“That’s right, practice your new name.”
“That’s not my new name you big, dumb—mmphf.”
Tom yanked her hard against his chest and kissed her until she forgot about yelling. He slid one hand into her wild white hair and tilted her head back so he could pour all his loneliness and eagerness to have her into one single kiss.
With no ability to yap at him, she turned into a full partner in that kiss. Her arms wound around his neck, and he knew, whatever words came out of her mouth, this was truth. She wanted him. She was meant for him. This was the destiny God had laid out for the two of them.
She calmed and went along so enthusiastically Tom tried to figure out a way to speed up their wedding vows to tonight.
Since they were about two days’ ride from the nearest preacher, nothing came to mind, so, when he quit, he wheeled toward the first door. All the crying was coming from there. “A house this big and the children don’t even get their own rooms.”
Mandy’s hand landed hard on top of his as he gripped the knob. “They don’t want their own rooms. Guess what. I sleep in there with them. I don’t want my own room. This place is spooky. Worse yet, it’s cold. If we stay together, then we only have to heat up one room to survive the winter.”
Tom looked down and smiled. “You’re coming, aren’t you, Mandy girl?”
All the defiance and temper melted from her expression, replaced by fear. “It’s not safe for you, for any of us.” She had her mind stuck clear in a deep old rut.
“I know. But I can’t help it. I need a wife and you’re the only woman I can imagine being such.” He considered kissing her again if she kept arguing. He decided that when she went to nagging it was almost like she was begging him to kiss her.
“I will never be your wife. I’d just as well sign a warrant for your death.”
She was worrying about him; that seemed like a good sign. “I gave you a year since that worthless husband of yours died, but you never came nor mailed me a letter asking me to come.”
“That’s not my place.”
“Figured you might see it that way, seein’ as how we’ve only met twice before. But I knew how it was meant to be between us right from the start. And I’m sure you did, too.” Tom flipped his hand over, off the knob, to grab hers. “Didn’t you?”
There was a long moment of silence. Well, silence not counting three crying babies.
Finally, with a frown so fierce it hurt Tom’s heart, she said, “I was a married woman.”
“That was a big old avalanche blocking the trail between us, I’ll grant you that.” Tom smiled at her confusion.
“And now trouble comes riding with me.” Mandy shook her head, and in the dim light of the hallway, he saw her eyes, so light blue they looked gray, fill with tears. “Terrible trouble. I won’t bring that to your door.”
“Finally figured that one out, too.” He interlaced his fingers with hers and held on, hoping she got the message soon that he was planning on holding on forever. “That’s why I quit waiting for you and came to fetch you home.”
One more kiss, then he opened the door and went in to meet his children for the second time. He approached the oldest girl, Angela, such a pretty little thing with long, wispy blond hair half escaped from a braid.
Behind his back he heard his stubborn almost-wife snarl, “I am home.”
Tom sighed but kept a smile on his face for the little girl’s sake. Someone around here had to think of the children’s best interests.
“And I will never marry you.”
Smiling, he lifted Angela into his arms and said, “Hey, little girl. Call me Pa.”
“Pa?” Angela tilted her head and the tears slowed.
“Yep. I’m your new pa. We’ll practice it until you learn it well.”
“Tom, don’t you dare tell my daughter to—”
“We’ve got plenty of time, because with your ma bent on talking me to death, this is shaping up to be a long night.”
Sidney Gray had tried to level a mountain. Pure stupid.
Cord had figured him for a halfwit from the first, but a halfwit in possession of a fortune. Cord was able to take orders from the man who was paying his salary. The money had been good, and he’d seen no way to separate Gray from that fat pot of gold he had tucked away in a Denver bank. So Cord had handled dynamite for one long summer, learned how to run a long fuse and get clear and how to pick a spot that would do the most damage quickly. Even back then Cord had seen how easy it would be to bring that whole gap right down on a man’s head.
The way it worked out, Sidney had paid Cord by the month to learn exactly what he needed to know to trap Mandy in this place forever.
