Willow: A Novel (No Series)

by Linda Lael Miller

  Willow shivered. She’d gone to such lengths to protect Steven, alienating her husband, letting her father suffer, and what had come of it? This, her worst fear. “I’ll die before I’ll lead you to Steven,” she said, meaning every word.

  Vancel Tudd laughed. “I figure you would, little lady. I figure you would. Lucky for both of us that you won’t have to. No, ma’am, you won’t have to, because Gallagher will come to me like a baby to a sweet-sucker, once he finds out that I’ve got my hands on his kid sister and his woman.”

  Beside Willow, Daphne flinched. But then her chin went up and her shoulders squared.

  Tudd’s pig eyes went to Dove. “’Course, this one’s no use,” he speculated. “Might as well just cut her throat.”

  “If you hurt Dove in any way, my papa will hunt you till the day you die!” Willow reminded him forcefully, depending entirely on bravado. “You’ll be a wanted man yourself—you’ll know how it feels to have a price on your head!”

  “I don’t want trouble with no bounty hunters, that’s true,” Tudd conceded, surprisingly. “Still, I can’t leave Miss Triskadden here behind to tell Lot and Devlin and the rest about tonight, now can I? No, sir, she goes with us.”

  “Goes where?” Daphne dared to ask.

  “To the hills, of course. I know a good place for us to wait. Word’ll get to Gallagher fast enough, I reckon.”

  Willow knew that Tudd’s reasoning was sound. Steven would come, and he would trade himself, if necessary, for the bounty hunter’s captives. “What makes you think my brother won’t call your bluff?” she snapped. “Maybe he’ll just shoot you on sight and that will be the end of it. Did you ever think of that?”

  Tudd touched Willow’s chin with a rough, stinking hand. “Why, little lady, I ain’t bluffin’. He’ll know it, even if you don’t.” He shook his head and grinned, as if unable to believe his good fortune. “Damn if this ain’t a fine night; got the Fox’s sister and his favorite woman without even tryin’!”

  The word favorite struck Daphne with a visible impact, and she bristled a little, but she wisely refrained from comment.

  “Tudd, you’ll hang for this, you fool!” Dove cried suddenly, rounding the sofa, her small fists clenched at her sides. “You can’t.”

  Tudd drew back his hand and struck Dove so hard that she fell back against the fireplace and hit her head. Willow went to her immediately, followed by a stricken Daphne.

  Dove was faint, and she was bleeding a little from a cut on the back of her head, but she was a frontier woman and she rallied soon enough. Tudd wrenched her to her feet by her hair, and the cruel warning was meant as much for Willow and Daphne as for Dove herself.

  The three women allowed themselves, however much it rankled, to be gagged with pillowcases from Dove’s linen cupboard and then bound at the wrists. Pleased with his handiwork, Vancel Tudd herded his three captives, single file, through Dove’s darkened dining room and kitchen and into the yard beyond. There were no near neighbors, and it was an easy matter for Tudd to force the women into the bed of a waiting buckboard and drive away through the night.

  Jolted and bounced about on the hard wagon bed, Willow struggled to get free of her bonds. Daphne and Dove, perhaps wiser than she, lay perfectly still.

  Nausea scaled Willow’s windpipe and burned in her throat. God in heaven, if she vomited with this gag pressed so far back in her mouth, she’d drown for sure. She swallowed convulsively and closed her eyes, concentrating on staying calm by mentally reciting the books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy . . .

  It was the closest she could come to praying, she was so scared.

  And the wagon moved on and on, up and up, endlessly. The sky turned from black to gray to an apricot shade shot through with pink and mauve, and still they traveled.

  Finally, Tudd barked a hoarse “whoa” to the plodding team and the wagon stopped. All three women sighed with relief.

  Their captor jumped down from the wagon seat and rounded the rig to haul them out, one by one. Willow’s legs were shaky and uncertain beneath her, and she stumbled as Vancel Tudd shoved her toward a sizable cabin hidden in the woods. Hardly aware of Daphne and Dove staggering along beside her, she grappled with a long-buried memory of this place. The feeling that she had been here before was intense, but she couldn’t think when that would have been or reason out why it seemed so all-fired important to recall that time.

