Hell's Fortress (10 page)

They found the boy at the edge of the cemetery. He had four saddled horses and was stuffing food and supplies into the saddlebag Miriam had hauled from Kemp’s school bus into the mountains. Grover had already tied blankets and bulging burlap sacks to the other horses.

“Grover, what the devil?”

“Hi, Sister Eliza.” He sounded nervous.

She turned on Miriam. “Where did you get this?”

“We went foraging.”

“Stealing, you mean.”

“We wouldn’t have had to if Gibson had helped us in the first place.”

“Now you sound like Joe Kemp. These people don’t owe us anything. They’re trying to survive, just like we are, and you came in and helped yourself.”

“We tried to trade, they wouldn’t do it. Anyway, we have no choice, and I didn’t take that much, only a few things we needed.”

“More justification.” Eliza’s anger was still burning hot.

“The only thing we’re short is firearms,” Miriam continued. “I’ve got two rifles and a few shells, but we’ll need to figure that out eventually.”

“And what do we do now, flee back through the mountains ahead of an armed posse?”

“We can’t go back. We sneak out of town.” Again, that nonchalant tone. “It’s dark. Cedar City isn’t that big. Once we get into the desert . . .”

“We’re in the foothills,” Eliza said. “The entire town is in front of us. We have to pass through the whole blasted thing just to reach the freeway. And what about Officer Trost? He’s still back there.”

“He’s a good man,” Miriam said. “And he knows people around here. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“The devil he will. They’ll string him up. We are
not
leaving him, do you understand me?”

“Then we’d better hurry up before someone spots us. Grover, are you finished?”

“Almost. One second.”

“No,” Eliza said. “I don’t know where you got this stuff, but I want it back where it belongs. Horses, food, the rifles—everything.”

Miriam cleared her throat. “There’s one small problem with that. I, um, had to use harsh measures to get one of the guns.”

“You killed someone?” Eliza was so angry she was shaking.

“Of course not. What do you think I am, a monster? But I, uh, well, I kind of bashed some guy over the head with a rock and stole his gun from his hands. He’s tied up and gagged. Problem is he got a good view of me. So when he gets untied . . .”

Miriam shrugged.

“So we’re backed into a corner.”

“You might say that, yes. Sorry.”

Eliza wanted to scream. She wanted to snatch one of the weapons and force Miriam at gunpoint to confess her crimes to Gibson. Let the man chain her up with the other criminals.

No, that wouldn’t do any good.

“Grover,” she said. “Listen to me. Not to Miriam, do you understand?”

“I didn’t want to, I—”

“Grover!”

“Yes?”

“If you disobey, so help me I will leave you here, is that understood?”

He bowed his head. “Yes.”

“Good. Now give me one of those guns. The ammo too.” She loaded rounds into the rifle. “You two stay here. I’m going back for Officer Trost. Be ready, both of you. The moment I return, we ride for our lives.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Eliza came down the hillside toward Hank Gibson’s house with the rifle gripped in her hand.

Act confident. Pretend you know what you’re doing.

The streets were dark and confusing. At any moment she expected to be challenged by gunmen. If that happened, she would either bluff or run for it. Only if cornered would she shoot to kill.

When she reached the end of Gibson’s street, she waited in the shadows until she picked out the two men with shotguns Miriam had warned her about, silhouetted against the bloody moon. They were watching the street for her return. A shotgun was lethal from close range. From this distance, better to have Eliza’s rifle, but she couldn’t exactly gun them down, could she? Besides, there were at least two more men on the property, counting Gibson.

Maybe Miriam was right about leaving Trost. Surely Gibson wouldn’t imprison the man for his companions’ crimes. Maybe Trost could even get his job back on the police force. Cedar City would be better served with him in charge instead of Gibson.

You’re fooling yourself. Best case, they throw him on the chain gang.

No. Eliza wouldn’t abandon him. Member of the church or no, he belonged to Blister Creek now.

And we take care of our own.

She had to think like Miriam and bluff her way in. Why was Miriam’s role-playing effective? She chose specific details. She didn’t make the story too perfect. That bit about falling into the scrub oak, for example. It wasn’t the sort of story that someone typically invented, because it made the teller look foolish and clumsy.

Even so, Gibson had been suspicious. He’d be doubly so now. Eliza’s story would have to be better.

