To Wed in Texas (11 page)

“Tell Deut I’ll explain more later. He already knows some.” Wolf slapped the wagon team into action and yelled, “Remind him if the fellow gets free, it’ll take ten men to hold him back down.”

Karlee had her hands full fighting the reins. The horses smelled the fire now and were edgy. She glanced back at the twins riding in their box. They were both watching the blanket tossing in the back of the wagon with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

Another bare leg kicked free. She drove the team faster than she’d ever driven horses. Luckily, the road was clear and smooth. The girls were safe. She didn’t want to even think about what might happen if whoever was under the blanket managed to get uncovered.

She tried to ignore the noise from the back of the wagon. Finally, she slowed and dared a glance.

Standing in the center of the wagon bed, balancing as best he could was a full-grown, mostly-naked Indian. He fought wildly against the ropes binding him.

Karlee let out a cry and slowed more. She knew what he was. She’d heard of Plains Indians and how they were wild cold-blooded killers. This must be one. His hair was long and black, his eyes fiery coals, his body, all that she could see, which was most of him, was the warm brown of the earth.

“I’m going to be killed,” she mumbled even though the man’s hands were tied behind his back and his mouth gagged. “We’ll be murdered right here on the road and no one will find us because of the fire and we’ll be buzzard meat. I’ve read the dime novels, I know,” she
said to herself. “The wild savages have to kill a few people and the women and children are always the first to go.”

She glanced again. He’d taken a step toward her and the twins. One arm was almost free of the ropes.

“Sit down!” she yelled the order as if she expected to be obeyed.

He looked like he could beat them all to death even with his hands tied.

“I got a gun!” She tried to make her words a growl.

He didn’t show any sign of understanding, or caring. His eyes blazed through her with such hatred the stare might kill her. His chest heaved up and down like a bull preparing to charge.

Her grip of the reins tightened. She stared back at him and tried not to look frightened out of her skin.

The twins began to cry.

He had no right to scare the children. Anger mixed with the fear in her blood. “Stop frightening the children!” she screamed at him.

The twins cried louder.

Wolf had told her to be gentle with the monster he’d so carelessly thrown into her wagon. She’d not have the girls frightened out of a year’s growth by any man, monster or not.

“I said sit down!” She slapped at the horses. Maybe she could make it to the Buchanans before he killed her. She’d never win in a fight, but she could drive.

A sudden jolt shook the wagon, but Karlee didn’t slow down. She slapped the horses again and glanced back to see how near death hovered.

The man was gone!

Karlee pulled the leather so hard she felt it cut into her palms. “He must have jumped out,” she said aloud. “I’ll tell Wolf that’s what happened and we’ll be done with the wild man.”

She looked at the girls, who were both shaking their heads as though they’d come loose during the ride.

“He didn’t jump out?” Karlee shook her head at the same rate.

“He bounced up,” one said with a sniffle.

“And over,” the other finished.

Karlee turned the team and headed back. After a few yards, she stopped and tied the reins. “Stay still, girls,” she ordered as she climbed down from the bench. “I’d better go the rest of the way back alone.”

Clinching her fingers around the derringer in her pocket, she ventured forward. If he wasn’t already dead, she might just shoot him for being such a bother.

She hadn’t gone twenty feet behind the wagon when she saw the prisoner lying in the center of the road. The moon shone off his bare skin. He lay flat with his arms and legs outstretched, his ropes circling his body loosely.

“I’ve killed him! Wolf said be gentle, so I killed him.” She ran to the man and lifted his mud-covered head. “First, I almost kill Wolf. Now, I murder his bloodthirsty savage.”

“No one in their right mind jumps out of a traveling wagon on their head,” she reprimanded, as if he’d had a choice. “I didn’t kill you. You killed yourself. I told you to sit down.”

She leaned down into his face and felt his slow breathing against her cheek. He was still alive!

Karlee gripped his arm and dragged him back to the wagon. He didn’t seem to weigh all that much. He must be her height, but he was thinner than a lean crop scarecrow. Now that he was limp as a rag doll, he didn’t seem nearly so frightening.

When she reached the wagon, she dropped his arm and tried to think how to get him in the flat bed. It didn’t seem right to put her arms around his bare body. He wasn’t a child she could just pick up. But there was no
help. Unless she planned to be on this road all night, she had to do something.

Reaching for him, Karlee encircled his chest with her arms. He smelled of rancid bacon grease and mud and the sad end of a cow.

She let go, dropping him back into the dirt with a thud.

The twins laughed. They thought she was playing a trick on the near-dead blood-thirsty savage.

Karlee grabbed the blanket Wolf brought him in and repackaged the strange man inside. Then she tied a rope around and around the middle. If the stranger got loose again, he’d be taking the saddle blanket with him.

Slowly, she lifted him once more, trying not to breathe as she rolled him into the wagon bed.

“I said, sit down!” she repeated. “A man should really listen to a woman.”

He fell into the wagon with a thump.

“Now stay there,” she ordered. “I’ll have no more trouble out of you.”

Karlee circled the wagon and climbed back on the bench. “Sit down, girls,” she ordered, slapping the horses with the reins.

Both girls plopped down in their box.

No one said a word until they reached the Buchanan farm. By the time Karlee stopped the wagon and climbed down, lamps were being lit inside the main house and one of the younger men came running from the barn.

Deut was the first on the porch. He seemed lost in trying to straighten his suspenders for a moment before he spoke. “Is that you, Miss Karlee?”

“It’s me,” Karlee answered, thinking she’d had enough excitement for one day. She lifted one twin to the porch. “The town is on fire. Daniel sent me here. Can we stay the night?” She was too tired to say more than was necessary.

Deut just stood there fiddling with his suspenders as though his brain hadn’t awakened yet. He needed time to understand her words.

