Bound for Glory Page 12

  “They’re going to lynch us,” Micah hissed.

  It was fifty-fifty, in Deathrider’s opinion. It would all depend on this captain. And whether his men respected, or feared, him enough to follow his orders. Deathrider was hoping a man who shined his buttons even in the wilderness, and one who put heavy stock in the rank on his uniform, might be too “civilized” to lynch them. He might be more inclined to drag them to a jail somewhere for a trial. Which would give Deathrider and Micah time to get away.

  But then again, when had being “civilized” ever stopped whites from shooting Indians?

  “You want to run now or see how this pans out?” he asked Micah quietly.

  “You’re not to confer with your compatriot!” the captain bellowed. “You are in the custody of the United States Army, and the United States Army is to be obeyed!”

  Deathrider met the captain’s gaze. He kept his expression amiable, even though dread was spreading through him like a winter frost. “We understand.” The captain seemed a man who liked obedience, so Deathrider would give him obedience. For now. “We speak English. We can answer any questions you have.”

  “In good time! You will have opportunity to answer the charges once they’ve been brought.”

  Deathrider took a moment to digest that. Charges. Once they’ve been brought. Which meant they weren’t going to be shot on the spot . . . That was heartening, wasn’t it?

  The captain turned impatiently to his man. “Walker! What is your official report of the crime? We need to level the appropriate charges against these villains.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s very clear. Cut-and-dried. A party of white travelers was set upon by Indians and killed, presumably by these two here, as we caught them in the act red-handed. The travelers’ wagon has been looted, their animals stolen, and it looks as though their bodies were burned.”

  This Walker man stated the obvious as though it was a great pronouncement. He looked proud of himself and his assessment, and the soldiers made a low noise of appreciation, while the captain nodded sagely. Deathrider could see Micah’s eyes growing wide. He hoped his friend could hold his tongue. Deathrider thought he could get them out of this—but only if Micah kept his composure. If Micah started mouthing off, he was liable to get shot before Deathrider could save him.

  “You have the wrong men,” Deathrider interjected, drawing the attention to himself. He kept his voice low and calm so as not to startle the soldiers. Whites could be like buffalo—prone to startling. And once they startled all hell tended to break loose. “Look around: we don’t have their horses or stock; we don’t have any of their belongings. We’re not Apache. We’re just traveling through. We found them and stopped to give them burial.” He kept his hands in the air and looked from face to face. No one was listening to him.

  “Why would they bury them after they burned them?” the captain asked with a frown, his attention still completely on Walker. “That seems an unlikely thing for savages to do.”

  “That’s a very good question.” Walker had been squatting by the blackened remains of the fire. Now he rose, his forehead knotted with concentration as he moved back to the cairn. “Perhaps these are old graves . . .” He scratched his chin. “But if they didn’t bury them, where are the bodies now?”

  “Do something,” Micah hissed at Deathrider. “These idiots are talking themselves into a lynching.”

  “I’m trying. I’m just trying to do it in a way that doesn’t end up with us used for shooting practice. Haven’t you ever heard of diplomacy?”

  “The bodies of the victims were thrown on the fire,” the captain declared with bluff authority. “They’ve clearly burned the poor beggars.”

  Walker shook his head. “There’s no trace of their remains in the ashes.” He looked disappointed. Deathrider got the impression he would have enjoyed finding an especially gory crime scene. And pinning it on him and Micah.

  “They probably ate them!” one of the soldiers shouted. His finger had tightened on the trigger of his rifle.

  “Now, hang on a minute!” Micah protested. He shot Deathrider a warning look. “I don’t like where this is heading . . .”

  Neither did Deathrider. This wasn’t going well at all. “We didn’t eat them,” Deathrider said, exasperated. “We didn’t kill them. We didn’t attack them. We found them.” Deathrider was still managing to sound reasonable. Just. But he inched toward where his weapons lay in the dirt. His gut told him words weren’t going to work, but he had to try. “And after we found them, we gave them a decent burial.”

