Untethered (23 page)

Oh, there were plenty of tears left in Cricket—plenty! As she stumbled back to camp terrified, hopeful, tired, elated, despairing, and tantalized all at the same, she collapsed in a heap near the other girls when she reached them.

“She looks like hell!” Patterson angrily exclaimed. Looking to Heck, he added, “What’s he gonna do? Beat ’em all to submission?”

“Nope,” Heathro answered. “Only this one…and I ain’t gonna beat her.”

Lowering his voice so that the girls couldn’t hear him, he nodded to Heck to gather the men. Once they all stood close enough to hear, he began, “She’s their leader. We get her restrained a bit, get her thinkin’ that I’m gonna cut her a deal with Jacques if she helps us get the others there…well, it makes our trip a whole lot easier, boys.”

Heck glanced around Heath to Cricket. “She does look like hell though. What’s she gonna look like when we get there?”

Heath smiled and chuckled a bit. “
Cooperative
, my boys. Cooperative and fresh and pretty as a June bride.”

“How you gonna do that when you’re beatin’ on her?” Patterson asked.

“I didn’t beat on her,” Heath explained. “I kissed her…made her feel desirable and beautiful.”

Patterson looked around Heath then. “I still think she looks like hell.”

“Well, maybe she does now,” Heath countered. “But you wait. She’ll warm up to me, and then she’ll be as pretty as the summer days are long.” Heath frowned, reached out, and tugged at Patterson’s disgusting beard. He’d seen stray dogs that looked cleaner—and smelled better. “Listen here. Who do you think those girls are gonna trust? You and this flea-ridden beard? Or me…all cleaned up like a mama’s boy for Sunday school? Get rid of this rat’s nest, and them girls will take to you more.”

Heath’s attention fell to something else then. Taking hold of Patterson’s arm, he studied the silver and turquoise bracelet he wore—the bracelet he knew Hudson Oliver had given to Marie King. After all,
Hudson
had bragged to nearly everybody in town about it only a couple of days previous.

“And what’s this?” Heath asked, pointing to the bracelet. “It looks like somethin’ some little girl’s daddy gave to her.”

“I got it off that one over there,” Patterson admitted, pointing around Heath.

Heath turned, pretending to look from one girl to the other. “Which one?” he asked.

“That taller one with the dark hair and blue eyes,” Patterson confirmed.

Heath looked back to Patterson. “Well then, you give it back to her.”

“What?” Patterson exclaimed with indignation. “It’s worth a lot of coin!”

Heath quirked one eyebrow. “More than that girl’s gonna sell for in
New Orleans
?”

Patterson frowned. “No.”

“That’s right,” Heath said. “So you give that girl back her bracelet, shave off this ratty beard…and those girls will start lookin’ at you a whole lot differently than they have up until now.”

Heck smiled—chuckled as full understanding overtook him. “You’re gonna charm them all the way to
New Orleans
, ain’t you?” he asked.

Heath smiled and nodded. “Now you’re catchin’ on. When it comes to women, a man gets a lot more cooperation if he feeds them sweet butter and honey instead of horse manure and thistles. Ain’t that right?”

All the men understood then—or thought they did. As they smiled and laughed, triumphantly patting one another on the back, Heath exhaled a very slight sigh of relief. These outlaws really were as stupid as they looked—and that meant the girls had a chance of survival.

“Oh, but she got you good there, didn’t she?” Heck asked, gesturing to the blood and scratches on Heath’s neck.

Heath laughed. “Yep. She’s a cat, that one. But nothin’ I can’t tame, boys. Nothin’ I can’t tame.”

“Well, the trick is,” Heath explained as he rode next to Heck, “to make a woman fear you…but at the same time, you gotta make her think she needs you for everything. You gotta make them totally dependent on you. Then, once you’ve done that, you can pretty much get them to do whatever you want.”

Heck chuckled. “So that’s your job for Jacques Cheval, boy? You come along and get one of the girls to fall in love with you? That’s it?”

