Sagebrush Bride (44 page)

Colyer lunged forward abruptly, pressing himself
against her, flattening Elizabeth against the horse’s mane as he dug his heels
into the mare. The saddle horn dug painfully into her stomach, but Elizabeth
resisted the urge to cry out in pain, sensing that it was what Colyer wanted.

“Already have, dove,” he informed her
contemptuously. “Already have.” His tongue snaked out suddenly, flicking the
back of Elizabeth’s neck through her hair, and she surged forward as far from
him as was possible, cringing against the revolting feel of it.

Colyer chuckled nastily. “Hafta wonder, dove... if
you lay as good as you taste.”

With a sense of foreboding wringing his gut,
Cutter vaulted onto the railcar in which Elizabeth and Katie had boarded. In
his recklessness, he cleared the steps completely. Racing blindly, he tore open
the door and hurried down the aisle, ignoring the stares and curses flung at
him for inspecting each and every occupied seat like a man possessed.

She wasn’t there. Christ, she wasn’t
there—she wasn’t anywhere!

“Elizabeth! Katie?” He grabbed a small child who
dashed out into the aisle and into the seat directly across, where a woman was
drowsing, her face to the window. Blond was all Cutter saw in that instant. The
woman in the seat was blond. And the child was dark-haired, but the little girl
he swung about to face him definitely wasn’t Katie, and she started to squeal
in fright.

The blond woman sat up in her seat with a start
and began to shriek at him. She lunged forward, her eyes wide with terror, and
seized the child from him, clutching her protectively.

Cutter didn’t linger to soothe her.

“Did you see that?” the woman shrieked at his
back. “He tried to steal my baby!”

“I think he’s insane!” yelled another.

Cutter’s brows knit as he deliberated his next
move. Christ Almighty, he felt insane! The train jerked forward in that moment,
taking the decision from his hands. His gut twisted. Having no choice but to
examine each and every railcar, he bolted toward the back of the train at a
dead run, ignoring the pain that burned through his left leg.

After two exhausting hours of riding before Colyer
in the saddle, every muscle in Elizabeth’s body screamed from the awkwardness
of straining forward.

From the snatches of conversation she’d overheard,
she’d been able to conclude that it was Cutter they were after, and not Katie
or herself. They clearly despised him; Jack Colyer, for some injury done to his
person. What, she didn’t know, but she was sure she’d find out soon enough. Magnus’
reasons were less a mystery. The simple fact that Cutter inhaled the same air
he did seemed to provoke him. Every other word out of his mouth was either
“breed” or “half-breed”—or some other less-than-flattering epithet.

Of the three, O’Neill seemed to be the least
embittered. He said nothing as they rode, but the care he gave Katie spoke
volumes. In him, Elizabeth sensed their greatest chance for escape. But she
didn’t dare meet his gaze for long to confirm it. Nor did she speak to him for
fear of drawing attention to his regard for Katie. Because of his
solicitousness, Katie’s fear seemed lessened considerably, and Elizabeth was
thankful for that. Yet, in spite of it, Katie’s eyes seemed perpetually wide
and on the verge of tears, and it tormented Elizabeth that she couldn’t reach
out and take her niece into her arms, couldn’t comfort her. Her eyes glazed
every time she happened to catch the stoic expression on Katie’s beautiful
little face.

Still, seeing was better than not.

Every once in a while O’Neill would ride out of
her field of vision, and Katie’s face would become nothing more than a shadowed
blur. It was in those endless moments that Elizabeth’s heart cried out the
most, for she wanted so desperately to know that Katie was holding up. Her ears
strained to hear even the slightest whimper, but there never was any, and
Elizabeth had to conclude finally that Katie had been right.

She never cried.

They didn’t stop until late afternoon, and then
only to water the horses. Without explanation, Magnus shoved Elizabeth down
onto a fallen log to wait. After a moment, a fitfully sleeping Katie was thrust
into her arms.

Watching her abductors with a knot in her throat,
Elizabeth sat, rocking Katie and feeling her anger mount with every blasphemy
Magnus heaped upon Cutter’s head. But she said nothing, only listened, and
tried desperately to keep her fragile control. For Katie’s sake, she suppressed
her anger under the appearance of indifference. But had she been alone, she
might have clawed Magnus’ eyes out for the insults he hurled at Cutter in his
absence. How bold of him to insult a man who wasn’t even present to defend
himself! The more she heard, the more difficult it became to keep silent in the
face of his bigotry.

When Magnus insulted Cutter yet again, saying that
he was no man, that he was an animal fit only to be skinned and worn like the
buffalo his kind hunted, Elizabeth couldn’t keep herself from speaking up any
longer—in spite of her resolve not to draw undue attention to themselves
for Katie’s sake. She flashed Magnus a look of disdain and, as instructed,
handed Katie back up into O’Neill’s arms before turning to face him again. Her
legs wavered slightly.

