Sarah saw Jesse’s eyes narrow and sensed he hadn’t liked Ada calling her stupid, or perhaps it was her whiny tone that had set his teeth on edge.
“She didn’t hurt you, did she, Sarah?” Jesse asked, coming forward to peer at her.
“No, of course I didn’t hurt her!” Ada snapped. “What kind of idiot do you take me for? You said not to, and I didn’t. Though I surely wanted to slap her smug face,” she muttered.
“She didn’t hurt me,” Sarah confirmed in the calmest tone she could manage. “But I don’t want to go with you.” She had little hope that she’d change his mind now after he’d gone this far, but she had to try. “Jesse, we loved each other once, but we’ve each changed. For the sake of what we had, let me go. I’ll walk back into town and tell them you went the opposite direction of whichever way you go. I promise I will.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not gonna do that,” he said, his tone soothing, his hand rough as he stepped closer and caressed her face. “I’m right pleased you’re here, and I’m not about to let you go now.”
Sarah hadn’t expected him to agree, but she couldn’t help backing away from his touch.
“No, you aren’t, ’cause you’ve got big plans for Sarah, isn’t that right, Jesse, darling?” cooed Ada. “I’ve been telling her how you’re gonna trade her to some dirty redskin up on the Staked Plains, or maybe some half-breed Mexican Comanchero. I can hardly wait to see that.”
“Be quiet, woman, or I’ll give you to ’em for nothing,” Jesse snapped. “Me and Miss Sarah, here, are gonna get reacquainted-like, on the way up to the Llano Estacado, aren’t we? That long a ride, I reckon there’ll be plenty a’ time to remember why we were once so sweet on one ’nother,” he drawled, keeping a hard grasp on Sarah’s chin so she couldn’t look away.
His breath smelled of stale whiskey, and now, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of an empty bottle propped up against the tree trunk.
“Yes sir, if you’re friendly enough, Sarah Matthews, I might forget all about tradin’ you and just trade the cattle instead,” Jesse continued.
“Jesse Holt, you stop talking that way!” Ada cried. “I’m your woman, not her! We’re gettin’ married after you trade her off, you said so! And I don’t share with nobody!”
“Is that a fact?” Jesse inquired, lifting an eyebrow. He sounded as if he didn’t mind very much one way or the other, but a prudent person would have detected the cold menace in his gaze as he shifted it from Sarah to Ada.
“Yes, it is. You said you were a one-woman man, and I’m going to take you at your word,” Ada said, but her tone had changed to wheedling again.
“I am,” Jesse agreed. “Only you ain’t the one.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he whipped his pistol from his holster and shot Ada.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“C’mon. The boys’ll be waiting for us at the hideout,” Jesse said, yanking on Sarah’s arm as she stood frozen in horror, staring at the fallen form of Ada Spencer. “We’re gonna settle in for the night, snug an’ cozy, and then head north at first light.”
“You killed her!” Sarah cried, for the second time in an hour, but this time she was very, very sure it was true. She’d seen the bullet strike Ada’s chest. “How could you do that, Jesse Holt? Ada loved you. She thought you loved her. She said you were going to marry her.”
Jesse gave a harsh bark of laughter. “From what I’ve heard in the short time I’ve been back to town, ol’ Ada believed quite a few things lately—she thought that Englishman was going to marry her, too, didn’t she, and that she was with child by your precious Yankee doctor. Some women’ll believe anything you tell ’em, ’long as it’s somethin’ they want to hear. Now get on that horse—we’ve got some hard ridin’ to do, Sarah-girl.”
Sarah tried to yank her arm out of his iron grasp. “But you can’t just leave her there, lying in the dirt,” she protested. “It isn’t right, Jesse!”
He stared down at her and gave her a sardonic smile. “Do you think I’m gonna take the time to bury her? I ain’t done much lately you could call right, so there’s no use startin’ now. The critters’ll take care of her carcass. Get on the horse now, Sarah Matthews, or I’ll shoot you, too.”
Just as Nolan had thought, the Simpson Creek bank had been undisturbed. It was closed now for the day, and the bank president assured them that he’d seen nothing of the Gray Boys.