There were cracks all over the walls of that gap, torn there by the blasting. Toward the end of the summer, they’d quit drilling holes for the dynamite sticks and just used the cracks that were already there. Some of the crew of skilled blasters had pointed to specific spots and warned Sidney that the wall was weak. They’d warned Gray that his gap would someday come tumbling down. Not could … would. They’d been sure the stone lining this gap was undermined and had warned the high and mighty Lord Gray that he was courting trouble.
Gray had just scoffed and said if the gap collapsed he’d blast it open again.
Cord had listened and watched, and in the dozens of times he’d passed through that gap, he’d located the exact spots where he could plant explosives. He’d have that gap closed in minutes.
Fergus rode up alongside him. “I’ve told the men to stay tight together. You may not want to believe in haints, Cord, but there’s for sure somethin’ in these woods. Wolves’d howl. A grizzly bear would kick up a ruckus if it attacked. Both of them critters would leave plenty of blood behind. We’ve seen no sign of Indians or outlaws. And that witch woman is usually up there where we can see her, pointing her gun at the sky like a madwoman. She’s not down here picking the men off.”
A cold chill crawled up Cord’s spine. It was the honest truth that men had disappeared. “Gotta be Indians.”
“There ain’t no Indians around here, Cord. The army moved ’em off years ago.”
Cord saw the gap in the distance, the rocks black and threatening. The other Cooter kin rode so close behind that Cord was ashamed of their cowardice. He was also glad to have them near to hand. They approached the gap. Cord saw the tall, narrow opening yawing in front of him and felt like it was a huge, gaping mouth, waiting to swallow them whole. Where had all Cord’s kin gone?
“Pull up.” Cord refused to admit it was because he was losing his nerve and needed a few seconds to build his backbone up. “I want to get the blast rigged and ready so we just ride in there, plant it, and pull out fast, running the fuse until we’re clear. The second we’re out, we detonate the sticks of dynamite and then we hightail it. We’ll be in and out in a few minutes. So fast no ghosts nor curses are going to have time to stop us.”
He reined his horse off the trail and felt the woods surround him. Cord swung to the ground and pulled the dynamite from his saddlebags and began cutting the fuse.
“Use plenty,” J.D. said. “I want to do this once and be done for good.”
Cord curled his lip in contempt, without telling his cousin that he’d already pulled out about double what they’d need. Cord wanted out of here, too.
“Did anyone see that woman up there tonight?” Cord paid attention to the dynamite but not so raptly that he failed to notice that no one rode away to check. They all studied the top of that gap from where they sat on horseback. There was no witch woman silhouetted as she took aim at heaven with her long gun.
The men were well and truly spooked.
“Nope, no sign of her. Bright night, too.” Fergus had stayed on his horse.
Only Cord had dismounted. It made the woods close in, and he felt that odd warm breath on his neck. The devil breathing on him.
Working faster, Cord stuck a fuse on plenty of dynamite. And he gave each stick plenty of fuse so they co
uld be well away before they lit it.
Cord was a coward, too. That thought sneaked into his head before he could stop it. He shook it off the best he could, but it stuck to him like a burr.
He felt eyes watching him right where he stood. The eyes of a crazy woman. A crazy woman he’d touched and wanted. A woman who was no witch. She was warm and beautiful, with eyes that looked straight into his soul and found him wanting.
He hungered to crush the contempt he’d seen in her eyes. Drag her down until she was thankful for a man like Cord Cooter.
But tonight he gave all that up. It was lost to him and it chafed, but there was no other way. They couldn’t get in, so tonight they were going to bury her alive.
Three
Mandy was going to be buried alive. They rode toward that gap, and her throat closed, and her breath battled to squeeze through her clenched jaw.
The gap stood between her and death. Inside it she could survive. Outside, death roved and snarled and snapped like a pack of rabid wolves.
And not just her death, but the deaths of any she’d be called upon to kill. A shiver rushed up her arms and shook her spine. Cold. She needed the cold to face what lurked outside the gap.
