Love and Glory: The Coltrane Saga, Book 3 (40 page)

“Aw, now, you shouldn’t’ve yelled,” he said. “Now he’s heard you and knows you’re there. He’s apt to get pissed off ’cause he can’t get me, and go for you.”

Squeezing her eyes shut tightly, she clamped her teeth together, bracing for the fatal strike.

“Here he comes!”

Her eyes flashed open as the snake was shoved closer. Her toes were less than two feet away.

“It’s gonna be a shame to see a pretty thing like you die,” he sighed. “’Course, I’ll just take off the ankle ropes and tell the boss you tried to run away and got snake-bit. It’s really a waste. And all you gotta do is talk. I just can’t believe you’re willin’ to die.”

He had positioned the torch between two large rocks, and the scene looked, she thought, like a vision from hell. Shadows of her body, hanging from the roots, danced eerily over the cave wall. Higgins’ large, hulking body hovered to one side. The hissing, rattling snake swayed in the middle.

Higgins was watching her with narrowed eyes, his chest heaving as he fastened his gaze on her breasts. “No,” he said suddenly. “We got time later for all this. Right now, I’ve gotta have me some of you.”

Quickly he swung the stick, scooping up the rattlesnake and sending him sailing through the air into the back of the cave. “Gonna have you,” he grunted, rushing forward to cover her nipples with biting kisses in between hungry flicks of his hot, eager tongue. She shrieked in protest and he jerked his head back and shouted, “Let’s get you down, baby. Let’s get you stretched out on the floor where I can get at you good.”

He leaped up, moving quickly behind her to tug at the ropes that held her.

That was when his scream turned her blood to ice.

“Goddamn, no!” He staggered away, slumping to his knees. “No! No! No!”

He was clawing at his right leg, and she twisted around, trying to see. She froze, silently screaming at her body not to move, for there, below her, coiled and ready to strike again, lay a rattlesnake.

This was their cave. They were probably all around.

Higgins was jerking up his trouser leg, screaming as he saw the twin puncture marks in the flesh of his calf. He leaped to his feet, bolting for the mouth of the cave. “Gotta have help…gotta have help…” he cried hysterically, his voice growing fainter and fainter as he ran.

He was going to die. She recalled her father’s many warnings about snakebites. When a person panics and runs, he had said, the poison moves quicker. Death is certain. She could hear Higgins’ faint screams as he ran ever closer to his own grave.

She forced her breathing to slow down, told herself that, for the time being, there was nothing she could do but endure the pain of hanging there, the stark terror of knowing the snake was close by.

Then a movement caught her eye, to her left, near where the torch was propped. Another snake was slithering along the cave floor. He inched his way closer and closer, and her eyes widened in horror as he approached.

He stopped, looked up at her with beady black eyes. She bit down on her tongue, tasted blood, concentrated on the pain and bit harder, harder. She could not, would not scream as the snake’s flesh touched her own.

Around and around he moved, warming his cold body on her warm flesh.

She closed her eyes, and then suddenly the movement of his flesh against hers stopped. She opened her eyes again and allowed herself the faintest of movements as she looked down.

The snake had coiled himself around her feet. Mercifully, she fainted.

Chapter Twenty-One

The screaming whine of the rifle shot reverberated inside the cave, bringing Marilee to sudden consciousness with painful jerks. Horror claimed her and she looked down, willing her body not to move.

A gasp of joy escaped her as she saw the huge reptile lying inches from her feet, its head blown away.

“Hang on, sweetheart. I’ll have you down from there in a minute.”

She turned her head, daring to hope that this was not a dream. Then she saw the battered face. She cried, “No! No! Oh, my God, Travis! What have they done to you?”

He propped the rifle against the cave wall and pulled a knife from inside his boot. He sliced through the ropes around her ankles and then the ones holding her to the exposed roots above. She collapsed in his arms. “Don’t try to move,” he cried. “I don’t know how long you’ve been suspended there like that, but you’re probably too stiff to walk. Damn. Your wrists are bleeding. Got to get you out of here. This place is a snake pit.”

