Finally, several of the other women from the wagon train climbed into the wagon and gently pulled the woman away from the man's body. Davis guessed that he was her husband, and obviously he had been killed fighting the bandits. But, despite the sympathy Davis felt for the redheaded woman, he still had to find out what had happened to Emily.
He stepped forward and held out a hand, saying, "Excuse me," to the women who were helping the grieving widow. "Is that Mrs. Fletcher?"
"Who're you?" one of the immigrant women asked.
"I'm from the crew that was working up ahead," Davis said. "I came back to help drive off the bandits. But now I'm looking for Emily Harding, and her mother said she was on the Fletcher wagon."
His words must have penetrated to the stunned brain of the red-haired woman. She let out a wail and turned her haggard, tear-streaked face toward him. "Em—Emily was here," she managed to gasp out. "But they . . . they got her!"
Davis restrained the impulse to reach out and grab the woman by the arms. He leaned forward, trembling from the intensity of the emotions that gripped him. "What do you mean, they got her?"
"One of those men . . . he rode by and tore the cover loose from the wagon . .. then another one reached inside and . . . and grabbed Emily! He rode off with her! And then they shot . . . shot Andy . . .!" More sobs doubled the poor woman over.
Davis stood there, too shocked and horrified to move. The bandits had kidnapped Emily. She was out there now, somewhere in the wilderness, in the hands of men brutal and ruthless and bold enough to attack an entire wagon train. Either that, or she was already dead.
* * *
God help them all, Davis didn't know which possibility was worse.
The one thing that burned in Davis's mind was pursuit. He had to go after the bandits and rescue Emily.
Most of the people in the wagon train were occupied at the moment with counting the dead and helping the injured, however. More than a dozen of the immigrants had been killed in the raid, including several women and children.
"We drove 'em off, though, by God!" Harding said fiercely a little later as he talked over the situation with Colonel Welles, Conn Powell, and the guide called Mather. Powell and Mather were both wounded, but the injuries were minor. Welles had missed the fight, having been scouting quite a distance ahead of the work crew when the shooting broke out.
"Do you think they were trying to take over the entire train?" Welles asked.
"Aye. They would have murdered all of us and looted the wagons. But we put up too much of a fight." Harding looked at Davis, Grimsby, Mcintosh, and some of the other men who were standing nearby and added grudgingly, "And your boys lending a hand like that probably tipped the scales our way even more, Colonel."
"I'm sorry we couldn't have saved your people who died," Welles said solemnly. "If there's anything else we can do to help—"
"We can go after those bastards and bring back Emily," Davis broke in, unable to contain himself any longer.
A look of pain passed over Harding's face, and it wasn't prompted by his wound. "I was going to speak to you about that, Colonel. Our folks are pretty shot up, and nearly every family's got somebody either dead or hurt."
Welles nodded. "Of course. Some of my men can pursue the bandits."
"If we're goin' to, we'd better get started mighty quick-like," Powell said. A bloody rag was tied around his left arm, but that didn't stop him from gesturing toward the gray sky overhead with that hand. "Could be a storm movin' in. That'd make it harder to track 'em."
Davis stepped over beside Powell. "I'll go with you."
Powell glanced at him, dark, hooded eyes unreadable. "Somehow, that don't surprise me none," he said dryly.
"Count me in," Grimsby said. Mcintosh volunteered as well, followed by several other men. Within moments, Powell had a group of a dozen ready to go.
"Take what supplies you need from our wagons," Harding said. "You're liable to be out there in the woods for quite a while."
Powell nodded and said, "Much obliged. We'll take you up on that, Captain."
They couldn't prepare to leave quickly enough to suit Davis. He paced back and forth while Powell gathered up a bag of food and another of powder and shot. After what seemed like an interminable time to Davis, they were ready to go. The damp wind blew in his face as he shouldered his flintlock and walked away from the wagons with the other men.
Powell, who was in the lead, looked back over his shoulder and said, "Watch close, mind you. We could be walkin' into an ambush. I wouldn't put it past that bunch to leave some men behind to cover their back trail, just in case anybody comes after them."
That made sense to Davis. As worried as he was about Emily, though, he didn't think there was much chance of him letting down his guard.
A fine mist began to fall not long after the men were out of sight of the wagon train. Like Powell, Davis was worried about rain making the trail more difficult to follow, but unless there was a downpour, he thought they ought to be able to pick up the tracks left behind by the fleeing bandits. For one thing, riding their horses through the forest had left plenty of brush broken and shoved aside. To a long hunter like Powell, that was a route that had been plainly marked. Even to a relatively inexperienced frontiersman such as Davis, the trail was easy to follow.
But it might not remain that way, he reminded himself. The bandits had been in a hurry to get away from the wagon train with their captive. Later on, they might be more careful about the tracks they left behind.
Besides, the sooner Emily was rescued from them, the better. Davis didn't want the bandits to have time to abuse her.
He wondered why they had kidnapped her. Did they intend to demand a ransom for her from her parents? That was possible, in which case they would have a good reason to keep her alive and relatively healthy. Or perhaps they had grabbed her simply because they hadn't been able to get their thieving hands on anything else. They might take out their anger and frustration at the raid being foiled on her.
