Mail Order Mayhem (Mail Order Romance Book 2 - Benjamin and Annie) (8 page)

When they stood together at the edge of the water, Annie smiled shyly at him and indicated the scene in front of them with a bend of her head. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful here? Just look at the way the light reflects off the ripples of the water where it falls over the rocks. Don’t you think it’s marvelous?”

Curtis
slanted his cold eyes in the direction she indicated, but withdrew them instantly. “Sure. Whatever.”

“Haven’t you ever sat here and just appreciated the beauty of it all?” she
gushed on undaunted. “I could sit here for hours, just drinking in the lovely scenery. This must be one of the most beautiful spots in the world.”

“Whatever you say, lady,” he muttered.

“Don’t tell me your father never gives you any free time to come here and just sit quietly by yourself,” she took an alternate approach. “You’re not so busy ranging around the countryside that you can’t take a few minutes to just relax. Are you?”

“I guess I could if I wanted to,” Curtis mumbled.

“And don’t you want to?” she inquired. “Don’t you ever feel like sitting calmly somewhere and just appreciating the peace and tranquility of the scenery?”

“Not much,” he snapped.

“You should try it sometime,” she suggested.

“Nah,” he objected. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Annie asked. “Wouldn’t you like to?”

“I got better things to do, I reckon,” he informed her
.
“Like what?” she pestered him.

“Like
lookin’ after the horses,” he returned. “Like keepin’ after the men to do what Pop tells them to do. He can’t keep track of them every minute of the day. He has more important things on his mind.”

“Like what?” she continued casually.

“Like where we’re goin’ and what we’re gonna do,” he responded. “He’s got the whole management of the gang on his shoulders. He doesn’t have time to worry about how the men are takin’ care of their equipment and whether they’re keepin’ the supplies in order. He leaves all that to me.”

She peered at him
closely. “You really love your father, don’t you?”

“Of course, I do!” he retorted. “He’s all I got.”

“And he takes care of you, too, doesn’t he?” she implied.

“Sure, he takes care of me,” Curtis shrugged. “But he doesn’t have to. I can take care of myself. It’s my job to make sure he doesn’t have to take care of me. He’s got more important things to think about than
takin’ care of me.” He stiffened his shoulders. “I’m a grown man now. I don’t need takin’ care of.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly!” Annie assured him. “He needs you.”

“He sure does!” Curtis burst out.

“I’m just asking if you ever take any time for yourself,” she led him back to her own subject. “Just to sit quietly and think.
Or to just relax and to reflect.”

Curtis tossed his head in annoyance. “I don’t need any o’ that,” he sneered.

“You ought to try it sometime,” she repeated her suggestion. “You might find something in it that you didn’t know you were missing.”

“I’m not
missin’ anything, lady,” he insisted.

“But surely, you must realize there is a value in appreciating the beauty around you that can’t be gotten from always tending horses and managing your father’s men,” she contended. “Besides, if you’ve never done it, how can you know what you’re missing?”

Her persistence finally produced the crisis for which she hoped. “What do you care, anyway?” he snarled. “It’s none of your business what I do or what I’m missing.”

“Oh, it’s just that this sort of thing is so tremendously important to me that I can’t bear the idea of someone living without it,” she
explained. “Look!” She pointed across the water to the dark fir trees towering overhead, and the steep ridges of rock spearing the sky behind them. Billowing cumulous clouds clustered around their highest peaks, their borders crisp and distinct in the immaculate blue of the heavens. “Doesn’t it make your heart soar, to look up at those hills, to see the dark green of the trees against the outline of the sky? Isn’t it something like food for your starving soul to gaze on the beauty of creation, and to know that it exists through the grace of God?”

“Oh, I get it,” Curtis growled. “I see what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me into all that religio
us stuff. Well, you can drop it right now, because I’m not interested.”

“I’m not trying to get you into anything,” she excused herself. “I’m just trying to point out to you how majestic and glorious it all is, how wonderful and marvelous. I just want you to look at it and agree with me that it is beautiful and worthy of admiration. That’s all.”

