The Lady and the Robber Baron

by Joyce Brandon

  “Who’d think it could be so damned hot in the mountains?”

  Clem Stringer, silent, dark, and suspicious as always, rode up to the creek. He’d hung back until now, gazing behind them. “There’s a rider back there following us.”

  “What the hell…” Fletcher burst out.

  “Coming on right determined, is he?” Etchevarria asked, rising from where he’d laid down on his belly to drink from the creek.

  “Considerably determined,” Stringer said, taking out the makings to roll a cigarette while the others scowled and stared back at the trail.

  Fletcher was the first to speak. “Well, it don’t matter. We’ll be in New Mexico before he can catch us.”

  “Miguel, take a look in that spyglass of yorn, and see if’n it’s Kincaid or his brother followin’ us,” Stringer said, lighting the cigarette. “If it’s the brother, I heard about that bastard, too. He’s even trailed men into Mexico and brought ’em back dead.”

  Etchevarria took out a spyglass from his saddlebags. He threw a rope over a high limb of a nearby lodgepole pine, tied one end around his chest, under his arms, and yelled for Stringer to hoist him up so he could take a look-see.

  For a moment he spun in circles, then caught the tree trunk with one leg and anchored himself. He scanned the terrain in all directions, then raised the glass and focused on something. Jennifer held her breath. He scanned the countryside in the opposite direction, then motioned for the men to let him down.

  “Don’t see nobody out there. There’s no posse coming from the direction of Morley, either. With that big celebration on, I doubt the sheriff’ll be able to pull anything together before noon tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be long gone by then,” Stringer drawled. “If we angle off and leave the creek, we can hit into New Mexico, where we’ll be safe. I have hideouts in them Santa Fe mountains no lawman kin ever find. Not even your hotshot Kincaid.”

  Hope of rescue died in Jennifer.

  As Jason hurried them toward the border, the pain in her side grew worse. Sunset came early in the mountains. A sky full of flaming orange and red clouds streaked with purple signaled the end of her first day of captivity.

  She rode doubled over in her saddle. The pain struck like lightning, without warning, and she ached in a hundred places. Her gown was in tatters from snagging on brambles and branches. Her face stung from them as well.

  At last Fletcher called a halt. Jennifer slipped down and lay on the ground. She’d thought herself in good shape after six months with the railroad crews, but she felt half dead.

  Jim Patrick walked over and offered her his canteen. She felt such disappointment in him. Her eyes must have showed it because he flushed and could no longer meet her gaze. She took a few swallows of water and passed it back to him. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am.”

  He was still soft-spoken and polite. He had such a guileless look of Irish good humor that she wondered what twist of fate had driven such a friendly young man into a life of crime.

  “I guess this explains why you lost so many sheep.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Stringer was obviously a hardened criminal, but Jim Patrick was little more than a boy.

  “We’ll rest here for an hour. The horses need it,” Fletcher said. He grabbed a rope off his saddle, walked over to Jennifer, and grabbed her arm. He jerked her to her feet and pulled her along behind him. Jennifer flashed one look back at the men watching him tow her away. They avoided her eyes, even Jim Patrick.

  Fletcher dragged her to a small clearing and threw her on the ground. “You’ve been more damn trouble than a dozen women.”

  He grabbed her right arm and started to wrap the rope around it. Jennifer hit him with her left fist as hard as she could.

  “Damn you!” he yelled, drawing back his fist and smacking it into her jaw. Lights flashed in her head. As he drew back to hit her again, Jim Patrick came flying out of the bushes and landed on Jason’s back. They tumbled over. Jason struggled free of Patrick, grabbed the gun out of his holster, and shot the boy in the chest. Jim blinked in disbelief and fell backward.

  “Now see what you caused,” Fletcher said, grabbing Jennifer’s arm and dragging her even farther away from the other men. Fear and defiance sparkled in her eyes. He found himself in a box canyon and stopped. Ordinarily this would not be good. But with no one pursuing them, and some time to spend with the woman, it was right handy.

