As if they weren’t in enough difficulty, someone yelled, “Look! There they are!”
Bullets sprayed the water near the stallion’s haunches. Seated in the saddle above water line, they presented easy targets. Like clay carnival ducks, lined up for destruction.
Rane twisted to look behind him. The mare was close. Angel clung to the saddle horn with both hands, her eyes round with fear.
“Jump!” he yelled.
“No!” she screamed back at him.
“I said jump!”
She looked frozen. The death grip she had on the saddle horn blanched her knuckles white. She had no intention of letting go.
He had to get her off the horse. But to do that, he had to reach her. Reversing position, he lifted his feet to the saddle beneath him and leap-frogged from the stallion’s back.
His off-balance dive landed him against the mare’s rump. And he felt himself sliding off. In desperation, he lunged upward, wrapped his arm around Angel’s waist, and raked her from her seat and into the water with him.
For brief seconds they hung there, lodged against the mare’s flank while Angel thrashed and screamed louder than the roar of the river.
The mare, wild-eyed with terror, plunged and kicked, trying to put some distance between itself and the screaming woman. The rushing torrent captured them immediately and sent them hurtling downriver.
Holding Angel in a tight grip, Rane fought to keep them from being swept under. Each time she opened her mouth in a scream, the muddy water sluiced over their heads and she was reduced to a fit of choking and spitting instead.
Always a strong swimmer, Rane had never attempted to hold onto another thrashing body like now as he tried to keep Angel afloat. Her instinctive fear only worsened matters as she slashed out, trying to keep her head above the water.
Only minutes into the maelstrom, his muscles burned with an intensity that required all his willpower just to hold her. They weren’t even halfway across. He anchored her waist with his left arm, with the other he sliced at the water, trying to take them closer to the eastern side of the gorge. Something rammed him from behind, slamming into his back with a sharp pain that quickly faded to numbness. Meanwhile, the overpowering current took them, like two tangled pieces of driftwood, along with the flood.
Rane scanned the bank, trying to get his bearings. The path had disappeared, and with it, all hope of escape. His thoughts turned to survival, for it had come down to that.
The current raced around the bend, taking them with it. Through a muddy haze, Rane saw the bridge looming ahead. He dashed a hand across his eyes. Four men stood at the rail, armed with rifles.
Their only hope was to stay in the water and let it carry them out of harm’s way.
A man on the bridge gestured and shouted, “Look! There they are!”
Shots rang out.
The imminent threat sent new strength surging through Rane’s limbs. Altering his hold, he clutched Angel to his chest and brought his face level with hers. Her skin had paled, her breath labored, and she held her mouth clamped shut to keep out the noxious water.
“I’m going to take us under,” he told her, his breath heaving from his own exertions.
Her eyes on him grew frantic.
“When I tell you, take a deep breath and hold it.”
She shook her head and tried to pull away. He held her tighter.
Seconds later, the shadow of the bridge closed over them.
“Now!” he ordered.
He gave her no choice. She sucked in a gasping breath and held it, just before he pulled her into the depths.
Rane’s eyes were open, but he saw only darkness, cold and suffocating. Then, they must have passed beyond the bridge, because light streamed through the muddy silt. He paddled, no longer fighting the current. Debris battered at them, sticks resembling ghastly snakes. Repeated sounds pressed in on his ears like muffled detonations of thunder. Something streaked past his arm, inflicting a sting and leaving bubbles in its wake.
The stupid bastards were still shooting at them!
Angel began to struggle again. Rane twisted about until they were nose to nose. Her cheeks were puffed to capacity and her long silver hair floated sideways, undulating with the current. In eerie liquid slow motion, she shook her head, then lifted her hand and pressed it hard over her mouth and nose.
Rane’s own lungs burned with the need to expel the air he held. His throat worked convulsively, and he knew it was only a matter of seconds before he would have to give in to the irresistible urge. Hot pain shot up the back of his neck and burrowed into the base of his skull.
He gave a savage kick that sent them shooting upward. Their heads broke the surface at once. He sucked in welcome air. From nowhere, pain slapped the back of his head. Through a dim haze, he felt something graze his shoulder and glide away. He shoved against the large tree branch to keep it from bobbing up and striking him again.
In that split second, the river seized Angel and hurled her away from him.
She kicked and thrashed, trying to stay afloat. He swam, trying desperately to close the gap separating them, until something snaked out and landed beside him on the water.
A rope.
Along the gorge, men swarmed down the rocks like a horde of ants. The one holding the rope stood on a narrow ledge just above the waterline, gathering it in for another cast.
Voices raised in excitement echoed between the canyon walls. Others raced along the rim, hurrying to get ahead of them as they drifted downriver. Several of Horace Lundy’s henchmen, equipped with ropes, took up scattered positions along the face of the water-carved wall.
The man on the ledge swung out his loop. Rane held his breath as it whirled higher and faster. Then it flew straight at him. The noose snaked across the water. Rane’s heart sank when he saw Angel yanked halfway out of the water. The bastard had snagged her, and he was still too far away to be of any help.
A cheer invaded the gorge.
