Heartbreak Creek (33 page)

Guthrie nodded. They said their good-byes, then the troopers turned north into town, and Declan reined the team east along the track that followed the creek, Amos and the boys bringing up the rear.

As soon as the wagon pulled into the yard, Thomas stepped onto the front porch. Brin and Lucas rushed out after him, but at a word from the Cheyenne, they stopped at the porch railing and watched with anxious faces as he continued past them down the steps. He was limping, Edwina noted.

He was also wearing his Indian attire again, complete with war shirt, leggings, topknot, and eagle feather. But no deputy’s badge. A huge, dark bruise covered one side of his face and he cradled his rifle across one arm.

Edwina glanced around, wondering where Pru was.

After telling R.D. and Joe Bill to help Amos unload the wagon, Declan climbed down and went to meet him. Feeling a prickle of unease, Edwina remained in the driver’s box and watched the two men talk in low, earnest tones.

Something was wrong. Something had happened.

She looked around again. Where was Pru?

Without waiting for help, she climbed down. But once on the ground, she was assailed by sudden dizziness, her heart beating so hard she could feel the thud of it against the walls of her chest.

Clinging to the wheel, she glanced at the children on the porch, scanned the carriage house, the side yards. But still didn’t see Pru.

Then Declan turned. And in that instant their gazes met, she knew with a certainty that almost buckled her knees.

Something terrible had happened.

No,
a voice screamed inside her head.
Not Pru.

Frantically she scanned the yard again, found Thomas looking back at her out of his black agate eyes, and wanted to rail at him for not keeping her safe, for letting something happen. “Where’s Pru?” she called.

Instead of answering, he turned and limped through the side yard to the stables in the carriage house.

Declan walked toward her. She clutched at the wheel, felt the nicked edge of the metal rim dig into her hand, and shook her head, willing him to stop and go back. “No,” she said.

But still he came, closer and closer, until he filled her vision and all she saw was the placket on his shirt with three white buttons.

“Ed, I’m sorry.” He put his hands on her shoulders, to steady her or keep her from falling, she didn’t know. “Pru was taken.”

Taken?
How was someone
taken
? She didn’t know what that meant. “Is she—is she dead?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“What happened? Taken where? By who? I don’t understand.”

“By Lone Tree.”

A buzzing began in her ears, growing so loud she heard only snatches of what he said next. “When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

We should have been back then. But I made him stay.
Because of her, Pru would suffer again. She almost staggered from the pain of it. Then she saw Thomas come around the house leading his horse, and her fury ignited, burning so hot it brought tears to her eyes. “Why didn’t he stop them? Why didn’t he save her?”

“He tried, Ed.”

Shoving her husband aside, she ran toward Thomas.

He stopped and waited for her to come, his bruised face impassive, his eyes as flat and hard as chips of black stone.

She wanted to hit him, claw those eyes, scream her rage in his face.

“How could you let this happen, Thomas? How could you let them take her?”

Favoring his bad leg, he pulled himself up onto his horse’s back. After sliding the rifle into a sling by his knee, he looked solemnly down at her. “I tell you this, Edwina Brodie. I will find
Eho’nehevehohtse
. I will bring her back. That is my promise.” With a nod to Declan, he reined the horse toward the mountains and nudged it into a lope.

“He’ll find her,” Declan said from behind her.

Edwina turned on him, the fury still strong inside her, her thoughts so scattered nothing was making sense. “Why are you still here? Why aren’t you going with him?”

“I can’t leave you and the children.” He put his hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged it away and started toward the stable. “Then I’ll go.”

He pulled her back. “You would only slow him down.”

Without warning, acid rose in her throat. She doubled over, retching, but nothing came out.
Pru. Oh, God . . . Pru.

Declan’s arm came across her shoulders. She hadn’t the strength to fight him, so she let him steer her toward the porch where the children watched. Lucas was pale as parchment. Brin was crying, tear tracks showing through the dirt on her face.

