Lettie was firm in her response. “I think the advance you were paid in St. Louis should be sufficient to compensate you for your trouble to this point. I believe your desertion in the face of my brother’s tragic illness would more than justify the cancellation of the agreement we made. I’ll need what money I’ve got left—I’ve decided to take the train to Ogden in Utah territory. It’s getting too late in the season to continue with a wagon. I see now that we were too optimistic in starting out, even before my brother fell ill.”
“You’re gonna take the train,” Bingham repeated with a hint of contempt in his voice. “What about Steadman Finch? Who’s gonna help you find him?”
“I’ll hire someone in Ogden to guide me.” She strove to maintain a firm posture.
“What about the wagon and the horses?” He continued to press her.
“I’ll sell them at Fort Kearny.”
He didn’t say anything more for a long moment while he stood staring at her with eyes as lifeless as coal. His mind already made up, he glanced around him briefly, although there was no one in sight for miles.
Lettie’s instincts told her that he was contemplating some evil deed, so she backed away a step and let her hand rest on the handle of her pistol. “I think it would be best if you take your leave now, Mr. Bingham,” she said, striving to keep her voice from quavering.
Bingham watched her intently, considering his possibilities. A slight smile began to form at the corners of his mouth as he took a step toward her. “Well, all right, missy, if that’s the way you want it.” His smile broadened. “No harm done, I reckon. I’ll just git my stuff together and be on my way.”
Lettie relaxed a little, relieved that he seemed to be agreeable to the parting—she should not have. He turned as if starting toward his horse. Then, before she could draw the pistol from its holster, he was upon her, knocking her to the ground. She tried to roll over so she could free her weapon, but he pounced upon her, pinning her arms against her sides. She fought to maintain possession of the weapon, but he easily overpowered her. Tearing away with her revolver now in his hand, he got to his feet and stood back a few steps, the pistol aimed at her.
“Now, I reckon I’ll be the one what says what’s gonna happen. First off, you owe me some money. You can save me some time by tellin’ me where you got it hid.” When she didn’t reply, he grinned playfully. “Come on, now, it ain’t gonna do you no good. I’m bound to find it. Might as well make this as easy as we can.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Lettie replied defiantly. “I’m very disappointed in you, Mr. Bingham. I should have suspected you were a dishonest person. And you’ve had a surly attitude ever since we left St. Louis.”
Bingham grinned again, unable to hide his amusement at her scolding. “My, my,” he clucked. “I do apologize for being so rude.” He moved to stand directly over her. Placing the pistol in his belt and extending a hand toward her, he said, “Here, give me your hand.” She would not take it, watching him warily. “Come on,” he coaxed, as if trying to calm a horse. “Come on, take my hand. I’ll help you up.”
Still she did not move, continuing to sit there in the dust while his hand remained extended toward her. After several minutes had passed with no motion by either party, she finally succumbed, grasped his hand, and started to pull herself up.
“That’s better,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her up toward him. When she was almost on her feet, he suddenly slugged her with his free hand, driving her back down upon the ground. The force of his fist against her jaw rattled her brain to the point where she was almost unconscious. “Now, let’s git one thing straight,” he advised. “If you sit there like a good little girl, I might not hurt you. But it’s gonna be hell to pay for you if you make me any trouble, ’cause I’ll hurt you bad.” She lay there in a painful stupor while he turned and proceeded to start rummaging through the wagon.
After a few minutes, her head started to clear. She managed to get up on her hands and knees. Still groggy, she stared at her assailant through glazed eyes. She had never known personal violence in her young life, and the shock of her first experience with such brutal behavior was almost enough to totally incapacitate her. Bingham paid her very little attention, glancing in her direction from time to time as he pulled personal possessions from the packs and left them strewn upon the ground. Unsuccessful in finding what he searched for in the packs, he paused to give her a hard look before turning his attention to her late brother’s gear. Though he spoke not a word, that look promised more violence to come if he didn’t find the money soon. She almost cried out as she felt the warm tears of terror well in her eyes, and the throbbing of her jaw seemed to intensify with every beat of her heart.