“Of course you can,” Granny answered from just behind her aging son. She slapped Deut on the back with her cane, priming him to act.

Karlee handed Granny the other twin.

The woman added, “I’ll take the girls to Willow’s room. Sammy’s away on the drive, and she’ll enjoy you all as company. We’ll put a cot in with her for you to sleep on.”

“Thanks.” Karlee let out a long breath and started to follow, then remembered her captive.

“Before I go in,” she backed toward the wagon with Deut finally awake enough to join her. “I think you better have a look at who else I brought, Mr. Buchanan.”

Deut picked up the lantern and peered over the wagon’s side, as did three of his sons who’d joined them on the porch. One of the men scooted the roll of blanket to the edge and untied it carefully.

The blanket slipped away from the Indian’s face as Karlee repeated Wolf’s instructions.

To her surprise, none of the Buchanan men looked shocked at the near-dead, near-naked, blood-thirsty savage she’d brought.

“I almost killed him,” Karlee whispered. “He fell out of the wagon.”

She watched as Deut tenderly brushed the black hair away from the sleeping man’s face then ran a hand over his scalp checking for cuts or bumps.

She saw the prisoner’s features for the first time in the lantern light. He was little more than a boy. Out cold, he wasn’t near as frightening. Several days growth of beard outlined his deeply tanned and dirty face.

“I didn’t mean to,” she added, trying to remember if she’d ever seen a picture of a Plains Indian with a beard.

Deut pushed the dirt from the savage’s face. “Lift him up carefully, boys, and take him to the cellar. Tie him three times what you would a normal man before you doctor him. Then bolt the door. One of you stand watch all night. No one opens the door unless we’re all standing there.”

Karlee watched the sons followed their father’s orders. One cradled the young man in his arms and walked toward the cellar while another grabbed a bucket of water from the well. The third passed Karlee, mumbling something about getting bandages and food.

“Is he a friend?” she asked. The caring was there, but they planned to tie him. Maybe he was a madman they all knew who only thought he was an Indian. She’d heard of families keeping insane relatives tied and locked in cellars.

“No,” Deut answered. “I never seen him before. Wolf told me a few days ago that he was holding him in one of the warehouses down by the waterfront until the other McLains arrived. My guess is the building was burning, or Wolf wouldn’t have taken the chance of moving him. I’m surprised he let the boy out of his sight.”

“The chance? What chance?”

“If that young man gets free, he’ll do whatever he needs to do to escape, including kill anyone who might try to get in his way. And knowing the McLains like I do, I’d bet anything Wolf and Daniel would be right in his way. They plan to keep him here until Daniel’s brothers arrive.”

“But who is he?”

“Did you ever meet Daniel’s older brother, Wes?”

“No,” Karlee answered.

“Or his sweet little wife, Allie, who’d been captured as a child by the Apache?”

“No.”

“Well, you just met her brother.”

B
Y THE TIME DANIEL RETURNED TO THE FIRE, MEN
were organizing, but they were ants fighting a raging wall of destruction. Building after building fell. One block of downtown was already ashes, and three more burned in a frenzied rush. Men fought, then pulled back again and again to make a stand farther out.

The smoke stung his eyes. The heat slowly toasted his skin, but still Daniel struggled alongside businessmen and dock workers trying to save a fraction of their world.

When the blaze reached his church, Daniel doubled his efforts, moving to the front of the bucket line. A yellow glow behind the glass in the door warned it was already too late. The frame might be standing, but fire had reached the core of the building through the roof.

With a sudden anger, cast in frustration, he charged, ramming the glass with an empty bucket.

Glass shattered an instant before he felt wind rush past him toward the fire. The flame seemed to draw a breath just moments before an inferno roared out of the building at full charge. The building shuddered in death and crumbled, feeding the fire below.

Daniel felt a blast like an iron-fisted blow, lifting him off the ground with heat and glass and smoke. Pain was
everywhere as his vision flashed to white light. Fire washed over him in a crushing tidal wave of crimson. Darkness followed, blanketing the white crystal brightness before him. All went black. Only the pain— agonizing, gut-wrenching pain—remained.

He rolled with the blow, vaguely aware of Wolf yelling his name. Then there was no pain, no fire, nothing.

Dawn spread across the sky in shades of violet and white-blues. Karlee leaned on the railing of the Buchanans’ porch and drank her third cup of coffee. She’d been up over an hour. In a house so packed with people, everyone awoke with the first person and only slept when all slept.

She’d tried to busy herself by helping with breakfast. She made a great effort to learn to make biscuits. But Karlee doubted she fooled anyone. Worry over Daniel filled her thoughts, making simple conversation difficult.

The Buchanan women were a grand lot. They carried each topic on without her when she faltered. They understood. Daniel might be off fighting a fire, but most of their men were working the spring cattle drives. None mentioned the fire in town, or why Karlee had spent the night, just as none spoke of the dangers of a drive.

Granny treated Karlee’s inability to cook as a personal gift Karlee gave to her. The old woman rambled on about all her secret recipes.

The house was bursting at the seams with people. Three Buchanans had married within the past few years, bringing wives beneath the roof. The four remaining single Buchanan boys had been delegated to sleeping in the barn. Most of the morning talk was about how several couples would build houses as soon as the men got back from the cattle drives to the west. The Buchanans might be rich in children and land, but they needed money to build.

Finally, Karlee escaped onto the porch. She drank her coffee and watched the black cloud rising from the direction of town. Daniel was somewhere in the ruin, and she could do nothing but follow his orders.

The twins ran onto the porch, laughing as Willow waddled through the door.

“Don’t you girls giggle at me,” Willow yelled, “or I swear I’ll have a boy to pester you both.”