“I don’t recall you being so vulgar and insulting
to Cutter’s face,” she taunted in a low voice, taut with anger. “Perhaps you
aren’t so much a man yourself, Mr. Sulzberger?”

Magnus only smiled, his eyes slitting cannily, and
then he turned to address Colyer with a belligerent grin. The look they
exchanged infuriated her. “She’ll ride with me now,” he said with relish, and
then he turned back to leer at her.

Colyer sniggered. “ ‘Bout time you showed some
emotion, dove. I was beginnin’ to worry I’d nabbed the wrong woman.”

Her gaze snapped back to Magnus as he spat a wad
at her feet, but Elizabeth stood her ground, ignoring his crudeness.

Magnus nodded in agreement. “Ain’t seen no sign of
that bastard trailing us either,” he added. “For a while I was thinking that
worthless half-breed might not even care enough to come after her.” Excitement
flared in his eyes as he turned to face her. He grinned. “Anyhow, you just set
my mind at ease, darlin’. He’ll come. And when he does... I’m gonna take real
pleasure in showing you, while he watches, just how much a man I can be. Now,”
he barked, “you just get that pretty little butt of yours up into my saddle.”

His grin widened, his gaze roving up the length of
her, lingering at her fully concealed breast, yet making Elizabeth feel
stripped before him. She shuddered at his look.

“We’re gonna do some powerful riding, you and I,”
Magnus vowed.

A frisson of panic rippled down Elizabeth’s spine
and the color drained from her face as she recalled Cutter’s passionate
plea—Ride me, Lizbeth, ride—the rawness of his voice. She closed
her eyes momentarily, wishing to God that she’d had no notion what that word
meant between men and women, but she did, and by the look on Magnus’ florid,
self-satisfied face, he knew she understood, as well.

Cold fingers swept over her as he sniggered, and she
swallowed convulsively, shuddering inwardly, her stomach turning with revulsion
at the merest thought of his touching her. Averting her eyes, she glanced over
her shoulder at Katie. She was still sleeping—thank God! She couldn’t
bear for Katie to hear.

“Well, whattaya know, ‘pears that savage trained
you real good.” His eyes shot her with cold contempt as he gripped her by the
upper arm, forcing her into motion. She gave a startled little cry, her throat
closing up with fear. “Now,” he mocked her, “why don’t you just mount up so we
can see what kind of moves you learned for us.”

“Bastards
want us trailing ‘em,” Cutter hissed through his teeth. Barely tempering his
fury, he swiped at the beads of sweat that dotted his forehead, his mouth set
grimly.

Riding
silently beside Cutter, Elias glanced up from the rifle he was examining. “How
do you know?” he asked, scanning the area ahead before returning his scrutiny
to Cutter.

Cutter’s
s gaze was fixed on the horizon, his jaw taut with a rage that had been growing
since the moment he’d discovered Elizabeth and Katie missing. He’d checked
every last railcar and then had hurled himself off the train and run like hell
back into Fulton City to find Elias waiting on him, already set to ride.

Elias
had already stabled Cocoa in the nearest livery, and for a few extra dimes, the
man in charge had leashed Shiftless to a post outside, promising to feed the
mutt until they returned. In the meantime, Cutter had picked up Magnus’ trail
with a little preliminary backtracking, and they’d been following close on his
heels ever since. As of yet, Sulzberger didn’t seem to realize it.

“Because
we should be tracking a blind trail,” Cutter replied finally, “and we’re not.”
He turned to consider Elias, worry deepening the shadows in his eyes. He wasn’t
certain the old man was up to the trouble they were courtin’—he looked
almost as bad as Cutter felt—but there was no choice. Because Sulzberger
was a dirty player, Cutter knew he would need all the help he could get.

Aside
from that, he wasn’t feeling quite right—wasn’t exactly sure what it was
that was wrong, but knew it had everything to do with his foot. The last man
he’d known to snag an infection had had his leg carved off, and he sure as hell
wasn’t willing to live like that, so it had been easier to let it go, tell
himself it would pass.

But
it wasn’t going to.

The
fact that his eyes were burning a hole in his face told him as much. Still, he
couldn’t risk the time it would take to see to it now. Besides, he’d never
known a sawbones to be anything other’n saw-happy, and he fancied himself
rather attached to his leg—didn’t particularly care to part with it.

“Sulzberger’s
ridden alongside me enough to know how to trash a trail if he wanted. He’s not
even trying.” He pointed out the wet tracks in the soil as they passed them.
“He started out at a dead run, but since late afternoon he’s been moving at a
snail’s pace. Now that we’re out in the bush, with no witnesses for what he’s
planning, he’s no longer in a hurry.”

He
glanced again at Elias, then heavenward, to scrutinize the skyline, recalling
with a twist of his gut the way Magnus had ogled Elizabeth. He vowed to himself
in that moment that the misbegotten bastard would pay with his life if he so
much as lifted a finger to Elizabeth’s body—or, for that matter, Katie’s.
He wouldn’t put anything past the man.