The three lawmen, handguns drawn, scattered; Ben remained behind long enough for further questions. “Your boss say anything about me?”
“If he had, it’s hardly any of my concern. You American roughnecks—”
“We like things fair and square and aboveboard, us roughnecks. Which is more’n Holcomb ever has done. So what did he tell you?”
A pause, while the servant gauged the look in his accuser’s eye against the distance to the front door—which had been effectively blocked. “Mr. Holcomb said,” the plummy tones began, “that he had had you and your family thoroughly investigated before ever inviting you to begin work here. I believe he mentioned planning to—ah—‘turn you’ with enough cash to last a lifetime.”
“Huh. Fat chance,” sneered Ben. “We Yanceys don’t turn. We’re just roughneck Americans thataway. So he prob’ly was informed the minute my brothers hit town?”
“To the precise minute,” Barrington took great pleasure in disclosing.
“You expectin’ anybody t’ stop by in the next week or so?”
The long nose quivered. “I haven’t been so informed yet by—aarrgh!”
Ben’s strong right fist fit perfectly into the middle of Barrington’s gut; with plenty of force behind it, all the air was driven from the butler’s diaphragm in a giant whoosh! and he toppled over backward like a sawed-off ponderosa.
“Oh, damn it. Damn it all!” grumbled the doctor, ruefully shaking his damaged hand. Hadn’t he learned anything from making that same mistake a few months ago, back in Indiana? Crap. Well, he was feeling hellbent to beat the shit out of somebody, and this arrogant bastard had walked right into it. The toe of his boot nudged the fallen man’s ribs. Not gently. “Who’s gonna be showin’ up here, and how soon?”
Several minutes of high-toned British expletive-laden misery limped by, until Barrington was able to wheeze: “Bank—rollers. Business—tycoons. Old money, super—rich. Due—this weekend.”
Another nudge of the hard-toed boot, less gently. Almost a kick. “Why?”
The butler, huddled into a fetal position to protect his soft middle, sent the flash of a malevolent grin upward. “You know—this much already…so you know the—reason…”
Plain brute American cuss words could beat their Anglican cousins any day. Letting loose with a string that blistered the air, Ben had yanked his quarry to a sitting position and was in the process of snapping cuffs around the man’s wrists when his brothers clomped back into the main hall.
“Unless Holcomb is hidin’ out on the grounds somewhere, your English toady spoke the truth,” reported John. “He ain’t in the house.”
“Found some mighty scared kids hidin’ in the kitchen, though,” added Thomas. “Told ’em we were shuttin’ down this operation for good, that they should hook up a surrey and get themselves back t’ the orphanage, lickety-split.”
Ben was glaring down at the manservant, considering the efficacy of one last good kick. But one of his brothers drew him back. “No use thumpin’ him any more when he’s already down.”
“Huh. Howdja know what I was thinkin’?”
Travis grinned. “Woulda done the same thing myself, son. C’mon. Let’s haul this’n back to the hoosegow.”
Sheriff McGowan acted far from pleased when the impromptu posse rode into Whitfield to drop off their vociferously complaining prisoner. “Don’t much appreciate the idea of outsiders doin’ work in my town,” he flatly stated.
“Then you shoulda done it your own self,” Travis said sharply. Shoving his U.S. Marshal’s badge directly under the sheriff’s nose, as evidence of his authority, he then demanded to know if McGowan was aware of the criminal element operating in “his” town, and, if so, why he hadn’t stopped it long ago.
With Barrington safely situated in a jail cell whose size and cleanliness fell far below his standards, the sheriff collapsed in his office chair like a balloon suddenly burst of air.
“Money changin’ hands,” John accused, leaning forward over the desk. “Lotsa money.”
“Hell,” snorted Thomas. “Speak it plain, brother. Bribes.”
“Your little empire is fallin’ apart, Sheriff,” Ben told him, seething. “Built on the backs of children. Helpless, vulnerable children, without nobody t’ look after ’em. You rotten pus bucket.”