  Though ramshackle, the cabin had a spacious interior. There was a stove, a table, several broken-down chairs, and a sagging cot. Willow knew for certain that there was a back bedroom, too.

  Sure enough, after untying the women’s gags, if not their wrists, which remained firmly tied behind them, Tudd thrust them all through a doorway and into a small room with a slanting roof. Without a word, he closed the door and bolted it, safe in the knowledge that there was no window to offer an avenue of escape.

  Willow did not like that room. Odd sounds played on the edges of her memory, frightening sounds countered by Steven’s efforts to distract her . . .

  “Willow?” queried Daphne, looking at her friend with a worried expression. “Are you all right?”

  Willow shook off the eerie feeling that had come over her at first sight of the cabin and summoned up a rueful smile. “I’m as all right as either of you, I imagine.”

  “What do you suppose he’ll do to us, Willow?” Daphne pressed anxiously. There were great, dark shadows moving in her eyes and smudges beneath them. “Do you think he’s the kind to—”

  “No,” Dove broke in, settling herself on the edge of the old bed that took up most of the dingy room. The springs creaked and Willow gasped, prodded again by that dim and unsettling memory.

  “He could rape us!” insisted Daphne, unaware of her friend’s terrified state, her attention fixed on Dove.

  “He won’t,” said Dove firmly. “If he was that kind, I’d have known it last night. I was alone with Tudd for a good hour before you two blundered in.”

  Willow was swirling in an eddy of memory, afraid. Tears trickled down her face and she began to tremble, hearing echoes from some hidden, shadowy part of her mind. A bed—this bed that Dove Triskadden sat upon—rattling hard, slamming against the wall, springs screeching.

  There had been groans and cries. It was Jay Forbes; he was killing her mama.

  Willow stood helpless in the doorway, screaming.

  Steven, strong, gentle Steven, had taken her hand then, and led her away. “He’s not hurting Mama,” he’d said, but there had been a quiet fury in his voice, all the same, and his blue eyes had burned with an ancient hatred.

  “Willow!” The voice was Dove’s.

  Willow looked at her father’s mistress with dazed eyes, feeling almost as though the woman had slapped her, which was impossible, of course, since they were all still bound at the wrists. “I was here before,” she said woodenly, when she could speak. “I know I was here once before.”

  Both Daphne and Dove looked at her with puzzled sympathy, and then the door opened with a crash and Vancel Tudd came in. He’d deign to untie their hands and permit them to breakfast on the dried beef and stale cornbread he presented.

  Wildly hungry, despite the upsetting effects of their ordeal, they ate, hardly noticing when Tudd left them again and once more bolted the door.

  17

  Vancel Tudd had made a dire mistake, and he clearly knew it. Consequently, as the long day crawled by, he came and went from the room, fidgety, growing more and more irascible with every passing hour. On one occasion, ignoring glares of warning from Daphne and Dove, Willow smiled at him. “You’ll go to prison for this,” she said, “if the good citizens of Virginia City don’t hang you first.”

  Tudd had been sucking at a bottle of Irish whiskey all afternoon, and he took a long gulp to finish it off. His skin was an odd shade of gray, and there was spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth. “Never met a Gallagher yet that knew when to shut up,” he said. “And you’re no
exception.”

  “You’d better let us go, Mr. Tudd,” Willow persisted. “My papa might look more kindly on your crimes if you release us, before any real harm has been done.”

  “Crimes!” spat Vancel Tudd, glowering at Willow, swaying on his feet. “I ain’t done no crimes! And your daddy aside, the railroad wants Steven Gallagher bad enough to overlook everythin’ else.”

  “Do you know who the railroad is, Mr. Tudd?” Willow pressed, not daring to look at her friends. “As far as you’re concerned, the Central Pacific is two men, my husband and Daphne’s father. Do you seriously think they’re going to condone what you’ve done and blithely pay the reward, whether they want to see Steven prosecuted or not?”

  Tudd grew a little grayer of flesh and sucked in a whiskey-rasped breath. “You hold your tongue!” he barked, gesturing with one unsteady hand.

  Willow lifted her chin and started to argue, but Daphne and Dove each caught one of her arms, somehow willing her to be silent. They didn’t release her until Tudd left them alone again and fixed the bolt on the door.

