He laughed, seeming pleased that she’d noticed. “Si, they bring me the wrong woman,” he said, his grin never wavering. “It don’t matter. One white bitch is as good as another.”
Molly had a deep, visceral feeling that she didn’t want to know what he meant.
He put his hand on her calf and moved it slowly to the back of her knee. Fear careened inside her, she jerked herself away and pulled her legs up so that her weight was on her knees.
Laughing, he grabbed her ankles and yanked them out from under her. Her hands were still weak and wouldn’t support her weight, and she fell backward, hitting her head against the wall. She saw a brief splash of stars.
“So white. So clean. Nice white legs,” he mumbled around a grin, moving his hand higher on her leg.
“Wh-what do you want with me?” Because her skin had begun to crawl beneath his touch, she was afraid she already knew.
He continued to grin and stroke her leg. “Oh, I want many things, senorita. Maybe … maybe I want you.” He groped her breast, pinching her nipple.
She sucked in a painful breath but didn’t cry out. She knew he was looking for even a flicker of fear from her, but she wouldn’t give the animal that satisfaction. “Who did your men think I was?”
He leaned back on his heels and studied her. “You wear her clothes and ride her horse. They think you are her.”
A finger of fear danced along her spine. Nicolette. His men had mistaken her for Nicolette. Why would anyone want to kidnap her? For a multitude of obvious reasons, Molly was grateful she’d been taken instead. Suddenly she remembered her dream, the one in which Nicolette had been kidnapped, and she knew now that it hadn’t been a dream at all, but a premonition. Not a warning to Nicolette, but a warning to her. But why, she wondered again, had they wanted to kidnap Nicolette in the first place?
His hand moved up to touch her breast again, and Molly pushed it away with her wrist. He caught it and squeezed, pressing hard against the delicate bones. Suddenly a shaft of pain shot through her wrist, and she cried out. Black dots danced before her eyes, and her whole body was filled with pain. When he released her wrist, she pressed her lips together against the burning, unable to stop the tears of agony that coursed down her cheeks. She carefully cradled her painful wrist with her other hand.
“Do you know what we like to do with white women?”
Her heart pounded in her ears and her wrist throbbed, sending more pain into her chest, intensifying her nausea. Never had she felt pain like this. She refused to meet his gaze lest he see her agony and her fear. Instead, she studied the ground, seeing nothing, feeling only the throbbing at the base of her arm.
Abruptly, he gripped her chin. “You look at me when I talk to you!”
Hate tumbled over her fear and her pain. She suddenly found it easy to look at him, for the more she saw his ugly, filthy face, the deeper her hatred grew.
“We like to strip the white women naked and tie them up outside in the sun.” He touched the skin on the inside of her calf and an involuntary shudder raced through her. “Whites are so … white, you know? The sun burns them to a pretty shade of red. Like the red rock in the canyon walls, or the hot red of the sun as it sets behind the mountains.” He continued to touch her. “Then, they blister. Pretty, white blisters that ooze pus. Soon, the insects find them and they feed, sucking on the liquid and laying eggs in the sores.”
The picture caused her stomach to heave, but she swallowed repeatedly, trying to gather strength. “Does burning women and seeing them suffer make you feel like a big man?”
He laughed, the stench from his rotting teeth laving over her like spoiled meat. “No, not so much as other things. I think,” he said, getting to his feet and massaging his groin, “that I should show you what makes me a big man.”
Molly was suddenly afraid she’d gone too far. She tensed, feeling new fear when he crossed to the cave opening and shouted.
A moment later, the woman who had kicked her and stolen her clothes stepped inside.
“Blanca,” he said seductively, “why don’t we show the little white bitch what she can look forward to?”
Blanca snorted a laugh, flung her long, greasy hair from her eyes and lifted her skirt. Her naked hips gyrated seductively. The man fiddled with the front of his trousers, pushed the woman onto the ground, and entered her quickly. They copulated in front of Molly, grunting and groaning like animals.