Nolan then gave voice to his fears about Sarah, and the posse had headed for the cottage. Filled with foreboding, Nolan jumped off his horse.
“We’ll wait here till you make sure everything’s all right,” Nick called after him as he pounded on the door of the cottage.
“Sarah! Sarah! Are you in there?”
Had his ears caught some faint sound within, or was he hearing things? He pushed at the door, found it unlocked and ran in, then nearly stumbled on Prissy sitting propped up against the stove, a blood-stained dish towel to her head.
He dropped to his knees. “Prissy! What happened to you? Where’s Sarah? Nick! I’ve found Prissy! She’s injured!” he called over his shoulder.
Prissy winced at his shout and favored him with a swollen-eyed gaze. “She hit me over the head. With a gun.”
“Sarah hit you with a gun?” Could he be hearing her right?
Prissy shook her head weakly, then moaned at the obvious pain the motion caused. “No. Ada hit me. She surprised us here and forced Sarah to go with her at gunpoint.”
“Go? Go where?”
“She was taking her to Jesse Holt and the outlaws—said they were going to take her and the stolen cattle up on the Staked Plains and sell her to the Comanches, or the Comancheros.”
Her words struck Nolan like a blow, rocking him back on his haunches.
“Why would he do that?” he demanded, as Nick ran in.
Prissy lifted one shoulder and winced again. “Revenge. Nolan, you’ve got to stop them! Hurry! You can’t let them take her!”
By this time, Antonio had heard the commotion and come running into the cottage, as well.
“What has happened? The senorita, she is injured?”
Nolan jumped to his feet, overwhelmed for the moment with conflicting responsibilities. A dangerously insane Ada was taking Sarah to the outlaws, and they intended to sell her to the savages, or renegade Mexicans—but as a doctor, he had a responsibility to tend Prissy, too. A blow from a heavy object like a gun could fracture a skull.
“Nick, you’ve got to ride after them!” he told the Englishman. “Prissy, do you know if you were knocked unconscious?” He pulled the dish towel gently from Prissy’s hands and probed Prissy’s scalp with gentle fingers, seeking and finding the swelling beneath, but no disruption of the bone.
“Just d-dazed for a moment, I think… After that, I pretended to be unconscious,” she said, and a tear trickled down her pale cheek. “I’m so sorry, Nolan! I was scared out of my wits, but I should have fought her…kept that madwoman from taking Sarah…”
“No, you could have been killed for your pains, my girl,” Nick soothed in his sensible British voice, “and then we’d have no idea what had happened to her. You did the right thing.”
“How bad is your head hurting? Can you see straight? How many fingers am I holding up?” Nolan asked.
Prissy blinked at the barrage of questions. “Three. Yes, I’ve got a headache, but if Antonio will bring me some ice from the springhouse, I’ll be fine. Go with the posse, Nolan, don’t stay here with me. Go! Every minute, they’re getting farther away!”
Nolan nodded. “All right, Prissy, I will. Antonio, can you carry your mistress up to the big house, then get her some ice?”
“Sí, senor, I will do this,” the other man said, scooping up Prissy as if she weighed nothing. “Flora will stay with her. But it grows dark, and there will only be a half moon tonight. There are lanterns in the stable. Take them.”
Nolan locked gazes with Nick. “You know the area better—what way would they go, if they’re
headed northward? The road between the mayor’s house and the saloon is handy—Ada wouldn’t have to risk them being seen going through town—but it runs south, not north.”
“But only a little way out of town, there’s a fork that bends north,” Nick told him. “It’s the only way north that’s close.”
“That’s likely the way, then. We’d better get those lanterns.”
Both men ran out of the cottage. As Nolan headed for the stable, he heard Nick tell the posse what they’d learned.
His brain seethed with rage and fear at the thought of the fate Holt had in mind for Sarah. How could any man contemplate selling a woman—any woman, but especially the one he’d once professed to love—to a savage? And crazy Ada—he should have had her locked in an asylum when he’d had the chance. He’d let compassion blind him, he thought angrily. If he’d done the responsible thing as a physician, realizing she was dangerous and beyond his help, they would not now be riding after the outlaws in the dark, hoping they could find them before they went very far.