  He shoved Jennie toward a pile of pine needles. She still had a little fight in her, but he knelt beside her and unsheathed his special knife from his boot. She cowered away from him, but he leaned close to her, stroking it on her throat.

  “Do you know what this is?” he whispered. “It’s a special kind of knife. All I have to do is stick it in you, and you’ll bleed to death. It’s like a siphon. Has a hollow center so the blood just keeps draining out of you.”

  Fear and revulsion made Jennifer cringe away. His hand twisted in her hair, holding her against the knife.

  “It’s not that painful, actually. You’d be surprised at the girls who thought they weren’t hurt that bad, ’cause it probably don’t hurt much—once you get used to having it in you. But it just keeps bleeding you and bleeding you.”

  As he talked Jason realized he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself. He needed to kill her now. He probably wouldn’t need this woman for their escape. They’d travel easier without her.

  Jennifer tried to back away from him, but he tightened the rope around her hands and wrapped the other end around the trunk of a small tree, then pulled it taut until her arms were stretched behind her head. Jason sat on her hips and thighs, immobilizing her legs. Frustration at her helplessness filled her with rage.

  His pale, opaque eyes smiled into hers as if they were coconspirators. He held the knife up so she could admire it. It had no handle. It was made of steel, but it looked more like a hollow reed, pointed and razor-sharp at one end, gradually getting bigger until it was the same size as the tube attached to it. At the sight of the knife, so shiny and lethal, her insides writhed with fear.

  Jennifer realized, without knowing how she knew it, that in spite of his soft Southern drawl and his polite manners, he had killed Tom Tinkersley and he was going to kill her.

  Jason saw her fear and liked it. He lifted the knife up to her throat and smiled at the terror that filled her eyes. An answering jolt of lust shot through his body, so strong he was almost immobilized. He’d waited too long for her.

  To cover his inability to move, he talked. “What I do is, I make you swallow this tube and then I tape it to your neck so it won’t come back out. It’s a little miserable, but you’ll do it, because I have some good little incentives to help you along…”

  Jennifer remembered the newspaper article saying that Bettina’s body had been riddled with carpet tacks from her thighs to her breasts. Revulsion and terror almost overwhelmed her. She struggled to get free, but her hands were tied too tightly, and Jason was too heavy.

  “Then I push this tiny little razor-sharp knife into the vein in your throat, and when the blood comes out of your vein it follows this tube into your mouth and down into your stomach. It’ll be a race to see whether you bleed to death before your heart stops.”

  Jennifer’s stomach lurched. If she’d eaten anything at all in the last few hours it would have come up then. He was insane. Terror caused a cold sweat to break out on her body.

  “You killed Bettina,” she said, horror growing in her.

  “Was that the one in New York?”

  Jennifer nodded.

  “It’s time to swallow the tube now.”

  She shook her head.

  Jason grinned and took out a small sack and hefted the weight in his hands. “I usually save these until after the girl is dead, but you’ve been so much trouble to me…”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chane’s horse caught a hoof in a hole and went down. He flew over the horse’s head and lande
d hard. Lance reined his horse and dismounted to kneel by his brother’s side. Chane was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll live, but I think my horse broke his leg.” Chane checked the leg—he was right. Regretfully, and frustrated that he couldn’t seem to do anything right, Chane shot the suffering horse and climbed up behind Lance.

  They rode in the direction of the New Mexico border, still tracking the kidnappers. Frustration almost overwhelmed Chane. Jennie’s life was in danger, and he was floundering around like a beached salmon. If Jennie died…The thought was too horrible to contemplate. His mind veered away from it. And his rage and frustration increased.

  The sun was hot, and they didn’t spare themselves or the horses. Chane felt dizzy, and blood kept trickling down his forehead. Lance forced the horse up a ridge and rode along the rim for a long time, watching the canyon below for any sight of Jennie and her abductors.

  Finally, near sunset, Lance motioned Chance to look down. Way below, in a small box canyon, a man knelt over something that might be a woman. Two others in a small clearing about a hundred yards away were lying on the ground as if taking a rest. Chane recognized them as Stringer and Etchevarria, Fletcher’s sidekicks.

