Kit Gardner (26 page)

Rance bent to the window, his hands working the buttons of his fly. “It’s not Louise. It’s Avram Halsey.”

Jessica froze midway through trying to do something with her hair. “Avram?”

Turning from the windows, Rance snatched his shirt from half-beneath the bed and shrugged into it, leaving it to hang loosely about his hips. He glanced around, found his boots where he’d carelessly tossed them in one corner and tugged them on. Grasping her upper arms, he bent his head to hers and muttered, “Stay here. I’ll see what he wants.”

Her lips took up a sudden, uncontrollable quivering. “H-he— If you go out looking like that, he’ll...he’ll...”

His lips twisted caustically. “He’ll know that I’ve been making love to you all night and all morning? Maybe. But a man like Halsey doesn’t think in those terms, at least not right off. Someday, my dear, you’ll have to thank me for saving you from him.”

“What could he possibly want? I would have thought he’d given up trying to get you driven off.”

“The greedy never give up without a hell of a fight. And that’s when it gets dangerous.”

Jessica shook her head. “Rance, Avram is not a dangerous man. He’s a reverend, for heaven’s sake. He simply enjoys stirring up trouble.”

“He doesn’t
look
dangerous. Neither did Frank Wynne, and yet he would have killed me, had I not anticipated something from him. Don’t let your guard down, Jess.
Ever.
” He tipped her face to his and kissed her softly. “Except with me.” With a last fleeting, confident grin, he left her there. Yet as she ran to her window and pressed her nose to the glass, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something, somehow, was about to go drastically wrong. And she was powerless to stop it.

* * *

The moment he stepped from the back door, Rance realized he was unarmed and the thought sent a sliver of warning through him. He’d never ignored his instincts before. No...something wasn’t right.

Halsey hopped from his wagon, his step bouncy despite the faint shadow of stubble on his chin and the purple tinge beneath his eyes. He obviously hadn’t slept well for many nights. What schemes had kept the good reverend from peaceful slumber?

“Ah, Stark,” Halsey crowed, giving Rance a thorough once-over. The good reverend’s nostrils curled with distaste, and he brushed a slightly soiled white glove beneath his nose, giving a swift sniff. “What, might I ask, were you doing in my fiancée’s home half dressed?”

“We just woke up.”

With a deeply felt satisfaction, Rance watched the color climb from Halsey’s wilting collar. The good reverend’s upper lip twitched, and for a moment his glasses seemed to fog. “Where, might I ask, did you sleep?”

Rance folded his arms over his chest. “Where do you think, Halsey? Jess has agreed to be my wife.” His lips inched upward in a mirthless smile that never reached past the tight curve of his mouth. “We were celebrating. Now get off this land.”

“So cocksure, aren’t you, Stark? Or should I call you Logan— Rance Logan?” Halsey arched an arrogant brow and thrust out his chin. “You see, our Mr. Bartlett has had a rousing of memory since last evening, the memory of the only faro game he ever lost—in Wichita, to a man named Rance Logan. A bearded, long-haired Rance Logan, but with the same—how did he phrase it?—the same cold, lifeless, whiskey-colored eyes, and the same cocksure strut.”

The hair on the back of Rance’s neck stood up. For some reason, his gaze darted over Halsey’s shoulder, to the east, and the endless ribbon of lonesome, rutted road stretching to Twilight. The dust had long since settled over it, giving no evidence that a curricle had sped over it not moments before....

His gut clenched. He glanced across the yard to the barn and beyond, westward, where the dust still hovered, clinging, as though waiting for him to notice before it dispersed.

Halsey had ridden in from the west. Right past the barn.

Why?

“You know memory.” Halsey was preening, with far too much confidence to suit Rance. “All it takes to summon it is a word, a phrase...something almost insignificant, like Hubert McGlue’s innocent comment last night. Your one mistake, Logan, wasn’t your handiwork with those pistols of yours. It was your card-playing ability. Couldn’t let yourself lose, eh?”

“I never do,” Rance growled, his eyes narrowing upon the barn, and the door sagging slightly open, the hinge hanging loose. When he’d put the buckboard in last night, he’d closed that door. And hinged it tight.

