Realizing that he was serious, and that she had just egged him on by saying the wrong things, Marsha said nothing else to him.
“Yep, golden-haired, pretty lady, in time you’ll be tamed enough to be willing to do anything I say in order to get out of this dark, dank, and stinky room,” Alan said. “You’ll cooperate with me, all right. And when you do, I’ll take you and my cows elsewhere so no one can ever find you. I’m tired of fighting with your brother and the Creek. I’m ready for some much-earned peace in my life and especially with a woman like you to share my bed each night.”
“You’re insane,” Marsha said heatedly. “I’ll never cooperate with you. Never!”
Alan shrugged. “If you’re going to be that way, so be it,” he said shrewdly. “I’ll make your imprisonment worse than I originally planned. You’ll not have food, heat, nor water for baths. You’ll soon be willing to do anything in order to live a normal life again.”
Smiling crookedly, he leaned down into her face. “You will even marry me,” he said throatily.
Enraged more by the minute, Marsha spat at his feet.
Laughing menacingly, Alan walked from the room and closed the door behind him, leaving Marsha in total darkness.
Tears filled Marsha’s eyes as she tried to see around her in the dark, but it was pitch-black. Nothing was definable. All she knew was that she was a prisoner to a man who had gone to maddening lengths to have her.
“Please, oh please, Lord, let someone come and find me,” she sobbed out into the darkness.
Chapter 22
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Feeling smug, Alan went to his liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Smiling, he opened it and poured himself one shot, and then another, and another, until he was beginning to feel drunk. He gazed at the chifforobe that he had scooted back in place. “The lady might want to drink with me,” he said, his words drunkenly slurred.
He set the glass and the bottle of whiskey on a side table, then once again slid the chifforobe aside and opened the door.
Marsha’s insides tightened when lamplight from the outer room poured into her prison. She trembled with fear when she saw the outline of Alan Burton standing in the doorway.
But she noticed something new about him.
He wasn’t standing still. He was teetering, suddenly having to grab at the door frame to steady himself.
“You’re . . . drunk . . .” she gasped, a new sort of fear grabbing at her heart with this knowledge.
“Perhaps I am, perhaps I ain’t,” Alan said, shrugging and chuckling.
He stepped back into the outer room again and grabbed the bottle of whiskey and the glass, then reentered the storage room. Enough light came through the door for him to see Marsha’s face.
“You’re mighty pretty, don’tcha know?” he said, his hands too full to be able to reach out and touch her. Instead, he leaned down into her face. “You’re gonna make a mighty fine and pretty bride for this cowkeeper.”
“There’s nothing in hell you could do to make me accept marrying you,” Marsha found the courage to say, yet gazing in fear at the whiskey, realizing how drunk Alan Burton already was.
He could hardly stand, and his speech was terribly slurred. She could smell his intoxication. His breath reeked of it as he stood now with his face so close to hers.
“You don’t have a choice in the matter, Miss Prissy,” Alan said, then threw his head back in a fit of laughter.
“You are more insane than I first thought,” Marsha said, her voice breaking. “How can you think you will get away with what you have done to me?”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” Alan said, again idly shrugging.
He straightened his back and tried to pour some whiskey into the glass, but laughed crookedly when he discovered that he got more on the sides of the glass than in it.
“Whoops,” he said, trying again.
“Please leave me alone,” Marsha asked, pleading with her eyes. “At least until you are sober . . .”
“If you’d drink with me, you’d think better of arguin’ about what your future holds for you,” Alan said, finally able to get enough whiskey in the glass.
He set the bottle on the floor, then stepped closer to Marsha.
He tipped the glass to her lips and began slowly feeding her the whiskey, Marsha gagging.
But soon her eyes were drawn quickly elsewhere.
Her heart skipped a beat when she saw a shadowy figure suddenly at the door, the light from the outer room illuminating it enough for her to see who it was!
Alan saw her eyes widening. He drew the glass slowly away.
“One Eye . . .” she gasped, knowing it was he even though he wasn’t dressed as he did when he portrayed a man of peace. Tonight he wore war paint and a brief breechclout the same as he had on the day of the ambush.
But she knew without a doubt that it was One Eye. She recognized the same leer, the same stance . . . !
Hearing that name and seeing Marsha’s alarm, Alan turned his head with a start. He froze when he saw the Indian painted in war paint, and with one eye, make a lunge toward him with a knife ready for its death plunge.
Alan turned and gave Marsha a terrified look just as One Eye sank the knife into his back.
One Eye watched Alan fall to the floor. He then kicked him aside and stood with his fists on his hips as he glared down at Marsha. “The cowkeeper getting drunk made my plan for you much more simple,” One Eye said, laughing throatily.
He leaned closer to Marsha. “I had planned to kill both of you, but changed my mind,” he said. He smiled wickedly at her. “That would be too simple . . . too quick. I want to make things more difficult and uncomfortable for you before killing you. You white witch, you almost caused my friend to believe you when you told him that I was the one-eyed man who killed your parents.”