“Okay,” he clenched his teeth. “I looked and I saw and I agree that it’s beautiful and worthy of admiration. Now can we drop it and get the water and get back to the camp, because I have other things to do.”

“Okay,” she assented. “We can go. I just wanted to talk to you about it, because I like to spend a few moments looking at the scenery when I come down to the water. I always have done it, and I just wanted you to understand why I do it, so we could understand each other better.”

“Look, lady,” he shot back. “I don’t want to understand each other better, and I sure as heck don’t want to talk about the beauty and majesty of the scenery. I don’t like you, okay? I don’t want you here. I think Pop made a big mistake even leaving you alive, let alone bringin’ you along with us, and I sure as heck didn’t like the idea of him bringin’ you up here to our most secret hiding place. We’ve kept this place secret for six years, and you’re the first person to come up here, outside of the men o’ the gang. If it was up to me, you never would’ve lived to see our faces. But Pop is so soft-hearted, he won’t hear a word of it. So don’t try to worm your way into my head, and don’t try to win my heart by trying to get us to understand each other. You are about the last person on earth that I want to understand. The very first minute Pop gives the word, I’ll kill you without any hesitation, and I’ll be glad to do it. So don’t try to talk to me again. Okay?” He turned his back on her, but didn’t leave her alone. She took him at his word and didn’t try to talk to him again as she filled her buckets and hiked back to the camp.

A
n hour later, Curtis and four other mounted bandits filed out of the hiding place in the direction of its walled rock entrance. Annie watched them go, wondering if this development might provide her with another opportunity to escape, but the thought quickly died when Carl posted Ned to watch her at her chores. The wiry bandit supervised her more diligently than Curtis himself, and seemed to concur with his young colleague about the danger she posed to their enterprise should she escape. Not only did he never let her out of his sight, but he inspected all her movements closely, watching her critically to make sure she only did what she was supposed to be doing and never deviating from it.

When
evening came, she sang “What a Friend I Have in Jesus!” during the supper. One of the men—she couldn’t remember his name—sniffed, threw his dish to the ground, and stomped away from the clearing. Carl scowled at his back. Then he grumbled at her, “I sure wish you wouldn’t sing like that.”

“Why not?” she
gasped in surprise. She never realized her singing disturbed anyone. She did it to keep her spirits up. She assumed everyone discounted it, the same way she discounted their scratching and swearing. She flatly declined to take any notice of it, and she expected everyone else to do the same with any action of hers they might find offensive or bothersome.

Carl narrowed his eyes at her. “It disturbs the men.”

“How can it disturb them?” she demanded. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re singing,” he retorted sternly. “They don’t like it.”

“Why not?” she repeated, still unable to understand his objection.

“It makes them upset,” he
declared, as though that explained everything.

Then she understood. “You mean, it makes them emotional,” she clarified for him. “You mean, it reminds them of things they’d rather not think about, like their mothers and their homes and their childhoods. Isn’t that what you mean?”

Carl looked down into his bowl of beans. “That’s about it,” he confirmed dismally.

She almost laughed in his face, but she stopped herself just in time.
“And what about you? Does it remind you of all those things, too?”

He wouldn’t look at her. “I just don’t like it, that’s all. So don’t do it anymore. That’s all I’m saying.”

Now Annie narrowed her eyes at him, as if seeing him for the first time. “I understand you completely. You don’t want to be reminded that what you’re doing is wrong. You don’t want anything to remind you that you have repudiated God and the laws of man, and that you’re a wanted outlaw with no hope and no future. That’s why you don’t like it.”

“Just don’t do it, that’s all,” he muttered again.

“Were you reared in a Christian home, then?” she pressed him.

“We went to Church and read the Bible at home
, if that’s what you mean,” he confirmed. “Yeah, I was.”

“Is your family still living?” she inquired.

“My parents and brothers are all dead,” he informed her. “My older brother died of typhus when he was a child. My younger brother was killed a few years ago. Curtis is the only family I have left.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she
replied.

