by Holly Bush
“Maybe I’ll be taking another look at those titties of yours. You’ll be begging to show me them when Thurman’s done with you.”
She swallowed, stared into his eyes, and forced a smile to her face. “I’ll never beg you or any other of the cowards in this town again, whether you have your little white hat on or not.”
She left the post office and walked down the street toward the edge of town and home. She passed the Thurman Grist Mill offices and stared at the window and door as she did. Joshua Thurman came out the door and shouted at her.
“We don’t need no whore out walking the streets of Bridgewater with good folks! There’s no use looking for another customer here since that old man and young one left town. I’ll bet you gave that young one a good old time.”
“Your shoes are tied together, Joshua!” she shouted back at him and watched him look down at his feet as she knew he would.
Matt checked the cinch on Chester’s saddle in the barn before sunup the following day. He’d packed a bedroll, as he would be sleeping outside for two nights, and Mabel had packed him provisions when she’d heard him wandering in her kitchen at four in the morning and gone to investigate in her night clothes, a frying pan over her head, prepared to attack an intruder. He’d kissed her cheek while she wrapped cheese and bread and fried chicken and put it all in a cloth bag.
“Are you ready, boy?” Matt said now in the cool stillness and quiet of the barn. “We’ve got a long, hard ride ahead of us.”
Chester nickered in response and stomped his front hooves. Matt chuckled and checked the bridle and bit. He packed a bag of feed in one of his saddlebags along with a spare pistol and ammunition, his clothes and razor and food in the other, and checked that his money belt was tight around his waist. His rifle was strapped behind his saddle and his gun belt was around his hips. He led Chester from the barn just as the sky was lightening and the dark of the shadows was turning blue. He put his foot in the stirrup and stopped abruptly.
“What in the name of the devil are you trying to do, Adam? Jumping out at me when it’s still half dark and scaring me to death? What are you doing out here anyway?”
Adam walked toward him out of the shadows, leading a saddled horse. “Waiting for your sorry ass to get moving. I’m going with you, Matt.”
“If what I expect is true, I’ll be doing things that you don’t want to do or know about,” Matt said. “I thank you, but I’ll not have another man’s conscience on my mind.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who’s been faced with unpleasant tasks?”
It was then he recalled what Ben had told him about the day when Daddy had been shot and what Ben and Adam had done to rescue the woman and her children. He wondered if Adam had had to defend himself or the Morgans from soldiers or others intending to take them while he hid them in the mountains.
“I’m riding hard,” Matt said and pulled himself up into the saddle and sat there not pushing Chester to move, until finally tugging on the reins. “I appreciate the gesture and the company.”
Annie leaned close against the wall of the loft and watched through the gun slit as three masked riders cleared the woods from the trail into town. She had slept on the mattress in the loft after her day in town, wondering if she’d done enough to spur them to action. It appeared she had, although the reason she’d want a reaction from them escaped her. What had she been thinking? Was she like her father? Asking for death in some roundabout manner? Had his pain been too great to live with? Was hers?
They were all carrying rifles, and she could see the glint of a knife in the near-daybreak moonlight on one of them. They spread out and slid down from their horses one at a time. Two of the men crept up to the cabin while one stayed near the horses, swinging his rifle in a wide arc until disappearing out of her view.
One of the men kicked the cabin door in, and he and the other charged in. Annie thanked God she was not inside, asleep or awake. There were two of them, and she would never have been able to fight them both off, unless she could have gotten a shot off. Then there would still be two to deal with, even if she had killed the first.
When had she decided that killing a man was something casual, as if she did it every day? When had everything her mother had taught her been forgotten? Maybe not forgotten, but perhaps amended—she was done cowering. She wasn’t going to live in fear any longer. She would be courageous and live, or be so and die. Annie felt great calmness each time she declared that she would no longer live in fear, as if the mantle of terror she carried crumbled a bit each time she did so. Fear was reasonable until it was crippling. Then she heard her pigs oinking and snorting as the man she’d lost sight of chased them to the front of the cabin.
She was on her knees in an instant, pistol in hand and aiming the barrel out the gun slit. The men talked and maybe argued while her pigs wandered the edge of the yard, foraging. Annie didn’t want to give away where she was hiding, but she wasn’t going to allow them to take her pigs. Although that would pale in comparison to Teddy’s death, it was the final straw in several years’ worth of them. One of the men aimed his rifle in the pigs’ direction, and Annie fired. All of the men dropped to a crouch, and one grabbed his ankle where he might have been hit. The horses scattered and two of the men took off for the woods, chasing them. One of them stood, and aimed in her direction as if she wasn’t behind a wall and peering through a slit that was only a few inches high, and then he moved his rifle away, aiming up into the trees. The pigs were running toward their pen, and she heard one of the men holler to the other to hurry as they chased their mounts into the trees.
Five minutes later Madeline’s husband came charging through the woods on their old plow horse.
“Annie! Where are you? I heard shots. Why are your pigs out?”
“They were here, Tom,” she said after hurrying down the ladder and racing across her yard to him. “They were here! They were going to shoot my pigs!”