She closed her eyes, refusing to watch, focusing instead on the pain in her wrist. It was broken, she was almost certain of it.
The woman cried out and the man’s lusty groan followed. What they were doing was meant to shock and scare her. It was working. She had no doubt that she would be raped—over and over again, by every man in the camp. Her only consolation was that it was she who would suffer the atrocities and not Nicolette.
Eight
The llano estacado. The staked plains. Aching, treeless miles of vast high flatlands covered with tough buffalo grass. A place where men and horses have disappeared, never to be seen again. A place so flat and huge and void of texture and shape, that it could drive a man mad, especially if there was no sun to guide him across it. It was an ocean of grass. A prairie of emptiness. It was the perfect place to hide, yet there didn’t appear to be any hiding places at all.
Buck sat astride Thunder and scanned the horizon. It told him nothing; there was nothing to tell. All he knew was that his only desire had been to protect Molly, and now, she was out there somewhere, suffering because of him. He just hoped he’d get to her in time, because he wasn’t sure what the kidnappers would do once they discovered they had the wrong woman.
Thunder capered and danced, anxious to get moving. Buck nudged him, and they headed toward the eastern edge of the grassland, where the world dropped away to a yawning abyss.
Cooking smells awakened Molly. She opened her tired eyes, once again aware of the painful throb at her wrist. The woman, Blanca, had wrapped it for her the day after it had happened, but the pain was still excruciating. She was surprised she could sleep at all. She’d fought it every night, trying to catch naps during the day in hopes of keeping her wits about her. The pain helped. It gave her reason to survive the nightmare. Somehow, she wanted to get even.
The dusky light outside the cave proclaimed sundown, and she knew the horrors of the night weren’t far behind. She would have thought that one day might blend into another, preventing her from counting the days since her capture. That hadn’t happened. She remembered every moment of the long, swelling deadness of time. She was acutely aware that her fourth night in this hell was fast approaching, and she saw no end to the pain, discomfort and humiliation she’d already experienced at their hands. She was grateful for one thing: She hadn’t been raped. She didn’t know why, for they’d had plenty of opportunities. Perhaps it would come to that. Perhaps. Drawing in a shaky breath, she prayed that she could survive until Charles sent help.
The night before, staked out on the ground like a splayed hide, she had sensed someone at the cave entrance watching her. She’d kept her eyes closed, hoping, praying they would go away. They hadn’t. Whoever had been there had stepped inside, moved closer to her and ran his hands over her naked flesh. Her stomach, heart and soul had quivered, she had bit the insides of her cheeks until she’d tasted blood, and held her breath until she thought she might faint. She had expected the worst, as the hand moved over her breasts and pinched her nipples. Then he’d touched the inner surface of her thighs and her privates, open and defenseless because of her forced spread-eagle position on the ground.
Suddenly, to her immense relief, someone else had entered the cave and pulled the man away, scolding him in rapid Spanish. Perhaps it was merely a short-lived reprieve for an inevitable act, but she quietly wept with relief just the same, grateful the humiliation would be put off for another day.
Afterward, she had lain in the darkness, unable to move or cover herself and imagined that if
she told them she was not white, they would release her. When she came to her senses and realized it would probably make no difference, she began to think of other things. Anything to keep herself awake and focused. Anything to keep herself from thinking about her degradation and pain.
Strangely, it wasn’t Charles’s face that loomed before her in her fantasies. It was Buck’s, further affixing the notion that she was truly going mad. Each time she dreamed up a situation for herself and Charles, Buck’s features, lean and hard, replaced the softer, prettier features of her fiancé. But when she was awake and clearheaded, she knew the first thing she had to do after she was rescued—and she firmly held onto the belief that she would be rescued. She had to make peace with herself, bury her fears and tell Charles everything.
The long, endless nights had given her plenty of time to consider her situation. She admitted to herself that her attraction to Buck was not just a remnant from her past, but a full-blown reality of the present. But it didn’t matter. He wasn’t husband material. At least, not the kind of husband she’d always dreamed of having.
