“Nick Coleman is dead.”
“I have a feeling you’re a little worried he isn’t.”
“If he ain’t dead, he’s sittin’ in jail soon to be hanged. One way or another, he’s dead.”
“And so are you, Mr. Slater, as soon as the law catches up with you, and they will!”
The stinging blow came with no warning. Addy felt the ground come up to meet her, tasted gravel in her mouth. Before she could regain her senses she felt ropes being tied around her wrists, felt a bandana being stuck into her mouth, another tied tightly around her head to gag her. Someone lifted her and carried her to a bedroll, dropping her onto it and putting a blanket over her.
“Sleep tight, Mrs. Kane. I think that’s what you said your name was. Maybe now you’ll learn to keep your bitchy mouth shut!”
Addy closed her eyes, fighting not to cry, for that surely was what Jack Slater wanted her to do. The right side of her face throbbed from Slater’s big hand slamming into it, and the left side stung from being scraped on stones when she fell. There was nothing to do now but pray—pray that the sheriff’s posse would find them before these men did something much worse to her … pray that somehow she would escape this mess and be able to put it behind her and go to Colorado as planned. Surely God would help her out of this. Surely He would not let her suffer any more than she already had.
The wind suddenly picked up, and she breathed deeply of the slightly cooler air. It sang through the treetops and cooled her face, and she was glad that at least with the wind there would not be much problem the rest of the night with mosquitoes. With her hands tied she would not be able to brush them away.
Nick swallowed against the pain in his shoulder, not sure he would be able to keep going. A strong urge to give up and go for help engulfed him, but it was overcome by the stronger need to find Jack Slater and give him his due, as well as help the poor woman Jack had taken with him.
He was glad for the strong south wind that had come up during the night, causing enough rustling in the thick woods to keep the posse that was camped east of him from hearing his stirrings. He was tempted to walk right into their camp and let someone dig the bullet out of him, but that would end his quest and probably lead him right back into a noose. If he could just rest tonight and not have to keep going to get ahead of the posse and cut the distance between himself and Jack, things would be a lot easier.
He halted his stolen horse, still grateful it was a strong, fast steed. The animal also needed a rest, but he would not dismount and put out a bedroll. If he did that, he might not wake up until it was far too late to reach Jack and the others in time to help the woman. He was not worried that the posse would find them. He knew the route Jack would take, over a hill of pure rock, along a deep creek, far enough that it would be impossible for the sheriff and his men to track them. Besides, by then they would be out of Missouri. Sheriff Page would have to turn their capture over to Kentucky authorities, and enough time would pass by then that they would never be found deep in the woods where their hideout cabin lay nearly hidden by vines and thick underbrush.
He untied his canteen and swallowed more water, well remembering how thirsty he was in the war when he’d taken a lead ball in his right leg. That same thirst nagged at him now, and it took every ounce of fortitude and determination in his bones to make himself keep going, against the night, against the pain. He recapped the canteen and sat for a few minutes, peering through the trees at the distant camp of lawmen, wanting to laugh out loud at their ineptness, first at leaving his gun in the room with him, then at the fact that he was sitting only a few hundred yards from them now, wounded, riding a stolen horse. He gave Charger a few more minutes to rest, then urged the steed forward at a slow walk, heading around the north side of the lawmen so that the wind would carry neither his horse’s odor nor the sound of its hooves rustling through leaves.
With luck the half-hearted posse would not break camp until sunup. By then he would also have made it to the rocky hill and the creek beyond it, surely very close to Jack and the others. Charger balked at having to find its way through a dark forest, and finally Nick had to dismount and lead the animal until he reached the pathway he knew was close by. Now it was just a matter of using the moonlight to keep going into the even-thicker woods beyond it, where he would be forced to wait until dawn to keep going or risk having Charger break a leg by stumbling into an unseen hole, or risk cracking his own head open on a branch. Whatever the case, he had to get going again as early as possible, which meant he would take his shuteye right in the saddle.