He threw his head back in a fit of laughter, then he looked soberly into Marsha’s fearful eyes. “Little does my friend Swift Horse know, but I also killed his parents,” he said tightly.
“No . . .” Marsha sobbed. “Oh, how can Swift Horse not see past your front of being a friend—of being an innocent man? He is so astute in everything else.”
“We were young braves, learning ways of proud warriors together,” One Eye said. “He will not allow himself to see that side of me that could never be as he wished me to be. I will never allow him to see it.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Marsha asked warily, every bone in her body afraid.
“Enough has been said,” One Eye said, reaching down and retrieving his knife from Alan’s back. He wiped the blade clean on Alan’s pants leg, then used it to slice the ropes away that held Marsha tied into the chair.
He quickly tied her wrists the minute she was freed of the chair, and then gagged her.
“I had planned to kill you immediately so that it would look like you and the cowkeeper killed each other, but I have other plans for you now,” One Eye said, grabbing her by an arm and shoving her from the room.
When she looked over her shoulder at Alan Burton, who now lay in a pool of his own blood, Marsha became ill at her stomach. Then the true fear grabbed at her insides as One Eye led her out into the darkness of night and made her walk some distance before reaching a horse that he had left hidden amidst a thick forest of trees. He shoved her onto the horse and glared up at her, then mounted behind her. One Eye had recently bought the horse so he would have a steed that the Wind Clan would not recognize and trace back to him.
They rode through a tall stand of grass in hopes that his tracks would get lost in them, for he expected Swift Horse to be close behind. Once Marsha’s absence was discovered at the village, Swift Horse would stop at nothing to find her.
That was the reason One Eye had not killed her immediately as he had originally planned. He wanted Swift Horse to search for her, knowing he would never find her. He would come acr
oss bones sometime in the future, and wonder if they might be the remains of the woman he loved.
He threw his head back in a fit of laughter, sending chills up and down Marsha’s spine. She had thought she was in the company of a madman while she was with Alan Burton. His insanity was nothing compared to One Eye’s!
Then a thought came to her. As she had given Alan Burton a last look, she only now remembered having seen him move just slightly. Could he still be alive? Could he tell everyone what she had been saying all along—that One Eye was the true culprit?
She prayed to herself that she was right, that he did have some life left in him. Strangely enough, that man, the cowkeeper—who had abducted her, whom she abhorred—was possibly now her only hope!
Chapter 23
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark....
—William Shakespeare
Just as Swift Horse had expected, the tracks led to the cowkeeper’s ranch house. He stayed in the shadows of the trees, his gaze sweeping the area.
Seeing lamplight in several of Alan’s windows made Swift Horse know that from this point on, he must be more careful, especially if he was going to catch the evil man in the act of keeping Swift Horse’s woman hostage.
Swift Horse couldn’t believe that the cowkeeper could be so daft as to steal a woman right beneath Swift Horse’s nose and think he would get away with it! Tonight the man would know just how wrong he was. He would also know the wrath of a Creek chief who had been wronged now in the worst way possible, by his taking the chief’s woman as his captive!
He dismounted, tethered his reins to a low tree limb, then yanked his knife from the sheath at his right side. His eyes narrowed angrily, he moved stealthily and quickly through the darkness until he reached the house. Swift Horse hugged the wall of the ranch house with his back as he inched closer to a window with lamplight spilling from it.
His heart thumping wildly in hopes of having his woman with him again in only a matter of moments, Swift Horse stepped around so that he could see through the window.
Not seeing anything amiss in this room, and not seeing any signs of the cowkeeper, Swift Horse moved quickly to the door, quietly opened it, then stepped inside.
Silence met him there.
He stayed there for a moment longer, his eyes scanning the room again, and then gazed at doors, two of which led into two different directions from the room.
He chose one of them and hurried to it, stopping and staring when he saw another door at the end of this room that stood open, a huge piece of furniture having been shoved aside.
Puzzled now by what he had found, and sensing something was very wrong, Swift Horse inched across the room. When he reached the open door, he stopped and gazed intently into the storage room.
He took a quick step back when he saw someone just inside the door, sprawled on the floor on his stomach, blood on his back.
“Cowkeeper,” Swift Horse said, then hurried into the dark room and knelt down on a knee beside Alan Burton. He placed a finger to the man’s throat and felt a faint pulse beat. Just as he drew his finger away, he saw the cowkeeper’s eyes flutter slowly open.
“One . . . Eye . . . Marsha,” he managed to say in a strangled sort of whisper as he looked wild-eyed at Swift Horse.
“What?” Swift Horse gasped, his eyebrows forking. “You said one eye, and then Marsha. Do you mean that the one-eyed man was here? He did this to you? He took my woman?”
Alan gave him a strange sort of stare, then his body lurched, his arms tightened at his sides, and he gasped out his last breath of life.
“Cowkeeper,” Swift Horse said, turning him on his back. “Cowkeeper!”
But Alan didn’t reply. His eyes were locked in a death’s stare, a tear having run from the corner of one of them.
