Mail Order Mayhem (Mail Order Romance Book 2 - Benjamin and Annie) (7 page)

“Well, you’ll dig your own grave,
doin’ that,” the sheriff warned. He swung down from his saddle and shook the kinks out of his legs. He tossed his reins to his nearest deputy and jerked his thumb toward the homestead.“I’ll have to take a look inside the house. Have you been inside?”

“No, I haven’t,” Benjamin responded.
“I hate to think what they’ve done in there.”

“Come with me,” the sheriff invited him. “You knew Tom and Maureen better than I did. I never went inside while they were aliv
e. You can tell me if anything’s out of place.”

“From what they did to my place,” Benjamin replied. “I imagine they wrecked it, the same as they did everything else. I guess they’re
havin’ fun, goin’ from place to place, smashing everything in sight. That’s the only thing I can figure out about them.”

“Well, come on and let’s have a look,” the sheriff ascended the step and threw the latch.

The two men peeked through the open door into the main room of the farmhouse. The scene closely inside resembled the one presented to Annie when she first arrived at the Iverson Ranch, with the exception of the cleanliness of the kitchen. The main sitting room remained virtually untouched. “Looks alright to me,” the sheriff pointed out. “Nothin’ broken.”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” Benjamin marveled. “I wonder why they left this place alone, when they’ve done so much damage to other people’s places.”

“Looks like a woman has been here,” the sheriff remarked.

Benjamin nodded, finding it difficult to answer. “You remember what it looked like when we buried Tom and Maureen? There were cinders and kindling underneath the stove, and ashes on the hearth.”
“I remember,” the sheriff confirmed. “Someone’s cleaned it up, and wiped the dust off. Look at the difference between the dust on the shelves in the sitting room and the shelves in the kitchen.”

They ventured into the kitchen, but hesitated to proceed beyond the boundary of dust at the edge of it. “The table’s been scrubbed and the dishes washed and stacked,” the sheriff observed.

“I don’t like disturbing this place,” Benjamin commented. “It feels like walking on someone’s grave.”

“
Too bad those rascals didn’t feel the same way. Looks to me like they made a special effort to keep the place nice and tidy,” the sheriff continued his perusal of the kitchen, until he finally migrated into the sitting room. Like Carl, he kept his hands tucked into his belt, touching nothing, while he inspected every detail of the room. “Come over here and have a look and tell me if you see anything missing.”

Together, they scanned the shelves and cabinets, until Benjamin stopped in front of the fireplace. “Here,” he called the sheriff over. “Have a look.” Martin Christopher joined him, and Benjamin pointed to a small
, dust-free square in the carpet of powder on the mantelpiece. “There.”

“Do you remember what used to be there?” Christopher asked reverently.

Benjamin surveyed the other trinkets and knickknacks on the mantle. “As I remember, they had a photograph of themselves here. That’s the only thing I can see missing.”

“I wonder why they took it,” the sheriff mused to himself.

Benjamin remembered something. “Come to think of it, the only thing they took from my place was a hunting knife belonging to Tom Iverson. That snake Forsythe had it. I kept it in my trunk under the bed. I couldn’t see anything else missing, not even my guns. Didn’t make sense at the time, seeing as how I always assumed they came to thieve and raid. And this morning—that’s the second time they’ve left my horse behind. They took one for Annie to ride, but left the second one. Maybe this whole thing has something to do with the Iversons. I mean, look at this place. It looks like a mausoleum. They used the kitchen and maybe the beds, but left this room preserved. Why?”

“I don’t know,” the sheriff responded, “and to tell you the truth, I don’t really care. I
gotta keep on until I find ‘em and bring ‘em in. It don’t matter no-ways why they’re doin’ what they’re doin’. The consequence is the same.” He headed for the door again. Benjamin took a last look at the room before following him out.

When they emerged into the daylight outside, they squinted into the distance. The sheriff gazed south, and Benjamin surveyed the northern horizon. “Do you still mean to head north?” the sheriff inquired.

Benjamin nodded. “Annie’s there. That’s my way.”

The sheriff sighed and stepped down to his horse. “Good luck to you. I hope we meet again before very long.”

“So do I,” Benjamin sighed.

“Come on down to the station in Patterson, if you change your mind,” Christopher offered as he hove into his saddle. “If we aren’t there, we’ll be on the main roads between here and there, and you can join us.”

“I appreciate that,” Benjamin acknowledged.

“You’re a good man, Moran,” the sheriff called as he spurred his horse around. “I hate to see a good man throw himself away like this. I only wish there was a way to change your mind and convince you to come with us.”