He re-mounted with great effort, deciding he’d better not get off again. He might become too weak to get back on. The night stretched into forever, the pathway ending after two miles. He led Charger into a heavy stand of trees, and the sound of all kinds of night creatures rang in his ears. He hoped nothing would come along that would spook Charger and cause the animal to rear up. He might not be able to hang on. Then there was the possibility he would have to protect the animal by shooting something, which would bring the posse running. He drank more water, patting Charger’s neck and promising the horse there would be plenty of water when they reached the creek through which they would ride early in the morning.
He shook his head. Jack never should have shot that teller, let alone taken a woman hostage. He knew Jack was a bastard, but he sure never thought he’d shoot one of his own men besides. Life sure had turned into a mess! Right and wrong had melted into nothing. When he thought about the kind of life he used to lead before the war, he hardly knew himself. Feelings and emotions had left him so that he was just a shell of a man who fed on hatred and vengeance. Now someone who was supposed to be his friend had shot him. What the hell kind of a life was this? There was a time when he had realized at least a little satisfaction out of raiding and robbing, but now even that didn’t satisfy him. Nothing satisfied him. When he laid with whores, he could only think of Bethanne, and no wild woman could please him the way Bethanne had. His only consolation was good whiskey. Whiskey dulled all senses, physical and emotional. Right now he could use some to dull the pain in his shoulder.
The only thing that kept him going at the moment was the thought of freeing that woman Jack had taken and paying Jack back for shooting him. It haunted him how much Mrs. Kane resembled Bethanne. He couldn’t help wondering if it was some kind of message from above, if this whole mess was some way of Bethanne trying to tell him he couldn’t live this way anymore. Fact was, there had been many times when he didn’t want to live at all, and this was one of them. He would just have to wait until he got rid of Jack and sent Mrs. Kane back home. Maybe by then the bullet in his shoulder would have taken such a toll in blood that he could just lie down and let the life ease out of him … end the agony in his heart, which was much worse than the agony in his shoulder.
The wind caused heavily-leafed trees to bend and rustle, casting eerie shadows and making his horse restless. “Take it easy, boy. Don’t be whinnying loud or rearing up and dumping me off. I’d never get back on,” he mumbled to the horse.
He was well hidden in the dense woods. He had no choice now but to wait a couple of hours until the earliest light allowed him to go on. Then he would head for the rocky hills and the creek, where he would lose the posse. Jack would surely also be holed up tonight, somewhere deeper in these woods. If he could just hang on, it was possible he could reach the cabin only two or three hours after the rest of the men. He just hoped that would be soon enough to help the woman with them.
Addy ached to bathe and change her clothes. The hat she had worn and the purse she had carried at the bank were both long gone. She could feel perspiration on her chest and under her arms, and the skirt of her dress was torn from catching on bushes and underbrush as her horse made its way toward wherever it was Jack and the others were taking her. She did not doubt her face was dirty from her fall into the dirt the night before, and she could feel that it was swollen on the right side. Her hair, ear
lier neatly tucked into curls at the back of her head, now fell astray, the combs having come loose. There was still a strong south wind, and although it had turned to a hot wind today, it was still better than the still, oppressive air of the day before.
They made their way through some of the most dense forest she had ever experienced, and she despaired that Sheriff Page and his posse would ever find her. They had crossed over rocky hills and ridden through a creek so that their tracks would be lost forever, and she was losing hope of escape. She would have no idea where to go even if she could get away.
By late afternoon they arrived at a sagging log cabin, and Addy’s stomach fell at the sight of it. Here was where the men would truly relax, count their money, drink their whiskey … and think about what they intended to do with her. There was no hope for her, three men against one woman, yet she continued to contemplate ways of defending herself.
