Mail Order Mayhem (Mail Order Romance Book 2 - Benjamin and Annie) (5 page)

When the beans simmered in the pot on the stove, Annie took her buckets to fetch in the water for the dishes and headed for the back door. Instead of following her all the way to the water’s edge, as his son Curtis always did, Carl merely watched her from the doorway, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood and carrying on a conversation with two of his associates about the management of their horses. The evening sun drooped behind the trees, and the darkening dusk settled over the farm. Annie bent down to fill her first bucket. The limpid water, so cold and clear, lapped around the fingers of her hand and caress
ed her skin, as if speaking to her. She hesitated, training her senses to the communication. The image of the lizard suddenly returned to her, and she paused. The water gurgled over the stones and harkened back to the many tranquil hours she spent on the banks of her own creek, admiring the beauty and clarity of the stream. Nonetheless, the sound whispered another message to her ear. What was it? Her eyes traced the sensuous ripples spreading out across the pool from her moving hands in its waters, reflecting the blazing purples and peachy pinks of the sunset in their glassy surface. The pattern drew her outward from herself, up to the top of the pool, and then for some reason, she looked up further still into the heart of the woods. Standing there, hidden by the trunk of a tree, she saw Benjamin.

She froze, at first unclear whether she might be hallucinating in her great desire to see him again. Then, by sheer force of will, she tore her eyes away and returned them to the bucket. She filled it and lifted it out, then submerged the second bucket in its place. Only then did she permit herself to look again. Sure enough, there he was, his hand resting on the bark of the tree. Diligently, she dragged her gaze down again, and pretended to scrub out the bucket in the water. She looked at him one last time. No, she could not be
hallucinating; because the whole front of his forehead bore the unmistakable signs of the blows he received in the cabin the night of their attack. Black bruises darkened both his eyes, and dried blood clung to his hair. He looked exhausted and aged. He stayed behind the tree, out of sight of Carl at the doorway. As she stared at him, he pointed up toward the setting sun, then lowered his hand below the horizon, and finally pointed down toward the ground at his feet. Annie dared not acknowledge these communications, and in any case she didn’t understand his meaning, but the knowledge that he was here, near her and endeavoring to reach her, quickened her pulse and sent her mind into a ferment of scheming how to get out of the house alone. She lifted out the second bucket, heaved the two dripping pails in her hands, and lugged them back to the house.

Carl met her at the doorway. “What took you so long?” he
snarled.

She shouldered past him and set the buckets down on the kitchen floor by the stove. She hid her flushed cheeks from him by mixing the pot of beans and setting the kettle in its place, then pouring the water into it. “I always used to sit by the river at home and say my prayers,” she explained as calmly as she could. “It’s force of habit. The water sort of sends me into a trance. I can’t explain it any other way.” Then she went on the offensive. “You were watching me the whole time. What are you worrying about?”

Carl grumbled under his breath. “Just don’t you try anything funny out there. You could wind up in trouble.”

“I’m already in trouble,” she
shot back. “I’m not on vacation here, you know.”

Carl rounded on her with a terrible expression. But instead of exploding in a storm of temper, as she expected him to, he
responded with brittle coldness, sending her a sterner warning than any show of violence could. “Hold your tongue, woman, if you know what’s good for you.”

Annie
whirled away, and returned to setting the dishes on the table for supper. When the first shift of men tromped in and sat down to their meal, she formulated a hasty plan. She set aside a bucket of hot water from her kettle, and as soon as the first shift finished and migrated away from the table, she collected their plates and put them into the hot water. She served the second shift and, while they shoveled and chewed, she carried the steaming bucket of dirty dishes to the back door and set it outside on the step. She came back to get the cake of soap and the dish rag and, in full view of Carl, dropped them out the back door onto the step as well. The second shift departed, and the third shift trooped in. Carl sat down at the table along with the men, and Annie dished out their food and set the plates in front of them. She could not follow their conversation from the pounding of her blood in her ears. Her hands trembled as she lifted the stack of dirty dishes from the second shift and carried them ceremoniously to the back door. She opened the door to put them in the bucket, but this time, she let the door close after her.