Travis, already on his way toward the door, paused. “Better stick close, McGowan. There’ll be plentya detective work from here on, diggin’ int’ everything Holcomb touched, findin’ out who all was involved, pullin’ t’gether all the financial records. It won’t be pretty. I suspect you’re in this up t’ your neck, my friend.”
“Got a few lawmen and judges in our hip pockets,” added Thomas. “Oh—and another fella. Maybe you’ve heard of him? President Andrew Johnson.”
As the Yancey team stomped out the door, they could hear a long low groan of distress from the soon-to-be-defrocked official left behind.
“Well, that’s a good first step,” commented John, once they had taken Barrington’s four-legged transport to the livery stable and climbed back aboard their own mounts for a return to home base.
“Satisfyin’,” Thomas agreed.
“Not a’tall,” snapped Ben, never one to hide his feelings. “I still wanna go kick that rat bastard in his double-dealin’ balls.”
Trotting easily along beside him, John sent his brother a look of amusement. “That’ll come soon enough, son. Did I tell you we’ve got a full contingent of government lawyers and accountants on their way here right now? Man, pretty soon we’ll be rippin’ the lid off this place.”
“At the moment, we just need t’ make sure that Jessamine is all right. Been worryin’ about her since last night.”
From the other side, Travis laid a reassuring hand on the doctor’s forearm. “Know just how you feel, fella; been there a time or two myself. Reckon we’d oughta go check on her next thing, then.”
They were forestalled.
At the house, they found Adam and Jake waiting on the front porch, along with a nervous, excitable Walter from the orphanage.
“Doc!” The boy exploded down the steps to greet the riders as if shot from a gun. “She’s gone, he just come in with a gun and took her!”
IX
The trail would be easy enough to follow. Apparently, Holcomb, for all his reputed wealth and the rough-and-tumble ways he had used to acquire it, was a novice when it came to dealing with the physical actuality of any plan. Minions and well-paid henchmen had always served his every whim, which included taking the brunt of any fall.
Charles Holcomb didn’t have a clue how to proceed from here. Other than to run, and keep on running until he could reach help—the sheriff, perhaps, or the mayor, or the council president.
Odd, that he would suddenly be so disoriented, when, for all his life, survival meant rapid-fire thinking and rapid-fire action. And he had excelled at both. Otherwise how would he have attained the pinnacle upon which he now stood?
Possibly this dilemma had been caused by awareness of imminent danger.
Possibly by sudden fear of the unknown.
Possibly by the stab wound in his gut, which was gushing fresh blood like a pig at slaughter.
“You goddamned little bitch,” he cursed, and clouted her again.
His arrangements had been made and events moving forward, just as successfully as so many times in the past, despite the arrival last night of Yancey’s lawmen brothers. No matter. They might suspect anything, but they had no proof of wrongdoing or even of criminal acts. He’d been quite careful about that, over the years.
With the connivance of his faithful manservant, Barrington, and the aid of his trusted lieutenant, Quincy McClennon, Holcomb had proceeded with organization of the auction. With the star and only attraction being Jessamine Lassiter, of course, whose likeness had already been well received by a number of potential bidders, anxious to get on with it. They would begin arriving at the end of this week. Holcomb needed to keep Jessamin
e tucked away somewhere safe only till then.
Which wouldn’t have been a problem, if not for that damned interfering Yancey gang. Instead of taking a few days to observe, to interview, to wander around like the dunderheads most public officials seem to be, they had jumped right in and started causing problems, before he’d had a chance to complete his setup.
Waiting now, hidden behind the orphanage’s flower barricade in the pale pink light of early morning, he spat into the dirt. At this rate, Jessie would prove to be his last conquest in this area. Thanks to Dr. Yancey, Holcomb would be forced to close up his business here and re-locate elsewhere. Far away.
Assaulting and abducting the girl should have been effortless, should have been simple and smooth. Wait until she appeared in the vegetable plot, as she did every day about this time, knock her over the head, and drag her away.
Should have been.
Plans can so quickly go wrong.
