But Honey, I Can Explain!

by April Hill

  A horrified Alice blushed deeply, but confronted him with her eyes her flashing. “Such treatment is vile, in itself, but it is also said that your men feel equally free to rape the women they find on the roads, as well as robbing, beating, and humiliating them!”

  He shook his head sadly. “Rare, but I will not deny that it has happened. The men here are but men, and rough ones, at that. When we learn of such behavior, the man in question is punished, and ordered to leave the camp. But even the women of our sworn enemies are at less risk with our men than with Prince John’s henchmen, or with the Sheriff’s, or with the powerful and corrupt robber barons that now terrorize England’s highways. Should the naked and well–spanked lady I spoke of be unfortunate enough to come upon one of John’s knights after she leaves our camp, she will find herself in worse hands by far than ours, I promise you. She may protest as loudly as she can that she is the treasured wife, or mistress, or daughter of some well–known rich or noble man, but her fate will be the same – to be raped and buggered, and then abandoned by the roadside, to live or die.

  “In addition, however strong our anger, we have never assaulted children, as the usurper Prince John’s hirelings do regularly. When they’ve finished, they ride off and leave their young victims to die of cold in the forest. Like the lass, there, whom we recovered some weeks ago, near death.” He pointed to a frail, pale child carrying water in a bucket. “She was eleven at her last birthday. Her nine–year old sister was not as fortunate, and died before she could be rescued.

  “Now,” he said briskly. “Back to your own situation. Henry Burden is a good man, and for his sake, we will do what we can to make your stay here agreeable. Arthur was right to bring you here, despite the lack of proper caution in his methods. The roads are unsafe, especially for someone in your circumstances. With your history, you would suffer a very great price should you be caught again. We will try to get word to your uncle as soon as possible.”

  “I do wish not to trouble my uncle,” Alice said hastily. “Nor to place him in danger. He knows nothing of my most recent escape. My plan is to travel to London, where I have made arrangements with friends. I will notify him from there, when I have arrived safely.”

  Fletcher seemed curious at her objection, and shook his head. “I think it neither fair, nor wise, to keep your presence here with us a secret from your uncle, Mistress. I know not what it is you’re about, but Burden has always been an excellent friend to our cause, and I’ll not take part in deceiving him, for any purpose. As far as your plan is concerned, yes, London is probably far enough from Nottinghamshire to guarantee some measure of safety, and we will see that you reach there as quickly as it can be arranged. Until then, however, I must ask you to keep to the center of the camp. The Sheriff’s men and the King’s Royal Foresters come looking for us now and then, despite the weather, and as spring approaches, the attempts will increase. They may even now suspect your presence here, and should you be taken, we haven’t enough men here to pursue them outside the forest. In the meanwhile, you may help the women with the cooking, perhaps, or tending the animals.”

  She grimaced. “You do not understand, Master Fletcher! I do not wish to stay here, but to leave immediately! Arthur and I ask nothing more than two fresh horses, and the loan of a small sum of money, perhaps.”

  Fletcher shook his head. “That is impossible, Mistress. You have no escort.”

  “But, Arthur,” she began.

  “Arthur is a boy, and a boy we all care a great deal about. Only a fool would have allowed him to take the risk he has, already. No, Mistress, you will stay with us until we can arrange something. Until then, as I said, you will help the other women with….”

  “No!” she cried. “I will leave this place, at once! I have not escaped one prison only to be locked up in another!”

  Fletcher’s voice hardened. “I have explained how things are, and in Robin’s absence, I will expect you to abide by my decision.”

  “I will not stay here, sir!” she protested furiously, striding out of the hut. Fletcher followed her, took her arm firmly, and pointed to the nearby hut of the blacksmith.

  “I believe our good blacksmith has finished dealing with young Arthur. If it is your wish to find yourself upended and walloped over the same anvil, continue this nonsense, and I promise you I will see to it.”