She ran for her life down to the river, to the tree where she believed Benjamin waited for her. But when she reached it, she found the spot deserted. She only paused for a fleeting instant before she rushed down the riverbed in the direction of the pass she knew led out of the valley from the direction they entered it. Benjamin could only have come from that direction. Once, she cast a frantic glance back over her shoulder toward the house
. Lanterns glowed at the front door of the house and at the door of the barn. The door opened and closed, throwing a yellow rectangle of light out into the deepening night, but only the contented, conversing voices of men at ease issued from within.

On she ran, her lungs bursting with the effort. She left the riverbank when the trees clustered too closely to make running easy, and she met the main trail out of the valley. The moon shone bright and full on the eastern horizon, illuminating the valley floor and providing her with more than enough light to see
where she was going. Her skirts rustled through the grass on either side of the trail. By the time she crossed the flat floor of the valley and began the climb toward the pass, the tearing pain in her chest forced her to slow to a walk. Higher and higher she trekked into the foothills, around bends and through switch-backs towards the pass. She stopped at the summit and turned, just in time to see the doors of the house flying open and to hear the shouts of the men streaming out of it. Above it all, she thought she could distinguish Carl’s voice issuing orders to the rest of the gang. The line of men, like a tiny trail of ants pouring out of their nest, ran for the barn. As she hurried on, she heard the alarmed whinnying of horses emerging from the barn, followed by the pounding of their hooves as they sped down the trail after her. Annie pressed on, panting in terror, hardly aware of where she was going. She stumbled over rocks and fallen twigs, her legs numb from the exertion of her climb. At the top of the rise, she tripped over a solid object blocking her path. At first, she mistook it for a fallen log, but when she got up and dusted herself off, she saw the shape of a man who appeared to be sleeping against a rock. On she hurried, not giving herself any time to think about what he was doing there, in the middle of the trail. Further along her path, the trees overshadowed the trail, blocking out the moonlight, and as she entered this cover, she collided bodily with Benjamin coming the opposite direction.

“Annie!” he breathed in astonishment. “You’re here! I was just coming down to meet you! Quick! They’ll be here in a second! Follow me, quickly!”

Annie suppressed her own cry of surprise. She scarcely registered the reality of Benjamin, alive and well, in front of her. Benjamin led her further into the trees, away from the trail, and before another moment elapsed, heavy darkness enveloped them where the trees completely obliterated all moonlight. At first, she followed the sounds of his rustling footsteps through the undergrowth, but in a few minutes, she lost the sound of them. She stood still and listened, but only the approaching rumble of her pursuers on horseback gave her any inkling of direction. She could neither see nor hear any sign of Benjamin at all, and she despaired of finding him again in the darkness. She dared not call out to him, in the fear of alerting the men to her position. She could not remain standing still any longer. She could only stagger forward, low-hanging branches scratching at her hair and face and tangled brambles ripping her skirts. She helplessly raised her hands in front of her face to protect herself, keeping her eyes shut tight. She could see nothing anyway. She crashed through the trees and bushes, making a frightful racket. She marveled they didn’t find her by the noise alone, and she wondered why Benjamin didn’t notice her absence and come back to find her.

She struggled onward in blind panic until she burst out of the darkness into the moonlight again and recognized the worn trail upon which she had come from the farm.
She had worked herself around in a complete circle. She just collected enough of her self-possession to face the southern direction again, when the thunder of horse hoof beats overtook her again, and the streaking shapes of charging animal bodies flowed around her. Had she kept silent, they might have ridden past without even realizing her presence. Instead, her arms flew up automatically to protect her head and she screamed out instinctively in shock. Belatedly, the horsemen reined to a stop just beyond her and, turning back, Curtis’s voice broke the night. “It’s that infernal woman. She’s run off, just like I warned Pop she would. I knew he wouldn’t watch her closely enough. We’ll take her back with us.”

She could only stand there, bewildered, as he trotted over to her.
He grabbed a fistful of her clothes from between her shoulder blades, hauled her up and deposited her across the pommel of his saddle. Without a word to the other men, he galloped off back up the trail toward the farmhouse.