She was bent over a patch of turnips, getting ready to pull what was needed, when he grabbed her from behind. One arm wrapped like a heavy band around her waist, the other hand covered her mouth before she could utter a scream or a cry for help.
And then she bit him.
She actually found the nerve to bite him, for God’s sake! His hand still bore the deep indentations from her teeth, and hurt besides. He’d slapped her; she’d kicked backward. In the ensuing struggle she jerked free long enough to whip a shining steel blade from somewhere around her ankle and shoved it straight into him as he lunged toward her.
“Aaargh!” A choked gurgle of white lightning pain, and blood. Buckets of blood. Gallons of blood. Or so it seemed.
Spurred on by agony and rage, he rapped her alongside the head with a chunk of wood, and, just like that, she dropped, flat and silent as a stone falling to earth. Quickly he bound her wrists together, then her ankles, trussing her up like a Christmas goose.
Jessamine was a slender thing, and he was a big burly man, easily able, in normal times, to heft her over one shoulder and haul her away. But, unconscious, her weight had gone completely dead, and, too, he was hampered by the knife wound in his middle.
Grunting and gasping, working as quickly as possible before someone stumbled upon them, Holcomb dragged her to a copse where two horses waited. Somehow he managed to throw her over the saddle of one. Then, tearing a big chunk out of her dangling skirt, he padded the fabric inside his shirt to stop the bleeding. And they were off.
Now, here he was, paused in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range, east and north of town, with no way out. He had no food, no water, and certainly no medical supplies for the knife wound that was just about bringing him to his knees. Pain. Blood. Cold, in the summer’s heat. Shortness of breath, in the thinner air. All thanks to his unconscious captive, who, he was able to tell by her faint movements, was beginning to revive.
Holcomb staggered toward her, grabbed her hair with one hand, and jerked her head up enough that she could see him and recognize him.
“Puta!” he swore, and slapped her again.
Hanging upside down over the back of a horse, especially for an extended period of time, is a most uncomfortable and eventually a dangerous position. Jessamine struggled, discovered tight bonds, tried to speak. At this point pride gave way to the need for survival, and she would beg for her life if necessary. She would agree to any indignity, to any shame; only let her upright with a clear head and freed hands!
“Ain’t so proud now, are you?” he huffed at her.
Twisting her head sideways against the leather fender of the saddle, Jessie tried to catch his attention. “Please…” she croaked. “Up, please. Let me—ride…”
“Uh. Think I’m a complete—jackass, girl—?”
She closed her eyes against the dizziness swirling her away into a world of darkness and fear. “Please, Mr. Holcomb,” came the feeble whisper. “You—liked me once; can’t you—can’t you like me—again?”
“Never—liked you. Wanted you. Big difference.”
Distressed, discouraged, realizing just how desperate was her situation, Jessamine bit her lip. Then: “I’m—sorry…I hurt you. But you—you startled me, and I was—afraid…”
Silence, while he considered. Or fell over dead from her attack, whichever came first. Feeling as if her veins were about to burst from fire and brimstone, she was rapidly losing interest in her fate.
And then she became aware of his knife sawing away at her bonds, both wrists and ankles. With superhuman effort she managed to slither down from the saddle to land in a little heap on the dry, dusty earth.
Time was endless while the sky spun and circled above her, and her senses and heartbeat gradually returned to normal. When she could finally open her eyes without feeling the pull of sickness, she breathed a soft word of gratitude that he had given her this much mercy, at least.
“For now,” he rasped, sinking onto a rock nearby. “We’ll get goin’ again—soon…tie your hands, then but—let you ride. Jesus!” he burst out, clutching his chest in agony. Fresh red oozed from his torn flesh to mix into the drying rust-colored gore already shed.
Too much, too much. She hadn’t recovered very well, after all. Jessamine closed her eyes, turned her head with its own bloody wound to one side, and gave herself over to darkness.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was Ben who spied the dagger, a slim wicked little blade soiled now by the damp earth upon which it had fallen and the blood still tacky-wet. But who the blood belonged to was more than anyone could tell.
