Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  As the contents of her stomach threatened to erupt, Serena swallowed hard.

  Is this what you felt, Mama? This terror, this degradation? This horror? Oh God, Mama! How did you stand it? How will I stand it?

  “That’s it, little sister, just lay there. I like my women willing.” He used both hands to work at removing her pants.

  Serena fought the panic that threatened to overwhelm her, and lost. She shrieked and squirmed and kicked, trying to defeat the hands that were even now tugging her pants down around her thighs.

  Caleb got the pants as far as her knees, then had to throw one leg across both of hers to still her thrashing. Damn, but she felt good beneath him. If only she would lie still.

  When she kept squirming beneath him, he forgot any intention of trying to woo her. He was going to take her, by God, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  He tightened his hands around her waist until Serena was sure he would squeeze her to death. Still, she kept struggling. It wasn’t in her nature to give up, and she was too scared to just lie there and let him have his way.

  “Be still!” he shouted, his whiskey breath gagging her.

  He buried his face between her breasts and thrust the hard proof of his arousal against her thigh. She tried to jerk away, but his weight held her down. His rough beard scraped the delicate skin of her breasts. When his tongue came out and swiped a nipple, she gagged again. She was going to be sick.

  His hands, rough and hurting, roamed over her body, leaving her no secrets, no dignity. She’d never known anything so horrible in her life as this beast pawing at her. Heart thundering, bile rising in her throat, she pulled on the rope above her until her wrists were raw. It made no difference. She was firmly trapped.

  Caleb grew tired of her thrashing and sank his teeth into her breast. That ought to keep her still, by God.

  Serena gasped at the pain and lay perfectly still, except for the heaving of her chest, the cringing of her flesh, and the sickness in her gut.

  One hard, unrelenting hand dove down between her legs. She screamed. His other hand struck her across the face, cutting her scream in half.

  The terror and shame, combined with the probing, hurtful fingers between her legs and the smell of his fetid breath, were more than Serena’s stomach could stand. Its contents burned a path up her throat.

  At the strangled sound she made, Caleb turned his face toward hers and laid his head on her bare stomach. She raised her shoulders from the ground. Caleb grinned, then thrust his fingers deeper inside her dry, unwilling body.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The morning after Matt’s fruitless trip to Tucson, an even dozen men, under the direction of Travis Colton, fanned out on either side of the road to town, searching for any trace of Serena’s passing. Anything at all out of the ordinary. They stretched out in a long line, each man keeping the next in sight.

  The three Trevino brothers, Carlos, Benito and Jorge, had lived and worked on the Triple C since it was built. The bright-eyed oldest daughter of the Coltons was special to each of them, as she was to the other hands who had volunteered to search.

  They were a hard-eyed, tight-lipped group, each man a good tracker in his own right. If Serena had left the road before reaching Tucson, they would find her trail. Of course, it would have been easier if several days hadn’t passed since she left, and if they hadn’t had that toad strangler of a storm last night.

  Travis himself took the road, eyeing every inch on both sides for any sign. Fifty yards to his left, Pace scanned every tree, every bush and cactus, every scraggly blade of grass. To Pace’s left rode fifteen-year-old Spencer.

  Spence hung back, going slower than the others. He wasn’t as experienced, and was being especially careful so as not to miss something. No one had asked him to come, but he had put down his books—a rare occurrence—and demanded his place among the men. Like the rest of the Coltons, Spence had a strong sense of family. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for any of them.

  That was the main reason he had decided to study medicine. At first he had thought of law, but lawyers were a dime a dozen. Arizona was lousy with them.

  Besides, a lawyer wouldn’t be able to help Spence’s father if he suffered a stroke the way Grandad Jason had when Spence was a kid. But a doctor could. Maybe. If he was good enough.

  A lawyer couldn’t have saved Angela. A lawyer couldn’t ease pain, bind wounds, or bring new life into the world.