Heath shook his head. “Nope. I get them to trust me…make them think I’m on their side and favor them. And it won’t work with just any of the girls. You see, you’ve got to get the strong-minded one who influences them most. You got to get the leader to crawl on into your web and wind her up. You gotta get her under your control…and then you get control of all the rest just because. It’s the same way it works with herdin’ cattle…even soldierin’ for that matter. You see what I mean?”

Heck nodded, thoughtful.

The truth was Heath wanted nothing more than to draw his knife and slit the outlaw’s dirty throat—shoot him or beat him to death would work too. But he knew better. He was one man, and he’d tried the direct approach before and ended up watching eight innocent girls die for it.

So he swallowed the vile taste in his mouth that gathered there each time he looked at Heck Alford (or any of the other outlaws), plastered on a smile, and continued, “Now, I can tell this one here—this one they call Cricket—she’s gonna be a tough little cat to tame. But I figure, judgin’ from the fact we’re gonna have to make camp somewhere and hole up through this rain probably for the rest of the day and through the night…I figure I can have her right where we need her to be by mornin’.”

Heck looked up. “What rain?” he asked. “I see the thunderhead…but it’s far out in front of us.”

“Not for long,” Heath explained. “It’s gonna rain like hell all afternoon. But I know a place up here not too far where we can dig in and wait it out—as long as the river don’t flood too high anyway.”

“So you know this trail purty good then, I guess,” Heck observed.

“Like the back of my hand, brother,” Heath said with a nod and a smile.

And it was true. Heath had lost track of the times he’d followed the white slavers’ trail to
New Orleans
. Many times he and his fellow Rangers had been successful in tracking outlaws down and returning young, innocent girls to their families fairly unscathed. But not the last time he’d followed it. Nope. Not that last time he’d follo
wed the old trail—alone anyhow.

❦

“So he doesn’t hurt you at all?”
Pearl
quietly asked Cricket.

“No,” Cricket whispered.

“But…but you always look so tousled, swollen-lipped, and chaffed when you return,”
Pearl
noted. “And you hardly have any seams left ha
ngin’ together on your shirtwaist.”

“I know,” Cricket admitted. “But trust me…he’s just playin’ these men. He’s waitin’ for the posse to catch up with us. He thinks they can’t be more than a day behind now.”

“But it’s been two days already, Cricket!”
Pearl
exclaimed as she began to weep.

“Hush up there!” Patterson hollered at them from behind. “You girls just ride and keep your mouths shut.”

“Don’t worry,
Pearl
,” Cricket quietly encouraged. “Ranger
Thibodaux
knows what he’s doin’.”

“That’s right,” Vilma said from the other side of
Pearl
. “Don’t you lose faith, hope…and your endurance.”

Pearl
glanced behind them, however—to where Marie and Ann rode on either side of Jinny. “But Jinny’s lookin’ worse and worse. She hasn’t been herself since…since they murdered her sister,”
Pearl
reminded Cricket—and quite unnecessarily.

“I know,” Cricket sighed with worry. “I know.”

“I said shut up!” Patterson shouted. “Single file now, girls! If you’re gonna gossip like a bunch of old hags, then you can’t ride next to each other. I done told you all this before!
 
You first, Red,” he ordered Vilma.

Cricket watched as Vilma’s face turned as red as a September tomato. Patterson had taken to calling her Red over the last day or two, and it infuriated the preacher’s daughter from Pike’s Creek.

As Cricket obeyed Patterson’s order to ride in single file, she tried to bury the doubt that was growing stronger and stronger in her. No doubts lived in her about Heathro Thibodaux (Heath, as he’d asked her to call him during their time together the day before). None at all. Heath would give his life before he’d give up on trying to free them. Cricket was as sure of that as she was of the air she breathed. But it was the hope of the posse from Pike’s Creek being close behind that she was beginning to doubt more and more.

For two days, Heath had taken hold of Cricket, dragged her off to a secluded place, and pretended to “rough her up a bit.” He’d explained to her the pile of horse manure he was feeding the outlaws—that he was winning her over so that she would cooperate with them and convince the other girls to cooperate as well. The idea was that Heath appeared to be breaking Cricket, much the same way a cowboy broke a new mare.

