“I didn’t beat on her,” Heath explained. “I kissed her…made her feel desirable and beautiful.”
Patterson looked around Heath then. “I still think she looks like hell.”
“Well, maybe she does now,” Heath countered. “But you wait. She’ll warm up to me, and then she’ll be as pretty as the summer days are long.” Heath frowned, reached out, and tugged at Patterson’s disgusting beard. He’d seen stray dogs that looked cleaner—and smelled better. “Listen here. Who do you think those girls are gonna trust? You and this flea-ridden beard? Or me…all cleaned up like a mama’s boy for Sunday school? Get rid of this rat’s nest, and them girls will take to you more.”
Heath’s attention fell to something else then. Taking hold of Patterson’s arm, he studied the silver and turquoise bracelet he wore—the bracelet he knew Hudson Oliver had given to Marie King. After all, Hudson had bragged to nearly everybody in town about it only a couple of days previous.
“And what’s this?” Heath asked, pointing to the bracelet. “It looks like somethin’ some little girl’s daddy gave to her.”
“I got it off that one over there,” Patterson admitted, pointing around Heath.
Heath turned, pretending to look from one girl to the other. “Which one?” he asked.
“That taller one with the dark hair and blue eyes,” Patterson confirmed.
Heath looked back to Patterson. “Well then, you give it back to her.”
“What?” Patterson exclaimed with indignation. “It’s worth a lot of coin!”
Heath quirked one eyebrow. “More than that girl’s gonna sell for in New Orleans?”
Patterson frowned. “No.”
“That’s right,” Heath said. “So you give that girl back her bracelet, shave off this ratty beard…and those girls will start lookin’ at you a whole lot differently than they have up until now.”
Heck smiled—chuckled as full understanding overtook him. “You’re gonna charm them all the way to New Orleans, ain’t you?” he asked.
Heath smiled and nodded. “Now you’re catchin’ on. When it comes to women, a man gets a lot more cooperation if he feeds them sweet butter and honey instead of horse manure and thistles. Ain’t that right?”
All the men understood then—or thought they did. As they smiled and laughed, triumphantly patting one another on the back, Heath exhaled a very slight sigh of relief. These outlaws really were as stupid as they looked—and that meant the girls had a chance of survival.
“Oh, but she got you good there, didn’t she?” Heck asked, gesturing to the blood and scratches on Heath’s neck.
Heath laughed. “Yep. She’s a cat, that one. But nothin’ I can’t tame, boys. Nothin’ I can’t tame.”
Chapter Twelve
“Well, the trick is,” Heath explained as he rode next to Heck, “to make a woman fear you…but at the same time, you gotta make her think she needs you for everything. You gotta make them totally dependent on you. Then, once you’ve done that, you can pretty much get them to do whatever you want.”
Heck chuckled. “So that’s your job for Jacques Cheval, boy? You come along and get one of the girls to fall in love with you? That’s it?”
Heath shook his head. “Nope. I get them to trust me…make them think I’m on their side and favor them. And it won’t work with just any of the girls. You see, you’ve got to get the strong-minded one who influences them most. You got to get the leader to crawl on into your web and wind her up. You gotta get her under your control…and then you get control of all the rest just because. It’s the same way it works with herdin’ cattle…even soldierin’ for that matter. You see what I mean?”
Heck nodded, thoughtful.
The truth was Heath wanted nothing more than to draw his knife and slit the outlaw’s dirty throat—shoot him or beat him to death would work too. But he knew better. He was one man, and he’d tried the direct approach before and ended up watching eight innocent girls die for it.
So he swallowed the vile taste in his mouth that gathered there each time he looked at Heck Alford (or any of the other outlaws), plastered on a smile, and continued, “Now, I can tell this one here—this one they call Cricket—she’s gonna be a tough little cat to tame. But I figure, judgin’ from the fact we’re gonna have to make camp somewhere and hole up through this rain probably for the rest of the day and through the night…I figure I can have her right where we need her to be by mornin’.”
Heck looked up. “What rain?” he asked. “I see the thunderhead…but it’s far out in front of us.”
