by Easy Jackson
Inga laughed. “So little Mrs. Granger isn’t so brave after all,” she taunted.
Tennie beat the door with her fists as hard as she could, wishing it was Inga’s head. Inga only laughed louder. Tennie quit pounding on the door and turned around, leaning against it. She spent the rest of the night standing up, intermittingly kicking whether she felt mice running across her shoes or not.
At dawn, she opened her eyes. The mice were gone. She slumped to the floor, unable to stop herself from lying down.
Later, she felt someone push at the door behind her.
“Get away from door,” Inga ordered.
Tennie scurried to the far wall, crouching in the corner. If they wanted to shove her around, they would have to pick her up first.
Inga opened the door and set a bucket inside. Along with it, she placed two pieces of cornbread on the floor. Sneering, she left the storeroom, but before the door shut, Tennie could see Bod and Ozzie staring at her, with Hawkshaw watching in the background.
Tennie went to the bucket. It contained two inches of water. She put her hand in and drank thirstily. The cornbread looked edible, but she wasn’t hungry. She debated on what to do with it, but decided she’d better eat it to keep her strength up. Besides, she didn’t want to leave anything to attract more mice.
In a little while, Inga again ordered her to back up, opened the door, and removed the bucket. Tennie was glad she had swallowed most of the water. She realized she wasn’t going to get any more that day. Again, she saw the three men watching her before the door shut. The look in Bod and Ozzie’s eyes sent shivers down her spine. It said they wanted more than just a quick feel of her buttocks and legs.
That afternoon, they began drinking. Tennie could hear them talking and ordering one another to pass the jug. She was fairly sure Inga was drinking with them, but she wasn’t sure about Hawkshaw. Occasionally, he said a word or two that proved he was still there. How had he gotten mixed up with the Miltons? He must have overheard them discussing their plans and demanded to be in on it. Hadn’t he already shown a grudge toward Lafayette? Tennie wanted to talk to him but realized it would be hopeless even if she could.
Toward late afternoon, the voices began to slur even more, making it hard for Tennie to understand what they were saying. The door rattled, and Tennie again went into the corner.
Inga opened it, her eyes red and bleary. “The men, they want you out here,” she said, slurring her words.
Tennie refused to move, staring at Inga who was beginning to rock back and forth.
“I will watch. I like to watch.” Inga gave Tennie a frightful smile. “But maybe I will join in. Would you like that, little Mrs. Granger? The men and the woman kissing and licking your breasts? No?”
Hawkshaw walked forward, putting his hand on the door. “If we harm her, Lafayette, if he lives, and her fiancé, and her fiancé’s friends, and all the single men in Ring Bit will hunt us down like dogs and kill us. If we let her go unscathed, they will pay the money, be glad they got her back, and eventually forget about us.”
Inga stared at him. “You are right, Mr. Hawkshaw,” she slurred. “You are always right. Perhaps, you would enjoy something with me. Yes?”
Hawkshaw shut the door, locking Tennie in, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She did not hear Hawkshaw’s reply. Bod said he had another jug somewhere, and after that, they began to argue over how they would spend the money. Hawkshaw abstained.
Tennie knew she was going to have to escape. She couldn’t wait for Lafayette to pay the money or to rescue her or anything else. She had to get out. Staring at the rotten floor, she put her hand in the biggest hole and pulled. The boards squeaked. She stopped. They were drinking so heavily, she thought they would soon pass out. At least, she hoped Hawkshaw was drinking as heavily as the Miltons were.
She went back to her place by the door, peeking through cracks into the room. The Milton men were leaning back in chairs. Inga was sitting nearby in a rocker. Her head lolled to one side, but her eyes were still open. Tennie moved from crack to crack, but she couldn’t see Hawkshaw.
Bod sat up with a crash. “We don’t need him,” he hollered, pulling a gun out from his belt. “And we don’t need his preaching about what to do with that gal, either.”
Inga sat up, but her head wobbled. “We can get money and kill her.”
“By God! We can do what we want to with her right now and kill her any time we take a notion.” Bod slapped the table.
“Hawkshaw . . .” Ozzie began.