That possibility turned Davis's blood to ice in his veins.
The mist stopped, but the wind still blew, soughing loudly in the tops of the tall trees. Lightning flickered in the gloom, and thunder rumbled in the distance. "Tater wagon's rollin' over," Grimsby commented. "That's what my ma used to say whenever it thundered."
Davis just grunted, not interested in such homespun childhood memories at the moment. He just wanted to find Emily, wanted to take her into his arms and pull her against him and feel her warmth and know that she was all right.
But instead of vital and alive, she might already be as cold as the clay, and that thought gnawed at his brain almost constantly no matter how much he tried to banish it.
Davis knew that, with the overcast sky, night was going to fall early. Powell seemed to be just as aware of that, so he pushed the men at a hard pace. They climbed hills, slipping carefully over the crests so that they wouldn't be silhouetted against the sky, dim and dreary though it was. A keen-eyed observer might still spot them if they weren't cautious. They splashed through creeks and made their way along wooded ridges. Always, Powell trotted along in the lead, but Davis was usually right behind him. The logging work had hardened Davis even more than he had been to start with, and he moved tirelessly, driven as well by his concern for Emily. Even if he had been tired and sore, he would have ignored any pain if it meant finding her sooner.
After a great deal of twisting and turning, the trail finally straightened out and led in the direction of a gray-green, rough-shouldered peak to the north.
As mountains went, it wasn't terribly impressive. The taller scarps were far behind them in the Appalachians. But this was the most prominent feature in the surrounding landscape, and Davis wondered if it was honeycombed with caves.
He had heard about such things from men who had been in Kentucky before. If that was the case, then the mountain might make a perfect hiding place for the band of highwaymen. Davis's pulse began to pound harder as he looked up at
the mist-shrouded peak.
He and Powell were thinking alike again. The long hunter held up his hand, signaling the men to halt. He nodded toward the mountain and said quietly, "Could be they're up there somewhere. It'd be a good place for 'em to hole up. It's close enough to the Wilderness Road to make raidin' travelers pretty easy."
"Let's go," Davis said impatiently. "The trail leads straight to the mountain. Even I can see that."
"Can you see the trap they've probably laid for us?" Powell snapped.
Davis's mouth tightened. "Trap or no trap, we've got to go ahead. The only other thing we can do is turn back, and I'll be damned if I'm going to do that."
"We're going ahead," Powell conceded. "But everybody look sharp, and sing out if you spot anything that don't seem right."
The air was crackling with tension as the men started forward. The trail led into a narrow valley that ran up the side of the mountain. There were quite a few horse tracks in the soft, grassy earth. Davis knew the bandits had come this way, and he was convinced they still had Emily with them.
With every mile he and the other men had covered without finding her body, his hopes of freeing her from her captors grew stronger. The rescue party would be outnumbered more than two to one, he judged, but that might not matter if he and the others could strike quickly and unexpectedly. Powell kept them in the trees on the edge of the valley, flitting through the shadows like phantoms.
The precautions weren't good enough. Powell stopped and stiffened suddenly, as if some instinct had warned him, but as he turned and started to wave the rest of the men back, a volley of rifle fire crashed from a nearby thicket. The balls ripped into Powell and threw him backward, dark stains of blood blossoming on his buckskins.
Davis jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired, aiming into the clump of brush. He heard a whine next to his ear and knew that a rifle ball had barely missed him. Behind him, a man grunted in pain.
More shots ripped through the air. Muzzle flashes lit the gloomy late afternoon. Davis threw himself forward onto the ground to make himself a smaller target and began desperately reloading. He heard men cry out, saw from the corner of his eye as they fell, knocked off their feet by the shots of the ambushers. When his flintlock was charged and loaded again, he aimed at the brush and pulled the trigger. The powder in the pan flashed and made a small noise, but it failed to set off the charge in the barrel. Davis grimaced. This was no weather in which to be fighting a battle with flintlocks, not unless you could stay under cover and make sure all your powder was dry. He rolled over and lunged onto his feet again, heading for a nearby tree so that he could put the trunk between him and the bandits. As he ran, he saw Bill Grimsby sprawled face-up on the ground. An ugly black hole leaked crimson in the center of Grimsby's forehead.
Davis felt a pang of regret as he ducked behind the tree. Grimsby had been the closest thing to a friend he'd had since leaving Virginia, and now the man was dead. So was Mcintosh, who was curled up in a ball in the middle of a pool of blood that came from the wounds in his belly. Powell, of course, had been shot to ribbons in the first volley. In fact, Davis saw as he looked around, out of the dozen men who had set off in pursuit of the gang, only three of them were still on their feet. And as he watched, one of the other men was cut down as he dashed unsuccessfully for cover.
A pulse rang like an anvil in Davis's head. His hands trembled as he tried to clear the misfire from his rifle so that he could reload. Finally, he gave up and dropped the weapon. Powell hadn't had a chance to fire any of his guns, so if Davis could reach the long hunter's body, he could get his hands on a rifle and two pistols. He edged an eye around the trunk of the tree and saw where Powell lay. The distance to the man's body was only about fifteen feet.
