Mail Order Mayhem (Mail Order Romance Book 2 - Benjamin and Annie) (4 page)

Somewhere from the depths of misery, another thought sprouted up from the soil of his mind, and the words of the Psalm he had read to Annie the night before returned to him. He never thought of himself as much good at reciting Bible verses, and in fact received more than one strapping at Sunday school for either refusing or failing to recite them when commanded to do so. But now, strangely, the passage
materialized in his head in its entirety. It repeated itself again and again, not in his own internal voice, but in some other outside voice not his own. He analyzed it as it cycled back around and began again. Was it Annie’s voice that spoke to him now? He almost burst into tears as he listened to this disembodied repetition, trying to recognize it. It did seem to carry a feminine intonation, but he could not exactly determine to whom it belonged. It shouldn’t be Annie since, from their earliest days of marriage, she preferred that he read the Bible for them each evening. She never read that passage to him.

After a while, the endless repetition of the words made him stop thinking about the voice and instead concentrate on the words themselves. The first several times through the Psalm, the sobs constricted his throat and he swallowed hard to stop himself from crying at the cruel mockery of the situation.
Evil, awful, ghastly evil,
had
in fact befallen him. A plague
had
come nigh his dwelling, and he and Annie
had
fallen into the snare of the fowler. Terror by night, the destruction that walketh in darkness, perfectly characterized the calamity that robbed him of everything that made his life worth living. Perhaps even now, it had robbed him of his own wife’s life. What contemptuous scorn threw that appalling truth into his face now, when all hope abandoned him? He thrust the verse away from himself, inwardly cursing Annie’s religiosity that left him vulnerable to this farcical ridicule in his hour of deepest distress. He neither wanted nor needed any hollow comfort, not from a handful of petty platitudes that failed utterly to reassure a person in the depths of tragedy.

But the verse would not be banished, and when it reiterated through his mind, it changed its emphasis somehow, so that he heard a different meaning in it. He felt himself tucked under the great feathers of a giant bird’s wing, and there found the refuge the passage promised him. Suddenly, his despair lifted, and he realized that he could call and be answered in his need. This verse endlessly cycling through his brain provided the answer to the call he didn’t know he
had made. Something was with him in his time of trouble. He could not recognize it, and he still refused to acknowledge it as the voice of God, so strange and unbidden did it strike him, but he accepted it as an answer of some sort, even if he didn’t know what it meant. He could rest and abide under the shadow of this wing. If he could not live in the cabin in the valley any longer, he could live in the habitation of the Most High. That would be his home now.

In this frame of mind, he descended
the trail to the main road, where he paused, unsure which direction to go. He considered going in the direction of Patterson, where he could meet up with Sheriff Christopher and join his posse. That would certainly be the more prudent choice. On second thought, he examined the tracks of horses’ hooves in the dirt road, and noticed that the overwhelming majority tended to be headed in a southerly direction, toward the little hamlet of Eckville. Only one set of tracks emerged from the Angelfire trail and went back toward Patterson. Those assuredly belonged to Sheriff Christopher himself, returning from his visit to Benjamin’s house. The damp earth, not yet dry from the recent rain, showed clearly a large number of horses, all travelling fast, turning out of Benjamin’s own trail and going south. He remembered Sheriff Christopher’s surmise that the bandits would almost certainly head for the Iverson Ranch next in their systematic assault on the countryside. Benjamin veered to his right and slogged after them.

He only proceeded another hour or so before the tracks changed direction again, this time striking off the road into seemingly unbroken terrain.
Had Benjamin not travelled this trail many times before, in the days when it
was
a trail, he never would have recognized it or been able to find it again. The profusion of bent grasses and snapped tree branches broke a new trail through the overgrown landscape, and Benjamin followed the path up into an ever-steepening valley parallel to his own. He climbed upward, all the while clinging inwardly to his sheltering Psalm, until he crested a hill and entered the narrow pass through the peaks towering on either side. Like his own, this trail offered a spectacular view of the valley below it, and Benjamin halted there to survey the scene of the Iverson homestead, tucked back among the trees on the valley floor. A faint curl of smoke rising from its chimney.