Now, as darkness approached, she thought of the unbearable night ahead of her. Having almost grown accustomed to the pain in her wrist, she suddenly became aware of the throbbing in her ankles. At first she’d been surprised that they hadn’t kept her bound during the day. Then she realized that even if she tried to escape, she had no shoes. They’d thought of everything. She glanced down, wincing at the sight of the raw flesh around her ankles.
For whatever reason, she was allowed to move freely around the cave during the day, wearing her underclothes. At night, when her defenses were down and her fears exaggerated anyway, she was tied to four posts driven into the crumbly rock, and stripped of all her clothing—and her dignity. Her captors were masters of applied humiliation.
The day before, she had gotten as far as the cave opening, just to see what was outside. The cave was merely a hollow in the canyon wall, and the drop to the canyon floor was enough to keep her from escaping, even if she’d tried. She could only visualize the layout of the camp. The men and their women weren’t far away; at times she could hear them clearly. And smell their cooking.
Her mouth watered as the cooking smells intensified. They would feed her—snickering as she ate, telling her in graphic words and gestures just what she was eating. Perhaps tonight it would be rattlesnake, rat, scorpion or dog. They hoped to disgust her so much she would refuse, then they could still say they had tried to feed her. But she wouldn’t refuse. As long as the food was even remotely palatable, she would eat. She needed her strength. For what, she wasn’t sure. But when Charles showed up to rescue her, she knew she had to be strong.
To take the edge off her hunger, she reached for her canteen, jiggling it to make sure there was still some water left. With shaky fingers, she opened it and took a small sip. It was hardly enough to coat her tongue, much less swallow, but it would have to do. She was never sure that she would get any more.
Shimmering stars filled the night sky. There was a half-moon overhead, giving him enough light to see, without being seen.
Buck slid quietly from his mount and tethered him near the horses that belonged to Molly’s captors. Silently, he crept around the perimeter of the camp, refilling his canteens and absconding with some packable food. He carried the items back to Thunder and shoved them into his saddlebags. After stuffing his knife and a narrow leather thong inside his shirt, and shoving the metal stake into his belt loop, he slung the coiled rope over his shoulder and quietly made his way toward the cliffs. He’d studied the camp before sundown and sensed that Molly was being kept in a small cave dug into the canyon wall, for one of the camp whores had gone in with a bowl of food at supper time.
Just above the cave and to the left, he drove the stake into the ground and attached the rope to it. He shinnied down onto the narrow ledge on the opposite side of the cave from the camp. Keeping his back against the face of the cliff, he moved along the narrow ledge, stopping occasionally to listen for sounds. There were none other than the normal, eerie songs of night birds and scurrying animals. Moving to the cliff opening, he stepped inside. A low fire burned in the corner, throwing a soft, dull light over the interior of the cave.
He bit back a vile curse when he saw what they’d done to her. He’d never be able to describe the fierce emotions that exploded inside him. Flat on her back, spread-eagle on the ground, she was either asleep or unconscious. Her wrists and ankles were staked to the floor of the cave with leather bindings. And she was naked, every inch of her sweet, flawless flesh coated with dusty red dirt.
He swallowed the bile of his anger and left the cave the way he’d come, then proceeded to the camp. The guard dozed against a rock, his rifle resting on his lap. Taking a deep breath, Buck strode to him, lifted the rifle off his lap and kicked his legs.
The guard grunted and stumbled to his feet.
“What kind of camp is this?” Buck roared, poking the sluggish guard with the rifle. His noise brought other men running. He pointed the rifle in their direction, recognizing Che among them.
“What’s this about, mi amigo?” Che stuffed his shirt into his pants.
Buck gave him a look of disdain. “Exactly my question. What in the hell kind of operation is this? Your stupid guard was sleeping so soundly I could have put a bullet through his balls.”
Che looked at Buck suspiciously, then let his gaze flit nervously about the campsite. “Why didn’t you then?”