After he realized Annie had failed to follow him in the darkness of the trees, Benjamin retraced his steps toward the trail, where he had listened in sinking dread to the bandits finding and recapturing her. Against all his inclinations, he withdrew further into the woods and returned to the glen where his horse remained hidden, and he laid down on the cold grass to wait for daylight. He didn’t even pretend to sleep. He cradled his head on his arm and stared up at the moon and stars all night long. In direct opposition to his line of thinking from the previous day, every time the subject of Annie or a memory of their former life together manifested in his mind, he studiously set it aside. Since he could make no further move to help her during that night, the motivation of her predicament would serve no purpose other than to irritate and alarm him. He thought instead of the marvelous miracle of the firmament above him. He had experienced little or no spiritual inspiration from observing the stars and the heavens since his earliest days at his ranch, when he slept out under the stars with his cattle herds and admired the rain of starlight he named Angelfire. At the time, the phenomenal beauty of the display made him envision a shower of blessings sprinkling down from Heaven to sanctify and consecrate the land and the creatures inhabiting it, including him. In the years since then, he lost the feeling of wondrous exultation and of intimate relationship with the Divine Presence. When Annie arrived, she reignited his sense of wonder at the vision of blessed light falling from the sky and reinforced the belief, long buried in his subconscious memory, of the sanctification of God descending on all creation. This resonance between them, more than anything else, confirmed their union and affirmed his resolution to join her in worshipping and glorifying God.

Now, with her so close to him yet so far out of his reach, he retreated into his Psalm, into his feathery refuge, surrounding
himself with its promised shelter. Even that divine rest didn’t bring him any closer to sleep, but he relaxed considerably in the sight of the night sky. He stared up into it, sensing some other eye looking back down at him in return, as if the myriad stars represented a thousand eyes recognizing him and acknowledging him, or perhaps as if the sky itself represented the eye of one enormous being gazing down on him. Finally, the stars twinkled out one after the other, and the eastern sky lightened incrementally until broad day lifted the landscape out of obscurity and brought the world back to life. When the sun blazed up over the horizon and sparkled on the dew on the grass, Benjamin sighed and dragged himself to his feet. He saddled his horse, mounted up, and rode up to the pass where he could look down on the farm in the valley below him.

The smoke still ascended from the chimney, offering its deceptively welcoming message to any forlorn sojourner see
ing it. Benjamin initially saw no other movement around the house or barn, but in a few minutes, the barn door slid aside and a man stepped out into the sunshine. Another followed, then another, and soon a dozen small figures scurried around the yard, traversing the space between the house and the barn, back and forth, and hurrying in every direction. They escorted their horses out, saddled them, tied on their rifles, and loaded up their pack horses with bundles and packages. All doubt about the course before him left Benjamin, and he untied his own rifle from his saddle and spurred his horse down the slope toward the farmhouse.

As he approached the homestead, the crowd of figures clustering in the yard thickened, and the men in the group milled around, waiting for
something.At last, a tall man, accompanied by a lanky, slender youth, came out of the house leading Annie by a rope tied around her wrists. The older man placed the rope in the hands of the youth while he secured the farmhouse door. As the group of bandits prepared to mount their horses, Benjamin Moran trotted into their midst, his rifle butt resting on his thigh and his eyes flashing around the circle of male faces. The two men nearest Annie stared at him inquisitively, not recognizing him, but Annie herself caught her breath and froze in her tracks.

Benjamin paid her no attention, but kept his eyes riveted on the two men flanking her
. He stopped his horse in sight of the gang. Then he nodded at the older man. “I’ll be taking my wife home now, Mister,” he declared.

The man scoffed indignantly. “You think so?
And how do you plan to do that, may I ask, a single man with a rifle against all of us? What’s to stop us killing you both and leaving you in a shallow grave to rot?”

“
Nothin’s stoppin’ you,” Moran conceded mildly. “You got the numbers, I’ll grant you that. But, still, here I am, a man with a rifle, and I don’t mean to leave here without my wife.”

