Caitlan moved an inch closer and Jordana breathed a sigh of relief. Good, she thought. Now they would have a chance.
“Just stay still a few more minutes,” Brenton instructed. He had ducked his head under the camera drape. He continued to talk to fill in the long minutes of the exposure time, telling his subjects about the photography process. If his intent was to bore the ruffians to distraction, he was succeeding excellently. They were hardly paying any attention at all to Jordana and Caitlan.
Jordana moved another inch toward the horse. She could almost reach out and touch the rifle, but when she did, she would have to be fast. There would be no room for error.
“Hold it!” one of the men yelled out.
Jordana felt her heart clench. She’d been caught.
“Riders!”
“Blue bellies!” another yelled.
They rushed past Brenton and the camera, knocking over the tripod and nearly doing the same to Brenton.
“Get your horses!” ordered Newt, though it hardly seemed necessary, since the men were already scrambling toward their mounts.
30
Jordana screamed out in pain as Newt grabbed her by her long, thick braid and dragged her to his horse. She pulled away from him, wincing at the pain of her hair being twisted at the roots, but she was determined to keep him from taking her away.
“Let me go, you animal!” she yelled and kicked.
Oblivious to her struggles, Newt jumped up on his horse and, still holding Jordana by the hair, reached down and pulled her up by the waistband of her skirt. Leaning his bearded face close to hers—and smelling so foul that Jordana thought she might throw up—Newt seemed to take pleasure in torturing her.
“We’ll have us a real good time once this is all over, sweety,” he leered.
Jordana threw herself forward, trying desperately to force him to let her go. Surely he wasn’t strong enough to stay atop the horse and fight her at the same time.
Brenton raced toward them, calling out, “You don’t need her! She’ll just slow you down!”
Newt ignored him. “Jake, you take the other one.” As he wrestled Jordana into place, he looked back down at Brenton and added, “You tell them blue bellies that we’ve got your women. If they don’t want to see us kill ’em, they won’t follow after us.”
“I won’t let you take them!” Brenton frantically reached for the man’s reins.
At this, Newt’s boot slammed full into Brenton’s face, knocking him to the ground. Jordana screamed at the sight as blood spurted from Brenton’s nose. Struggling to get back up, Brenton put one hand to his nose to staunch the flow, while his other hand worked to reposition his now bent eyeglasses.
Livid at this uncalled-for treatment of her brother, Jordana wildly swung herself sideways, an awkward procedure from her position slung across her captor’s lap. But Newt hadn’t expected her retaliation, and she managed a stunning blow to the side of his head.
“How dare you! He didn’t hurt you!” she screamed.
“Ow! Why, you little—” Newt must have realized there was no time for verbal haranguing. Instead, he yanked back on her hair and raised his gun. “Just remember what I said about killing them!” he told Brenton, then put his heels into the horse’s side. “Haw!” he yelled, and the others followed suit.
Jordana felt him tighten his hold on her, but she didn’t care. Already she looked for ways to escape this seedy gang. Glancing around Newt’s back, she could see that Caitlan was similarly imprisoned, and she, too, was fighting the man named Jake, even as his horse gained ground on Newt’s.
“Where to, Newt?” Jake called out.
“There’s a good place to turn and fight up here!” Newt yelled. “We’ll get there at least five, maybe ten minutes ahead of them Union boys. Just follow me!”
For the first time in her life, Jordana was truly afraid. This was no lark. The fear that trembled through her body was nothing like what she had experienced that day she had climbed the building at Deighton. This time the fear was not only for herself but for others as well. For Brenton who might foolishly attempt to chase after them, and for the soldiers who would surely mount a rescue. There seemed no doubt now there would be gunplay, and people could well get killed. And Jordana knew, with a terrible ache inside, that it was all because of her. She had dragged Brenton and Caitlan on this foolish journey. If anything happened to them, or any other innocent people because of her misjudgment, she didn’t know what she would do.
