House of Masques

by Fortune Kent

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  He glanced over his shoulder, ignoring the question. “Floyd,” he called, “in here.” A short older man joined him in the doorway. When he saw Kathleen his eyes widened. He shifted a wad of tobacco in his cheek and smiled, revealing yellow-stained teeth. His beard was a grizzled gray, his hair darker than the beard, and he wore the same blue uniform as his companion. The shirt bloused over his belt and his left pants leg had pulled loose and hung half-in, half-out of his boot. He, too, carried a gun.

  “She’s prettier than the Captain,” he said. “I’ll say that for her, Jeb.”

  Jeb grunted. “We’ll take her,” he said. Jeb yanked a sheet from the bed and, with a knife from a sheath on his belt, cut the cloth into strips. From the door Floyd, still smiling, looked Kathleen up and down. She shrank back.

  “Come here,” Jeb told her. She began to scream and the young man lunged forward, his hand flicking out to slap her hard across the face. Her head snapped to one side.

  “Oh!” she gasped.

  “You’ll do what I say when I say,” Jeb told her.

  Kathleen rubbed her tingling cheek with her fingers. Who were these men? They seemed to know her. Had they been waiting for her return? But, for what purpose?

  Jeb gripped Kathleen’s wrist, lowered and twisted her arm behind her. She grimaced in pain. Pushing Kathleen ahead of him he shoved her facedown on the bed. He held a piece of cloth in both hands and twisted it into a rope, thrust the gag in her mouth and knotted the ends tightly behind her head, making the corners of her mouth sting. He brought both of her hands to the small of her back and tied them together. Grasping the cloth that bound her hands he pulled Kathleen to her feet.

  “We’re taking her like that?” Floyd asked.

  “Have to, we’ve got no choice. I’ll scout ahead while you keep just behind her.”

  “They’ll see the gag.”

  Jeb looked around the room. “Here,” he said, picking up Kathleen’s broad-brimmed hat from the floor. He bent the brim down on both sides before pushing the hat onto her head. “Best we can do,” he said. Jeb went to the door and looked up and down the hall before signaling them to follow.

  They walked toward the back stairs with Jeb In the lead, Kathleen following with head down, and Floyd behind, When Kathleen paused at the head of the stairs Floyd ran his finger down her spine from neck to lower back, making her cringe and hunch her shoulders. He gave an amused snort. Jeb, already halfway down the steps, looked around with a quick warning glance.

  They met no one in the house, no one at all.

  Jeb stopped when he came to a screened door at the end of a narrow hall. He eased the door open with his foot and looked across the side lawn to the woods, then to the back of the house, once more to the woods. Kathleen heard the thud of axes, followed by the swoosh of a falling tree.

  “Well?” Floyd thrust Kathleen back against the wall and squeezed by her to join the younger man at the door.

  “They’re felling trees. Wetting down the outbuildings. About a hundred feet away. We’ll have to chance it.”

  “Our horses?”

  “Can’t see them from here. We’ll hope for the best. Are you ready?”

  Jeb opened the door and walked swiftly toward the woods, looking neither right nor left. Floyd gripped Kathleen’s arm above the elbow and followed. As she crossed the grass Kathleen glanced with sudden hope to the rear of the house where several men pulled a fallen tree. Would they see her? If they did, would they realize her danger? When she reached the dirt at the edge of the woods she thought she saw one of the men stop and stare in her direction. She could not be sure.

  She was in the woods. Jeb and Floyd pushed through the underbrush until they entered a clearing where two tethered horses snorted restlessly.

  Floyd nodded at Kathleen. “I’ll take her,” he said. His eyes, fixed on hers, were set close together and the whites were lined with red veins. No, she prayed, not him.

  “No,” Jeb said. She sighed. She much preferred Jeb’s cold cruelty. She could hate Jeb, a clean emotion. For the older bearded man she felt a queasy distaste.

