“Seth wants to get as far from home as possible. He’d jump aboard one of them clipper ships we hear about and go all the way to China, if he could. He’s got this romantic vision of the world bein’ different because it’s on the other side of the ocean.” Ben Lunsford shook his head sadly. “Me and you, we know different, don’t we, Doc?”
“No matter where you are, there’s trouble of some sort.” He cleared his throat and looked toward town, hoping Ben got the message. He didn’t.
“Things are better now, with you ridin’ along with us. I don’t have anything against Hannigan. He’s taken charge, like he did in prison. Only he’s different. We all are, but he’s harder, if that’s possible. Hell, I cut more’n one bluecoat’s throat and never lost a minute of sleep. But Hannigan’s worse now.”
“How’s that? He didn’t strike me as being changed all that much.”
“It’s hard to say, Doc. He don’t trust anyone. I understand that. I trust Seth. I for certain trust you. You’re one of the few good men I’ve ever met who wasn’t a blood relative.”
Knight smiled grimly at that. If Lunsford thought Hannigan had changed, he had no idea what coming home to Pine Knob had done to this “one good man.” Hatred boiled within him until he wanted to lash out. He held that anger in check. He saved it up for the man who deserved it most. How he would make Gerald Donnelly pay was still a mystery, but he would. His thoughts turned to stories he had heard of how the Comanche treated their prisoners, and it hadn’t been charitably. The Comanches ranged far and wide throughout Texas and westward and had learned some nasty tricks from the Apaches. Before he died, Donnelly would sample the worst Knight could deliver, compliments of stories about the Indians and their enemy prisoners.
He sucked in a deep breath and held it until his lungs threatened to pop. While in Elmira, he had seen some inhuman acts that might be even more appropriate, considering Donnelly was a carpetbagger and likely to have approved of how the Union treated its prisoners.
“Don’t go putting too much faith in me, Ben. Just take me at face value and don’t worry about tomorrow while you’re still living today.”
“You always said the smartest thing, Doc. Live for the day, is that what you’re sayin’?”
“I reckon it is. When did Hannigan say you were riding out? He and I had a long talk about any of you finding jobs in Pine Knob. Chances aren’t all that good, not with a cavalry detachment here.”
“They’d harass us for certain. We seen that in other places. It’s bad enough bein’ a native of a town, but a drifter comin’ in, lookin’ to settle down?” He shook his head sadly. “The carpetbaggers don’t like that, and the townspeople don’t much, either. Livin’s hard enough for them without any drifter takin’ jobs their menfolk need.” He laughed without humor. “They get real protective of their women, too. Real protective.”
Such a comment sent Knight’s pulse rising. He felt his face flushing with anger.Victoria. Gerald Donnelly. His hand touched the butt of the Colt at his hip. Hannigan had plenty of ammo for a wide number of six-shooters his men didn’t even carry. Never leave a gun or ammo behind, no matter what, had been the standing orders for every Confederate unit. Hannigan followed it, to Knight’s benefit. He carried a loaded Colt Navy with three cylinders ready to swap out if the one in the gun came up empty. If Donnelly had been in his sights, all twenty-four rounds would have found targets in his vile heart.
“You feelin’ all right, Doc? You got all red in the face and you’re breathin’ fast, too, like you run a footrace.”
“When did Hannigan say you all were riding out?”
“Tomorrow morning, maybe hitting the road before sunup. We’re headin’ due west, no particular destination in mind, but soon enough we’ll have to get some money. Our supplies are runnin’ low, too. Not likely we’ll get lucky like before, when we got most of it.”
“You found someone to let you work?”
Lunsford looked sheepish. “Not exactly. We found a railroad car with its door unlocked. The supplies inside have kept us goin’ for a couple weeks now. Stealin’s not right, but we were mighty hungry.” He looked at Knight’s clothes hanging loose on his gaunt frame. “You’d never do a thing like that, would you, Doc?”
“Who’s hungry and who’s starving to death?” He patted his sunken belly. It had bloated for a while, before collapsing into its present state. “Hannigan’s responsibility is to keep you and the others alive.”