“You did steal my woman away, and now someone else has her,” Swift Horse said tightly.
His gaze looked slowly around the room, his throat somewhat constricting when he saw the ropes that had fallen from the chair. He could only guess that was where the cowkeeper had placed Marsha upon their arrival here. He had tied her to the chair, and then someone else came and released her and was now taking her . . . where?
“He said one eye, and then . . . Marsha,” Swift Horse said, so wishing that he knew how to interpret that.
Did he mean that a one-eyed man was there? Or did he mean that the man who was there was . . . One Eye?
He sighed heavily as he respectfully closed Alan’s eyes although this man had done him and his woman so wrong. But Swift Horse was a religious man, who understood what it meant to respect the dead—even the death of someone he loathed.
He reached for a blanket and placed it over Alan Burton, then hurried from the room and ran outside.
He mounted his horse and rode out into the open. He studied the track activity all around the house, then followed what he found until he came to a tall stand of grass that reached out far and wide in all directions.
The one who had taken Marsha knew that it would be difficult to follow them in such tall and weaving grass. Swift Horse had to think like the one he was tracking and choose a direction, hoping that he would eventually be led to his woman.
Hopefully she would still be alive!
He snapped his reins hard, sank his heels into the flanks of his steed, and took off at a hard gallop.
Chapter 24
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell. . . .
—William Shakespeare
One Eye looked down at Marsha where he held her on his lap on his horse. He could see pleading in her eyes and he could hear her trying to say something behind the gag.
For now he ignored her. He just smiled and continued onward, too full of himself and what he had achieved tonight not to feel proud and smug.
He was on his way to his hideout, and would then decide exactly what he would do with Marsha. It just didn’t seem enough for him to kill her outright. There needed to be more than that for him to feel that he had made her pay for having interfered in his life—a double life that combined the excitement of being a chief with the notoriety of being a renegade.
Yes, soon he would think up a way to make this lady pay, and in the worst way possible. But until then, he had to get her out of the area, so that none of Swift Horse’s warriors could find her—that would come later!
He smiled darkly at knowing that he had taken the lady away from Swift Horse—to whom everything came so easily. Swift Horse had always been the one everyone looked up to over One Eye.
Even One Eye’s own clan admired Swift Horse more than they should when they had their own leader. It was just that Swift Horse had always had more of a noble bearing about him than One Eye.
He gazed at Marsha, who was still making all sorts of noises behind her gag, her eyes pleaded with him in the moonlight.
“All right, what is it?” he said, yanking the gag from around her mouth, yet holding tightly to it, for he planned to keep her gagged until they were safely at his well-concealed hideout, which no one yet had been able to find even though many soldiers had scanned the land for him and his gang.
“I’m so thirsty,” Marsha said. “Please give me a drink of water.”
Needing a drink as well, and a moment or two to stretch from having been in the saddle for so long, One Eye didn’t hesitate doing as she requested. He rode onward as he watched for the shine of water beneath the moonlight, knowing that he was near Silver Creek, where he had stopped ofttimes to refresh himself.
“Please, One Eye, I am so parched,” Marsha pleaded, thinking that he was ignoring her.
She kept glancing at the gag that he was still holding, expecting him to stop and place it back on her at any moment. She hoped that he would leave it off long enough for her to be able to cry out with alarm if they came anywhe
re near a settler’s home, or if by chance someone came along on a horse.
Yet she reminded herself what time of night it was. It was surely the midnight hour now, for it seemed an eternity since she had been sitting peacefully beside the fire, crocheting. Now she doubted she had many more hours to live.
Oh, if only Swift Horse would have listened to her when she had told him that One Eye was the villain! Even her brother had scoffed at the idea. She hoped it wouldn’t be too late when they discovered that she was right.
She gazed heavenward at the many twinkling stars, and prayed to herself that soon this nightmare would end. Her brother never went to bed late. As far back as she could remember he got sleepy long before she. Surely he had discovered that she was missing by now and had alarmed Swift Horse. Together they would find her. Finally One Eye would get his comeuppance.
“You asked for water, you have water,” One Eye said, drawing Marsha from her deep, troubled thoughts.
She gazed to the right as One Eye turned his horse in that direction. She smiled to herself and said a quiet prayer of thanks to the heavens when she saw the shine of water not that far away. It was one of the many creeks that dissected this land, where water was always refreshing and cold.
She tried the ropes at her wrists again, knowing that she had succeeded at getting them loose. Perhaps soon . . . ! And then she would find a way to disable One Eye and make her own escape without anyone’s help.
She was determined that this man wasn’t going to take her life, too, after having taken her parents’ lives as well as those of Swift Horse’s parents.
She would proudly take One Eye—dead—to Swift Horse, and once and for all prove to him that she had been right about his best friend.
One Eye reined in his black steed and dismounted, then reached up and took Marsha from the saddle.
“Thank you so much,” she murmured, pretending to be gracious. If at all possible, and if she got the courage, she was going to kill this man—a villain of villains.
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