  Jeb lifted her onto his saddle before swinging up behind. Floyd mounted and they set off at a walk with Floyd in the lead. The trail ran almost level as it rose gradually through thick woods along the flank of the mountain. Although they were going away from the house and the fire, the wind-blown smoke grew thicker, stinging her nose and throat. She choked, bent over in a fit of coughing. They stopped at a well house where the men dismounted to wet their neckerchiefs and tie them over their faces.

  The mountain, Kathleen had observed from the village, was shaped like a knife lying on its back, the blunted point jutting into the Hudson River. They were halfway to the top, approaching the edge of the blade where the gentle incline changed to a precipitous slope.

  Their route crossed deep slashes where, when the rains began, streams would hurtle to the river. Logs which had been used to bridge the gullies many years before were rotted. Some sagged precariously while others had fallen to the rocks far below. At one crevice, some thirty feet from side to side, Jeb and Floyd were forced to dismount to test the decayed timbers before leading the horses across.

  As they neared the ridge of the mountain the ground became rocky, the going rougher. The pain in her cramped arms almost made Kathleen forget the stinging of her eyes. Most of the smoke had risen to hang in a cloud above their heads, leaving patches of white clinging here and there among the trees and brush.

  Through the wisps of smoke Kathleen saw a movement far above them on the mountain. Men on horseback. She glanced quickly at Floyd. His downturned eyes followed the track in front of the horses, looking, she supposed, for ravines and washouts. Jeb, Jeb was the danger. She twisted her body.

  “Damn you, sit still,” Jeb told her. Good, if she could just keep him distracted.

  Their horses picked their footing with care. The river lay below to her right, Constitution Island near the far shore, Breakneck Mountain beyond. A scattering of boulders and a few scrawny shrubs covered the rising slope to the left. A thick finger of smoke drifted between Kathleen and the horsemen coming down. She relaxed despite the tears blurring her eyes. The other riders were completely concealed.

  The trail turned abruptly back on itself, still climbing. Two more switchbacks, three at most, and they would meet the other party face-to-face. A breeze pulled at her hat. She groaned to herself as she saw the smoke thin and begin to rise.

  Floyd raised his open hand. Jeb reined in beside him.

  “See something?”

  “Couldn’t be sure,” Floyd said, his voice low. “Thought so. Look there between those two black rocks.”

  “Off the trail, hurry.” They had reached another turning and Jeb dropped to the ground and plunged straight down a rocky slope. Kathleen bent forward to keep her balance on the jouncing horse. Her flesh stung where the cloth had rubbed the skin from her wrists.

  Jeb led them into a clump of trees and stopped behind a boulder. He pulled Kathleen’s arm so she fell sideways into his arms. With one motion he deposited her on a clump of grass with her back against the large rock. She could see nothing of the trail.

  Floyd joined them and the two men peered around the boulder.

  “How many?” Floyd whispered.

  “Nine or ten.”

  “Mules, too.”

  “Yeah,” Jeb said. “With axes, spades, picks. They’re coming prepared to fight the fire.”

  “Look.” Floyd nodded. “That’s Worthington with them on the big chestnut. The others look like West Pointers, cadets.”

  “They didn’t waste any time.”

  “Should we risk a shot at the Captain?” Floyd asked.

  “No, too many of them. We’ll get our chance later when he finds we’ve got the girl.”

  “Ho
w will he know?”

  “One of us will have to go back to the Estate.”

  The two men stopped their whispered conversation. Was Captain Worthington almost upon them? Could she attract his attention? How close were they now? Kathleen could only judge by the actions of Floyd and Jeb. The two men remained silent, tense. She heard horses’ hooves clump on the rocks and the laconic speech of the horsemen. Closer and closer they came.

  Floyd held their two horses to quiet them. Jeb, alert and rigid, lay with his body flat on the boulder. Kathleen saw a rock near her foot. Just beyond, the bank dropped down in a jumble of stones, dead leaves, and broken branches. She stretched her foot until her toe touched the rock.

  Kathleen waited. The Worthington party seemed close to their hiding place—probably, she thought, at the turning where Jeb had led them from the trail a few minutes before. Now! She shoved the rock as hard as she could and knew a surge of hope as she heard the rumble of a small landslide. Jeb turned his head and muttered under his breath.

