Copper Fire

by Fayrene Preston

  “Mr. McCord, Dan asked me to deliver a message.”

  Wes nodded. “What is it?”

  Dutch glanced up and down the street. Even though it was Sunday, people were visible, out for a morning stroll or on their way to church. “We best go inside, Mr. McCord.”

  Wes turned on his heel and reentered his office. Dutch followed. Minutes later, Wes was looking at Dutch in disbelief. “How much was destroyed?”

  “Just about all the tents and everything that was in them. Fire caught some black powder. It went up and took a flatbed load of rails up with it. We was able to save most of the rest of the supplies.”

  Fury fast replaced disbelief. “And Cummings thinks that Janice got away with the ledger?”

  Dutch squirmed in his chair. “She’s the only one that could’ve. Dan had slapped her around and thought she’d be quiet for a while. We turned our 'tention to Lassiter, and next thing you know, she’s up and gone. And so’s the ledger.”

  Wes’s fist came down on top of his desk so hard, the wood rattled. “And so, goddammit, is Sloan Lassiter! Just how in the hell did you people manage to let so many things get destroyed and so many people get away?”

  Dutch gazed nervously around the room. “It was the fire and all. Nobody was expecting no fire.”

  “Apparently, that wasn’t all you weren’t expecting,”

  Wes snapped, thinking of Brianne Delaney. Suddenly, he jabbed his finger at Dutch. “You tell Dan Cummings I want those three people. Find them and take them back to the tent city.”

  “Wes and four or five of the boys have already lit out after that lady and Lassiter. He sent a couple of others after Janice.”

  “Good. We’ve got to find that ledger! In the meantime, I’ll make arrangements for new tents for the men. We can’t let this delay the building of the railroad any longer than necessary.”

  Chapter 13

  The sun had been beating down on them all day. By its angle, Brianne judged the time to be about four o’clock in the afternoon. They had been in the saddle since early morning, and Sloan had long ago stopped giving her even monosyllabic answers. She was frantic with worry about him, but they couldn’t afford to stop until she found some sort of shelter for them that would offer concealment and that would be defensible.

  Using every evasive maneuver she had ever learned, she had kept them riding west away from the tent city until noon. Then she had doubled back, keeping in mind something her uncle, Dom, had once taught her – the best place to hide from your enemy is somewhere close to his own home ground, because that's the last place he thinks to look.

  Up behind the tent city there was a butte, and she had had them climbing the back of it for the last two hours. She was practiced at reading the lay of the land, and she was betting their lives that she would be able to find them shelter somewhere on the butte.

  She knew that the natural formation of land could be deceptive. So she was going on instincts, that and her knowledge of animals. She had found an old cattle trail. It was narrow, and by its overgrown state she judged it hadn’t been used in years. But she had decided to follow it, gambling that it would lead her to water and perhaps good grazing for the horses.

  Giving Dancer his head, she swiveled around to carefully scan their back trail. “Still clear,” she said to Sloan, no longer sure he heard her but needing to talk to him anyway. “I’ve been as slippery and cunning as I know how. And I’ve used every damn thing that Rising Star and Silver Dove taught me. Oh, Cummings and his men may be able to track us, but we’ll sure as hell slow them up and make them work to find us.” She laughed. “I shouldn’t cuss, should I? If Patrick were here, he’d tell me Malvina would wash my mouth out with soap.” The laughter died out of her voice, leaving a sudden deep sorrow. “I wish Patrick were here.”

  Sloan stirred. Her arms trembled and ached from holding him in the saddle all these hours. Because they were climbing, he was leaning back against her, and every torturous breath he drew was transmitted to her. The tension she could feel in his muscles told her the tremendous effort he was exerting to stay upright. She was so afraid for him. She had no idea how extensive his injuries were, but she knew he wasn’t going to be able to last much longer. She had to get him to a place where he would be safe and she could nurse him.

  “It won’t be too long,” she murmured, hurting for him. “I promise you. Just hang on a little while longer.”