Every muscle in his body coiled. Even as he watched, the door seemed to sway open slightly, as though wavering in the breeze. Only this morning there was no breeze. Just the hovering heat.

“Ah, but your luck has changed.” Halsey jerked his chin toward the house, the lascivious look in his eye drawing Rance’s attention. “I hope you got your fill of her. And she of you. She’ll have to content herself with it for the rest of her life. You see, I have long resigned myself to another man’s leftovers. First Frank, and now you. Ah, but with my share of your bond money in my pocket, I could appease myself with marrying Jessica and enduring the stench of you on her skin the rest of my life. Let us hope your seed does not take root and sprout. One never can predict the accidents that can befall a woman on a farm, eh, Logan?”

The words had barely left Halsey’s tongue when Rance smashed his fist into the good reverend’s belly. Halsey doubled over and sank to his knees in the dust. The only sound he made was a muffled gurgle.

“Now get your carcass off this land,” Rance snarled. He took maybe two steps toward the barn when the unhinged door swung wide, as though shoved hard by a man...from within...

And then Black Jack Bartlett stepped from the shadowy interior into the sunlight. With one beefy hand, he clamped Christian before him. In the other hand, shoved against Christian’s temple, he held a shiny gray six-gun.

Rance’s blood ran cold.

Jess... No, can’t let her see this... She’ll never be able to set the memory from her mind....

“Not another step, Logan.” Black Jack sneered. “Or the boy gets a bullet in his brain.”

Rance stopped cold. The back door thwacked open, and Jessica’s shriek drove like a stake through his heart. He turned and caught her by the arm just as she flew past him in a cloud of white cotton. Her bare feet drove into his calves. Her fists pummeled his chest, his arms, her nails clawing into his skin and drawing blood. Gritting his teeth, he clamped his arms about her, and fought against the slow tearing at his heart that came with each of her agonized wails.

“Stop fighting me,” he rasped, his arms tightening like vises about her when she continued to struggle.

“He has my son!”

Spinning her, he yanked her back against him and wrapped one leg over hers, pinioning her entirely to him. “Bartlett wants me, Jess,” he growled against her ear. “Christian’s the bait. Bartlett can’t hurt him and get me, and he knows it. Trust me.
Trust me, Jess.
”

She seemed to suddenly deflate against him, sagging in his arms as he turned her and crushed her against the ache deep in his chest. Tears spilled down her cheeks, over her lips, onto his skin, like hot rain. “B-but h-he has a g-gun at my baby’s head...a g-gun... M-make him put it away.” Wide, terror-filled eyes lifted to his, twisting Rance’s gut into a merciless knot. “Please make him give my baby back to me, Rance. Please...”

“I told you, I’m responsible for him,” Rance growled.
And I failed to keep him safe.... I failed....
“No harm will come to him, Jess. I promise.” Cupping her head between his hands, he bent and stared directly into her eyes, commanding her attention, purposely blocking out the horrible scene just over his shoulder. “Now you have to promise me something, or none of this is going to work. You have to do as I ask. No matter what. You have to go along with everything I say and do.
Everything.
”

Fresh tears plunged down her cheeks and spilled over her quivering lips. “I want to hold my baby, Rance...my baby...”

He crushed her against him, squeezing his eyes tight against the rage, the frustration, building to an excruciating crescendo in his chest. He should have known...should have anticipated this, especially from a man like Bartlett.

He’d let Jess down. She should never have to feel such pain, such unspeakable terror. And Christian...

“Promise me.”

She shuddered, and he felt the slight nod of her head against his chest. “I promise.”

Rance opened his eyes to find Halsey hobbling toward them, one arm still clutched about his middle. Despite the greenish-yellow hue to his skin, the good reverend wore a look of such perverse satisfaction, Rance felt an unmitigated desire to clamp his hands around the man’s neck and squeeze until he crumpled lifeless into the dust at his boots.

Damned satisfying as killing Halsey would feel at the moment, Rance instead leveled the man a hooded glare.

“Not so cocksure anymore, eh, Logan?” Halsey’s words roused nothing but a dangerous flame in Rance’s eyes. Giving a shrug, Halsey waved his hand over them. “Such a heartwarming scene. Ah, Jessica, my beloved—”

With a gasp of pure outrage, Jessica spun about. Only the pressure of Rance’s arm wrapped about her waist prevented her from flying at Halsey with limbs thrashing. “Y-you d-did this!” she breathed accusingly.