All three men were in good spirits, sure they had lost the posse, relieved to be back home, as they called it. Jack came over to her horse and ordered that she climb down, while Cal carried in their bag of stolen money and Ted began unsaddling the horses to let them graze. Jack put a powerful hand to her back and gave her a shove, ordering her inside. “You’re gonna’ fix us a nice, big supper,” he told her. “We’ve got meat stored in a smoke house and potatoes inside. That’s what we want, beef and potatoes, and a pretty woman to look at while we eat and count our money. Then a little whiskey and—” He grabbed her arm, whirling her around just as she reached the front door. “And then a little dessert.” He grinned, and Addy realized how he seemed fat all over, even his cheeks and lips. He moved a hand down to one of her breasts, and she quickly knocked his hand away.
“I’d rather be dead!” she told him.
Jack grasped her around the throat. “Well, maybe I can grant that wish, after I’m through with you,” he sneered. He kicked open the door and shoved her inside, where Cal sat at a rough-hewn pine table with money spread out everywhere. Addy stared at it, thinking how hard it had been to save her four hundred dollars. How dare men like this come along and take it from her!
Jack shoved her over to a counter, then reached underneath and plopped a sack of potatoes on it. “Start peelin’,” he told her. “I’ll get a fire goin’ in the cook stove.” He put a paring knife in her hand. “And don’t get any funny ideas about that knife. There’s three of us here. Remember that. Besides, that little thing ain’t big enough to do a man much harm.”
He left her to get some wood, and Addy glanced down at the knife, wondering if she should just shove it into her own heart and save herself the indignity and horror of what lay ahead. She looked around the cabin, a sorry mess from having been lived in by men who cared little about keeping house. She wondered how they had ended up here. Surely they were simply squatting here, probably had found the cabin abandoned by someone else who had given up trying to survive in these deep woods. She looked up to notice there were two birds’ nests tucked along two of the ceiling beams. Cobwebs decorated many other places along the ceiling, and the floor was dirt. The cabin consisted of one main room, with the table and counter, an old iron cook stove and some buckets for water, and one big iron-framed bed in the corner. A curtained doorway told her there was one more room, probably a bedroom with another bed. She shivered to think how dirty the bedclothes must be, felt sick at the thought of Jack taking her in there …
She turned to peel the potatoes, deciding to take as long as possible to cook the meal. She had hoped that at least the three outlaws, who reeked of perspiration and who all needed shaves, would try to clean up a little, but Ted came inside after tending the horses, and all three were only interested in counting their money and hollering at her to hurry up and fix a meal. Jack plopped cast-iron pans on the stove for her and got a fire going, and Ted went to a pump outside and brought in some water for boiling potatoes.
From what Addy had observed, Ted was the youngest. He had long, dark hair and a tooth missing at the side of his mouth. His eyes were brown, and she thought how he might be a handsome young man if he would clean himself up … and if he were not a part of this gang. He seemed to be a little slow mentally, a young man who followed a man like Jack with no questions. For a little while she had held out the hope that he might help her, but she knew now that he would never go up against a man like Jack. Neither would Cal, who seemed just as eager as Jack to have his turn at her. Cal was pure ugly, with blond hair that stuck out in every direction. He was perhaps forty-five, a man with a very strong southern drawl, who seemed to have gotten a feeling of great importance from robbing a bank.
“Ole’ Nick had a good idea taking the Unionville bank,” he told Jack. “There must be enough here for maybe a thousand dollars a piece.”
“We could have got more if we didn’t have to hurry because of that sheriff,” Jack grumbled.
Addy thought how that was no one’s fault but his own, for shooting Richard Wyman. She placed a couple of smoked beef steaks into the frying pans and began cooking them while the potatoes boiled, hoping that if she did make these men a decent meal, perhaps they would feel some guilt about turning around and hurting her. She used as much time as possible, her whole body aching from her ordeal. She needed to bathe, to rest. She should be hungry, but her situation ruined her appetite, and she only picked at her food while the three men wolfed down the meat and potatoes like hungry bears, mopping up juice from the meat with stale bread that had been left there five days earlier.
