Gerrity'S Bride (26 page)

He frowned at her impatiently. “Why didn’t you make sure she stayed home?”

Olivia shook her head helplessly. “I did everything I could, Matt. She promised me she wouldn’t go out of her room, and I believed her. I thought she’d be all right.”

He grunted, accepting her explanation, and relented, waving a hand in apology. “Go on to the house, Olivia. I take it you didn’t find Tessie?”

“No...” She hesitated and bowed her head. “I wasn’t sure where the creek was, and I was afraid I’d get lost, so I came on back.”

Matt grunted and shook his head. Fool woman. About as worthless as they came. His thoughts turned from the limp figure before him and focused on the source of his problem.

Emmaline.

“Let’s go, Hailey,” he said, heading due north and leaving the lone woman behind him to watch.

It wasn’t a long ride, but he was impatient, leading the way with Hailey Baines and Tad close on his heels. Only a few miles past the home pasture, easily reached by a small child on a sturdy mare, he saw the line of trees. In the light of the setting sun, he spotted the mare, and his breath escaped in a deep sigh of relief.

“There’s the horse.” He pointed her out to the men who rode with him. Hailey nodded and flashed him a look of understanding.

“See her yet?” he asked, squinting as he slowed his horse to a trot.

“Yeah, over there by the creek,” Matt answered, his heart thudding when he spied the small, silent figure.

“She’s stirring, Matt,” Hailey said quickly. “I saw her hand move.... Look, she’s stretching.”

A grin of relief spread over Matt’s face, curving his mouth even as his eyes closed for a moment. The hot rush of emotion threatened to unman him as he saw the form of his sister rise to stand as she watched the approaching men.

“Matthew!” she cried plaintively, reaching her arms to him. “I had a bad dream, an’ I heard a gun shootin’ and everything.” She swallowed her sobs and wiped at her eyes. “I didn’t know it was gonna start gettin’ dark. I slept a long time, I think.”

He was off his horse and beside her, scooping her up from the ground and holding her closely. “I swear, short stuff, one of these days I’m gonna give you the whippin’ of your young life!” he said gruffly, even as he hugged her and buried his face against her hair.

“You always say that, Matthew.” She giggled. “You won’t whip me!”

“Well, I might,” he said, holding her away from him to look over her rumpled clothes and bare feet. She seemed to be in one piece, he noted, lowering her to the ground and looking about.

“Where’s your sister?” he asked, frowning once more as he saw no sight of her. “Where’s Emmaline?”

Tessie shook her head. “I don’t know. She was supposed to follow me here, but she never came, and I fell asleep.”

He scanned the horizon as she spoke, and his brows lifted at the story she told. “Who said she was going to follow you? Did Emmaline tell you that?”

“No,” the child said, shaking her head. “Miss Olivia said I should come here, and she was gonna tell Emmie to come, too.”

“Different story than we heard,” Hailey murmured beneath his breath. He turned his horse and trotted the animal back to where he’d spotted tracks earlier. Matt watched him go, and his stomach tightened with apprehension.

“Tad...” Matt motioned the deputy closer. “Take Theresa home, will you? Put her up on her horse and get her in the house without seeing Miss Olivia, if you can manage it. I don’t want Olivia near her. Make sure Maria or Claude stays with her till I get back. This whole thing is gettin’ more involved all the time. I’m beginnin’ to have some gut feelings that Olivia’s... Well, it just isn’t makin’ sense.” He looked at Tessie quickly, not wanting to frighten her. “Enough said, I guess.”

Waiting only long enough to see the nod the younger man gave him, he set off after the sheriff, who had begun heading north, his head bent, watching the ground before him as he rode.

“What do you see, Hailey?” he asked as he rode up beside him. “Is that two horses or three?”

“Looks like three along here. Then, over there—” he pointed to the west a ways “—there’s another set going back to the ranch.”

“Do you ’spect these are Emmaline’s tracks?” Matt asked, bending to one side to inspect the fresh hoofprints, which were barely discernible in the dusk.

“It’s not a shoe from the blacksmith shop in town, or from anywhere around here. See that depression there at the toe? I’d say these mighta been made by one of them new horses Miss Emmaline’s folks brought her.” He sent his mount into a trot with a light touch of his toe, and kept his eyes lowered. “These other tracks look like half a dozen others I’ve seen lately. Probably from this area, maybe even one of your horses.”