  “Cannibalism,” Walker mused, staring thoughtfully into the middle distance. “Yes, perhaps.”

  “No!” Deathrider and Micah spoke simultaneously. Damn it! These people were ghouls.

  “But then we still have the problem of the graves . . . ,” Walker said thoughtfully.

  The captain swore. “Just once I’d like a simple situation. Every time we come upon one of these scenes, it’s the same story: Indians run amok.”

  Deathrider had an idea why they always discovered bizarre scenarios, and it had nothing at all to do with Indians run amok.

  Dog picked up on Deathrider’s body language and rose from his crouch. He backed against Deathrider’s leg, his hackles up. Deathrider put a calming hand on the back of his neck. The last thing he wanted was for his dog to get shot.

  “This is a simple situation,” Deathrider reassured the captain, still striving for calmness in the hopes he could salvage things. “We found them. We buried them. You came along.”

  But the soldiers weren’t listening. They didn’t so much as look at him when he spoke. Goddamn it. If people would just listen . . .

  And use their common sense.

  “These must be old graves,” Walker pronounced. “As you say, savages don’t usually bury their victims.”

  These blue-clad idiots actually enjoyed conjecturing about the possibilities. It was like a game. One they seemed to take very seriously.

  Walker considered the cairns Deathrider and Micah had built not half an hour before. “They’re a red herring. They just happen to be here . . . but they have nothing to do with the current events.”

  “Sir?” another soldier called out excitedly. He was a keen-faced boy wriggling in his saddle with barely suppressed glee.

  “Not now, son.” The captain flapped his hand at the boy. “Now isn’t the time to go distracting Walker. He’s getting to the heart of the matter.”

  A chaparral bush would have had a better chance of getting to the heart of the matter, in Deathrider’s opinion. It looked like he and Micah would have to fight their way out of this mess. The odds weren’t in their favor . . . but then they never were.

  “But, sir!” the boy protested. “I think your answer might be right there.” The boy jabbed his finger vigorously in the direction of Deathrider’s shredded buckskins. “Look! One of them got killed in the melee too!”

  “By God! He’s right!” Walker found the buckskins and held them aloft. “There we have it! Mystery solved. A couple of their number were fatally wounded, and they buried them here. That explains the graves.”

  “Incredible,” the captain rumbled. “Just incredible what you can tell from a few small clues.”

  Yes. It was incredible. Deathrider and the captain could agree on that.

  This stupidity had gone too far. Daeathrider had lost patience with it. “I can tell you exactly what happened,” he said irritably. “And it doesn’t include Apaches burying their own.”

  “I thought you said to keep calm,” Micah said under his breath. He sounded plenty amused, but he also took a sensible step back as he spoke. You didn’t want to get too close to Deathrider when he’d decided enough was enough.

  “We know exactly what happened, you savage.” The captain fixed Deathrider with a baleful look. “You Apaches set upon these poor travelers. Clearly, th
ey fought like lions, as evidenced by these graves. They managed to bring down two of your mighty warriors. But they were no match for your superior numbers, and you killed them. Man, woman and child.”

  Child? What child? There wasn’t the slightest sign this party had had any children in their numbers. Deathrider took a deep breath. He was still prepared to try reason, although he didn’t think he’d get far with it. Not with these idiots.

  “Firstly,” he said, striving for equilibrium, “we’re not Apaches. I’m Arapaho, and he’s a mix of Shoshone and Ute.”

  “With a bit of Pawnee thrown in,” Micah added helpfully. “My grandmother was Pawnee.”

  “We’re as foreign to this place as you are and just as liable to be set on by Apaches. Secondly, what superior numbers? There are two of us—”

  Walker interrupted him. “Now there are two of you.” He pointed at the graves. “Now that your friends are dead.”

  It was like arguing with the wind. “This is absurd.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” the captain told Deathrider sternly. “And believe me, I’m taking note of your lack of remorse.”