She held the gun against her body to conceal it in the darkness, then staggered down the sidewalk as if injured. One of the men spotted her and cried out a challenge. Eliza stumbled and fell to her knees.

Eliza made her voice high, like a younger girl’s. “Please, help me.”

“Who is that?”

“Kaylee Hatch. Two men, they—” She stopped and let out a sob.

The men approached her cautiously.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” she said. “They had food and I was so hungry, I couldn’t help it. I’m so stupid. No, don’t come any closer, don’t look at me.”

“It’s okay,” one of them said. “You’re safe now. They won’t hurt you again, I promise.”

“Please, no. There’s blood on my face and I—please don’t look at me.”

As she’d hoped, her act seemed to trigger their paternal instincts. They ignored her pleas and came up to her, slinging their shotguns over their shoulders.

“Who were they?” the other man said. He sounded younger than the first. “We’ll find the guys who did this to you.”

The older man reached for Eliza’s arm. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. Where do you live? Can we fetch your folks?”

There was genuine kindness in his voice. He didn’t sound like a thug, he sounded like a concerned citizen. No, what he most reminded Eliza of was her old LDS bishop in Salt Lake City, the man who had stood up for her against the polygamist men who’d been harassing her. She twinged with shame at the nasty trick she was about to play.

She let him pull her up. As she did, she raised the rifle and chambered a round. She dropped the little-girl talk. “Nobody move. Nobody cry out. I will kill you both.”

“What the hell?” the younger man said.

“Drop the guns. Set them down. Now!”

They hesitated, as if they were going to make a charge at her or scream for help. Eliza was not bluffing; her finger was on the trigger. That would take care of one. Could she get off a second shot in time?

Then the older man let the shotgun slide off his shoulder and clatter to the ground. His companion followed suit.

“Hands on your heads. Back up three paces. Do not move.”

They obeyed.

“Good, now listen up. I’m from Blister Creek. I have killed tougher men than you. So help me, if one of you makes a move I will turn you into hamburger. Got it?”

“What do you want?” the older man asked. His voice quivered with anger.

“What I
don’t
want is bloodshed. I want the two of you to return to your beds tonight, feeling stupid that a girl beat you, but alive. That’s what I
want
. What actually happens is up to you.”

“You’re a fool,” he said. “If we let you escape we’ll be out of work. That means we starve. That means our families starve.”

Eliza ignored this as she frisked them, an awkward move while keeping the rifle trained on them with one hand and searching them with the other. Fortunately, neither made a move. She removed a service pistol in a holster from one and two sets of handcuffs from the other. She made the older man handcuff the younger behind his back, then she cuffed the older man in the same way. She ordered them to a sitting position.

She picked up one of the shotguns, confirmed it was loaded. Pumped the gun to chamber a round. Then she popped the shells out of the second gun, pocketed them, and tossed the empty gun into the brush. She took a step back and put on the holster with one hand, while leveling the remaining shotgun at the men with the other.

“How many men are in the house?” she asked when she’d finished.

The older man shook his head and jabbed his elbow at his companion as if in warning.

Eliza hardened her voice. “Is the secret worth your life?”

“Three,” the younger one said.

“Sanchez, Gibson, and who else?”

“Guy named Trost. Used to be a cop.”

“Ah.”

Gibson had not fully briefed these men. That was to Eliza’s advantage.

“Give it up,” the older man said. “There’s no way you can do this alone. We’ll have a posse on you so fast your head will spin.”

Eliza gestured with the shotgun. “All right, on your feet. Time to go. And I
will
do it alone, because I’m desperate. Remember that if you’re tempted to try something stupid.”

She led the two men to Gibson’s front porch, then realized she should have waited before cuffing them. She could have fixed them to the railings. She briefly considered messing around with the handcuffs again, but the men were growing surly and likely doubting her resolve to shoot them if they struggled.

So she ordered them to lie on their bellies. They obeyed.

Instead of going through the house, she made her way around the deck as quickly and quietly as she could manage. Trost and Gibson were talking about the New York bread riots when she burst around the corner with the shotgun lowered.

“Hands up!” she shouted.

The men staggered to their feet. “Eliza?” Trost began.

“Take it!” She tossed him her rifle. “Run!”

