Bound For Eden (18 page)

Against her better judgment, Alex crept forward.

And was horrified.

There were people chained to the wall.

The man was badly beaten, one of his eyes was swollen closed and there was blood crusted on his face. An older woman was chained to his right, she too was bruised and swollen. To the man's left was a younger woman – she was the one whimpering. She had an iron collar around her neck and attached to the collar were two short chains, leading to two more collars . . . collars which were clamped around the necks of two small children. The youngest one couldn't have been more than five.

All of them, including the children, had pale pink scars on their shining black skin.

She'd had no idea the Gradys owned slaves.

‘Please Miss, you've got to help us.' The man's chain rattled as he started away from the wall. Alex's nerves were so shot she jumped, and she saw the man wince.

Alex looked around wildly. How on earth was she supposed to help them?

The man gestured to a cupboard in the corner. ‘His axe.'

Alex could hear the blood roaring in her ears as she hurried to the cupboard. There was a heavy chain and padlock. She looked back at the slaves helplessly. The children had such huge dark eyes. She would remember the way they looked at her for the rest of her life.

Suddenly, she remembered the jangle of keys on Silas's belt as she and Adam dragged him through the birch thicket. Before she could have second thoughts, she darted for the stairs. She heard the younger woman wail and knew they thought she'd given up.

At any moment she expected to hear a shout as someone spotted her. But all she could hear was the buzz of bees among the last of the blossoms, and the lazy clucking of the chickens. ‘Don't wake up, don't wake up,' she chanted under her breath as she reached for the bunch of keys at Silas's waist. She almost died when he took a hitching breath, but he didn't stir.

She was shaking so hard as she returned to the cellar that the keys clattered and chimed. She almost fell down the stairs again, because she didn't allow time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

‘Praise the Lord,' she heard the older woman moan.

Alex had trouble fitting the first key into the lock because of her trembling. She had to steady her wrist with her other hand. Her hair was standing on end as key after key failed to fit. What if Silas didn't have a key to the cupboard? Oh glory, she'd die of terror if Gideon were to show up and find her down here trying to free his slaves.

Finally, a key slid home and the padlock opened with a click.

And there was the axe. It was so heavy she could barely heft it.

‘Step away,' the man ordered the women and children. ‘Aim for the fastening, Miss.' He gestured to the iron spike driven between the stones of the cellar wall. ‘I'll do the rest.'

Alex tried her best, but the axe was heavy and her aim was bad. It took her several tries to even hit the spike. She would have given up in tears if it weren't for the calm voice of the man and the big desperate eyes of the children.

She yelped when the axe head finally struck the spike forcefully enough to loosen it. She felt tears well when the man tugged the spike from the wall. He took the axe from her and expertly struck at the chain loops until each of them was free to move. Then he turned back to Alex. ‘Now you need to do mine.'

She looked in horror at his chain. Glory, with her aim, she would decapitate him!

‘Quickly,' he urged. ‘Do it lower down if you're scared.' He held the chain against the dirt floor. She struck. It took four swings, but eventually the loop broke.

They all ran for the stairs, the man holding the length of chain hanging from his collar, so that it wouldn't hit anyone or make a racket.

‘Hell and damnation, who left the door to the root cellar open again!' Gideon's voice rang across the yard and they all froze. Without looking down, Gideon kicked the door closed, and they were plunged into darkness. ‘Ma! Where are those lazy bastards!' they heard him holler. ‘They've been down at my moonshine again!'

Above they heard the shuffle of feet and the slamming of the porch door as his mother came out to see him. ‘How should I know?' the old woman said waspishly, her voice thin and mean. ‘Silas has been gone most of the afternoon and the others just left.'

‘I know damn well where they are,' Gideon snapped. ‘They're off selling my liquor to those Pascalls. They'll only charge half what it's worth, and drink the profits on the way home.'

‘If you knew, why'd you ask?'

They could hear Gideon spit. ‘I'll give them what for,' he grumbled, his voice fading.

Alex heard a creak and then a rhythmic noise as Ma Grady settled into her porch rocker. ‘We can't go out this way,' she hissed, ‘the cellar comes out right by the porch. We'll have to go through the house and out the other door.'

They fumbled in the dark until they found the rickety stairs leading up to the kitchen. ‘I'll go first,' the man told Alex, stepping in front of her and hefting the axe.

She felt only marginally comforted.

When they reached the door at the top of the stairs she had a sudden fear that it might be locked, but it wasn't. It squealed softly as the man eased it open and Alex's heart stopped again. They tried to move as silently as possible as they crossed the old floorboards. Alex realised with horror that there was no exit from the kitchen. One door led to a main room; through the window they could see Ma Grady rocking in her chair.

They turned the other way, towards a bedroom. Alex's pulse leapt every time one of the old floorboards creaked.

The rocking stopped and there was a grunt as Ma Grady rose.

‘Hurry,' the man hissed, ushering them into the room and silently closing the door. He held a finger to his lips and they stood as still and silent as statues.

Beside Alex was a bureau. It was loaded with a pile of drawstring bags, shaving gear and an oil lamp; one of the drawers was open and she could see the glint of a blade amid the mess of papers and junk inside. A cutthroat razor. Slowly, she reached for it. She'd feel much safer holding a weapon.