I can make it, Davis thought. And once he had Powell's weapons, he could duck back into the trees and try to circle around the ambush. It was a slim chance, but the only one left to him.
Then, just as he was about to dash out from behind the tree, he heard a woman scream.
Emily!
It had to be her. She was the only woman out here in this savage wilderness—at least the only one he knew about.
Rage exploded inside him. She was alive, but she was scared, or hurt, or both. Without thinking about what he was doing, he emerged from the shelter of the tree and sprinted toward Powell's body, an inarticulate cry of rage welling up his throat. The other survivor of the rescue party was right behind him, also shouting.
The other man's bellow was cut short as a rifle ball struck him and threw him backward. Davis was vaguely aware that he was charging the gang alone now, but he was far beyond caring about that.
He paused for a fraction of a second as he passed Powell's body, just long enough to bend down and jerk the foreman's pistols from behind his belt. Then Davis was running toward the hidden gunmen again, screaming and firing both guns. He flung the empty weapons aside, ready to do battle barehanded.
He never got there. Something slammed into the side of his head with an awful impact, harder than anything he had ever felt before. He reeled to the side, tried to keep his balance, but failed. What felt like a finger of fire drew a line of agony across his side as he fell. He tasted grass and dirt in his mouth.
The rains that had been threatening all afternoon finally came then, pouring down from the sky, washing away the blood that welled from the wound in his head.
Davis never felt the cold, hard rain.
Chapter 13
He did feel something underneath him, however, when he woke up an unknowable time later. Something sharp and prodding and uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as the pain that rampaged through his head.
For one dizzying moment, he thought he was back in Constable Peter Abernathy's jail in Elkton. He remembered waking up there, but everything after that was a blur. Gradually, as he lay there unmoving, some instinct warning him not to announce the fact that he had regained consciousness, other memories came back to him.
The trial for Faith's murder. The lies that Andrew had told. The escape from the jail, the days and weeks of hiding and running. And then the Wilderness Road . . .
And Emily.
Despite the fact that he was trying to lie completely still, Davis's jaw clenched tightly, and his fingers twitched. He knew now what had happened. The raid on the wagon train was clear in his mind. He remembered following the bandits along with Powell, Grimsby, Mcintosh, and the other men.
They were all dead now. All dead . . . except Davis himself. And he knew damned well that he was alive because no one who had passed beyond this life could possibly hurt so much.
He recalled as well Emily's scream, just before the final charge against the bandits. Did she still live, too? If they had kept him alive, surely they hadn't killed her. A beautiful young woman had to be worth more than a grizzled, soul-weary fugitive from the law.
As he lay there, a few more things penetrated his consciousness. He heard the low-pitched voices of several men. Something tantalized his nose for long moments before he realized it was the smell of frying bear. Then he heard hollow echoes of footsteps somewhere nearby.
Davis opened his eyes, just the barest fraction of an inch.
At first all he could see was a strange, flickering, reddish light. It came from a fire, he figured out after several seconds. He could smell the wood burning. Somebody laughed, and a man said, "Pass me that jug."
He was in the bandit camp, Davis decided, probably in a cave in that mountain he had seen before the ambush, judging by the echoes he heard. For some reason, they had dragged him in here after shooting him. He was lucky to even be alive.
Or, depending on what his captors had in mind for him, maybe not so lucky at all.
He tensed his muscles and tried to move his arms and legs a little, not enough to let the bandits know he was awake. He had to find out whether or not he was free. It took only a moment for him to realize that he was bound hand and foot, and pretty tightly at that. His fingers and
toes were going numb.
Footsteps approached him, and he tried to lay as limp as possible. The masquerade didn't help. A booted toe nudged under his shoulder and then roughly rolled him over onto his back. Cold water splashed in his face, its touch as shocking as the blow of a fist. Sputtering, he shook his head from side to side, the reaction instinctive and violent.
"'Bout time you woke up, mister," a man said. His rough voice sounded like it had been filtered through gravel. "Thought for a little while there you weren't goin' to make it. That gal was carryin' on somethin' fierce over you."
Davis felt a spark of hope blaze into life inside him. The woman this man was talking about had to be Emily. She was the only one in these parts who would "carry on" just because she thought he might be dead.
Blinking water out of his eyes, Davis looked up at the man looming over him. From this angle, lying on the floor of the cave, it was impossible to tell how tall the man was, but his spread of shoulders and his long, powerful arms were impressive. He wore buckskin pants, a linsey-woolsey shirt, and a broad-brimmed black hat shoved back on curly dark hair. His beard hung down almost to his chest.
The man had his hands on his hips and a self-satisfied expression on his face. "You know who I am?" he asked.
Davis shook his head, even though the movement made fresh pain throb behind his eyes.
"They call me Shadrach. I'm the leader of these boys."
"Can't say as I'm . . . pleased to meet you," Davis managed to grate.
Shadrach threw back his head and laughed, the booming sound echoing from the high ceiling of the cave. "No, I don't imagine you would be," he said. "But you're here, and there ain't a blessed thing you can do about it. What's your name?"
The Wilderness Road Page 15