Now she heard him cursing to himself as each compartment and each sack yielded nothing more than clothing and various dried foods and cooking utensils, his anger increasing by the second. Finding nothing in the wagon, he rifled the contents of her brother’s saddlebags. Finally, when his search was completed with nothing to show for his efforts, he spun around to face her, but she was no longer there.
“I shoulda looked there in the first place,” he muttered, realizing that she must have hidden the money somewhere on her person. It did not concern him that she was gone when he turned around. It would do her no good to run. There were very few places to hide along the creek bank where they had made their camp, and there were miles of open prairie beyond that.
Feeling no need for urgency, he untied his horse and stepped up into the saddle. In her haste to escape, Lettie had left an obvious trail through the sandy loam beside the creek. It was no trouble for Bingham to follow even in the failing evening light. The tracks led him down along the water, weaving around the thin line of cottonwoods that lined the bank, and into the shallow creek. He smiled to himself when he saw the imprint on the other side where she had fallen as she tried to run up the bank after leaving the water. He prodded his horse with his heels and crossed over. Once clear of the brambles that competed with the cottonwoods for the stream’s nourishment, he looked out across the prairie. Espying her right away, he paused to watch her for a moment. Over a hundred yards away by then, she staggered drunkenly as she tried to run, her wind obviously having just about played out. Knowing he had all the time in the world, he held his horse to a walk.
When he was within twenty yards of overtaking her, Lettie heard the sound of his horse over the labored gasps of her breathing. She looked back at him and tried to scream, her face a desperate mask of terror. But she had no wind left to scream for help. Bingham could scarcely hear her thin cry. He chuckled to himself, amused by her helplessness.
Guiding his horse up against her, he took one foot from the stirrup and planted it between her shoulder blades, sending her crashing headfirst to the ground. Seeing the girl was spent, he took his time dismounting. “Well, now,” he said, standing over her, “are we gonna do this the easy way or the hard way?”
Still gasping for breath, she tried to crawl away from him. “Get away from me,” she pleaded, pushing herself through the dust as he paced her step for step.
“Have it your way,” he said with a shrug. “Makes no never mind to me one way or the other.” He placed his foot in her side and kicked her over onto her back. Before she could recover, he was on top of her, straddling her. When she tried to fight him, he slapped her hard across her face with the back of his hand. Although the blow made her head spin, she still struggled to resist him, but her efforts were becoming more and more feeble. His face a picture of pointed determination, he grabbed a handful of the heavy shirt she wore and, with one violent move, ripped it down the middle, revealing her long flannel underwear. “Huh,” he grunted, surprised to find her wearing long johns. She made a desperate attempt to resist, but he easily overcame her efforts, ripping the buttons down the front.
Halted momentarily by the sight of her exposed chest, he stared stupidly at finely sculptured breasts that lay like perfect mounds of alabast
er. “Damn,” he exclaimed. “You ain’t as young as you look. If I’da knowed what you been hiding under that shirt, I mighta made my move before we got to Westport.” Stunned for only a moment, and driven by his lust for her money, he recovered to continue his search of her body. The money first, he decided, then the girl, knowing that he would kill her afterward.
“Come on, honey, I know you got it on you somewhere.” Running his hand under the gun belt she wore and down inside her underwear, his fingers touched a pocket sewn inside the garment. “Hot damn!” he exclaimed. “I think I found something here.”
She tried to claw at him with her nails, but he was too quick, grabbing her wrist before she could strike him. Feeling satisfied with himself now, he didn’t bother to retaliate. His face lit up with an evil grin as his hand groped farther down into her long johns. If she heard the sharp crack that ripped the evening air, it didn’t register in her terrified brain. She wasn’t even aware of her own screaming until Bingham’s grin froze briefly on his face and then melted away, replaced by a look of horrified disbelief. Then suddenly he was gone, snatched from her body in the wink of an eye, the fingernails of his groping hand leaving raw marks across her belly.
