Wild to the Bone (25 page)

29

R
aven cursed and fought
against the ropes tying her wrists behind her back as she was hauled by two men up the porch steps of the Stoveville house, thrust through the open door, and dumped unceremoniously into a kitchen chair. The man who'd been carrying her by the shoulders crouched over her, laughing, and closed his gloved hands over the front of her shirt.

He gave the shirt a savage pull. The buttons went flying off in all directions.

“You son of a
bitch
!” Raven spit through gritted teeth as the man then took hold of her chemise and ripped it down the middle as though it were made of nothing more substantial than cheesecloth.

Her breasts bounced free, fully exposed to the men just now filing through the open door, the one who'd been wounded being helped by the tallest man of the stage-robbing bunch. The man who'd ripped Raven's shirt open stepped back and pointed at her exposed breasts, howling. “Holy shit in the devil's sandstorm. Lookit the teats on this purty little bitch!”

They'd tied Raven's hands behind her back. So she could straddle a horse, however, they had not tied her ankles. Raven took the situation to full advantage by pulling back her right pointed-toed boot and then driving it forward and up, burying her foot nearly to her ankle in the man's balls.

The fool had neither expected it nor seen it coming.

He lurched up onto the toes of his boots, clamping his hands to his crotch as he let out a shrill wail. He stumbled backward two steps, and, face turning bright red and then just as suddenly floury-white, he dropped to his knees and leaned forward.

His hat tumbled to the floor in front of him.

“Oh, you
bitch
!” he howled.

“Why, ya damn fool!” said the man who'd taken a bullet to his upper left arm and was now sitting, looking pain-racked and sweaty, in a chair at the table's far end. “What in the hell'd you
think
she was gonna do?”

Clutching his wounded arm with his other hand, he gazed at Raven's breasts peeking out from between the flaps of her vest and shirt as she glared down at the man whose oysters she'd grieved.

“Gotta admit, though, them's
nice
!”

Both the other two men were aiming their rifles at Raven—one from the door, one just inside the door to her left. The Mexican girl in the low-cut blouse, flowered sash, and leather pants stepped up close to Raven, slid a bone-handled stiletto from her sash, and held the point up tight to the underside of Raven's chin.

“How 'bout if I cut your throat for you, bitch?”

She pushed the point up tighter, until Raven could feel it begin to penetrate the skin. She glared up at the girl, whom she'd heard the men calling Ana, and hardened her jaws with defiance.

“Hold on, Ana. Put the pig sticker away.”

This from the honey-blonde whose place this apparently was, who was also apparently Danny Stoveville's sister. She stepped around the man aiming a carbine at Raven's head from her left and stood in front of the detective, wearing a pair of men's wash-worn longhandles, brown stockman's boots, and a cream Stetson. The longhandles top was unbuttoned clear down to the girl's navel, leaving most of her small, round breasts bare.

Vaguely, Raven noted that she was damn sexy. Also, she looked a little tired. Raven supposed that her concern for Haskell's welfare in yesterday's torrential downpour had likely been ill founded. Bear had probably made himself right at home here in the honey-blonde's cabin, his formidable trouser snake likely causing him to be totally oblivious to the blonde's identity as one of the two female gang leaders.

Raven couldn't believe she was actually wondering how many times they'd done it and where.

Staring down at Raven, one boot cocked in front of the other, the blonde said, “Who is this purty little bitch, as Albert calls her?”

“A fuckin' bitch is what she
is
!” Albert said, still grunting tightly on the floor, clamping his hands over his crotch, and glaring up from beneath his thick brown eyebrows at Raven. He was probably in his late twenties, but his dark brown hair was thin around a bald spot at the top of his head. His right ear was notched as though by a bullet. On his lean face was a two- or three-day growth of brown beard stubble.

