Jodi Thomas (3 page)

“Howdy!” the stranger shouted, raising his hat high. “Name’s Big Zeb Whitaker. Howdy to the wagon!”

Lacy waved, but Bailee waited. Though his voice was friendly enough, she didn’t miss the fact that he kept his gun at ready. In his furs he looked more predator than friend.

The stranger drew closer. “Where’s your menfolks?” he asked as he lifted a huge rifle a few inches.

Cumbersome saddlebags hung from both shoulders, making him seem wider than his already considerable girth. The gun he carried was long-barreled and old.

“We ain’t got any!” Lacy shouted before Bailee could stop her.

He didn’t lower his weapon as he drew closer.

“Why are you afoot?” Bailee changed the subject as he reached the oxen. “Are you lost?”

“Never.” Zeb Whitaker’s laughter chilled the air between them. “We’re not more than a good day’s walk from Cedar Point He glanced in the direction he’d come and nodded once. ”I had to put my horse down about a half mile back.”

“I didn’t hear a shot,” Bailee said more to Lacy than the man, but she guessed he heard her. Something about Big Zeb didn’t make sense. If he’d had to shoot his horse, wouldn’t he head back to town? No sane man would walk into this open country without horse, or bedroll, or any supply of food or water that she could see.

He ignored her stare. The oxen interested him more. “You wouldn’t want to sell me this wagon and team, would you, ladies?”

“No,” Bailee answered without taking her eyes off him.

He ignored her answer and continued appraising the merchandise. “You ladies must be headed toward Cedar Point. It’s the only place for a hundred miles. You won’t be needing this wagon once you reach town, I figure. Might as well take it off your hands.” He helped himself to the water barrel as he passed, not bothering to use the dipper, but dropping a dirty hand into the supply.

“The wagon’s not for sale,” Bailee said firmly. “But we will offer you a ride back to town.” It was the right thing to do, she told herself, even though the idea of riding beside him didn’t appeal to her.

The man’s black gaze shot her direction. The hardness in his stare startled her.

“I’m heading in the opposite direction, ma’am.” His words were polite enough, but his stare made her shiver.

Without asking, he swung up on the running board of the wagon and checked the storage box below the bench. From the way his shoulders relaxed, Bailee guessed he searched for weapons.

“What’s wrong with that one?” He pointed toward Sarah who was wrapped in several blankets.

“She’s sick,” Lacy volunteered. “But she ain’t got the fever.”

“She looks more dead than alive.” The stranger didn’t seem to care if he offended Sarah. “Get out here with the others where I can have a look at you.”

When Sarah didn’t move fast enough, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her onto the wagon’s bench seat. She glared at him with fever-ringed eyes, and he moved away, wiping his filthy hand on equally filthy clothes.

He jumped to the ground and rested his rifle across his arm. “Look, I need your wagon. You can walk to town in a day or so. I’ll even unload it and leave all your belongings right here so you can come back for them.” His effort to be nice never changed the cruelty in his eyes.

“No.” Bailee was starting to believe the man might be hard of hearing. “The wagon’s not for sale.”

Zeb Whitaker swore under his breath, as if he were talking to a child who couldn’t understand logic. “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars.”

“No,” Bailee answered. What good would a hundred dollars do Sarah? Even if she and Lacy could make it to Cedar Point, Sarah couldn’t walk that far, and they wouldn’t leave her.

“A hundred and twenty!” The man puffed out his chest trying to intimidate them.

“The wagon is not for sale.”

Zeb Whitaker slowly turned his rifle toward Bailee’s middle. “I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice. I have to have your wagon, and the matter of your surviving is of no importance to me. So step back out of the way so I can be gone. If you three are no more trouble than gnats, I won’t have to waste a bullet on you.”

Bailee didn’t make a sound, but Lacy let out a little cry. “You can’t take our wagon, mister! You can’t!”

“I’m not taking. I said I’m willing to pay. I never stole from no woman. Or shot one. Leastwise, not when I was sober and can remember doing such a thing. I just need to be traveling, so don’t bother me, girl.”

She grabbed his arm trying to stop him.