“I ain’t afeared of him,” Bod roared.
“A broom handle,” Inga said, ignoring the men and gazing at something unseen. “A broom handle brings exquisite torture.”
Ozzie sat, looking befuddled. He breathed heavily and said to no one in particular, “We ought to have brung one of those young’uns back with us. I like little boys, too.”
“Shut up, Ozzie,” Bod said.
The front door opened and Hawkshaw entered, carrying a jug in his left hand.
“Did you find that other jug?” Bod asked.
Hawkshaw handed it to him in silence. He took a chair and placed it in front of the door, where he could easily watch the others. Turning the chair around, he sat down, resting one arm on the chair’s back and leaving his gun hand free. Bod lifted the jug to his mouth with one hand, his other still holding on to a pistol.
“Reckon they is out looking for us right now?” Ozzie said.
“No,” Inga said. “Remember note said not to search or we kill her.”
Ozzie looked perplexed. “Note?”
The jug paused in Bod’s hand. He stared at his brother. “Ozzie, you handed the stagecoach driver the note, didn’t you?”
Ozzie shook his head, looking as if he was about to cry. “I thought you were going to give him the note.”
Inga, shocked into sobriety, jumped from her chair like a panther. “You did not give them ransom note?” she shrieked. “You fools! You utter, utter fools!”
She began to pace back and forth across the room in anger, clutching a small pistol by her side. The Milton men shrank from her wrath, but she had ceased to pay attention to them. Hawkshaw said nothing but kept his eyes on her.
She came to a sudden stop. “I will take note to Waco at daylight and see Lafayette gets it. They will not suspect woman. I will say in note to give me the money or the girl dies if I do not return with it.”
“But what if they follow you?” Bod ventured, looking more in fear of Inga at the moment than Lafayette and his men.
Inga turned to Hawkshaw. “Hawkshaw will accompany me. He will kill anyone who tries to follow us.”
The three Miltons stared at Hawkshaw. He met their gaze with cool eyes and responded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Good.” Inga stood staring at the floor, opening and closing her free hand in a fist. “They won’t find us. They will search robbers’ nests east, not west where there is no one.” She turned and looked with scorn at her husband and brother-in-law. “Drink up, you fools. Tomorrow, I will be the one to do the job. You will stay home and sleep like dogs.”
Tennie felt so sick, she was afraid she might throw up. It would not surprise her if Inga ordered the men to kill her after she and Hawkshaw left. Inga was no longer drunk, but sitting in her rocker, alert and brooding. They did not light a lamp, and darkness was creeping in, covering the cracks so Tennie couldn’t see. Wiping tears from her eyes, she scooted over, taking off one of her shoes, ready to tackle any mice and use it as a lever to raise the boards as soon as she thought they were sleeping. As she looked over her shoulder at the door, Hawkshaw’s duplicity stabbed her.
She turned back around and waited, watching the hole in the floor with her shoe poised and ready.
CHAPTER 7
Just as the increasing darkness would soon make it impossible to see anything, Tennie spied something black with a curved head begin to rise slowly through the hole in the floor. She gasped, raising her hand to smack what she was
sure was a snake as hard as she could with her shoe. A split second before she did, she realized what was rising up through the hole in the floor was a crowbar, not a snake. She grabbed it, set it aside, and looked through the hole.
“Lucas!” she whispered, catching sight of pale skin and dark hair underneath the house.
He drew close to the hole. “We’re going to set the barn on fire. When they go outside to look, use the crowbar to pull up the floor. We have horses on the east side of the house, hidden in the trees.”
Tennie knew she should order them to get away, to go home, the Miltons were too dangerous, but they wouldn’t listen anyway, so all she whispered was, “All right. Be careful.” She had no doubt whatsoever that her stepsons could set a barn on fire if they set their minds to it. And if anyone was capable of squirming out of trouble, they were.
She heard the sound of a chair crashing and the floor on the other side of her door shaking. Racing to the side of it with the crowbar raised, Tennie stood ready to bash in anybody’s head who opened the door.
Instead, Inga called out, “What is noise?”