“I suppose so, but other’n Seth, I don’t much like them. They and Hannigan get along good. Birds of a feather. But I think one of them—the small one with the oversized white hat—shot a man in the back at a saloon in Baton Rouge. Don’t know for certain, but Johnny Nott’s a tough character. I’m not even sure he was in the army, from what he says, but if he was, he deserted.”
“We should have, too, rather than get captured and endure Elmira.” Knight’s patience had come to an end. “Tomorrow you’re riding out? I’ll catch up with you. I have some business in Pine Knob to take care of.”
“Something about your wife, Doc? You’ve been avoidin’ mention of her. Why’d you want to ride with us if she’s in town?”
“Take care of Seth. I’ll catch up before noon.” He seethed with anger at Lunsford for asking such a question. It wasn’t the young man’s fault. There was no way he could know since he had just ridden in with the others and knew nothing about Gerald Donnelly or Victoria claiming she was married to that son of a bitch.
He forced himself to open his right hand. The Colt dropped back into the holster. He had unconsciously drawn it at the thought of Donnelly and Victoria together.
“You want somebody to watch your back?” Ben Lunsford shuffled his boots a mite, then looked Knight squarely in the eye. “Hannigan told us what happened to you, why you’re out here hidin’ from everyone in town.”
“They got what they deserved. Donnelly might have set the soldiers on my trail, but they can’t find me. Now you get on along.”
“Me and Seth can—”
“Go.”
Lunsford’s hangdog look almost made Knight reconsider. They had been inseparable in the prison camp because they relied on each other. Of all the men he had known, Ben Lunsford was the most dependable, but this wasn’t his fight. Knight heaved a deep breath and picked up the stolen rifle. He wanted it to be his fight and his alone. Justice demanded it.
Hannigan didn’t have any spare horses, and Knight wasn’t going to ask for one. That might slow their departure in the morning. He glanced at the sun and estimated how long it took to hike into town—to his house. The night would keep him from being seen. After he finished with Gerald Donnelly, finding a horse to steal would be easy. He had done it twice before, after all. And that pasture out back likely wasn’t Fred Fitzsimmons’s at all but Donnelly’s. The thought of stealing as many of those horses as possible gave him a warm feeling deep inside. More retribution.
Rifle in his right hand and swinging as he walked, he skirted Pine Knob and found the fancy new road leading to his house. The hour it took to walk in gave him plenty of time to think. What would Victoria decide if Donnelly was no longer in her life? At one time that would have been an easy question to answer, but Knight admitted he had no idea how his wife would react. She had made it clear where her sympathies lay. But did she love Donnelly? Knight knew she had loved him, and some tiny stirring of that soft emotion had to remain. Snuffing out the sun’s heat would be easier than erasing her love for him.
Lights in the lower part of the house shined forth. Knight avoided them. He froze when he heard voices outside the house. Two cowboys made their way toward a distant barn. From their banter they had finished the day’s chores and intended to finish off a bottle of whiskey hidden in the hay. When they disappeared, Knight continued his approach to the house.
The light in the parlor winked out as he chanced a quick look inside. He ducked back and crouched on the porch. His hands shook as he lifted the rifle. Shooting blindly into a dar
kened room led to accidents. No matter what Victoria said or did, he loved her. She was his wife. He did this for her. Harming one hair on her head would make him the awful person she believed him to be. Worse, it would confirm Donnelly’s opinion of him.
Knight came to a quick decision. Shooting Donnelly from ambush was wrong. Not only was it the mark of a coward to kill without facing his target, he wanted the carpetbagger to know who delivered divine justice.
A quick peek inside again told the story. The room was empty. Knight duckwalked around the porch as the next lighted window went dark. Rather than trail whoever extinguished the lamps, he went to the door and lightly tried the doorknob. It turned and the door swung inward on well-oiled hinges. Coming out of his crouch, he went down the hall and peered into the kitchen. The maid bustled about, finished her day’s chores. Her room just off the kitchen put her far enough away from those upstairs. Any ruckus might be ignored as being none of her business.