Tom bent over at the waist, still holding his rifle. “Please, Annie, please, move in with us for a while,” he said as he straightened. “Madeline’s worried sick and so am I.”
“You’re both good friends. But this is my property, and I’m staying.”
“I heard you were in town today, ran into Ezra and he told me. Why did you do that? You’re just going to make Thurman mad.”
“I don’t care if Thurman is mad, Tom,” she said her voice rising. “I just don’t care. They killed my brother in cold blood in front of me, and I have just as much right to buy a chicken and stop at the post office as the next person. I’m mad, too!”
“I can’t protect you here, Annie; and I’ve got a wife and children to raise.”
“I know it. I don’t expect you to come running. I’ll take what they hand me. I won’t like it, in fact, I’ll most likely hate it, but I’m not letting them bully me anymore. I’m just not. Go home. They aren’t coming back today.”
Tom helped her round up her pigs and waited to leave until she’d dropped the bar over the door of her cabin. The sun was coming up and she lay down, willing her pounding heart to slow and not beat its way out of her chest. It was one thing to claim that she was going to stand up to Thurman and his men and quite another to actually do it. She missed Matt. Where was he this very moment? she wondered. What would he say about her new attitude, and would he believe that it was him who’d inspired her? He’d been afraid in the river but hung on to save himself and Ben. He was in poor shape when he finally woke up but had worked until he was fit and able again. He was capable of love, that was for certain. He loved Ben and his family desperately. He was a hero.
She closed her eyes and consciously let herself think of him. Of when he’d smiled at her, when she’d shaven him, the tears in his eyes when Ben squeezed his hand for the first time, when he’d kissed her so tenderly. She would forget him, as she should, but for now his profile, handsome and strong, was a clear vision and made her long for him in her gut as her eyes filled with tears.
“I wasn’t going to say it in front of mother, but Ben found me in a room above a saloon with two naked women.”
“Two?” Adam said as he moved his bedroll around on the hard ground trying to get comfortable. “Ben said there were eleven of them.”
“What?” Matt said and sat up quickly, knocking his hat into the dying embers of their fire. He grabbed it and slapped it against his leg. “That crazy old coot. I’ll have something—”
“Relax, Matt. I’m just teasing you. He said there were two and you’ve said there were two so I guess you were in bed with two women, although for the life of me, I can’t understand what you’d need two women for at the same time.”
“I was too drunk to know any better most of the time.”
“It’s best Mother not know that detail.”
“I’m as ashamed of myself as I could be just imagining what she’d say to me if she knew.”
“I thought the top of her head was going to blow off when you said this Annie might be in a delicate way.”
Matt groaned. He’d purposefully tried not to think of the possibility. But what if she was? She wasn’t like saloon girls, who knew how to keep themselves from having a child, and she’d given herself to him. He was aching to touch her and shied away from the thought that she might be in danger. That he would arrive and find she was dead or gone the day before he rode into town. But the horses needed rest, and so did he. He wondered, though, when the last time was that he’d not had Annie at the forefront of his thoughts. When was the last time he’d gone all day without thinking of her, the last hour that he’d done so? She was somehow wrapped up in him, in his thoughts, and in any consideration of his future. What would he do if she didn’t feel the same?
Chapter 11
The slap to the side of her face stunned her and she dropped to her knees. The kick to her chest knocked her on her side. She felt herself being dragged upright and then slammed against the side of her cabin.
“Not so clever now, huh girly?”
He held her there with one hand flat against her chest and the other holding a knife to her throat. Annie forced her eyes open. It was the masked man who’d seen her when she was in the loft.
“Funny thing,” he said. “I shot a wild dog last week when I was hunting, and when I went to make sure he was done dead, I noticed a piece of cloth in his mouth just like the shirt that Jeremiah Thurman was wearing when he disappeared.”
She concentrated on the pain in her head and chest so as not to show any response to what he’d said. He sounded like Frederick Miles, the postmaster’s son, and there was no more worthless man for five counties in each direction. He was always trying to gain favor with the Thurmans, and this discovery would be a huge victory for him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He slammed her head into the cabin wall again. “I think you do. I think you know everything there is to know, except one little detail.”
“What is that?”
“The nigger girl, Gilly, we caught up with her two days ago. She ain’t doing so well.”
Annie felt real fear then, for herself and for Gilly, if she was even alive. She could smell his body odor and his rancid breath as he spoke to her, inches from her face, and realized that right now she was to face what she’d blindly said she could take for having courage. It was then she noticed four long marks down the side of his face. She might as well give as much as she could for as long as she could. Matt would be proud of her.
“Maybe Gilly gave you as good as she got, Frederick, seeing how there’s nail marks on your face above your bandana.”
“You’re coming with me,” he said and pressed his hand against her chest until she wasn’t able to draw breath. “Mr. Thurman has some questions for you.”