  “Are you insane?” demanded Daphne, her eyes wide, with big shadows underneath. “That’s a madman out there, Willow Marshall, in case you haven’t noticed!”

  Willow stiffened, then thrust out her chin. “He’s also a drunk. Another few minutes and we might have been able to overpower him!”

  Dove sat despondently on the edge of that sagging bed, still clad in her dressing gown. “Overpower him? He’s big as this mountain!”

  “There are three of us!” retorted Willow.

  “You know, Vancel Tudd was right!” Daphne shot back. “You don’t know when to shut up!”

  It was Dove who sounded the voice of reason. “Let’s get some sleep if we can. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

  Stoically, they all lay down on the musty bed, trying not to think of the creatures that had probably nested there before them.

  * * *

  Gideon was exhausted from the long ride north to Helena with Jack Roberts, and he’d wondered every mile of the way there and back whether he was doing the right thing. It came as a profound surprise to him to find Steven Gallagher pacing the length of Devlin’s study.

  “It’s about time!” the erstwhile outlaw bellowed at the sight of Gideon.

  “Steven,” Devlin said, in gruff reprimand.

  “Tudd’s got the women, for Christ’s sake!” blurted Steven, glowering at Gideon and the heavy man who stood beside him.

  Gideon’s weariness was literally jolted out of him; he forgot why he’d gone to Helena, what he’d accomplished there, everything. “What?”

  Steven was pacing again. “Are we going to talk all night?” he roared, casting furious, ink-blue glances at his father.

  Devlin was amazingly calm, a virtue Gideon didn’t share. “We can’t afford to do anything rash,” the judge reasoned. “Tudd’s brain has finally melted down and seeped out his ears. He’ll kill one or all of the women if we push him that far.”

  Jack Roberts had broken out in a sweat, even though dawn hadn’t arrived yet and it was still cool, and he sank into one of Devlin’s chairs, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, wheezing. His lips took on a blue tinge. “Lord God,” he whispered.

  Devlin poured a generous helping of brandy into a snifter and extended it to Roberts. “You’d better stay here, Jack,” he said, with the compassion that one father feels for another in such moments. “We’ll see that Daphne’s safe.”

  Steven interjected an angry sound. “Right. Provided we don’t stand around here all night, flapping our jaws.”

  “Steven,” Devlin said firmly, “shut up.”

  “Where are they?” Gideon demanded in a rasp.

  “Up in the hills; Steven knows where,” answered Devlin quietly.

  “Yes, and I wish I’d done something about it, instead of depending on you old ladies for help!” raged Steven, reddening to the roots of his hair. “Could we ride now, or do you have to tat doilies?”

  To the surprise of everyone in the room, Devlin drew back his hand and slapped his son soundly across the face. “Enough, Steven,” he said, in level tones. “If you can’t calm down, I swear to God I’ll leave you here.”

  Steven subsided, but grudgingly, and the men began to make the necessary plans.

  * * *

  It was dawn again, and Vancel Tudd allowed the women to go outside, though only one at a time. When Willow’s turn came, she stumbled obediently into the woods, her throat dry, with no idea of rebellion in her mind. She’d slept fitfully during the night, plagued by curious, frightening dreams, dreams that strengthened her conviction that she had been in this place before.

  “Hurry it up,” complained Vancel Tudd, who was standing only a few feet away. At least, Willow reflected, he’d had the good grace to turn his back.

  She washed her face and hands in the narrow little creek and this, too, touched her memory. She had a fleeting recollection of coming here, long, long ago—with her mother.

  Willow stood up, then wiped her hands on the skirts of her rumpled dress. Her hair was straggly and tangled and her face, despite its recent washing, felt sticky. She bit her lower lip and followed Vancel Tudd back toward the cabin.

  The nearer they came, the more she remembered. A rising excitement quickened Willow’s step.

  Reaching the cabin, Tudd moved to open the door and was stopped cold by a shout from the tree-lined ridge nearby.

  “You’re a dead man, Tudd!”

  Vancel Tudd turned slowly, ignoring Willow, scanning the ridge for some sign of Steven. “Show yourself, Gallagher!”