He raised his hand suddenly as if to strike her, then looked Lacy up and down carefully like she were also something he considered buying. When he turned back to Bailee, she caught a glimmer of lust in his black eyes. She had no doubt in her mind that he’d kill her if he had to, but what he had planned for Lacy was far more evil.

A smile slowly wrinkled across his dirty face. “Ladies, there’s probably a rope waiting to stretch my neck, so I’ll have to cut this bargaining session short.” He stared at Bailee. “You can sell me the wagon and stand aside, or I’ll leave your bodies rotting in this rain. One way or the other, don’t matter much to me.”

Bailee’s mind raced as fast as it once had when her father badgered her at the dinner table over some small fact in her lessons.
Think!
he’d shout, as if his demand would help reason.

“Two hundred,” she said as her hands balled into fists. They’d all be dead in a few minutes if she didn’t think of something. “We want two hundred for the wagon.”

The man blinked, seemingly surprised she had the nerve to speak. “What?”

“You said you’d pay.” Bailee stood solid, knowing that if she took her eyes from him, she’d fall apart.

“What?” Lacy echoed. “Bailee, you can’t be serious.”

“It’s my wagon.” Bailee forced her words to be cold. There was no time to explain to Lacy, and she didn’t want the girl getting in the way. “Two hundred is as low as I go.”

The man raised an eyebrow, debating whether to spend money. “All right,” he finally said. “I don’t like the idea of killing women, even ones as poorly looking as the three of you. There’s not enough meat on all of your bones to feed a crow.”

He lowered one of his saddlebags and began unstrapping the laces. “Besides, I just come into a considerable amount of cash, and I can afford to pay. For that kind of money, though, I’m taking the girl with me.” He winked at Lacy as though he considered her the lucky winner. “She’s young, but I don’t mind training her. Already a full handful of breast busting out of that dress. That’ll make her worth the trouble of feeding.”

Before Lacy could react, he grabbed the front of her blouse, tearing the material almost to her waist.

As she backed away in horror, trying to hold the scraps of her clothes together, he laughed. “You’ll do, girl.”

Lacy’s mouth opened in shock. For a moment only little sounds of panic came out, then she screamed, “I’m not going anywhere with you!” She snatched her shawl hanging on the wagon and tied it around her. But he’d touched her. Panic washed across her face.

Zeb laughed. “You’ll get used to me, girl. Might even start liking my handling you after a while. If you don’t, it won’t matter none because where we’re going, no one will hear your screams but the buffalo.”

Lacy’s gaze darted to Bailee. “He can’t take me! He can’t!”

“No,” Bailee answered with her teeth clenched tightly together. “He can’t.”

Zeb wasn’t listening to their chatter. He smiled, proud of his own plan. “I’ll work you so hard during the day, you won’t even fight what happens to you at night. Two hundred for the wagon and the woman is high, but I’ll pay. When I reach the Comonchero camps, I might be able to make some of my money back.” He smiled at Lacy. “You’ll know how to lie real still for a man by then, girl.”

He knelt on one knee and began digging in his bag. Bailee reached her hand behind her and felt the board leaning against the water barrel.

Lacy backed away a step. The man grabbed her wrist with his free hand and pulled her to her knees paying no attention to her sobs. His beefy hand forced her head down, then patted her face in more of a slap than a touch.

“Yes, sir, you’ll go with me, girl.” He bragged to himself as he slapped her once more as though daring her to try and move. “You’ll go with me and we’ll get along just fine once we understand one another.”

Lacy gulped for air, too afraid to even look up.

He knotted a handful of her hair into his fist and jerked her head up. “There ain’t nobody here to stop me from taking you, girl, so don’t get any ideas. These two friends of yours are half dead anyway. And you will be if you don’t make up your mind to be real good from now on. I ain’t long on patience.”

He grinned as he let go of her hair and hit her again to prove his point. When Lacy tumbled backward, Whitaker reached for her as if angry that she’d moved when he’d told her to be still.

Bailee saw her chance. Her fingers closed around the smooth wood of the wet board. It was her only weapon. Her only choice. Lacy’s only chance. With one swift movement Bailee swung the board with all her strength.

Wood met his skull with a mighty crack. Lightning popped far above them, echoing the sound.

Screaming, Lacy jerked her arm free of his grip.

The stranger glanced up in shock, then melted to the ground as though made of butter and it was an August noon. Gold coins spilled from his bag across the dirt as he tumbled.

