Mail Order Mayhem (Mail Order Romance Book 2 - Benjamin and Annie) (2 page)

Without further introduction, Benjamin began reading the story of Noah’s flood and his deliverance from the Ark. Though of course Annie knew the story well, the selection sparked a curious sensation in her, as though she heard some other, more significant meaning in it.

The image of the purple lizard once more materialized in front of her eyes, and the peculiar awareness of having forgotten something, something about which this little creature appeared to remind her, dominated her thoughts once again. She so focused on this apparition that she scarcely heard the rest of the reading. She only emerged from her reverie when Benjamin took her hand for their evening prayer.

The words also seared into he
r mind like a red-hot pin-point, and she could not dispel their influence any more effectively than the image of the lizard. The two impressions seemed linked to each other, and they joined their voices in broadcasting their obscure message to her. A dense fog, not dissimilar to the bank of terrible storm clouds shadowing the valley outside, blanketed her brain and prevented her from deciphering the meaning of this combined vision. Flustered and suddenly anxious, she shook her head and bustled uneasily about the room as soon as Benjamin released her hand.

He scrutinized her critically for a moment, and then he called out to her, “Let’s go to bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m beat.”

She halted in mid-step, and laughed gratefully. Though their usual routine involved sitting up by their fire most evenings, working on various small projects and occasionally conversing casually, the events of the afternoon, the calamitous near-loss of all their livestock, followed by the precipitous saving of the herd at the last extremity, suddenly dropped its crushing burden onto her shoulders, and she wished she could collapse into bed then and there. “Okay,” she assented heartily.

Benjamin stayed in his chair until she removed her shoes and completed her own nightly
prayers on her knees by the bed. Then he shed his soaking outer clothes and moved over from the table to sit on the edge of the quilt in his underclothes. She sat down next to him to relax one more moment before removing her clothes for bed, and in the interval, he took her hand again. “You saved us today,” he observed gently. Then he shook his head and lowered his eyes to the floor. “Everything I have, I owe to you.”

Annie gasped once,
then compelled herself to sit silently. Such expressions from Benjamin, though rare, often took such an earnest form, and meant more to her than any protestation of love. “I could say the same about you,” she responded softly, squeezing his hand and stroking his gnarled fingers. “I would be in the gutter, if it wasn’t for you—or dead. I owe everything I am to you.”

Benjamin kissed her lightly on the cheek
and then jumped up onto the pillow. “Come on!” he giggled impishly. “Let’s get tucked in!” He burrowed under the blankets and ensconced himself in their folds while she finished undressing. She blew out the lantern and dove into bed next to him, finding her way by feel. She pulled their heavy bear skin rug over the top of the quilt and snuggled into the bubble of warmth next to him. Even through their underclothes, she felt his vibrant and energetic spirit, infusing her with elation in the darkness. But the comfort of his arms encircling her only enveloped her in the blissful liberation of sleep, as exhaustion engulfed them both. The only thought that crossed Annie’s mind before she drifted off was the perception of the steady drumming of the rain on the cabin roof, and the rolling reports of thunder, now receding into the higher reaches of the valley rim.

They slept the sleep of deliverance from disaster, and neither stirred from their enchanted embrace until a horrendous pounding on the cabin door started them both from deep slumber. The crack under the door showed the faintest glimmer of
pre-dawn light. They both sat upright in their bed, staring toward the door. The hammering noise resumed in spurts, while Annie and Benjamin struggled to collect their thoughts. Suddenly, a voice punctuated the din coming from the outside of the cabin. “Is anyone home?” bellowed a deep, male voice. “We need help! Please, anybody, open up! We’re desperate!”

“W
ho’s there?” Benjamin boomed back in his harshest tone.

“We got stuck out in this storm,” the man’s voice answered. “
We lost our horses, and we’ve been walking through the rain all night long. We’re desperate for help! Please, if you can, let us in and give us shelter! My son here is soaked through, and if we don’t find some cover soon, he’ll be frozen for sure!”

“How many of you are there?” Benjamin demanded, laboring to make his brain shrug off the sluggish haze of sleep.

“Just the two of us,” the man informed him. “Just my son and me, that’s all. Please, Mister, we can’t last out in this weather any longer. We’ll be dead by morning!”

