“Ya, boss, ya.”
In the sudden silence, an explosion ripped through the night and rocked the train. Instinctively, Jessie knew there were more than just the two men. Someone had just blown open the express car.
Jessie’s heart hammered in her chest. With a man before her and one behind, she couldn’t get away. While the one fumbled to cover his face again, the “boss” grabbed her arm in a bruising grip. “She’s seen you now. We’ll have to take her with us.”
Jessie whirled to object, plead, scream. Whatever it would take to change his mind. But what she saw locked the words in her throat. Captain Renard lay sprawled on his bunk, his chest bare, the sheet covering him from his waist down. The bandit poked two fingers against the captain’s face. The captain’s head rolled limply. The exposed side of his face and head, along with the pillow where he’d lain, were covered in blood.
Violent trembling seized Jessie. “You’ve killed him!”
The man’s evil laugh sent icy fingers of terror around her throat. “Yeah. I did, didn’t I?” Then he doubled up his fist and swung at her.
Jessie tried to jerk away. She wasn’t fast enough. Pain unlike any she’d ever known exploded along her jaw. Everything went black.
“Ah, hell, boss,” Sven whined. “She’s too pretty to hit. What’d you do that for?”
Wade glared at the big Swede. “Just get her out of here. We got what we came for.”
Sven tossed the woman over his shoulder and shuffled toward the door, grumbling. They hadn’t gotten a damn thing, except the woman. He hoped to hell the boys in the express car did better.
Wade followed, backing slowly down the aisle. None of the passengers so much as poked a nose out to see what was happening.
“Anybody who steps foot out of this car in the next twenty minutes is dead. We’ll be watching.”
Outside, the five men met next to the stock car where Burt had their horses saddled and waiting. “You get anything?” Wade asked Hank.
Hank’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as he hefted a second canvass Wells Fargo bag into his saddle bags. The clink of coins made him laugh. “Plenty for all of us.”
Wade laughed with him. “Okay. Let’s split up. Hank, you go south and west with Sven. Get that girl away from here and make sure she can’t identify him to anybody. She gets loose, I’ll kill the stupid bastard. Burt, you and Pete head north. I’ll circle around, and we’ll meet in Lordsburg in three days. And Hank,” he added, “if you get lost along the way with all that money…”
Hank chuckled. “I wouldn’t even think of it, pard. If you’re worried, we can split it up right now.”
“No time. The engineer is already backing up the locomotive. In an hour the news will be on every telegraph line along the Southern Pacific. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The men mounted, with Sven throwing the woman face down over the front of his saddle. He patted her backside, covered only in a thin night dress, and grinned. “Gonna have a little fun before we get rid of her.”
Wade eyed the woman’s bare, shapely calves hanging down the left side of Sven’s horse. Yeah, he’d like to get a little of that himself, but there wasn’t time. There would be plenty of women for him in Lordsburg.
As the men rode out in different directions, Wade slid open the second stock car and fired in the air. Dozens of overcrowded, thirsty, terrified sheep set up a godawful racket and thundered out of the car.
Wade then scattered the remaining horses before riding away alone.
He’d done it. He had killed Blake.
God, but life was sweet.
As his horse carried him into the night, victorious laughter trailed in his wake.
Chapter Four
Someone was banging on his head with a hammer. That was the only explanation Blake could come up with for the unbearable, pounding pain in his head.
“Captain? Captain, can you hear me?”
God, why was somebody screaming in his ear? He groaned. Even that sounded abnormally loud.
“He’s alive. Thank God.”
Alive? They had to be kidding. He felt like he’d been trampled straight to hell by a herd of angry buffalo. He blinked, but saw only a blurry mass. Several seconds passed before he focused on the anxious faces hovering over him. The salesman from across the aisle. An old woman and her widowed daughter.
What…? Then he remembered. “Jessie.”
“How badly are you hurt, Captain?” the salesman asked.