  “We found the remains of these people, and we stopped to give them a decent burial,” Deathrider insisted mulishly. “That’s all. There are no bodily remains of the travelers because we buried them.”

  “You’re lucky we found you this year and not last,” the captain said, unimpressed. “If we’d found you last year, you’d have been shot by now. But this year we have procedures: we’ll be taking you to face formal charges.”

  The captain’s men didn’t look thrilled about that. Deathrider bet that it wasn’t the norm. They’d just happened to be caught by a man who was a stickler for rules.

  “Where are you taking us?” Micah asked, looking more appalled at the thought of being in custody than he was at the thought of being shot.

  “The fort.”

  Fort? What fort?

  “Are you really going to let this happen?” Micah demanded of Deathrider.

  “No,” he sighed. “I guess not.” Why did life have to be so damn difficult all the time?

  “Good.” Micah had lost his sense of humor. “I’m ready when you are.”

  “Captain,” Deathrider called as he made a snap decision about how to proceed, “I have a confession to make . . .”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Micah’s head whip around.

  “Oh no,” Micah moaned.

  Oh yes. If he was going to do this, he might as well save Seline in the process.

  “You want to know who killed the woman who wore that dress?” he called, raising his voice.

  The soldiers took the bait. He didn’t miss the prurient gleam in their eyes.

  Deathrider smiled.

  “Oh no.” Micah scrambled for cover.

  It was time for the U.S. Army to meet the Plague of the West—and if he was smiling, they didn’t stand a chance.

  9

  YOU’RE A LUNATIC!” At some point Ava’s rage had outpaced her fear. She had no compunction about railing at Kennedy Voss as they charged along, following the trail the Hunters had left many hours before. A trail that, frankly, a half-wit could have followed, as it looked like it had been made by a herd of elephants.

  The madman had kidnapped her. Right from her own damn bed. In the end, it was her exhaustion that had brought her down. When they’d decided to spend the night in Mariposa (because there was no way in hell they were catching the other Hunters before nightfall anyway), she’d succumbed to the pleasures of a feather bed. She and Lord Whatsit and Becky had found rooms in a quiet boardinghouse, paying an exorbitant sum because the proprietor mistrusted strangers—particularly after Kennedy Voss had terrorized the town.

  The sight of the brass bed had filled Ava with heady anticipation. An actual bed. She’d sat down on it just to feel the pillowy give of the mattress . . . and that was the last thing she remembered. She hadn’t barricaded the door or cocked her weapon or even pulled the blind. It was a mistake worthy of a greenhorn. The mattress had proven so comfortable, she’d thought she’d stretch out, just to test the pillow too. Just for a minute. But she passed out stone-cold asleep the minute her head hit the pillow. There hadn’t been anything she could do about it. Her body just couldn’t stay awake for another moment; her eyes slid closed of their own accord. I’ll just rest them for a minute, she’d thought. And that was the last thing she thought for a good long while.

  When she finally woke up, she was miles from camp, jolting along in front of Kennedy Voss, slack in his arms, gathered close to him, like they were sweethearts and he was riding her home. Her head was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer, and she felt sick to her stomach. Dawn had broken; it had been the glare of the sun that had woken her. She came to slowly, feeling disoriented, nausea rolling though her in waves. She’d been dreaming about being on a ship in high seas, mistaking the gait of his horse for the swells of the waves. But then she opened her eyes. And once she realized who was holding her, she started screaming. She realized in horror that he didn’t look startled by her shrieks at all. In fact, he looked amused. Somehow that was even more terrifying.

  “Why didn’t I wake up?” she shrieked, writhing in his arms. “How did you get me here without me waking up?”

  She realized she was still armed and reached for her gun. He didn’t try to stop her, which was bizarre. She shoved the muzzle of the gun under his chin and pulled the hammer back.

  “That’s liable to go off by accident,” he said cheerfully. “This ain’t terribly even ground.” He didn’t seem even the slightest bit perturbed that she might shoot his head off.