Benjamin yielded to this entreaty, and threw back the blankets to climb out of bed
, but Annie stopped him. “You’re not opening that door,” she ordered him.

“We can’t leave them out in the rain,” he insisted. “
There are only two of them. It’ll be alright.”

Annie lowered her own voice to a menacing
threat. “Don’t even think about opening that door.” She didn’t know why, but a dangerous certainty alarmed her at this unexpected intrusion. “You’re out of your mind even considering it.”

The urgent rapping on the door
startled them both again. “Please, Mister!” the man pleaded. “Please don’t leave us out here to die! I’ll do anything to save my boy’s life!”

“We can’t turn them away,” Benjamin maintained. “Doesn’t Scripture command us to attend to the stranger and the needy?”

“You’re taking both our lives in your hands,” she hissed. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“If we don’t let them in, we’ll have two deaths on our heads,” Benjamin retorted.

At that, he pulled his arm resolutely out of her grasp and got out of bed. Annie still sat on the pillows of the bed, watching ruefully as he drew on his pants and seized the door latch. The instant he released the latch from its hasp, the door flew open from a swift blow against it, sending Benjamin sprawling backwards across the floor. In the faint gloom of the dusky light from outside, Annie saw a stream of men, all definitely fully grown and almost as big as Benjamin himself, rushing into the room. She screamed in terror at the horrible fulfillment of her worst fears, clutching the quilt around her neck as some futile protection from the invasion, but only their hard boot-heels running on the floor boards answered her. Benjamin yelled out in surprise as he fell, but the first figure to enter the room leapt upon him, and Annie felt a sickening surge of horror strike into her guts as blows fell in the corner of the room. When the whole group of invaders crossed the threshold, they slammed the door behind them and threw the bolt, locking themselves inside along with Annie and Benjamin. The acute darkness of the enclosed cabin only emphasized the portentous silence. Annie held her breath for an eternity, not daring to call out to Benjamin or even to move from the bed. Every human body in the room held its breath, listening acutely for any other sound of struggle or resistance. No one moved or even panted in the pitch black darkness.

Then, a match abruptly struck up a sudden ball of light, and a man lit a lantern. As he adjusted the wick and hoisted it aloft, it cast its ever-enlarging circle of yellow illumination around the room, and for the first time Annie saw the faces of her antagonists. The dim light offered only a partial description of their appearances, but her later interactions with them imprinted their faces indelibly on her memory as though she
saw them clearly then, in the cabin darkness, in the first moment.

The man
who held up the lantern to inspect the room wore the nondescript uniform of a cattle handler. Leather gloves covered his hands, and a tanned leather coat protected his chest and torso. Even in the inadequate lantern light, Annie registered that only the upper surface of his shoulders bore the darkened stains of wetness. He could not have walked through the rain all night and remained so dry. Tanned leather chaps, scratched with countless seasons of wear, covered his canvas pants, down to his boots. His broad-brimmed hat shaded most of his face except for a bushy moustache and a square-cut jaw line. His glittering eyes reflected the lantern light as he surveyed the room with a deadly calm. He addressed his first concern to his associate in the corner of the kitchen. “Is he down?” he barked.

His friend stood up, straddling the motionless body on the floor. The second man grinned
hawkishly at his leader. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere. You can bank on that, Carl.”

“Good man, Ned,” Carl confirmed. “You keep your eye on him and see that he
don’t move.”

“You bet, Carl,” Ned
replied.

Then the leader of the group, Carl, trained his
sharp eyes toward the bed, where Annie cowered behind her quilt. He stared at her so fixedly that she would have fidgeted in nervousness had sheer fright not kept her frozen. She could not tear her glazed eyes away from his. He mesmerized her, like a snake swaying ever closer to its prey, preventing it from fleeing by the unremitting force of its stare. “Search the place!” he ordered to his men.

Immediately, his companions
flew into a cloud of movement around him. They dug into drawers and chests. They overturned barrels and crocks. They riffled through Annie’s lingerie and tore open the very quilt covering the bed. Only Carl, the obvious master, stayed still, towering in the center of the room, his eyes transfixed on Annie’s face. Annie heard smashing and crashing emanating from the lean-to where she and Benjamin kept their food supplies, while a handful of others went out into the early morning to search the barn. They returned in straggling pairs and trios to the cabin, until the whole group reassembled around the table. Each reported having found nothing. Carl acknowledged each report with a curt nod or a brief word.

