OUT OF THE DARKNESS (THE PRESCOTT SERIES) (3 page)

S
he rubbed her temples and concentrated on finding a way out of the woods. People, just as animals, needed water. She imagined it would be wisest to follow the stream. Keep it in sight, but not crowd its banks. The village had camped near a stream, but at a safe distance. She would follow their example.

Bird Song had taught her
how to survive on berries and nuts. For food, she’d gather hickory nuts and dried berries left on the vines. Watercress grew in the shallows of the creek she followed. Its green leaves clustered among the rocks were easily gathered. The pungent taste was bitter to swallow, but it would give nourishment to her starved body.

W
orried if she spent a great deal of time foraging for food, she might not put enough distance between herself and her enemy, she debated. Food or distance? Which was more important? Food. She’d need nourishment for strength and the coming winter had left little for her to scavenge.

All day,
the storm returned to plague her. The air was oppressive, heavy with moisture. Each roll of thunder reminded her of the fateful day that she couldn’t face. Reality would have to wait until she could cope with the fear instilled in her.

At dusk,
she found an outcropping of rocks that sheltered the ground beneath, creating a small dry area. Small shrubs grew around the opening. Spindly blades of grass, now withered by the frosty nights, lay limp against the moss covered rocks.

Jade crawled under th
e protrusion of rocks and prayed she had not taken some wild animals shelter, only to have it return at any moment to reclaim its residence.

Legs drawn up to her chest for warmth, s
he gazed out on the moonlight filtering through the overhead canopy of leaves to dance on the sparse underbrush. Reasonably dry and her stomach full, she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Startled awake
she laid still and listened.

The sound, which had awakened her, was the
morning sounds of the forest: birds chirping, small animals scurrying through the brush. Natural sounds. Soothing sounds. Jade dragged herself from under the rock ledge, put her back to the sun, and trudged forward.

Days?
Weeks? How long since she’d left the encampment? She’d lost count.

Would
she be lost forever? She stayed close to the stream, yet hadn’t found one trail to follow in the last two days. She merely wandered about in the woods, until she thought she would lose her mind. Don’t stop, she told herself. Just put one foot in front of the other. Sooner or later it would be over; one way or the other.

Each day she foraged for food, sti
ll hunger was never far away gnawing at her stomach. Nights were the worst. She’d crawl into whatever shelter she could find and listen to the night creatures while she shivered from the cold. Wolves howled in the distance and she prayed they wouldn’t come any closer.

Fear
was always present. Nights, she spent in darkness with an ever-present, unknown terror, but she pushed it to the back of her mind with the light of day.

D
esperation drained her strength. She walked when she could and crawled when she had to. Time was the enemy. It had no beginning, and, God help her, it had no end. Sometimes when she fell, all she wanted to do was curl up and lay there, never to move again. Then she would remember the reason she’d left the village and would make herself get up. She had to. Her child’s life depended on it.

M
iles converged one upon the other. Coaxing one foot in front of the other, she trudged on until her step faltered, and her courage became nonexistent. Time became meaningless. Hours seemed like minutes, days seemed like weeks.

A break in the trees
appeared up ahead. She started to run, fell, but couldn’t bring herself to rise. Exhausted, she crawled through the rocks. Brush scraped her hands and knees until they bled.

J
ust as the last of her energy ebbed from her body, she reached the edge of the clearing. She struggled to lift her head and recognized the imprint of wagon wheels. Her strength evaporated as the rains from the earth on a hot summer day. For the first time in months tears formed in her eyes. She lay on the ground and hoped against hope someone would find her.

Her painful knowledge of the past
, held captive by fear, drifted away on a sea of forgetfulness. Jade closed her eyes to sleep.

Jason Prescott clicked to the team and smacked their backsides with the lines. He’
d left town early this morning and the decision he’d reached weighed heavily on his mind.

He shook his head and reached out to touch the
fuzzy head of the eight-month-old baby fast asleep on his sister Margaret’s shoulder. His child. His and Sue Ellen’s. But Sue Ellen was gone. She died exactly one week after their child’s birth.

Margaret placed a hand on his forearm. “I know this will be hard Jason, being separated from Emma, but I don’t kno
w of another solution. Do you?”

“
It won’t just be hard for me, but for your family, also” Jason agreed, “and you’re right. I don’t know what else to do.”

He glanced in the back of the wagon where John and Margaret’s children rode. Blankets, piled high, gave them some comfort from the bounce and sway of the wagon as they traveled the uneven
trail.

Tyler at five, six next month, considered himself too grown up to ride in the back with h
is two-year-old sister. Yet he took it upon himself to entertain her with a game only the two of them knew. He leaned his dark head to whisper in his sister’s ear. Their blue eyes twinkled with mischief. Tyler put his finger to his lips “ssh.” Janey nodded. Giggling they ducked under a blanket.

Jason chuckled at their antics.

Margaret and the children would spend the next week on his ranch with him. He wanted time with Emma before their long separation over the winter. Up until now, he had made regular trips to town to see his daughter, which wasn’t often enough for him.

His gaze drifted
over to Margaret and Emma. “I would keep her with me, Lord knows I want to, but there is no one to care for her when I need to be out with the livestock. If she were older, it wouldn’t be so hard. She could go with me when I do my chores. But, I couldn’t handle her along with everything else.” A wife was the only feasible answer, yet he wasn’t ready to marry again.

He smiled at his sleeping child. “She rese
mbles Sue Ellen more each day.”

“
Yes she does,” Margaret agreed.

