“Yes and no. Didn’t drive no wagon over the buffalo wallers, I rode my own good stallion. Lissen, y’ think we’re anywheres near this place yet, or have we landed on the far side of the moon?”
“So glad you have a sense of humor. That’s important in a man.”
“In a woman, too. Makes rubbin’ along in life together a lot easier. Well?”
“There.”
“There where?”
“That Manzanita grove, farther off, closer to that small mountain.” Frances pointed. “See it? And that’s a good sign—smoke from a fire. So someone is home. Let’s hope it’s Star.”
She was not alone in that hope.
What little time Matt had spent with the girl, two days ago, had left him wanting more. He, too, felt anxious and apprehensive as to Star’s whereabouts. And her safety. However self-reliant and independent she might be, some situations could turn out to be just too problematic, too formidable, for one of the fair sex to deal with. Especially one so young and lovely...and, he would admit it, quite desirable.
“Adsila!” Too worked up to wait for assistance, Frances clambered down from the buggy’s high seat, skirts awhirl, and started across the open ground. “Adsila, are you here?”
“Frances!” hissed Matt, who was busy tying the mare in a shady spot. “Wait a darned minute. You dunno—”
“Of course I do. Look.”
From the open door of a small cabin, very similar in style and form to Star’s own, emerged a woman dressed in simple doeskin—dress, leggings, and moccasins. Very little of the fancy beadwork so often seen on such apparel, for this would be, like the clothing of her Yankee sisters, more of a work uniform. Clearly, Adsila had been working.
Or perhaps not. She was approaching like a runaway train, careening down the small knoll toward them while making some sort of keening noise, loud and long.
My God. Horrified, Matt was drawn up short. That sounded like a mourning cry. What would come next, the braids chopped off and fire ash rubbed into the skin?
“Adsila, what is it?” Frances met the Cherokee woman halfway, taking her right into the sanctuary of her open arms. “What’s wrong?”
“Miss Goddard. Miss Goddard. It is my Goldenstar...please, you must help me!” Plaintive sobs that would tear at the fabric of anyone’s heart.
“Has she been hurt, Adsila? Please tell us, what can we do?”
Shorter by several inches, she looked tearfully up at the teacher who had been friend to her family for many years. “Not out here. You will come into my house, yes? And let me explain?”
Over her shoulder, across the small intervening distance, Frances exchanged a meaningful glance with her escort. “I think that would be a good idea. If it’s all right with you, we’ll both come inside,” she said firmly.
The large main room held a living area, with hand-made wooden furniture and hand-loomed multicolored blankets, a stone fireplace almost big enough to roast a buffalo, a Spartan kitchen dominated by table and chairs. There, gestured Adsila, would her guests please take a seat and be comfortable. While she poured coffee into enamelware mugs, Frances carried out introductions.
“And you are a lawman, Mr. Yancey?” their hostess confirmed, still shaky but regaining purpose. Upset though she was, it was plain to see where Star had gotten her looks. This was a beautiful woman by any measurement. “Good. We have not much time.”
“Star is missing,” Frances guessed.
“Missing? She has been taken!” Another surge of tears, and a half-sob, quickly bitten back. “My girl—my precious girl—in the hands of that—that bastardo!”
“Um.” Frances sent a wincing sort of glance Matt’s way. “A—um—Spanish word...”
“Yeah,” said Matt grimly. “I get the meanin’. Go on, please.”
If suntanned Cherokee skin could ever be blanched by emotion, certainly Adsila’s was today. How many hours had she spent fretting and fussing, helpless out here in the middle of nowhere?
“I blame him—Daniel’s brother, Ricardo. He is the one mixed up with that gang. And yet—and yet—” Drawing in a ragged breath, she pressed her knuckles tight to her lips, as if the physical discomfort could alleviate some of the emotional pain building up and about to explode. “Had he not been there, had he not let me know—eee—!”
“Adsila.” Frances’ stern voice pulled her friend back to reality. “Daniel’s brother? A gang? But where is Daniel?”