“Jessie! Is she all right?” He pushed up onto one elbow. Pain exploded in his head.
Hands pushed him back down. “Just take it easy, son. You’ll be all right, but you ain’t going anywhere just yet.”
Something pressed against the side of his head, where the worst of the pain had settled. The agony of the pressure nearly blinded him.
“Ah, as I’d hoped. Just a crease. Wouldn’t you agree, ma’am?” the salesman asked of the older woman.
“Where’s…Miss Colton?” Blake managed around the pain.
“There now, Captain,” the woman said. She took the cloth from the salesman and dabbed at Blake’s head. “Let me clean this up so we can see exactly how badly you’re hurt.” Each touch felt like a blow from a sledge hammer.
Blake had had enough. “I’ll live.” He grabbed the rag from the woman’s hand and rolled to the edge of his bunk. The woman and the salesman had to scramble away to give him room. The movement rocked his stomach and sent pain slicing through his head. He forced himself to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bunk. And damn near blacked out.
Once his vision cleared and his stomach settled, he felt steadier. Until he realized no one was meeting his gaze. “Where’s Miss Colton? Tell me, dammit!”
Slowly, the old woman raised her gaze. “They took her, Captain. The train robbers, they took her.”
Pain, worse than that in his head, seized Blake’s chest. The mere thought of beautiful, delicate Jessica Colton in the hands of vicious criminals squeezed the breath from his lungs. Tortured thoughts of what they would do to her gnawed at his gut like a giant rat.
If only she’d stayed still. If she hadn’t been trying to help him. If she hadn’t taken such an outrageous chance by trying to save his own worthless hide—and succeeding, by damn. She was the reason he was still breathing. And it would cost her her life, at the very least.
“Don’t torture yourself so, Captain,” the old woman whispered with a pained expression. “There’s nothing you can do for her now.”
Nothing he could do? The hell there wasn’t. He’d be damned if he’d sit there in his drawers and do nothing. “How long ago?”
The salesman shifted anxiously from foot to foot. “About twenty minutes. But it’s pitch black out there, hours ’til sunup.”
“How many hours?”
With anxious fingers, the man dug his watch from his vest pocket. “Just over two.”
Blake cursed. Too damn long. He couldn’t let them get that far ahead of him. He had to go after her now. He turned to reach for his clothes. “What’s all that noise?” He started to nod his head toward the window, then thought better of it. The slightest movement still brought excruciating pain.
“The bandits opened up the stock car and turned the sheep loose. They’re all over the place, stinking up the countryside.”
Blake slid back behind his curtain and pulled on his clothes. It took him longer than it should have; when he moved too fast, his head screamed and his vision blurred. Damn, how the hell was he going to sit a horse? If he could find a horse.
By the time he stepped off the train, he was feeling slightly better. The old woman had bandaged his head, then insisted he eat some cheese and bread from a sack of food she’d brought with her. Then she had handed him a bundle of cloth.
“What’s this?”
The old woman met his gaze squarely. “Your young woman was in her night dress.”
Blake started to object. Jessica Colton wasn’t his. But the admissio
n, offered only in his mind, left him feeling curiously empty inside. He kept his mouth shut.
“When you find her,” the old woman said, “she’ll need clothes.”
Not “if” he found her, but “when.” Blake wished he was as certain as the woman was that he would find Jessie. That he would find her in time. That he would find her alive.
A chill skittered down his spine.
Outside, darkness and chaos reined. Sheep, glowing dirty white in the black of night, ran everywhere, chased by angry, frustrated men.
The locomotive had backed up as soon as it had realized the cars had been uncoupled, but with the damn sheep all over the track instead of in the stock car where they belonged, the conductor hesitated to recouple and pull out.
With the help of a young boy who thought the whole train holdup and resulting sheep-chase a great adventure, Blake rounded up one of the passenger’s horses that had been turned loose from the last stock car. Little good it did him, however. Not until he had more light and could pick up a trail.
