Bound for Glory Page 13

  “Careful there. You look a little unsteady on your feet,” he drawled as she missed the stirrup on her first try.

  Her vision wasn’t as clear as it should have been, and her head felt stuffed with straw.

  “I wonder why,” she muttered under her breath. She was sluggish and sickly from the drug. “Prize, my ass.”

  “It’s true. You’re the prize. Everything hinges on you.” Kennedy Voss leaned back in his saddle and watched her trying to mount her horse. “You see, what I’ve been thinking is: if they catch old Rides with Death and you’re not there to witness it . . . did it really happen?”

  “Did you chloroform yourself too?” she snapped. “Because you’re talking nonsense.”

  “The way I see it, you’re as important as he is. The story you write will be the one that people remember.”

  “Not if Pete Hamble or Cactus Joe goes riding into San Francisco with his head. They’ll remember that just fine.” Oh, she felt like she was going to be sick. It was the thought of the head that did it. She’d never in her life get used to that kind of violence, no matter how many times she witnessed it. It made you doubt everything. What was wrong with people?

  “You might feel better if you eat something.” Kennedy Voss tossed her a hunk of hardtack. If she hadn’t already felt like vomiting, she would have at the sight of the hardtack. It had clearly been in his saddlebags a good long while.

  “The thing is, how are they going to verify it’s his head?” Voss said with enormous satisfaction. He’d clearly thought about it a great deal. “Who’s to know that they got the right Indian?”

  “He’s got blue eyes,” she reminded him. “Ice blue. So pale they look almost colorless. They can’t just go killing any Indian and claiming it’s him.”

  “According to your books, you mean?”

  She didn’t respond. Yes, according to her books. And according to everyone she’d spoken to who’d actually met him. It was part of the legend.

  Voss shrugged. “But he’ll be dead. So they won’t be able to tell what color his eyes are.”

  “Stop! I don’t want to hear any more about dead people’s eyes.” Ava felt queasy enough as it was.

  “They’ll need someone who knows him, to verify it’s him. There’s no way in hell LeFoy is handing over a fortune without proof of identity. I guarantee you there’ll be fifty men trying to claim the prize before the month is out—and LeFoy is going to need someone like you, someone who knows Deathrider, to verify it’s him.”

  Oh God, she hadn’t thought of that. Some of those vile Hunters wouldn’t bother looking for the actual Deathrider; they’d be perfectly happy passing anyone off as him, in the chance of tricking LeFoy out of his money. All those innocent men, pulled into this nightmare, murdered, so some greedy trailhound could claim the money.

  Ava kept her mouth shut. She knew two things that wrecked Voss’s logic, but neither of them helped keep her safe right now. The first was that she didn’t know Deathrider; the second was that LeFoy did. He’d traveled in the same wagon train as Becky and met Deathrider when he was traveling as Tom Slater. Becky had regaled Ava with the details back in the treasure box room above the Palladium. LeFoy would know at a glance if they’d caught the right man or not; he didn’t need Ava’s help or anyone else’s. But if Ava told Voss that, he might realize he didn’t need her—and then he might kill her.

  Voss grinned. He was looking smug. “They can’t do anything without you,” he said happily. “And I got you. Which gives me the upper hand. Nothing can happen till we get there.”

  “Of course it can. I’m not the only person who knows the man.” Now she was agreeing that she knew him. Jesus wept. “I’m going back to Mariposa,” she said tightly.

  “Nah, you ain’t. You know why you ain’t?”

  She ignored him and turned Freckles around, hoping she was facing the right way. She wouldn’t travel alone with Voss if her life depended on it.

  “You ain’t going back there, because if you do, I’ll kill that girl you were traveling with. That skinny little Becky girl.”

  Ava pulled Freckles up short. Hell.

  “You know I ain’t bluffing. And let me tell you, honey, I’m pent-up. Traveling with a woman such as yourself takes a toll. Hell, you been jouncing up and down my thigh all night, and that does things to a man.”