Halsey gave her an odd look that lingered upon the deep vee of her wrapper. “Of course I did. I came up with the scheme, and a flawless one it is. Why, Louise French handed the boy over to me this morning with barely a hesitation. And he’s the perfect bait, judging by all the fearsome clenching of Rance Logan’s jaw. Surely you didn’t think I would allow this...this...
murderer
to all but steal my future wife and this farm, every dream I’ve ever had to be the richest, the most powerful, the most influential reverend in the state—right out from under my nose, without some sort of fight? My dear Jessica, you sorely underestimate my determination to get precisely what I want. And might I add, Jessica, you look positively profane this morning, rather like a murderer’s whore, with your bosoms flopping about and the seed of that animal still moist between your white thighs. You expect me to forgive you for this, I presume. I suppose I shall have to find it in my heart to forget, and perhaps, one day, forgive.”

“You can burn in hell.” Jessica seethed, trembling with her fury. “Your lust for power has driven you mad. You’ve purposely jeopardized my son’s safety,
used
him for your own ill-gotten gains.
That man has a gun pointed at my child’s head.
What perverse logic can allow that? Nothing is worth that...no amount of money, power...
nothing.
How can you call yourself a man of God? You’re the devil’s henchman—nothing more.” She turned and curled into Rance, shuddering deeply with each shallow breath she took.

“Seek what solace you can from your lover,” Halsey warned. “He will die, Jessica, in order to give you back your son. And in your grief you will come to your senses and turn, again, to me. You see, I know you, my dear. Know you as well or better than you know yourself. Deny it all you like. Abhor it if you must, but you will always be a helpless, powerless female, afraid to venture past Twilight’s sacred limits. You can barely take a step or summon a thought without a man’s guidance. Ripe for the picking and vulnerable, particularly vulnerable because of your child and your widowed status. You know well there aren’t many men who will content themselves with not being the first to sample you, men who are perhaps willing to settle for another’s leftovers. The offers for your hand haven’t been piling up on your doorstep. You may hate me now, but after we bury your lover here, I can assure you, you will marry me, Jessica.”

Jess shuddered anew. Rance heard his teeth click. “Don’t give me any more reason to kill you, Halsey.”

“Might I point out that Mr. Bartlett there could kill you with one shot from his pistol?”

Rance bared his teeth. “That’s never stopped me before. Now call off Bartlett and release the child.”

Halsey blinked, as though suddenly aware of the others present. “Ah, yes. And I was so enjoying this. I believe we would like you to get into the back of my wagon here, Logan. We’ve a long drive ahead of us to Wichita, you know. I’m rather anxious to meet this Cameron Spotz and collect my share of the bounty.”

“Bartlett will kill you before we’re a half mile out,” Rance said, achingly aware of Jess’s fingers digging into his forearms, of the quivering length of her pressed against him. “Bounty hunters have an uncommon aversion to sharing.”

Halsey’s brows wavered ever so slightly before his lips thinned in a toothy grin. “I know what you’re about, Logan. Turnabout is fair play and all that, eh? No, Mr. Bartlett and I have an agreement. I helped him bag his murderer. He won’t turn on me.”

Rance merely arched a knowing brow in response, then swung his gaze again to Bartlett and Christian. His heart twisted, and he tasted himself the gag stuffed in the child’s mouth, felt the pressure of cold steel at his temple, could only imagine the terror gripping the child, shaking those fragile, young limbs.

He had to free Christian. Anything to save the child. Even sacrificing his own life.

J
essica dug her fingers into Rance’s arms, willing some of his strength into her limbs. Pressing her face into his chest, she closed her eyes and felt her tears renew their flow, her soul its wrenching ache, when her mind filled with the image of Christian’s wide eyes peering at her, so brave...so entirely unknowing of the brutality men were capable of. Until now.

Would the child ever trust again? Innocence, that which she had devoted herself to protecting in him, shattered in one cruel moment.

