Sidney was hanging back by the steps. Every thank-you had been grudging. It was all Mandy could do not to rap him on the head with the butt of her Winchester.
Mandy neither yelled at her husband nor cried, knowing either would delay the Hardens, and they needed to get on the trail. Mandy had done everything she could to convince them she could finish their winter preparations on her own. And she could.
They could have survived with no help. But God had sent people in her path. Mandy prayed for protection steadily. It was the longing of her heart to feel close to God and protected from the often rugged life in the West. Both here and back in Texas.
God had certainly provided beyond any hope Mandy had dared. She and Sidney would live comfortably through the winter because of Belle and Silas Harden.
“I found the straightest trees I could”—Silas studied the cabin—“but there are plenty of gaps. You remember how to mix up the mud and daub it in, right?”
Silas had done one whole side already, most of the higher logs on the cabin, and he’d given the barn a first coating of mud, keeping his men working late into the night. But the plaster of mud needed to dry before more could be added, and where knots in the trees had forced them to leave good-sized gaps, the cabin was going to need several days worth of patching.
Now the Hardens were riding out, leaving behind supplies and the riding horses—which Mandy hadn’t realized were a gift until a few minutes ago, and the foal, which meant the Hardens would return in the spring—and it was more than Mandy could stand without tears.
Sidney stood behind her glowering. Mandy expected taking the charity—Belle had called them housewarming gifts and payment for sheltering the mare and foal—had pinched him.
“They’re rich people,” Sidney grumbled as soon as the Harden company was out of earshot. “They don’t know what it’s like starting out. They could have given me better advice about where to hunt gold. All Harden would do was talk about caring for the horses and how to lay in wait for a deer. And how to mix the stupid mud up to patch holes in the cabin.”
Mandy caught herself rubbing the little callus on her trigger finger and stopped that telling action. “We’ll look around, Sidney. We’ll find a place for you to dig your gold mine. But winter’s coming down on us. We need to add a new layer of mud right away and jerk that venison.”
Mandy looked out the door at the two big bucks hanging from a tree just outside the door. Emma had gone hunting and brought them in.
Mandy looked at Sidney and gave him an encouraging smile. “We’re going to be happy here. If you don’t find gold soon enough, you can ride to town and work until the winter settles in. We’re going to make a good life.”
She looked at the trees and scrub brush surrounding their home, cutting the wind. “It’s a likely place we picked for a home.” The Hardens had picked the exact site and done it well, but Sidney had picked Montana.
Sidney looked away from the hanging deer. “You really know how to butcher those deer?”
Mandy nodded, proud she’d be able to help make them comfortable.
He shared his most charming smile, and Mandy remembered fully why she’d agreed to marry him. “Will it hurt anything if you wait an hour or two to get started?”
“No, they can hang a while. But it’s best to get a job tackled if it needs doing.” Mandy took one step away from their little cabin.
Sidney slid an arm around Mandy’s waist and pulled her back hard against him. Then he leaned in and kissed her. “I know something else that needs doing.”
Mandy let the kiss drive every other thought straight out of her mind.
Sidney was right. The deer would still be there. It was far past time to give the man his wedding night.
They hadn’t seen their pursuer in a while, but who needed a gunman when Beth was determined to kill them both?
Alex thought his legs were giving out. His arm burned like fire where it’d been creased by a bullet. They’d run all night through pouring, soaking rain. When he’d suggested they seek shelter, Beth had bullied him into moving on. The storm had cleared off about the time the sun came up.
The one good thing was they hadn’t been fired on in hours. Maybe they’d lost that madman in the storm.
Alex had never been a lucky man so he wasn’t optimistic. They ran on. Alex had long ago given up on doing anything but keeping pace with his wife.
“There it is!” Beth yelled.
“There what is?” Alex looked at the little slave driver he’d married.