And when he had more light, frustration nearly strangled him. There were too many trails. Tracks led off in six different directions. No one knew how many robbers there were, but the shallower of the tracks, indicating less or no weight on the horse’s back, were no doubt left by riderless horses.
Finally Blake found what he’d been looking for—tracks set deeper into the ground than the others, indicating the horse carried an extra load. There were two sets of the deeper tracks, but they followed the same trail. One of those horses carried Jessica Colton. Blake was going to get her back.
That was all he thought about as he followed the trail southwest from the rail line. He was going to get Jessie back.
Then he had to stop thinking of her, because he began imagining what she must be going through, seeing a dozen different tortures in his mind that she might be subjected to.
He shook off the thoughts and worked on his anger. Every mile he rode after the kidnappers took him that much farther away from exacting his final revenge on Geronimo. How the hell was he supposed to get to Florida if he had to traipse all over the damn countryside after a woman he barely knew?
Just why was he going after her? Hell, he’d never played the hero before. She might be a damsel in distress, but he was no knight. The closest thing he had to shining armor were the brass buttons on his uniform, and they needed polishing. Even his trusty steed was borrowed.
The pain in his head grew worse as the sun rose higher and burned hotter. Now and then—too often—his vision blurred. Blake cursed the wound and the weakness it brought that made him want to stop and rest.
But he couldn’t rest. He had seen that gun pointed directly between his eyes, had seen the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. And he’d seen that soft, delicate hand belonging to Jessica Colton as it struck the gunman and threw off his aim.
Goddamn. She’d saved his life. He still couldn’t figure it. He’d never known a woman to act with such courage and strength of purpose. But then, he’d never really known many women, and the ones he did were soft or weak or frail or cold. Or at least presented that impression.
But Jessie…her name came easily to his mind. As easily as her laughter had floated around him last night. Damn. What was she having to pay, even now, for the rash, foolish, courageous act of saving his life?
Again he told himself not to think about it. He checked the rifle in the saddle holster—courtesy of the owner of the horse—and the revolver at his hip, then the long-bladed knife in its sheathe on his belt. He had to keep his mind focused on finding her. Her captors had nearly three hours on him. Judging by their tracks, they were moving at a good clip. He would have to move faster.
He knew he was gaining on them. Their horses were more heavily laden, and he’d spotted three places on the trail so far where they’d stopped to rest. At each stop, dealing with a hostage, watching to make sure she didn’t escape, hiding her from a chance encounter with others, would slow them down. He only prayed they didn’t slow down long enough to…
No. He wouldn’t think about what they could do to her if they stopped for longer than a few minutes. What they undoubtedly would do to her when they stopped for the night. It was unthinkable. Yet he couldn’t stop the churning in his gut.
Until Jessie, Blake had never actually known a white woman who had lain with an Indian. He’d always supposed they would have to be lower than a snake’s belly to spread their legs for a savage. Especially for an Apache. But no woman deserved what he instinctively knew these criminals had in mind for her. No woman. Especially not Jessie. Dear God, not Jessie.
Disregarding the throbbing pain in his head and the fuzziness at the edges of his vision, he urged the horse faster.
Bile rose from Jessie’s stomach and threatened to choke her. With grim determination, she forced it back down. She would not give her kidnappers the satisfaction of knowing she was so scared she was about to retch.
There were advantages to finally sitting upright, rather than being draped belly-down over the saddle as she had been, but a calm stomach wasn’t one of them. The new position gave the Swede’s big, dirty hands access to the front of her body. His vile touch contributed to the urge to gag.
Still, the occasional pinches to her thighs and breasts weren’t nearly as sickening as when she had been face down before him. Then, he had run his hand up beneath her night dress and rested his flat palm and splayed fingers on her naked backside. She had felt his touch the instant she had regained consciousness as they had galloped away from the train.