She couldn’t bear to look at Christian...
at that gun pressed against his blond head...
and yet she sensed he needed her to, just as she needed Rance for all his towering strength and utter calm in the face of any danger. She turned her head, and her eyes met with those frightened blue saucers, so much like her own.

“Go stand by the back door,” Rance told her, his voice tight.

She hesitated, her eyes lifting to his.

His gaze was a storm-tossed sea of deep gold. “Do as I ask, Jess.”

Despair washed over her in long, deep spasms that nearly sent her crumpling into the dust. “You’re going with them,” she said with brutal conviction.

“I thought you trusted me.”

“I don’t trust them.”

One corner of his mouth curved upward. “Neither do I. Now go sit by the back door. And when they free Christian, take him into the house with you, fast, and don’t look back. Not even for a moment.”

Her palms splayed over his chest, where the vibrant beat of his heart thumped beneath his skin. The beat matched her own pulse, hammering in her ears. Souls united... A groan of despair escaped her, and the tears again flowed over her cheeks. “You’re coming back to me. I could not bear to lose you now.... Life could not be so cruel.... Tell me, Rance. Tell me we’ll grow very old and wise together.”

“I promise—” And then he crushed her against him, his mouth taking hers in a savage kiss, as though this were their last. Surely she’d only imagined such a thing. “Go—” he rasped.

The tears were streaming from her eyes, and she nearly doubled over from the grief gripping her insides. Yet she turned and ran blindly toward the house, sagging against the door with a feeling of such helplessness that she pounded her fists into the thick wood until physical pain momentarily eclipsed the agonized wrenching of her heart. To find herself so utterly without control, and she a woman who prided herself on maintaining mastery over her life, a woman aching in every fiber to make it right.

If she’d had a gun, she’d have shot Avram Halsey and Black Jack Bartlett without a moment’s hesitation or a wisp of regret. If only she hadn’t banished guns from her home to the barn, for fear that her son would venture too close.

Sunlight gleamed with mocking brilliance upon the barrel shoved against Christian’s head. Black Jack shouted something to Avram, but Jessica had been swallowed by a fog that muddled perception and slowed all action to a blur. For a moment, the fog lifted, and she saw Rance, now trussed hands to feet and gagged, lying in the wagon bed. And Avram, flashing her a victorious leer as he clambered to take the reins, albeit visibly favoring what she ardently hoped were badly broken ribs.

Black Jack Bartlett moved toward her, his gun hand clamped around Christian’s narrow body, leading his saddled horse with the other. Jessica glimpsed the rifle tucked in the saddle scabbard when he paused not twelve inches from her, his face, save for the grizzled stubble plaguing his chin and jaw, generously shadowed by his wide-brimmed black hat. At first she thought this some twisted last effort to torture her with the sight of her son, bound and gagged, just out of her reach. Her heart swelled near to bursting in her chest. A merciless ache of longing filled her limbs, and she must have taken a step toward Christian, because suddenly she found herself gripped about the arm and yanked cruelly against Black Jack Bartlett. She stared into his spiritless eyes and wondered how such a man could have thought Rance capable of the same cold-blooded air...and how Louise could have imagined that Rance and Black Jack even remotely resembled one another.

The stench of his breath fanned over her, and his thin lips twitched into a vile version of a smile. She felt his fingers biting into her upper arm, saw the flicker of a lascivious gleam in his eyes as they plundered the gaping neckline of her wrapper. A chill of grim foreboding shuddered through her.

“Ain’t you the honey pot?” Bartlett drawled, revealing a flash of white teeth as he leaned closer to her.

Stiff as a barn board against him, Jessica gritted her teeth and kept her gaze even with his. “Release my child. You got what you came for, Mr. Bartlett.”

“Not all, missy. I ain’t a man to walk away from a honey pot I ain’t gotten my fill of. Some things a man cain’t walk away from, even fer money.”

Jessica jerked as the cold steel muzzle of his gun slid down her throat, then along the skin at the gaping edge of her wrapper, pausing at the deepest exposed curves of her breasts. Some part of her crawled into itself, leaving a spreading numbness in its wake. After all, what could this man do to her more vile than taking her life’s love from her? From a violation of her body, she could force herself to recover. From the loss of Rance, she might never.

