Southern Rapture

by Jennifer Blake

  She gave them a hearty smile as they stood regarding her. "I have some coffee made. You'll be wanting a cup to help you stay awake tonight."

  The coffee was hot and strong and black. The old woman served it to them in enameled tin cups at the rough, hand-built table, then sat down herself.

  As Lettie sipped the brew, she considered their position. The cabin was not more than four or five miles from the corncrib, with only a single turn to reach it. She thought she would have no difficulty in returning to the horses, or in finding the cabin again, for that matter, if it were necessary. She pondered the Thorn's connection with the elderly woman. It might be that he used her house as a way station, a convenient hiding place, or somewhere to change into his many disguises. She sent the woman a glance. Their hostess stared back, her eyes unblinking.

  "What is your name, if I may ask?" Lettie said.

  "You can call me Granny. I don't think we need more than that."

  "You live alone?"

  A chuckle greeted the question. "In a manner of speaking."

  "Are you related to … the man we seek?"

  "You're just full of questions, aren't you, sweetheart?"

  There was harsh amusement in the old woman's voice. It raised an echo in Lettie's mind. A shiver ran along her nerves. In the act of lifting her coffee cup to her lips for a final swallow, she sat staring at the creature across from her.

  Johnny set down his cup. "Let's stop fencing. When is the Thorn coming?"

  It was Lettie who answered, her words measured. "I don't believe that he will."

  "What do you mean?" Johnny demanded.

  "I think he's here already."

  The woman smiled and then crooned in a voice that became more husky and masculine with every word, "Oh, clever, sweetheart, very clever."

  Johnny uttered an oath, his eyes widening with shock. He swallowed. "I should have known."

  "I would have been devastated if you had. Tell me, Miss Mason, what was it that gave me away."

  "I'm not sure," Lettie said, her brown-eyed gaze still on the face of the Thorn made up like a hag. When dressed as a priest, his nose had been narrow and thin. Its broadness now was probably due to gum rubber and who knew what trickery, all as false as his sagging bosom. "Something in your voice, perhaps. Or maybe it was the way you looked at me."

  "Next time I'll have to be more careful."

  "I trust there won't be a next time. I am here only because of Johnny."

  The Thorn barely glanced at him. "Your interest being strictly humanitarian?"

  "My interest being none of your business," she said without expression. "I'm told you can help him, if you will go to the trouble. I take leave to doubt it, but you may prove me wrong."

  "Lettie!" Johnny protested, his gaze anxious and still a little confused as he looked from her to the Thorn in his ludicrous disguise.

  "Your confidence puts me on my mettle," the Thorn drawled. "By all means, let's hear how I may be of service and the reasons why I should exert myself."

  Lettie set her coffee cup aside, her lashes shielding her gaze. It had been a mistake to permit her animosity to goad her into plain speaking. It would not help Johnny to antagonize this man. She gathered her thoughts as she took a deep, calming breath. When she began to speak, telling Johnny's story once more, her tone was more conciliatory.

  Johnny allowed Lettie to explain as she would, interrupting only once or twice with a few words of clarification. He sat with his gaze on his enameled cup as he played with it, only glancing up now and then at the Thorn with uneasiness in his eyes.

  When Lettie had finished, the Thorn turned to Johnny. "It's your decision to go to Texas?"

  "Not exactly. There's my mother to think of, but I don't know what else to do."

  "You let her know you were going?"

  Johnny gave a slow shake of his head. "She was bound to ask questions if I did, and I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth."

  "I'm inclined to agree that Texas is best. You can write your mother a note and I'll see that she gets it."

  "That's decent of you."

  The Thorn pushed at the spectacles sliding down his nose as if it, or something, annoyed him. "You can't leave without telling her some tale. Not only would it upset her more than is apparently good for her, but she would most likely call out the sheriff. The result of that, I have every reason to think, would be that I would be blamed for your disappearance."

  A sheepish look mingled with concern moved over Johnny's face. "I wasn't thinking."