  Dancer stepped off the trail and turned toward a wall of brush that was growing against the side of the butte. She reined him back. When he persisted in pulling in that direction, she decided to let him have his head. In some ways animals were smarter than people, and they had the ability to sense danger or to smell water.

  As they drew closer, she saw that behind the brush there was a narrow opening in the side of the butte. Further scrutiny revealed that the opening would be just wide enough for the horses to go through single file.

  Two choices occurred to her simultaneously. Either she could dismount and investigate the opening on foot, or she could go ahead and lead the horses through. Quickly, she chose the latter. She didn’t feel that she could risk leaving Sloan alone for even a few minutes.

  “This may be our answer,” she told him. “Hold on tight.” She directed the horses through the brush and into the opening. There was no space to spare on either side of them. Their boots grazed the sides of the rock walls that rose high above them. But when they finally made it through, she permitted a smile of satisfaction to spread over her face.

  They were inside a box canyon. On the floor of the canyon a meadow of green grass flowed into and out of deeply carved arroyos and around huge boulders. At the far end of it was a stand of trees. To her left and perhaps twenty-five feet above the meadow an over-

  hang jutted out over a ledge. Water, she guessed, had worn the rock back until a small cave had been created. A shelf edged the mouth of the cave then began to curve downward to the floor of the canyon. To the right of the cave a fall of rocks and boulders blocked the shelf ledge, but the other side was clear.

  She walked the horses to the beginning of the rocky footpath, then slid off Dancer and hobbled him. Sloan’s eyes were shut and his breathing was shallow.

  His hands were clutched tightly around the saddle horn. She covered them with his. “Listen to me. You’re going to have to walk up an incline, but once you’re there, you can rest and I can take care of you.” He didn’t answer or respond. She began prying his fingers away. “You’ve got to get down. You can lean on me while we’re walking. I’ll take as much of your weight as I can.”

  When he still didn’t move, she reached up and took hold of his arm. “Sloan, I know you’re in a great deal of pain and that you’ve endured a lot, but you’re going to have to do one more thing. You’re going to have to help me!”

  Sloan heard the urgent plea in her voice. His dismount was part fall, part slide.

  The impact of his feet hitting the ground made Sloan groan aloud with pain. It felt as if red-hot spikes had imbedded themselves in his head and in his stomach. He would have collapsed if Brianne hadn’t quickly thrust herself under his arm and steadied him.

  “Iknow this is hard, Sloan, but you’ve got to do it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can, and you’re going to. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” She had to ignore the fact that his skin was almost white, she told herself.

  “Bri – ”

  “Don't talk. Save your strength.” Slowly, she walked him onto the ledge path. “Take it one step at a time.”

  Sloan couldn’t see. The pain had blinded him. So again he fastened on to her voice. And she never stopped talking, encouraging when he faltered, giving him courage when he could find none within himself.

  Once he fell. He didn’t want to get up. But he heard Brianne frantically calling his name, pulling at his arms, and somehow he managed to get back to his feet and begin walking again. He wanted to stop. He desperately needed to.
Just when it seemed to him that he couldn't take one more step, though, he’d take another. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know where they were going. He didn’t care.

  All he wanted to do was cease his motion, lie down, and let the tormenting pain take him toward the blackness that had been pulling at him all day. But Brianne’s voice wouldn’t let him go. He listened carefully, wondering where her laughter had gone.

  At last, with a sob of relief, Brianne guided him into the little cave. At its deepest point it was sixteen or seventeen feet. She led him to the back of it. “Here… sit down here and rest.” Her arms were around his back and his waist, holding him tightly, supporting him as best she could. When he went limp and slipped out of her arms, she wasn’t prepared. “Sloan!” She dropped down beside him and rested his head on her lap. Tears were running down her face, but she ignored them. “Sloan,”she said again, this time more gently.

  But he didn’t answer. He was unconscious.

  Jake Koller shoved Janice backward onto the bed in Dan’s tent, one of the few tents that hadn’t been completely burned to the ground. He grinned crookedly as her skirts flew up to her knees and he spoke to the man standing next to him. “Dan told us we should find her and bring her back here, but he didn’t say what we should do with her, did he?”