“Not for long,” Heath explained. “It’s gonna rain like hell all afternoon. But I know a place up here not too far where we can dig in and wait it out—as long as the river don’t flood too high anyway.”
“So you know this trail purty good then, I guess,” Heck observed.
“Like the back of my hand, brother,” Heath said with a nod and a smile.
And it was true. Heath had lost track of the times he’d followed the white slavers’ trail to New Orleans. Many times he and his fellow Rangers had been successful in tracking outlaws down and returning young, innocent girls to their families fairly unscathed. But not the last time he’d followed it. Nope. Not that last time he’d followed the old trail—alone anyhow.
❦
“So he doesn’t hurt you at all?” Pearl quietly asked Cricket.
“No,” Cricket whispered.
“But…but you always look so tousled, swollen-lipped, and chaffed when you return,” Pearl noted. “And you hardly have any seams left hangin’ together on your shirtwaist.”
“I know,” Cricket admitted. “But trust me…he’s just playin’ these men. He’s waitin’ for the posse to catch up with us. He thinks they can’t be more than a day behind now.”
“But it’s been two days already, Cricket!” Pearl exclaimed as she began to weep.
“Hush up there!” Patterson hollered at them from behind. “You girls just ride and keep your mouths shut.”
“Don’t worry, Pearl,” Cricket quietly encouraged. “Ranger Thibodaux knows what he’s doin’.”
“That’s right,” Vilma said from the other side of Pearl. “Don’t you lose faith, hope…and your endurance.”
Pearl glanced behind them, however—to where Marie and Ann rode on either side of Jinny. “But Jinny’s lookin’ worse and worse. She hasn’t been herself since…since they murdered her sister,” Pearl reminded Cricket—and quite unnecessarily.
“I know,” Cricket sighed with worry. “I know.”
“I said shut up!” Patterson shouted. “Single file now, girls! If you’re gonna gossip like a bunch of old hags, then you can’t ride next to each other. I done told you all this before! You first, Red,” he ordered Vilma.
Cricket watched as Vilma’s face turned as red as a September tomato. Patterson had taken to calling her Red over the last day or two, and it infuriated the preacher’s daughter from Pike’s Creek.
As Cricket obeyed Patterson’s order to ride in single file, she tried to bury the doubt that was growing stronger and stronger in her. No doubts lived in her about Heathro Thibodaux (Heath, as he’d asked her to call him during their time together the day before). None at all. Heath would give his life before he’d give up on trying to free them. Cricket was as sure of that as she was of the air she breathed. But it was the hope of the posse from Pike’s Creek being close behind that she was beginning to doubt more and more.
For two days, Heath had taken hold of Cricket, dragged her off to a secluded place, and pretended to “rough her up a bit.” He’d explained to her the pile of horse manure he was feeding the outlaws—that he was winning her over so that she would cooperate with them and convince the other girls to cooperate as well. The idea was that Heath appeared to be breaking Cricket, much the same way a cowboy broke a new mare.
Each time the group stopped for a meal or to see to necessities, Heath had whisked Cricket away and spent the brief time they were together mussing
up her hair, rubbing his whiskery face over hers to chafe it, and creating an appearance that he had been “sparking with her,” as he put it. Furthermore, Cricket’s part had been to seem more and more docile in his company—even smile at him and offer the facade of growing fond of him. And she’d played her part well. Heck, Patterson, and the others would always chuckle triumphantly whenever Heath would return Cricket to the other girls, leaving her with a wink, a dazzling smile, and a flattering word.
Heath’s plan was working too. The outlaws were less fierce, less violent toward the girls. Patterson had even trimmed his smelly rat’s nest of a beard and returned Hudson’s bracelet to Marie. Of course, Cricket had explained to Marie that she must be more tolerant of Patterson now—lead him into a false sense that she liked him more than the other men because of his kindness toward her.
Naturally Marie had nearly vomited when Cricket had explained Heath’s plan and why Marie must be nice to Patterson, but Marie was strong, and she did as Heath encouraged. As a result, all the girls had noticed that Patterson wasn’t quite as wary of them as he had been before.
