Climb the Highest Mountain (23 page)

She sipped more tea, and then they went up the stairs to her room. Abbie hurried to the dresser and pulled open the drawer to rummage beneath some clothing. She pulled out some money and counted it, then sighed deeply. “Apparently she would have felt guilty about taking it all,” she said dejectedly. “There is fifty dollars missing. Margaret must have taken it. There’s no other explanation.”

“You never heard her come in?”

She closed her eyes. “No. She must have done it while I slept.” Abbie put the money away. “It’s the Indian in her, I suppose, so quiet when necessary.”

Edwin walked up to her, grasping her shoulders. “We will find her, Abigail. And if we don’t, you will hear from her. There is too much love in your family for her to stay away forever.”

“But she’s only seventeen! She knows nothing about the world out there. And worse than that, she looks Indian! You know what could happen to her because of that. Dear God!”

When her knees began to give out, Edwin enfolded her in his arms and lifted her. “You are to lie down if I have to tie you to the bed,” he told her. “You’ve hardly slept for weeks. You can’t keep this up, Abigail. You rest, and I will do everything I can to find your daughter.” He led her toward the bed.

“Zeke,” she said weakly, her head on Edwin’s shoulder. “If only … Zeke were here.” She thought of her last beautiful moments with Zeke, of falling asleep in the warmth of his arms. It seemed her happiness had ended with that moment.

Zeke urged his horse to the edge of a massive mesa, to look out at the valley that stretched before him and into the mountains ahead. This was big country. The cry of the coyote could be heard from miles away, and things that looked close could be sixty miles off. He had been traveling for nearly three weeks, sticking to the route the Comancheros would most likely take to Mexico. He had little to go on but his own Indian intuitiveness, his ability to smell out a man, and his experience at surviving in this country. They would stay away from the open country and stick to the foothills whenever possible. They would head south-east
toward Mexico. They would stay away from forts and cities.

He bent down to rub his aching leg. The stab wounds he had suffered in the knife fight with the Comanches had festered badly, and he shuddered at the pain he had suffered when ten days earlier he had held hot coals to his own leg to burn out the infection, drawing on all of his strength, knowing that if he did not do something, he would lose his leg or die from infection and never be able to help his daughter. The wounds he had suffered on his side and across his shoulder were superficial and had healed, but his leg seemed to be taking a very long time healing. It still pained him greatly.

If he didn’t find LeeAnn within another month, he didn’t know what he would do. It was already February, and he had been gone ten weeks. He still had a wife and family back in Colorado. There were things left undone there. They must be seen to, for he was more and more convinced that Abbie was better off without him. That must be settled when he returned, but he did not want to go back without LeeAnn. He couldn’t bear to see the look on Abbie’s face if he returned empty-handed.

He had new hope that he was on the right trail when he came across a burning barn and ranch house. He had ridden down to find a man and boy dead, the livestock apparently stolen. Only a few chickens and sheep had been left behind, the sheep grazing near the bodies and the smoldering ruins. He’d been certain the Comancheros had been there, and he’d wondered if there had been a woman at the ranch and she had been taken. Most likely. He’d shuddered when he’d realized the things his daughter must have witnessed. Then he had spent the rest of the day circling the ranch, checking tracks, wanting to be sure that when he headed out he followed the right ones, and hoping they
would lead him to the Comancheros and not to a band of renegade Comanches or Apaches. There had been no arrows in the bodies, no signs of an Indian attack, which indicated the Comancheros were to blame. After four days, the tracks had led to the base of the mesa where he now was perched. He had ridden to the top to see what he could see.

His keen, dark eyes scanned the horizon, and he thought he saw a tuft of smoke curl up from a crevice in the distant mountains. It was difficult to tell. The mountains seemed painted against the sky, and the day was sunny but hazy. He studied the green and purple, velvety-looking peaks that thrust skyward, never feeling more alone than that morning as he sat atop the mesa, a tiny dot in a great, massive land. There was no sound, not even a breath of wind. He saw the smoke again, and his heart pounded with hope and anticipation that it might be from someone’s morning campfire—perhaps the Comancheros’!