  Terror went through her like a cold snap. She felt like her insides had turned to ice. Out of habit, she chose to thaw her fear with anger. At least anger was hot. It kept her alive when sheer terror wanted to freeze her to the spot.

  “A jouncing woman makes a man want to kill?” she snapped. She couldn’t bite the words back. She was infuriated. Because she was stuck. She knew he was capable of killing Becky—and not just killing her, but enjoying it.

  “Nah. Not most men. Just me. But I ain’t like most men.” His voice had dropped and become greasily seductive. “I’m something special.”

  “Special like a two-headed goat?” Her mouth was unbuttoned good and proper now.

  He laughed. “You know, I like you. And I don’t like many people.”

  She threw the hunk of hardtack at him. It hit him in the chest and fell to the ground with a thud. “You’re an unholy bastard—you know that?”

  He gave another horsey laugh. “You say it like I should be insulted. Now, come along, we’re wasting daylight. We’re going to track that posse and see what they’ve found. With any luck they’ve done all our work for us and found our prey. Thanks to the way I helped you back there in Mariposa, we know Deathrider and his whore ain’t that far ahead of us.”

  “Your help,” she grumped. “I could have got exactly the same information by asking nicely.”

  “Asking nicely didn’t even get the door open. Not at the store, not at the saloon and sure as hell not at the whorehouse.”

  The angrier she got, the more cheerful Voss got.

  “They barely spoke to me!” Ava fumed. “Do you have any idea how much I could have learned if you’d shut up and kept out of it?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll never know now, I guess.”

  Damn straight. Voss had terrorized every last creature in Mariposa. And each and every one of them had told the exact same story: tales of Deathrider and the redheaded whore’s outrageous display in the whorehouse—with her buck naked, no less—and their wild ride out the next morning; and then the descent of the Hunters, who were responsible for more than a fair few bullet holes and broken windows in Mariposa. The whores were still incandescent with fury at the way they’d been treated by the posse as it rode through looking for answers.

  Ava knew she could have got more out of them if it hadn’t been for Voss. Oh, she had the bare bones of the story, but none of the substance. Had Deathrider met the whore there? Or had they arrived together? How long had they known each other? Did he love her, or were they just having fun? Why her and not another?

  Ava felt a disconcerting pang at the thought of Deathrider with a woman but batted it away. She’d never found a trace of women in Deathrider’s past before, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have them. He was a man like any other. He must have had a mistress or two. Or a wife. Or both.

  How likely was it that a man of his age had entirely escaped lust, love or even matrimony? Maybe he had a wife back in his village and a pack of plump children. When he disappeared for months at a time, maybe he was at home, playing happy families.

  The pang became a pain, like a muscle cramp.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Voss said, breaking into her thoughts like an ice ax shattering the surface of a January pond. “When we catch old Rides with Death, I’ll keep him alive long enough for you to ask him for all the details. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? To get your notebook out and pepper him with questions, just like you did to all those people back in Mariposa? I’ll make sure he’s amenable to answering your quest
ions, have no doubt about that. And you can get all of those lovely details out of him.”

  Humph. Voss had said he liked details, but he wouldn’t have known a detail if he sat on it. He’d ridden roughshod over her interviews and then had the nerve to kidnap her, right out from under everyone’s noses. And now he thought offering her a beaten and terrorized Deathrider was what she wanted. The last thing she wanted was to see Rides with Death captured and constrained, answering her questions under sufferance. But men like Kennedy Voss would never understand that.

  It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t going to be around long enough for his ghoulish scenario to play out. In a day or two at most, she’d escape from Voss. She’d wait to give Becky and Lord Whatsit time to get clear of Mariposa. He was using Becky as a bargaining chip, but once she was on the trail, she’d be harder to find. For one thing, Ava was sure Becky and his lordship would get themselves royally lost, which would probably protect them from Voss finding them.