  "There's pen and paper in the next room, also another dress and bonnet. I suggest you make use of them."

  Johnny shoved back his chair and got to this feet, then, as the implication of what had been said reached him, he stopped. "Hey, wait a minute. Dress up like a woman? Me?"

  "Only for an hour or two tonight, until I can get you to a better hiding place while arrangements are made."

  "I thought we would ride hard and fast for the line."

  The Thorn gave him a level look. "That's the best way I can think of to attract attention, if that's what you want."

  "No. No, I'm sure you know best." Johnny moved toward the rough door that led into the next room. He was almost to it when he stopped and turned back. There was a thoughtful frown between his eyes. "You know, the way you look as an old woman reminds me—"

  "Most old women look about the same," the Thorn said easily.

  "No, but that costume, that nose—"

  "You can tell me about it later."

  "I could swear—"

  "Later."

  There was a note of command in the single word that Johnny obeyed instinctively, though he shot a final glance at the other man before he stepped into the other room. The Thorn waited until the door had shut behind Johnny before turning to Lettie.

  "Now," he said, his tone not a whit softer, "tell me what reward I can expect for being so obliging."

  "Reward?" Lettie repeated the word as if she had never heard it before.

  "What did you expect? That I would do it out of charity or for the sake of your smile—which I have yet to see, by the way."

  "I should have known better than to expect anything other than the most callous conduct from you."

  There was such contempt in her face that Ransom felt an intense need to see what it would take to displace it. "So you should."

  "I have no money with me. However, if you will name your price—"

  "In gold? How mercenary you are, a typical Yankee shopkeeper's daughter. I had in mind a finer and sweeter coin."

  She stared at him until her eyes began to blur, until fear and the hysterical desire to laugh at the farcical nature of the suggestion that hung in the air between them threatened to choke her. That it had been put forward by a man who appeared uncannily like an old woman only added to the bizarre unreality.

  She cleared her throat, speaking with an effort. "Such as?"

  "Oh, Miss Mason," he said, his tone mocking, "you are a sad flirt."

  "And you are a cruel tease," she cried, rising to her feet and leaning over the table. "You don't really mean to barter a man's life against—against—"

  "Your charms? But of course I do."

  "It's barbaric! And insulting."

  "Insulting? It seems to me to be placing a rather high value on them."

  "You can hardly expect me to agree!" She swung away from him, folding her arms across her chest and clasping them tight.

  "I don't think you are the kind of woman who would consider the few minutes of her time I ask for to be more treasured than a human life."

  Ransom sought not just to substitute fear for the contempt in which she held him, but for something to use as a distraction once more. He and Martin and Johnny had once done a skit as the three witches from Macbeth. Something about his hag's costume must have reminded Johnny of it. It was important that Lettie not be allowed to dwell on the little his friend had been permitted to say.

  More important to him,
however, was his need to know how she would answer his outrageous proposition, to gain some idea of how she felt, to learn if the moments they had shared in a corncrib haunted her as they did him. He needed to know if, given excuse enough, she would come to him again, despite the conventions that forbade it, despite her fears, despite the wild tales that turned him into a bloodthirsty beast. He wanted, in short, to know if she desired him as he did her.

  In the jangling silence that held them, an idea occurred to Lettie. She considered it, rejected it, then came back to circle it cautiously in her mind. "You—you weren't joking, weren't just … trying to annoy me?"

  He looked at the taut set of her shoulders, heard the appeal in her voice, and he almost agreed. But there was something tentative about her words that made his pulse leap, overriding his better instincts.

  "You don't really think that."

  She drew a deep breath. "Then what can I say? As you pointed out, it would be too callous of me to refuse."

  It was an agreement made under duress, one she had no intention of keeping. He would not find her an easy conquest, not a second time. She could be wrong, but she did not think he would take her in front of Johnny. He had said that he would transfer Johnny to another place of hiding. That would give her some time to escape.