“The arroyo I was looking for.” She pointed and Alex caught a glimpse of shimmering water curving far below them. They’d been coming down out of high country all day, but from the look of the cut the arroyo ran through, they were still pretty high. She’d never said a word about an arroyo. Except, she had said—
“Wait a minute. About the time it started raining, you asked me if I could swim. I said I can’t.” They reached the edge of the cliff that fell thirty or more feet into what looked like raging floodwaters.
“I remember.” Beth looked downstream. “Maybe we can run alongside it. We don’t necessarily need to jump in.”
A sharp report of a gun cut the air and a rock exploded. The ricochet slit Alex’s face.
Beth gave Alex one wild look. “Sorry.”
She grabbed his hand and, swim or not, he knew that while the fast moving water was only apt to kill them both, the bullets were for sure deadly. He clutched her hand and they jumped.
When Alex fought his way to the surface, his first thought was that he’d lost hold of Beth. As the water swept him along, he looked frantically for her. His eyes landed on that madman who’d lured them out into the mountains last night. The man was a long way away. Out of rifle range. At least Alex sure hoped so.
The man was so focused that Alex knew this hunter was staring straight at him, not Beth. The man yelled, and the canyons and water echoed the words until Alex couldn’t possibly miss what he said, even over the roar of the rushing water. “Dead or alive, Buchanan! Dead or alive!”
And suddenly it all made sense. Alex knew exactly what this man was after. And he knew that unless they were very lucky—and Alex had never been lucky—Beth was going to die to pay for Alex’s sins.
Alex caught sight of Beth being swept along by the current a few feet behind him. Their eyes locked. He knew she’d heard that awful shout. As they were rushed along by the raging floodwater, and since luck was unlikely, Alex started to pray.
Then the flood waters sucked him under.
“Dead or alive, Buchanan!” Cletus might as well have been howling at the moon. Buchanan and his woman couldn’t hear him. Didn’t matter. It suited Cletus to blow off some steam by yelling, so he did. No one around to care, so why not?
Cletus’s druthers were to get a man before that man knew he was being hunted. Made life easier. Now Buchanan was warned. But Cletus had been hunting men for a long time and he knew the main trick was to just keep coming. Always coming. Like a hungry wolf on the trail of blood.
Cletus had left his horse behind. His gun wouldn’t fire if he jumped in the water, and he wasn’t going up against Buchanan without a gun. So he’d come along slow. No harm in slow as long as it was sure and steady. These waters flowed fast, and the walls of this washed-out arroyo were steep most of the way to the Pecos. There’d be little chance for Buchanan to climb out of that water for long, brutal miles.
Chances were Cletus would just scout downstream and pick up Buchanan’s body. Smiling, he turned back. In the daylight he could cut his time in half and he could get his horse and ride around this mess of mountains instead of through them. If he didn’t get there in time to cut Buchanan off, he’d get there later and track the man down. Buchanan was wanted. No law would protect him.
If the yellow-bellied doctor heard nothing else, Cletus hoped the deserter heard laughter echoing off the walls of the wild mountain canyon.
“Montana?” Sophie looked at the telegraph and was stun
ned. “What in the world is Mandy doing in Montana?” And who in the world was Silas Harden, the man who’d sent the wire?
She marched out of the telegraph office. Sophie had heard everything about that skunk Mandy had hitched herself to. She’d never liked the man. Too smooth to suit Sophie from the first day. Didn’t have a callus on a single finger. Bad sign.
Clay would have to find Luther and Buff and send them in the right direction. Sophie had no doubt he’d do it. Her husband was a good man. A man to count on. Not like Sidney Gray.
But if Clay didn’t fix this, Sophie vowed to the good Lord she’d saddle a horse and go herself. And yes, she’d take all the young’uns with her. That skunk who’d stolen her Mandy was not going to get away with marrying Mandy when he was already married. Yes, Sophie determined with grim resolve, she really did want to go herself.
“Clay!” Sophie saw Clay coming out of the doctor’s office with Sally at his side. Sally, her girl. She’d almost died.