The mental battle to explain as clearly and succinctly as possible could be discerned as the woman straightened her slender shoulders and lifted her chin. “Two days past, he left. Checking his trap lines, as he always does. So he is not here. He does not know his only child is—”
“Is where, Mrs. Mendoza?” Matt interrupted the labored recital. “Where is Star?”
“Captive—captive of that monster, Suarez!”
Frances gasped. “Oh, dear God!” she whispered.
“Suarez,” repeated the Ranger, looking from one to the other. “Who’s Suarez? And where would he be right now?”
“Suarez is a bandito. Leader of a Mexican gang. A terrible gang, Matt. They’re murderers, every one of them, and thieves, and they supply drugs and liquor, and they—” Deeply distressed, Frances lowered her voice, as if a softer tone might negate actual fact. “—they purchase—women, Matt. They’re slave traders. If Star has been kidnapped by—by that bunch of thugs—”
His expression has suddenly been set into a mask, hard and still as granite. “Yeah, Frances. Kinda got an idea of what they’ll do to her. You say your husband’s brother told you Star had been taken captive, Mrs. Mendoza?”
More tears rimmed the thick dark lashes, and then overflowed. Adsila nodded.
“And this is his niece? His own goddamned niece? Jesus Christ on a handcart!” Matt swore in disbelief. Unable to contain himself any longer, he heaved to his feet with a great scraping and scuffing of the chair and began to pace.
“Did Ricardo tell you when this happened?” asked Frances gently.
“Yesterday—late yesterday morning she was seen being driven out of town by Franklin Bower.”
“Franklin Bower!” Aghast, Frances gulped down some hot coffee, holding the cup with unsteady hands. “So he’s mixed up in this, too.”
“She tried to get away, last night,” continued the girl’s mother, disconsolate. “But Mr. Bower followed and—and he brought her back to his ranch. This morning—Ricardo told me that this morning my Star was sold—sold!—to Suarez!” This was finished on a wail, as Adsila buried her face in both hands to weep bitterly and convulsively.
Matt returned to the table for his own gulp of coffee. And then another. In an aside, he realized how savory this brew was. Given a contest between Adsila’s and William’s, her concoction would win, hands down.
“That explains why she wasn’t at the cabin when I went lookin’ for her,” he mused. “But why would she have gone with Bower, after all her problems with him in the past? Why would she even consider just calmly drivin’ away beside him, in his carriage?”
Adsila looked up, features white as paste. “I think because she was protecting me.”
Pulling out the chair he had shoved away, Matt straddled its seat and crossed his arms along its back. “I know we’re pressed for time here, and we gotta get goin’ soon. But first I have to have all the facts or I’m no good t’ anybody. So tell me, Mrs. Mendoza, please. What was she protectin’ you from?”
Those dark eyes had seen so much pain and misunderstanding, from childhood on. She sighed a deep, long-suffering sigh that came straight from the heart and a lifetime of memories. “An attempted murder charge,” she whispered.
“Adsila!”
“Yes, my friend?” The weary, reddened eyes shifted. “You will no longer want to be my friend, when you hear my story.”
Frances reached across the table to clasp hands and grip tight. “There’s nothing you can tell me that would change our friendship,” she said fiercely. “Now go on,
let us hear what happened. And quickly.”
“I was only sixteen when I came to Yerba Buena for the first time,” Adsila, staring down at the bleached table top before her, began softly. “It was also the last.”
Her mother was far too shy to face a strange tribe of people with brown or white faces and unknown ways; her father, who had broken his ankle in a fall and was still recovering, could not accompany her. Instead, she was escorted by two of her cousins, Bitterroot, neither as pretty nor as vivacious but quite responsible, and the proud and stalwart warrior, Tamarack.
Trading with a Mexican owner of the general store had been accomplished easily and to the satisfaction of both parties: furs and pottery and other handmade items in exchange for ammunition, Yanqui blankets, a few items of clothing, and various other sundries. The owner’s son, a handsome black-eyed young man named Daniel, had helped carry their purchases to the wagon parked and waiting. Things seemed to be going well, in this burgeoning little settlement by the bay.
And then Tamarack had discovered firewater.
