Dorothy Garlock - [Annie Lash 03]

by Almost Eden

  Maggie ran through the woods toward the creek singin’ one of her favorite ditties.

  Yan-kee Doo-dle is the tune

  Amer-i-cans de-light in;

  ’Twill do to whis-tle, sing or play,

  And just the thin’ for fight-in’.

  “Aee, Eee was wantin’ t’ come, but—”

  Something was wrong. Aee wasn’t there—and the crock of soap was tipped over. Instantly alert, Maggie stood as still as a doe. Then she heard a sound unrelated to the sounds of the woods—a muffled sound. Quickly, and as quietly as a darting wood mouse, she was through the sumac and into the clearing beside the creek.

  There was Aee lying still as death on the ground! And Kruger was on his knees, pulling her skirt up around her waist. So intent was he on what he was doing that he hadn’t heard Maggie enter the clearing.

  “Get way from her!” The words burst from Maggie’s mouth in a shrill scream.

  Kruger jumped to his feet and turned to face her.

  “I vas comin’ for ya.”

  Maggie could see the craziness in his eyes. She took a deep breath, put her two fingers in her mouth and whistled two long loud blasts.

  “Verdammt! Stop dat!”

  Maggie jerked the whip from her shoulder and shagged it back when he took a step toward her. Her eyes never left his face.

  The German watched her with an amused smile. The chance to get her had come sooner than he had thought. He had been watching since the two women had come to the creek and built a fire under the pot. When Maggie had left he had decided to take his pleasure with the other one until she got back, then he would take her away with him.

  “Foolish voman,” he muttered. “Ya tink to hold me off vit’ dat silly vhip?”

  The first blow answered his question. The tip of the lash caught him across the face, cutting a gash in his cheek, laying the flesh open to the bone. He stopped in his tracks and grabbed at his face.

  “Ohhh . . . ow! Gott damn!”

  Wild with fury, Maggie shagged the lash backward and with all her strength brought the thin strip of leather down on the arm he had thrown up to protect his face. He was bleeding where the forked tip had taken away skin. He let out another helpless bleat of rage, tried to catch the punishing strip of leather and discovered it was like trying to snare a striking rattlesnake.

  Maggie went after him with a vengeance. Again and again, she cast, catching him on the ear, the shoulder, the neck. Flesh and blood flew. He backpedaled.

  The only weapons Maggie had to use against this crazed man who outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds were the whip and her powerful voice. She used both. While she stalked him, she took another deep breath.

  “Y-oo-al-al-al-ee. Y-oo-al-al-al-ee. Y-oo-al-al-al-ee!” The yodeling cry resounded throughout the woods.

  “I kill dat breed, he come—”

  Kruger managed to get the knife from the back of his belt. When he brought it forward, she opened the back of his hand and he dropped it before he could use it. He bellowed with rage and stooped to pick it up. Maggie’s whip ripped open his shirt from shoulder to waist, drawing a long bloody line across his bared back.

  She was tiring. She allowed the whip to wrap around his arm once, but jerked it away before he could grab it. Another mistake like that and the whipping would be over.

  Otto Kruger was like a wild man. The blood that ran down his face mixed with the froth from his mouth. He roared with rage, but he did not retreat. Taking the lash full in the face, he threw out his arms and lunged at her.

  “Drop, Maggie.” Light’s commanding voice came from behind her.

  Kruger was only a few feet from her when she threw herself to the ground. Light’s knife sailed over her, sure and swift. Kruger staggered back, stumbled over his feet and fell.

  “She meine . . . voman—” They were his last words as blood gushed from his mouth.

  Light stood over Kruger until he was sure he was dead. Then he knelt beside Maggie and took her in his arms.

  “Mon trésor! Mon amour!” His voice was hoarse with worry.

  “Ya killed him, didn’t ya? I knew ya’d come.”

  “I killed him. I’ll always come when you call, my sweet pet.”

  “Aee! He hurt Aee.” Maggie turned her head to look around.

  Eli, breathing hard, burst into the clearing. His eyes passed over Kruger lying on his back, Light’s knife in his chest. Then he rushed to where Aee lay unconscious on the ground, her white limbs exposed.