He had prayed to Maheo all through the night, begging for the wisdom and skill to find his daughter. He’d wished that Wolf’s Blood were with him, as he’d been when they’d rescued Abbie from her abductors. The boy would have been a tremendous help. But Zeke Monroe had taken on outlaws single-handedly before, and he would do it again. He turned his horse and quietly urged it down the mesa to the trail he’d been following, occasionally coming across old campfires and garbage, signs that several men had made camp along the way. He reached bottom and kicked his horse into a faster gallop, heading toward the velvet mountains.

With a shaking hand, LeeAnn handed the coffee to the leering Mexican. She had learned soon after her
capture by the Comanches not to struggle and fight, for that only meant beatings and the awful rawhide tied tightly around her wrists, making them bleed and hurt. It was better to be a willing, cooperative slave than to be constantly tortured. She remembered her mother saying that one had to do what was practical to survive and that helped her now. Once she had determined after several days of captivity that the Comanches were not going to rape her, she had opted simply to live, trusting that somehow, some way, her father would come for her. She hoped her father was alive, for he’d been badly beaten when the Comanches had pulled her away from him. Since then she had been tied and beaten, forced to do hard chores with the other Comanche women, taunted by those women, and teased and looked over and terrified by the men. But they had not touched her. She suspected they were saving her for something worse, and her suspicions were realized when the outlaws came for her, a mixture of renegade Indians of various tribes, several Mexicans and a few white men. She had just begun to calm down and understand what the Comanches expected of her when the new men came and bought her and her father’s horses for rifles. These new men were more ruthless than the Comanches. Her hands had been kept tied to the pommel of her saddle almost constantly, and they rode hard and methodically, giving her little to eat, allowing her little rest. They, too, had inspected her, humiliated her. They had not raped her, but they had seen her and touched her, and she knew with horrible dread that she was most certainly being saved for something—someone. She could only pray that her father would help her before they reached wherever it was they were going.

The Mexican who took the coffee from her laughed and rubbed a hand across her bottom. She jumped
away. She had long ago lost the dress she’d worn the day of the raid, and she was clad in a Comanche tunic now, under which she wore nothing. She lived in constant fear of what these men might decide to do with her, especially since she had been forced to witness them rape a white woman they had captured from a ranch three days earlier. LeeAnn’s thirteen-year-old mind had been rudely and graphically awakened to the intricacies of what men and women did. She knew there had to be a nicer side to it or there wouldn’t be happy husbands and wives, but she wasn’t sure she could ever forget this or ever love a man and let him touch her. She wondered what kind of torture was in store for her when they reached their destination, wondered how anyone would ever find her in this desolate land—even her father? And what about the woman? She was kept tied to a travois during the day, completely covered, and taken into a makeshift tent every night. She was there now, and men kept going in and out. Laughter and horrible grunting sounds came from inside, but the woman’s sounds had long ceased. She wondered how long it would take the men to tire of the woman and turn their attention to herself. She vowed that somehow she would find a way to escape if someone didn’t come for her soon … or perhaps she would simply kill herself rather than face whatever it was they had in store for her. Her father’s horses had been sold to another group of men not long after they’d first left the Comanches. The men looked Mexican and had paid in gold. The only horses left now were two mares and Kehilan, her father’s prized stud. She was glad the horses were still with them, for watching them made her feel closer to her family, and gave her hope that the man who owned them would find a way to come and rescue her.

But that hope was fast dwindling. How she hated this land now! It was wild and ugly and full of bad people. Everything about her hurt, and her ribs stuck out from hunger. She was dirty and tired and terrified, and she vowed that if she got away, she would leave this land when she was old enough. She would go East, go to school and become a fine lady. No one would know she had any Indian blood at all. People would look up to her. She would marry a rich white man and live where people were civilized and cultured, live in places she had only read about. A hard slap to the side of her face knocked her down then and brought her back to reality.