Rane watched Angel being pulled from the river, helpless to stop it, then sucked in a quick breath and dove once more.
Clinging to the rope like a lifeline, Angel heard someone yell, “Damn it, don’t let him get away!”
“We got the woman!”
“Lundy wants Mantorres, too! Either captured or dead. It don’t matter which. But he don’t want him to get away!”
Her captor dragged Angel from the water and pulled her onto the ledge where he stood. The worst part of it was, she couldn’t lift a hand to stop him. All she could do was submit, feeling as though the very life had been sucked from her body by the battering river water.
“You just set still and don’t move,” the roper told her.
Along the gorge, the others stood silent and watchful. Ropes whistled softly as they swung them round and round, waiting for Rane Mantorres to reappear amid the churning waters.
Heedless of the man’s warning, Angel clung to a rock for support and lifted to her knees. Like the others, she scanned the river, waiting, tense and breathless, for Rane’s dark head to appear on the surface of the water.
Please, God! Oh, please, please, God! Let him get away.
Suddenly, she saw him, his face low in the water, gasping for air. He’d drifted closer to the bank.
“There he is!”
Three ropes whipped through the air.
Rane upended and dived for it once more. One of the loops snagged his foot as it sliced out of the water. The rope snapped taut and a wild thrashing ensued.
“I got him!” The roper braced himself in the rocks and hauled hand over hand.
Rane’s head broke the surface. He grabbed for the rope.
“Don’t give him no slack!” her captor shouted.
More ropes were cast. One of them landed over Rane’s head and jerked tight around his throat. Instantly, he was yanked back and stretched between the two opposing forces.
Angel clutched at the rock with fear vibrating through every nerve in her body. They were kill
ing him. If by some miracle they didn’t break his neck, then they’d surely choke him to death.
All the men converged on the two who held the ropes and the gorge filled with laugher and shouts of encouragement, as if they were trying to land a great fish.
Frozen with horror, Angel watched them pull him ever closer to the riverbank. His hands were no longer in sight, no longer clinging desperately to the rope around his neck.
“They’re killing him!” she sobbed.
“They’re just givin’ him a Mexican hangin’. So what!” her captor growled. “You’re the only one Lundy wants brought back alive.”
Through a tearful blur, Angel saw Rane’s hand lift from the water. Sunlight flashed from the wicked blade in his hand. He raised it overhead and sliced through the rope shutting off the air from his body. The abrupt release of tension snapped the rope high into the air. Using the impetus of release, he angled forward and severed the snare about his ankle.
The men panicked when their big fish spit out the hook. They scrambled down to the water’s edge. A handful of them leaped right into the river.
“Don’t let him get away!”
But Rane had already disappeared beneath the surface.
The men drew their guns and fired blindly into the river.
Angel’s little paint mare, rolled on its side and caught in a tangle of driftwood, floated past. The bastards had killed her. Farther downstream, Pago still swam southward, the only sign of life remaining in the river. The sight of the magnificent stallion, still alive, wrenched a sob from Angel’s aching throat.
Still, she stared at the water, watching for any sign of a dark head to appear. Her eyes grew blurry and unfocused, until she saw nothing at all through the dimness of streaming tears. How long could a man hold his breath and still live?
Silence settled into the canyon, broken only by the rushing torrent below. Angel looked up, surprised to find the sun still shining. She scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands. The curious faces of strange, rough-looking men crowded the edges of her vision.
Two of them stepped in and wrapped their hands around her arms, lifting her. Once on her feet, she jerked from their grasps and nearly fell. She turned, glaring at them and, as one, they stepped back.
If she looked like a madwoman, so much the better. She snarled. “I hope you all burn in hell for this day’s work!”
Chapter Twelve
The back of Rane’s nostrils burned as though fiery brands had been thrust into them. The sensation clawed into his brain, distorting his vision. The unstoppable current took him, disoriented him, until he no longer knew which way was up. The raw flames in his chest, filling his lungs, commanded him to cough. He fought his body’s own instincts. If he gave in, the river would rush in completely and defeat him. He didn’t want to die like this, at the bottom of a river that rarely flooded.
His boots scraped bottom. Above, light streamed through the flow of silt. Daylight. If only he could reach for it. He tried, but his arms and legs had turned to leaden weights commanded by the force of the river.
An image of Angel, pale with fear, flickered through the white-hot agony tearing through him. Lundy had her. The bastard had won.
Angel. Rane had promised to deliver her safely home to her father. Now, he’d failed.
The thought goaded him, pricked the one thing within him that still thrived. His pride.
Gathering his last shreds of strength and willpower, he planted his boots against the river bottom and shoved. The motion propelled him toward the surface.
Radiance struck his blurry eyes. Sun-warmed air washed over his face. He gasped a lifesaving breath deep into his agonized lungs, and they seized with the cough he’d held off, trying to expel the noxious river water he’d ingested.
The gorge had narrowed and the cliffs blurred on either side of him, the river pushing him downstream faster than ever. Working against the numbness of fatigue and cold, Rane righted himself. His labored heart clutched onto a new thread of hope when he saw what was in front of him.
Pago.