How terrified Sarah must be in the hands of the insane woman, much less Jesse Holt and the pack of wolves he ran with! If Holt touched so much as one golden hair on Sarah’s head, he promised himself, he’d make the outlaw wish he’d never been born.
If she had lain where she had first fallen, they would never have seen her as they thundered past. But after Jesse had left with Sarah, Ada had crawled with the last of her strength out of the grove of trees, collapsing at last by the side of the road. Even so they might have missed the slight, crumpled form if the wind hadn’t picked up as the posse approached and caught the edge of her petticoat, fluttering it in the breeze like a signal flag.
“Look yonder! Somethin’—somebody’s layin’ by the road!” one of the men in the posse yelled, raising his lantern high and pointing ahead. “I think it’s a woman!”
Nolan spotted what the man had seen. His heart rose to his throat and threatened to choke him. Had they killed his Sarah here and left her body for the coyotes to find? He spurred his horse toward the body, vowing retribution against every last one of the Gray Boys gang. He’d make sure Jesse Holt strangled at the end of a rope, if he didn’t succeed in shooting him himself.
He jumped off his horse, who shied at the fluttering petticoat, ran to the fallen woman and turned her, his mind going numb at the sight of the dark red stain drenching the front of her coat and bodice.
It’s Ada, not Sarah. For a moment he could hardly speak for the relief that flooded through him. Ada was dead. As long as the body he was cradling wasn’t Sarah’s, there was hope, wasn’t there?
And then the woman’s eyes flickered, and she took a shuddering breath, opened them, then blinked as she tried to focus on Nolan’s face.
“Dr. Walker…f-fancy meeting y-you here,” Ada whispered. She tried to smile, but the effort resulted in a grotesquely lopsided grimace instead.
Even in the wavering light of the lantern one of the other men held high above them, Nolan could see the ashy, waxen quality of the woman’s face. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes dilated, and a trickle of blood had dried at the side of her chin.
“Ada, where’s Sarah? Where have they taken her? Tell me,” he pleaded, knowing that he might have only seconds to worm the truth out of her. “I’ll do everything I can to save your life, if you’ll just tell me.”
Ada’s slender shoulders heaved with the effort to speak. “E-everything you…can? Isn’t…very much…anyone could do, is there? E-easy t’ say…”
“Please, Ada,” he begged as the woman’s eyelids drifted shut. Any second now she would take her last breath, and they’d know nothing more than they had before. Please, God, give her strength to tell me, and forgive her…
“Wouldn’t have…told you…till that s-snake betrayed me…chose her…instead… He shot me…”
“Holt shot you?” Nick demanded, standing beside Nolan.
Ada shifted her gaze to include the Englishman, tried to nod. “Sh-should-should’ve known…couldn’t trust him. Not any man… Now listen, not much time…”
Nolan had to put his ear almost next to Ada’s mouth to hear words that weren’t so much whispered as breathed. A minute later, he closed her eyes and laid her body down again.
At Nick’s direction, they sent the oldest man in the posse, the mill owner, back to Simpson Creek with Ada’s body, while the rest of them rode northward into the night.
Jesse tied her hands together in front, then held a gun on Sarah while she mounted one of the two horses in the grove. This horse was saddled, but bridleless, with a rope around its neck so he could lead it, but she could not direct it. The fact that there were only two horses in the grove told Sarah that Jesse had probably never intended to take Ada with them.
And he’d had to know that if he’d merely left Ada standing there and deserted her, that she’d tell others out of sheer spite where they were headed. So it was likely he’d planned all along to murder poor, foolish Ada. The thought sent icicles shooting through her veins, but she said nothing. What was the point of hearing him deny it, or worse, admit it?
Jesse struck a match against the rock and lit the lantern that had been hanging over his saddle horn, and they headed back onto the road at a lope. They rode steadily in silence until they reached the Colorado River, where Jesse stopped to water the horses. He whistled “Tenting on the Old Campground” as the horses lowered their heads into the water.
“They’ll come after you, you know,” Sarah said. She didn’t know if it was possible, but she had to try to chip away at Jesse’s confidence. It was all she could think of. Besides, his answer would tell her whether Ada’s assertion that the outlaws had killed the posse was true or not. “Nolan and the rest of the posse won’t just let you take me without doing anything about it. You could still let me go, you know, and save your skin.”