  A noise came from above, a sliding rumbling sound. “Careful,” a strange voice warned, “keep your horse away from the edge.” She was puzzled. Hadn’t they heard? Then she knew. At the same time she had tried to attract their attention, one of the Worthington horses had stepped on loose dirt, its noise effectively drowning out hers. The voices of the men faded, became stronger as the trail doubled back, faded again as the horsemen went on down the mountainside. Kathleen shrank within herself.

  Jeb waited a long time. Ten or fifteen minutes, Kathleen thought. Then he walked back the way they had come.

  “They’re gone,” he reported when he returned. He gripped Kathleen under the arms and lifted her to her feet. The boulder cut into her back. Without a word he brought his palm stingingly across her face, hit her again with the back of the hand.

  She stumbled between Jeb and Floyd as they led the horses back to the trail, her throat raw from the smoke, her arms and wrists aching. Jeb lifted her into the saddle to resume their climb up the face of the mountain.

  Floyd glanced back at her. He rubbed his hand down his side to his leg, smiling with anticipation. All hope of rescue gone, Kathleen slumped forward, bit hard on the gag, and sobbed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They climbed steadily for twenty minutes before Floyd led them off the trail. They skirted the top of a cliff, crossed several ridges, and passed through a narrow defile. Although Floyd seemed to find his way with ease, Kathleen saw neither a track nor trail-blazings on the trees.

  The wind rose as they neared the summit. Kathleen lifted her face to the cool gusts and drew the clean air into her lungs. The breeze tugged at her hat. Above her head the cloud of smoke grew thicker and blacker. She feared for the Estate, hoping Charles and the others had stopped the advance of the flames before they reached the great house.

  Jeb dismounted beneath a pine. “I’ll have a look,” he said, moving cautiously forward. Floyd leaned over his saddle horn, fingering the leather braid on his holster while his eyes followed his younger companion. Kathleen slumped exhausted in the saddle. Are we there? she wondered. She did not know how much longer she could go on.

  A dead spike branched from the pine at the level of her face. She sat up. I might be able to, she thought. She gripped the horse with both legs and leaned far to the side until the branch jabbed her hair. When she twisted her head her hat fell to the ground to lay partly hidden behind a clump of ferns.

  She sat upright and held her breath. Would Jeb notice?

  “It’s all right, come on.” Jeb’s voice. He stood waiting for them several yards ahead. Kathleen let out her breath in a long sigh. Perhaps he wouldn’t discover the missing hat. Yet whether he did or not, she knew the hat was a forlorn hope. Who would possibly ride this way? She felt better, though, for she had done something, no matter how futile.

  Floyd swung about, grabbed her horse’s reins and led her through a screen of brush and down a steep embankment into a ravine shaped, she thought, like the cornucopia on the table at the Estate, narrow at this end, sloping downhill as it curved and broadened for a distance of some two hundred feet. A few pines tossed in the wind, but most of the growth consisted of stunted holly, laurel, and other mountain shrubs.

  She felt trapped. The sides of the ravine rose steeply to the height of a man at this end, three times as high farther along. They walled her in, cut her off from the world. At the distant mouth of the ravine she could see no trees, no shrubs, only the black sky, as though a cliff thwarted escape in that direction. She was isolated, alone, a prisoner on an island in the sky.

  Floyd tied the horses on the edge of a patch of grass. Only then did she notice the lean-to. Tree limbs which had been laid along the wall of the canyon were artfully concealed by cut pine boughs placed on top. Jeb came from inside to stand at the entrance.

  Floyd walked back to lift her from the horse, but before he could Kathleen bent forward, threw her leg over the saddle on the opposite side and slid down. One foot landed on a loose stone and, trying to keep her balance, she fell, straining against her bindings.

  Pain shot up her arms and across her shoulders as she sprawled on the ground. Stones cut into her back, making Kathleen realize her dress was torn.

  She heard a snicker. Floyd’s face, sweaty and soot-stained, loomed over her. He lifted his campaign hat in mock deference. “May I be of assistance, ma’am?” he asked. His phlegmy voice sounded as though a portion of every whiskey he had ever drunk remained in his throat.

