Dark Warrior: Kid (Dark Cloth Series Book 2) (4 page)

Riding Fence

A bullet whizzed past Kat’s head
, a mere split second after she’d heard the rifle’s retort. With the ease of years of practice, she made it to her pony. She pulled back on the reins, and he pivoted on his hind legs.

A shot whizzed by his head. Her horse, of course, immediately reared, spooked by the sudden explosion—and the missile that had just shot by. Only her expert horsemanship kept Kat in her seat. She’d no sooner congratulated herself on that—seeing how becoming unseated would have left her a sitting-duck—then her horse lunged sideways. The large bent branch, the same tree that had been her protection, now hit her across the middle, knocking the wind from her and doing the unseating for her, with one deft stroke.

She hit the ground, an explosion of stars lighting up behind her eyes, her head striking something hard. She’d always wondered if that expression were true—now she knew.

She realized, fighting to catch her breath, there’d been no more wind to knock from her. The branch from the tree had taken it all—probably cracking a couple of her ribs along the way.

She heard footsteps, barely making out the shadowy outline of men and knew she needed to move—and fast. But her body refused to cooperate. She couldn’t lift her arms, couldn’t seem to command them to get her up. She felt heavy—as though she were made of lead. She heard a man yell at someone in rapid Spanish, but it didn’t seem directed at her. Something struck her head again, and then she knew no more.

Kat didn’t know how long she’d been out, when she woke. She winced as a drum beat, deep inside her head. Fire followed in its wake. Something warm ran across her face, and she tried to open her eyes, then realized—one eye had already been open.

She found that odd, since she’d been pretty certain she hadn’t hit her face.

She remembered the branch, which had seemed to reach out to knock her from her horse. Well, her horse
had
lunged, near halfway around, the beast.

She tried to shift her position, but nothing happened.

Near as she could tell, it felt like night. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just knew. She attempted, again, to shift her weight, still nothing.

At first, she couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. Her head exploded with lights, her arms on fire, as though they were being torn from their sockets. She went still, fighting down wave after wave of nausea for her efforts. Then, she realized her head drug across the ground with even the slightest shift—since they’d hung her upside-down.

She attempted to flex her arms—and screamed through something rough, stuffed in her mouth. For a moment, she forgot all about her arms, as she fought not to gag, her tongue dry like parchment. It felt like something wooden—as though foreign. Even so, the rag tasted acrid, and she wanted to vomit. The stench of decayed flesh permeated her nostrils, as she fought the urge panic.

Another pain shot through her shoulders, returning her thoughts to her twisted limbs. She needed that. Better to concentrate on the pain, then be overrun by her fear. She focused on her body, as it took a bit for her to recognize that her arms were bound behind her back, angled so severely that she could get relief no to her shoulders, no matter how she tried. Moving them, in fact, sent excruciating pain slicing through her—and she’d lost all the feeling in her hands.

She moaned, tried to draw moisture to her mouth, but the filthy rags stole what she could muster. She knew that grime made it taste bad. The smell of something putrid, like rotten flesh, filled her nostrils. Even through her haze of pain, she knew rage. If she could get the blasted rag out of her mouth, she’d tell
them
what she thought of them.

She peered out into the dark. She could barely make out a campfire, through the one slit in her one good eye. Several yards away, gray lumps, like dark mounds of dirt, lay circled around what warmth it provided. The flickering flames looked inviting. She realized, then, how cold she felt. They hadn’t even bothered to put her close to the fire, to give her any warmth.

She dreaded the thought of what she must do to free herself—but she dreaded what would happen to her, more, if she didn’t. She moaned and worked to get some relief to her arms. Searing pain drug another moan from her cracked lips. She knew they were cracked, by the new splits she felt whenever she moved them, causing a different kind of fire—like the paper cuts she’d received on the ends of her fingers, when learning Mandy’s lessons on how to read.

She remembered Kid, only a few short months ago, in a similar position to this, when they’d gone searching for some cattle wrestlers. Only they’d had him hanging by his arms.

She’d wanted to kill every one of those men then, when she’d seen what they’d done to his face. Thieves and bandits, the lot of them. But McCandle would have killed Mandy if Kat had alerted the men to the fact that she’d discovered their well-hidden valley.

So Kat had cut Kid down and left to warn Jake.

She stifled another moan now, pulling her back to her own predicament, eyeing the sleeping forms of the men. She needed to get loose. She could almost hear Mandy whispering in her ear,
to
get her ass moving.

Mandy had hired her on the spot when she’d found her with her six-inch skinnin’ knife, threatening to send Ashley McCandle to his maker—realizing they had an enemy in common. She’d loved Kat’s fighting spirit. And Kat had loved the same about Mandy.

McCandle might have been determined to force Mandy to marry him—by any means at his disposal—but she and her friends had been just as determined to stop him. By that time, he’d forced so many landowners out, he’d owned most of the land between Denver and Cheyenne—and he wanted Mandy’s too. He’d even murdered her father to accomplish that.

McCandle had kidnapped Mandy because she’d thwarted him by marrying Hawk, instead of him. Her marriage had sent him into a rage and brought out the killer in him. He’d been trying to bring Hawk down for years, hating his father for dragging him all over the country, for most of his childhood, searching for his older brother, although Hawk hadn’t even known the younger McCandle had existed. How could he? When, in truth, Hawk hadn’t seen his father since the time he’d left him at that wagon train massacre to die.

But McCandle
had
known of him. He’d known of him—and he’d hunted him.

Kat concentrated on these memories, as she tried, again, to shift her position. She concentrated on these memories, to block out the pain—to keep her from losing consciousness.