“You sit and dream, huh?” a Mexican growled at her. “Stop wasting our time! Clean up the mess around here and be quick about it. We must sleep soon and leave in the morning!” He yanked her up by the hair of the head, holding her little body close to his own. “Not many days now you will be at the home of a wealthy Mexican who will pay much gold for the likes of you! He will tame you, huh?” He ran a hand over her hips again and she struggled against tears. “Oh, I wish I could be the one to do that. It would not be long before the hate in those blue eyes would turn to desire, little one. Never have we had a prettier captive, and I am tired of that used-up woman in the tent.” He laughed and shoved her down, then walked away.

LeeAnn finished clearing up with shaking hands, trying not to sob too loudly for fear they would hit her. Then she walked to the juniper tree where she was to be tied for the night, subdued again and determined to cooperate for fear of being beaten or raped. One of the men came and tied her wrists together, then he tied her bonds to the slender trunk of the tree. She curled up next to it, and he threw a blanket over her. More men
entered the tent, and she turned her face away and tried to block out their laughter and grunts.

The day had been long for Zeke, for he had been forced to watch from his hiding place as his daughter had been abused. He could not move in too quickly. He intended to do so that night, after most of them were sleeping. He would have to do everything with his knife, for to start shooting would rouse all of them at once. It must be done quickly and quietly. They would not suspect that one man would come after them in such country.

Zeke’s blood ran hot with vengeance now. He was glad LeeAnn was tied. She could not run if all hell broke loose and get caught in crossfire. He moved like a cat in the night, making no sound as he came up behind the first of two guards, quickly clamping a hand over the man’s mouth and sinking his big blade into the man’s spine. He stood that way for a moment before letting go and hanging on to the man until he was on the ground, so there would be no noise from his fall.

There was one other guard on the other side of the camp. That man had heard nothing. Zeke ducked back into the shadows and hurried around to that guard. He watched the man for a moment, then stood up out of the light of the fire and tossed his knife. It landed with a thud in the man’s heart. The guard let out only a light grunt, then sank to his knees. He tried to go for his gun, but Zeke dashed out of the darkness and yanked out the knife, quickly slashing it across the man’s throat and pushing him to the ground.

There were seven left now. He had taken a count that day while he watched them. Two slept nearby. He had
to move fast, very fast, before any of them awoke and realized what was going on. The element of surprise was always a man’s best advantage. He crouched down and deftly slashed his knife across their throats; then he moved to where LeeAnn slept. The girl was not even aware of what was going on, for Zeke Monroe knew the Indian ways of making no noise. He crept up to her and clamped a hand over her mouth before fully waking her. She began to struggle, thinking that one of the men had come to rape her. She tugged at her bindings and Zeke grasped her tight, keeping his weight on top of her to stop her struggles.

“It’s me—your father,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m going to cut you loose, LeeAnn. Go into the shadows, out of the light of the fire, as soon as I release you. Understand?”

He raised up to meet her eyes, and the look of relief and joy he saw in them was worth a million lives to him. He put a finger to his lips, indicating that she should make no sound whatsoever when he took his hand from her mouth. She nodded and he took the hand away. In the light of the fire, disheveled as she was, she was still beautiful, still his LeeAnn, and from what he could determine from the movements in camp that day and the talk he’d heard, still untouched. There would be time to talk about that, time to start helping her forget the horrors she had seen and suffered the past several weeks. First he had to get her out of here alive. He quickly sliced through her rawhide bindings, releasing her hands, and she hugged him around the neck.

“I thought you were dead!” she whispered.

“I’m too mean for that,” he whispered back, pulling her arms away. “Get going, LeeAnn.”

She turned and ran into the shadows, just as a huge,
fat Mexican man came out of the bushes from relieving himself. He spotted Zeke rising from where LeeAnn had been and looked up just in time to see the girl running into the bushes.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Zeke spun about to see the big man running toward him. He threw his knife and it landed in the Mexican’s chest, but the fat man kept coming and drove into Zeke’s middle, bashing Zeke to the ground. The man was yelling something in Spanish as Zeke wrestled with his massive weight, finally rolling the man over. Suddenly, the Mexican weakened from the terrible stab wound, and Zeke yanked out the knife and stabbed again, this time more directly into the heart.