Night came too quickly. Addy thought about trying to bolt outside, but she suspected that to suddenly run and then have to put up a fight would only excite these men to the point of making them act on their plans more quickly than they would have otherwise. To try to stab one of them or burn them with hot grease would still leave two more. She decided that perhaps if she was quiet and let them drink to their hearts’ content, they would simply pass out and sleep so heavily after such a hard ride, that she could slip out without any of them even realizing it. The problem was, where would she go? She had no idea which direction was the right one.
Already, patting their bellies from a grand meal for which they did not thank her, they were bringing out the whiskey. This was the most dangerous time, men happy from a good meal, money in their pockets, good whiskey at hand … She walked to the stove, wondering if there was enough hot water left from the potatoes to throw at all three of them and scald them all. It would be difficult, and she would probably scald herself in the process, although that would be better than being forced to give herself to any one of these men.
She could feel their eyes on her every movement as she cleaned up from supper. The pan of water left on the stove was obviously still hot, since embers from the wood that had heated it still glowed underneath. She walked back to the stove, grasped the pan with hot pads, then heard the click of a gun.
“Don’t do it, lady.”
She kept hold of the pan, glancing sidelong at Jack. “Do what?”
“Move back, boys.” Jack rose, a whiskey bottle in one hand and his gun in the other. He also rose, backing away. “I see what you’ve got in mind. You can’t get all three of us, and you’ll only burn yourself in the process. Do you know what it’s like to be burned with hot water? Your skin falls off. It’s a painful, sorry mess.”
Addy stared at the water. Surely there was something … something … “Please just let me go,” she said quietly. “Isn’t it bad enough that you have stolen my life’s savings and dragged me out here like this? I’ll continue to cook for you, if that’s what you want. Just don’t …” She sighed. “Why don’t you let me go? I’ll just slow you down from whatever you need to do next, and if I return to Unionville, they’ll probably stop looking for you.”
“We’re in Kentucky now, in case you don’t know it,” Cal spoke up. “That posse doesn’t have any jurisdiction here, and they’d never find us anyway.”
Addy closed her eyes in resignation. She let go of the pan of
water and set down the hot pads. “Go on with whatever you were doing. I am going to wash the dishes.” She turned her back, her heart racing when she heard Jack’s heavy footsteps. He was behind her then, moving an arm around her waist.
“The dishes can wait, honey.”
She stiffened, wiggling out of his grasp. “So can you!”
The man laughed, his eyes raking her body while he slipped his six-gun back into its holster. “I don’t think so. I’ve waited long enough. I don’t need whiskey to help me out, not with somethin’ as pretty as you.”
Addy glanced at Cal and Ted, but she saw no help there, only hungry grins. It was then she did bolt, out of pure desperation and wild instinct. Cal grabbed her before she could reach the door, whirling her and slamming her tight against him. He tried to kiss her while the other two whooped and whistled. Addy’s breath came in frightened gasps as she squirmed and kept her face turned away, but Cal began slurping and licking at her neck, then grasped her arms and shoved her toward Jack. She stumbled past him, and Jack started to reach out for her when the door suddenly burst open.
Addy’s breath caught in her throat as she grasped the back of a chair to keep her balance. Her eyes widened at the sight of a tall, blue-eyed man standing in the doorway wearing a duster, which he had pulled back on the right side to expose a pearl-handled six-gun he wore on his hip. Jack and his cohorts stared in equal surprise at Nick Coleman.
“What the hell—”
“Your aim was off, Jack,” Coleman growled in a deep voice, “and you’re a dead man!”
Three
“What … how the hell did you get away?” Jack’s breathing grew heavy, and Addy slipped farther away from him. Coleman looked pale and was perspiring, but he stood steady, his blue eyes cold.
“It doesn’t matter how. The point is you shot me and left me for dead, or at least a hanging if I hadn’t managed an escape, while you rode off with an innocent woman and planned to enjoy my share of the money!”
Until Tomorrow Page 3