Bartlett licked his lips. “Somethin’ tells me you’d do ‘bout anythin’ I wanted jest to keep yer little varmint here alive, missy. See how good he jest stands there, all quiet-like? ‘Cause I got this gun here on his mama. Nope, ain’t never met a woman or child what wouldn’t do my askin’ when I held my gun on ‘em.”

The cool tip of the gun slid beneath the edge of the wrapper, then flicked the cotton wide over the peak of her breast. Jessica closed her eyes, certain that she would retch, suddenly even more certain that she would risk death, rather than endure Black Bartlett’s vile touch upon her.

But salvation sometimes comes from unlikely sources.

“What the devil—?” It was Avram, springing to his feet from his wagon seat. “Get your filthy gun from my fiancée’s person, or I’ll have none of this scheme—”

“Siddown ‘fore I shoot ya,” Bartlett growled over his shoulder, before fixing Jessica with a deeply hungering glare that drifted to her wholly exposed breast. “Yep, I’m comin’ back, missy. I reckon I ain’t got the time now. But I’m comin’ back, an’ when I do, yer reverend’s gonna be worm feed, an’ I’ll have Rance Logan’s boots with me—after I watch him swing awhile from his hemp, ‘course. Ya better be waitin’ on me, missy.”

And then he released her, turning and mounting his horse in one swift motion that set his faded black duster billowing about him. With his gun resting upon his thigh, aimed directly at the wagon, Bartlett followed it from the yard, toward the barn and westward, out into open prairie. Toward Wichita.

The wagon hadn’t even reached the barn when Jessica sank to her knees, with Christian clutched in her arms. With trembling fingers, she freed him of his gag and bonds, then let loose with the great, wrenching sobs she’d barely kept contained, weeping uncontrollably, then filling her lungs with the child’s sweet scent. His fragile body curved into hers. His soft whimpers echoed like a mother’s most grievous nightmare, and she yearned to make his world whole and innocent, safe and warm and loving, once more. If only she could. If only she had the power. And then, in the midst of it all, she realized precisely what she had to do.

Smoothing the tears from his downy cheeks, she summoned a steady voice. “D-do you know how to harness Jack to the buckboard?”

Christian sniffed and wiped one grimy sleeve over his nose. “Logan taught me how, Mama.”

Fresh tears sprang into her eyes. “I know he did, Christian. Logan taught us both many, many things. Mama loves Logan, Christian...very much.”

Fragile arms wound about her neck as though he were offering comfort, solace, strength. “It’s all right, Mama. I love him, too.”

Wiping her fingers fiercely over her eyes, she gripped his narrow shoulders, feeling the delicacy of the bones beneath. He was so very young. “Harness Jack for me. I’m going to change. Quickly, now. We’ve little time. And then you have to show Mama where Logan keeps his guns.”

The narrow chest visibly puffed up. “He showed me, Mama. He let me touch them. He said I would never get hurt if I knew how to hold them like him, so he showed me how. Did he show you, too, Mama? Else I can’t let you hold them. Logan wouldn’t want you to. You might shoot a hole in the roof again.”

“I promise I’ll be especially careful, Christian.”

“Is Logan gonna come back, Mama? Promise me he will, Mama.”

She’d always stood by her word. Always.

“Yes, Christian. I promise he’s coming back. Now go...hurry!”

* * *

The gag tasted of smoke-choked saloons, bad whiskey and cheap women. A year’s worth of each, gone pungently stale, cutting into the sides of Rance’s mouth and tongue. But it was not the gag that occupied his attention at the moment. Nor was it the smell of his own flesh baking beneath the ruthless midday sun. Even the dull ache in his limbs, which had gradually given way to complete numbness and then again to excruciating pain, due to his hands-to-feet trussed position—no, this went ignored. It was the nail, the lone, rusted bit of nail that had worked itself loose in a wagon board, enough to jab him in the buttocks with every slight jostle of the wagon over deeply rutted road. This nail occupied him entirely, and had for the past hour.

With every small movement of his wrists behind his back, his legs were yanked into a thoroughly unnatural and exceedingly uncomfortable position. This was a torture Rance had heard of, but had never had the pleasure of experiencing. Yet he worked the thick hemp binding his wrists against that rogue nail, despite the painful tugging on his legs, despite the warmth of his blood slicking his wrists as the nail slipped time and again over the hemp and instead carved into his flesh.