  The sight galvanized him into action. He slid off the horse, lifted his rifle, took aim, and shot six times. When silence fell again, the two men lay dead or dying. He had spared only the man near Jennie. He couldn’t risk sending a bullet in that direction for fear of hitting her.

  Lance blinked and shook his head. Now he understood how his brother had become such a feared lawman. He didn’t waste time on civilized niceties like trials.

  Fletcher heard the gunfire, but he couldn’t tell what had happened from where he was. He untied the rope around Jennifer’s wrists, jerked her to her feet, and held her in front of him. He separated the knife from the tubing, slipped the knife into his boot, and tossed the tubing aside. Grabbing his gun out of its holster, Jason kept turning around like a man on a spit, trying to see where the bullets had come from. “Stringer!” he yelled. “Etchevarria!”

  No answer came.

  “Answer me, dammit!” Fletcher yelled.

  “Now we negotiate,” Chane said, turning to Lance.

  “This is what I want you to do…”

  Lance nodded as Chane started away on foot. But he stopped and turned back. He knew he was wasting precious time, and Jennie’s life hung in the balance, but this had been preying on his mind. “About Colette…”

  Lance scowled.

  “In case I don’t make it back, I forgive you for that.”

  “I figured you already had.”

  “Well, I hadn’t. But now I do.” Lance shook his head. It amazed him that Chane could worry about that at a time like this. Chane slipped out of sight.

  Lance counted to twenty and yelled, “Your men are dead, Fletcher.”

  “You shoot again, you bastard, and this woman’s gonna be dead, too!”

  “Hold your fire! I want to parlay,” Lance yelled.

  Jason jerked the woman toward the place where he’d left the others. At the clearing, he saw the dead men and cursed.

  “Fletcher! We’ve got you surrounded. Let Jennie go.”

  “Go to hell!”

  Jennifer strained to recognize the voice of the man yelling at Fletcher. She desperately wanted to believe it was Chane, but it didn’t sound like him. She’d know Chane’s voice even if he tried to disguise it.

  “Throw down your gun.”

  “You throw down your guns. Or I’m going to shoot this woman! I can put a lot of bullets in her before she dies!” Fletcher yelled, tightening his grip on her and pressing the gun against her temple. “I’m going to count to three. You better start throwin’ ’em out here. One! Two!”

  “My guns are down.”

  Fletcher grinned. “You see how much he loves you?” he said to Jennifer. Then he yelled, “Everybody! Three!”

  “I’m alone. And my guns are down.”

  The sky was turning dark blue with approaching nightfall. Seconds ticked by. Lance glanced at his watch. Five minutes since Chane had left.

  “You better not be lying! Anybody fires a shot at me, and this woman dies,” Fletcher warned.

  “My guns are down,” Lance said flatly.

  Fletcher held the woman in front of him like a shield and pushed her forward. “Stand up so I can see you.”

  Slowly Lance stood up.

  Fletcher took aim, and Lance dropped and rolled to the right. Dirt spanged up behind him. He reached the rock he’d been aiming for and crouched and ran, hoping Chane was where he could do some good.

  Jason forced the woman up and onto his horse and leaped on behind her. That way if the bastard shot at him, he’d hit her first. He rode toward the rock, firing at where he expected the man to be, but when he got there, the bastard was gone. Jason scanned the bushes nearby, but he didn’t find him. He wasn’t worried, though. The man was unarmed and running for his life. He probably wouldn’t stop till he got back to the work site.

  Jason decided to take all the horses in case he needed them. No sense leaving anything behind. He unhobbled the horses and led the string away. He set a fast pace, and quickly broke out of the scrub forest and onto a wagon trail. There was no pursuit in sight, and Fletcher was pleased with himself. “Dad gum, my luck is holding today!”

  He reached around and squeezed Jennifer’s breast. “You must be my lucky charm.”