  Seeing something in Fletcher’s eye that made it clear his threat was not in jest, Alice backed off – for the moment. “If I am to be detained here, there must surely be something else I can do,” she said sullenly. “Other than caring for pens of fowl, or swine. My duties at the convent were in the library, inspecting the monks’ manuscripts for errors in their Latin and Greek. I know nothing of cooking, nor of caring for animals.”

  He grinned. “Our chickens and pigs rarely converse in Latin or Greek, but they will manage to make their needs known, I’m certain. The work is perhaps not as clean as toiling in a dusty library, but it should be no less boring. You don’t cook, either? Ah, I suppose that is a foolish question. Well, then you shall wash. Nuns wash, do they not? Their clothing, bedding?”

  “I did not launder others’ soiled clothing,” she said proudly, becoming more annoyed at his questions as every moment passed. “Others laundered. I did not.”

  Fletcher frowned. “I see. Were you, by chance, a…how shall I put it? A favorite of our friend the Abbot, the corrupt Bishop of Hereford? I understand he plucks a plump partridge or two from his own confessional when the need….”

  “You dare to suggest I’d allow that fat, croaking toad to put his ungodly, unholy hands….”

  “Careful, Sister!” he cautioned, smiling broadly. “You’ll not wish to add blasphemy to your already considerable sins. All right, then, go and speak to Fanny Kimball – the large woman over there by the fire, among the smoke and cooking pots. We can’t afford idlers in camp, so it’s time for you to learn a useful skill. Tomorrow, come dawn, Fanny will no doubt show you how to stir a pot or two, and to feed and slop what few fowl and swine have survived the winter.”

  With that, he walked away, whistling cheerfully, leaving Alice to fume in frustration.

  Vengeance Creek by April Hill

  Chapter One

  Claire Parkins walked slowly through the spacious rooms of the once-grand old house, noting with sadness the glassless windows and the rotted floorboards that creaked and groaned beneath her step. Outside in the barren front yard, bright flowerbeds had once bloomed every spring. But now the ground was baked dry, dotted sparsely with dry clumps of brown weeds and strewn with splintered slit-wood shingles that had fallen from the sagging roof. The only remaining signs of the thriving vegetable garden she remembered from her childhood were shallow furrows in the parched clay. Yes, repairing the house was going to be a problem, but not the biggest problem. The biggest problem would still be Thacker, as it always had been. Claire slipped her hand in her pocket and touched the bank check again, comforted by the reality of it, but conscious of just how small it really was and how far it had to go.

  Twenty years ago, when the house belonged to her grandfather, Noah Parkins, the Circle P ranch was the largest spread in the valley, and its elegant longhorn bulls were siring much of the quality beef in the territory. Claire was a small girl then, trailing behind the old man wherever he went and dreaming of the day when she would be a real rancher like the grandfather she adored. But that had been before the long years of drought came—years that brought financial ruin and made Grandpa old before his time. For Claire the saddest part was that Noah Parkins had died knowing that the spread he'd carved out of the wilderness and spent forty years building to greatness had crumbled into neglect. He'd lived just long enough to see the Circle P's vast herds sold off to strangers and its expansive lands auctioned off for pennies on the dollar. Most of it had gone to neighboring rancher Linus Thacker, of course, whose fortunes had soared as rapidly as her grandfather's had failed.

  And that's why Claire had come back. Her dream was to
rebuild not just the melancholy old house but the ranch itself—to reclaim it from the dust and make it great again. Maybe not as big as it had been in Grandpa's day—that would take more money than she had or ever would have, but as close to Grandpa's dream as she could. A place with the sturdiest breeding stock with the finest bloodlines—steers that would provide the beef a growing nation needed as its borders expanded westward. Beef to feed its children and its rail workers, and ….