  “Godamighty!” He pulled her skirt down over her thighs. “What did that crazy bastard do to her?” he demanded of no one in particular.

  She looked so . . . defenseless lying there. She was no longer the proud, lippy woman, but a young, pretty girl who had been overpowered by the German’s superior strength. Eli turned Aee’s head. He could see that her cheek had been cut and bruised, and her lips were swollen and bleeding. He cursed again. The bastard had hit her in the face with his fist.

  Then fear of something even worse than the blow came to his mind. Without hesitation he flipped up her skirt. Her underclothing had not been disturbed. Thank God! He had not raped her. Eli quickly covered her thighs again as her father and Paul arrived.

  Aee was revived with a cloth dipped in the cold creek water. She sat up and stared dazedly about. What was the Swede doing there? He looked worried and was supporting her with an arm around her back.

  “Don’t try to get up just yet. He hit you pretty hard.” Eli took the wet cloth from Paul and gently wiped the blood from her face.

  “Where . . . is he?”

  “In hell where he should have been sent days ago,” Eli said passionately. “It’s my fault, Aee. I saw him the day of the celebration and let him go. And I was sure he had gone downriver after he busted up my boat.”

  “Maggie?”

  “She’s all right.”

  In the safe haven of Light’s arms, Maggie told him what had happened. The marks on Kruger’s body spoke of the vicious fight the small woman had waged against the crazed man.

  “If he’d caught the whip, I was goin’ t’ throw the knife.”

  “You did right, my treasure.” Light gently brushed the hair back from her forehead and placed his lips there.

  He was proud of her. She had dropped to the ground the instant he spoke so that he could throw his knife. But now, reaction had set in, and he trembled at the thought of the danger she had been in.

  Maggie touched Light’s cheek with her fingertips. “I knew ya’d come,” she said again.

  After making sure that Aee was all right, MacMillan squatted down beside Light and Maggie.

  “Yore little woman shore knows how to use that whip,” MacMillan said. “She held him off till ya could get here. Ma’am, I ain’t never seen nobody move so fast as yore man did when he heard ya whistle. One minute he was there, next he was off like a shot. We knowed somethin’ was wrong. It was like tryin’ to follow a scalded cat. We couldn’t keep up. Then we heared ya yodel. I ain’t never heared nothin’ like it.”

  “Is Aee all right?”

  “She’s got a busted lip. She don’t seemed t’ be hurt none, but she’ll be mad as a hornet.”

  Maggie leaned up and put her lips close to MacMillan’s ear.

  “He . . . was goin’ t’ get in her . . . drawers. But he didn’t—”

  MacMillan was startled by the frank words. Then he nodded.

  “I thank God for it. And ya too, ma’am, for savin’ her.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I ain’t goin’ to just walk off and leave the cloth in the washpot,” Aee protested.

  “To hell with the cloth!” Eli held her elbow securely in his hand and walked her back to the cabin. Then he stood by while her mother and sisters fussed over her.

  With a wet cloth held to her face, more to hide it from the Swede and the rivermen than to ease the ache, Aee listened to her father telling her mother what had happened.

  “Miz Lightbody whistled, then l
ashed ’im with the whip. Lightbody heared that whistle an’ took off like a scalded cat. Little woman’s got a powerful voice. Did ya hear that racket she made?”

  “It was odle, odle, odle, Pa,” Dee said. “Reckon I could learn it?”

  “I bet ya could, sis.” MacMillan pulled his second youngest daughter up onto his knee. “Why don’t ya ask Miz Lightbody t’ show ya how.”

  At Mrs. MacMillan’s suggestion Dixon went with Bee and Cee to the creek to finish washing the cloth. The girls were leery of going there alone so soon after Aee had been attacked. Bodkin stayed at the homestead and turned the crank on the corn grinder for Mrs. MacMillan, who was still weak from giving birth. It brought to Eli’s mind how readily the two rivermen had been accepted by the MacMillans.

  Did Bodkin think he’d have a chance with Aee if he got in good with her mother? Eli scoffed at the thought of the two of them together. MacMillan’s eldest daughter needed a firmer hand than the riverman would give her, and Eli decided to tell MacMillan so at the first opportunity. She would be miserable with a bumpkin like Bodkin.