  No, Spence didn’t want to be a lawyer. He was going to be a doctor. The best damned doctor this territory had ever seen. Then he would be able to help his family. He would do anything for his family. Even if he didn’t love his sister so much, he would do whatever he could to take that look of helpless terror from his mother’s eyes.

  So he had put down his books to ride with the men. He wasn’t as good a tracker as the others, but he wasn’t bad, either. Growing up in a house full of Apaches, he couldn’t help but know more about tracking than the average citizen.

  Fifty yards to the right of the road, Matt wasn’t thinking about Spence or anyone. Only Serena. Pace said he had watched her leave, so they knew she had headed toward town. But somewhere along the way, she had seemingly just disappeared.

  Rena was much too responsible to have run off, so what had happened? There was no reason for her to leave the road, yet she must have. There was absolutely nothing between the ranch and town. No neighbors of any kind. Not even a water hole. And she was too experienced to have had trouble with the horse.

  The remaining possibilities sent sharp pain stabbing Matt’s chest.

  But his imaginings were absurd. The bandits who occasionally flooded across the border and terrorized the valley hadn’t raided this close to Tucson in twenty years.

  Of course, Tucson itself was a favorite haven of the dregs of society. The town literally crawled with everything from petty thieves to cutthroat murderers.

  Matt tried to block out pictures of Serena in the hands of scum like that, yet he forced himself to admit it was a very real possibility.

  But, his mind argued, there was no reason for outlaws to take this road. It led nowhere except to the Triple C.

  Matt forced the unsettling thoughts away. Serena had to be all right. She had to be. If anything terrible had happened to her, Pace and Dani would have felt something, wouldn’t they? He would have felt something.

  The thought startled him, but as he turned it over in his mind, he knew it was true. If something had happened to Rena, he would have known. That emptiness she had so recently filled would have swallowed him whole.

  He didn’t even want to consider what his knew awareness meant.

  The line of men swept all the way to town without finding a single trace of Serena’s passage. They gathered at the edge of Tucson, then broke up and searched every square foot of town for a glimpse of Serena, the buggy, or the gray mare.

  They found nothing.

  The next morning, they all switched places, so no man would cover the same ground he’d covered yesterday. They pulled in their ranks, riding at twenty-five-yard intervals.

  The tension built in each man as the day wore on. If they didn’t find something before they reached the ranch, where would they look next? How would they ever find her?

  Matt’s eyes burned so badly with fatigue he was afraid he would miss something important. Hell. Who knew what he might have missed already? If he had crossed a set of railroad tracks in the past two hours, he probably wouldn’t have seen them.

  He pulled his horse to a halt and rubbed his eyes. “Christ,” he muttered. It had to be here. Some trace, some sign…something. She had to have left the road. He didn’t know where, or why, but she must have left the road.

  He blinked and focused on the flattened bush beside him. Flattened? He stared at it a long moment, then slowly dismounted. On either side of him, Benito Trevino and Tinker Williamson saw and drew their horses to a halt.

  Matt knelt in the gray dirt and stu
died the bush. That storm could easily have flattened it, yet the ones next to it, no bigger, no sturdier, stood upright. The only hoof prints in the immediate area were his, so that ruled out one of their own men having trampled it.

  One twig lying on the ground had a break in it. Matt carefully reached out and lifted the clump of stems next to the broken one. Those stems had evidently been beaten down by the rain, because underneath, protected from the downpour by the covering, lay a single track. A wheel track.

  Matt pulled his pistol and fired three quick shots. The signal brought the other riders and a gallop.

  All except Spence. He was the last rider in line on the south end of the search. He heard the shots, but ignored them. He’d been following a series of broken shrubs for several yards, wanting to make certain of what he’d found before signaling the others. The line of broken shrubs led straight into a thick clump of cedars and brambles.

  The wall of green he faced looked impenetrable. If that was the remains of a wagon or buggy track he’d been following, it couldn’t possibly have gone through there. He dismounted, picked up a rock, and tossed it through the cedar branches. It struck something and gave back a hollow thud. Not the dull sound of a rock hitting a tree or the ground, but a rock hitting a board.