The black stallion still swam with unflagging strokes. His sleek, wet hide gleamed like a beacon under the noonday sun. Resembling dead, blackened seaweed, the horse’s long tail undulated in and out among the muddy, swollen rills.
A lifeline.
Rane reached for it. His breath heaved harder. After several attempts, he caught a handful of the illusive strands. Victory! Quickly, he wrapped his hand, winding the coarse fibers more securely. Then he hung on.
He tried to say, “Take us home, boy,” but his voice failed him. Without words to guide him, strength gone, he could only trust the instinct of the faithful horse to carry them both to safety.
****
Hushed voices whispered inside Rane’s head. The sounds woke him from fitful dreams of dead horses, hundreds of them. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find one still alive to carry him from the carnage.
He opened his eyes a mere crack. Nearby, low orange, blue-tipped flames danced against a background of darkness. The warmth against his face and the smell of wood smoke were familiar comforts.
Dim figures, speaking in low tones, moved around the fire. Rane tried to sit up. His muscles resisted, sore and stiff, as if he’d been beaten. He opened his mouth to speak, but forced nothing more than an alien sounding croak from his throat. The effort cost him. Pain, raw and burning, tore through his throat. Sweat broke out over his body and his breath heaved harder.
“Don’t try to speak, hermano.”
Wolf’s face loomed above him. The big half-breed squatted on his heels and dropped down to his knees.
Tears of relief gathered behind Rane’s eyes. They lay there, never to be shed, their salty sting adding to his discomfort. Despite the throbbing ache in his shoulder, he lifted a hand to his throat, his eyes on Wolf’s face, questioning.
Wolf nodded, understanding. “When I found you, you were wearing a rope. From the looks of your neck, I gather the bastards tried to hang you. You’re damn lucky they didn’t crush your windpipe.”
Rane forced himself to relax against the blankets beneath him. Lucky. Wolf didn’t know the half of it.
“I made a poultice to help the swelling,” Wolf said. He lifted a strip of cloth containing the remedy and applied it with a gentle touch.
A cool weight settled around Rane’s neck. Immediately, the smells of wild onions and animal tallow filled his head. He wrinkled his nose and grimaced.
“Rest now,” Wolf commanded. “Heal and grow strong to fight another day.”
Another day. But when? In capturing Angel, Lundy now had his bargaining chip. If Roy Clayton gave in to his demands, the bastard would disappear before Rane had the chance to exact the justice he’d planned for so many years. He closed his eyes and prayed to the Holy Virgin to grant him a miracle.
****
Angel clenched her arms beneath her breasts and paced the confines of her elegantly furnished prison. Three days had passed in an agony of waiting since she’d been pulled from the river and taken to the Hacienda. Three days of hellish uncertainty and self-torment. The worst of it stemmed from her inability to go look for Rane. She’d never felt so helpless. By all accounts, he’d perished in the river, but she refused to accept his death. Not without proof.
Oh, Rane.
She ached each time she remembered her last sight of him, disappearing beneath the cold river. That was the last anyone had seen of him. But he couldn’t be dead. If he were, she would have known it somehow. Her heart would have felt the loss. But she didn’t feel that emptiness. Instinct told her he was still very much alive, and he was out there somewhere.
But in what condition?
After her horrific ride down the flooded river, Angel had discovered an array of bruises ranging over her body. Nothing serious. Meanwhile, Rane had been roped and nearly throttled. Lundy’s men had shot at him. Then, he’d stayed underwater longer than seemed humanly possible. She knew he was injured. Not
knowing the severity of his injuries held her in a perpetual state of torment.
As yet, she hadn’t seen Horace Lundy. He hadn’t even bothered to put in an appearance when his minions delivered her to the Hacienda that first day. Was he ashamed to face her? Well, he should be!
Upon her arrival, she’d been handed off to an imposing ape of a man who’d locked her in a bedroom. The only person she’d spoken to since then was the Mexican woman who showed up twice a day to bring her food and tidy the room. A guard, whose face changed with each four-hour shift, was posted outside the bedroom’s solitary window.
The first day, Angel had asked the servant to deliver a message. She wanted to speak to Horace Lundy. Nothing had happened. Since then, she’d demanded an audience with Horace at every opportunity. She had finally concluded the servant was either too frightened, or too uncaring, to deliver her plea.
Angel expelled a short breath and turned, kicking aside the cumbersome, too-long hem of the dress she wore. The servant had brought her clothes. Dresses, and undergarments, and even a nightgown. Although fine, the garments smelled of old must, as if they’d been packed away for a long time. They were too long, too big in all respects. She suspected they’d once belonged to Horace’s deceased wife, Francine. Given a choice, Angel would rather not wear them. But since her ruined shirt and breeches had disappeared on the occasion of her one and only bath, she didn’t have the luxury of refusing.
As day three stretched interminably before her, Angel decided she’d played the docile prisoner long enough. It was time to make some noise and get someone’s attention.
She stopped pacing and snatched up a tapestry covered footstool. Driven by anger and frustration, she flung it against the massive wooden door. The stool bounced off and dropped to the floor, splintering one leg. Not enough noise, although destroying Horace’s property did give her some small measure of release.
Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) Page 14