Sophie couldn’t find it in herself to hate the strange Alex Buchanan even if it galled her that Beth had married the man. Even if the man stacked up to be some kind of lunatic. Still, she’d be grateful to him forever.
She had two daughters married. Both married to men Sophie thought were mighty strange picks.
“Sophie!” Clay marched toward her, Sally nearly running to keep up.
Sophie hurried just as fast toward him. They met in the middle of the mud-soaked main street in Mosqueros.
“Beth’s gone!” Clay raged.
“Mandy’s in Montana,” Sophie said at the same moment.
“What?” they spoke the word in unison.
“Beth has disappeared.” Clay talked faster and his words distracted Sophie from her disturbing news about Mandy. “Her horses came in last night, pulling the doctor’s wagon. No one’s see her all day.”
Since it was nearly noon, something had definitely happened to Beth. All thoughts of Mandy and her plight were put aside. For now.
Sophie and Clay turned and walked side-by-side. Sally fell in line with them. All three of them jerked on their buckskin gloves as they headed for their horses, tied three in a row in front of the general store.
Sophie looked at Sally and could see the still-raw scar on her throat. A tiny scar that saved her life. “Is Alex gone, too?” She’d forgotten about her son-in-law.
“Yep.” Clay jerked his reins loose from the hitching post and swung up onto his black gelding. “No one saw ’em leave town, but the wagon came in from the south. Rain washed out all the tracks from last night, but the wagon must have come down after the rain passed.” Clay wheeled his horse to the south. “The horses stood, still in their traces, out front of the stable this morning. There’s wagon tracks heading south.”
He paused and turned back to Sophie. “Mandy’s in Montana?” Clay’s voice almost screeched. “What in the world is Mandy doing in Montana?”
“Who can say? Let’s go save Beth. Then you’ll need to wire Luther.” Sophie spurred her horse south, Sally one step behind.
The tracks just kept on going south out of town, the one direction Beth would never go.
Sally was the first to notice a second set of tracks. “Someone rode out after them.”
Clay swung down to study the sign. “The wagon came down the mountain empty. You can tell by the way the trail left by the buckboard wanders that there was no driver on the way back. That means—” Clay looked up.
Sophie read his fear as if he’d shouted it. Beth had been led up this lonely trail by someone and that someone had come back alone.
They were at a full gallop in seconds.
“Grab the log, Alex!” Beth saw their chance. Not to get out of here—there didn’t seem to be a spot where the banks weren’t straight up and high above their heads—but a log would help them stay afloat.
Alex heard her over the roar of the surging floodwaters. He must have because he obeyed. He grabbed for one of the dozens of branches of the stout trunk and, glory be to God, he held on.
Beth was behind him. For the first time, instead of fighting the current, she kicked hard to speed herself up. The Winchester was still wrapped around her head and one shoulder. The doctor’s bag, with its medical supplies and the trusty Colt revolver, was slid hard up her arm until the handles were stuck tight. They’d been awkward to hang on to, but she’d done it, clung to them like they meant life or death.
They very well might.
She dragged herself forward, thinking of her sharpshooting sister, Mandy. It was Mandy who’d started using a strap so she could get her gun into play faster. Beth might well owe Mandy her life, if things came down to life and death, and the gun made the difference.
Fighting the water an inch at a time, she was battered and bruised and half-drowned from this wild ride. But at last she got to the tree and clung to the gnarled roots. The tree looked like it had been torn whole right out of the ground.
She was on the off side of the tree from Alex so she hoisted herself up to lie on her belly across the trunk. And there he was, doing the same thing with a frantic expression on his face—looking upstream.