“I really miss her you know. Her laugh most of all.
Sue Ellen had always found laughter in everything she did. I use to say some ridiculous things just to hear her laugh. She’d toss her dark head and tell me I was being silly. Of course, I was.” Jason chuckled at the memory. “She told me the reason she laughed so much was that until she married me there had never been any joy in her life, that she never felt safe, and now that she was, she couldn’t stop laughter from bubbling up, spilling out in open enjoyment.”

A hitch caught in the back of his throat when he thought of Sue Ellen’s short and unhappy life.

“It’s sad she didn’t have much happiness in her short life.” Margaret rubbed Emma’s small back. “Be thankful you were part of what happiness she had. Neither of you said how you met.”

“It’s not a pretty tale.”

“Go on, I’m listening.”

“
After her mother died, her father dragged her from one town to the next and was constantly too drunk to watch out for her.” Jason shook his head. “She tried to avoid bad situations by hiding in isolated places. She’d managed to avert any serious problems until the night I rescued her.”

“Rescued her!”
Surprise widened Margaret’s eyes.

“Yes. I found her behind a saloon where her father was trying to trade her for more whiskey.” Margaret sucked in her
breath but didn’t interrupt. “It was dark, except for a dim light shining out a small window. I could barely see two men and a young girl. Thinking something wrong, I stopped.”

Once he had his ranch running and Margaret had married, Jason, at twenty-three, decided to improve the quality of his herd. Redwood was not as large as White Oak, although there were large ranches nearby, ranches with good livestock. Jason had
gone to buy a bull to upgrade his herd. Walking along the boardwalk, not far from the only saloon, he’d heard a commotion in the alley.

Jason could hear her as if it were yesterday. Sue Ellen
pleading with her father not to leave her alone with the man dragging her further into the alley, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. Her father shoved her, causing her to lose her balance. She fell to the ground. The man twisted her arm to get her on her feet. That’s when he’d noticed Jason coming toward them, a gun strapped to his thigh.

“You know sis, I had never wielded my gun against
a human being in anger like some men. After that, I understood why men used guns to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.” He cast a sideways glance at Margaret and saw she watched him intently. “I discovered something about myself in that alley.” He leaned forward, elbows braced on his thigh. “That night, I became one of those men.”

“Y
ou didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t leave her there.”

“No, I couldn’t. When I yell
ed, “What’s going on here?” the old geezer pulling her arm let go and ran away. Her father whirled to see what had caused his prospective buyer to leave so fast. The old coot bristled when he saw me coming. Pulled himself up to his full height,” he gave her a crooked grin, “which wasn’t very impressive, then swayed into a drunken stance, and bellowed, “What do ya think yer a doin’, inter’ferin’ with a man’s business?” I ignored the old man and went to help Sue Ellen stand.”

Jason’s
mind drifted back into the past. His heart had gone out to the crumpled form, curled into an infant’s position. Looking up at him, her blue eyes were awash with unshed tears and full of gratitude as she took his hand. She was quite tall for a woman, her slim form dressed in a tattered gown of indiscernible color. He thought she looked rather pitiful, young, and humiliated.

“The old man grabbed my arm and tried to
pull me away from what he considered his next bottle of whiskey. Mad as a hornet, I shook him off like a pesky fly. I took her hand and started for the street. She cried out when her father yanked on her other arm. I stopped and glared at the old man. He whined, “What am I gonna do without my little gal?”

As
if, he gave a damn.

“
I told him, “You were willing to give her to that drunken sot a moment ago. The old man had the decency to drop his head, then ruined it by saying, ‘Yeah, well, he was willin’ to pay for her. What are you gonna give me?’

“
I felt such disgust for the drunken sot. I reached into my pocket, took out a twenty-dollar gold piece, and threw it to the ground. We walked away while the old man scrambled on the ground for his whiskey money. That was the last time Sue Ellen ever saw her father.”

He didn’t like to think he had paid for Sue Ellen a
s if she was some street doxy. But she had no one to turn to and no place to go. A wife would ease some of the loneliness of the ranch, so it seemed natural to marry her. He had teased her later about the twenty-dollar gold piece being her bride price. She always laughed, saying her father was probably still drunk on the money Jason had given him.

“So you married her, because she didn’t have anyone else.”

“No, Sis, I truly cared for her. We were happy.” Sue Ellen had been pretty enough, and they got along well. Yet, it wasn’t the ‘love of a life time’ he knew John and Margaret shared. He had always admired their relationship, but he was satisfied with his life and his marriage.

Sue Ellen had not been the best housekeeper or a very good cook
, but traveling with her father, and not having a home to care for, she’d never had the opportunity to learn the skills. He hadn’t cared if the house was not spotless or the meals barely edible. Ranch life was hard and the nights lonely. He and Sue Ellen were happy. Until the night Emma was born.

“Yes
, I could always see you were content.” Margaret gave him one of her things-could-be-worse smiles. “Don’t worry about Emma, time will pass faster than you realize. You can ride into town and see her when the weather is clear.”

“Yeah
, I will. But I’ll miss her first birthday, her first word, and her first step? That’s the hardest to accept. I won’t have the memories of all the ‘firsts’ of her growing up.” Jason sighed with regret.

His sister reached over, covered his hand holding the lines, and gave him a reassuring squeeze.
Margaret, his senior by five years, had married late. She always teased him that she’d had to raise him first. Which she had.

When he came west to start his ranch, Margaret came with him.
There was nothing to hold her to the small town where they’d grown up. After their parents died leaving them a considerable inheritance, they sold everything and moved west. Jason decided to use his share to make the dream of owning a ranch come true, and Margaret refused to be left behind. Where he went, she went, she’d told him in her I’ll-not-take-no-for-an-answer voice.