Tennie saw a chance and took it. “I’m hitting mice with my shoe.” Maybe if they did hear her pulling up boards, they would think she was warding off rodents.
Inga sniggered. “You cannot imagine how happy the thought makes me.” She walked away from the door, telling the men, “I go to bed. Don’t bother me.”
Tennie lowered the crowbar and breathed a sigh of relief. Sitting down, she hurriedly put her shoe back on, ready to tear a hole in the floor the minute the fire was discovered and praying harder than a soldier caught in the crosshairs of an enemy’s rifle.
For five minutes, she sat waiting with every muscle tense. With Inga supposedly in bed, the Milton men and Hawkshaw said little. She knew by the occasional word spoken or the scraping of a chair they were still there.
Just when she thought her nerves would snap from waiting, the front legs of Bod’s chair hit the floor. “Do you smell smoke? Ozzie! Wake your sorry ass up! I think something’s burning.”
“Huh?” Ozzie said, sounding groggy.
Someone walked to the front door, and it made a creaking sound as it opened. She heard boots on the floor and someone running back into the room.
“Ozzie! The barn is on fire! Inga, wake up! The barn is burning like a son of a gun.”
Tennie heard Inga’s groans, the sounds of rushing feet, a thud as if a chair hit the floor, and the sounds of more boots on the front porch.
She began to attack the floor with the crowbar. The nails squeaked loudly as they were pulled up, and the screeching of wood as it broke sounded like thunder in the night, but no one rushed into the room to stop her.
When she believed the hole big enough to shimmy through, she thought of the mice, snakes, scorpions, and other creepy things living under the house, took a deep breath, clutched her crowbar tighter, and put her feet into the hole. Her dress caught on the jagged wood, and she had to let go of the crowbar. With fumbling fingers, she ripped at her dress, making her way down.
Rusty, Lucas, and Badger were waiting for her at the wall’s edge.
“Come on, Miss Tennie.” Lucas bent down, urging her as he and the other boys shot fearful glances in the direction of the barn.
Tennie left the crowbar and crawled as fast as she could to where they stood. Rusty reached in, pulled her out, and helped her stand. While Tennie gave the barn a backward glance, he began pulling her in the opposite direction, clutching a rifle in his other hand.
They had made a fine job of the fire. While it roared, Bod and Ozzie jumped up and down, screaming expletives. With little time to look at the blaze for more than a few seconds, Tennie and the boys pounded across the hard, rocky ground, plunging into taller grass toward a mott of trees, the smell of smoke filling their nostrils and the sound of furious cursing filling their ears. In the dark, she could see the shadowy outlines of horses hidden among the oaks.
They reached the horses, Rusty still grasping Tennie’s hand. He stopped so short, Lucas and Badger ran into Tennie’s back before they could halt. Rusty stood staring, breathing heavily, and Tennie followed his gaze.
Hawkshaw stood waiting for them.
Tennie gasped but realized he was standing next to his saddled horse, holding the reins in his hand.
“Saddle up if you want to get out of here,” he said.
Tennie could feel Rusty’s hesitation. She looked at the other three horses. “Which one’s mine?” she asked Rusty.
Rusty guided her toward a horse with a saddle. He turned to Lucas and Badger, helping them onto a bareback pony.
As Tennie put her foot in the stirrup of a dried, cracked leather saddle made sometime before the War of 1812, Hawkshaw murmured, “Don’t try to ride sidesaddle.”
Tennie nodded and straddled the horse, grateful for the dark so Hawkshaw couldn’t see clearly how clumsily she got on and how high her skirt got hitched doing so. With lives at stake, it seemed a stupid thing to be thinking.
Hawkshaw eased smoothly into his saddle, reining the horse toward Rusty. With one swift motion, he took the rifle from Rusty’s hand. “I don’t aim on getting shot in the back.” He turned to Tennie. “Follow me.”
