Mary Connealy (46 page)

A hard hand clamped over her mouth.

Glowing Sun screamed, but no sound got past those hard fingers.

An arm circled her waist like a vise.

She reached behind her head, clawing. She kicked and twisted her body. Wrenching wildly, she tried to break the iron grasp. Then she thought of her knife.

As she reached for it, the man shifted his grip and trapped both her arms, locking her hands to her sides so she couldn’t get to the razor-sharp blade. The man holding her grunted in pain but kept a firm hold. “She’s wild. She don’t know we’re savin’ her.” Rasping breaths and vague, mostly unknown words sounded from behind her, not far up. The man seemed to be only a little taller than Glowing Sun.

From a foot or so farther behind, someone whispered, “Let’s put some distance between us and them Flathead.”

She jerked violently and nearly slipped from his grasp, but then his arms tightened. His smothering hand stayed in place, and her arms were bound even more firmly to her sides.

If she could just scream once, her father would come. Wild Eagle, too. They were promised to each other. Even her younger brother, Thunder Light. Her mother and sister would fight for her. The whole village. They had always protected her.

She hadn’t heard the white language for nearly eight summers, and few of their words were clear.

“I’ll grab her feet. Then we’ll make tracks for the nearest settlement.”

The second man rounded her, and she saw one of her assailants for the first time. His ugly, heavily furred face, his stinking body covered in crudely cut furs, his filthy hands reaching for her.

She lashed out a foot, and he grabbed it, then caught the other and wrapped his arms around her knee-high moccasins. He caught her deerskin dress, wrapping it around her legs like binding. He sneered. A thick scar glowed red across one eye, down into his beard, and up his forehead into his heavy beaver-skin cap.

The man behind her kept a tight hold, solid as an iron clamp on her waist, never releasing her mouth.

She fought them and saw the beading of her dress snap. The pretty beads she’d sewn so painstakingly along her neckline scattered. She wanted to cry. The beads were so dear. She yanked at the man’s arm, substituting rage for sorrow. Rage made her strong, sorrow weak. She’d learned that well, despite the words of the kindly missionaries who told her anger was a sin. Surely it wasn’t a sin to hate men such as these. She cried out in her heart for God to send her family, the Salish.

God save me. Save me from whatever these vile men have in store.

She shouted her fury, but the words remained buried behind the suffocating hand.

The men carried her at a near run away from her village.

Oh why hadn’t she listened to her parents and stayed near safety? She clawed at the wrist of the captor behind her, but he began nearly crushing her, and she quit so she could breathe.

They slipped along, dodging trees, sliding more than walking down the steep, heavily wooded mountain that surrounded her village.

A cold wind warned of approaching winter. If they took her far, her family would have to leave for the winter campgrounds. She would never find them again.

Their tepees were set up along the low valley, surrounding the crystal water rushing through this part of the Bitterroots. It was the tribe’s favorite fall hunting ground. Trout swam thick in the rushing stream, and elk and bighorn sheep were abundant. They could gather food for the harsh winter months ahead.

She left that safety farther behind with every step. Her muffled shouts did nothing to stop the men. Rescue became more and more distant.

A desperate jerk pulled her foot loose. She drove her heel into the man’s belly.

His eyes turned wicked, furious. He snagged her flailing foot and wrapped one arm around her feet so tightly she cried out in pain, but no sound escaped.

The man at her feet swung back a fist.

“Not now.” The man gagging her lifted her higher against his chest, her breath nearly cut off. “How’re ya gonna hit her without hitting me? Knock my hand away, and she’ll get loose hollarin’. We’ll be out the reward her family’ll pay.”

Family.
She recognized that word. What were they saying about her family? She couldn’t bring in a breath. The men roughly pulled her this way and that as they stumbled and ran and moved, moved, moved ever farther from home.

Emerging from the thickest trees, the men picked up their pace. She’d heard horrid tales of the white man, especially from Wild Eagle and Thunder Light, who delighted in scaring her to death. She was old enough to remember that her real parents were good. She understood the Salish people’s fear yet knew the wild tales of evil didn’t apply to all whites. But these looked like the kind her white mother would have feared and her white father would have watched with cautious eyes. She had no doubt they meant her ill.

Too long without a deep breath of air. Too long fighting and turning. Too long terrified. Her head began to spin. She wrenched her neck, trying to find even a small bit of air.

The man stifling her breath gripped her face harder.

Her cheeks burned from the fight. Her thoughts slowed until she felt dull and stupid. The edges of her vision grew dark until she was looking down a tunnel.

No, Lord, I have to stay awake. I have to be ready if there is a chance to escape.

But the hand tightened more. The arm around her waist weighed on her lungs like stone. The eyes of the man at her feet burned evil, as if he only waited for his chance to repay her for that kick.

She shook her head, trying to say no without the ability to speak. Trying to beg for air.

“Horses just ahead. We’ll gag her, and I’ll carry her on my pack mule. We can be far from her village before they know she’s gone.”

“Far…village …”

Those were words she understood. She’d been alone before. She’d lived for weeks in her family’s cabin after her parents died. She’d buried them one by one in the hard, rocky ground. Digging those graves nearly killed her, and she’d prayed that the sickness that was taking her mother, father, and two little brothers would take her, too.

She’d stayed healthy in that house of death, with no idea how to exist except one day at a time. The aloneness after her real family’s death haunted her. To this day, she often woke up screaming to find she’d been trapped back in that deserted cabin.

Into that monstrous aloneness, her new father had come. Though she remembered her terror of the huge, dark-skinned warrior, she had been given no choice. He’d swung her high on his horse and taken her to a new home. A home with so many people she could never be alone again.

