CHAPTER 20
* * *
The fact that Catalina’s back wasn’t a bleeding mass of welts and cuts yet wasn’t out of any charitable leanings Ma Fenwick might have held. If anything, it was out of a sadistic streak borne from the brutality of her childhood.
After Catalina’s arms had been made to be wrapped around the tree, Foster had fastened the ends of the ropes to each of her wrists immobilizing her. Behind her, Catalina could hear Ma Fenwick laughing as she paced back and forth, snapping the whip in practice gestures to intimidate her young captive.
Catalina had done her best to tune it out and was mentally attempting to prepare herself for the promised assault. Trying not to think of the pain of the very first lash, she instead began to go through the events that led her here. Her mind formed them into an almost mental version of one of Lijuan’s business ledgers.
One by one, she went down the imagined checklist. First, there had been the decision to finally make her push to land Selena in bed. For no particular reason, she had chosen that afternoon to be the day and had headed over. Had she simply stayed at Cedar Ledge until it was time to accompany Honor Elizabeth and Lijuan into town for their night out, she would have missed the posse’s arrival.
Then there was the impulsive volunteering to join them. All she had to do was remain silent and the men would have left. What if Honor Elizabeth had refused like Lijuan … no, she wasn’t going to put this on Honor. Then Carver getting her gun … how had she let that happen? There were so many missed opportunities to avoid what was about to happen and yet somehow, she had been swept along to the point where she was about to feel the sting of her very own bullwhip. Catalina resigned herself and that had been when Ma Fenwick suddenly stopped her practice.
“You know what, Foster? I’m gonna hold off for a bit. Let her think about the beatin’ that’s to come. Just like that Mexican step-mother used to do to me; get me real nice and scared before she gave me one of her whippings!
Foster looked at his mother with some disappointment in his eyes.
“You sure about that, Ma?”
Ma Fenwick nodded with an evil grin.
“Trust me … it makes it a lot worse having time to stew about the pain to come. Now let’s go back inside. You take a break from loadin’ the wagon and fix me another steak. She ruined mine. Once you’re done, you can get the black girl like you wanted and make her help you.”
Foster was sullen now, but he obeyed his mother. “Yes ma’am.”
With that, Ma Fenwick went over and sneered in Catalina’s face with a laugh and re-entered the house with Foster following her.
Some minutes had gone by now and she knew it wouldn’t be long before Ma Fenwick’s rare steaks were cooked and probably inhaled by the woman, judging from her girth. Catalina had not been idle. There was a small bit of play in the rope and she began yanking each wrist backwards, one at a time, in a sawing motion, hoping to get the rope to start fraying. She was sweating profusely and feared there was little chance in freeing herself before Ma Fenwick returned to extract her punishment on her failed escape attempt.
***
Honor Elizabeth’s trap was set and waiting. After removing the last of the screws, she had fought the temptation to remove the door and slip out. Better to wait, she had reasoned, and secure a weapon, and put Foster out of commission at the same time. In her pocket, she fingered the twenty-five cent piece. If she got out of this in one piece, she would have to keep it as a good luck charm. She made a mental note to buy Blue River a month’s supply of his sweets as a thank you for being responsible for the coin being in her pocket in the first place.
Her crooked index finger was almost flying back and forth between her neck and her choker and once more, she was not even aware she was doing it. Earlier, she had thought she’d heard something that sounded like a shot, but the distance between the house and the woodshed was great and whatever she had heard was muffled. The uncertainty filled her with dread and made it even harder for her to wait for Foster to return, but she held her resolve.
At last, she had been rewarded when she heard the sound of footfalls coming down the path leading to the bottom of the hill. She pressed her ear up to the door to be sure, but a second later that proved unnecessary, as she heard the buoyant voice of Foster Fenwick disrupting the peaceful silence of the night air.
“Emancipation’s over, girl! Time for you to get to work. That’s what your kind was bred for in the first place!”
Honor Elizabeth ignored his ignorant comments and placed the palms of her hands about a foot apart from each other on the back of the door. She waited until she heard him pull the slide bolt open on the other side of the door. Throwing all her strength into it, she gave the door a mighty push.
The door struck Foster square in the face as its momentum sent it heading downward. Foster snapped back, his nose breaking almost instantly, as torrents of blood began streaming down from both nostrils. With Honor’s weight pressed against it, both she and the door fell, smashing him to the ground. Foster’s head struck a fortuitously placed rock at the edge of the path, knocking him out cold.
Honor Elizabeth rolled off from the door and took position on her knees next to it. She flipped it over to get a look at the sight of Foster’s prone body. The woman wasted no time snatching his dragoon pistol from its holster. Happily, she noticed that the man, like her, carried a blade on his hip. Snatching it from its sheath she turned it over in her hand several times.
Cheap, that was the first word that came to mind. Clearly, it was of very poor quality indeed! It also appeared the man had never bothered to sharpen it as well. Honor shook her head. Her knives came from the finest knife store in Phoenix. It was her weapon of choice and she was only going to protect herself with nothing but the best.