As he watched, a group of men emerged from the barn, leading their saddled horses. They mounted hurriedly and
cantered toward him. Frantically, he retraced his steps down the trail into the undergrowth, until he found a patch of trees he imagined offered the best avenue to cover up his own retreat. These men would be on constant alert for any sign of pursuit, and the untouched foliage of the area provided a perfect palette for them to spot his tracks. Quickly, he disguised himself and his horse as well as possible, before the small band barreled up the hill. They stopped at the top of the pass. Benjamin pressed himself down on his belly in the debris on the forest floor, watching them. One of them—he seemed to be the leader, though he looked somewhat thinner than his fellows—waved his arms and pointed in different directions. Two of his associates separated from the group and stationed themselves at key locations on the crest of the hill, taking up strategic surveillance positions over both the valley and the trail back toward the road. Benjamin considered he would have to deal with these sentries before he made any further move. The rest of the riders galloped off to the south, leaving their comrades to guard the trail.

Instead of returning to the pass, Benjamin continued farther into the thicket until he found a steep ravine, well concealed by brambles
, where he unsaddled his horse and tethered it in a grassy area to graze. Then he hiked up to the top of the ridge on foot. He lay down on his chest behind a rock outcrop where he could spy out the area without being seen himself. After a brief interval, a woman emerged from the farmhouse carrying two wooden buckets, her skirts swinging with the rhythm of her stride. Another man tagged after her as she trudged down to the river and stooped to fill the buckets at a water pool. He observed her sadly as she tarried there, her hand trailing through the glistening water and her head thrown back toward the sighing cedar trees leaning over her. How often he had watched her following the same routine at their own creek side when she fetched water. She loved to sit at the water’s edge and dream in the quiet beauty of the spot. He knew her communion with the river brought her exquisitely close to her God, and all the splendor of the valley reminded her of the glory of creation.

The man
supervising her seemed insensible to the delay. He also seemed either reluctant to acknowledge or unaware of any possibility of being observed. He watched Annie nonchalantly, her immediate actions his only care. Annie didn’t linger there as long as she normally did at home, but filled her buckets and returned to the farmhouse. Benjamin lost sight of her under the eaves by the back door. He stayed in his place for perhaps another hour. They appeared to be keeping her to cook and clean for them, in which case she would probably follow the same schedule she kept at home. She came out to collect water again just before supper, then afterwards for the washing up. He couldn’t expect to take his horse down to the homestead without alerting the bandits to his presence, but he could probably sneak in there on foot, especially if he kept to the trees around the valley rim. He could creep up to the pool and show himself to her, then meet her there again after supper. If she knew he waited for her outside, she could contrive to get out of the house without her guard. Then he could lead her up to where his horse was tethered and ride away with her. He didn’t bother to think any further than that, or consider what he would do next if that first plan failed. He would make it succeed.

But first, he must dispose of these sentries. If he removed the guard and the sheriff arrived in pursuit with his posse—well, that was one impediment to their success eliminated in advance. He crept up to the crest of the hill and spied the first man sitting on a rock, his rifle resting idle at his side. The man gazed down into the valley, his back to the trail. Deftly, Benjamin tiptoed around through the trees. He picked his way ever so softly and carefully from one tree to another, until he made his way to within a few feet of the preoccupied man. He took his pistol from its holster and turned it around so that he held it around the barrel and the butt of the hand grip protruded outward. He took one decisive stride toward the man and swung his gun down, clubbing the sentry on the back of the head. The man crumpled off his rock into a heap onto the ground. Benjamin disarmed him and stashed his weapons in the ravine with his own horse. Then he
dealt with the other sentry the same way and set off at an angle around the perimeter of the forest, keeping hidden all the time, working his way steadily around the valley toward the pool of water behind the house.