  Excited now, yet cautious, afraid of what he might find, he pushed a branch aside. Amazingly, it fell to the ground. He touched more branches. They, too, fell. Spence peered through the new opening and took in a sharp breath as he stared at the back end of the family buggy.

  For one brief instant, he panicked. He couldn’t see inside the buggy. What if Rena was in there? Fear shook him from head to toe. He took a deep breath to calm himself. It didn’t help. Another branch fell beside him. A blue jay screeched and darted away. Spence jerked like he’d been shot. Any more sudden sounds, and he just might piss in his pants.

  Ready should anyone jump out of the surrounding brush, he stepped back several paces and fired off three rounds.

  Matt froze at the sound of the signal. He glanced around the circle of men. “Spence,” he said under his breath, naming the only one who wasn’t there.

  All the men jerked into action at once, mounting up and riding toward the sound of the signal. For one brief second, Matt, Pace, and Travis read the mixture of hope and fear in each others’ eyes. Had Spence found a sign? Or had he found…Rena.

  Nerves screaming, Matt kicked his black roan into a gallop and gripped the reins tight to still his shaking.

  Had Spence found her? Her…body?

  No. She wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t, couldn’t let himself believe she was dead.

  He beat his father and Pace to the clearing by two lengths. There, he got a firm grip on himself and dismounted. He couldn’t panic now. He had to keep his head. Looking around, he took in details.

  An old campsite indicated someone had waited, hidden, for several days. One man, one horse. Then the buggy had come, and two horses had left. One had been range fed. The other had recently eaten grain.

  Matt nudged the grain-filled droppings with the toe of his boot. He looked to Pace.

  Pace nodded. “The gray mare I hitched was grain-fed.”

  Matt forced himself toward the buggy.

  Serena’s handbag lay on the ground beside the left front wheel. Her carpetbag was still inside on the floor board. Nothing in the bag seemed to have been disturbed. Then there was the dress. Matt felt ice form in his veins as he fingered the gray serge material that lay in a torn heap on the buggy floor.

  “She was wearing that the day she left the house,” Pace said.

  Benito, the oldest of the Trevino brothers and foreman of the Triple C, cleared his throat then hesitated. “Señor Travis,” he began reluctantly. “Is it possible…well…that the señorita knew this man was here, met him, and…”

  “And ran off with him?” Spence finished for him.

  No. Matt knew better.

  “If she did,” Pace said, “she didn’t leave willingly.” With his pocket knife, he dug a slug from the trunk of a tree. “This came from her derringer, that little one of Mother’s Rena carries when she travels.”

  “Who?” Matt whispered. “And why?” he shook his head. “I don’t believe she came here and met someone. He had to have met her on the road and forced her here. Any tracks would have been long gone. It’s a miracle we found this at all, this far from the road. You did good, Spence. Damn good.”

  Travis squeezed Spence’s shoulder. “You sure did, Son. We’re proud of you.”

  Spence nodded, swallowed, and blushed.

  “Now,” Travis said grimly. “After a week of wind, followed by that goddamn storm, tracking Serena and whoever took her is going to be damn near impossible.”

  “But at least we know she’s alive,” Spence offered.

  Benito said what no one else wanted to, but what everyone else was thinking. “She was alive when they left here, seven days ago.”

  “She’s alive!” Matt refused to acknowledge any other possibility.

  “I pray this is true,” Benito said fervently.

  “She’s alive,” Pace said calmly. He closed his eyes and took in a slow breath, searching inside himself for that special bond he and Serena had always shared. He reached for her voice, but it wasn’t there. But there was no emptiness, no gaping hole in his soul, as he knew there would be if she were dead. “She’s out there, somewhere. And she’s alive.”

  That was good enough for Matt. He knew she was alive. She had to be.

