Rosanne Bittner

by Paradise Valley

  The man left, and Jasper turned to Maggie. “Fry up what’s left of the bacon and eggs from yesterday,” he ordered. He shoved his gun into its holster and headed for the bedroom to pull on his pants. “If your man ain’t in the bunch who’s comin’ today, looks like maybe he won’t come for you at all,” he goaded.

  Maggie hurt so bad that she wondered if she might have broken bones. It was all she could do to lift the cast iron fry pan to the stove. She turned to the bacon barrel and glanced at Jasper’s gun hanging nearby.

  “Don’t be thinkin’ to use that gun.” The words came from the corner where Arny Clay lay on a cot watching her. “I’ll shoot you down, pregnant or not. Fix that coffee and bacon like Jasper told you to do. And don’t be thinkin’ them men that’s comin’ are gonna help you. They’re here to trade. Best you can hope for is they’ll try tradin’ somethin’ for you. If they do, your fate ain’t gonna’ be any better with them than with us.”

  Sage. He should be here by now. How disappointing to learn he was not among those coming to trade. Maggie stoked the fire in the cookstove, poked the dying embers to get flames started as she added wood. She wondered how on earth men got such a heavy stove up here, but she supposed where there was a will, there was a way. She prayed the same was true for Sage.

  She set a coffee kettle on one of the burner plates, deciding to heat the coffee left from the day before rather than make fresh. She lifted the lid and added water to ease the thick bitterness yesterday’s brew was bound to carry. She turned to the bacon barrel and lifted the lid, using a fork to dig what was left of their supply of bacon from the lard in which it was packed. She threw the bacon and extra lard into the cast iron fry pan then replaced the lid on the wooden barrel.

  The lard heated quickly, while Maggie’s thoughts raced with possibilities for escape, if Sage didn’t make it after all. She had to face the reality that any number of situations could arise out here that would prevent him from getting to her. He could be wounded, or maybe his horse went lame, and had slowed him down by a day or two. She had to believe there was a good reason he’d not come yet.

  The bacon sizzled. Maggie went outside to get the eggs she’d left there to keep cool. She looked out to see two men riding across the mesa toward the cabin. They dragged a travois built narrow enough to get it through the path that led here. It was loaded with supplies and covered with canvas. Behind them, a third man led six good-looking horses tied together with a string of rope. He kept his hat pulled down over his eyes as though nearly asleep in the saddle.

  “Get in here!” Jasper growled from the doorway.

  “I was getting the eggs,” she answered, turning back inside with the basket in her hands. “The men coming look to have a lot of supplies, even some horses.”

  “I don’t want them men seein’ you,” Jasper ordered. “We’ll see what they want first and make sure they’re on the up and up. Might be I’ll trade you for one of their horses. Now that I know you’re carryin’ a baby, and Lightfoot apparently ain’t comin’ for you, I’d just as soon trade you off and get rid of you. That would twist Lightfoot’s gut right good, which is all the better.”

  Fine. I’d rather take my chances with strangers than spend another minute with you, Maggie thought. She walked to the stove and took the coffeepot from a hot plate, pouring some into three tin cups on the table. She replaced the pot and broke eggs into the fry pan along with the bacon. Jasper left the door open, so he could keep an eye on the new arrivals while sitting at the table. He and Jimmy and Arny sat down and slurped their coffee.

  “Hurry it up,” Jasper told Maggie. “Them men out there is gonna be ready to trade, and I don’t want to miss out.”

  “Then you should go there to greet them first instead of feeding your face,” Maggie answered. She no longer cared about Jasper’s threats or how he might treat her. She moved away from the table and walked to the open doorway again. The traders were close now, approaching the men next door. She noticed Walt Sloan amble out of the other cabin. He was not wearing his guns.

  Maggie glanced at the traders again, and it was then she saw him.

  Sage! He moved from under the canvas that covered the travois. Maggie realized then that the man who’d been riding with his hat pulled down was Newell! She forced herself to show no reaction as she tried to think straight, her heart pounding. She decided the best thing to do was act quickly to help Sage without giving anything away to the men inside.