  “C’mon, Miss Archer, we’re wasting daylight.” Voss reached over and clipped a rope to Freckles’ reins. “I’ll lead you till you’re feeling better.”

  “I feel just fine,” she said waspishly. But she wasn’t. A wave of nausea rolled over her as they started moving. She broke out in clammy sweats, and her brain felt like it was swelling up in her head.

  Chloroform. That sneak.

  It gave her an idea though, one that she kept coming back to over the course of the day, as she suffered through her headache and stomach pains. She had a tincture of laudanum in the leather pouch that held her notebook—it was a luxury in many remote towns and could buy her more information than hard cash could, so she always carried a few bottles with her. Homesteaders always needed medicines. After the last trip she was down to her final bottle—but there was enough to get even with Kennedy Voss. Laudanum had a bitter taste and was hard to slip into people’s food, but she was a terrible cook. She’d have no trouble disguising the bitterness in a charred salt beef stew. And then, while he dreamed his salubrious opium dreams, she’d get the hell out of here.

  While she still could.

  10

  THIS IS GETTING us out of trouble?” Micah was bitching again. He sounded marginally more chipper than he had when they were back with the army, but only marginally.

  They were lost. And they had only one horse. But no saddle. And no food.

  They didn’t even have a canteen.

  All Deathrider and Micah had were the clothes on their backs and a single saddleless horse. It wasn’t even one of their horses. It had been roped to one of the soldier’s packhorses, and they soon found out why. It was as wild as all hell. It kept trying to throw them or scrape them off against the prickly pears. Dog snapped at it when it tried to kick him, but it kept kicking nevertheless.

  “We’d be better off walking,” Micah said after he’d ended up on his ass in the dirt one too many times.

  “Feel free.”

  “I will.” Mulishly, Micah continued on foot. “This is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.”

  “I didn’t do anything. Blame the army, not me.”

  “The army didn’t dress me up like a whore and go dragging me into the Apacheria. The army didn’t get me lost in the middle of a wasteland.”

  “Well, they did. We’re only lost because their stupid horse went tearing off in the wrong direction. I’m not wearing the blame for being lost when it’s the army horse who did it.”

  “Even their horses are idiots.”

  Deathrider was relieved that Micah was bitching—it meant they were still talking, at least.

  “You should have shot them in the first place, and not wasted time talking to them. If you’d dealt with it straightaway, we’d still have our own horses.”

  “Or we’d be dead.”

  “You’re always such a damn peacemaker.”

  “I thought I was a white knight?”

  “Same thing. You have to go trying to talk to people when it’s clear they just want you dead.”

  “A white knight is not the same thing as a peacemaker.” Deathrider was starting to relax now. The rush of battle was subsiding; his heart rate had slowed, his breath had returned and his thoughts were regaining order.

  “If you want to help people, you should help me instead of getting me tangled up in these stupid situations. Do you know how many times I’ve almost died because of you?”

  “Not because of me. Because of the crazy people trying to kill me. It’s not my fault people want me dead.”

  “Us dead. It’s not just about you, you know. People shoot at me too now. And Tom Slater. And now Seline—because of you she’s going to be in those books too. The Outlaw and the Whore. I bet they’ll start hunting her too.”

  “No, they won’t. The army think she’s in one of those graves back there—the news will be all over the territories soon.”

  “All over the territories that we killed her, thanks to you. Now it’s not just those Hunters after us. It’s the damn army.”

  “I told you I’ll make it up to you.”

  “In Sonora.” Micah got a stubborn look. He was determined they should head south, over the border.

  “Not in Sonora,” Deathrider said firmly. “The army thinks we’re headed to Mexico, so we can’t go to Sonora; they’ll be waiting for us at the border.”

  “Those idiots think we’re already in Mexico.” Micah lapsed into a tirade in Shoshoni, which Deathrider didn’t speak. He got the gist of it from Micah’s pissy tone though. And by the way he kicked at the dirt as he walked, sending up explosive puffs of dust.