Not now. Don’t cry in front of the children. Wait.
Later she could curl up somewhere and give in to the fear. She would wail and weep and rage until her mind went numb and her throat grew hoarse. Then she could decide what to do next.

“Thomas said Lucinda sent food from the hotel,” Declan told her. “Let’s get the children fed, then we can talk.”

Talk?
About what? What was there to say? What could he possibly tell her that would make sense of this?

When they reached the porch steps, Brin launched herself at her father, Lucas close on her heels. Letting go of Edwina, Declan went down on one knee and took them into his arms, murmuring that they were safe now, he was here, everything would be fine.

Edwina looked away, the need to give in to her own tears like a fist in her throat. How could anything be fine again?

R.D. and Joe Bill came up behind them, and suddenly everyone was talking at once, and Brin was crying and Joe Bill and R.D. were wanting to saddle up and go after Thomas.

Edwina couldn’t bear it and continued on past them, desperate to escape the noise and the pain and the fear that clawed at her insides.

It was a quiet dinner. Edwina couldn’t eat, but stared blankly down at the table, terror lodged like a stone in her chest. The children scarcely spoke, and Declan spent more time watching her than eating.

The part of her mind not steeped in fear wondered why she was sitting here before a plate full of food, safe and secure, while Pru—

“Ed.”

Through a blur of tears, she looked at Declan’s hard, unsmiling face with that furrow between his eyes.

“You have to eat something,” he said.

She looked down at the food on her plate, not sure what it was, or how it had gotten there. Dutifully she picked up her fork. But her fingers couldn’t seem to grip it, and the fork clattered against her plate, then slipped from her grip. Such a simple thing. But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make sense of anything. Couldn’t stop shaking. “I c-can’t—” she began, then clapped a hand over her mouth as a sudden hot wave of nausea churned in her throat.

“Boys, tend your chores. Take Brin with you.”

Dimly she heard the scrape of chairs, footfalls fading down the hall. Propping her elbows beside her plate, she dropped her head into her hands.

But the dam had already burst.

 

 

Declan watched her from his place at the end of the table. He hated to see her cry, but he was glad that her brittle control had finally snapped. He was surprised she’d held herself together this long. That glassy-eyed look had scared him. Like she’d moved to a place he couldn’t reach, and if she kept drifting, she would disappear altogether.

He wanted to go over there and comfort her, but he wasn’t sure how, or if she would even let him, so he kept his seat. “Ed,” he said, finally.

Slowly she looked up.

There was a savage look in her eyes. A fury he hadn’t expected. Yet beneath it, he saw the bewilderment of a stricken child.

“Why, Declan?” Her voice wobbled. Tremors shook her chin. Her eyes were seeping wounds in her pale, tear-streaked face. “Why won’t you go after her?”

“And leave you and the children here alone?”

“Thomas is hurt. He could have stayed.”

“Even hurt, he can go where I can’t.”

He watched her digest that. Then her shoulders sagged in resignation. “Yes. Thomas will find her. He’ll bring her back. He promised.”

Declan clamped his jaw against an unreasoning swell of resentment. He wanted to be the one to find Pru. He wanted to be the one to bring her back and wipe that stricken look from his wife’s face.

“I can’t leave you and the children unprotected,” he said.

She looked toward the window. “I understand.”

He wondered if she did. He wondered if she knew that her pain was eating a hole in his chest. “Ed, I’m sorry.”

She didn’t respond.

Talk to me,
he wanted to shout at her.
Just talk to me.

She didn’t. And so they sat.

Gravy congealed on the plate before him. A fly droned slow circles above the butter crock. Beyond the window, horses paced and whickered as the boys threw hay over the paddock fence.

“What happened?” she finally asked, breaking the long silence.