When Hawk’s father had gone on to marry again—and had another son—and Ashley McCandle had been raised, following his father around while he’d searched for his firstborn son, he’d been kidnapped and tortured by some Sioux renegades. He’d hated Hawk for that childhood, but also for the things that had happened to him while he’d remained in their hands, all because his father had dragged him about the country—and all of these things of which Hawk knew nothing about.

Kat realized that she hadn’t told Kid, back then, when she’d rescued him, that she could have escaped the ropes that had held her beloved captive. It had been bad enough that he’d had to be freed
by her
. She never told him that she could have
saved herself—
as easily as she’d cut him loose.

In spite of her pain, she almost chuckled at the thought.

Almost.

But the pain knifed hard on her heels, raking its ugly claws through her skin, leaving fire in its wake. She had to concentrate on Kid to keep her sane—and alert.

She found it ironic that she should be here now, just a few short months later, facing a similar predicament, forced to prove that she could really escape from her bonds. Yet, even so, the path to freedom lay in doing something that would prove to be excruciating.

Sweat ran into her eyes, trailing a stinging path. She shuddered as she tried to flex her muscles, making her first attempt at dislocating her shoulder, fail. The fire, smoldering in its bed, and the men, lumped in their eerie gray mounds, slid away in a haze, as the stuff of nightmares.

The first time she’d accidently dislocated her shoulder, as a child, she’d passed out too. Sometime later, she’d woke, screaming, to the sound of children—laughing. She saw herself as a child, when it had happened, running around the fire, twirling, with her blond ringlets flying. Then, she’d fallen.

Kat groaned through her rag, remembering an old man who’d come over and examined her shoulder, and her screaming as he bent her arm.

That day she’d learned that she could fold her arms around like wings. Remembered, too, that playing around with this ability had been what had caused her arm to come out of its socket—not the fall. She’d been just ten years old. She’d never known such fire. She’d been extremely fortunate that that old Asian man had realized what she’d done.

He’d been the one to tell her that she had dislocated her shoulder. She’d screamed to the heavens when he put it back in place, but then she’d known an immediate relief. He’d shown her a way to put it back into place herself, telling her how to fix it when it happened again because, he’d said, she had very flexible joints.

He’d been right. And the first time she’d had to do it herself—she had thought she’d never succeed. She’d had to try several times—and passed out twice along the way. People had taken the opportunity to steal all of her possessions. And when she came to, she had known she’d been lucky they’d only stolen her belongings, since she’d been powerless to protect herself.

She
hadn’t
hunted them down because she’d found the lesson in what had happened.

Well—she thought. She hadn’t hunted them down—except for the young man
who’d stolen her knife.
No one got away with stealing her knife. Still, she hadn’t killed him when she caught up with him—had only roughed him up a bit—glad now that she hadn’t.

Imagine if she’d had to tell Mandy she’d killed him.

No. She had learned a valuable lesson that day—and she knew it. And, since then, she’d hidden this ability from others, no longer playing around with it like a toy. She no longer showed anyone how she could fold her arms around like chicken wings, or crawl completely through her own legs. Besides, it made it appear as though her arms and legs weren’t really attached. It scared people, caused them to whisper things behind her back.

And if she talked about it, but didn’t show them—they’d called her a liar, and that only made her want to get her knife out—
and skin ‘em.

Gradually, she’d learned to hide her ability to dislocate her limbs, completely.

But she’d use it now.

Tremendous pain made the smallest shifts to her muscles threaten to cause her to blackout. And she didn’t know how late into the night it was—or if they were closer to dawn. She didn’t know how much time she’d have if that turned out to be true. Besides, the way they’d hung her only caused her pain to increase, every minute she hung there. She’d just have to hope they’d drunk themselves into a stupor—because she doubted very much she could be quiet....

She folded her shoulder further back, disengaging it from the socket before she could let herself think about it. Thinking would’ve robbed her of her will—and she needed her will to survive.

She moaned heavily into the rag, tears running down her forehead. The world swam crazily before her. She knew that if she vomited, she’d probably drown, because of the rag bound tightly to her mouth.

The ropes went slack, and she used her freed left arm to pull her now useless right arm free from the knots. She worked quickly, disengaging herself from the confines of her bonds, knowing that at any moment, one of the men could wake—and sound the alarm.

Kat was in superb shape. She’d been fighting all of her life. It’s what she knew, what she did best, though no one could tell just by looking at her—with her blonde ringlets and green, catlike eyes.

She’d been raised with her momma’s people. And her momma had been half Cherokee.

Kat curled upwards, snaking her body towards her feet, using her powerful abdomen muscles to reach them with her one good arm. They’d used the slipknot, so she’d only to pull the rope to free herself, and she hit the ground with a thud. Thank the heavens she’d been close to it to begin with. Still, she stifled off the scream that threatened to burst through, rag or no rag, when her shoulder collided with the hard-packed earth.

She rolled to her feet, losing no time, and slammed her shoulder against the tree with the silent war cry that erupted from her throat—but never made it past the filthy cloth still in her mouth.

If she could have seen her own eyes, she’d have seen how they glittered with deadly menace, her rage palatable now, as she ripped the stench-filled material from her mouth. One of the men rolled over, and she went still, blending with the darkness, then as he settled back into his deep slumber, she slipped into the shadows on silent, moccasin’d feet.

Not a sound came from her movements as she crossed the camp, being careful not to step between the fire and the men, so as not to cast a shadow across their sleeping forms. She drew a rifle from near one of the men, drew a pistol from next to another. Then she spotted her knife—and she smiled.