  Malcolm Williams’s gaze was on the torn neckline of her blouse. She’d fought like a wildcat when they’d caught up with her, he remembered with considerable pleasure. During the struggle he’d been the one who’d torn the blouse, and he’d had a feel of those luscious breasts. But dammit all if he didn’t want more now. He went to sit on the edge of the bed. “We’re supposed to get out of her where the ledger is.”

  “Did he say how we was supposed to do that?” Jake asked, never taking his eyes off Janice. If it’d been up to him, they wouldn’t have brought her in at all. They’d have set up camp and just kept her to themselves for a while.

  “Nope,” Malcolm answered.

  Pulling the two sides of her blouse together, Janice squirmed to the head of the bed and sat up. Malcolm and Jake were two of Dan’s men, and she’d never liked them. But at least they’d left her alone in the past. Now it was clear what was on their mind. They were fairly panting with lust. “I’m not tellin' you nothin'! Where's Dan?”

  Malcolm reached out and thrust his hand beneath her skirts to stroke the back of a calf with his fingers. “Now, honey, why would you want him? He’s just liable to beat you up again.”

  Repulsed by his touch, she tried to shrink away from him, but his caressing fingers turned hard and bit into her flesh. Tears sprang into her eyes, but, she decided, she wasn’t going to give these bastards the satisfaction of crying. “He’ll kill you if he comes back and finds you’ve laid a finger on me!”

  At that Jake gave a snort of laughter and pointed to her battered and bruised face. “Who’re you kiddin’, girlie? Any man that’d do that to a woman doesn’t care what happens to her. He sent us after you. We found you. Now you’re ours!”

  Malcolm had shifted his position on the bed so that he had her trapped against its back. “All you got is us, honey. Now what we want to know is, where’s the ledger?”

  For probably the first time in her life Janice forced herself to face some ugly truths. No one would come if she screamed. Everyone thought of her as nothing but a whore. No one saw that she had a heart that hurt occasionally. No one was ever kind to her unless it was in bed – and then not always. And lastly, Dan was going to kill her when he got back. She needed to play for time. “If I tell you, will you let me go?”

  Jake sat down on the side of the bed and slapped her hands loose from the material she was attempting to hold over her breasts. “Sure, honey, tell us.”

  Janice’s resolve not to cry was fast fading. Her face was hurting, and she knew they were lying to her. They wouldn’t let her go. Why had she ever thought that being in on the building of a railroad would be fun? For that matter, why had she ever thought men were fun? Malcolm and Jake were ugly and dirty. She didn’t want them to touch her. She never wanted any man to touch her again! Suddenly, she couldn’t take it anymore. She kicked out with her feet and caught Malcolm squarely in the stomach. “Leave me alone!”

  While Malcolm grabbed his stomach, Jake snatched a handful of her hair and pulled her head back. “Now, that’s not nice, girlie.” Rotten teeth showed through parted lips. “Malcolm, you all right?”

  “How’d you like some of her?” Malcolm asked, grunting.

  Jake pressed his hand against the uncomfortable bulge in his lap. “What d’ya mean? I can have her?”

  Malcolm shoved one big hand under the torn material of her blouse, brutally grabbed one of her breasts, and began squeezing. “She’s not gonna tell us nothin’, so let’s have a little fun.”

  Janice tried to push the men away, but they were all over her and it seemed like their hands were everywhere. “Stop! Stop!”

  “We could divide her up!” Jake suggested generously, already reaching for the buttons of his trousers. “I’ll use her top half and you can use her bottom half; then we’ll switch.”

  “Good idea,”Malcolm said, grabbing her legs and pulling her down on the bed until she lay full length.

  He shucked his pants down around his knees and squirmed himself between her legs.

  In the meantime Jake began to arrange himself over her mouth.

  Janice was screaming and screaming.

  Two gunshots were fired, so close together they sounded like one.