Declan hadn’t been able to get many details from Thomas before he left, and Brin was still so upset she didn’t want to talk about it, but he related what he knew. “They were fishing at the creek,” he began. “Brin got bored, so she and Pru wandered a ways down the bank, hunting tadpoles. They were about fifty yards upstream when two Arapahos jumped out of the bushes and grabbed for Brin. Pru tried to stop them. Thomas heard her scream and came running, but it was two against one.”

“That’s how he got hurt?”

Declan nodded. “Took a knife in the leg and a rifle butt to his head. When he came to, Pru was gone.”

“What about the children?”

“Jeb Kendal—you met him, that log place down from ours—he’d heard Pru’s scream and had grabbed his rifle and was running toward the creek when the children came tearing out of the brush with an Indian on their tail. When the redskin saw Jeb, he ducked into the trees and the children ran to Jeb. He thought he heard a woman cry out, but wasn’t sure. A minute later, Thomas staggered out of the brush. They searched, but no sign of Pru or the Indians.”

She thought about that for a bit, then asked, “How do you know for certain it was Lone Tree?”

“Thomas recognized one of the braves as his kin.”

“But you’re not sure. It could be some other Indian.”

Declan knew she was grasping at anything to keep hope alive. He didn’t want to take that away from her. But he didn’t want to lie to her, either. “He’s certain. Same war paint, same renegade war party.”

“I don’t understand. It makes no sense that Lone Tree would take Pru. Does it make sense to you? Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, Ed.” Declan sighed and shook his head. “Maybe since they’d missed Brin, they didn’t want to go back emptyhanded. Or maybe they’d seen Pru around the place and thought she was part of my family, and taking her was a way to get at me. Or maybe they took her for the hell of it. I don’t know.”

“What will they do to her?”

The question he dreaded. And one he couldn’t answer . . . at least in a way that would give her comfort. So he told her what he’d told his children and hoped it would be enough. “Thomas will find her.”

She turned toward the window again, her jaw so rigid he could see the twitch of a muscle in her cheek. “He’d better. He’s her only hope now.”

“Ed, I’m sorry. I wish—”

In a sudden, abrupt movement, she stood and began gathering the dirty dishes.

“I’ll do that,” he said, rising to his feet.

“No.” Picking up a stack of plates, she carried them to the counter by the sink. “I need to do something. I can’t sit and do nothing.”

Implying he could.

“I would go if I could, Ed. You know that.”

She didn’t respond. Wouldn’t even look at him.

Defeated, he turned and left the room.

He stayed away as long as he could, mucking out the stalls and nursing his guilt into a fine resentment. What did she expect him to do? Put his family at further risk? Hadn’t he done that already by putting Lone Tree in jail in the first place? Did she think he didn’t feel helpless, too?

Christ.
Just the thought of that crazy bastard getting his hands on Pru made him want to snap the rake handle in his hands.

He knew what the man was capable of. He’d seen the bloody dress, the crushed locket. He’d heard all the grisly details from the trooper who had found the charred, twisted remains of the stage passengers. It sickened him to think of the terrible things that might be happening to Pru right now.

But it sickened him more how glad he was that it wasn’t Ed suffering.

When he left the stalls, the house was dark, the children long in bed. He stopped in the yard and watched night birds loop and soar in the fading sky. On a high ridge, a coyote yodeled, and closer by, hidden in the trees behind the house, water trickling down Elderberry Creek murmured like aspens in the wind. The sound of it soothed him, calmed his frayed nerves. He stood until the last lamp up at the mine winked out, then went inside.

He paused in the kitchen and listened but heard no sound from the main bedroom. He doubted he would be welcome, but opened the door anyway. Just to check on her. Make sure she was all right.

The room was dark. But he saw her form silhouetted at the window, fully clothed. When he stepped inside, she turned but didn’t speak.

Aware of her watching, he hung his hat on a peg, then looked around.

The room was crowded with boxes of items they’d salvaged from the ranch. He hadn’t had a chance to put the bed together, so the mattress was on the floor, taking up most of what space was left. The smell of raw wood and whitewash and smoke-scented bedding hung in the still air.