His voice trailed off, but before there was time to wonder what was happening, he had rolled her into the crook of his left arm, holding her tightly as he stooped to pick up his rifle and fire from the hip, all in one flashing movement. There was another snake, now dead, about five feet away.

“He…he didn’t even rattle,” she whispered, slumping against him. He hoisted her up and over his shoulder.

“They don’t always play by the rules.” He glanced anxiously from side to side as he backed toward the cave entrance.

Once they were outside, Marilee blinked gratefully at the dawning sun. The sky was streaked with pink and purple wisps of clouds, and all around them birds were chorusing praise to God. Silently she praised Him also, for allowing her to live to see the dawn.

Travis placed her gently on a bed of pine needles, then quickly stripped off his shirt and used it to cover her nakedness. Kneeling beside her, he touched her wrists and asked, “Are you hurt anywhere else? Did he do anything to you?”

She knew what he was referring to by the tone of his voice, and the way he averted his eyes. “No,” she replied, “but he was about to when the snake bit him.”

He nodded. “He’s dead. He was still alive when I found him, but he didn’t last long. Obviously he’d panicked and run around, causing the poison to spread quickly. He mumbled something about a snake pit in a cave. I’ve spent some time combing these mountains, so I knew where there was a cave nearby.”

She reached to touch him but drew away, afraid she might hurt him. One eye was swollen almost shut, and there was a cut along his cheekbone.

“Don’t worry about my face, sweetheart.” He smiled. “It might be what attracted the ladies in the beginning, but it’s not what kept them coming back.”

She could not help laughing. “Only you, Travis Coltrane, could think of such things at a time like this. But are you sure you’re going to be all right? And what about Sam?”

“Sam’s got a broken leg,” he said grimly. “They jumped me in the alley outside my office night before last, then got Sam when he heard the commotion and came running out. They did a good job on us. I woke up in Doc Humboldt’s office and realized I’d been unconscious all night and all day, too.”

She was bewildered. “But how did you find me?” she cried. “Way out here, and—”

“I think,” he said quietly, “it’s time we leveled with each other.”

She watched as he sat down and crossed his legs, could not help marveling at his handsome chest, bare, muscular, covered with a thick down of black hair that would trail all the way down to…She felt the warmth in her face, and hoped he could not tell what she was thinking.

He picked up a pine straw and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment as he stared at her, then drew in his breath and said, “I have known for quite a while now that you were spying on the Klan.”

“How?” He had hinted at this before, during their night together.

He continued matter-of-factly. “You passed information along to Willis and others and they confided this to me. I asked them not to let you know that I was aware of what you were doing. You were doing a good job, dangerous though it was, and I figured if I kept you covered, stayed close by, things could continue till I was ready to make my move.”

She moaned. “All this time I thought you just weren’t doing your job.” She shook her head in disbelief. He grinned at that, then continued, “I wasn’t aware the Klan was meeting last night. I just wanted to check on things. When I got to the springhouse, Willis was there and told me you’d gone out but had not returned. He was pretty upset. We waited around, and I was about to leave and try to track you down when Israel came and told us what had happened.”

“Israel?” she cried. “How did he know?”

Travis laughed softly. “I told you. I had you covered. Israel perched up in a tree and kept an eye on you when you were at the Klan meetings, just in case something happened. He told me the direction they’d taken, so I followed the trail.”

“They were after Willis last night,” she cried suddenly, remembering. “Did they—”

“No,” he assured her quickly. “Israel told us. Willis is safe now. He’s going to stay out of sight until I get word to him that everything is all right. I told him it might be a while.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I trailed you. I saw Mason coming back but since you weren’t with him, I let him pass without letting him see me. Then I kept tracking till I found Higgins. I knew you had to be close by.”