But perhaps Brenton, ever the practical one, would convince the soldiers to give up pursuit for fear it would only jeopardize herself and Caitlan even more. However, the thought that no rescue might be made was as fearsome as anything.
The bushwhackers and their prisoners crossed through thick undergrowth beneath forested canopies before coming out on the other side into a small clearing. Newt urged his mount forward to jump a fallen log. Jordana nearly slipped off the side of the horse and gasped aloud, actually reaching out for Newt in order to keep from falling from the flying animal. In her utter fright over the possibility of falling to her death, Jordana actually ceased fighting Newt for a moment. He pulled her back into place, his unshaven face breaking into a grin as he looked down to see Jordana staring up at him. She quickly let go of him and gave him what she hoped was her most menacing look. She thought him the ugliest man she’d ever seen and considered telling him so, but he reined back on the horse, once again causing her to reach out to steady herself against him.
“Over there!” he called to his men. “In those trees.”
Jordana craned her neck around to see what area her captor believed to be their sanctuary. Newt dismounted and pulled Jordana after him, grasping her braid once again when her feet touched the ground. She lost her footing and stumbled to the hard ground on her backside before Newt even realized what was happening. Laughing, he yanked her upward by her hair and squared her on her feet, then pushed her forward. “Get to those trees.”
Jordana did what he told her. There seemed to be no benefit at the moment in fighting him. These men were desperate, and already they were calling back and forth to each other as to how best they could save their own skins.
“The river is smack behind those trees,” Newt instructed. “Ain’t gonna have ’em sneakin’ in behind us. Bear, you take the right! Sammy, you get those horses and get over here with me. Everybody else, spread out and take cover.” Just then Caitlan let out a bansheelike scream. “Keep her quiet, Jake!” Newt growled, throwing Jordana a threatening look. “If you want to live, you’d best keep your mouth shut.”
Jordana felt the urge to spit in the man’s face, but she restrained herself. She supposed it would be senseless to irritate him further. After all, if he thought her too cowering and afraid, maybe he’d ignore her long enough to let her escape.
They hit the brush running and Jordana felt the branches tear at her muslin blouse. By the time they took cover it would be ripped to shreds; then she laughed at herself for even thinking about such a thing at a time when her very life, and that of her good friend, was on the line.
With sobering realization, Jordana began to wonder if they would manage to get out of this alive. Even if I get away, she reasoned, how will I be able to help Caitlan? And what if my escape actually causes them to kill her? These thoughts haunted Jordana, filling her with confusion as Newt continued to drag her into the cover of the trees.
Catching her off guard, Newt threw Jordana down on the ground behind a huge oak. He put his booted foot on her braid and laughed as she struggled against his hold.
“I got you just where I want you. Now settle down and maybe I won’t have to kill you,” he demanded.
Jordana opened her mouth to protest, then once again got the feeling she should just relax and pretend to be afraid and to cooperate. Not that she had to pretend anything. Jordana looked up fearfully and nodded her acquiescence.
“Good. I like my females smart,” he said, then checked his revolver to make certai
n it was loaded.
Jordana waited on the damp ground for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly it was as if the entire forest had gone silent. She could hear her own breathing—Newt’s too. She could hear the Missouri River coursing and churning from somewhere behind her, and she tried to raise her head enough to see where everyone else had taken cover. She could barely move an inch, but her slight head movement immediately captured Newt’s attention.
“I told you to stay still,” he growled in a whisper.
Jordana went limp.
The anticipation of what was sure to come drove Jordana half mad. She had never been a patient person, and waiting for what would surely be her own execution hardly seemed the time to begin practicing such a virtue.
A shot rang out and Newt’s head twisted halfway around to see where it had come from.
“Barnes, ya might as well give up. We’ve got ya surrounded out here!” This came from somewhere across the clearing.
