by AlLee, Jennifer L. ; Breidenbach, Angela; Franklin, Darlene
Her hand clenched his wrist. “My da’s gout is the worst it’s ever been,” she whispered. “He can barely hobble around, and he’s too proud to use a walking stick. I’m glad you offered to help.” She brushed a soft kiss against his cheek. “Thank you.”
She straightened, scooped up the toolbox, and headed toward the front door.
Emmett remained in the kitchen. The spot where her lips had brushed his cheek felt like an echo, calling him, compelling him. His heart pounded as if he’d run a mile at full speed. He was falling in love with Lorelei Boyd, and that put him at a crossroads. Was he willing to change his course to success and settle down? Or would he ask Lorelei to leave her family and travel from place to place with him? No woman wanted that kind of life.
He shook his head to clear it. He would stay through the contest, see if Jimmy wanted to buy her recipe, and then he would move along, for her sake. Maybe he’d sell her the orchard for a song. That idea made him smile.
Lorelei kissed her father’s cheek as she passed him. “I’ll be back for lunch and to make today’s pie,” she called as she jogged down the steps, cleaning equipment rattling in the old wooden toolbox.
She waved in response to her father’s admonition to be safe and set off toward Otto’s place. Her skin hummed as though an entire hive of bees had taken up residence under the surface of her flesh. She shook her head to clear the buzzing sound that being around Emmett Dewey triggered.
Good heavens, was she having some sort of episode? Like Mrs. McCauley in town, who’d had a spell last year and, when she recovered, told the whole church congregation that for weeks beforehand she’d heard a buzzing noise in her ears but her doctor had ignored her complaints.
“Oh stop it, Lorelei. Mrs. McCauley is eighty-three if she’s a day,” she muttered, picking up her pace. She wasn’t accustomed to being in the presence of a handsome man near her own age, and it was having an unnerving effect on her senses. Plus, he’d kissed her. She should be offended by the liberties he’d taken. Instead, her skin prickled traitorously at the memory of that kiss. She’d kissed him back, too. And then she’d walked away. She couldn’t have a man like Emmett. He was world-wise, an opportunist, a man on a mission for success, and she was a farm girl who needed to stay close to home to help her parents.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” she said as she walked—marched—down the lane. “He’s leaving once he sells the orchard.”
Thoughts of Otto’s property being sold reminded her of the letters from the bank. An imaginary claw grasped her chest and made it hard to breathe. She walked faster and turned her attention to her pie recipes. Her personal favorites were numbers eight, fifteen, and twenty-four. And maybe twenty-three. She pictured each individual recipe in her head and contemplated ways to combine the best of her favorites into one pie.
When she reached the corner of the orchard, she slipped through the old break in the wire fence—an as-yet-unrepaired detail she should probably mention—and zigzagged through the trees until she reached the cabin.
But today the cabin wasn’t as silent as it should have been. A thin stream of smoke curled from the crumbled chimney, and she was sure she heard voices coming from inside. Other than Emmett, Otto’s cabin had been empty since his death. His family hadn’t even come to collect his things, which was part of the reason she had insisted on tackling the unpleasant chore herself.
She knew Emmett was expecting deliveries. That was the probable answer. But deliverymen wouldn’t have gone inside. Lorelei slowed and ducked behind the trunk of an apple tree. She strained to hear the murmured sounds coming from inside the cabin. Not one voice; at least two, and maybe three. The front door banged open with a squeal, and someone flung a pan of dirty water outside. It spattered the dusty ground with a greasy splash. Raucous laughter followed from within the cabin, and the door slammed shut.
Lorelei’s heart pounded. Not deliverymen. She shoved her hand against her mouth and doubled over, praying the men in the cabin wouldn’t hear her.
It wasn’t uncommon for hobos to hop off the train in search of farmwork at this time of year. Tramps, on the other hand, worked only when they were forced to and sometimes squatted in abandoned homesteads. Most were harmless enough, but there was no guarantee.