His eyes were brown, almond-shaped, and mean. He'd wanted to rape Raven last night, after they'd stopped to ride out the storm in a small abandoned trapper's shack, but Ana had prevented him and the other men from doing so. Mostly out of jealousy, Raven suspected, though she'd been mildly grateful. She wasn't exactly sure why they were keeping her alive, however. She wasn't sure they exactly knew themselves.

“Pinkerton detective,” said Ana in her faint Spanish accent.

The blonde nodded, keeping her eyes on Raven. “So they're sending Pinkertons now. What next?”

“Wells Fargo agents, more federals, and more Pinkertons, most likely,” said the man who'd been shot and who was now wrapping a neckerchief around his upper arm. “We can't kill 'em all. We're damn lucky we're near the end.”

“Shut up!” both Ana and the blonde hissed at him.

“What?” he said, wrinkling his brows indignantly and then gesturing at Raven. “Hell, we're gonna kill her, aren't we? Besides, she heard a bunch of what we were discussin' last night.”

“I thought we just grabbed her to play with,” said Albert tightly, still clamping his hands to his battered balls but not as tightly as before. He grinned deviously up at Ana and the blonde. “Ain't that right?”

“We grabbed her because we were too close to town to kill her,” said Ana, gazing smokily down at Raven while holding the stiletto up close to her chin. Her eyes flicked across Raven's chest. Raven shifted around in her chair, trying to jostle the flaps of her blouse and leather vest across her breasts. She suddenly had a feeling it wasn't only the men in the room she was covering for.

What was it about the women around Spotted Horse? Bad water?

“She'll make a good hostage,” said the blonde, also regarding Raven with a flat, devious stare. She flipped a lock of her hair back behind her shoulder. “Yeah, she'll make a good one. Anyone comes after us tomorrow, they'll think twice about shootin' once they see this pretty piece of ass.”

“Who was the bastard who shot me?” the man at the far end of the table wanted to know.

“Her partner,” said Ana.

The blonde glanced at Ana. “Huh?”

“He delivered your brother's body, right?” Ana said. “Big shaggy-headed bear of an
hombre
whose name, coincidentally, happens to be Bear?” Her smiled widened, dark eyes glinting. “With a very pleasing dick?” She hissed a devilish laugh. “I assume, Dulcy dear, that's why you invited him into your home and kept him here till this morning?” She mockingly flicked a lock of Dulcy's own hair back behind the girl's shoulder.

Dulcy's cheeks reddened. She stared down at Raven. “Your
partner
, eh? I had a feelin' he was somethin' like that. I reckon I got to feelin' so many other things, my brain got soft. I was gonna kill him in his sleep but never managed to wake up to do the deed.” She glanced at the wounded gent. “Hey, Swede, which way did he ride?”

Swede was tightening the
bandana
knot with his teeth. “East.”

They all considered Haskell, as did Raven. And then Dulcy said the same thing that was on Raven's mind. “He won't ride far. He'll stay in the area. That
hombre
don't turn tail.” She grinned. “I can tell you that from last night.”

“No, he won't ride far,” said the man standing off Raven's left shoulder. She thought his name was Dusty. He was tall and blond, with a long, hooked nose, copper eyes, and a surprisingly high-pitched voice for a man nearly as big as Haskell. He smiled. “Too much pussy in this cabin.”

The men and the two girls chuckled shrewdly at that.

Ana tapped her stiletto against Raven's chin. “What're we going to do with her?”

“Yeah, what're we gonna do with her?” said the man standing nearest Raven. He was short and stocky, with close-cropped red hair beneath his hat, long red muttonchops, and a red handlebar mustache.

Raven had heard him called Tennyson, Ten for short. A poet with devil's blue eyes and tobacco-brown teeth.

Raven didn't like the breed of outlaw they grew in the Pumpkin Buttes.

“My room upstairs,” Dulcy said, glancing at the stocky redhead. “You and Albert get her up there. Tie her to the bed.”

Ana laughed caustically.

Dulcy said, “Just to get her out of the way.”

“Like hell,” the wounded Swede said.