Newt growled again and raised his gun. “Never! You blue bellies are askin’ to die.”
“You’re signing your own death warrants if you hurt those women!” came the voice from across the clearing.
“If anything happens to these girls, it’ll be your fault, blue belly!” Newt yelled.
Several shots were fired from Newt’s men with a couple of returning volleys from the other side.
The obvious danger of the moment became quite clear to Jordana as a bullet ricocheted off a nearby tree and whizzed past her head to play itself out in the dirt. Panic stirred her to action, and spying the hilt of a knife in Newt’s boot, Jordana decided to fight for her freedom.
With Newt preoccupied firing off his revolver, he didn’t even notice as Jordana slipped the mammoth blade from his boot. Facedown on her stomach, her braid still firmly fixed to the ground by Newt’s foot, Jordana wondered what her best course of action would be. She could stab Newt, but then he’d probably shoot her before she could do any real damage. She drew the knife up to her face and found her braid was in the way.
Her braid! That was it. Cutting it would free her! Without a second thought, Jordana gingerly, so as not to alert Newt, reached around and sliced at the braid with Newt’s knife. The blade was razor sharp and easily parted the waist-length brown hair.
She was free!
But what next? Run, she thought. I need to run. But to where? She couldn’t very well run into the middle of the gunfight. She’d have to take her chances with the river.
With Newt fixed on his attackers, she started inching backward, still lying on her stomach, across the ground. Bullets flew by her, striking objects to her left and right, but they didn’t find their way to harming her. It reminded her of a verse in the Psalms where God had promised David something about a thousand falling at his side and ten thousand at his right hand, but harm wouldn’t come to him. The memory made her stronger, braver.
Just then one of the soldiers’ voices rose above the gunfire. “Release the women, and we’ll let you go free.”
Newt responded by firing several rounds at the rescuers. Jordana took the opportunity while he was thus distracted to ease to her feet; then in a sprint, literally for her life, she raced toward the river.
She cleared a patch of sapling elm, and had there not been a rather sturdy parent tree right beside these, she might have plunged headlong down a steep ravine. The river was nearly twenty, maybe thirty feet below her, and it was clear that the water was quite shallow at this place along the bank.
“I can’t go this way,” she muttered, jumping as yet another bullet buzzed like an insect past her ear. “Well, I have to get out of here someway.”
She glanced back from where she’d just come. Maybe if she gave them a wide berth and moved around the main clearing, she could get to the other side to where the soldiers were. That seemed logical. But she couldn’t run off and leave Caitlan. Now that the soldiers were attacking, the bushwhackers could easily kill her in retaliation.
She had a general idea of the direction Caitlan had gone. Perhaps if Jordana circled around she could approach the area without being seen. Holding the knife tight, she moved out in a low, crouching position until she felt certain she had passed the point where Newt was fighting. As brush thinned out she could see the clearing with its thick, overgrown grass waving like wheat just beyond. Jordana felt a surge of hope. She was going to make it!
Rushing out from the clearing, she focused on her steps as the battle raged from somewhere to her left. Keep moving forward, she told herself. Don’t look around. Don’t look back. She moved steadily, her heart pounding, her body tense with fear. She was nearly to the other side of the clearing when she heard another bullet zing past her. She heard it hit the tree directly in front of her almost at the same moment a white-hot pain coursed up her left arm and into her shoulder. She’d been hit!
The thought so stunned her that Jordana stopped in her tracks and looked at the white muslin of her blouse as it turned crimson. Blood. Her blood. It didn’t seem possible. Reaching up with her right hand, forgetting about the knife still grasped tightly at the hilt, Jordana was about to grasp her wound when suddenly, before she could so much as figure out what to do with the knife, a solid body slammed into her, knocking her to the ground.
Sure that Newt had caught up with her, Jordana struggled to raise the knife.
“Get off of me!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you!”