  She walked casually back to the stove, glad Walt was not armed, and realizing that he wouldn’t know Sage anyway, unless someone pointed him out. With shaking hands, she took Jasper’s tin plate from the table and used a spatula to put eggs and bacon on it. She did the same for the other two men, setting their food in front of them, then picked up the pan of hot grease as though to remove it from the fire.

  It was now or never. Difficult as it was to hang on to the heavy pan, Maggie swung it around, slamming the open pan with its hot grease against the side of Jasper’s face. She heard a sizzling sound, and Jasper screamed and jumped up. Maggie ran to the door and yelled Sage’s name. “In here!” she screamed. “There are three of them!”

  Everything happened so fast then that Maggie wasn’t sure what took place first. Jimmy was suddenly there. He slammed a fist into her face and sent her sprawling onto the porch. Maggie rolled away from the doorway. She heard gunfire, saw Sage ducking and rolling, fire spitting from his six-gun. In near unconsciousness, she scrambled farther away, heard Jasper still screaming and cursing inside the cabin. She took satisfaction in causing him pain.

  Newell rushed past her and flattened himself against the outside of the cabin wall. Maggie managed to sit up. She forced herself to concentrate. Now she saw Sage at the far corner of the cabin. He motioned for her to stay down. Maggie obeyed. She glanced at the supply train. One man was on his knees near the travois, apparently ready to help. The other man with him ran behind a watering trough, his gun ready. But the men in the nearby cabin all stayed inside, none of them willing to help. Maggie was not surprised. It worried her that she didn’t see Walt Sloan anywhere. Had he gone for his guns?

  “Come on out, Jasper!” Sage yelled.

  “You come get me, you son of a bitch!”

  A barrage of gunfire came from the doorway and the one window of the cabin. Maggie wasn’t sure if anyone inside was hurt, other than Jasper’s burns. Pain throbbed at her cheek where Jimmy had hit her. She could tell it was already swelling.

  “Step in the doorway, and I’ll blow our head off!” Jasper added. “Then I’ll take care of that goddamn bitch you’re after. I’ll give her to the rest of them men out there, if any of them wants a whore carryin’ a bastard kid!”

  Maggie gasped. This was not the way she wanted Sage to find out about the baby! She met his gaze and saw surprise in his eyes. What was he thinking? She couldn’t tell, and the matter at hand was too pressing to give it much thought. Sage looked at Newell and made a gesture toward the roof. Newell nodded. He shoved his six-gun into its holster and made a mad dash for a pole that supported an overhang of the sagging front porch. He shimmied up the post and onto the roof.

  Realizing what was happening, Arny came running out, guns blazing. Sage stepped out and shot him down, then darted around the corner. Walt Sloan came charging out of the other cabin then, both guns blazing. Newell flattened himself on the roof, and Sage cried out, apparently hit.

  “Sage!” Maggie screamed. She barely got his name out before he fired several shots at Sloan. The man’s chest seemed to explode, and he crumpled to the ground.

  Sage ducked back again, and Maggie hoped he’d have time to reload before more shooting started. How badly was he injured? To her great relief, the rest of the men stayed barricaded inside the other cabin. According to the code of conduct among such men, this was not their business.

  Jasper mouthed off a string of curses, daring Sage to step inside, while Newell removed his vest and laid it over the top of the stovepipe that stuck up
through the roof of the cabin. In just seconds, smoke came pouring out of the cabin door and windows. Jimmy stumbled outside, coughing and gagging, shooting randomly at nothing.

  Sage charged onto the porch and shot Jimmy as he ducked and rolled to get to Maggie before Jimmy’s wild shooting could send a bullet into her. A bullet spit across Sage’s face, opening a cut across his cheek. He spun around, landing beside Maggie.

  “Sage!”

  He didn’t answer. Stunned but awake, he quickly grabbed her and dragged her off the porch. Maggie noticed his upper arm was also bleeding.