Buck kept the rifle aimed at Che. “I didn’t come up here to kill your men. You have Campion’s woman, right?”
Che scratched the scraggly hair that grew on his chin. “What business is that of yours, senor?”
Buck gave him a dark smirk. “Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
“No, senor, why don’t you tell me,” Che snarled.
Buck sighed, pretending scorn. He had no proof of what he was about to say, but his gut told him he and Sage were right about Campion’s dealings. And Molly’s abduction and the note that accompanied it made him sure the Mexicans were getting itchy to move the stolen cattle. “You’re putting the focus on yourselves, you fools. Do you want to get caught kidnapping?”
Che finally appeared to be in control. “What do you know about it, senor?”
Buck forced a languid chuckle. “Campion has a reason for lying low. Can’t you see that? By taking his woman, you’ve drawn attention to yourselves.”
Che narrowed his gaze at him. “You’re working for Senor Campion, too?”
Buck almost smiled. “If I weren’t, how would I know what you’re up to?”
Che shook his head. “No. We know what we’re doing. We don’t need your help.”
Buck shrugged expansively. “Have it your way, Che. But I think you should know that the sheriffs making noises, poking his nose into places neither you nor Campion want him to. Not only that, rumor has it someone from the army has infiltrated the ranch.” He gave each of them a suspicious stare. “How do I know it isn’t one of you?”
There was an uncomfortable rumbling among the men. Che shouted at them to shut up. He gave Buck an insolent glare. “How do we know it isn’t you?”
Buck raised his eyes skyward, as if begging some higher being to forgive them their stupidity. “If it were me, don’t you think I’d have turned the whole pack of you in by now?” He swore, shaking his head in disbelief. “Tell you what,” he said after a minute. “Let’s drink to Campion, his clever, diabolical mind, and his scheme to get all of us rich.”
Che snorted a laugh, then gave Buck a hard, calculated look. “Senor Buck, you never drink. I seen you at the whorehouse in Cedarville, pouring good whiskey back into the bottle. And you never join us when we celebrate.”
Buck shrugged again. “Hell, one little drink won’t hurt. I want to prove to you I’m on your side, mi amigo.” He watched as Che’s face lit up. Buck could read the man like a map. He knew exactly what Che was thinking. Let’
s get the half-breed drunk.
“Si. Come,” he ordered. “Drink our whiskey.”
Buck wagged his finger at him. “No need. I have my own,” he said.
“You carry whiskey?” Che was incredulous.
“Every cowman who knows his job carries whiskey, Che.”
“Si, I know. But you—”
“It’s in my saddlebag. I’ll get it.”
“Hector,” Che ordered, giving Buck a sly grin. “Go with our friend here. Make sure he only gets whiskey from his bag.”
Buck shrugged, strode to his saddlebag and pulled out the flask of whiskey he always used for snake and scorpion bites. Hector grabbed it from him, opened it and took a swig. He raised his gaze to Buck’s face and grinned.
“It’s whiskey,” he shouted back over his shoulder.
Buck took the flask from him and followed him back to camp, shoring up his resistance. He hadn’t taken so much as a sip in three years. But now he must, to prove he was on their side.
The Mexicans settled around the fire and passed the bottle among them. Buck took an occasional sip from his flask, setting his mind against the sweet first rush that whiskey had always given him—and he’d always anticipated.
Che belched and sighed. “So, Senor Buck. You think we are making a mistake by holding the woman.”
Buck wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pretended to have trouble focusing. “The boss doesn’t like threats, Che. You ought to know that.”
“You think if we let you take the woman back, he’ll forget about it?”
With a casual shrug, Buck leaned back on one arm. “He doesn’t want the woman hurt, Che. You’ve already bungled the job by taking her.”
Che studied him. “All right. This is my plan. You,” he said, pointing the bottle at Buck, “will take her back.”
Buck squelched a huge rush of relief. “If that’s what you want,” he said casually.
Forbidden Moon--The Moon Trilogy--Book Three Page 13