“There isn’t,” Benjamin reiterated.

The sheriff shook his head. “I know.
Alright. Good-bye, then.”

“Good-bye,” Benjamin whispered to himself as the posse filed out of the valley to the south. Then he reached for his own reins and mounted before heading his own horse
in the northern direction.

He ignored the growing hunger and thirst
dominating his senses with increasing authority and urged his mount into a trot. By the middle of the day, he wound his way out of the flat area of the valley into the upper reaches of the river, into the ravines and hills leading up into the higher mountains. He only stopped once to drink from the river, and as he stooped to cup his hands into the water, he noticed some wild blackberry bushes overhanging the pool on the opposite bank. He waded across and scoffed as many handfuls of the ripe berries he could reach without tearing his hands to shreds on the thorns. Then he took to his horse again and didn’t stop again until the path of tracks led him into a series of rocky escarpments. The trail snaked among these stands of granite, scaling the steep peaks of the mountains into rough wilderness. His horse scrambled for its footing in crumbly gravel and soft loam under the trees, always following the trodden course of the other horses.

Benjamin no longer questioned where the way led him. He would only follow wherever it took him, because it could only end with Annie. He held this certainty sacred.
Finally, as the late afternoon sun increased the shadows and muted the activity of the forest, he found himself at the mouth of a narrow defile, walled on both sides by high rock cliffs forming a sort of avenue into a maze of passageways. He halted at the entrance, wary of entering the bandits’ hiding place with the same rash impetuosity with which he confronted them at the Iverson homestead. He must consider the whole enterprise more carefully, because this time, they would certainly never allow him to leave the place alive. He decided to camp there, out of sight, and to think and pray about it until morning.

When he found a suitably remote position and tended to his horse, he had just turned his mind once more to the subject of food when the noise of mounted riders alerted him to the direction of the gap between the rocks. He hid himself behind a tree near their trail and peeked at the small band that emerged from the passageway.
He recognized the leader of the group as the youth, Curtis. They didn’t notice him as they filed down the slope in the direction they had come.

He returned to his camp site and crouched at the base of a tree to wait for morning.

The gang of bandits galloped out of the valley to the north. Curtis led Annie’s horse by the bridle, as before, but this time, the rope binding her hands together cut into her wrists. Curtis also wrapped the long tail of the rope around her waist and retied it close to her stomach, so she couldn’t even grip the horn of her saddle, much less touch the reins. Before they left the homestead, Curtis argued with h
is father about draping her bodily over the saddle and tying her wrists and ankles underneath the horse to render her completely helpless. A fearful battle ensued when Carl rejected this proposal. “She ain’t goin’ nowhere, Curtis,” he argued. “Just get her onto the horse and let’s get out of here.”

“You’re getting too slack,
Pop,” Curtis countered bitterly. “She’s already run off once, and we can’t afford to lose her now. If we did, she’d have the sheriff’s posse after us in no time. I don’t understand why you keep draggin’ her around with us. She can only get us into trouble. And you leavin’ her old man alive don’t make any sense at all. You ought to kill her and her old man, too, and leave them here. That’s the only sensible thing to do.”

“I
ain’t killed anybody yet,” Carl maintained, “and I don’t mean to start now. We may be on the wrong side of the law in all this, but no one can accuse me of murder. If we do get caught and I have to explain myself to a judge and jury, there’s no one on God’s green earth that can accuse me of murder. I didn’t start on this road to kill people, and I’m not
gonna
kill people. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it, and as long as I’m runnin’ things around here, that’s the way it’s gonna be. If you want to go off on your own and start killing everybody, then go ahead, but leave me out of it. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna get on my horse and get on up to the hideout. Are you gonna come with us?”

“You’re
gonna be the death of us all, Pop,” Curtis declared. “You’re takin’ a powerful risk just bringin’ her along, and the whole idea of letting her cook our food is just plain fool-hardy, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you!” Carl thundered back. “Now shut your lip, boy, before I beat you senseless and leave you
lyin’ on the ground!”

“How do you know she won’t try to kill us all in our sleep?” Curtis persisted, ignoring his father’s threat. “If she can’t run off again, what’s to stop her putting something in our food to knock us all out or render us helpless? Did you ever stop to think about that?”

“And how exactly would she do that?” Carl scoffed. “What exactly would she put into our food? Tell me that!”

“I don’t know!” Curtis spluttered. “Maybe she knows some plant that she could pick up from the ground while she’s fetching water from the river! Maybe she knows some poisonous leaf or bark or something that she could cook into the food to make us all sleep while she runs away again. I don’t know, but at least I’m
thinkin’ about it, which is more than you’re doin’!”