  Smoke finally forced Jasper outside. He fired wildly, striking a horse. The animal whinnied and reared, and Sage stepped up and shot Jasper twice. The man screamed and collapsed with a bullet in each knee. Maggie realized Sage had deliberately avoided hitting Jasper in any vital places. He wanted him alive… for a while.

  More curses poured from Jasper’s mouth in ugly screams. Once he was down, Sage left Maggie and stormed to where Jasper lay. He took his hunting knife from its sheath near his ankle and dragged Jasper around the side of the house. Jasper’s screams grew so loud that even Maggie almost felt sorry for him.

  “Where’s my money!” Sage raged.

  “Lander!” Jasper screamed. “In the bank! I swear—most of it is still there!”

  There came a couple of seconds of quiet, and in that brief moment, Maggie found herself wondering if Sage really did come just for his money.

  She wouldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it.

  Jasper began begging then. “No! No! No!” His protests sounded desperate, like a man being tortured. Maggie wasn’t sure what Sage was doing to him… nor did she want to know. She put a hand to her stomach, her emotions roiling in her gut at the realization that the last two men who might have fathered her child were dead… or soon to be dead, when Sage was finished with Jasper.

  Suddenly, Newell was beside her. He helped her to her feet. “You need to get farther away,” he told her. He hurried her behind an abandoned buckboard wagon.

  “Newell! Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay. Is Jasper the last man who was inside?”

  “Yes, but Sage is wounded.”

  “Don’t worry about Sage. He’s too pissed off to go down.”

  “I can’t believe both of you made it up here.”

  “Had some help. Men in these parts won’t help the law, but they’ll help each other if they think it’s necessary. They don’t like other men takin’ a man’s wife—and the men who helped us knew Kate. They wasn’t happy to hear Jasper and Jimmy beat up on her.”

  “How is Kate? Is she alive?” Maggie saw the pain in Newell’s eyes.

  “She was when we left Lander. I’m not sure she’ll still be alive when we get back.”

  “Oh, Newell, I’m so sorry!” Maggie couldn’t help her tears—a mixture of relief Sage and Newell had found her, and sorrow over Kate.

  “You couldn’t help it,” Newell answered, watching both cabins. “Me and Sage are the ones who are sorry. We never should have left you and Kate alone.”

  Sage walked around the corner of the cabin and into view. Jasper was still screaming, calling Sage every name in the book, and begging him to kill him.

  “Maggie!” Sage shouted.

  Maggie stepped from behind the buckboard. There was a wild look in Sage’s eyes that made her hesitate.

  “She’s carryin’, Lightfoot!” Jasper screamed, deliberately baiting Sage, apparently in an effort to get Sage to shoot him and put him out of his misery. “It’s my kid! Maybe it’s Jimmy’s… or Cleve’s! Your woman is carryin’ a bastard!”

  Maggie watched Sage’s eyes. She could not read them. At the moment, she was the one who wanted to die, realizing the other men were listening, that they all heard Jasper’s ugly words. Newell walked up beside Maggie.

  “You gonna kill him?” Newell asked Sage. “Or do you want me to do it?”

  “Let him suffer,” Sage answered, his eyes still on Maggie. “He’ll die soon enough.”

  Maggie realized then that Sage’s hands were bloody, and he still held his knife. Blood poured down the side of his face from the bullet wound, and his shirtsleeve was soaked with blood. “Sage,” she said softly, not sure what he wanted or needed.

  “Is he telling the truth?” Sage asked.

  Maggie swallowed. She was losing him. “Yes.”

  He looked her over. “How long have you known?”

  “Since before we left.”

  He closed his eyes and struggled with emotion. “Not your husband’s?”

  “No.”

  He turned away, bracing himself against a porch post. “How do you know?”

  “How do you think?”

  Sage walked off the porch and went to a barrel that held water. He dipped his hands and the knife into the water and washed off the blood, then shoved his knife into its sheath. He washed some of the blood from his face, but more poured forth. He stood bent over for a moment, looking broken. Finally, he walked to the men with the pack train. He reached into his pocket, handed them money. One of them helped him take two saddles and gear off the travois.