The band of horsemen clustering around Annie veered to the north from the road, taking a side trail up into an adjacent valley. The path they trod almost completely vanished at several points into overgrown vegetation, as if no one had passed that way for a long time. Twice, the men dismounted to hack through the brambles with machetes, and in more than one place, the whole group detoured around fallen tree trunks before regaining the trail again. Through it all, the young Curtis held the bridle of Annie’s horse and never released it. She held the reins out of habit, but she could not steer her own mount. Unlike Benjamin, she never visited the Iverson Ranch, so she had no idea where they were going, and the combination of this uncertainty and her own inability to control her movements, left her panting in anxiety. When they topped the pass, she looked down into a valley closely resembling her own. Only the relative position of the house and some of the stands of trees indicating the path of the river told her this was not her home. The cottage to which the horsemen led her was constructed of stone, unlike Benjamin’s log structure, and towered much larger than their own diminutive hovel.

The hoard of men cantered up to the farm house and collectively dismounted. A select handful took on the chore of tending to the horses, unsaddling them and installing them in the barn, while others busied themselves with domestic chores. They ferried armloads of firewood to the house and unloaded food stores from pack horses at the rear of their column. Carl and Curtis, father and son and the clear leaders of the group, entered the house
directly without concerning themselves with such matters. After stopping his own and Annie’s mounts at the door, Curtis pulled her down from the saddle with an iron grip on her elbow and propelled her through the door before closing it after her. Once more, Annie found herself alone with Carl in the central room of the house.

Inside, the house resembled
her own in almost every respect, other than its size. The kitchen table and stove, the shelves for crockery and cutlery, reminded her of her own house, but the immediate peril of her situation prevented her from dwelling on the loss. She surveyed the large sitting room on her right, and the staircase leading up into the second story of the building which, she assumed, held the sleeping areas. A large grandfather clock occupied the corner of the main room, and its incessant ticking infused the house with a sense of occupancy. Annie observed, however, the thick film of dust covering ever surface, especially the wood stove. No one had lived in this house for a long time.

Annie observed Carl, who examined the house just as she did, but his expression gave her an impression of wistful sadness, almost nostalgia. He strolled around the kitchen, peering closely at everything on the shelves, but kept his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, as though
loath to touch anything. In the sitting room, he smiled lovingly at the clock before proceeding to the big stone fireplace. A few curiosities dotted the top of the big wooden beam serving as a mantelpiece. He stopped in front of a small black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman, enclosed by a gilt frame. He gazed at it for a long time. Then he picked it up and wiped the dust from its surface on his coat. He brought the photograph up close to his face and studied it intently, his eyelids and lips twitching pensively. Though she didn’t understand why, something in his misty expression gave Annie the idea that he knew these people, and the impression solidified in her mind when he tucked the photograph, frame and all, into the inner pocket of his coat.

Carl continued his exploration of the room. He navigated around the chairs and lamp to a cabinet in the corner of the main room, where he withdrew his hand from his pocket again to slide open one or two of the drawers.
He stared into the second drawer he opened with the same thoughtful curiosity with which he viewed the photograph. Then he lifted out a woman’s necklace from inside the drawer and gave it the same close examination, before stowing it along with the photograph inside his coat. His behavior puzzled Annie. She expected him to smash and demolish everything in his path, the way he did at her own house, but instead he seemed intent on leaving everything perfectly undisturbed, as though he were a guest in the house of an esteemed colleague, and that he should preserve the integrity of the place against its owner’s imminent return. At the same time, he seemed most careful not to disturb the dust on any of the surfaces, as though he was taking a tour of a museum, and the unsullied antiquity of the place mattered as much to him as anything else. On the other hand, these marauders, whom she originally assumed to be petty thieves, did not seem to take anything of value from this homestead. They took nothing, for example—other than herself—from her home, when Benjamin’s guns and livestock lay utterly unprotected before them. Carl only took the hunting knife from Benjamin’s trunk, and he examined that with the same curious reflection he bestowed on the necklace and the photograph. This retrieval of keepsakes, none of which carried any apparent value, completely contradicted her assessment of their motives. She wondered what their true object might be. Neither did their purpose seem to include wanton murder and pillage. They could easily have killed Benjamin with a single bullet to the back of his head. Instead, they left him alive. They had not assaulted her, as she feared they might, but only carried her off, otherwise unmolested. True, they smashed up her house and destroyed their food supplies, but all of that seemed to be in a clumsy search for the hunting knife, which could hardly be classified as a trophy of their conquest. They clearly sacked the cabin searching for something specific, and found it in the shape of the knife.