“Hers,” he said with a heavy heart. And explained to those around him—his three brothers, Madonna, and young Walter—how he had overheard her comment about needing protection. “Protection!” he repeated bitterly. “And I wasn’t here t’ give it to her!”
“No, you weren’t,” agreed John. “You were off doin’ your best to find her.”
The director, lips trembling and stance none too steady, reached out to touch his arm. “Please, Doctor. Ben, you have to—you must—”
He wrapped his fingers over hers. “I will, Madonna. Take care of your students, and we’ll take care of this.”
The three lawmen had lost none of their tracking skills. At that, the trail was plain enough to follow: two horses, walking slowly and carefully, their hoof prints showing up here and there indented into powdery dust or, occasionally, flattened grass; and drops of blood. Someone was still hurt, still bleeding.
Out from under the trees, across an open expanse, along a narrow meandering creek, and into the foothills. Until, finally, with hope building, Ben spied the two horses, silhouetted against the bright noonday sky.
“There!” he shouted, and took off like a rocket, letting his big gray quarter horse eat up the distance.
She was lying on the ground, still as death and covered in gore, as he flung himself out of the saddle beside her. “Jess! Jessie, open your eyes, sweetheart. Look at me, and tell me you’re all right!”
While he worked frantically to restore the girl to life, his brothers took in the scene and the half-conscious Holcomb slumped beside the boulder from which he had collapsed.
“You still breathin’?” asked Travis casually, poking him with one hand as if the man were cake batter being tested for doneness.
Holcomb opened one eye. “Somethin’ you’re—lookin’ for—?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. Information. You got it, I want it.”
“Ain’t—happenin’, Yancey.”
“I can wait. What happened?”
The eye opened again: red-rimmed, watery. “Bitch—knifed me…”
“Huh. Wouldn’t doubt but what you deserved it. Hey, Ben, how’s your lady doin’?”
“Movin’ a little,” reported Ben with obvious relief. “Can’t see where she’s been hurt, though. All this blood… Head wound, prob’ly concussion, gotta get that cleaned and wrapped; rope burns around her wrists from bein’ restrained…ankles, too, from what I can see.”
“What’s
on her clothes ain’t from her, Ben,” Thomas told him gently. “It’s from him.”
The doctor flung one quick glance sideways, at what would end up being his second patient of the day. “Damn. What a little fighter she is!”
“And don’t—you forget it,” murmured his first patient, from under his questing hands.
“Jessie!”
Carefully she opened her eyes, violet black-lashed eyes looking straight up into those of an adoring dark brown. “I knew—I knew you’d come, Ben. I knew you’d—find me.”
His big tender hands cradled hers. “Till the end of time, darlin’. Which means forever.”
Much later, the party made ready for a return trip to Whitfield. Ben had bandaged Holcomb as best he could, under the circumstances, with the caveat that he would need medical care with antiseptics and bandages once settled in his office.
The same would hold true for Jessamine, whose head wound had been checked and wrapped with another torn fold of her skirt. As wobbly as she was, Ben refused to let her ride her own horse; he established her tenderly in front of him, so she could use the support of his ready and willing broad chest as they jogged along, rest against his warm shoulder.
The three remaining clan members, pacing behind with a mounted Holcomb in tow, exchanged knowing glances. Every brother thus far had worn that same sappy expression just before he’d set up housekeeping with the woman he loved.
It was about time for another Yancey wedding.
X
Several months were needed to collate and list all the details of Holcomb’s far-flung enterprises, to gather information, to bring a few matters to a satisfactory close while others would, of necessity, drag on for years. For the moment, Whitfield’s jail was providing a temporary holding cell for Holcomb, McClennon, Barrington, McGowan, and others.
The government team of investigators discovered that Ben’s predecessor, Dr. Morton, had been shot, killed, and buried by Quincy McClennon, under Holcomb’s direct orders, because the doctor had finally had enough of criminal doings and refused to go along any longer.
A Western Romance: Benton Yancey: Taking the High Road (Book 7) (Taking The High Road Series) Page 10