answers.

  "I want to check around on the other side of the trees," he said, pulling the reigns of his horse in the direction he indicated. "Perhaps we can find something to help explain who was here last night."

  “But this is where Julia entered. We’ve already found her footprints,” Jeremy said with a frown.

  “It’s just a hunch,” Daniel said, walking his stallion next to Jeremy’s around the thick outline of trees and brush.

  They inspected the area as closely as possible for anything out of the ordinary. There were several hoof prints made by horses and a pile of manure left behind by one of the beasts, but nothing more conclusive. Daniel tucked the piece of white silk Jeremy found into his shirt pocket along with the rope and turned back toward home and his unconscious wife.

  "Let's go talk to Dourn," he suggested. "He may have seen something last ni
ght, we missed."

  The next half hour was spent searching for the Dourn, with no luck. Rally Overton and two other hands left earlier to check the outer ridge of the property lines. The thought of thieves and rustlers were feared by all who lived nearby, both at Turner Stables as well as by neighboring ranches after news of Julia’s attack filtered through the community. Although nobody actually saw Dourn leave, several suspected he had gone out with Rally and the others.

  Daniel stifled his mounting anger and the desperate urge to hit something hard and solid was growing stronger with each passing moment. It was past eight o’clock and so far the day had proven very frustrating and with little more than a few footprints, a piece of rope and a torn piece of cloth to help them piece together the mystery of Julia’s accident.

  Still, Daniel intended to speak with Dourn, though. There was something about the man he didn't trust, the feeling he was more than he was claiming stuck in the back of Daniel's mind, but until they could confront him they were going to have to play a waiting game. Waiting for Dourn to show up, waiting for Julia to awaken and possibly even waiting for another accident to occur.

  Recent events were beginning to wear thin on Daniel's raging nerves. He was frustrated for not having found anything substantial to help them, and irritated with the waiting game they had been playing. Twice now Julia had been attacked. In Daniel’s mind, that was two too many times.

  He cursed under his breath as he led Roustabout into his stall then walked back to the main house beside Jeremy. He knew there was something missing, he could feel it; he just couldn’t find it. But he promised to the silent night, he was going to get to the bottom of this, even if it killed him.

  Daniel once again had returned to his wife’s side after washing his hands and face and pouring a large brandy. She remained asleep in the hot, steamy room. The dim lights bouncing around the portrait lined walls. The crackle of the fireplace made for a relaxing, intimate feeling, though it was by far too hot for comfort. Daniel had just removed his shirt and shoes when the sound of the doorknob turning caused him to turn to look at the door.