  “You took the bullets out, didn’t you?” she guessed. Her tongue was thick in her mouth.

  He grinned. “Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “But I’ll give ’em back as soon as you’ve simmered down.”

  She didn’t lower the gun. In fact, she shoved it harder into his skin, which was senseless, since the gun didn’t have bullets, but it made her feel better. “How did you kidnap me without me waking up?”

  “I’m good at what I do,” he told her, grinning even wider. “You should know. You wrote about it.”

  It wasn’t natural, his ability to haul a grown woman out of a boardinghouse without waking her up. Getting her downstairs, getting her on a horse, cantering out of town in the dead of night—without her so much as stirring. He’d ridden for miles, and she’d slept through the whole thing?

  “You drugged me,” she guessed.

  “You’re pretty good at this.” He was as breezy as though they were going courting on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

  “But how? We didn’t eat together.”

  “It weren’t in nothing you ate.” He was enjoying the whole guessing game thing.

  “Did you chloroform me after I was already asleep?” He must have. Somehow he’d gotten in her room and drugged her. Goddamn it. Why hadn’t she locked the door?

  “A boy has to keep some secrets,” he told her with a coy wink.

  Ava’s mind was racing. She went over his old crimes, and a number of nagging problems were resolved. He’d drugged them. That was how he managed it. She’d always wondered how he’d gotten the girls without a fight. At least the most recent ones. Looking like a charming farm boy took you only so far . . . especially once your name was out there as a murderous maniac.

  She had to get away. She considered her options, taking in Freckles and the packhorses, and the wild country around them. She didn’t even know where they were. A long way from Mariposa already, by the looks of it. How long had she been asleep? She’d stretched out on that feather bed in the late afternoon . . . and it was now past dawn. Theoretically he could have taken her miles and miles from Mariposa. If she got away from him, how would she ever get her bearings? She checked to see if he’d strapped her saddlebags to her horse. Hell. He hadn’
t brought her packhorse, just Freckles. All the packhorses were his. So she had only one lot of saddlebags. She hoped her compass was in there. . . . She’d need it once she got away from him.

  “You’re welcome to ride your own horse now that you’re awake.” He gave her a sly look, like he’d been reading her thoughts. They both knew she’d never outride him on Freckles, so of course it was safe enough for him to offer.

  If she was going to run, it had to be done with stealth. Because Freckles couldn’t outpace a turtle. Thank you, Becky, for buying the slowest horse in California.

  “What did you do to Becky and Lord Whatsit?” she asked abruptly. Now that Becky had leapt to mind, she was worried about her. Her stomach gave a weird twist. She felt responsible for the girl and Lord Whatsit—God knew why, since they were grown adults and seemed plenty good at getting in and out of trouble without her. But if Kennedy Voss had hurt them, it would be her fault. There was no way he would ever bother with them in the normal course of events; they were only at risk because they’d been with her. Ava had a sudden image of Becky in bed in the boardinghouse, with Voss looming over her.

  Voss gave a horsey laugh. “Lord Whatsit: that’s good. You should use that in a book. When you write the story of how the Plague of the West cut him down.”

  How the Plague of the West cut him down . . . “So, he’s still alive, then?”

  “I’ve got no trouble with either of them. Nor with those two idiots who were dogging us.”

  “But you have trouble with me?” The nausea was rising again, and she didn’t know if it was the thought of what happened to people Voss had a problem with or if it was the residue of the drug.

  “Of course not. You ain’t the prey. You, Miss Archer, are the prize.”

  The prize. Goddamn it all to hell!

  “Stop the horse.” She gave him a shove. “Right now. I want off.”

  He merely watched as she tumbled down from his saddle. Her foot got all tangled up as she pushed herself out of his arms, and she almost landed on her face. He didn’t try to help. He just watched in that disconcerting flat-eyed, genial-smiling way he had as she fumbled for Freckles’ reins, which were hitched to his packhorses.