“Goldilocks, by the time they figure out which way we’ve gone, it’ll be too late.”
Then Nolan is alive. Thank You, Lord.
“Who’s gonna tell ’em? Ada left Prissy with her head split open, didn’t she? She’s likely as dead as Ada by now. You tryin’ to make me believe there was anyone else there? You’re lying.”
“There was no one else,” Sarah admitted, “but Prissy wasn’t dead. I saw her breathing.” She prayed it was still true. “They’ll find her—in fact, they probably have already because it was nearly suppertime. We’re expected at her father’s house. And when she comes to, she’ll tell them you’re headed north, because Ada bragged about the whole plan before she knocked Prissy out.”
Jesse’s jaw hardened and he spat in irritation. “Why do women have to talk so much? Oh, well, it don’t matter, even if she does wake up. We’ve got a long head start, and once we reach the hideout, they’ll never find us.”
“And what if Ada didn’t die, either?” Sarah needled. “They’ll find her, too, and she’ll tell the posse exactly where the hideout is, won’t she? I’m sure you’ve taken her there. After what you did to her, she’ll be delighted to testify about you and see you hang.”
Jesse’s hoot of laughter sent a couple of bullfrogs plopping into the water in alarm.
“Oh, crazy Ada’s dead all right. You saw where that bullet hit her. She won’t be telling anyone anything. I will admit I shouldn’t have wasted my time with her, though, if it makes you feel any better. I should’ve tried harder to sweet talk you into coming with me, Sarah-girl. You could still change your mind and be agreeable about it, you know, and if you’re smart, you will.”
Sarah’s laugh was mirthless. “‘If it makes me feel any better’? You can talk till the end of time and I wouldn’t change my mind.”
He tipped her chin up and stared down at her, and Sarah froze. He could do anything with her right now, anything—even throw her tied up and helpless into the chill waters of the Colorado. She was helpless and alone.
No, you’re not alone, Sarah Matthews. The Bible promises God is with me always.
�
�Yeah, you’d best be reconsiderin’ your position before we get up to the Staked Plains. You try spoutin’ off to some Comanche buck like that, and he’ll decide that yellow hair would look mighty nice decoratin’ his teepee. Or he’ll let the squaws have you, and I hear that’s worse. Either way, I hear captive white women don’t live too long among the Comanches, and by the time they die, they’re beggin’ for someone to put them outa their misery. And if by some miracle you got back to civilization, what decent man would have you?”
His words left Sarah speechless with horror.
Please, Lord, let Nolan save me!
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sarah awakened from a fitful, miserable doze when the horses halted.
“Took you long enough,” the outlaw standing sentry duty grumbled as he opened the gate and let them ride inside.
“Things involving women always take longer than you’d think,” Jesse muttered, “’specially when one of ’em’s loco.”
“Yeah, where is crazy Ada?” the other asked, peering at Sarah and beyond her. “You promised she could be mine once you got Goldilocks.”
“‘You promised,’” Jesse mimicked. “You sound like some little kid. Shut up, Jones. Go find your bedroll and get some shut-eye. We leave at dawn.”
“Hope she’s worth it,” Jones muttered, and stalked away.
“Where are we?” Sarah asked, peering around them in the dim light cast by a campfire, around which lay sleeping men. She made out the dark mass of a barn, with an irregularly shaped corral filled with the cattle lowing, some lying down, some milling slowly around. She’d lost track of time as they’d followed the snakelike path of the Colorado northwest, finally crossing it at a shallow ford. The water had drenched her skirts nearly to the waist, and now, in the cool March air, she was wretchedly cold.
“Far from home, Sarah-girl,” Jesse said with smirk. “This here’s the farm of a loyal Confederate colonel, one who hasn’t bowed his head to the blasted Blue Bellies, though he pretends to enough to get along. It’s far off the main road and other farms that no one pays him any mind. He’s been real happy to hide us, re-brand the cattle as we bring them to him, and all he asks is a share of the money when we sell them, to start the new treasury.”
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