A virulent stream of curse words potent enough to straighten her curly hair erupted from the vicinity of the cabin. Lorelei wished she could climb into the anonymity of the leafy branches until the men left. But they might not leave for hours. Or days. And if she didn’t come back for lunch, her da would come looking for her, and the results would be ugly and put her father in danger.
She crouched to set the toolbox down in the grass. She could backtrack through the orchard faster without the heavy box. She’d run home, tell Emmett and her da, and they’d call the marshal. She took a deep breath, stood, swiveled to run, and ran smack into the waiting arms of a stranger.
Wiry arms wrapped around her like chains, pinning her arms to her body. She kicked at the man’s shins, choking on the stench of old onions and smoke and sweat that emanated from him. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he sidestepped and she lost her balance, giving him the advantage. He pinned her to the ground, her face pressed into the dirt by one firm hand cruelly pinching the back of her neck. He held her wrists together and pressed a knee into the center of her spine.
She struggled, despite the lack of oxygen. She kicked and thrashed and tried to scream. She heard the cabin door bang open and the sound of footsteps.
“Caught me a wild one, Drub,” said the man holding her. His voice was raspy, and he was breathing hard. If he hadn’t had the benefit of sneaking up on her, she might have escaped, she thought.
“Well, whaddya know? Flip ’er over.”
“I ain’t lettin’ her loose a bit. She’s wild. Get some rope or somethin’ to tie her up.”
“Let me go!” Lorelei shrieked, panic warring with logic. She needed to stay calm, needed to be aware of opportunities to escape.
“Shut her up. If there’s anyone in hearin’ distance, they’ll be coming to see what the fuss is about.”
Harsh fingers squeezed the sides of her jaw until her mouth opened, and a filthy rag was shoved inside. She tried to spit it out, gagging as she did so, but another cloth was wrapped around her mouth and tied behind her head. The world started to go black, with shooting stars behind her eyes, and she forced herself to still, to breathe through her nose.
More rough hands bound her wrists and tied her legs together at the ankles. Then someone flipped her over. Tears filled her eyes, and she bit back a cry. She looked up at four dirty, leering faces. The men were young, her age or younger, but they looked desperate. And stupid. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“That’s quite a catch.” The apparent leader spat a brown stream of tobacco juice into the dirt mere inches from Lorelei’s face. He smacked the men beside him with the back of a beefy hand. “Take her inside.” Addressing the man who’d caught her, he asked, “Did you find anything, Tweedy?”
The scrawny but strong man shook his head. “Naw, Drub, nothin’ but junk. Looks like the place has been abandoned for a while.”
“Keep looking. There has to be something worth pawning around here.”
Drub—what kind of name was Drub?—strode toward the cabin. He was older than the other three, and his speech sounded like he’d had more education. The two men assigned to carry her scooped her up like she was a rolled-up rug and followed him, with Lorelei swinging between them.
The inside of the cabin was more of a disaster than Lorelei remembered. The men had emptied every box, shelf, and cabinet. They’d even cut open the crumpled mattress on Otto’s narrow bed frame and strewn the contents—dirty, broken straw—all over the room.
The two men dumped her on the remnants of the mattress. She wriggled into a sitting position and pushed her back against the wall, watching her captors.
The cabin stank even more now than it had when Otto lived in it, and she hadn’
t thought that possible. Rotten food, body odor, and the nostril-searing smell of spilled liquor permeated the stale air. Prohibition’s laws ruling alcohol illegal had done little to stop its use, sale, or production.
The one called Drub swiveled the cabin’s sole four-legged chair around backward and sat down, crossing his thick arms on the back of the chair.
“So, little lady, what shall we do with you?” He smiled, a leering grin that exposed several black gaps where teeth were missing.
She jutted her chin at him, turned her head from side to side, indicating, she hoped, the gag that silenced her.
“You got something to say? How do I know you ain’t gonna start a-screamin’ again?”
Lorelei shook her head, pleading with her eyes. He stared at her for a long moment and then moved to crouch beside her, far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to kick him with her bound legs.
“If you scream, there’s no one to hear you, understand?”