Knight tensed at the idea Donnelly and Victoria engaged in such noisy activities that the maid simply ignored their behavior.
He stepped onto the new staircase and put his weight down. A small creak hardly carried. He mounted the steps carefully, making almost no noise. Whatever carpenter had built the stairs had done an excellent job. At the top of the stairs ran a hallway from front to back with three doors on each side. A window directly ahead caught the lace curtains as it let in a humid night breeze. Two doors on the right stood open. A sewing room and a small library. The third door opened to storage. Boxes piled high and a wooden file cabinet with one drawer open had been pushed against the far wall.
Knight spun when sounds came from the room behind the middle door on the other side of the hall. He pressed his ear against the panel. His heart almost stopped beating when he recognized the unmistakable, well-remembered sounds Victoria uttered when they made love. He gripped the rifle so hard his hands shook. Rearing back, he kicked like a mule and knocked the door from its hinges. It slammed to the floor amid a rush of trapped air from beneath it.
The dark room prevented him from getting a clear view of those in the bed. He let out a choked cry of rage and lifted the rifle. His finger came back hard. Nothing happened. He hadn’t levered a round into the firing chamber.
Then the cry turned into a loud moan that escaped unbidden from his lips. The dark shape he would have shot wasn’t Donnelly but Victoria. His wife, astride the man under her, turned and shrieked. Then chaos turned everything upside down in the room.
Victoria flew from the bed, thrown to one side by Gerald Donnelly. He surged up, tangled himself in the bedclothes, then launched clumsily to crash into Knight. The two went down on the bedroom floor in a jumble.
“You! Why don’t you die?” Donnelly tried to choke him. When he failed to get fingers around his assailant’s neck, he began banging Knight’s head against the hardwood floor.
His anger surging madly, Knight heaved upward and dislodged Donnelly. They exchanged blows and finally came to their feet separated by the bed.
“Gerald, should I fetch the men?” Victoria clutched a sheet to her throat, hiding her nakedness. In the dark room, only flashes of white skin showed. It wasn’t anything Knight hadn’t seen and lusted after before, but now it infuriated him. She had been in his bed making love to this carpetbagger!
“Get an army, if you like, Victoria, nothing will save him.” Knight clenched his hands into fists and dived across the bed. That was a mistake. He landed on the feather mattress and immediately bogged down.
“Got you!” Donnelly crashed down atop him, forcing his face into the mattress and suffocating him.
Knight rocked from side to side and clawed at the naked man to no avail. His starvation finally overrode his hate-fueled anger. Consciousness ebbed from him until darkness closed in.
* * *
He came to an instant later . . . or it seemed no more than that.
Knight quickly understood he had been unconscious for some time. Tied to a chair in the storage room, all he could do was struggle futilely. Again his weakened condition worked against him. He should have told Ben Lunsford to come along. He should have asked that Seth join them. He should have made sure the carbine had a round in the chamber, even though if it had, he would have murdered his own wife.
But the sick realization came to him that Victoria wasn’t his wife any longer. As he and Donnelly had fought, she cheered on the carpetbagger. It had been a golden opportunity for her to be rid of the man, but she chose him over her real husband, her legal husband, returned from impossible hardship during the war.
Knight bounced up and down, taking the chair with him. His arms were tied with short lengths of rope. He couldn’t see his feet, but from the way pain cut into his ankles, he had been secured there in the same fashion. Already his feet had turned numb from lack of circulation. Only a minute or two remained before his hands similarly died and his fingers became useless sausages.
The door opened and Donnelly entered. He had pulled a robe around his naked body. On bare feet he padded over and towered above Knight. Then he doubled his hand into a fist and struck out as hard as he could. The captive man lifted up and crashed to the floor, still bound to the chair. Donnelly righted him for another punch to the jaw.
“Damn, you got a bony chin.” Donnelly rubbed his fist. “A hard head. It figures. You’ve done nothing but make the wrong decisions all your life.”
“It looks that way,” Knight said. “I married Victoria.”
Donnelly hit him again, this time aiming for the middle of his chest. Air rushed from his lungs as the punch echoed into his body through his diaphragm.