As for Cricket’s trysts with Heath, overwhelming guilt was beginning to mingle with all the other emotions raging through Cricket—because she relished every moment with him! Certainly Cricket’s secluded encounters with the unlawfully handsome Heathro Thibodaux were nothing but a facade—a ruse created for the sake of fooling the outlaws into keeping them away from the girls as much as possible until the posse arrived. But no matter how often she reminded herself of the truth of it all, Cricket could not keep from bathing in blissful wonder of owning Heath’s attention—of knowing his touch, no matter how unwillingly rough it may have been at times, as he attempted to make her appear as if he’d “been havin’ my way with you,” as Heath explained—and of hearing his voice as he instructed her on what to do next.
In fact, as Cricket rode on, pondering over all that had happened between them—the conversation, the plotting, the mutual hope that the posse would come—she was astonished at how well she felt she’d come to know him. In only a few minutes spent together several times a day, Cricket had begun to see into Heath’s soul. She saw his pain at having lost the girls the year before—the guilt that threatened to consume him—and the strength he mounted in order to keep it from doing so.
The sound of Jinny coughing startled Cricket from her thoughts for a moment. Glancing back to Jinny, she could see how pale and frail-looking the girl had grown since the death of her sister. Silently Cricket prayed Jinny would not become too ill—for she feared Heck wouldn’t pause any longer in killing Jinny than he did in killing her sister if he thought he couldn’t make a profit from selling her.
Thoughts of Jinny and her sister Nina drew Cricket’s mind back to the first day Heath had entered the camp. He’d taken Cricket off to some secluded place five different times that day. Each time Cricket would return looking more meek and cooperative than she did the time before—as he instructed. It was part of Heath’s plan to outmaneuver the outlaws.
But it was the final “tryst” they’d had that first day—it was those moments that Cricket’s thoughts lingered on now.
“Tell me about the dead girl,” Heath had begun. “The one I found snake-bit. I buried her a bit, by the way.”
Instantly Cricket had begun to sob—to tremble with remembered horror and painful grief racing through her—her own grief, but also Jinny’s. So bitter was her sobbing, so violent her gasps for air, that Heath had pulled her into the comfort of his strong, protective embrace.
Stroking her hair, he’d soothed, “It’s all right now. That little girl isn’t in pain anymore. She’s in the arms of the Lord and free from misery. It’s only us left behind that are feeling so guilty and sorry for her…missin’ her.” He paused a moment, allowing Cricket to cry into the softness of his shirt. Once she’d settled herself a bit, he’d repeated, “Now tell me what happened.” Keeping her safe against him, protected by the capable power she could feel in the firm, solid contours of his muscular chest beneath his shirt, he urged, “You don’t need to go on about it too long, but I do need to know what happened. A rattler got the girl…then what?”
Cricket nodded. “Yes…a snake bit her. A big one. It bit her twice.”
“And they shot her because they knew—”
“Heck shot her!” Cricket cried. “He didn’t even try to save her…didn’t even show a morsel of compassion or carin’! He just shot her and forced us to leave her there without buryin’ her or sayin’ a few words or anything. Her poor sister…Jinny. That’s Nina’s sister.”
“Nina was the girl who died.”
“Yes,” Cricket whispered. A strange sort of panic began to overtake her then. Her trembling increased, and she felt like she couldn’t draw a regular breath. “It w-was my fault!” she sobbed. “I had been the one to be with her just a minute or two before! I should’ve known when the horse reared that somethin’ was wrong…b-but we were all so frightened and tired. I should’ve…I should’ve stayed with her…made her walk in front of me. I-I—”
But Heath interrupted her with a firm, “No. No, that ain’t true at all. That girl’s death is on the heads of these outlaws, Magnolia. Do not take this on yourself when it was no fault of yours.”
Cricket had looked up to Heath then—gazed into the mesmerizing blue of his eyes, studied his lips far longer than she’d intended—desperately wanting to run her palm over the square line of his jaw for some reason.
“B-but you know how I feel,” she told him. “You know why I blame myself. If anybody in the world understands, it’s you.”