  She should have known he would exact a price for his help. If the truth were faced, she had expected something of the kind. Certainly she had known there would be trouble. Given the character of this man, how could it be otherwise?

  "Lettie—"

  "Miss Mason to you."

  The correction sounded overly prim to her own ears, but she could not bear to hear her name on his lips. She was not surprised that he knew it; he seemed to know everything. She turned to give him a defiant stare, then quickly lifted one hand to her mouth to hide a flash of humor. The suppressed desire in his eyes did not sit well with his disguise.

  He glanced down at himself, then chuckled in his turn. "It is ludicrous, isn't it. I'll have to change before I return."

  "And this change, will it be with or without the mustache?"

  His eyes, she saw in the lamplight, were hazel, that color that is a mixture of all others, though for the moment they appeared more gray, reflecting the gray clothing he wore.

  "Which would you prefer?"

  She lifted one shoulder. "It matters not at all."

  "Perhaps I'll surprise you, then."

  "Or you may be surprised," she said with her most dulcet smile.

  He lifted a brow, but before he could speak, the door to the other room opened and Johnny emerged. One look at him in his woman's costume was enough to show how gifted an actor the Thorn was. Where Johnny strode with flapping skirts, the other man had walked with the rolling and rather halting gait of an old woman with overstretched pelvic bones from childbearing, unevenly distributed adipose, and tender joints. His hunched shoulders and bowed back had, until he discarded the pose, seemed natural. It was uncanny, almost frightening, as Lettie thought of it. It meant that he could be anyone, that he could be watching her, laughing at her at any time, while she never knew. It was not a new thought or a pleasant one, and yet she could not get it out of her mind.

  Johnny came to Lettie and took her hand. His face was earnest and his voice gruff as he spoke. "I hate good-byes, but I don't guess I'll be seeing you again. I'll never forget you, though, or what you and Aunt Em have done for me."

  "Oh, please. Anyone would have done the same."

  "Nobody did," he said simply, "except you."

  "I—I hope you'll forget all of this, and that you will be happy."

  He smiled, though there was pain in his eyes. "I'll try. I sure will try." He lifted her hand, pressed it to his lips, then replaced it at her side. He turned away.

  The Thorn moved to the door and held it open. Johnny stepped toward him.

  Johnny, with his red hair and stocky build, was nothing like Henry, and yet for some reason he reminded Lettie of her brother. There was a hard knot in her throat as she called, "Take care."

  He glanced back, smiling. "That I will."

  The door closed behind him and the Thorn. Moving to the window, Lettie watched as the wagon pulled out of the yard, the two figures huddled on the seat with their bonnets pulled around their faces like old women. In a few short minutes, the rattling of harness, squeaking of wheels, and plodding hoofbeats receded. Finally it died away altogether.

  Lettie eased the door open a crack, drew it wider, just wide enough for her to pass through. She closed it carefully behind her. Her footsteps light, her movements agile, she moved down the steps and across the yard to the narrow road. Then she picked up her skirts and began to run.

  She ran until she had a stitch in her side. She walked until it eased, then ran again. Her hair, loosened from its knot at the nape of her neck, spilled over her shoulder and left a trail of pins behind her. Her boots were heavy, not made for such effort; they soon rubbed a blister on her heel. She stopped and pulled them off, walking in her stockinged feet as she carried the boots under her arm. The dust sifted through the cotton stockings, collecting in a fine grit between' her toes. She ignored it.

  She could not ignore the sounds that pursued her, the calls of night creatures, the scuffling noises in last year's dead leaves beneath the undergrowth. A dozen times her heart jarred against her ribs in apprehension as she thought she heard hoofbeats behind her, but it was only the echoes of her own footfalls.

  When the real hoofbeats sounded, she disregarded them for long seconds. She was almost to the turning for the road that the corncrib was on and knew she could not be far from it. There was a stretch of thick woods here that seemed to hold sound so that she could hear the whisper of the sand under her feet as it shifted. Then she realized that the hoofbeats were coming faster than she could possibly travel.