  “Tudd!” This voice, to Willow’s intense relief, was Gideon’s. “Let the women go!”

  The bounty hunter caught a hank of Willow’s disheveled hair in one hand and jerked. She flinched, closed her eyes, and bit back a cry of pain. Tudd shouted an obscene and patently defiant response, then hurled his captive through the cabin doorway.

  A moment later, Willow was again imprisoned in the back bedroom, with Daphne and Dove.

  “They’re here,” she whispered, once Tudd had left them to go outside and carry on his hopeless argument with Steven and Gideon.

  Hope leaped in both women’s weary eyes. “Then all we have to do now is wait,” said Daphne.

  “That would be a serious mistake,” responded Willow crisply. “Tudd is cornered now, and he’s more dangerous than he ever was. He could decide to tie us up again and set fire to the cabin, or any number of other things.”

  Daphne made a little whimpering sound, probably imagining the horrific scenario, and Dove embraced the younger woman, trying to lend courage from her own obviously dwindling store. “We’ll be all right,” she said, in hollow tones. “They’ve come for us, the men have. We’re as good as saved.”

  “Yes,” agreed Willow brightly, kneeling on the floor and beginning to pry at the aged, filthy boards with her hands. “We’re as good as saved. But we’d damn well better save ourselves, because Tudd might be outnumbered, but he still has the upper hand.”

  “What are you doing?” marveled Daphne.

  “We used to live here,” Willow answered, in a low voice. “I was sure I remembered this place, and that’s why; Mama and Jay Forbes hid out here sometimes. One night, some men came, on horseback—they must have been vigilantes—and we hid under the floor until they went away.”

  She shivered, reliving the fear. The men had cursed something awful, breaking the few dishes, overturning what little furniture there was.

  But they’d left without finding the family.

  Daphne simply stared at Willow as though she’d gone daft, but Dove was mobilized. “A tunnel,” she whispered, excited. “There’s a tunnel, isn’t there?”

  Willow was kneeling, peering under the old bed. “I wouldn’t call it a tunnel,” she replied softly. “It’s more like a rabbit hole. There ought to be space enough to crawl to the edge of the house, though—that’s how we got out, Mama and Jay Forbes and the rest
of us. And once we’re clear of the house, we can run for the trees.”

  Daphne was wringing her hands. “Run?” she fussed. “Tudd has a rifle, and we’re wearing skirts—”

  “Shut up and help us,” breathed Willow. Moving the bed was a risk, considering the inevitable noise, but Tudd was still shouting back and forth with Gideon and Steven and there was a chance that he wouldn’t hear what was going on in the room behind him.

  Beneath the bed were two loose boards, easily displaced to reveal the cobwebs and dense darkness underneath.

  “There are spiders down there!” protested Daphne as Willow helped the intrepid Dove Triskadden into the hole in the floor.

  “And there’s a raving maniac outside!” Willow reminded her, grabbing Daphne’s elbow and thrusting her into the pit. “Thunderation, Daphne, get moving—we don’t have all day!”

  Traversing those dark, cramped environs was not an easy thing to do, even for someone as adventurous as Willow. There were rats scuttling through the shadows and cobwebs covered the women’s faces like smothering sheets. The ground was fraught with other hazards, too; broken glass, old boards, nails—all these things tore at their clothes as they crawled toward the light.

  At the edge of freedom, they paused. Willow drew a deep breath. “I’ll go first,” she said finally. “If Tudd doesn’t shoot at me, you two follow after. Catch your skirts up as high as you can and run like hell!”

  Daphne stayed Willow’s departure with a tug on her elbow. “Willow—”

  “It’ll be all right, Daph,” she said softly. “I promise it will.”

  Daphne’s eyes were brimming with tears, but she bit her lower lip and nodded bravely in response. Willow crept out from under the cabin, bunched her skirts in both hands, and ran at top speed for the trees a dozen yards away. Just as she reached them, a bellowed curse from inside the house made her turn and beckon frantically to Daphne and Dove. Vancel Tudd had discovered their escape; within moments, he would be rounding the house, rifle in hand.

  Daphne and Dove scrambled for their lives at Willow’s signal and reached the trees just as Tudd bounded around the side of the house, shouting.