She nodded, holding her breath. She held very still as he untied the bandanna and pulled the offending wad from her mouth. She gagged and spat, eyes watering with relief.
“Thank you,” she muttered. “Could I have some water?”
“No water in here. Got some moonshine though. That’ll clear your palate.” He guffawed at his own joke, slapping his meaty thigh with one hand.
“You can let me go. I won’t tell anyone you’re here.”
He frowned, and the corners of his dark mustache drooped to his chin. “Now, little lady, don’t lie to me.”
Lorelei cursed her inability to hide what she was thinking.
“Then what do you plan to do with me?”
“Well, now …” He twisted the ends of his mustache between his fingers. “I don’t rightly know. You weren’t part of the plan.”
“We could take her with us, Drub, use her as bait,” said one of the pair who’d hauled her in.
Drub shook his greasy head. “Bait for what?”
“I dunno. Mebbe we could hold her for ransom.”
“Look at her, you dolt. She’s not rich. No one is going to pay a ransom for her.”
“Well, I ain’t up for killin’ no womenfolk,” said the other tramp, shuffling his feet.
“Who said anything ’bout killin’ anyone?” Drub said, swatting at the tramp with the back of his hand.
Lorelei shuddered again, this time with relief. Tweedy—surely these weren’t their real names—came back inside. He tripped over the threshold and almost crashed headlong into the room. When he’d righted himself, he frowned and addressed the leader.
“Nothing useful out there at all, Drub. Couldn’t even round up any chow ’cept for apples. He turned out his jacket pockets on Otto’s wobbly table. Apples tumbled out, rolled off the table, and bounced across the floor. One came to a stop beside Lorelei’s foot.
Drub groaned. “You’re useless, Tweedy.”
Lorelei blinked at the apple. She looked through the single grimy window to gauge the sun’s height. In a few hours, her father and Emmett would come to search for her, and then there would be a fight. No, she had to escape her captors on her own. She needed a diversion. A Trojan horse. She looked at the apple beside her foot again, inspiration dawning.
“I could bake an apple pie.” Four pairs of hungry, suspicious eyes turned toward her. She sat up straight, ignoring the pain in her wrists. “It’s my specialty. All the ingredients I need are here in the cabin.” All the ingredients, including Otto’s morphine.
She made eye contact with Drub. He was the one whose trust she needed to gain. When he didn’t disregard her, Lorelei’s confidence grew. “I’m entering the Apple Pie Days contest next week, and I would appreciate having some early judges. Let me bake a pie.” She looked at Tweedy. “Or two. When was the last time you had homemade apple pie?” She focused attention on the other two and then turned back to Drub. Four pairs of eyes went round and dreamy at the mention of homemade apple pie.
She had them.
“You’ll have to untie me,” she said. “And I’ll need twice as many apples.” To her relief, her captors responded as if she’d cast a spell over them. Tweedy grabbed one of the empty sacks by the door and headed back to the orchard. The other two scrambled to begin righting the mess they’d made of Otto’s kitchen supplies.
Drub cut the rope binding her wrists. She rubbed the red, raw flesh, willing circulation to return to her fingers.
When he moved to her ankles, he tied a long rope to one leg before cutting the ties that held her legs together. He jerked the long leash tight and tied it to his own waist, putting a six-foot distance between them. “I can’t let you wander, you know,” Drub said.
“Of course.” She pushed herself to her feet. He wasn’t much taller than her, but he was as thick as a cottonwood in the middle. Even if he’d been alone, she would have had trouble taking him down.
She surveyed Otto’s cooking space. She let her mind drift to her recipes, picked up an overturned bowl, and set it on the table. She started to move toward the wall to grab the flour, but a jerk on the rope nearly sent her sprawling. She faced Drub with a glare.
“Tell the boys what you need. They’ll bring it to you.”
She looked at the two then blinked. Looking at them she could see they were twins.
“What are your names?” she asked.
Drub yanked on the rope again. “You can call ’em Lefty and Righty. That’s all you need to know.”