Each time the group stopped for a meal or to see to necessities, Heath had whisked Cricket away and spent the brief time they were together mussing up her hair, rubbing his whiskery face over hers to chafe it, and creating an appearance that he had been “sparking with her,” as he put it. Furthermore, Cricket’s part had been to seem more and more docile in his company—even smile at him and offer the facade of growing fond of him. And she’d played her part well. Heck, Patterson, and the others would always chuckle triumphantly whenever Heath would return Cricket to the other girls, leaving her with a wink, a dazzling smile, and a flattering word.

Heath’s plan was working too. The outlaws were less fierce, less violent toward the girls. Patterson had even trimmed his smelly rat’s nest of a beard and returned
Hudson
’s bracelet to Marie. Of course, Cricket had explained to Marie that she must be more tolerant of Patterson now—lead him into a false sense that she liked him more than the other men because of his kindness toward her.

Naturally Marie had nearly vomited when Cricket had explained Heath’s plan and why Marie must be nice to Patterson, but Marie was strong, and she did as Heath encouraged. As a result, all the girls had noticed that Patterson wasn’t quite as wary of them as he had been before.

As for Cricket’s trysts with Heath, overwhelming guilt was beginning to mingle with all the other emotions raging through Cricket—because she relished every moment with him! Certainly Cricket’s secluded encounters with the unlawfully handsome Heathro Thibodaux were nothing but a facade—a ruse created for the sake of fooling the outlaws into keeping them away from the girls as much as possible until the posse arrived. But no matter how often she reminded herself of the truth of it all, Cricket could not keep from bathing in blissful wonder of owning Heath’s attention—of knowing his touch, no matter how unwillingly rough it may have been at times, as he attempted to make her appear as if he’d “been havin’ my way with you,” as Heath explained—and of hearing his voice as he instructed her on what to do next.

In fact, as Cricket rode on, pondering over all that had happened between them—the conversation, the plotting, the mutual hope that the posse would come—she was astonished at how well she felt she’d come to know him. In only a few minutes spent together several times a day, Cricket had begun to see into Heath’s soul. She saw his pain at having lost the girls the year before—the guilt that threatened to consume him—and the strength he mounted in order to keep it from doing so.

The sound of Jinny coughing startled Cricket from her thoughts for a moment. Glancing back to Jinny, she could see how pale and frail-looking the girl had grown since the death of her sister. Silently Cricket prayed Jinny would not become too ill—for she feared Heck wouldn’t pause any longer in killing Jinny than he did in killing her sister if he thought he couldn’t make a profit from selling her.

Thoughts of Jinny and her sister Nina drew Cricket’s mind back to the first day Heath had entered the camp. He’d taken Cricket off to some secluded place five different times that day. Each time Cricket would return looking more meek and cooperative than she did the time before—as he instructed. It was part of Heath’s plan to outmaneuver the outlaws.

But it was the final “tryst” they’d had that first day—it was those moments that Cricket’s thoughts lingered on now.

“Tell me about the dead girl,” Heath had begun. “The one I found snake-bit. I buried her a bit, by the way.”

Instantly Cricket had begun to sob—to tremble with remembered horror and painful grief racing through her—her own grief, but also Jinny’s. So bitter was her sobbing, so violent her gasps for air, that Heath had pulled her into the comfort of his strong, protective embrace.

Stroking her hair, he’d soothed, “It’s all right now. That little girl isn’t in pain anymore. She’s in the arms of the Lord and free from misery. It’s only us left behind that are feeling so guilty and sorry for her…missin’ her.” He paused a moment, allowing Cricket to cry into the softness of his shirt. Once she’d settled herself a bit, he’d repeated, “Now tell me what happened.” Keeping her safe against him, protected by the capable power she could feel in the firm, solid contours of his muscular chest beneath his shirt, he urged, “You don’t need to go on about it too long, but I do need to know what happened. A rattler got the girl…then what?”