Dulcy marched up to Ten, not minding the rifle he still had aimed from his hip at Raven, and knocked his hat off his head. “You heard me, God damn it. Do you wanna be cut from this herd, Tennyson?”

Red-faced, Ten held his ground, glaring up at the girl, who was an inch taller than he. “I don't take no orders from the likes of—”

The fourth outlaw, who'd been standing in the doorway, looking cautiously out into the yard, turned his head to one side and yelled, “Ten, if Dulcy wants the Pinkerton upstairs, take her upstairs. We don't got time to argue amongst ourselves. We gotta take care of the big son of a bitch who shot Swede, get him out of the way before we go after that gold.”

He turned half around—a tall, one-eyed man who'd likely been handsome at one time before he'd acquired all the barbed-wire scars across his face, including his lips. They gave him a particularly savage look not tempered at all by his cold pearl-gray eye. “So get her upstairs, God damn it, and get her upstairs now!”

Since he'd been soft-spoken, albeit menacingly so, until now, this sudden outburst was especially significant.

Ten leaned his rifle against the wall and said, “Ah, fer chrissakes.”

Glancing owlishly at the man with the barbed-wire scars—Raven remembered he'd been called Griggs—Albert gave a painful grunt and climbed heavily to his feet. His face was still drawn from the bruising Raven had given him. He approached her as though she were a caged bobcat, glaring at her. “You just go ahead and try to kick me again. I don't care who says what about it, I'm gonna drill a bullet through your purty
head
!”

“Yeah, big talker,” mocked Swede, who'd found a bottle and a tin cup and was now splashing whiskey into the cup.

“Yeah, big talker,” Dulcy said, standing back while Ten walked over to Raven's feet, staying a cautious distance back, and Albert moved around behind her.

Raven had a mind to kick another one of these owlhoots in the oysters, but she sensed such a move would be counterproductive. Might even get her killed. She had to stay alive long enough for her and Haskell to find a way to take these killers down before any more stages got held up and any more lawmen got murdered.

The stage due on the previous morning had no doubt arrived safely in Spotted Horse. The gang was after the one due to pull through tomorrow—the one carrying the gold.

Under normal circumstances, Raven would be feeling pretty hopeless about now. But Bear Haskell was out there . . . somewhere. And that meant she had better than a fighting chance of making it out of this situation intact.

Ten said, “Albert, grab her shoulders, and be quick about it!”

“No need, gentlemen,” Raven said with a weary air. “You don't have to haul me around like a sack of grain. I've got legs. I can walk.”

Ten and Albert looked at Dulcy and Ana.

Dulcy picked up the carbine she'd wielded earlier and loudly levered a round into the chamber. She aimed the barrel at Raven's tits. “I got this,” she said. “Up, purty Pinkerton. Stand up, and hoof it up them stairs. You try anything, I'll blow your lights out.”

“At ease, sister,” Raven growled.

She rose from the chair, turned, and pushed between Ten and Albert, heading for the stairway on the other side of the table. Behind her, Dulcy grabbed a coiled rope off a peg near the door.

“You fellas stay down here and keep an eye out for Haskell.” Dulcy stopped and swept her gaze around the room. “If you see him, even catch a glimpse of him, shoot first and ask questions later. He's no man to trifle with.”

With that, she walked up the stairs behind Raven, who stopped at the top and turned to see the blonde moving up toward her, holding the butt of her cocked carbine against her right hip. Ana appeared in the doorway behind her. One of the men said something too low for Raven to make out, but the others laughed lustily.

“Keep movin',
sister
,” Dulcy ordered, hardening her jaws and gesturing to the left with the carbine's barrel.

Raven looked down the short, narrow hall at the end of which lay a bedroom. There was a large brass bed in the room, its sheets and quilts badly rumpled. Even before she got to the doorway, Raven could smell the sage, leather, and wild smell of her partner, Bear Haskell. The smell touched something deep within her. She wasn't sure exactly what that thing was.