She could only thank God that the big Swede had some small sense of decency—or whatever—that made him sit her upright before they had splashed into the wide, muddy waters of the Rio Grande. Otherwise, she might have drowned.
Since leaving the river they had traveled through one rugged canyon after another, each one rising closer to the tops of the bluffs until bluffs turned into jagged hills. These rose toward more jagged desert mountains in the distance, and the land became even rougher, the cactus larger, the going slower.
Mexico. Jessie’s heart thundered with renewed fear at the thought of it. Somehow, crossing the border made her feel even more desolate and alone. Abandoned. There was no one to care, no one to even know she was missing except her fellow passengers on the train, and they didn’t know who she was. The only one who’d known her name had been…Blake.
It was ironic how easy it was to think of him by his given name now that it was too late. She couldn’t believe he was dead. A sharp ache stabbed through her heart. In her mind she could still see his eyes, dark and glowing. Fierce and full of disdain one minute, sparkling with laughter the next. Gone. Forever closed now, because of these…animals.
Maybe if she hadn’t acted. If she hadn’t hit the man, hadn’t shot a hole in his ear. Would Blake still be alive? Had her reckless interference gotten him killed?
Her stomach heaved again.
“How much do you think we could get for her at Juarez?” the Swede asked his partner.
Dear God. Jessie concentrated on not letting her reaction show. She didn’t have to be told what he meant. In Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, women were frequently sold to brothels.
The second man was the Swede’s opposite in nearly every way. Where the Swede was brawny, his partner was lean and wiry. The Swede was blond, fair skinned, blue eyed. The partner’s hair, skin, and eyes were dark. The Swede moved with slow, deliberate motions. The partner was quick and jerky, as though nervous.
His leering gaze slithered over her, leaving her chilled in the afternoon heat. “I know a couple of places that would give us top dollar for a yellow-haired darlin’ like her. More, if she’s a virgin. ’Course, we don’t know that she is, do we?”
The Swede’s low chuckle made the bile rise in her throat again. “No, but we could find out. ’Course after that, she wouldn’t be a virgin, would she? I think she’d be worth losing the extra money for, ya?”
It was
hard to control the tremor that shook her at the partner’s eager agreement. They were going to rape her. As surely as the sun would set in the west, this night would see the end of whatever innocence and dignity she had left.
Not as long as I have breath in my body, she silently vowed. She was weak with pain and hunger, so thirsty she thought her throat might crack, and totally, utterly terrified. But Colton blood ran hot and fast in her veins. She would fight with every last drop that pumped through her heart.
One by one, she took stock of her weaknesses and strengths.
Her weaknesses were many. The pain was nearly unbearable. She hurt everywhere. Her stomach and ribs had taken a pounding all morning as she’d hung in the awkward, undignified position draped over the saddle. Her wrists and ankles were raw where the ropes had bound her until they’d untied her at the river. She could only thank God that neither the Swede nor his partner had thought to tie her again. Blood still trickled from the worst of the abrasions.
Then there was her back, which felt as though it might snap in two from being forced into an awkward angle for too long—first when she’d been belly-down over the saddle; now as she sat sideways before her captor and tried to keep from brushing his sweaty chest.
And her skin. Oh, God, every inch of her skin. The sun had blistered her through the thin linen of her night dress, not to mention her exposed face and hands and feet. Even the bottoms of her feet were burned.
She’d had nothing to eat in nearly twenty-four hours. No sleep, except that of unconsciousness from the blow to her head the previous night.
Behind her eyes, the throbbing had grown steadily worse throughout the day, but her vision was still clear.
As for her strengths, they were so puny as to be laughable. She had virtually none. She did have surprise on her side. She had been so quiet all day, they wouldn’t be expecting her to try anything. And if she could manage to get a horse, she was a good rider. Except for the slight problem of numb legs and a dead backside. How could she ride astride in one of their huge stock saddles if her legs were numb?
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