Just as the last man re-emerged from the lean-to, wiping his flour-dusted hands on his pants and repeated the
intelligence of “Nothin’ there,” the last member of the bunch sang out, “Found somethin’ here, Pop!” The man who stood up from next to the bed appeared considerably younger than the rest of the group. Thin fuzz covered his chin and upper lip, though his rangy, ungainly body stretched as tall as Carl. He rose from his knees next to Benjamin’s trunk, which normally occupied a hidden place under the bed, and carried his find over to his father. The leader of the invaders examined the object closely in the light of the lantern. The initials
T. I.
glimmered in ghostly inlaid bone in the wooden handle of the hunting knife where it protruded from a leather sheath. “I thought so,” Carl mumbled to himself. Then aloud, he addressed the young man. “Good job, Curtis.”

“Thanks, Pop,” the young man
glowed.

Carl shoved the knife into his belt, continuing to address his men over his shoulder, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on Annie.
“Mount up, all of you,” he ordered. “Let’s move out.”

“What about this one?” Ned piped up from the kitchen corner.

“Is he still alive?” Carl asked.

A dreadful pause quieted the room as Ned bent down to check before he answered. “I guess so,” he replied. “He’s still
breathin’, if that’s what you mean. But that’s about it.”

“Leave him where he lies,” Carl instructed him. “He didn’t have time to see any of us, and I don’t guess he’ll be in any condition to follow us. But you…” His words slithered out toward Annie. She caught her breath again. “You’ve seen us, haven’t you? We can’t leave you here. Still, it’s a shame to waste a perfectly good woman. You might come in handy later, if anyone else tries to follow us or stop us. We’ll take her along with us,” he informed his men. “For as long as she lasts.
Can’t hurt, anyways.” He stalked across the room and waved his lantern over the bed, where she cringed, awaiting her fate. “Get up and get dressed.”

Annie hesitated to comply,
her eyes darting around the circle of male faces leering from the margin of the lamp light. Observing her trepidation, Carl snapped back over his shoulder again, “Get out of here! Mount up and get ready to ride. Curtis!” he called out. “Saddle up a horse from the barn for the lady to ride. Then all of you wait outside until I come out.”

With the speed of a regiment obeying its general’s orders, all the men
hustled out of the cabin as eagerly as they entered it, leaving only Carl looming over the bed. When they remained alone in the room, Carl dropped his voice to a more conciliatory tone. “Get up now, lady, and get dressed to ride. I can’t leave you alone, since you might try something funny, but I’ll turn my back to you for the sake of your modesty. Now, get up. And don’t make me have to tell you twice.”

Carl set his lantern on the table and
slowly turned around. His overpowering presence gave Annie all the motivation she needed to obey his order. She tossed the blankets off and flew to her everyday work dress hanging across the bedpost. She would have rushed to Benjamin’s side to care for him, but she dared not even glance in his direction. She yanked the dress over her head and hastily fastened as many of the buttons as she could manage with her trembling fingers. Then she laced up her shoes and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. “I’m ready,” she croaked.

Carl spun around on his heel at her word, scanned her from head to foot, and then motioned her toward the door. He
held the door for her and she exited out into the rising morning light outside the cabin. Mounted horsemen crowded the whole yard, and the stamping feet and puffing breath of the horses confounded Annie, preventing her from noticing much of anything about her abductors. Carl directed her to a spare horse one of the men held by the bridle, and she climbed into the saddle. From the elevated vantage point of the saddle, her mind cleared enough for her to realize that she was leaving Benjamin, that he might be dead or dying there on the cabin floor, that she was a prisoner of these criminals, and that, in all likelihood, they would kill her, too, when they finished with her. At the threshold of the door, Carl extinguished the lantern and hung it on its hook before pulling the door closed. The fall of the latch into its place clanged ominously in Annie’s ear with fatal finality. Her heart quaked in her breast. She wondered if she would ever return to this cabin she had invested with so much emotion and toil. Could this be the end of the brief but happy era of her life with Benjamin? Would she live long enough to see again this haven of tranquility she had grown to love so much in such a short time?