Lacy kept screaming as she jumped to her feet. She ran about as though the earth had grown suddenly hot and she was testing for a place to stand. Her words came out in broken fragments. “You, you! Oh, Bailee ... You killed ... He ... He was going to ... He hit me ...”

Bailee didn’t move. She stared down at the man with the board still in her hand. “I’ve killed again,” she whispered, making no effort to stop her tears from tumbling down her face with the rain. “Again.”

Sarah, looking more ghost than human, slowly moved through the rain to Bailee’s side.

Lacy ran to her. “Sarah! Did you see? Oh, Sarah, Bailee killed ...”

On bare feet Sarah crossed between Bailee and Zeb Whitaker’s body. Red mud clung to the hem of her nightgown, forever staining the lace. Her thin hand covered Bailee’s and pulled the board from Bailee’s white-knuckled fingers. Without a word Sarah lifted the weapon in the air and let it fall across the back of the stranger’s head. Like an echo once more the thunder rattled the sound skyward.

Lacy screamed again as if all had suddenly gone mad, but Sarah only raised her pale eyes to Bailee and said, “We killed him, Bailee. My blow may have been the deadly one, not yours. It wasn’t just you doing what had to be done. I killed him, too.”

“But he ... he was already ...” Lacy froze, letting understanding filter into her panic.

She moved forward and took her turn with the weapon. Her blow hit his shoulder, but she stood back and lifted her head. “We killed him. All of us. He said no one would stop him, but we did.”

“
G
ET IN THE WAGON!” BAILEE SHOUTED OVER THE thunder. “Hurry.”

Sarah climbed into the back of the Conastoga, taking the bedrolls from Lacy as Bailee pulled the oxen in line. The dawn air grew silent and still around them, almost as though morning held its breath until they could get away from the body crumpled in the mud. Then, when the harnesses jingled, the thunder resumed and lightning brightened their path.

The three women followed nearly washed-out tracks Big Zeb Whitaker had made when he’d stomped into their camp. The sun hid behind a wall of clouds, but they knew they were heading south. South, to the only town within a hundred miles.

“We won’t stop for anything but to water the oxen,” Bailee reasoned aloud. “If Zeb Whitaker said it was a good day’s walk to town, we should be able to make it by nightfall with the wagon.”

Sarah and Lacy nodded their agreement.

“But we can’t waste a minute. Each time we stop, everything has to be done fast.” Bailee didn’t have to add that since there was no food, they didn’t have to bother with a noon fire.

“What’ll we do when we get to town?” Lacy held the board they’d used for a weapon as if she expected trouble to come toward them at any moment.

“We confess,” Bailee answered. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

Lacy climbed onto the bench beside Bailee. “To a priest? I never done that before. I don’t know if I can talk to one.”

“No, to the sheriff.” Bailee tried her best to sound determined. “It’s only proper. We killed a man. If this Cedar Point is big enough to have a lawman, we go there first.”

“They hang murderers,” Lacy whispered. “Don’t they?”

“Not us.” Bailee tried to sound sure of herself. “I’ll explain that my killing him was self-defense. After all, I have you two as witnesses.”

“And I have the two of you as witnesses when I killed him again,” Lacy added.

“I’m not sure you can be a witness to the same murder you’re pleading guilty to,” Sarah mentioned from the back of the wagon. She was given out. The thought of being tried and hanged didn’t seem to worry her at all. She’d used all her energy carefully building her nest in the tiny space between Bailee’s crates so she could sleep. For her, she’d only done what had to be done, and there was no point wasting time thinking about it.

 

Twelve hours later the sheriff of Cedar Point, Harman Riley, asked the same question Sarah had. “Now, let me get this straight.” He paced in front of the women like a lawyer. “You three ragamuffins claim to have killed Big Zeb Whitaker, a man who told you he was due for a hanging?”

The three suspects nodded.

Harman Riley considered himself a hard man, but he’d been gentle with these three women because they reminded him a little of his daughters back in Tennessee. They’d pulled into town well after dark and looked near drowned when he’d opened his office door to them. It had taken him ten minutes just to get them all three to stop talking at once and almost a half hour to get the office warm enough for them to stop shivering.