  “You’d better sit down,” Newell told Maggie. “Give Sage a few minutes. Takes awhile for a man to settle down after bein’ so angry, especially after he’s killed somebody. He has some dickerin’ to do with them men over there. They did a right good job of helpin’ us out.”

  Maggie sank to the edge of the porch. Smoke poured from the cabin’s front door. She waited while one of the men who’d helped ripped open Sage’s shirtsleeve and doused his wound with whiskey, then wrapped gauze around the wound to slow the bleeding. She heard the man say something about the bullet going all the way through. He asked Sage about the deep scar already on his arm.

  “Grizzly,” Sage answered.

  To Maggie, it seemed a lifetime ago that she’d shot that grizzly.

  Newell climbed back onto the cabin roof and retrieved his vest from the top of the chimney, then jumped down and tossed it aside. “All smoked up,” he commented. “Ain’t no good now.” He walked over to help Sage saddle two horses. The men in the other cabin slowly came out and talked with the traders. They all proceeded to go about their business as though what just happened was a daily occurrence. Jasper’s curses weakened and turned into the ugly groans of a man slowly dying.

  Maggie felt dazed. Silly as it seemed at the moment, she worried how she must look. She was filthy. She didn’t need a mirror to know her hair was a mess, her cheek swollen, her lips cracked, her hands blistered, her dress in shreds, and her arms covered with dirt and scabbing scrapes. On top of that, she figured she must smell horrid. If Sage had seen her at her best back in Atlantic City, he was now seeing her at her worst.

  Sage finally walked closer and pulled her into his arms. “Thank God, you’re alive,” he groaned.

  Maggie wilted against him. “I’m so sorry, Sage, about the ugly way you heard about… the baby.” She felt him stiffen.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Maggie pulled away and looked at him. “Because you would have left me behind. When I fell in love with you, I not only feared you’d leave me, but that I’d lose your love and respect. I meant to tell you when all this was over, and we were both safe. I thought maybe… if I picked the right time and place…”

  “Just tell me you didn’t intend to pass the baby off as mine.”

  “No!” Maggie felt sick with regret. She turned away. “You should know me better by now.”

  He closed his eyes. “I’m familiar with a woman’s deceit, Maggie.”

  “You’re too worked up right now to deal with this.” She faced him again. “And I’m so… so worn out, and…” She couldn’t finish, too emotionally and physically drained to argue or explain. A hint of softness moved into Sage’s dark eyes… the eyes of a man who could be as savage as the wildest Indian… and perhaps, as unforgiving. She saw doubt in those eyes, and it devastated her. Yet, in the next moment,
in spite of his injuries, Sage scooped her into his arms and carried her to one of the saddled horses. He set her on it.

  “We have two more horses below the wall,” he told her. “When we get to the pathway, you can sit on the horse while I lead it down. The descent can be more dangerous than coming up.” He paused, settling into the saddle behind her and wrapping both arms around her. “Maggie,” he groaned her name. “What have they done to you?”

  Maggie grasped his strong forearms and let the tears come—deep, wrenching sobs of relief… and sorrow. He’d come for her… found her… but in a different way, they’d likely lose each other again.

  Forty-two

  Sage held Maggie in his arms until they reached the edge of the massive red-rock wall and began their descent. In spite of its beauty, Maggie hoped to never see this place again. Sage remained quiet, and Maggie was grateful. She was too weary and hurting too much to talk about anything that touched on raw emotions. It was enough that their journey was finally over—at least the part that kept them searching for the men who’d caused so much havoc in their lives. She could sense the rage that still seethed in Sage’s blood. Even Newell remained tense and quiet.

  The trip down was the most harrowing of any other part of their journey, but the horses remained sure-footed and stable. Sage put Maggie on one of two more horses held for them at the bottom of the trail.

  “Looks like you had a bit of a battle,” said one of the two men waiting with the horses.

  “You might say that.” Sage packed supplies they’d left with the men. Maggie realized any one of them could have ridden off with all of it.

  The man helping Sage glanced at Maggie and nodded. “Ma’am.”