More than the cold, she just plain needed to stay inside. She rubbed on that callus she’d grown by keeping her rifle always to hand. Hating the bit of hardened skin, she knew her heart was just as hard and just as terrified of what was waiting for her outside that gap.
But Tom was leaving, and he was taking her children with him. So now here she rode straight for death with no way to get control of the situation. And that made her crazy.
Being crazy probably described her pretty well as she headed for that gap like she wasn’t afraid to die or nuthin’.
“I can’t believe that idiot husband of yours didn’t manage to do harm to my horses.” Tom was riding one of the horses Sidney had bought from him two years ago.
They were beautiful animals. Mandy had cared for them with utter devotion, hoping Sidney never noticed how tenderly she watched over them because she knew they were a little piece of Tom.
Now they rode away from Gray Tower on the matched team of blacks Sidney had bought from Tom, leaving the huge house and all its lavish furniture behind without a second thought to its value. She’d also abandoned closets full of stupid gray clothes. The furniture had just been more to dust for Mandy. The clothes, she and her children wore because she had no others.
Tom had Angela in his lap and nearly two-year-old Jarrod in the pack strapped on his back. The little tyke was chunky and given to running wild. He was dark while his sisters were fair, and Sidney had proclaimed the boy his spitting image. Mandy thought Jarrod took after her pa.
Mandy had taken the bare necessities with her. Diapers and Sidney’s map. She ran her hand over the map she’d slipped inside the bodice of her dress and fretted to think of her shattered telescope. That telescope and this map were what she’d always hoped would lead her to freedom.
Right now Jarrod was settled in that pack and acting contented, waving cheerfully at Mandy, almost as if he wanted to taunt a smile out of her when she was feeling so grim.
Tom carried the chunky little boy in that pack without a sign of effort, though he loaded Mandy’s arms or back down heavily these days. Mandy stared at her wriggling, grinning son, who yelled, “Bye-bye, Mama.”
Bye-bye Mama indeed. God protect me. Protect us all.
She slid her hand to where her rifle should be on her back and wanted to go pound on Tom because she felt so helpless without it. If she had possession of it, they had a chance. Besides, she needed to touch the muzzle to bring the chill rushing through her veins, the cold that helped her pull the trigger.
Tom and two of her children were riding straight into the teeth of the Cooter family’s gunfire. Mandy followed along, knowing she should somehow run Tom off with her Winchester. But the man was canny enough to have possession of her children. Even as sure a shot as Mandy was, she couldn’t be sure of not hitting one of them. And even if she could be sure, none of that was possible because she didn’t have her gun.
In near despair, she admitted to something even worse than that. Her heart wasn’t in killing him. Confound it.
“Hurry up. I hear something.” J.D.’s whisper sounded loud as a rifle shot. Cord heard the man draw his six-shooter and cock it.
“Shut up.” Cord would have said more, but he was rushing through the job. This was the last stick of dynamite to place. The fuses where ready to be doled out and attached to the plunger. Cord fastened the last blasting cap to the stick of dynamite and began backing out of the gap.
He thought he heard something, too, but he ignored it. His imagination was running wild in this pitch black pass with his brother and cousins as jumpy as spit on a red hot skillet. The gap pressed on Cord until he could hardly breathe.
Fergus held a lantern, but it barely cast enough light to work. It did nothing to push back the weight of these high walls, looming, threatening to collapse and bury them all.
“Bring my horse.” Cord eased the fuses out hand-over-hand, careful not to pull on them and maybe loosen the connection so they wouldn’t detonate.
They neared the mouth of that gap, and Cord hurried toward it, eager to breathe deeply again. He fed out the fuse.
His family was slower, and they’d strung out behind him as he stepped out of the black pit those gap walls created.
“Move faster. I’m going to blow that thing. Can’t you keep up?”
He rounded a pile of rocks well out of range and dropped to his knees. Immediately he fastened the fuses to the plunger, so hungry to bury that woman alive he was drooling.