Several white men, turning a covetous eye toward two fair young Indian maidens, decided it would be necessary—and probably amusing, besides—to sidetrack the watchful young Indian brave. What better way than camaraderie, and a saloon?
It didn’t take long, for someone completely unused to the taste and effect of hard spirits. Within a short time, Tamarack was stewed to the gills, staggering along from place to place, and riotously funny for anyone watching.
Then the watchers could tackle the girls.
That took place in the dusk of early evening, in an alley near the storefront which Tamarack had entered, for some unknown reason. Still befuddled, he emerged just as they were being dragged away, fighting off their assailants and screaming for help. Their cries reached him, through the fog; it was his duty to protect and guard, was it not? Pulling his knife from its sheath, he had stumbled to the rescue.
“Two of the men were stabbed,” said Adsila quietly, recounting the sorrowful memories.
“One very badly; he seemed to be dying. Bitterroot had been—she had been hurt in the attack.”
“Oh, my dear,” Frances whispered in utmost sympathy. “What a terrible experience.”
“The three of us were able to reach the wagon, ready to leave. But the last man gave chase, shouting that we—we were all thieves, and murderers. He grabbed me, pulling me away, just as Tamarack and Bitterroot made their escape. From what I later heard, they arrived safely at our village, with no further—adversity...”
“And you?” asked Matt. “What happened t’ you?”
She looked up with the barest hint of a smile. It warmed her face into rare beauty, like sunlight breaking through the clouds after a rainstorm. “That nice young man, Daniel Mendoza, raced out to save me. He and his family kept me with them, until the ruckus had died down. Eventually, as you know...”
“You and Daniel were married and moved out here, away from the scandal.” Frances nodded. “That explains so much, Adsila.”
Matt, head bent, had been closely following the story, listening to every detail. Now he said, “I’m sorry for makin’ you go through all this again, Mrs. Mendoza. But I don’t quite understand why you’d be the one worryin’ about attempted murder. You said your cousin, this Tamarack—”
“I said he pulled his knife. I was the one who used it.”
A gasp of pure shock from Frances.
Adsila turned her way. “Yes. You see, now. You understand.”
“He was too drunk to function? Ahuh. And where is he at the moment?”
“Dead. Of too much drink, over the years.”
The muscles around Matt’s mouth tightened. After another sip of the cooling coffee, he asked, “And the other girl—Bitterroot?”
“Also dead. Of shame. She hanged herself next day, from the tallest oak in our village.”
“Oh, dear Lord. Oh, Adsila...” Frances’ eyes had filled with sympathetic moisture. And Frances did not cry easily. But surely such a story of unmitigated tragedy merited the tribute of a few tears.
The Ranger was not quite finished. “Is this common knowledge? No? Then how did Bower find out about it?”
Adsila lifted one shoulder in a very un-Cherokee-like shrug. “His brother was the one most badly wounded.”
“Son of a bitch,” muttered Matt. An understatement, if ever there was one.
Frances murmured something about this being beyond her, slid away from the table, and strode over to the open door. So much had filled this morning’s hours already, and yet the sun was only directly overhead. In the shade of a Manzanita, her plump mare dozed, occasionally swished her tail at a persistent fly, and dozed again.
“And you’re sure you’ve been charged with attempted murder?” she asked from the threshold.
“So Mr. Bower has been quick to tell me, every time he’s come here.”
“Ah. That’s interestin’.”
Concealing a crime, harassing a victim, serving as accessory—Franklin Bower might have a lot to answer for in court.
Matt rose, reached out to lightly touch the back of Adsila’s hand, resting on the table, and picked up his hat. “Mrs. Mendoza, thank you for bein’ so cooperative. I know this whole thing has been hangin’ over your head for a long while, and it’s about time we get it cleared up.”
“You’ll help her with that, Matthew?”
“I will, for sure. And so will Sheriff Goddard. Now, tell me where this Suarez individual and his camp might be found. We gotta get a-skally-hootin’.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Goddamnit, I knew we shoulda ridden out here by our own selves,” grumbled Matt, impatiently flicking the reins at the mare’s ladylike backside. “When you’re in a hurry, you don’t wanna sit in a goddamned buggy behind a goddamned fat hawse who’s takin’ her sweet time t’ move along. Can’t this nag go any faster?”