  She plunged off the road into a sumac thicket and knelt among the saplings, peering through the leaves. A body of horsemen, five in number, clattered past. She caught a flash of white. White sheets. She and Johnny and the Thorn were not the only ones abroad in the night. She crouched lower, shivering. They did not check but rode on out of sight.

  It was some time before Lettie could move. She was holding on to a sumac sapling, ready to drag herself upward, when she heard another horseman approaching. She went still, her teeth clenched against the pull of a cramp in her right leg. The man passed by at an easy lope. His hat was pulled low and his head tilted, as if he were listening. It was almost, she thought, as if he were keeping a safe distance between himself and the men ahead of him.

  The man vanished into the darkness. Quiet returned. The dust settled. Lettie stepped back into the roadway. She began to run again, though she looked often over her shoulder.

  Her chest was heaving and the hair around her face was damp with perspiration when she reached the corncrib. She stood with her back against one of the lean-to posts for long moments, gasping, trying to catch her breath.

  At last, her chest still heaving a little, she leaned over and tried to draw on her boots. Her feet were swollen and sore, and entirely too filthy. There was a piece of tattered rope hanging on a nail on the wall, and she looped the boots together and threw them across the pommel of her saddle.

  Time was passing. She checked her cinch, pulling it tighter, and spoke quietly to her horse as it sidestepped in the darkness. When the animal was calm, she pulled herself into the saddle. She sat for a moment wondering what to do about Johnny's horse there in the lean-to with her own. The Thorn knew where it was, she decided after a moment. Let him worry about it. Perhaps he would take it to Johnny's mother with the note Johnny had written her. Bending low to avoid the lean-to roof, she rode out into the night.

  She saw no one on the road to the ferry as she retraced the route she had taken from the corncrib once before. It was with intense relief that she saw the gleam of the water, the low road leading to the ford, the ferryman's cabin set back among the trees. Dogs ran out barking as she came near. A ma
n appeared around the house carrying a lantern in his hand. He stopped, then, as he saw her, started toward her with a lanky, weak-kneed stride.

  "I hope I didn't wake you," she called as he came nearer. "It's important I cross tonight."

  "No, ma'am. Had a sick horse in the barn."

  His voice was so drawling and thickened that she suspected he had been drinking while attending his animal. It didn't matter so long as he was sober enough to get her across the river.

  She dismounted and led her horse toward the ferry. The man followed along behind her. He held his lantern low to show her where to walk, but it gave off only a feeble light, being an ancient affair of pierced tin.

  The ferry, like a barge with rails, rocked as she stepped aboard. She urged her mount toward the end and tied the reins to the railing, then moved back toward the front on the opposite side to even the weight. The ferryman set the lantern down on the bank, released the rope that held the ferry, shoved off, then jumped on board.

  Lettie glanced at the man as the boat dipped to his weight. He wasn't as thin as he had appeared, or perhaps as she had remembered, though his beard was just as thick and scraggly. She wondered if he had left the lantern behind on purpose or if he had forgotten it. He paid it no attention, certainly, but put his hands on the ropes that controlled the ferry and began to pull hand over hand, like drawing water from a well.

  The ferry glided into motion, drawing away from the bank. The lantern light diminished, the rays falling away until only a glowing yellow spot was left. Darkness closed in around them. The sound of the river, gurgling, rushing around the boat, grew louder. The water swept away on either side, catching and refracting the faint gleam of starlight so that it appeared gray beneath the black press of the night. As they neared midstream, there was a sense of isolation, as if for the brief moment that they floated there between the two banks they were utterly alone, stranded together in the swift flow of time and the river.

  The ferry stopped.

  Lettie turned her head to look at the ferryman. He straightened away from his rope, then moved toward her. He came to a halt not two feet away and spoke in that husky voice that alone of every sound she had ever heard could send chills of degrading excitement along her spine.