“Can you keep up?” Tom snapped at her like she was a private in the army and he was the almighty general.
“Let me have my rifle back.” Resuming the argument she’d already gone through ten times, she reached the inside edge of the only way out of this place—unless she turned mountain goat like Tom—and nearly turned and galloped back to the house.
To keep from doing just that, she kicked her horse into a trot, forcing the beautiful thoroughbred to enter that narrow gap. The stupid place Sidney had blasted out with dynamite—barely wide enough for a small wagon to squeeze through. All because he wanted to live atop a mountain. The gap snowed shut all winter. Though it melted open in the short Rocky Mountain summer, it didn’t matter because there were Cooters outside that gap trying to kill her.
The gap was easy to guard against the whole, back-shooting world … but it hadn’t stopped one pest of a rancher who wasn’t afraid to scale a cliff. It was all wrong that she found that appealing.
“I’ll give it to you when you catch me.” He had the nerve to look back, and even in the black belly of that gap, she knew he was gloating.
The gap was too narrow for them to comfortably ride two abreast. The steep sides cast them in deep shadows as they rode farther in, until it cut off even the starlight—which reminded Mandy again that she’d lost her scope.
She needed it to study the night sky. She’d been doing it ever since she’d found Sidney’s map and the stars he’d used to lay out a direction to his treasure. She’d never made sense of the map, but staring at the heavens night after night reminded her of her place, her low humble place in God’s creation.
Sidney had been fascinated by the stars once his fortress was finished. Mandy didn’t think he was in awe of how small he was. Instead, she suspected he resented the heavens for daring to be above him. And maybe the moron was looking for a way to build way up there.
Sidney had hauled home books about the stars. Mandy had listened when he talked of constellations and the North Star and the phases of the moon. And after he’d died, she’d found peace in the night and the stars.
Now she’d lost her telescope. She’d have to remember she was lowly without any help.
Except Tom would probably remind her.
And she’d lost that one tool that might help her find Sidney�
��s gold. Gold that would help her buy freedom.
The sides of the gap rose to a dizzying height. Mandy could see her rifle in the boot of Tom’s saddle. He’d also scrounged through her house and taken four pistols, a shotgun, and a Bowie knife.
It had been left to Mandy to remember to bring diapers for Jarrod.
Men!
Instead, mainly because Catherine was on her lap and Jarrod was watching her from the pack on Tom’s back, Mandy said, “I’d like it now, please, Mr. Linscott.”
A far more earthy phrase full of dire threats and insults was pressing to escape through her lips. But the children were close at hand.
“Call me Tom.” Then Tom tilted his head and in the dark seemed to look down at Angela. “And you can call me Pa, little girl.”
“Pa!” Angela kicked her feet, which stuck out almost straight on both sides of the broad-backed black Tom rode. Mandy could just barely see her little moccasins.
“Do not call him Pa.” Mandy could not sit idly by while that travesty occurred.
“Pa!” Catherine, on Mandy’s lap, twisted around and grinned up as if the order were a joke.
Jarrod’s legs were encased on that papoose-like pack on Tom’s back, but the little boy’s arms were free, and he waved them wildly and yelled, “Papa!”
“That’s right. I’m your pa. You might as well call me that right from the start.”
“My other pa is dead.” Angela’s high-pitched voice carried back to Mandy.
Tom bent down and responded, but Mandy couldn’t hear what the coyote was saying to her daughter.
Shaking her head, Mandy couldn’t believe the actions of this night. If things continued to progress as they were, maybe her order was a joke. Maybe she was destined to marry Tom. And maybe Tom and Mandy’s children were all destined to die under the blazing guns of the Cooter clan.
Tom had announced they probably would never come back, and he’d picked the horses he’d sold Sidney and let the others loose. He handled the long-legged black spitfire mare so easily, Mandy wondered if the horse remembered him. He hadn’t offered to bring a pack horse or let Mandy bring any extra clothes, and she hadn’t asked. There was nothing in that stupid fortress she wanted.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 62