Several of the men laughed viciously, and the youth at the man’s side snorted derisively. “You want me to take care of this joker, Pop?”

“I’ll take care of him, son,” the man replied. Then he addressed Benjamin again. “I’ll make you a wager, Mister, just to amuse myself before we set out on our journey. You come down from your horse and put your rifle away, and we’ll both take off our gun belts, and I’ll fight you man to man, fair and square and hand to hand, with no weapons. If you best me, you’ll ride out of here with your wife. That’s the best I can offer you. Take it or leave it.”

“And if you
best me? Then what?” Moran inquired.

“If I
best you?” the man shrugged blandly. “Well, if I best you, then, you won’t ride out of here with your wife. That’s all.”

“And if I
best you, what’s to stop your men, or your son here, from killing us both afterwards anyways?” Benjamin squinted suspiciously at the bandit.

“I’ll give you my word of honor, as a man, that they won’t do that,” the man promised seriously.

“Your word of honor!” Benjamin guffawed. “That’s a laugh, coming from the likes of you! Your word of honor—HA! Tell me another one!”

The man grimaced in embarrassment.
“Alright, Mister. You heard my offer. Take it or leave it. I promise you that if you beat me in a fair fight, my men will let you ride away from here with your wife. And Curtis will promise the same thing. Won’t you, son?”

“Alright,
Pop,” the youth assented. “I promise.”

“There you go, Mister,” the man rejoined. “Now, what do you say? I reckon that’s about the best you can hope for.”

Benjamin glanced ruefully around the group of rugged, hardened faces again, and rapidly assessed the odds. The man’s proposal gave him his only chance to rescue Annie. If they killed him, they would either kill her, too, or take her away with them, and with him dead, she would have no chance of rescue again. “Alright,” he reluctantly agreed. “Just tell your men there to move back.”

The man waved his hand toward his men, the majority of whom already sat mounted on their horses. “Move back!” he ordered them. They obeyed, withdrawing toward the barn and leaving an empty space between Benjamin and his opponent. Only Curtis, holding Annie by the rope
with one hand and the reins of their horses in the other, stayed motionless in the same position. Benjamin tied his rifle to his saddle and dismounted. His opponent scrutinized him keenly as he unbuckled his gun belt and looped it over the horn of the saddle. He led his horse away, secured its reins, and slapped it on the haunch. The animal started into the air in surprise and bolted away down the trail toward the safety of the trees. Benjamin returned to the open ground in front of the house, completely unarmed, but strangely, he felt no less exposed now than when he first approached the gang with his rifle in his hand. The other man unfastened his gun belt and handed it over to his son, whispering conspiratorially to him. Then he peeled off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, stalking over toward Benjamin.

From their first confrontation, Benjamin comprehended his own disadvantage. Never a fighting man himself, he felt awkward and ungainly facing this lean
, lithe character poised like a cat in front of him. The two men presented their fists to each other, circling and feinting with simulated thrusts and appraising gambits. After a few minutes of this, Carl understood their relative positions well enough to drive in and strike at Benjamin’s face with his fists. Benjamin made one successful block against this attack before the first blow landed against his eye, shooting sparks of pain into his head and sending him reeling. Carl followed up his advantage with one punch after another, knocking Benjamin backward with every hit, until he tripped against a clump of grass and pitched over onto his back on the ground. Carl pounced on his fallen victim, kicking him in the ribs and finally dealing a nasty kick to Benjamin’s head. The defeated man sprawled prostrate on the ground, while Carl stalked away toward the house. When he reached the spot where Curtis and Annie observed the fight, Benjamin groaned and strained from the grass up onto his hands and knees. Carl sneered over his shoulder, picked up a stick of firewood from next to the cabin door, and stomped back to Benjamin. He clenched his teeth sadistically and, aiming carefully, delivered a punishing wallop to the back of Benjamin’s head. Benjamin succumbed to the blow, collapsing face down on the ground, and didn’t move again.