  Jennifer jerked away. He chuckled. “You ain’t got that much, anyway—”

  A volley of gunfire made the horses scream and paw the air. Fletcher clawed for his gun. Jennifer grabbed his gun hand and held onto it. “You bitch!” He clubbed her with this other hand, but Jennifer held on tight in spite of the battering she was taking.

  A dark form loomed out of the darker shadows, grabbed Fletcher by the waist, and pulled him off the horse. Jennifer almost went down with them, but she managed to hang onto the horse’s mane.

  The two men rolled on the ground, each straining to get control of the gun. Even in the semidarkness, Jennifer recognized Chane. Joy and relief washed into her, along with the fear that Jason might kill him.

  Fletcher tried to force the gun down against Chane’s head, but Chane grabbed his arm. They rolled over again, straining against one another, panting. The gun went off. Someone yelled. For a moment neither man moved. Jennifer’s heart felt as though it had stopped in mid-beat. Then, slowly, Chane disengaged himself and stood up. “On your feet,” he growled at Fletcher.

  “You shot me, you bastard.”

  “Apparently not bad enough to shut you up. Get up!”

  Fletcher struggled to his feet. Lance ran up and grabbed Fletcher by the arms. Jennifer felt faint. And so glad to see Chane alive that she could barely think. He walked over to her and looked her up and down, searching for wounds.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just scared. Are you—”

  “I’m fine.”

  Chane grabbed a rope off Jason’s saddle and fashioned a noose. He place it over Fletcher’s head and around his neck. “Turn away,” Chane said to Jennie. “You don’t want to watch this.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  Chane looked at her oddly, but he figured after what she’d been through, she was entitled.

  Lance forced Fletcher up onto a horse, while Chane threw the rope over a tree limb and tied it to the trunk. Lance took the saddlebags with the payroll off Fletcher’s horse and placed it on his own. Then he went through Fletcher’s personal saddlebags and came up with a small packet of letters.

  “Wait a minute,” he said to Chane, who looked impatient to get on with the hanging. Lance opened one of the letters and read it.

  “Look at this,” he said, passing it to Chane.

  It was a short, unsigned note to Jason. It ended, “Kill her.” Chane recognized Latitia’s handwriting instantly. The note was in the same handwriting as the note she’d written to
Jennie—and reflected the same rage.

  “You’ve been working for Latitia Laurey all this time, haven’t you?” he asked Fletcher.

  “Go to hell,” Jason growled.

  Chane shuffled through the other letters. All of them were in the same handwriting and signed by Latitia. He stuffed the letters into his pocket and turned back to Fletcher, who was now gray-faced with fear. “You were the one following Jennifer in New York, weren’t you?” Chane asked.

  “Go to hell.”

  Jennifer realized he was the one, and that she should have known it right away. Tall man. Pale blue eyes. “He killed Bettina, too,” she said. Jason sneered.

  “And Tom Tinkersley, and that young woman at the hotel.” Chane said. “It’s going to give me great pleasure to remove this piece of garbage from the land of the living. Got any last words to say, Fletcher?” Chane asked.

  “Go to hell!”

  “You try it first. Let me know if you like it.”

  Chane led the horse out from under Fletcher.

  The killer kicked a few minutes, looking for something to ease him, then went still. Jennifer didn’t look away until she felt certain Jason Fletcher was dead. Chane walked back to her side. For a moment they just looked at the man dangling there in the dusk.

  The silence stretched out. Chane’s mind went blank. He had wanted to find Jennie alive so bad he couldn’t remember anything else. And here she was, alive. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her, but he couldn’t. All he could do was stand there, frozen.

  She seemed as immobilized as he. Fortunately, Lance took charge and got them all on horses. They made it back to the work site in two hours. It was deserted and quiet as a tomb. Jennifer was so tired she couldn’t get off her horse. Chane lifted her down and carried her to the Pullman coach. He had figured out what he wanted to tell her, but she was already asleep.

  The next morning Chane received a message from what was left of Tom Tinkersley’s security network that the Denver and Mexico crews were within two weeks of the New Mexico line, and that hired thugs were massing in Morley to keep Chane away from Raton Pass until Laurey’s crews had reached the New Mexico line.