She was nearly hysterical, caught up in the horror of realizing she’d been captured once again and knowing that this fight might well be to the death of herself or her captor.
“Stop it, you little wildcat!” the man yelled as he struggled to pin her down.
Jordana wielded the knife with her eyes closed. If she hit the man, she wasn’t entirely sure she could stand the sight of it. “I have a knife!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, all the while flailing it at the man.
“I can see that for myself,” her attacker countered. He finally managed to grab her right wrist, twisting it painfully backward.
Jordana’s whole arm went numb as the pain of his hold on her shot all the way up to her shoulder. Her fingers instantly lost their grip on the hilt. “Aghhh!” she sputtered, angry and frustrated and afraid all at once.
“Now stop fighting me,” he commanded. “I’m here to help you.”
The words barely registered in her brain. Help me? He’s here to help me? Forcing her eyes open, Jordana finally saw for herself that the man was not the ugly, smelly Newt, but instead, a rather stern-faced soldier with a dark moustache over thin, taut lips and steely blue eyes beneath a mess of windblown hair, the color of a raven’s wing.
“Oh,” Jordana barely managed to utter as the unmistakable sound of bullets whizzing by them filled the air.
The soldier fell across her with such a thud that Jordana instantly felt the wind knocked out of her. It was a terrifying sensation, and between struggling to breathe and trying not to scream in pain, Jordana couldn’t help but wonder if the man who had so bravely risked his life for her—was dead.
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“We have ’em, Captain!” a voice called out from somewhere to their left.
Jordana struggled to draw a deep breath. Were the bushwhackers captured? She prayed it was so. Pushing at the body on top of her, she was both surprised and relieved when the man rose up on his own accord.
“Secure the area,” he called, then looked down at Jordana. “Are you still alive?”
She nodded. “And you, sir?”
He smiled for the first time and the steel in his eyes softened, looking more like a pond in summer. “I’m feeling fit as a fiddle.” Despite the smile, there was an edge to his voice that Jordana couldn’t quite place.
Before she could figure it out, she noticed the blood on his shirt. “You’re bleeding,” she gasped.
He looked down and shook his head. “Nah, that would be your blood, miss.”
“What?” Jordana stared in disbelief, then saw that her entire left side was n
ow drenched in red. “Oh my!” She suddenly felt light-headed.
“We’d better see just how bad it is,” he told her, ripping away the torn pieces of her left sleeve. “I’m going to get some gear from the horse. You best stay put right here,” he told her, then got to his feet.
Jordana eased herself up into a sitting position. She could barely see over the tall grass. The soldier, clad in the dark blue of the Union, was leading his horse back to where she sat and seemed to be shaking his head.
“You shouldn’t be too quick to get up,” he remonstrated.
“I’m fine,” Jordana replied. “I’m strong.”
“That’s good, because I’m in no mood to be dealing with silly females.”
Jordana frowned. “I assure you I’m nothing of the sort.” She bit her lip to keep from crying out at the pain when she unconsciously moved her arm. Her left arm throbbed from the open wound, while her right arm still felt a bit achy from the twist he’d given it to disarm her.
The soldier took a pack and a canteen from his horse and knelt back down beside her. “This is going to hurt a bit.”
“It already hurts—a bit,” Jordana replied from between clenched teeth.
“What were you thinking walking out in the middle of a battlefield?” he questioned, laying out some bandages and a knife.
“I was escaping. What did you think?”
He shook his head and his expression remained serious. “I wasn’t sure what to think. Hardly seemed that anyone with brains in his, or her, head would walk into the crossfire.”
“I planned to circle around—unless, of course, I wanted to jump twenty feet down the ravine, in which case I’d probably have a broken leg instead of a broken arm.”
“You don’t have a broken arm,” he told her. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he added, “You best lie back.”
“I don’t want to.” She met his commanding presence with new resolve. “Just do what you have to do.” He actually laughed at her, and this only served to make her more determined. “Do it!”
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