He lowered the knife and turned, grabbing her hair. She was thankful at that moment that she’d not put away the shovel she’d used to dig up her potatoes, that it was still leaning against the cabin near the door. She’d grasped it as he’d pushed her against the wall and hung on, waiting ’til the knife dropped from her throat. She brought it up with all the strength she had, screaming as she did. He blocked it with his raised arm but she still felt a satisfying ring when it connected with his forehead. She picked up her skirts and ran.
She stayed to the woods near the road to town and ran until she saw carts and wagons and others on foot. Surely, he wouldn’t assault her in public. Surely! People were staring at her, and she imagined she was a sight with her hair wild and not yet combed for the day and her blouse torn and muddy where Frederick had held her. She looked down and saw blood and realized it was dripping from a cut on her neck. How close she’d come!
Annie hurried and then wondered why she had. She was where Thurman ruled. She saw the sheriff’s office ahead and hurried there.
“Sheriff!” she said when she entered. “Help me!”
“Settle down now,” Sheriff Watterby said. “What are you screaming about?”
She took a deep breath. “A masked man held a knife to my throat at my cabin. You’ve got to arrest him. I’m sure it was Frederick Miles.”
“If he was masked, then how are you sure it was Miles?”
“I could . . . I could tell by his voice,” she said and watched as the sheriff sat down behind his desk and put up his feet.
“Could have been a drifter. Could have been one of your lovers, for that matter,” he said, eliciting a chuckle from his deputy slouched in a chair near the window.
“It was not a drifter. It was Frederick Miles,” she whispered.
“You want me to see if Mr. Thurman would like to hear about this, Sheriff?” the deputy asked and spit on the wooden floor. “I can just head over to his office and . . .”
But Annie didn’t hear any more of what he said. She was already out the door. What had she been thinking? Of course the sheriff would be on Thurman’s side. He was probably on his payroll! What a fool she’d been, thinking that she could face them all, face them down and put her friends at risk in the doing. She turned the corner hoping to reach an alley when Frederick Miles caught her arm. Abraham Thurman was behind him.
“Annie Campbell,” he said as he backhanded her, sending her to the dirt. She sat up, got her feet under her, and stared at him.
“Abraham Thurman!” she screamed, feeling her lips beginning to swell. “Tell your henchman to keep his hands off me!”
“Not likely,” Thurman said and nodded to Miles. “Take her out and let her sit a spell with her friend. That’ll soften her up.”
Thurman looked around then at the townsfolk as they stood silently and watched him. “Go on now. There’s nothing to see here that’s any of your business!”
Miles dragged her down the street, and Annie plucked at his fingers around her arm. “This is what we allow here in Bridgewater?” she shouted. “A woman is allowed to be dragged off in daylight? Are you all cowards?”
Before anyone could offer assistance to her, if anyone would have, Miles pulled her into an alley, and a burlap bag was put over her head. She was thrown over the back of a horse and lost all sense of time and direction and screamed until her throat was raw and she could shed no more tears.
“Matt,” she cried softly and thought of his face as she lost consciousness.
Matt and Adam ate in Harrisonburg at the same restaurant where he and Ben had eaten on their way to Paradise. He was impatient to get to Bridgewater, but they were less than an hour away and the sun had recently set. Adam had talked him into staying there and leaving for Bridgewater at first light.
Adam drew stares from the ladies dining there and on the street when they’d ridden into town, just as he’d done when they were young men. The soiled doves shouted to Matt from the second story windows of the saloon, but the well-dressed ones on the street with their parasols and hats and lace gloves eyed Adam as if he were a fancy dessert after a fine meal. Adam tipped his hat and acknowledged them all.
“How do you it?” Matt said to
him when they were seated and had just finished ordering their food. “Even the serving girl is in love with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as he nodded to two fashionably dressed young women.
“I may as well be invisible. The women in fancy dresses are all staring at you.”
“Women like me,” he said and cut into his beefsteak. “I can’t help it.”
“Then why aren’t you married? You could have had your pick in Winchester.”
“The ladies are all nice. They smell good and bring me the best pieces of pie at the picnics. They smile up at me and dance with me, and I’ve stolen a kiss from a few of them.” Adam shrugged then. “But I was never interested in a second dance or piece of pie or kiss from any of them. If I’m going to live with them until I die, then I should want seconds or thirds or maybe even fourths.”
“Is that how we’ll tell if a woman is the right one like Mother was for Daddy?” he asked.
“I think maybe it will be,” Adam said. “Would you be satisfied with one more kiss from Annie? If you never saw her again, would it matter?”
Matt concentrated on his meal and tried not to think of the answers to his brother’s questions. But he couldn’t. Would he ever have enough of her kisses? He didn’t think he would. What if the sight of her tomorrow was the last time on this earth that he saw her? Good God! He fought the panic that shot through him.
After dinner, they wandered over to the saloon, where Adam made conversation with the men standing near him and Matt ordered a glass of water, eliciting a sharp look from the barkeep. Matt tossed a coin his way and listened to the conversation beside him.
“So, what do you fellows know about Bridgewater?” Adam asked and then turned to the barkeep. “Give my friends a round of whatever they’re drinking.”
“Small town,” one man said after thanking Adam for his drink. “Not much there.”