Matt looked grim. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he admitted. “It’s almost too dark to track much farther, isn’t it, Sheriff?”

Hailey Baines cast a look at the sky, the horizon and the encroaching darkness. “For a while, maybe. We’re due for a clear sky tonight, and the moon is pret’ near full, so we should be able to keep movin’. Can’t see far ahead, but up close we’ll make out all right.”

“How long since they came this way?”

Hailey shook his head. “I ain’t no damn Indian, Matt. You’re lucky I can track as well as most white men hereabouts. Maybe better than most,” he added with a modest grin.

“I always said you were a patch of still water,” Matt told him, riding just to one side and behind the lawman. “I’d give a little bit to know where you came from and what you did there.”

Hailey grunted and shook his head. “That’s an old story. One I don’t tell.”

“Well, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have along on this trip,” Matt told him bluntly, then looked ahead to where the mountains rose in the distance.

* * *

Emmaline was cold, chilled to the bone, and her first instinct was to reach down for the quilt that lay at the foot of the bed. She shivered and huddled into a ball, aware in that instant that her hands were asleep, folded together at her waist. She attempted to wiggle her fingers and failed, sensing a tension about her wrists that confused her. She tried to brush the cobwebs from her mind.

Her eyes flickered open and she shielded them from the glow of the fireplace, her lashes drooping a bit to absorb the glare. Fireplace? There was no fireplace in the bedroom. In fact, it didn’t even feel like her comfortable bed.

She turned her head and groaned, suddenly aware of the pain that radiated from her forehead and encompassed the rest of her crown and the back of her neck. I feel like I’ve been here before. The memory raced through her mind, confusion blurring her thoughts. No, that was when I was bucked off Brownie, she remembered suddenly, stirring against the rough blanket beneath her.

“Awake, are you?” The man emerged from the corner of the room, clad in darkness, his clothing fading into the background, as though he had appeared from the depths of the night.

She straightened her arms to fend him off, lest he touch her again, and her eyes fastened on the rope knotted about her wrists and cutting into the flesh. Her gaze swept the room, the rough log walls, the small table and stools drawn up beside it. The fireplace was stone, built against the far wall, and as small as the room was, she felt the warmth of it against her outstretched hands.

Yet she was chilled, and again she shivered, her brow beaded with cold sweat. She lifted her head and was overwhelmed by waves of nausea, and frightened as her vision blurred once more. She squinted, and the man became two vague shadows before her.

“What do you want with me?” she asked, her voice slurring and pathetically weak.

“What I want and what’s gonna happen is probably two different things,” he answered enigmatically.

She peered at him. “Do I know you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I’ve been around, but mostly up here.”

“Here?” She looked about her again. “Where are we?”

“About ten minutes away from a dandy fire. Soon as I get my gear together, you’ll be on your own. Except for the trusting fool over there in the corner.”

She narrowed her eyes, her gaze seeking the far side of the room. As though a pile of blankets had been cast aside, a motionless heap lay just beyond the firelight. “Who—” she began.

“Had to get him out of the way,” the man told her bluntly. “Didn’t plan this quite the way it turned out, but I reckon it’ll all be the same in the end.”

A muffled groan from the corner, accompanied by a thump against the wall, alerted her to the fact that the third person in this room was very much awake and aware.

“Sorry, Jackson. Haven’t got a thing against you. I jest can’t afford to leave anybody to carry tales,” the man said darkly as he stepped into the light. A blanket was rolled across his back and he carried a bundle wrapped with a rope. Approaching the cot where she lay, he bent lower and touched her face with the back of his fingers.

“Too bad I don’t have time to spend with you, lady. I think I coulda enjoyed an hour or so of your company, but I’m afraid the boss man will be hot on my trail before long, and I’m gonna have to make tracks.”

She shuddered at his touch and turned her face away, her mind more confused than ever. “Why are you doing this?” she asked weakly.

“You shouldn’ta married the man, honey. If you’d been half as smart as you thought you were, you’da gone back east and left things as they were here.” His chuckle was dry and rusty, and his face was too close for her to focus on.

“What did it matter to you?” she managed to say, her voice wispy and querulous.