  Deathrider was wary of upsetting him further, which was why he didn’t tell him about the riders. At first they were shadowy flickers at the edge of his vision, far in the distance. Dog noticed them too. He gave a yip. Oh yes, they definitely had company. And this time it wasn’t the army. This time it was something much worse.

  “Uh, Micah?” Deathrider dropped back to ride next to his friend. “Get up on the horse now.”

  “That devil animal? No, thank you. I’d rather ride Dog.”

  “Micah,” Deathrider said warningly, “get on the horse.”

  Micah groaned as he recognized Deathrider’s tone. “What now? Let me guess. We’re surrounded by the Chiricahua?” His voice dripped sarcasm.

  “Not surrounded. Not yet.”

  “What! I was joking.”

  Deathrider gave an apologetic shrug and held a hand out to haul his friend up onto the horse.

  “I hope it rains on you for a year,” Micah shouted as the horse surged beneath them. He grabbed hold of Deathrider, hanging on for dear life. “I hope the only women who let you touch them are crones!” Deathrider urged the wild horse into a gallop, with Micah still hollering in his ear. “I hope your crops get bugs!”

  “What crops?”

  “One day you’ll have crops, and I hope they get bugs. Lots of them! Big ones!”

  They tore across land woolly with chaparral and spotted with cacti. They heard whooping behind them as the Chiricahua broke cover and came hard in pursuit.

  “They’re going to torture us,” Micah shouted. “And it’s all your fault.”

  “Stop being such a doomsayer. I got us away from the army, didn’t I?”

  “You got us hunted by the army!” Micah yipped as an arrow skipped off the ground close beside them. The horse startled and suddenly changed direction. Dog barked madly, chasing them. “The army didn’t even know who I was before—now I’m a wanted man!”

  “They still don’t know who you are,” Deathrider shouted back impatiently. “They think you’re an Apache. Stop being melodramatic.”

  “This horse is going to kill us!” Micah thumped him in the shoulder with a fist as the mad horse went running at a prickly pear.

  “Better the horse than the Chiricahua!” Deathrider s
aid, right as the stupid animal reared and sent them flying headfirst into the cactus.

  Deathrider wasn’t sure what hurt most: the landing, which was sure to leave him covered in bruises, or the cactus prickles, which were sticking him right in the ass.

  Actually, maybe his right ear hurt the most, from Micah screeching in it. It was ringing like a mission bell.

  They were still sitting in the smashed flesh of the prickly pear, covered in slime and spiked with thorns, when the Chiricahua bunched around them. There were a lot of them. They had dusty yellow-orange bandannas tied around their foreheads and were attired in white peasant shirts with vests and leggings. And they were armed to the teeth.

  Micah said some kind of prayer in Shoshoni. He was preparing for death.

  “I don’t suppose you speak English?” Deathrider asked the Chiricahua ruefully, slipping on the goo oozing from the smashed cactus as he tried to gain enough purchase to stand.

  “Today, you are a lucky man,” one of the Chiricahua replied in heavily accented English.

  “Funny, I don’t feel lucky.” Deathrider winced as his feet slid out from under him and he went down hard on his ass. He yelped. The movement had shoved the cactus spines even deeper into his flesh.

  “Trust me, he’s not lucky. He’s about to get shot by his friend.” Micah was tentatively more hopeful now that he realized they weren’t facing an immediate death. He had a few prickles stuck in the side of his face and looked like a porcupine.

  Deathrider hadn’t heard of the Chiricahua talking much to their victims, so Micah’s hope might have been well-placed. “Who said you were my friend?” Deathrider reached over and plucked one of the prickles out of his face.

  Micah slapped his hand away. “Rub salt into the wound, why don’t you?”

  There was a pause as Micah took in the bandoliers hanging across the Chiricahua warriors’ chests and the sheer number of their unholstered weapons. “We’re doomed.”