“And how, may I ask, would she get this magic poison, while we’re watching her day and night?” Carl demanded. “After she ran off last night and you brought her back,
I chained her by the ankle to the bed post, so we know she never went out of the house again. We’ve been watching her cook the food and fetch the water and wash the dishes ever since we brought her here. Heck, we’ve even followed her out to the privy! She can’t collect any poisonous plants and she can’t run off! Now, come on! Let’s get out of here!”

“That’s exactly what you said yesterday, before I left,” Curtis retorted. “The next minute, she’s gone. If
I hadn’t run smack into her on the trail comin’ back, we might never have got her back. We just can’t go around takin’ these foolish risks, Pop!”

Carl stiffened, and his words hissed out between his teeth. “That’s the second time you’ve called me a fool, boy, and I won’t stand here while you do it again. Get on your horse. I’m done
talkin’ about it.” He spun on his heel, swung into his own saddle, and spurred his horse away, followed by his companions, leaving Curtis and Annie alone in front of the farmhouse.

Curtis
glowered moodily at the rest of the gang riding away. When the last horse vanished into the trees, he rounded on Annie. “Mount up, lady,” was all he said. He left her bound hands free enough for her to pull herself up into the saddle by the horn, and he pushed her up from behind. Once she gained her seat, he secured her wrists close into her waist and took the reins away. Then he cantered off after his companions, leading her after him. All day and into the night they rode, and Annie long since lost any sense of direction. In fact, they seemed to follow no recognizable trail at all. After leaving the homestead, they struck out into unbroken terrain, climbing crumbling embankments and fording creeks, crossing the shoulders of the higher peaks and then trekking through impenetrable ravines to climb up into the heights again. Annie stopped trying to keep track of their movements and withdrew into an internal world of prayer and reflection.

At the same time, she remembered the verse Benjamin read the night
of her capture, and she repeated it to herself
ad nauseum
as she rode toward her unknown fate. The lines of the verse describing the comfort and protection of the Lord’s habitation blanketed her heart and mind with a serene quiet that contradicted everything presented to her senses. While she felt quite certain that these men, so cruel and insensible to the destructive nature of their own actions, would almost certainly kill her in the end, some part of her repudiated the notion and simply rejected any effort on her part to accept her fate. Hope still reigned in her heart, and against all evidence to the contrary, she still believed she would go home again. She knew, for example, from the argument between Carl and Curtis, that Benjamin was still alive when they left the homestead, and she clutched that knowledge to her heart. Perhaps he would come for her again, in the same way he had shown himself to her at the pool by the river when she filled her buckets with water.

She regretted more than anything being deprived of the unique satisfaction of her daily routine, milking her cow and making her cheese, spinning and knitting her wool, and weeding her garden. She directed her thoughts to her vegetables and herbs, and wiled away the hours of travel by planning
the next season’s planting. She hoped her peppermint hadn’t overgrown its border of logs, and she thought through what recipe she would use to make a hand cream from butter, cream, and lemon verbena. Weeding the garden and scrubbing the laundry dried out her hands terribly. The skin cracked during the coldest days of the last winter, making spinning and knitting painful. She resolved then to concoct a cream to rub into her hands. She also planned to incorporate some milk and soothing herbs into her soap recipe to soften the effect of the lye on her skin and to make it smell nicer. The last time she and Benjamin visited the minister in Patterson who married them; she discussed the subject with his wife and their cook and came home with several exciting ideas. She met another local woman at the Eckville Post Office who knew quite a lot about the wild herbs of the area and willingly shared her knowledge and her own experience using them. This woman even sparked Annie’s interest in wild plant dyes for her wool.

After dark of night descended over them and they continued to press forward, Annie dozed in her saddle, no longer caring where they took her or what they did with her. She insulated herself in her internal world, making it more real than the real world. Only when they
halted did she notice the first rays of dawn coloring the sky and the birds and animals of the mountains stirring back to life from sleep. She scanned the countryside. The trees and vegetation indicated they had climbed high into the mountains, out of the system of valleys and streams surrounding the Angelfire area, and into another group of mountains that appeared foreign to her in their shape and position. Curtis directed her horse through a gap between two steep granite escarpments, through the high walls of a narrow defile, and into a hidden meadow surrounded on all sides by cliffs. Caves and fissures riddled these cliffs, and when they traversed the meadow and finally dismounted in front of one of the largest of these caves, Annie could well believe that they housed innumerable nefarious secrets not less obnoxious than these men with whom she now resided.