  As the thought came into Eli’s head, he realized he had made a rhyme. Bumpkin Bodkin. A chuckle bubbled up and he glanced at Aee. She was looking at him. Their eyes met; she lifted her chin and stared at him defiantly. Hell and high-water! He’d done it now. She thought he was laughing at her!

  * * *

  The rest of the day was spent in almost awed silence.

  Aee’s and Maggie’s narrow escape from the madman had shaken everyone at the homestead, even little Eee, who cried when she saw her sister’s face. All felt relief knowing that the mad German was dead.

  “God was with us this day,” MacMillan declared as he and Paul left to dig a grave for Kruger.

  They each took an arm and dragged the body to the knoll where the other rivermen had been buried. The soil was soft and the digging easy. They had almost finished when Many Spots and two of his warriors rode in to speak to MacMillan.

  “How do, Mac.”

  “How do, Many Spots.” The two men shook hands.

  “Downriver we find big boom gun.”

  “How big?”

  “This big.” Many Spots curled his hands to form a large circle.

  “A cannon?”

  “Big,” he said again, shrugged, and looked down at the dead man. “Who kill?”

  “Sharp Knife.”

  “No Hair,” the Indian said with disgust.

  “Reckon he warn’t worthy of hair.”

  “That is so. Where Sharp Knife go?”

  “He went to look for the canoe this one came in.”

  “He will find it.” Many Spots looked at Kruger’s body with disgust. “Scalp with no hair! Nothing to hang on belt.”

  “It’s a shame,” Mac agreed dryly. “Seen any sign of Delaware?”

  “Delaware go that way.” Many Spots pointed across the river toward the south.

  “That is good.”

  “This many canoe comin’.” He held up two fingers. “Three, four days upriver.”

  “Trappers?”

  “Bring furs and bear oil.”

  Having said all he had to say, Many Spots motioned to his warriors and they rode away.

  Paul watched him leave, then turned to MacMillan.

  “How does he know that? He’s been down river.”

  MacMillan scratched his head. “Beats me. He may know the canoe carries bear oil because of the kind a canoe it is. When the dugout is made, two partitions are left in the middle. They pour bear oil in the center compartment. A skin is drawn tight over the top. Bear oil sells good in St. Louis.”

  Paul threw out a few more shovelfuls of dirt while he absorbed this information. When he thought the grave deep enough, he climbed out.

  “Well, guess we know what the big noise was.” MacMillan stuck his shovel in the pile of dirt beside the grave.

  “Vega’s boat blew up.”

  “Reckon Kruger did it?”

  “It’s sure we won’t find out from him, m’sieur.”

  “Wonder where he stashed the canoe.”

  “Light will find it. He took Caleb and Maggie with him.”

  “Don’t reckon he’ll let her out of his sight fer a spell. She’s got more guts than some men I knowed. She could’a run off, but she stayed an’ fought the bugger. Kept him off my girl.”

  “She’s a different kind a woman, m’sieur. I’ve never seen two people that were more suited to one another than she and Light. Mon Dieu, this bastard’s heavy.”

  Not too gently, Paul and Mac lifted the body and placed Kruger in his final resting place. MacMillan looked down. Kruger’s dead eyes stared up at him. He was a man far from home, being placed in a lonely grave with no one to grieve for him. But there was no pity in MacMillan’s heart.

  “Open wide ye gates a hell, yore son is comin’ home.”

  “Very poetic.” The homesteader’s words were a surprise to Paul.

  MacMillan grinned. “Read that some’rs.”

  The grave was filled quickly. When they were finished, Paul pulled his pipe and tobacco from his pocket, packed the bowl and offered the sack to MacMillan.

  “Eli thinks Kruger may have filled his canoe from the boat before he sunk it.”

  “It’s what I’d a done.”

  “What do ya think of my friend Eli, m’sieur?”

  “Well . . . he’s a moody feller. Can’t say as I got anythin’ against him. But I’m thinkin’ he’s got somethin’ against Lightbody. Two of ’em don’t talk much.”

  “It’s nothing that won’t be worked out . . . in time.”

  “Is it the woman?”

  “He’s worried about Light takin’ her off into the wilderness all by himself.”