Unable to believe her eyes, Lettie sat up to discover a man on horseback dragging Bingham behind him. Bound by the end of a whip lashed tightly around his throat, the hapless man clawed frantically to free his windpipe as his body bumped unceremoniously over the rough ground. She gazed in wonder at the man who had appeared from nowhere to dispatch Mr. Bingham in such rude fashion. Still unsteady, she managed to get to her feet, not sure if she should try to run or not.
The stranger pulled his horse to a stop about fifty yards away from her and turned to face Bingham, who was now on his feet, still trying to free his throat of the rawhide coil. The stranger sat silently watching Bingham, a rifle lying across his saddle. Shaken and bruised, Bingham finally flung the end of the whip from him. Almost in the same instant, he pulled the pistol from his belt and fired. In his haste to vent his anger, he didn’t take time to aim the weapon, and his shot went wide of the mark. He did not have the luxury of a second shot. Before he could pull the trigger again, he was struck in the chest with a .45 slug from the stranger’s Winchester.
Jim Culver held his rifle trained on the wounded man, ready to put another bullet in him if necessary. But the pistol dropped from Henry Bingham’s hand, falling harmlessly in the prairie dust. Bingham stared at Jim, unseeing, for what seemed to Lettie to be minutes before he finally crumpled to the ground. Only then did the stranger take his eyes off him and dismount.
“Are you all right, miss?” Jim asked as Lettie hurriedly pulled her torn shirt together in an effort to cover her exposed bosom. He reached down and picked up the pistol that had fallen from Bingham’s hand.
“Yes,” she stammered, not really sure. “I think so.” She watched the stranger with a wary eye, not certain at this point if she had been rescued from one peril only to be subjected to another.
“My name’s Jim Culver,” he said. “I hope that man was not your husband.” There had been no way he could have known if he was interrupting a family fight or not. If it was, he knew that it was no way for a husband to treat his wife, so he felt he had been left with little choice but to interfere. As far as the shooting was concerned, that had been Bingham’s choice and not his. His intention had been simply to stop the lady’s obvious distress.
“Heavens, no,” Lettie replied at once. “He was my guide. No, I think you have just saved my life, sir.”
“Then I guess it’s good I came along when I did,” Jim said. He had an opportunity now to take a closer look at the second damsel in distress he had rescued. He realized that she looked a bit younger than he had first imagined. He dismounted and dropped Toby’s reins. Although he had scouted the camp and found no one before riding in, he looked around him now, half-expecting other members of the party to appear out of the growing darkness. But no one showed, which brought to mind the obvious question: What was a young lady doing out here on the prairie with no one but a guide? A rather frail young lady at that, he thought as he studied the thin white face, now slightly lopsided with a red welt and a lump on one cheek. He couldn’t help but blink when his gaze lifted to find two dark doelike eyes locked on his, and he realized that he was being evaluated with even more intensity. He attempted to put her mind at ease.
“My name’s Jim Culver,” he repeated. “I came across your camp back yonder by the creek. I wondered where everybody was. Then I heard you scream, and I decided I’d better come have a look.” He endeavored to form a friendly expression on his face. The girl still seemed a little nervous. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Gradually, she began to relax her guard, sensing the honesty in his voice. “Yes,” she answered after a furtive glance in the direction of Bingham’s body. “I’m all right now.”
“Here, maybe you better hang on to this.” He handed her the pistol, noticing she wore an empty holster. “I’m wondering what in the world you’re doing out here and how you happened to be with that fellow. You say he was a guide?”
“He said he was,” she answered, calm again now that she sensed this stranger intended no harm. “Although I’m afraid it was poor judgment on our part. I’m not sure he had the slightest idea where he was leading my brother and me.