She sighed. “Fine. Would you bring me the sack of flour there behind the stove? And the salt and the lard?” They moved in eerie symmetry, complying with her demands. She picked up the apples still scattered over the tabletop, and the ones within reach of her leash off the floor, and piled them together then turned to Drub.
She pointed to the heap of apples. “Those have to be peeled, cored, and sliced.” She turned again, found an empty pot within arm’s reach, and banged it onto the table.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Drub pull out his knife, pick up an apple, and begin peeling it with the greatest of care. She peeked at each of them in turn as she prepared the piecrusts.
Drub was the only one with any spare flesh on his bones. But he bore the rosy, puffy complexion and labored breathing of a heavy drinker. Tweedy reminded her of one of the blue herons that came through in the fall, all legs and beaky nose. Lefty and Righty—they never switched places, and she wondered if that’s how Drub told them apart—were younger than the other two, more nervous.
“Could one of you hand me that box of spices, please?” she asked.
Lorelei sprinkled brown sugar mixed with cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger over the pot full of peeled, cored apple slices. She bent and sniffed then added a dash of salt and a pinch more ginger to heighten the sweetness and the citrus … and to disguise the morphine. She’d chastised Otto for keeping his medications—used when the pain from his arthritis was too much to bear—in his box of spices. Now she was thankful. When she straightened, all four of her captors were staring at her.
“What?”
Drub shook his head. “Last time I saw someone pay that much attention to something was a fella in Kentucky working a still.”
“I happen to take apple pie very seriously,” she said. “If I win this contest—provided you don’t kill me or carry me off as ‘bait’ for your next heist, or whatnot”—she shook her head—“I can sell the recipe and save my family’s farm. At least, I hope I can.” She wiped her hands on her overalls. Why had she told them? She hadn’t even told her parents what she was planning to do.
She waited for them to laugh, to ridicule.
“What kinda farm, miss?” Righty asked. Or was that Lefty? Did it matter?
“Sugar beets,” she replied. She upended the pot’s contents into the pie tins. When no one said anything, she continued talking. “My da started getting letters from the bank a few months ago. They wanted to raise the monthly payments on our mortgage. We can’t afford more, and my da ignore
d them. Now they’re threatening to foreclose on us.” She exhaled. It was relief to share her burden, even if it was with these men.
“Aw, that ain’t fair,” Tweedy chirped.
She draped the top crust over the apples, rolled the handle of the wooden spoon around the edge to trim the excess, and then used the end of the spoon handle to flute the crust around the edge.
“That’s what happened to my uncle in Kansas,” Drub grumbled. “He raised me after my folks died. And then the bank took his farm and gave it to the railroad. They tossed him and my nanty out. That’s when I took off on my own. They didn’t need no extra mouths to feed.”
Lorelei’s heart constricted. “I’m sorry, Drub. How old were you?”
He peered at her through his beady little eyes. “I was eleven when I left.”
“Eleven?” she gasped. “You were barely grown!”
“We was nine when we took to the rails,” Righty murmured. Compassion rolled through her. She kept her voice steady as she pinched holes in the top crust for the steam to escape. “What happened to your family, Righty?”
“Our pa went a little crazy after our ma died. He started drinkin’ too much….”
Lefty pulled back the collar of his shirt to expose an angry red scar. Lorelei shuddered. “Tweedy? What about you? How did you end up out here?”
The skinny man shuffled his feet. “I never knowed nothin’ but the rails and the road, ma’am. My momma died birthin’ me, and my pa handed me off to the nearest lady who took pity on me. When I was nine or ten, she sent me away.”
That was more than Lorelei could take. “You’ve never had a home?”
Tweedy hung his head. “No, ma’am.”
Tears stung the backs of her eyelids.
“Have you tried to work? Tried to better yourselves?” she asked. Surely there was a reason they’d ended up where they were.
“Every day, little lady. But no one wants to hire us for more than an odd job. We get a meal here and there, and sometimes we find a place to squat, like this.” Drub waved a hand to indicate their surroundings. “We do what we have to.”