With Hawkshaw winding them through underbrush and thick stands of trees, Tennie followed behind Lucas and Badger while Rusty insisted on bringing up the rear. Hawkshaw seemed to know exactly where he was going, and they followed blindly, crashing through brush and brambles they could scarcely see. Tree branches ripped at Tennie’s skirt, but they were traveling so rapidly, she dared not take the time to tuck the folds around her legs. She wondered if the boys, who did not know the evil the Miltons were capable of, thought it was more of an exhilarating adventure.
Barely able to tell direction by the position of the sun during the day, Tennie was completely baffled riding on the back of a swiftly moving horse on a cloudy night. She had no idea if they were heading toward Waco or not.
After what seemed like hours of riding and becoming so tired she could hardly stay upright in the saddle, they approached a clearing. She could make out the shapes of another smaller shack and a corral. They had arrived at the spot Hawkshaw had been leading them to.
He slowed the horses to a walk and took his time approaching the corral. At the gate, he got down and signaled for them to dismount. When Tennie’s foot hit the ground, she almost fell the rest of the way. Hawkshaw led his horse into the corral, and the Grangers followed, too numb to think. There was a water trough half full, and after getting their tack removed, the horses went straight to it. Tennie went to one side and seriously considered hopping in, she felt so dirty.
“There’s a well and bucket over yonder,” Hawkshaw said. She didn’t know if he sounded gruff because he was mad or just exhausted.
Tennie nodded, leaving the horses. Lucas and Badger went outside the corral and plopped to the ground. After drawing the bucket, Tennie drank thirstily before proceeding to wipe the dirt from her the best she could.
Hawkshaw and Rusty approached, Hawkshaw throwing the almost empty bucket into the well and pulling it up again. He drank his fill and handed the bucket to Rusty. Lucas and Badger had fallen asleep on the ground.
Hawkshaw didn’t speak, but Tennie spoke her mind. “I’m not sleeping in that shack if there are mice and snakes in there.”
“The snakes that are outside would have no problem curling up under that pretty dress of yours tonight, but there weren’t any in the shack when I was here last.”
Her tired brain tried to make sense of what was going on. “So, you planned to bring us here? Are we still kidnapped?”
“You state everything as baldly as a skinned onion, Mrs. Granger,” Hawkshaw said. “You are free to go whenever you want, but since the Milton men will soon be after us, you might want to stick together.”
“Would you stop with the Mrs. Granger? I was Miss Tennie in Ring Bit, and I’m Miss Tennie out here.” She looked down at her ragged dress and
mourned. “And my dress is no longer pretty. It’s so torn up, it will have to go in the rag pile when this is over.”
She went to the sleeping boys and picked up Badger, while Rusty helped Lucas up then followed Hawkshaw into the small shelter. Rusty commented that it looked like a cowboy’s line shack. Hawkshaw did not respond.
Tennie thought of something else. “You said the Milton men would be following us,” she said to Hawkshaw as he stood at the door. “What about Inga?”
“I slit her throat before leaving,” he said, opening the door.
Tennie stood still. After a pause, she spoke. “No use being a hypocrite by saying I’m sorry. Why didn’t you shoot the men?”
“In the back? I don’t operate that way. I killed her because she figured I was the one who set the fire and was about to shoot me with that little derringer she carried.”
“But you were ready with a knife so it wouldn’t make noise,” Tennie said, surprising herself for being able to put two and two together when she was so tired.
“I won’t say I’m sorry she tried to kill me,” Hawkshaw said. “Maybe a comment I made about how fast a little coal oil can start a fire in a haystack made her think I had something to do with it. Now, are you going to come inside or not?”
“Yes. I’m much obliged.” For what, she wasn’t sure. The questions she had for him and the boys would have to wait.
Hawkshaw left them in the shack, saying he would stay outside on guard.
* * *
He roused them at predawn, throwing a rope to Rusty. “Tie the horses so they can get their fill of grass. I brought a little feed they can have later.”
He tossed each person a stick of jerky, ordering Lucas and Badger to catch half a dozen rabbits. “I heard you kids bragging in town about killing rabbits. As soon as it gets light enough to see, prove it. I’ll gather some wood and get a fire going.”
“I’ll help,” Tennie said.
“No, you won’t,” Hawkshaw said. “Because if you see a snake, you’ll start screaming.”