The problem was she had a habit of losing them in their numerous run-ins with those out to do no good in Arizona. The sisters liked to tease her about it to no end. Her last one had been lost when she had hurled it into the chest of an outlaw that had been shooting at them as they pursued him along the edge of Comanche Canyon. Could she help it if the man carried it with him as his body had toppled into the abyss? Honor surely hoped she could get her knife back from wherever the Fenwicks had taken it rather than have Lijuan or someone else heckling her about it.
It would have to do, though, she reasoned as her hand tensed around the weapon’s hilt. It was high time she got moving to rescue Catalina. A gurgling sound below her stopped her in her tracks. She looked down and saw him in that moment.
Being on his back, the blood was flowing back down the man’s throat. If she left him, he would drown in his own blood. She thought of Carver, probably lying dead in the clearing and started to move again, but she stopped. Annoyed, she set the weapons down and flipped him over.
“We might need him later,” she thought, trying to justify not leaving him to die. She just wished she had something to tie him up with, but there was no time to search. Snatching up her new weapons, she hurried up the hill towards the Fenwick’s hideaway.
Approaching the back of the house with her pistol at the ready, she could see Ma Fenwick sitting at the kitchen table. The woman was just finishing some type of meal and picking at her teeth. Catalina was nowhere to be seen. That had to mean she was somewhere else in the house or … Honor Elizabeth shook her head and refused to consider the alternative given all the four sisters had been through, including the firestorm in Beacon, and that told her that Catalina would not have fallen … could not have fallen to the likes of Ma Fenwick!
She circled around the side of the homestead, intent of entering through the front to search for her sister when she stopped dead in her tracks upon reaching the front of the house. Feeling one’s heart swell was not just a saying Honor now knew, as hers absolutely did so at the sight of Catalina. Her younger sister was bound to a tree, but she still lived and even appeared to be unharmed.
Looking around and seeing no one about, Honor Elizabeth v
aulted over towards the tree. Catalina saw her when she was halfway to her and felt her knees weaken slightly with relief. The only sure thing in life that all four sisters knew was that they could always count on each other when it mattered most.
Honor could not stop the grin on her face.
“If you are through wrestling that tree, perhaps you would care to join me, Peppercorn?”
Catalina, so happy to see her, didn’t even think of her usual rebuke she gave when everyone but her father used the nickname he had given her. Instead, she sniggered in relief and chortled, “Do the honors, Honor.”
If she’d had her own blade, it would have only taken two quick slashes of the knife next to each of her wrists to free her. But the knife’s condition made her have to work at it from end to end. Soon, Catalina came free. Quickly, she unwrapped the cut part of the rope that still encircled her wrists and discarded the remnants into a nearby bush. Honor put her hands on her hips and just smiled at her, and Catalina threw her arms around her giving a squeeze that was one half “Thank you” and the other half “I love you.”
When the two sisters broke apart, Honor was the first to speak.
“So, what shall be our next move, Cattie?”
Before Catalina could answer, the snapping of a twig near where the Fenwick’s overgrown lawn met the woods caused the pair to instinctively whip around. Honor pointed the captured gun in the direction of the noise, but in astonishment, she let her arm drop and swing to her side.
Standing before them was Carver, a bit battered, but still among the living. He strode over to the women and Honor gave out a second hug in as many minutes.
“Carver! You made it!” she gasped as she threw her arms around him.
While the man started to describe his survival, Catalina kept a close watch on the door to the house. Ma Fenwick could return at any moment. Carver’s words nearly ran together as he breathlessly explained.
At the edge of the clearing, he had been trying to draw fire from the Fenwick’s gang off the posse. He had succeeded all too well as he came under attack from one of the rustlers.
He had been in the process of reloading when another one of them surprised him. As the outlaw was about to gun him down, the most remarkable thing had occurred. Out of the tree the man was standing under came a piercing shriek and a great horned owl had swooped down and began pecking at the man’s head. The terrified outlaw had raised both of his hands to swat it away and his gun had been still in one hand and it had accidently discharged, blasting a hole through his head.
Carver still could not believe his luck. As he ran past the tree, up in the branches, he could not see the nest in the dark, but he heard the cries of several owlets and knew the outlaw had come too close to them and the mother had been protecting her own.
As he was about to continue his charge out into the field, he had halted. Newell and a few others were making their last stand. There was nothing he could do now, as the men were cut down where they stood. Dashing back into the woods, he had intended to return to the sisters, but arrived just in time to see Honor being allowed to put on her boots and the women being taken away on their horses by the Fenwicks.
All the posse’s horses had either been scattered or captured by the Fenwicks, so he knew he would have to pursue on foot. He was just about to follow when the main body of surviving rustlers leading the captured horses came heading his way to regroup with the Fenwicks that had taken the Wildes. Carver had hung back until the last of the rustlers had left.
Both Catalina and Honor Elizabeth were heartened by the further news that seven survivors had emerged from the woods to stand with Carver. They had feared that all the men had been lost and it was especially bitter to Catalina that they were mostly young men, some even younger than her age of twenty-three. At least, not all of them had their young lives snuffed out in this travesty.