  She smiled to herself. Even her daydreams sounded like Grandpa's. Big words and bigger dreams, she thought, brushing off enough dust to sit down on the steps of her badly leaning porch. Unrealistic dreams, probably. Here she sat, an inexperienced woman, alone in the middle of hundreds of acres of empty grassland with only a ramshackle house and the bank's one-thousand-dollar loan check in her pocket. Grandpa would have made the effort, though, however impossible it seemed. Her father would have done it, too, if he hadn't died in the war. Now, with every last penny she had to her name tied up in a rundown ranch, Claire looked out across the barren plain and sighed. Her future looked a lot bleaker than it had three weeks ago, when she had left Chicago and a life of ease and comfort.

  She'd been sitting on the hot porch for close to an hour when a lone horseman appeared on the top of the ridge and stopped, obviously watching her. Moments later, horse and rider came down the hill at a full gallop and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust in what had once been the vegetable garden.

  "There ain't no goddamned squatters allowed here, lady," he shouted. "You need to move along. Didn't you see them no trespassin' signs over there? The ones posted along the fence, yonder, and on the damn gate?"

  "I tore them down," she said simply.

  "Tore 'em down? Why the fuck would you do a fool thing like ...?"

  "Because the fence and the gate belong to me, along with this house and what's left of the porch I'm sitting on. And now that I think about it, mister whoever you are, you're trespassing on my front yard. And I'll thank you to move that horse of yours. He's standing right smack in the middle of my vegetable garden."

  "The hell I will! You're fuckin' trespassin'!" he bellowed. "This here's Mr. Linus Thacker's place, all the ways past the creek and a damn far piece beyond that! Now, just get your ass movin, or ...."

  Claire stood up. "The county records will show that this property belongs to me, including that stretch of the creek," she said firmly. "If you or Linus Thacker or anyone else would care to see a copy of my grant deed, you're welcome to ride into town and look it up. Meanwhile, get your damned horse out of my turnips."

  The man looked down at the bare dirt. "I don't see no fuckin' turnips."

  Claire smiled. "You're not one of Mr. Linus Thacker's brightest hands, are you?"

  Suddenly unsure of himself, the man backed his horse off a little. "Well, I reckon as how it'd be all right with Mr. Thacker if you was to just squat here for tonight, if you've a mind to—if you ain't got somewheres else to sleep. But if you know what's good for you, you'd best be gone come mornin'. Just get your tail outta' here by then and I won't tell nobody I seen you."

  "You may tell anyone you wish, and please tell them my name, as well. It's Claire Parkins Maitland. My grandfather was Colonel Noah Parkins, and I fully intend to stay right where I am—in my house, on my land. Tell Mr. Thacker if he'd like to ride over and have a cup of coffee with me to discuss removing his illegally posted signs and boundary fences, I'll be here in the morning—and every morning from here on, until hell freezes over. Now, get your damned horse out of my string beans!"

  The man grumbled and swore mightily but finally rode off, spurring his horse mercilessly up the hill. Claire knew it wouldn't be much longer before Linus Thacker or one of his henchmen paid her a visit.

  As the afternoon wore on, Claire kept herself busy sweeping the years of accumulated debris from the interior of the house and into the yard, all the while keeping a cautious eye open for unwelcome company. She'd sleep here tonight, but go back into town tomorrow to buy what provisions she needed—and try to find out why the ranch hand she'd hired hadn't arrived. When she saw another rider approaching at some distance, she went inside and loaded the ancient rifle her father had carried at Appomattox Station. He'd died there on April 8, 1865, during General Custer's raid on the Confederate supply trains. Claire was two years old when the news came, and the only real memory she had of Daniel Parkins wasn't really a memory at all, but a photograph— a handsome face in a cracked and fading tintype left to her when her mother died. Carefully, she leaned the rifle just inside the doorway and sat on the crippled porch rocker to watch as the rider approached.

  When he reached the fence—or what remained of it—the stranger leaned down from the saddle and opened the broken gate, then rode on through and up to the house. He was tall, lean and blond, and he looked vaguely familiar.

  "Afternoon, ma'am," he said, touching the front brim of his hat. "Can I trouble you for some fresh water for my horse?"