Consciousness returned to him only very slowly. For a long time after he regained awareness, he simply rested in the darkness in front of his eyes, making no attempt to open them or to move any part of his tortured body. As before, his brain at first recoiled from the chore of thinking about anything
. A thick haze hung around the borders of his perception, blocking out everything outside the limited circle of his self-awareness. In the end, something obstructing his ability to breathe convinced him to rally and roll over onto his back. When he overcame the shooting agony in his head and body to accomplish this feat, his eyelids flickered open momentarily, and he remarked to himself that the darkness still obscured his eyes. He wondered what might be causing it, but couldn’t quite make himself open them again. He lay there, appreciating the cool air on his burning brow and refreshing his nostrils and lungs. Then he identified the strange smell of the substance that impeded his breath when he lay on his chest. It was the rich, aromatic smell of soil, and the recognition reminded him of how he came to bury his face in it in the first place. The memory of the fight slowly filtered back into his mind, and with it, full consciousness returned as well. His eyes popped open of their own accord, and with them came the sight of the star-studded sky overhead. He briefly recalled his thoughts and reflections of the previous night, and then he noticed that there was no moon. It must have already set behind the horizon, which meant that he had lain unconscious for an entire day and an entire night after the bandits rode away, leaving him there on his face. Oh, poor Annie! he grieved to himself. How devastated she would be, at witnessing him defeated and left for dead a second time at the hands of these ruffians! He wondered again why they left him alive. Regardless of the reason, it meant that, in all likelihood, they kept Annie alive, too, which meant he still had a chance to get her back. Still, he could not induce his body to move. His brain simply refused to send the necessary signals to his limbs. He laid on his back, staring up into the stars, the cold of the ground seeping further into his bones and robbing him of all motivation to do anything.

Suddenly, the sensation from the night before of being watched from above, of staring into the all-seeing eye of Heaven
, dispelled all his despondency and despair, and he felt once again the warm comfort of divine Refuge surrounding him and supporting him. His breathing subsided into a calm tide, and he sighed in something as near to bliss as he could reach in his battered, shattered state. He relaxed still further, making no effort to move, until the stars faded gradually and the grey murky light of dawn changed the landscape around him. Bird songs trilled among the trees, and he heard the burbling of the river for the first time, although he knew that it had been there, close by him, all along. The breeze rustled the grass, the frogs croaked in the marsh, and all the sounds seemed to encourage him further. With great difficulty, he rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow. His head exploded in pain and his vision swam before his eyes. He almost collapsed into unconsciousness again, but he mustered all his strength and flipped over onto his hands and knees. He crawled to the door post of the house and, leaning against it, he dragged himself to his feet. He teetered there uncertainly, his eyes clenched tightly against the piercing light and pain, and swallowing the nausea welling up from the pit of his stomach.

H
e searched inside his own head for the ministering voice of his Psalm that so fortified him during his travel to this place, but instead of the disembodied feminine voice repeating it so faithfully, he found his own inner voice calling upon God to answer him and deliver him. “Dear God,” he heard himself praying. “Dear God, help me. I can’t do this without You. Help me, please. I’m begging You. I’ll do anything. I’ll be Yours for the rest of my life. I’ll be Your servant and I’ll obey You humbly no matter what for as long as I live. Just get me through this, and help me to get Annie back. That’s all I’m asking. Protect Annie and help me bring her home. Please.” As these words arose from his heart and formed themselves in his thoughts, tears came to his eyes and scored his dirty cheeks. He made no move to stop them or to brush them away, but let them run, and in the nadir of his despair, he felt the truth of the words he just formed. Though he still stood unsteadily on his feet, clutching the door post for balance, he felt his heart and soul bowing down to the ground and pressing his forehead to the earth in supplication and submission, and he felt the turning of a great tide within himself. He had stated his terms, the bargain had been struck, and his terms were accepted. He was now a servant and a subordinate of God, with no recourse and no exit. In exchange, he could hope to restore Annie. He could rely on God to uphold her and protect her in the same way He would, and he could shelter in the sanctuary of God’s eternal, spiritual habitation. He only needed to find her and bring her home again. Everything else he could leave in God’s hands.