“Not me, honey. The lady that hired me. She wants your man, and she don’t care what she has to do to get him.”

“Where... What did you do with Tessie?” she asked, panic alive within her as she remembered the small child by the creek bank.

“Nothin’. Didn’t do a thing. She wasn’t part of the bargain. Jest you, lady. Fact is, without the kid, Gerrity wouldn’t even need—” He glared at her suddenly. “You don’t need to know any more,” he said bluntly. “Won’t make any difference to you in a little while, anyways.”

The muffled sounds from the corner erupted once more, and her assailant turned away to glare at the man who lay there in the darkness. “No sense in gettin’ yourself all in an uproar, Jackson. If you’d gone back to the ranch when I told you to, you’d be well out of it now.”

“Kane...” The single word was a guttural sound in the room.

“Got your gag off, did ya? Won’t do any good, ya know. Those knots are tighter’n a hangman’s noose.”

The man called Kane stepped to the door, and Emmaline watched as he opened it wide, allowing the night air to enter, the scent of pine reaching her nostrils as the breeze filled the room.

“‘Fraid this is it, folks,” he said. “Sorry I can’t stay to watch the fire, but I’m headin’ out to collect my pay. If I got it figured right, it’ll be dawn before the boss man gets here. He’ll never track me in the middle of the night. An’ by then, you’ll be a pile of ashes, and he’ll be—”

“Don’t count on it.” Emmaline cut in, her voice growing stronger as she felt the anger surge within her. “He’s not stupid, you know. He’ll have this all figured out.”

“Well, in that case, I’d better move on out and stay a step or two ahead of him, hadn’t I?” He reached through the doorway, to where a length of pine lay waiting on the ground. Bringing it into the room, he laid the green needles and the topmost part of the long branch in the fireplace, where it burst into flame, pitch spitting as it crackled with a radiant glow.

Carrying it to where the small table sat, he put it on the floor beneath. Within seconds he had piled firewood loosely over the branch, and Emmaline watched in horror as the dry kindling caught the flame and blazed into an eager inferno that reached toward the underside of the table. Kicking the stools closer, until they, too, toppled into the growing fire, he stepped back and squinted at Emmaline, then grinned with satisfaction at the man in the other corner.

“Sorry I can’t stick around, but I’m runnin’ behind like the cow’s tail as it is,” he drawled, backing to the porch as he spoke. The door slammed shut, and immediately the room was filled with heat, the flames reaching toward the fireplace as though drawn there by their counterparts.

“Jackson?” Emmaline’s voice was edged with fear.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the man answered. “I’m tied tighter than a pig in a poke.”

Emmaline lifted her hands to her mouth, her teeth fastening on the rope that bound her, even as she saw the first smoky haze surround the cot where she lay. She bit hard at the heavy rope and shook her head. A pain slashed through it from forehead to nape, and she groaned aloud and closed her eyes, but all the while her teeth tightened and tugged against the knot.

* * *

“This sure is takin’ a hell of a lot longer than I’d like,” Matt growled as he followed the sheriff up the steep grade. In the fading light, he searched the ground before him, looking for whatever the lawman followed so carefully.

“We’re losin’ the moonlight,” Hailey said, urging his horse forward at a faster clip. “But I have a notion we’re not far behind them.”

The wind blew steadily down the slope they followed and brought with it a tangy blending of pine and the humid scent of the night. Matt scanned the crest of the rise, then began the downward trek into the fertile valley below.

“Damn. I’ve got two men down there,” he said angrily. “Sure hope they had their eyes open. Maybe they saw somethin’ goin’ on.” He turned to Hailey. “Why in hell would he come here? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

Hailey shook his head. “I’d lay money that’s where he took her, Matt.”

“Let’s go,” was Matt’s guttural reply as he scanned the valley. He straightened suddenly, his hands clutching the reins in a reflexive grip. Before him, at the edge of a stand of trees, where the rough cabin stood, he saw a flare of light. Then a slender flame lit the sky, penetrating the eerie darkness that settled about the small shack. His head tilted back as the faint scent of woodsmoke reached him, and his heart began to pound with an increasing beat.

“Hailey!” he called in a strident shout. “Look there!” He stretched forth the hand that held his rifle at the ready, pointing at the flames that licked the crest of the roof.