“Then you know Mason is involved?” she asked.

He looked straight at her and said quietly, “I know everyone who is involved, Marilee.”

She told herself he could not know about her father. There was no way. And she was not about to tell him, even now. “Mason didn’t want to kill me,” she explained. “I heard him talking when he thought I was unconscious. He was going to get a Klan group from the western part of the state to take me and keep me prisoner. He said he knew my father would have a search party out combing the mountains for me.”

Travis raised an eyebrow. “Does Mason know that you know he is their leader?”

She shook her head no. “He thinks the only Klansman I recognized was Higgins.”

“And now Higgins is dead,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Then you’re in no danger for now. You’re going to have to go home and pretend you don’t know anything at all. The Klan will, no doubt, change their meeting place, but you won’t be slipping in anymore, anyway.”

“Higgins tied me up to torture me,” she said, hoping that talking it through would help her forget. “He wanted me to tell him who knew about my spying, but I didn’t say anything. He got bitten by that snake, and then ran out. Then another snake crawled out and wrapped itself around my feet.”

“I know,” he interrupted, smiling slightly. “That’s how I found you. I was afraid if you woke up suddenly, you’d startle him, and he’d strike. So I shot him,” he said simply.

She sat straight up. “You shot him while he was still…
coiled
around my feet?”

He nodded. “It was either shoot him or leave you both hanging there, sweetheart,” he grinned. “I’ve got work to do. I can’t waste a whole lot of time rescuing damsels in distress.”

“Well, thank you, kind sir,” she said sarcastically. “You know, I could have been shot, too.”

“You weren’t,” he said simply. “I don’t shoot unless I plan to hit what I’m aiming at. You saw the snake.”

She could only stare at him in silent wonder as he stretched, muscles flexing tautly in his shoulders and chest. “Now then, I think we’d better get you home. We’ve got to get some clothes for you, though. Can’t have you walking in naked. Tell your father you got thrown by your horse in the storm when lightning scared him. You had to find your way home when your horse ran off. I’ll ride you just so far, and you can walk the rest of the way.”

“But what about Stewart?”

“I don’t consider him a threat just now. And he doesn’t consider you one, since he doesn’t know you’re on to him. He’ll go out to check on Higgins and find him dead of snakebite and assume you just managed to escape by yourself.”

“But won’t he wonder why I’m not telling my father everything?”

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “He’ll know that you don’t want your father to realize you’re on to him.”

She gasped, hands flying to her throat. “You know that, too? I wanted to talk to him, to reason with him. You can’t arrest my father, Travis.”

He took her hands and held them, studying the wounds. “You’ll need to say that you got yourself caught in the reins when you fell from your horse. That’ll explain these cuts. Fortunately, they aren’t serious.”

“Travis, you aren’t listening to me!” she screamed. “I must save my father from prison and disgrace! You can’t ruin it for me now. I won’t let you.”

He continued to hold her tightly. “Sweetheart, I know how you feel, but I think you already realize it just isn’t going to work out the way you want it to. I haven’t cracked down on the Klan yet, because I wanted to identify the brains behind it. I’m going to get him, but I want to do it in my own way and have enough evidence to send him away. Your father is a smart man, and he’s covered his tracks well. It hasn’t been easy to come even this far. I don’t want to spoil it all now.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “No. I won’t let you do this to my father.”

“You have no choice,” he snapped, then cupped her chin in one hand, forcing her to look directly into his eyes. “Listen to me. It has to be this way. I know you love your father, and
your loyalty is admirable. But it’s too late. I’ve too much on him already.”

“Why can’t you take Mason and the others and leave Father alone?” she cried. “If they’re in prison, there won’t be enough left to form a Klan.”

She stopped as he shook his head. “You know that’s not right. Why should they be punished while your father goes free? Hate me if you will, but I can’t let him go. And if you warn him, I will still get him. Do you understand me?”