“You don’t mention her name. You left her to fight a war you knew you’d never win. You never wrote her. You abandoned her!”
“I wrote. I did,” Knight gasped out. “The damned Yankee prison guards must never have sent along my letters. They never brought me any from her.”
“She thought you were dead. Why write a dead man?” Donnelly walked around and punched him from behind. Knight’s head snapped forward and lights exploded in front of him. “This time I’ll make sure you’re put in the ground to stay. Should I put you into a coffin alive and bury you? Would you like fighting for breath, knowing you were going to die? Might be better to see you hanged, though that would be a trial for her.”
“Stop lying, Donnelly. Whatever you do to me is for your own sick gratification.”
Another blow to his chest caused Knight to cough and spit blood.
“That’s about the only smart thing you’ve said. Yeah, I want to torture you because of who you are. You’re the past, Knight. You’re a loser. Get rid of the past and losers like you and the future looks mighty good.” He began punching methodically but after a minute stopped suddenly and stepped back. “Victoria insisted we store everything you left behind in here. I can use some of it to good effect.”
Knight sagged forward. As he did, he felt the right chair arm break off. He hid how that arm was free and worked on the left. With his feet still bound to the chair legs, he was in dire straits, but he had a chance. One chance. He couldn’t fail or his life was forfeit.
“Your old medical tools. I doubt you’ll need this scalpel anymore.” Donnelly held it up so it caught a ray of moonlight coming through a distant window. “I’m not trained, so I might get messy as I cut you up. Will it be painful? I hope so.”
Gerald Donnelly stepped forward, the razor-sharp tip of the scalpel moving about like the fangs of a striking snake coming for his face. Knight straightened and swung his right arm as hard as he could. The wooden chair arm connected with the side of Donnelly’s head, but Knight was weaker than a kitten. The man staggered and fell to one knee, shook off the blow, and snarled as he stabbed out with the scalpel.
Knight swung again, using his left arm, which had come free as the chair arm broke. The length of wood caught Donnelly above the eye and opened a gash that spurted crimson. From the way he recoiled, he was blinded by his own blood. Kn
ight knew what that was like. Blood made a darkness descend unlike anything else.
He kicked hard and felt the chair legs break away. Like a windmill he swung at the blinded Donnelly, hitting him first right and then left with the chair arms. A kick brought a bit of chair leg whipping around and drove the lawyer to the floor.
The scalpel clattered from his hand.
“I can’t see. You’ve blinded me, you son of a bitch!”
Knight picked up the scalpel. With Donnelly in such a helpless condition, a single slice across his throat would end the fight. Severed carotid arteries would bring his miserable life to a bloody conclusion. Knight dropped, his knee smashing down onto Donnelly’s diaphragm. Cartilage cracked under the pressure.
He pressed the cold surgical steel blade into the man’s throat. “You wanted me dead. How’s it feel to have the tables reversed?”
“I cuckolded you. I took your home and made it mine. Go on, murder me, you filthy Johnny Reb!”
Knight started to do as Donnelly demanded, but his oath came back. First, do no harm. Heal. Preserve life, not take it.
The hesitation gave Donnelly the time needed to lash out and unseat Knight, knocking him to one side. Blundering about, rubbing at his eyes in an attempt to see again, Donnelly swung around to hands and knees to scramble away.
Knight slashed with the scalpel. More luck than skill caused him to slice the man’s Achilles tendon. Donnelly let out a shriek of pure agony and fell forward.
“I can’t move my foot. You’ve crippled me.”
“Good.” Knight stood and watched as Gerald Donnelly thrashed about, covered in blood that was more his victim’s than his own, but he had been hamstrung good and proper for all time. “You’re going to remember me for the rest of your life, with every stumbling step you take.”
Knight threw the scalpel into an open doctor’s bag he had used when in medical school. He had forgotten the tools had been stored because he had a newer, better set when he’d joined the C.S.A. A bag of his old clothes had been stored alongside it. He made a pile, adding odds and ends from a previous life, then tied it all into a bundle. Picking it up, he stepped over Donnelly and went to the stairs.
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