  When Pace opened his eyes, Matt met his gaze, then gave a sharp nod. “How much grain did you feed the mare?”

  “More than that,” Pace said, indicating the pile of broken manure at Matt’s feet.

  “Pair up in twos, spread out, and zigzag toward the south,” Matt told the men. “That horse had at least one more dump of grain left in her, and she had to shit again sometime. Find it.”

  The men began to mount up, but Travis stopped them. “There’s only about an hour of light left. We wouldn’t get far enough today to make any difference, and we didn’t bring enough supplies. We’ll go home, each man will load a full pack of provisions, and we’ll head out at dawn.”

  Matt started to protest at what he considered an unnecessary delay, but he knew his father was right. And there was Dani. She’d be crazy with worry by now. She would need all of them with her when she learned what they’d found.

  They rode in at dusk. In minutes Dani had a hot meal ready for her family. A similar meal awaited the returning ranch hands at the cook shack.

  Jessica and Joanna were sent to bed while Travis explained to Dani what the men found. Pace went to organize supplies for the search. They had no idea how long they’d be out, so he also arranged for a chuck ­wagon to follow them. The rest of the family gathered in Travis’s study.

  By the time Pace had left the study, there wasn’t much left for anyone to say. Spence finally went to bed. Matt watched his stepmother pace the floor, his thoughts even more tortured than hers. He blamed himself for whatever was happening to Serena.

  Travis sat at his desk and idly sorted through the mail he’d picked up in Tucson but hadn’t looked at yet. There was a new contract from the Army for beef for the reservation, and a letter from his old friend, Cal. Cal’s letters always made him smile, but Travis wasn’t in the mood to be cheered just then. Another letter, this one from Washington regarding the meeting he was trying to arrange with the President to discuss the deplorable conditions the Apaches were forced to endure at San Carlos. Since Garfield was shot last month, Travis didn’t hold out much hope for the meeting.

  Also in the mail was a package for Matt. “Here.” Travis tossed the leather bundle marked “personal” to his son.

  Matt welcomed the distraction from his tormenting thoughts and studied the package. No return address. Who did he know who would send him a personal package? The rawhide string was knotted too tightly, so he pulled his knife from his belt and cut it. The end flap came open. Matt held the p
ackage up and dumped the contents onto his lap.

  His sharp cry split the air as he stared at the hideous thing that fell out. He went light-headed. His stomach heaved to his throat.

  Travis saw it at the same time Dani did. He barely made to her side before her eyes rolled back in her head and her knees gave way beneath her.

  The grisly thing in Matt’s lap was a scalp. A fairly fresh one. With black hair. And a white streak where the right temple should be.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pace was just entering the room when Matt flung his head back and roared in anguish and disbelief. The gruesome thing lying across Matt’s thighs brought a look of surprise, then puzzlement to Pace’s face. “Now why do you suppose someone would go to all that trouble just to make us think Serena was dead?”

  Dani’s eyes fluttered open to stare at Pace.

  “Are you crazy?” Travis demanded, his face grief stricken, his arms around his wife. “That…that’s your…sister’s…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish.

  Matt watched Pace closely. Anything to keep from looking at the thing in his lap. Pace seemed so sure. Matt had never known Pace to be mistaken when it came to anything to do with his twin. His teeth clenched tight, Matt worked up the nerve to touch the long black and white hair lying across his thighs. As he fingered it, his eyes widened and his heart pounded with excitement. “No,” he cried. “It’s not Rena’s!”

  “God knows,” Travis said, his voice shaking with emotion, “I don’t want it to be hers, but are you both blind? Who else has hair like that?”

  “I don’t know.” Matt shook his head. “But it’s not Rena’s. It’s too…coarse, too thin, too curly. Rena’s hair is softer, thicker. Straighter.”

  Pace glared at Matt. “Just how the hell do you know how soft and thick my sister’s hair is?”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yes, damn you, my sister.”

  Matt grinned. “Thanks. I’ll remind you of that one day.”