Annie puzzled over this, but in the middle of her deliberations,
Carl slid the drawer closed with a sigh and faced her decisively. “We’ll be staying here for a while,” he informed her. “You might as well make yourself useful by getting the fire going and getting some food ready for the men. The more useful you make yourself, the longer we’re likely to keep you around.” This warning closed Annie’s thoughts with a resounding snap. She started and stared at him.

“Do you intend to kill me eventually, then?” she
stunned herself by blurting out.

Carl shrugged and
turned away. “Who knows? We can’t exactly let you go, now that you’ve seen who we are and what we’re doing. I don’t much like the idea of killing a defenseless woman, but, hey, you never know what could happen. If anyone comes after us, we might have to use you as a hostage, and then anything could happen. When we leave here, we’ll be going up to our own hiding place in the mountains, and if we take you along, we definitely won’t be able to let you go. We can’t run the risk of you telling anyone where we are, or who we are, or what we’ve done. We’ll have to either keep you with us forever—which isn’t likely—or get rid of you. But who knows? I can’t make any promises now. I brought you along so the men don’t have to cook and clean for themselves. They can’t abide that. They say it’s women’s work, and they quarrel something terrible every time we have to decide who’s gonna do what. I’ve had enough of it. So that’s what you’re here for. If you do that, and do it well, we’ll keep you around as long as we can. Just keep yourself busy, do as you’re told, and keep quiet. And don’t try anything fancy like trying to escape. Then we might have to kill you for sure.”

He pulled out a chair from the table, tossed his body into it, and did not condescend to notice her again. Annie shook herself with a shudder and bustled over to the wood stove, trying to steady her shaking hands by rattling the vents and scraping out the ashes. She
noticed the cobwebs around the door of the fire box, but she also surmised that whoever left this house unoccupied for so long must have left it abruptly, since they made no effort to clean out the stove or to prepare it for their return—or for anyone else to occupy it, for that matter. They hadn’t even swept the twigs and soot out from underneath it.

The mundane tasks of building the fire, kindling the flame,
and adjusting the flue took Annie’s mind off her predicament. She found wooden buckets outside a back door, but when she tried to leave the house to fetch water from the river, Carl called his son over from the barn to follow her and bring her back. Inside the house, however, they left her relatively free to work in much the same way she engaged herself at home. She found soap, clothes for cleaning, and everything else she needed in the way of utensils, all located in their appropriate places, as though the proprietress of this kitchen had merely stepped out for a few hours and would be back shortly to take up her work again. Once she found her way around the kitchen, Annie set a pot of beans to boil on the stove and a kettle of water to heat on the back burner. She experienced the same satisfied contentment at the completion of her chores that she normally enjoyed in her own kitchen. She found herself internally repeating her beloved Proverbs 31, reminding herself that her husband was not necessarily dead, and that she could still labor to honor him and to glorify God’s name.