When she appeared, he saw her and smiled. That frantic look had been his worrying about her. “Beth. Thank God you made it.” He breathed hard twice, changing his grip so his body was more fully supported by the tree. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Beth squirmed around, too, trying to get a firmer grasp on the tree. She felt like she was using her last ounce of energy to pull herself up. She set her now soaked Winchester and her waterlogged doctor’s bag on her lap. Maybe everything was ruined. Maybe the rifle and the Colt wouldn’t fire. But she’d held on all this way down the flooded creek.
The branches spread out to the sides in a way that kept the tree from rolling. Alex and Beth raced along on their clumsy raft at a sickening speed, and every second swept them farther from the safety of Beth’s family. But for this one second, they were alive. They were even sort of safe. At least safe from that back shooter. The river might still get them.
“We both made it.” Alex panted as if he were storing up air for the future. As if he were planning to be underwater again soon.
The creek roared. No gunfire split the air. No human voices. A bird cawed in the early morning sun as the water splashed and rumbled along. Beth smiled. “Even you. Even I-can’t-swim-Alex made it.”
“I’m not sure what I did once I hit the water qualifies as swimming, but if it does, then, yes, I can swim.” Alex sighed.
Beth leaned back and found the roots of the tree made a fair backrest. “We’ll keep going downstream until we find a place with low banks where we can climb out. Then we’ll circle around, give the arroyo a wide berth in case that man’s coming downstream, and head back for Mosqueros.”
“No!” Alex shook his head—dead serious. The day was breaking and Beth could see it clearly in his face that, for the first time, Alex wasn’t going to obey her.
Well, that was annoying.
“We’re not going back north to Mosqueros. We’re going west to Fort Union.”
Beth patted the flat of her hand on one ear, hoping to dislodge water so she could hear what the man was saying. Maybe the water in her ears had kept it from making sense.
“I’ve heard of Fort Union. It’s in New Mexico. It’s a long, hard ride over some mean country.” Beth didn’t bother to mention that they didn’t have a horse. “Why would we go there for safety when we can just go back to Mosqueros?”
Alex sighed.
Beth saw something so kind and wise and gentle in his eyes that she wanted to crawl along this swirling, splashing log to his side and give him a hug.
“We’re going there because we’ve been swept so far west that we may actually be closer to it than we are to Mosqueros.”
Beth doubted it. They’d definitely come a long way in the right direction. But still—
“And we’re also going there because I figured out who that man is.”
&n
bsp; “You know him?” Beth felt some meager satisfaction to know the man had been gunning for someone other than her. It was very meager.
“I don’t know his name, but I know his type. He’s a bounty hunter.”
“And he’s after you because—” Beth waited.
“Because I’m a wanted man, Beth. There’s a price on my head. I should have told you. I should never have married you.”
Beth gasped then sucked in some of the water still streaming off her face. She started choking. At last she managed to say, “Alex, what did you do?”
“I’m a deserter from the cavalry. As that man so cruelly reminded me, I’m wanted dead or alive. Only it’s pretty clear to me that he’s only interested in dead and he’s going to make sure you’re dead right along with me. I’m not going to stand for that. We’ll make a run for Fort Union and I’ll turn myself in.”
“What do they do to deserters, Alex?”
Alex’s eyes finally fell. He’d been pretty brave when he announced he was turning himself in to the cavalry. Now he wasn’t quite so courageous.
“What, Alex? Tell me.” Dread came in waves just from looking at Alex’s expression.
“The punishment for desertion”—Alex swallowed hard but he raised his head to look her square in the eye—“is a firing squad.”
Twenty – three
Mandy skinned the buck with a smile on her face. She was truly Sidney’s wife now.
She wondered how long it would be until she had a little one to raise. She’d mothered her little brothers and sisters all her life, of course with her ma in charge, but Mandy knew the way of mothering, and all the fun and love and hard work. She couldn’t wait.
God, protect me and Sidney and our children.
Her married life had finally, truly begun.
She made quick work of skinning the bucks then set the hides aside to tan, a process that would give them thick, comfortable blankets for the winter—or she could use them to make shoes or coats or gloves. She knew how to do all those things.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 17