  “Get off her!” Wes McCord said, his voice cold yet soft, ominously so.

  Just the sight of him frightened Malcolm and Jake more than the sound of the two shots being fired had. They scrambled to their feet, falling several times in the process.

  “We were just tryin’ to get her to tell us where the ledger is,” Malcolm said, hastily pulling up his pants.

  “Yeah,” Jake chimed in, his fingers shaking so badly he couldn’t even grasp a button, much less do one up, “the bitch wouldn't cooperate.”

  “Wait for me outside,” Wes said.

  It didn’t matter that neither of them had their pants fastened yet. They left the tent so fast, they stirred up dust.

  Janice’s sobs were calming now. Wes walked to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her. What he saw made his jaw clench. Her breasts had angry red whelps where the men had grabbed her. The inside of her thigh had three long, bloody scratches running the length.

  Leaning over, he pulled her skirt down to her ankles. Before he straightened, he gently touched one finger to the side of her face. “Did they do this too?”

  Like everyone who knew of him, Janice was afraid of Wes McCord. She had never actually been this close to him before, and now that she was, she could see the cold anger burning in his eyes. She swallowed hard. “Dan Cummings.”

  Wes cursed silently. He’d heard that every so often Cummings liked to hurt a woman just for the fun of it. There'd even been a rumor that he’d killed one of the girls at Lucky’s Saloon awhile back, but no one had been able to prove anything. As soon as Cummings got back to town, he was going to fire him, something he obviously should have done a long time ago. His only excuse was that he’d had so many other things on his mind.

  He glanced around, locating the small bureau. He opened a drawer, pulled out a shirt, and handed it to Janice. “Put this on.” Then he sat down.

  Hastily, Janice sat up and pulled the shirt on over her dress. Because she was shaking so badly, it took her a long time to button it.

  Wes sat patiently, waiting. Finally she was finished. “Can I get you anything?”

  Warily, she shook her head. Even though he was speaking softly, she thought his voice sounded as cold as a knife’s blade and just as dangerous. She’d be better off with a dozen Malcolms and Jakes, she thought, than with one of Wes McCord.

  He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. “All right, Janice. I want you to tell me what you did with that ledger.”

>   She hesitated, thinking of Brianne Delaney. Miss Delaney had been nice to her. She’d spoken to her on the street, and when she’d been hurt, Miss Delaney had been concerned.

  “The ledger is my property, Janice. I have a right to know.”

  Janice felt a chill skip down her spine. His voice reminded her that this was a man she did not want to cross.

  “Janice?”

  “I gave it to Miss Delaney.”

  There was a short silence. “Do you know what she did with it?”

  She shook her head, not daring to look at him.

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Are you telling me the truth, Janice?”

  He was a compelling man, and being a woman, she couldn't help but finally look at him. “Yes.”

  He nodded and stood. “All right. Someone will bring in some soap and water. After you’ve cleaned up, you’re free to go.”

  “Go?” Her bewilderment showed in her face. “You mean you’re going to let me leave now?”

  Already at the opening of the tent, he paused briefly to throw a last glance at her over his shoulder. “Your horse will be waiting for you.”

  Janice’s legs gave out and she sank to the bed. In an instant she made the most important decision of her life: As soon as they brought her horse to her, she was going home to her mama!

  Over the years pine needles and leaves had blown into the cave. Brianne formed them into the shape of a mattress, and then spread one of the blankets over the mound. Looking back at Sloan, she saw the huge welt on the side of his head that was caked with blood. There were other bruises on his face, and she imagined his body had taken a battering too. Her stomach turned over as she thought of the pain he must have suffered today. But he had never complained. And somehow he’d managed to stay strong long enough for her to get him to shelter. As gently as she could she rolled him onto the makeshift mattress and covered him with another blanket.

  “I love you,”she whispered to him, and ran a hand across his forehead. “I’ve got to leave for just a little while. I hate to, but if we’re to survive, I have some more things I’ve got to do.” She bent and pressed a kiss on an unbruised portion of his cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”