Curtis dragged her from her saddle
and set her on her feet. He steered her by the elbow toward the mouth of the cave, but when he noticed his father sitting on a fallen log outside of it, he tied her to a tree and left her there to tend their horses. The other members of the gang unloaded their supplies outside the cave before leaving with their horses to some unseen location. They returned on foot, some with their tack over their shoulders. Carl scowled at Annie when Curtis first deposited her near him, but soon roused himself to build a fire in the center of the clearing in front of the cave mouth. When the blaze twinkled merrily, he untied her. “Time to get workin’, lady,” he informed her gruffly. “Don’t stray too far, and don’t make me regret untying you.” Then he slumped onto his log again, giving her no more than an occasional glance.

Annie rubbed her wrists and wiggled her fingers to
loosen them. Then she started rummaging through the packs and bags stacked around the periphery of the clearing, finding the pots and spoons and food the bandits brought with them. In a few minutes, she uncovered everything she needed to commence her cooking and cleaning duties—except for one crucial ingredient.

“Where am I to get water?” she asked Carl.

His head jerked up at the sound of her voice. He frowned, got wearily to his feet, and walked off to the cave. While she waited for the next development, she peered around the little glen. He had left her utterly alone and unsupervised. She could run away right now, if she wanted to. But where would she go? Unlike the homestead, she didn’t know even which direction to run towards home. She would become hopelessly lost and probably die of starvation if she ran away now. At that moment, Carl returned with two buckets. He thrust them into her hands, mumbling, “Follow me.” He crunched through the leaves littering the ground to a stream winding its peaceful way through the meadow, dotted here and there with trees. Carl stood over her while she filled them and didn’t offer to help her carry them back to the fire.

After that, she
occupied herself with domestic chores and so kept a positive frame of mind. She didn’t permit herself to contemplate escape again, but comforted herself with the possibility of Benjamin rescuing her somehow. She couldn’t imagine how he would find her in this hidden place, but she banished all doubt. As Carl recommended, she made herself as useful as possible and, after cooking several meals for the gang, began to entertain the impression that they needed her too much to get rid of her. How long this reprieve would last, she dared not consider. Every time she acknowledged her peril, she repeated the litany of her prayers and sang hymns of release from slavery and the promise of salvation. Both Carl and Curtis frowned on these outbursts of glorification, but she ignored them and persisted. She sang while she cooked and cleaned, she sang while she served the men their meals, and she sang while she hauled water to the fire from the stream.

In the afternoon of the second day, Carl met with Curtis at their fireside, and this time they made no pretense of hiding their conversation from her.

“They must be getting closer now,” Curtis postulated. “They weren’t that far off when we left the ranch.”

“How many of them are there, did you say?” Carl asked.

“I’d say forty or more,” Curtis confirmed. “Too many for us. Our only option is to run or to stay hidden.”

“Do you think they can find us here?” Carl mused.
Listening to their interaction, Annie marveled at the reversal of their roles. In venturing out into the dangers of scouting the area, Curtis assumed the leadership position, relegating Carl to the fringe of camp management.

Curtis shrugged noncommittally.
“Hard to say. We should send a few scouts up the creek to see if we can find another way out, in case we need to escape.”

“That’s a good idea,” Carl nodded. “Once you get back and we have an idea how close they are, you can take a few of the men and investigate it.”

“We ought to do it now,” Curtis returned. “We don’t know how close they are. I might pass them in the night, and you would be surprised here.”

Carl shook his head. “No. I don’t like splitting up like this, and we can’t split the gang up any more than we already
have. We have to wait until you get back.”

T
his time, Curtis overruled his father, shaking his own head. “No. If we aren’t gonna to do it now, we should just leave in the morning. They’re too close as it is. We don’t have time for that now. When I get back, we’ll have only just enough time to pack up and leave and get away from them.”
“You’re right,” Carl consented. “We’ll leave in the morning, like you say.”

Curtis paused to let the idea sink in. “What are you
gonna do about….?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Carl reassured him. “I don’t like it, but I understand now it needs to be done and I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Curtis answered, “because if you don’t, then I will.” He stomped away to emphasize his point.

After overhearing this conversation, Annie determined to speak to Curtis about his intentions toward her the next time he followed her to the stream, even if the effort proved futile. She pondered how to open a dialogue with this hostile young man, and in the end, she fell back on the subject of religion. The only difficulty, she decided, would lie in drawing his attention to such things, when he remained so heartlessly inured to them. She could hardly offer herself as an object of human compassion when he so repeatedly stated his desire and objective to kill her at the first opportunity.