She turned to flee without waiting. Gibson bellowed for help as Trost pounded after her. They came around the deck to the front of the house as Sanchez burst through the front door. The two handcuffed men had disappeared, apparently running off the moment she’d left them.

Sanchez screamed at them to stop. They didn’t. He fired. A bullet whizzed past Eliza’s ear. She turned on her heel and fired without aiming. The shotgun roared and the stock kicked her shoulder like an ironshod hoof. It was all she could do to get around and keep running.

Several seconds passed as they fled up the street before more pistol shots chased after them. Footsteps pounded behind them. Shouts sounded. Doors slammed. Gibson screamed orders.

Eliza and Trost ran in the darkness for two or three minutes before Eliza had to stop to figure out the darkened streets leading up into the bench.

“What the hell are you thinking?” Trost said, gasping. “Gibson had just agreed to loan us his shortwave radio. We could have radioed home. Now you’ve wrecked everything.”

“Trust me, Miriam had already wrecked it. I’m just improvising. This way.”

They were only halfway to the cemetery when horses came clopping along the road from above. Trost dove for the brush, but Eliza pumped the shotgun, dropped to one knee and waited. Four horses. Two had riders.

“Over here!” she called.

“Where are you?” Miriam called back.

Eliza stood and waved her arms.

Trost emerged from the brush. “Will someone tell me what is going on?”

Eliza climbed into the saddle. “Later. For now we have to get out of here. Hurry.”

He grabbed the remaining horse. Below them, torches and flashlights were flickering to life. Eliza turned the horse around and rode in the opposite direction from the lights. The others followed.

They finally had some luck as they rode along the foothills. Instead of being forced back into the mountains, a second road led down into the town, this one trending north. As they trotted down darkened streets lined with little brick houses, people appeared on porches to watch. Many of them were armed. But nobody challenged them. The pursuit was searching for them back up the mountain highway, but no word appeared to have reached this part of town.

Before long they were on the ranch roads north of town and searching for a way west to cross the freeway and flee into the western desert. Still no challenges.

“Don’t they have a way to raise the general alarm?” Grover asked.

“They’re idiots,” Miriam said. “So no, it appears they don’t.”

“We could have helped,” Eliza said. “If only Gibson hadn’t been so blasted unreasonable. We could have shown them how to organize a defense.”

“Instead, here we are on stolen horses with stolen food and stolen firearms,” Trost said. “Fugitives. Nice work.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“We got away, didn’t we?” Miriam said.

“Not yet we haven’t.”

“And with a minimum of bloodshed too. Liz, did you kill that guy?”

“I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“There you go,” Miriam said.

“You think that matters?” he said. “They’ll be after us, don’t you worry. And plenty of people saw us riding north. Even if we get out of town, we’re not in the clear.”

“We’ll ride all night,” Eliza said. “Once we get in the desert, we can hold our own.”

“Stop avoiding the issue,” he said. “If someone pulled a stunt like this in Blister Creek we’d hunt them to the ends of the earth. You turned us into thieves and bandits. No better than Joe Kemp.”

“I’m not trying to avoid it. This is not what I wanted. Miriam is out of control. Believe me, I know.”

“Please stop fighting,” Grover said.

Miriam snorted. “By out of control you mean pulling our chestnuts out of the fire while everyone else sat around chatting? You’re welcome, no thanks necessary.”

“I should have known it was your fault,” Trost said. “Sorry, Eliza. Of course it was her, not you.”

“Please,” Grover said. “They’re going to catch us.”

“Grover’s right,” Eliza said. “We keep arguing and we’ll find nooses around our necks. What do you think, left at the next intersection?”

They picked their way west in silence. They crossed the freeway, dark and empty. On the opposite side, ranch houses gave way to flat dirt roads. Alfalfa fields, grazing land. Finally, sagebrush and rabbit grass, then the flat desert plain. Still they continued.

When morning broke, they’d penetrated the desert hills many miles west of the city. It was dry, barren land, with rattlesnakes underfoot and patient, circling vultures overhead. Finding water for man and beast would be difficult.

But Eliza’s heart lifted with the sun as they rode toward the brown, shimmering Indian Peak Range on the other side of the Escalante Desert.

War, famine, disease, bandits, a barren wasteland—nothing could stop her now. Steve was out there and she was going to find him.