“There is no God,” Carl maintained. “If there is one, He’s a cruel God who takes everything you have and leaves people with nothing to live for. All that
Christian stuff is nonsense to get people to do what they’re told. Now, stop talking about it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, and I don’t want to hear any more of that singin’, either.” Annie let the matter drop, but she resolved to start singing again after an appropriate hiatus. Maybe tomorrow morning, bright and early, she would start again. If her hymns disturbed the men so much by reminding them of their own wrong-doing—well, then, so much the better. They could use a little reminding, and maybe she could do them some good in the time left.

She collected the empty dishes as the men drifted away from the fire. In the distance, she heard them setting up other camps and lighting other fires in pre
paration for the coming night. While she washed the dishes in her kettle of hot soapy water and rinsed them off, they wandered back to the main fire to pass the time conversing and joking with Carl and each other before retiring to their blankets for the night. As if to declare himself as much to his men as to himself, Carl broke the repartee with his friends to address Annie. “We’ll be leavin’ in the mornin’, lady,” he stated matter-of-factly.

She stretched her back. “Where will we go this time?” she asked.

“I mean,
we
will leave,” he clarified. “Not
you
.”

She stared at him, trying to figure out what he meant by that distinction.
Some of the men snickered at her befuddlement. When the state of affairs penetrated her brain and she understood his intention, her plan to do this group of hooligans some good with her hymns and her ministrations dimmed and she thought again of escape instead. Whatever the outcome, the consequence of failure no longer presented a sufficiently powerful motivator to remaining docile and compliant, fetching their water, cooking their meals, and washing up afterward. If she ran and they caught her and killed her—what was the difference, after all? None. At least she tried. But how? Ever since her last attempt, Carl chained her by the ankle when he slept at night, making any thought of breaking free impossible.

While she washed the dishes, she prayed for guidance, but instead of her usual evening formula or any of the Bible verses she had committed to memory, the words sprang spontaneously from her wounded heart, supplicating directly before the Divine Throne for clemency. “I am nothing without
You,” her soul implored. “If You do not aid me now, I am lost. Please, restore me to my husband and let me live. I live only for You, and I dedicate my life to You. Help me now. I can’t survive without You.” A tear dropped from her eye into the dishwater. Another followed it. She picked up the tear on her rag and scrubbed the plates with it as an emblem of her destitution. Let my hopeless despair infuse these rascals’ very food, she prayed bitterly. May they choke on the gall of my resentment. With an effort, she checked this umbrage and repeated her Proverb instead, but the recollection of her distant husband only deepened her antipathy toward her captors.

When she finished stacking up
the dishes and putting the remainder of the food away, she sat on a log across the fire from Carl. Sunset colors emblazoned the clouds in the sky, but the shadows of the trees rendered the forest floor almost completely dark. Only in isolated spots between the trees, the remaining light offered a faint glimmer by which to see. Carl tossed a stick into the fire, sending a spray of sparks into the air. He picked up a tin coffee pot from the ground at his feet and pitched it over to her. “Fill it up and make us our coffee,” he growled.

Low chuckles and snickers went round the circle of wolfish faces surrounding the glowing fire, as though in appreciation of an excellent joke. Annie bristled inwardly, but held her tongue and walked away toward the stream, swinging the coffee pot. At the water’s edge, she stooped to fill it, gazing up at the last light of day fading from the sky. The cold water dripped from her hand when she lifted it out, and at that moment, a faint movement attracted her attention to the side of the tree nearest her. Swaying up the rough bark
, rocking its stubby limbs from side to side, an iridescent purple lizard shuffled up the trunk of the tree, the dusky sky gleaming on its bright skin and shimmering in its beady little eyes. The memory that jostled at the corners of her mind, endeavoring to work its way out into her consciousness, broke through to the surface and delivered its message to her at last. In that moment, she realized Ned was not with her. Carl had forgotten to send him after her, and Ned himself  must have forgotten his duty. She only hesitated for a fleeting instant before a kind of elation flooded her whole body at the perception that the lizard represented the answer to her heart-felt prayer of just a few minutes before. She covered her fingers with the corner of her apron, picked the lizard off the bark of the tree, and dropped it into the coffee pot.