  “If anybody can take care a her, he can. I’d hate to be the one to try and keep her from goin’ with him. ’Sides, a man ain’t got no business gettin’ ’tween a man an’ his woman.”

  “Eli knows that. I’ve known him since he was a lonely skinny lad working on the docks for a pence to give his ma. Grew up to be a good man. Honest and hard-working. I’d trust him with my life—and have many times.”

  MacMillan took his pipe from his mouth. “What’er ya singin’ his praises for, Paul?”

  “Am I doing that?” Paul chuckled, then answered his own question. “Guess I am. Eli’s like a son . . . well, more like a brother. I’m not old enough to have sired him.”

  “It’s plain ya want me t’ think well of ’im.”

  “I do. ’Cause I’m thinking he’s kind of sweet on your girl.” Paul looked away and drew on his pipe.

  “Aee? He’s wastin’ his time. She don’t like ’im.”

  “Women act like that sometime,” Paul said, as if he’d had vast experience with women.

  “Like they don’t like ’em when they do?”

  “I got five sisters,” Paul lied. “A woman is afraid a man won’t return her affection so at times she acts as if she can’t stand the sight of him.”

  “Hmm.” MacMillan puffed on his pipe. “When any one of my girls takes a man, he’ll be one she chooses.”

  “Be sure it’s a good man, m’sieur. They’re fine girls.”

  * * *

  Paul and MacMillan went downriver to find out what they could about the big boom gun, as Many Spots described it. They had no trouble finding the site. The smell of rotting flesh would have led them to it even if they had not seen the circling scavengers and the iron barrel amid the charred rubble. Paul wondered why Many Spots had not mentioned the carnage.

  They beached their canoe and walked along the sandbar strewn with charred debris. A small section of trees and brush along the riverbank had also burned. The pieces of bodies thrown out of reach of the fire were causing the stench and attracting the scavengers that had been picking and gnawing on the body parts.

  “Mother a Christ!” MacMillan muttered when they passed part of a head with a few blond hairs attached to it.

  Fish or crabs had nibbled on part o
f a torso that lay half in, half out of the water. A gold watch chain was hooked in the vest buttonhole. Paul turned away.

  “We . . . should bury them, m’sieur.”

  “It would be the decent thin’ t’ do. Thin’ is, I ain’t sure I’m that decent.”

  “At least . . . the women—”

  “—If we find somethin’ to dig with.”

  * * *

  In the middle of the afternoon, Light, Maggie and Caleb returned with Kruger’s canoe. Caleb had suggested that the German might have gone upriver where the bank was high and several rock formations hung over the water. When they came to a place where the reeds were bent down, Light turned in. The canoe had been well hidden.

  Caleb paddled the light birch-bark canoe back to the homestead. Heavily laden, it sat low in the water, and Light didn’t think it would have lasted a day in rough weather. The German had taken a bale of tobacco, a keg of whiskey and tools to build a boat.

  Eli was pleased to have the tools back. He was having a difficult time finding the ones Kruger had thrown overboard before he sank the boat.

  When MacMillan and Paul returned, the homesteader gave a brief description of what had happened to the Vega boat to his wife and older daughters and a more detailed account to the men. The two crewmen from Vega’s boat listened in chilled silence, knowing that they had escaped being on the boat by the skin of their teeth. They were more than grateful to the man who had taken them in. Already they had decided to stay here and help MacMillan build his village.

  It was agreed that later the cannon might be salvaged and brought to the homestead. There was not much likelihood of anyone’s running off with it.

  Light took no part in the discussion. Come morning he planned to visit the Osage camp. After that he and Maggie would choose a place to spend the winter. With skins and fur bought from the Osage, he could put up a tight, temporary shelter in a few days.

  Eli, on the other hand, was very interested in what Paul and MacMillan had to say about the explosion until he learned that nothing large enough to use to repair his boat had been left. He mulled over what he could do. The quickest way to get boards would be to use the ones from the top of his shed and replace them with a canvas covering. Then what? All that was left of his cargo was a few tools, the gunpowder stowed in MacMillan’s caves, the rifles, a keg of whiskey and a bale of tobacco. It was not enough to pay for a winter’s lodging at the Bluffs and to buy furs to bring back in the spring.