“Far…village …”

No air. No hope. No family.

No, no, God, please no.

The swirling darkness came closer and faded to only the red eyes of the man who held her legs. The rest of the world faded to black, but those glowing eyes followed her.

Burning in the darkness like the eyes of Satan.

B
elle jerked away from Silas as if she’d been burned.

He wasn’t sure he wasn’t on fire himself.

His eyes went to that doorway and that gun aimed at him. Again.

Lindsay aimed that rifle at his chest as if he were wearing a big fat target that had been pinned on him for the sole purpose of collecting bullets.

Belle wrenched away from Silas, muttered, “What is happening to me?” and practically ran to the house, ignoring Silas and Lindsay. Then, in a slightly throaty voice, she called out, “Breakfast is ready.”

Silas could smell the eggs and biscuits. He had a long day ahead of him. He’d barely slept the night before. Now he decided without one split second of hesitation to start the day without eating. There was no force short of God Almighty Himself—coming down from heaven with a big stick—that was powerful enough to get him to go into that house and sit all cozy with the Wild Bunch.

He mumbled something about already having eaten and rode out to the steers without looking back, although his hair tingled with the feel of Lindsay and her fire iron drawing a bead on his backside. He was almost out of the yard when he finally heard the door swinging shut.

Just before it closed, he heard Lindsay say, “Ma! How could you—” The door slammed, and whatever else she said was cut off, which didn’t matter, because he was riding away so fast he couldn’t have heard anyway.

He rode into a lush canyon full of fat, lazy cattle, mostly lying down like the contented beasts they were. Belle had a knack for tending cattle; there was no denying that this all-girl crew was doing a good job.

Silas began hollering to wake the herd up, and as they rose he hazed the glossy herd of T Bar cattle toward the notch in the high side of the canyon where Belle had said they had to take the trail out. He admired the healthy animals as he stirred them from their sleep.

Belle had contrived a rickety fence and held them in a box canyon that seemed to have only one entrance. But on the far north side, a fissure cut into the looming cliffs surrounding the canyon.

Silas could see the rubble, some stones as big as a man, that had caved off that fissure over the years. He knew the trail up had been cleared by hand, and he knew, after listening to Belle and her girls at supper last night, that none of her husbands had done the backbreaking work.

Emma was the first of the girls to show up. She had the baby strapped on her back, and Silas had his hands full with not starting to scream. She set right to work without speaking to him. Lindsay was close behind. Then Belle came with Sarah.

No one had spoken; they’d just fallen to work, Sarah included, on a wiry little cow pony that she handled like an old puncher. Belle came and took the baby from Emma, but even carrying an infant on her back, she gave herself no quarter that Silas could see. Still, the sight of that baby and what lay ahead of Silas almost set him to screaming and running.

With his jaw tightly clenched, he kept working until he had all the steers on their feet. A good number of them had already finished filling their bellies with water from the pond that had been dammed up behind a creek. They were starting to crunch on the shoulder-high prairie grass. Silas had shooed them toward the back of the canyon.

Sarah rode straight for the high trail, pushing a few cattle along in front of her. That trail was so narrow and steep the cattle had to go up single file. The stretch wasn’t long but high and treacherous as anything they’d face. Sarah led the string of pack animals and spare mounts tied together on a long rope. That along with a few cattle she pushed left a marked trail for the herd. They liked none of it, but with Silas and the womenfolk punching, once the lazy things began moving, they were contented enough to go where they were told.

The cattle weren’t the only thing being hazed. Silas had been in a haze since Lindsay had broken up whatever madness was going on between him and his boss. He pushed himself harder, hoping to keep himself busy enough to forget those minutes alone with Belle.

With the girls working with him, they had the herd headed in the right direction in minutes. Sarah took the lead with the horses. The cattle trailed after her.

Belle took the drag, and taking his life in his hands, he rode up to her.

“Let me do this.” Every drover knew drag was the worst. Dirty, hot, slow, exhausting. It was a man’s job, and that was the long and short of it.

“I’ve got it.” Belle didn’t look him in the eye.

He wanted to argue. He was all set to argue. Then he saw the stubborn set of her jaw and gave up without a fight. “Fine, you take the first shift.”

“The boss rides drag. I don’t take shifts. Get back to work, unless you’re already tired of the hard labor.” She finally lifted that clenched jaw and looked him in the eye.

“Look, there were two people back there. It wasn’t only me—”

“You asking for your time already, Mr. Harden? I’d hoped you’d stick with us longer than midmorning the first day, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Narrowing his eyes, he thought maybe there was going to be a fight after all. “I’m staying.” He wheeled his horse and rode away before he had to share one more word with the stubborn woman.

Drag wasn’t too hard now, but when they got off grassland and the herd kicked up dust, it would be choking, bitter work. Silas let her stay, although his instinct was to take the worst spot himself. He’d relieve her later when the conditions were worse, and maybe she’d accept it as his duty to take a turn. On a normal cattle drive, everyone rode drag for a spell, but Belle and her prickly pride might make it hard for her to give up the job.

Besides, to take over he’d have to stay there and argue, and right now that was beyond him because he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t remember ever kissing anyone who made him lose his senses quite so thoroughly.

Silas shifted on the saddle and noticed a feisty longhorn with a rack almost six feet across trying to drop back behind the herd and return to the easy living of that valley. He spurred his horse toward the troublemaker, glad for a chance to keep busy dodging horns and hooves. The drive should have been demanding every ounce of his attention anyway. He got to work and firmly ignored the whole Tanner family.

He probably ought to be grateful he didn’t have to take a turn carrying the baby.