He kept his eyes closed, as though he’d achieved the utterly impossible, given the circumstances, and somehow slept. He knew Black Jack rode in their dust. He knew his six-gun still rested on his thigh. He knew Bartlett could yank his rife from the saddle scabbard quicker than the flash of an eye and empty lead with deadly precision at a tall man’s hundred paces. He knew that Bartlett was planning to kill Halsey, no doubt just before they reached Spotz’s ranch, and that he’d force Rance to walk the rest of the way. He knew Bartlett would kill him, if adequately provoked, no matter the bounty money.

Even a thousand dollars would buy Black Jack Bartlett enough clean bandannas to last a lifetime.

He also knew Bartlett wasn’t in any great hurry to get to Wichita, perhaps because he wanted to decrease the chances for a weakened and cramped Rance Logan to attempt any sort of escape. Bartlett had chosen well a sparsely traveled course to Wichita, one with fewer watering holes and less prime grass for the horses. So when they happened within distance of water or good grazing, Bartlett ordered them to stop. Rance remained in the wagon bed, gagged and bound, denied but the few tastes of water Avram Halsey offered, solely to keep Rance alive and ensure Halsey his due share of the twenty-five hundred.

The smell of bacon frying and coffee stewing watered his mouth, despite the gag’s foul taste. At this pace, he figured they’d make Wichita by tomorrow afternoon.

If he guessed right, Halsey had less than twenty-four hours left to live.

And he, another long day of sun and no food and working a nail through layers of tightly hewn hemp. Another day to plan precisely what he was going to do.

He’d always been a man up to any gamble. He could only hope Bartlett wouldn’t get trigger-happy with Halsey before he could work his hands free. Though with Halsey stomping about, waving his arms and whining incessantly about the food and lack of sleeping accommodations, save for the softest tuft of grass he could find, Rance found himself wondering who would kill the good reverend first, Bartlett or Rance himself.

He resettled himself in the wagon bed and worked the hemp back and forth, again and again, in an endless rhythm. His only solace was the woman and child who needed him...almost as much as he needed them. And the plan taking steady formation in his mind.

* * *

Bartlett’s shout pierced the sun-bitten stillness of midday, yanking Rance from a fitful doze. He made not the slightest movement, his eyes remaining closed, as though he still slept. He heard the shuffling as Avram Halsey twisted about and yanked upon the reins. The wagon jerked to a stop that sent white-hot pain spiraling through Rance’s limbs.

“What the devil—?” Halsey huffed. “Surely we’re not stopping again, now that we’re this close to Wichita.”

The muffled thud of Bartlett’s horse’s hooves stilled just beside the wagon bed. Spittle met with sun-parched prairie. Bartlett’s saddle creaked as he shifted. A gust of wind whipped through the grass. Rance’s gut clenched. “Git outa the wagon, Reverend,” Bartlett drawled. The click of a pistol cocking sang out over the wind. “Now.”

“Put that gun away, Bartlett,” Halsey mewled, scrambling from his seat. “There’s no need—”

“Yer right. There’s no need fer you no more, Reverend. Ya shoulda listened to Logan here. Thought he’d gone an’ tipped my hand, warnin’ ya like he did. But if yer stupid enough ta think that piece o’ womanflesh woulda wanted ya over me, er even Logan here, yer stupid enough ta think I’d o’ shared the bounty with ya.”

“Y-you double-crossed me!” Halsey shrieked.

“Yep.” The lone gunshot cracked through the air. The prairie emitted a dull thud as Halsey’s body slumped lifeless. Again Bartlett’s spittle met with the dust. His saddle creaked as he reholstered his six-gun.

“Hey, Logan. Git up. Yer walkin’ from here on out.”

Rance didn’t even flex his fingers or his now unbound wrists, hidden beneath his back. He barely breathed. His eyes remained closed, his mouth slack, parched, his lips cracked and raw. Every muscle he possessed had numbed sometime during the night.

The muzzle of Bartlett’s rifle jabbed into his ribs. “Git up, I said. Hey. No tricks, Logan, ya hear?” Again the poke of the rifle muzzle, this time shoving just beneath his chin.