As her hand closed around the handle she could hear Ma Grady bustling about the kitchen. She turned to grin in triumph at the man beside her as she withdrew the razor from the drawer. His eyes widened and to her horror she felt her hand knock the bureau. With a crash the oil lamp tumbled to floor, smashing at their feet and showering them with glass and oil. All noise in the kitchen ceased.

‘Out the window!' she hissed, her heart in her throat. The razor clattered back into the drawer. ‘You go first and help them out,' she told the man forcefully, feeling the weight of her guilt hit her.

The older woman had already thrown the sash up and in a heartbeat the man was through the window and was lifting the children out. Alex struggled to shift the bureau in front of the door. As she did, it tipped; the bags went cascading to the floor, the drawers slid out, and there was a shower of gold coins. Alex gaped at them. Gold? She scooped up a leather bag and felt its weight. There must be a fortune in those bags!

There was a deafening roar and the door exploded inwards. Alex gaped. Thank God she'd moved the bureau; it absorbed most of the buckshot. All she could hear was a strange muffled ringing, but she could see clear enough that Ma Grady was reloading her shotgun.

Alex didn't pause to think. She threw the heavy bag of gold at the old woman. It hit her full in the face and Alex could hear the crack of her nose snapping. The old woman stumbled back, struck her head on the wall behind and fell like a sack of potatoes.

Oh glory, she was taking the Gradys out one by one today.

She shrieked when someone grabbed her arm. She hadn't heard Adam calling, or heard him come through the window. Her ears were still full of that odd ringing.

‘Let's go!' she said, not knowing if she was whispering or shouting.

On her way out, she couldn't resist grabbing more leather bags. She figured the Gradys owed her.

‘What happened to those poor people?' Dolly asked from her position on the washroom bench, her eyes huge.

‘I don't know,' Alex admitted helplessly. It was a question that kept her awake at night. ‘They were gone by the time Adam and I ran. We headed straight home and gathered our things.' Alex paused. She was too tired to recount the rest of the tale: the way Silas had turned up on her doorstep with the sheriff, Gideon's mad glee, the murder of Sheriff Deveraux, and the way Ma and Pa's house had burned to the ground, the black cherry tree flaming like a roman candle. She wanted to forget it all, not relive it.

‘I can't keep this,' Dolly said ruefully, holding the bond out.

‘Why not?'

‘You think word won't get to them that some old whore was suddenly cashing in a one thousand dollar bond? I don't want those boys coming to my door.' Dolly shivered.

‘What will you do?'

Dolly grinned. ‘This old cat still has a few lives left. I'll be fine. Worst comes to worst, I'll give Ralph Taylor a lifetime of free tumbles to let us use this place, until I can get enough scratch together to rebuild my own.'

Reluctantly, Alex took back the crumpled bond.

‘Take my advice, darlin'. You burn those bonds, you hear? What you've got there is a date with the wrong end of a rope. Theft of that scale is a hanging offence.'

‘They can't have got it legitimately,' Alex defended herself, pushing aside the memory of Sheriff Deveraux at her door.

Dolly shrugged. ‘Don't mean much. You can't spend that kind of money. People will notice.'

Alex stared miserably at the bond, then she straightened her shoulders and made for the stove.

‘Aw hell, not here!' Dolly squawked. ‘You don't want to leave the slightest trace! You wait until you're out on the trail, and don't burn them all at once. You do a few now and then, so you can make sure every last bit of them burns. And you make sure you're the one to douse the fire the next morning. Check for anything left unburned. Bury it deep, you hear.'

The gravity in Dolly's voice resurrected Alex's terror.

Dolly looked at the girl's pinched face, still covered in soot, and sighed. The poor love. ‘You get to bed, darlin'. Everything will seem better in the morning.'

‘I always say that to Vicky, but it never does.'

Sixteen

Luke couldn't believe it when the trail doubled back to Independence. He'd been tracking them for a couple of days, sure they were headed for St Louis, but then they suddenly turned right around.

There'd been some kind of dispute. He found signs of it at their campsite. There was a big mess of footprints, where they'd struggled, and the imprint of a man's back in the dirt. But why would they go back?

To get what they'd come for in the first place, Luke supposed.

But they'd be damn fools to go back to town. Not when the sheriff was looking to question them about the fire at Dolly's – not to mention the theft of prime horseflesh.

Even though his new mount, a pacy little sable mare, was tiring, he urged her on. He kept picturing the way Victoria had fainted dead away at the sight of Silas. They were looking for a sister . . .
She abandoned us,
Victoria had said. Well, it didn't look like the Gradys were convinced.

When he caught up with the wagon train, Luke resolved to get some answers out of the Alexanders about this mysterious sister of theirs.

The trail went cold just outside Independence. Luke got down off the mare, but he could see no sign of them. Why would they wise up now and disguise their trail? He scowled and circled the outskirts of the town, determined to find something. But there wasn't so much as a single print.

‘I think they're back in town,' he told Sheriff Keeley, when he finally found the man at Gibson's Saloon.

Keeley was a genial pot-bellied man, with a steel-gray walrus moustache and a big grin. ‘That can't be. Someone would have spotted that horse. Since the auction, it's the most famous horse in the county.'