Honor inquired as to where the men were now and Carver told her the other men, having learned their lesson, decided it best to head back to the entrance of the Twin Butte valley and await the official posse. Carver had been determined to follow the rustlers in hopes of rescuing the sisters. They had begged him not to go, but he had left, anyway.
If Carver had more to say, Catalina stifled him by holding up her hand. Inside, she could hear the sound of the chair scraping backwards across the kitchen floor by Ma Fenwick’s bulk as she rose.
Catalina turned to them.
“You two ... in the bushes now!” They started to go into the bushes, but then held a hand up.
“No, wait. Honor Elizabeth, I’ll need you to hand me the rope!”
Honor glared at her.
“What?”
“I want her to think I’m still tied up. I’m going to give her a little surprise. Both of you cover me from the bushes.”
Catalina wrapped her arms around the tree again and Honor handed her the end of the rope to each hand and she held them.
Honor, worried sick about the prank made a last-minute warning.
“Whatever you are going to do, you better hope that she does not look too close to see you are merely holding the ends and it is not around your wrists anymore.”
“Don’t worry. This will be over and done with right quick. Go!”
Carver had a confused look on his face, but Honor just gave him a mirthful look and winked at him.
“Let Catalina have her fun with Ma Fenwick. She deserves it.”
The pair took up a position in the bushes with their guns extended, only moments before Ma Fenwick ambled out of the house, swinging Catalina’s coiled bullwhip in her hands. She didn’t even bother to look at Catalina as she passed her, still trying to pick a piece of gristle out of her teeth. Fenwick walked and turned around and stood about five feet behind Catalina’s back. She once again snapped the whip in the air.
Honor’s amusement dimmed and she looked on anxiously, wondering how far Catalina was going to take this. Suddenly, Catalina cried out.
“Please wait! Please, I have something to say.”
Ma Fenwick smiled wickedly.
“Then say it!”
Catalina murmured softly.
Ma Fenwick was beyond impatient and she cracked the whip to emphasize it.
“I can barely hear you! I know you are trying to stall me, birdie!”
She trod the short distance between them and stood behind Catalina, her hot breath once again touching Catalina’s neck as she leaned close to her.
“And it’s not going to work! This is where you get yours. You were talking about my bloody steaks before … they’re gonna be nothing compared to what your back looks like when I’m through,” she said with her foul breath.
She turned and started to walk away. Then as if on second thought, she stopped and began to speak with her back to Catalina.
“You know what, though … I’m gonna get a knife and cut that shirt right off your back so there is nothing between you and this whip that’s gonna give your Mexican hide any protect …”
Fenwick’s eyes suddenly bulged out of their sockets as she found herself being yanked back by a force she couldn’t understand. She dropped Catalina’s whip and clawed at her neck where to her bewilderment, she found a rope had been looped. Ma Fenwick was big and powerful, but Catalina was young and strong, and she had caught the woman by complete surprise when she had used the rope intended to bind her during her suffering and turned it back on the outlaw matron as a makeshift garrote. Fenwick jerked around violently, but Catalina would die before she let go of the rope.
“I will … kill … you …” Ma Fenwick managed to get out, even as she was choking. That only made Catalina constrict the rope further, making it dig deeper into the woman’s windpipe. Even she wasn’t sure how far she would take this. Catalina knew she had every right to finish the woman right on the spot. The spirits of the young men in the clearing called out for revenge, as did those murdered in Cavendish Township. Fenwick was close to blacking out now, but having second thoughts, slowly, Catalin
a released the pressure and let the woman fall to the earth.
Carver and Honor Elizabeth emerged from their hiding place and looked down at Fenwick.
Carver whistled. “Hot damn! I thought you were going to kill her, Miss Catalina,” he said with awe in his eyes.
Catalina smiled.
“She would have deserved it. But in the end, I don’t want the families of all those who died because of her gang to miss out on the pleasure of watchin’ her swingin’ from the gallows. It’s the least I can do for them.”
Catalina said nothing more as she tied Ma Fenwick’s hands behind her as the woman continued to gasp for air from her close encounter with death.
“So that is our plan, I gather. We bring her back and wait with the others, then turn her over to the actual posse when they arrive in this valley?” Honor asked.
Catalina nodded thoughtfully.
“Eventually. First things first, though. I’ve got to go stop the rest of the Fenwick gang from getting away.”
Honor raised an eyebrow.
“May I inquire as to what point ‘we’ became ‘I’?”
Catalina turned to her sister with concern in her eyes.
“I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this to start with, Honor Elizabeth. I went off half-cocked volunteerin’ us. I just figured it was somethin’ Cassie would have done, but she would have found out a lot more about the whole thing first. I’m sorry. Now, I can’t ask you to help me, but someone has to stop them. By the time the real posse gets here, they will be long gone.”
Honor closed the small distance between her and her sister and laid her hands on both of Catalina’s shoulders.
“There exists no world where I am going to stand back here guarding over this reprobate, while you charge off into danger on your own,” she said with a small smirk.
Wilde-Fire: Wonder Women 0f The Old West (Half Breed Haven Book 1) Page 27