After a few hours, Carl called the men to come into the house in shifts to eat the meal Annie prepared. They arrayed themselves around the table and
gobbled the food noisily, but cast uncertain glances in her direction and did not converse. Annie inferred from their behavior that Carl had instructed them in no uncertain terms to keep their mouths shut around her. Not that she minded so much. The less she knew about their activities, the safer she would be. The gang took three shifts before all the men finished eating, and then the job of cleaning up began. Once again, Curtis accompanied her while she hauled in the buckets of water, and again when she went outside to dump them out. As soon as she finished cleaning up, she checked the clock in the sitting room and realized the remainder of the day left her only enough time to start working on supper. Feeding fifteen to twenty men took more time than she thought. Then she had to get Curtis to go with her to get the fresh water again, as well as another supply of wood.

After they returned to the house, Carl called
Curtis and the two retired together to the sitting room. Though she admonished herself to stay as ignorant as possible about their machinations, she could not stop herself from quieting her supper preparations and attempting to eavesdrop on their conversation. At key points, she deliberately clanged the door of the stove and rattled her spoon on the side of the pot to camouflage her interest.

“Take Ned, and one or two others,” Carl instructed his son, “and go as far as
Eckville. See if you can find anyone at the saloon who might be interested in talking.”

“What if we meet a posse on the way?” Curtis asked.

“Then run for it,” his father told him. “Don’t try to engage with them. Just get out of there. If you can get back here to warn us, so much the better. But save your own necks, if it comes to it. We can always meet up later at the hiding place.”

“But you’ll be left here with no warning, if they do come,” Curtis countered. “If they get past us
and make it up here, you’ll be caught by surprise.”

“I’ll post a few look-outs at the top of the pass,” Carl decided. “They can sound a warning shot if anyone comes.”

“I don’t like leaving you alone, Pop,” Curtis hesitated. “We ought to stick together.”

“I know how you feel,” Carl consoled him, “but we need to find out if anyone is coming after us, and the only way to do that is to send out scouts. I don’t trust any of these
fellas the way I trust you, and it’s good for the guys to follow you for a change. Get them used to the idea of you being in charge.”

“Yeah, I know,” Curtis
conceded. “But I still don’t like it. What are you gonna do about that woman? I didn’t like you bringin’ her along. We should’ve left her behind, or got rid of her.”

“So, do you want to start killing women
now?” Carl retorted. “I sure don’t. That’s not what we’re here for. Besides, maybe having a woman to cook for them will keep the men quiet for a while. I know it’s not great having her along, but it beats anything else I could think of at the time. Anyway, she’s here now, so we’ll just have to make the best of it.”

“So how will you deal with her, while I’m gone?” Curtis continued. “You won’t be able to watch her every minute, like I’ve been doing. You want her to do the cooking and the cleaning up? She goes out to the river to get water every five minutes. You
gonna follow her every move to make sure she doesn’t make a run for it? I don’t like this at all.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Carl soothed him. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“You’re getting careless in your old age, Pop,” Curtis reproached his father. “You’re gonna get us all lynched, thinkin’ like that.”

“
Now, son, pull your head in,” Carl growled menacingly. “Don’t forget who’s in charge of this operation. You go do what I told you and find out how close they are to following us. You leave the business of handling her to me. I think I can handle a woman, even at my advanced age. You’ll be runnin’ this outfit soon enough, and then you can make whatever decisions you want. Until then, mind you keep your place.”

“Alright, Pop.” Curtis retreated. “Have it your own way. Just be careful. That’s all I ask.”

“I will be,” Carl reassured him. “Now get on with you, and get back with some useful information.”

Annie crashed around the kitchen to mask her eavesdropping and
when Curtis barged out of the house, she stuck her head into the pantry to avoid coming into contact with him. She listened gratefully as the drumbeats of horse’s feet receded from the homestead, knowing he would not be lurking around her all the time. Her brain started working feverishly to formulate a scheme to take advantage of the relaxed vigilance of his absence. She kept a keen eye on Carl’s activities in the hours leading up to supper, in the hope of catching him slackening his watchfulness enough to provide her with an opportunity to escape. She didn’t know what she would do if she did succeed in escaping, but she had to try.