  She nodded to the cistern, which she'd filled that morning with buckets of water carried from the creek below the house. "The pump doesn't work. If that's not enough, you'll find plenty of water just down the slope, there." She pointed in the direction of the wide creek that flowed through the property thirty yards from the back porch.

  "Thanks," he replied, patting the horse's damp neck as he dismounted. "I'll just walk him on down there and not use up what you've carried. That's mighty hot work on a day like this."

  Claire got up and followed behind him as he walked down the hill to water his horse at the creek. The stranger was well-muscled, with broad shoulders and strong, calloused hands—a man accustomed to hard work. His hair was longer than fashionable and tied at the back of his neck with a strip of rawhide, but he was dressed in the familiar worn jeans and faded shirt favored by local cowhands. This stranger was no cowhand, though. There were no spurs on his boots and no coiled rope over his saddle horn. A Winchester rifle in a beaded leather case hung alongside his saddle, and he wore a holstered Colt .45 low on one hip.

  He knelt on the creek bed to inspect the horse's feet. "This place has been deserted for quite a while," he observed, pointing back to the house. "It kinda' surprised me, finding someone living out here."

  "I inherited it," Claire replied, watching his tanned, sun-lined face for a reaction. "The house, and several hundred acres around it, anyway. This creek's mine, too. What is it you wanted, here?"

  He looked up at her and smiled. "Just the water, for now."

  "Are you from around here?"

  He stood up. "Nope, just passing through."

  "And your business?"

  "Well, now, ma'am, I figure that's pretty much my business, wouldn't you say?" he asked, loosening the horse's bit to clean it in the cool creek water.

  When he'd finished watering the horse, the stranger filled three canteens, hung them over the pommel, then turned and started walking back to the house. She called after him. "Do you have a name?"

  "I do."

  "Well, what is it, then?" she asked irritably.

  He stopped and turned around. "You always this polite to people you just met?"

  "Do you want to work for me, or simply make idle conversation, Mr. ...?"

  "I hadn't planned on working here. Just passing through, like I said."

  "Oh, I …," she stammered, flustered by her error, "I thought you were one of the men I hired. Mr. Walker at the bank was supposed to be sending one of them over. That was three days ago, and I've been waiting ...."

  The stranger stooped walking. "Did this fella you hired have dark hair and a long scar on his cheek?"

  "Yes, that's him. He said he'd been injured by a pitchfork last year. A Mister Jesus Hernandez.

  Do you know him?"

  "You can stop waiting. Hernandez won't be coming."

  "Why not? He told me he needed the job very bad."

  "Not any more, he doesn't. I buried him last night." He pointed down the road. "About six, seven miles back, b
etween here and town."

  "Buried him!"

  "Had to. Looked like he'd been dead about two days. Smelled that way, too."

  "Dead!" Claire gasped. "But, how …?"

  "Could be he fell off his horse."

  "That's ridiculous," she said irritably, annoyed by his mocking tone. "The man told me he was an experienced …."

  He swung up into the saddle. "It wasn't the fall that killed him," he said. "Someone put a load of buckshot in his back."

  Claire sank down on the porch step. "Thacker!"

  The stranger looked at her curiously. "Linus Thacker? Runs the Silver Star?"

  "Yes. Do you know him?"

  He nodded. "I've heard the name. Tell me, is Linus Thacker in the habit of shooting your hired hands?"

  Claire sighed. "Well, I can't prove it, of course, but ...."

  "Then maybe you should be more careful about accusing people of shooting other people."

  "And maybe you ought to shut up and mind your own business!" Claire snapped.

  He nodded calmly. "Always good advice, but I've heard it put more polite." Claire looked him over again, noting the worn clothing. "What about you? You certainly look like you could use work. I'm prepared to pay well. Do you want the job or not?"

  "Might be, but from what I've heard so far, it sounds like it might be a real short term position."

  She sneered. "You're scared, then?"

  "I've always found being scared at the right moment a pretty good a way to stay alive," he observed mildly.