  She stared, unable to speak or move while he knelt beside her and grasped her under the arms. She found a footing and struggled upright, twisting away as his hands slid forward under her breasts. She tried to run but he gripped her about the waist and pulled her to him. She whimpered when she felt the shock of his body on hers.

  “Be patient,” he whispered. “We’ll have to wait just a little while.” He shoved her ahead of him into the lean-to.

  “The young lady doesn’t seem to care for you,” Jeb snorted. “Cut off the gag. She can make all the noise she wants, there’s no one to hear.” Jeb’s gaze lingered on her face and hair. She stiffened. He’s noticed a difference, she thought. Will he remember the hat? He frowned, then yawned and turned away.

  She sat with her back on the dirt bank, watching Floyd slowly take out his knife. He held the weapon pointed down at her while he looked from the mottled blade to her eyes then down the length of her body. At last he cut the cloth at the back of her head. Her lips ached and she could feel the bitter taste of blood in her mouth.

  The two men squatted at the entrance of the lean-to rolling cigarettes, letting the smoke out with long relaxed breaths.

  “A few hours’ sleep?” Jeb asked. “What do you say?” This was the first time, Kathleen realized, he had deferred to the older man.

  Floyd nodded. “And some hot grub. A campfire’s safe what with all the smoke.”

  After they laid bedrolls across the entrance Jeb brought a rope from the shadowed interior of the camp and bound Kathleen’s feet. She stared away from him, passive.

  She dozed fitfully as the men slept, dreamed she forced her legs through clinging waist-high smoke, her steps slow and labored as though she ran in deep water. All the while, in her dream, Floyd’s yellow teeth grinned at her.

  Just as she found a deeper, untroubled sleep, Floyd’s spluttering snores wakened her. She tried to think, to plan, but found questions without answers. How could she escape? Why had they taken her? To lure Charles from the Estate? Josiah’s scheme to admit Kathleen to the Estate was being repeated in dead earnest.

  The two men stretched themselves awake. While they started the fire they spoke in whispers too low for her to hear. After the fire blazed, Jeb strode from the camp, leaving Floyd busy with a black kettle and pot. She saw the older man’s eyes return time and again to where she lay.

  Finally he came and knelt beside her
. She felt his hand slide along her side to the swell of her hip, linger on her thigh. She forced herself to be still despite the tensing of her body.

  “Wind’s blowing the fire this way.” Jeb. Floyd’s hand jerked away and she heard him swear under his breath. “No danger yet,” Jeb went on, “but the trail to the Estate may not be passable.”

  “Guess we did a good job when we started her.”

  “Too good, maybe,” Jeb said. “Whichever of us goes down tonight might have to take the long way round.”

  “Who goes back to the Estate, Sergeant?” Floyd asked. Was there a challenge in the “Sergeant”? Kathleen wondered.

  “Let chance decide. Drawing lots all right by you?”

  “Agreed.”

  Floyd broke four twigs into uneven lengths. He held them to his hand so the visible ends were the same length. “The man who gets the shortest stays,” he said.

  Jeb selected one of the sticks. “Not the shortest, not the longest,” he said. He took the remaining three sticks in his hand and let the bearded man choose.

  Floyd grunted with satisfaction. “I stay,” he said, flipping the short twig on the fire. Kathleen knew a sinking sensation in her stomach. When Jeb left, she would be alone with Floyd.

  “Let’s eat,” Jeb said. After untying her wrists he handed Kathleen a tin plate filled with watery, lumpy globs of food. Stew, she found, with a few chunks of meat among the potatoes. She coughed as she washed the meal down with thick, bitter coffee. When they finished Jeb motioned Floyd aside where he talked earnestly, nodding his head from time to time in Kathleen’s direction. Floyd held both hands before him in a gesture of innocence.

  Jeb returned to tie the binding on her hands. “I know what’s wrong,” he said. He gripped her chin between his thumb and fingers and looked into her eyes. “Where’s your hat?” he demanded.

  “L-lost.”

  “Lost? When?”