“I doubt he intended to lead you anywhere except maybe the middle of nowhere,” Jim said. “Why don’t we go on back to your camp. I could use a cup of coffee.” He tossed a glance toward the late Henry Bingham. “He ain’t going nowhere. I’ll take care of him in the morning.”
Taking Toby’s reins, he walked back to camp with her. When he started rummaging in his saddlebags for some coffee, she stopped him, insisting that she would furnish the coffee beans. “It’s the least I can do,” she said. So he rekindled the fire, then took care of his horse while she ground the beans and fetched water from the creek. Soon coffee was boiling, and he sat across from her while she told him how she happened to be in such a forsaken place with the evil Mr. Bingham.
It was a little over seven years ago when her father had been murdered. Lettie had been just a child of nine when a man who worked with her father had brutally murdered him by crushing his skull with a poker. Jonah Henderson, a senior vice president of the Midland Bank, had provided a handsome living for his family. Lettie and her older brother, Harvey, had adored their father and were devastated by his death. Their mother had never really recovered, seeming to wither away a little more with each year that passed after her husband was sc cruelly taken.
Steadman Finch was the man who had so wantonly struck her father down, killing a man who been a mentor to him—even after the ungrateful Finch was promoted to a vice presidency himself. It had been her father’s misfortune that Steadman Finch’s integrity had failed to match his ambition. Lettie’s mother had told her in later years that her father had begun to suspect some of Finch’s dealings some time before he actually caught him in the act of transferring funds to his personal account. When confronted with the deed, Finch had taken the course that men of low moral values and evil intentions often take. He had struck her father down and run.
“I think the fact that Finch escaped punishment for taking my father from us greatly contributed to my mother’s failing health,” Lettie said. “I don’t believe a day passed that she didn’t dwell upon it. I think she just didn’t care to live anymore. A year ago, she developed pneumonia, and the doctor said it was like she didn’t even try to fight it. In less than a month, she was gone.” Lettie paused a moment to compose herself before continuing.
“Last fall, a friend of the family returned from Montana territory, where he had spent the summer hauling freight from the mining towns. He was certain that he had seen Steadman Finch in a saloon in Virginia City.” Her eyes opened wide with emotion at the thought. “My brother and I decided to go to Virginia City and bring my father’s murderer to justice.”
Jim listened to Le
ttie’s story without comment. Gazing at the slip of a girl on the opposite side of the fire from him, he marveled at the audacity of the undertaking. “Where is your brother now?”
“I buried him yesterday,” she answered softly, her chin dropping slightly.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Bingham?”
“No,” she quickly replied, shaking her head. “Harvey was ill. I think it was cholera.”
“Damn, excuse me, you’ve had your share of bad luck.” Seeking to change the subject, he asked, “How did you hook up with Bingham?”
“We placed an advertisement in the paper,” she replied, dropping her head again to hide her embarrassment at having to admit to such naivete.
Jim was kind enough to keep his opinion of that to himself. He was sure she had already paid dearly enough for that mistake. “Well,” he remarked, “a lot of things don’t work out the way we plan ’em. I reckon I can escort you back to Fort Kearny in the morning. Can you get back to St. Louis all right from there?”
“I’m sure I can, Mr. Culver, but I hate to delay you any further. I’m sure you were on your way somewhere when you happened upon us.”
“No trouble, miss. I’m heading out Montanaway myself, but it’s already a little late to be starting out. It took me over a month to get this far from Virginia. A day or so longer won’t make much difference. I expect I’ll be able to get to Fort Laramie in a week or ten days, maybe Montana territory, before hard winter hits.”
“Very well, then. Once again, I find myself in your debt.”
Lettie insisted upon fixing a late supper for them even though it would have to be pretty skimpy. It consisted primarily of some side meat and more coffee. What with the activities of the past couple of days, there had been little thought toward planning meals. There were not even any dried beans soaking in the crock. She apologized for her lack of preparation, but Jim assured her that he was not really hungry, anyway.
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