Heath frowned, inhaled a deep breath, and nodded. “I do. I surely do. And I know you must think I’m a hypocrite for tellin’ you not to blame yourself when I still blame myself for those eight girls last year. But this is different.”
“No, it’s not,” Cricket assured him. “Not to me.”
He nodded again, knowing she was right. Then he released her from his embrace, taking her face between his hands as he looked directly into her eyes.
“Now listen,” he began. She quivered as he brushed tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “You girls are doin’ real good with all this…especially you. I’m sorry I’m havin’ to be so rough on you, but you can see that this is workin’ pretty well, right?” Cricket nodded—studied the contours of his unbelievably handsome face. “These men are some of the most ignorant I’ve ever seen…thank goodness. They’re believin’ all this hogwash I’m feedin’ them. It’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel.” He smiled, chuckling a bit, and Cricket felt her own lips curve upward a little. “You just keep puttin’ up with me handlin’ you so harshly and then seemin’ to be nicer and nicer to me, and we’ll make it through this. That posse has got to be closin’. We travelin’ slower than molasses uphill in January, for Pete’s sake. All right?”
“Yes,” Cricket said with a nod.
He inhaled a deep breath, exhaled it with a note of discouragement and regret, and said, “Then come here, Magnolia. I need to scratch you up a piece again before I send you back.”
Cricket nodded once more—even smiled—for the truth was that she didn’t mind when Heath scratched her up a bit by rubbing his whiskers on her cheeks, over her mouth, and down her neck. Sure, it was somewhat uncomfortable and left a smoldering rash on her flesh for twenty or thirty minutes afterward, but it was almost intimate in nature—and Cricket enjoyed that it was.
As Heath began to slowly brush her face with his chin, a question that had been bouncing around in Cricket’s head all day long suddenly popped right out of her mouth. “Where did you get all that money…the six hundred dollars you gave to Heck?” she asked.
Heath paused in chafing her, his beautiful blue eyes brightening with mischief as he gazed at her a moment, and then said, “Didn’t I tell you that ornery old bull was worth all the trouble? You can thank ol’ Conq for that.”
Cricket’s eyebrows arched in astonishment. “That bull made you six
hundred dollars?” she exclaimed.
Heath nodded. “A whole lot more than that, in truth.”
“Goodness sakes!” Cricket breathed in exclamation.
“Goodness sakes is right,” Heath mumbled, brushing his whiskers along the length of Cricket’s neck.
And “goodness sakes” was right! At the sound of Patterson nagging Vilma again, Cricket’s attention was drawn back to the fact that she was a prisoner, riding astride a horse and on her way to New Orleans to be sold. Yet even so, goose bumps rippled over her arms and legs at the memory of Heath’s face sweeping her own—of the capable manner in which he held her arms as he endeavored to make her appear ravaged.
It was morbid—perhaps insane—to be thinking such romantic thoughts of Heath Thibodaux when the circumstances were so dire for him, Cricket, and all the other girls. Yet Cricket wondered if perhaps it wasn’t her mind’s way of actually keeping her sane in the end. If Heath hadn’t found them—if he hadn’t had the courage to begin the farce that found him able to accompany the group—then certainly the circumstances would be entirely void of hope.
Thus, why not daydream about him? Cricket asked herself. Why not escape the reality of their grim prospects and fill her mind with the sorts of things she’d filled them with days before, only days before, when she’d been an innocent, carefree young woman, stealing a kiss from the man her heart was drawn to?
❦
“I guess you was right, Baptiste,” Heck said, shaking the rainwater from his sopping hair and beard.
Cricket grimaced, thinking she’d smelled wet dogs that didn’t stink as bad as these wet outlaws did.
“Yep,” Heath confirmed. “I knew the moment I saw that thunderhead this mornin’ that we were in for it. And we can’t travel in this. The dry creek beds around these parts fill up with so much fast-movin’ water, a body can get completely swept away to drownin’. It’s best just to wait it out here.”
“I’m glad you knew this place,” Patterson said. He shook his head. “I don’t know where we woulda holed up otherwise.”
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