“Here, Matt, let me handle her. She’s used to my voice. Hi, there, Veronica. Come on, girl, geeup!”
“Veronica! What the hell kinda dumbass name is that?”
“Matthew Yancey.” Glaring at him as if he were a reprehensible student in her school, sowing wild oats, she said severely, “You stop that cursing right this very minute. Veronica is a fine name, and she’s a fine horse. Just sit there silently and fume if you must. But don’t take out your bad mood on us.”
He fumed for only a minute or two. Then, dredging up a more deferential expression, he apologized for his bad behavior.
“It’s all right, Matt. I understand. We’re both worried, and anxious to find that girl.” Frances peered sideways. “What do you think our chances are?”
“I think it’s a helluva mess,” he replied gloomily, staring off at the horizon. “Wanna know the truth? Our odds—they ain’t s’ very good.”
That kept her quiet for the rest of the journey back to town. Quiet, ruminating, and distressed.
At the Yancey household, reached in early afternoon, Matt swung down from the buggy, with the assurance from Frances that of course she could return to her own home and unhitch the tired mare by herself, she’d been doing it for years. And, yes, she promised that she would track down William, by hook or by crook, describe the day’s adventures in detail, and relay the message urging a desperate need for help.
“He’s gotta follow me down to Los Huesos, Frannie,” Matt paused only to give last-minute instructions. “Tell him t’ take the Glen Creek Road south. And t’ bring as many men as he can find, and as much ammo as he can put together. Lord knows what we’ll find there.”
“I will, Matt,” Frances assured him. She rested one hand upon the width of his brawny shoulder, as a pledge. “Be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am.” A brief salute of his hat, and he wheeled away.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Los Huesos, Matt snorted as they thundered along. The Bones. Another helluva dumbass name. Did the people in this barmy state lack imagination? And just what was h
e heading for, anyway—some kind of ancient kids’ game or a burial site?
Good thing he hadn’t taken Colonel out to the Mendoza place today after all. Lazing around the shady corral till now meant that his big black steed was fresh and ready for this afternoon’s crucial ride.
Sarah had reacted to his news about the visit to see Star’s mother with her usual cool competence. Of course she could manage the household, and his son, while Matt was off fighting desperadoes. And while she was at it, here: take this along, and this, and he might need that…
Now, both he and his horse were loaded down. Gun belt refilled and rifle in its scabbard, with plenty of extra ammunition for both; bedroll and slicker tied behind the saddle; canteen of fresh water, hunks of beef jerky and a dozen buttermilk biscuits stuffed into a drawstring cotton bag; jacket, gloves, extra shirt and socks; piggin’ string rope, lariat, and fresh-sharpened hunting knife; war bag and scarf—all the paraphernalia of the trail he had thought not to use again for a long time. At least, not until his return to the Rangers.
Following the directions given to Adsila Mendoza by her brother-in-law—and what a family relationship that must be!—Matt had kept his stallion at a steady gallop for some time along the meanderings of Glen Creek. Then a brief break, a rest for both, then another steady gallop.
Stay the course. Don’t rush your fences. Keep it true and sure. Remember that fable of the tortoise and the hare.
While he pressed forward, hunkered down against his own disquieting reflections about Star, and what terrible harm might have already been inflicted upon her, the scenery passed by unnoticed. Forests of giant madrones, tall and spreading full with summer’s leafage; grassland and shrubbery galore; the Creek itself, narrow enough and shallow enough to wade across, pinned in place by boulders and pine.
If Matt were a spiritual man, he’d be praying a blue streak about now. God, let her be safe. God, keep her goin’ until I get there. God, help her survive whatever might be happenin’. God, give me guts to kill anyone who’s hurt her.
The smoke from a cooking fire not far in the distance gave unexpected but welcome warning of habitation. The Suarez gang, and his hideout of Los Huesos, parked back in hills where no one else would think to look?
A Western Romance: Matthew Yancey: Taking the High Road (Book 2) (Taking the High Road series) Page 8