The Cogan Legend (17 page)

Ann screamed as the man plunged the knife toward her.  He grinned at her as his knife sliced through the cloth.  He put the knife back on the bench and ripped her dress from the bottom up.  With that done, he pulled the dress to each side of her body, grabbed her underwear and ripped it off.

Phillip, dazed but now awake, heard screams from within the coach.  He felt blood trickle down his face from his forehead.  He wiped the wound with his sleeve and attempted to stand.  In his weakened state he grabbed a tree to steady himself.  Phillip looked toward the coach and saw Lewey lying on the ground and the coach door flung open. He staggered to the coach and saw the stranger attacking Ann.

“Help us!” Rachel shouted when she saw Phillip at the door.

Phillip grabbed for the man's leg to pull him off of Ann and out of the coach.  The ugly man turned around.  He smashed a foot into Phillip's chest knocking him backwards.  Phillip's head hit the tree with a sickening thud.  He sank unconscious into the snow.

The man turned to face the girls.  Ann screamed, and he slapped her.  She tried to cover her nakedness, but the man slapped her arms away.  She tried to fight, but he put his knees on either side of her body and pinned her to the floor.  Then he fumbled at his pants.  Her youth, her beauty, and her naked body increased his desire.  The animal was on top of her, and Ann could do little to resist his brute strength.

 Rachel became aware that the pig was about to rape Ann.  She saw the knife on the far bench and saw that the man wasn't paying attention to her at all.  She lunged across the intervening space and grabbed the knife.  She raised it and plunged it toward his back, but he saw the movement and flung his arm up to protect himself.   Rachel missed the man's back and cut a piece of his coat before the knife slammed into the bench.  She kept her grip on it and raised it again.

The man's pants were down and that kept him from standing up and quickly overpowering Rachel.  He was much stronger than she was, but she had a slight advantage in that she had a better position, and he was handicapped by the awkward positioning of his clothing.

Rachel brought the knife down again and this time, the stranger hit her wrist and the knife dropped.   He managed to deliver a stunning blow to her jaw as he raised his arm.

Rachel fell back against the bench she'd been sitting on and felt her legs go numb.  She saw the stranger reach and grab his knife as she clawed for his face but couldn't reach it.  Ann also struggled to hit the man, but her blows were having no discernible effect.

“Help!”  Rachel called out as she lunged toward him.

The man grinned and plunged the knife into her stomach.

Ann screamed when Rachel collapsed and didn't move.

The man swung around, and Ann saw blood dripping from the knife.  She screamed again, and the man dropped the knife and turned his attention back to Ann.  He pressed a dirty hand over her mouth and nose.  Her screams were abruptly silenced as she struggled for breath.

“I warned you I'd use it, but she didn't listen.  Now you listen!  Shut up.  If I hear another scream, I'll gut you too.”

Ann whimpered as the man lifted his hand off her mouth and nose and grabbed one of her breasts.  He squeezed it, and Ann cried out in pain.

The man was a beast on top of her. Ann struggled but was unable to pull her arms free of the man's weight.  He leered at her, eyes full of animal lust and without the thin sheen of civilization he'd exhibited in their past encounters.

She stopped struggling, and he pulled his hand away from her face.  Pent-up fury, driven by fear unlike she'd ever experienced, gave her strength.  When he reached for her exposed breast again, she clenched her fist and threw it upward, hoping to hit something that would tip him off balance and give her a split second to reach for the knife that he'd carelessly thrown onto the bench to her right.  She missed the jaw she'd been aiming for and hit him in the neck.

Surprise wrote itself onto his features and then he slapped her hard and vicious, forehand across her cheek and backhand that smashed her lips into her teeth. She felt one of them loosen even as she threw up an arm to protect against another savage blow.

Rachel's eyes fluttered open. Her face was bloodless and pale, but she reached up and grabbed the man's greasy hair and pulled with all the strength she had left in her weakening body.

It was enough. The man's arm, up for another slap, faltered and changed directions to capture the hand that held his unkempt locks.  He grabbed her fist and squeezed, opening Rachel's fingers.  As he did, Rachel's last breath rattled from her throat, and her eyes closed.  Her body was already dead when he twisted away from Ann to grab Rachel by the throat.  It took a dozen seconds to realize he was choking a dead girl.  He let go, and Rachel's body collapsed to the floor.

Ann couldn't get her body out from under the man's heavier one, but she could move both hands.  Realizing it was futile to try to hit and hurt him enough to get away, she did what Rachel had tried to do.  She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head down to the side with enough force to crack his head when flesh and bone hit the leather-covered bench. Despite the covering, Ann managed to bring his head down at enough of an angle that it impacted the edge of the bench where the padding had been stretched so tightly as to be merely decorative.

The man's head hit the bench with a sickening thud, and he cried out in pain and rage.  Blood streamed from a fresh cut above his right eye as he grabbed Ann's hand and squeezed her wrist until she was forced to let go of his greasy hair.  As she did, he pushed her arm down, pinned it under his knee, put the full weight of his body on her arms and put both hands around her throat.

Ann felt darkness descending as the man squeezed the life out of her.  When the darkness was nearly complete, he screamed in agony and let go of her. She felt his hands relax and his weight leave her arms and body as if he'd simply quit and stood up.  

Ann thought Rachel had stabbed him, but Rachel remained unmoving on the floor.  The stranger screamed again.  Ann drew ragged breaths as her vision returned.  She grabbed the blanket and covered her body as the man inexplicably began sliding backwards along the floor away from her as if being dragged by an invisible hand.

To the side, Rachel lay still.  A pool of blood had formed under her stomach. Her beautiful face had gone white; her green eyes, without the spark that enlivened them, were open and staring at nothing.  Instead of a smile on her sweet face, she wore a grimace because the last thing she'd seen in her short life had been the most horrible.

Scrabbling noises drew Ann's attention back to the man who'd attacked them.  He was on his knees, his back to her, fighting with someone who remained outside the coach.  His body was hunched over, hands moving, arms shifting, back bowing and twisting as the fight evolved. Blows were struck and the man alternately groaned and cursed at his assailant.

Free from his weight, she pulled herself backwards until the coach wall kept her from retreating further.  She sat up, covered herself, and sobbed as she glanced at Rachel and then at the back of the man who struggled three feet in front of her.

She caught a glimpse of the man who fought her attacker.  She stifled a scream.  It wasn't Phillip or Lewey: it was the attacker's brother.  He'd come to get his share and now they were fighting over her.  That meant Phillip and Lewey were dead or near death outside in the snow and cold.  She was alone, at the mercy of whoever won this desperate fight between brothers!

Fury was gone.  In its place had come the resignation of deep sorrow, the kind of sorrow that left her weak and listless.  Rachel was dead.  Lewey and Phillip were likely dead.  Two vicious, ugly bestial men were fighting over the right to take everything that she had left to give and then to take her life as they had Rachel's.

She whimpered and tried to draw herself into the corner, to make herself small.  The man outside the coach, the one that had scared her the most by appearing suddenly at the window on that first ride through the Cogan, knocked his brother to the floor of the coach and raised an axe over his head.

The words he spoke made no sense to her.  She heard them as if in a dream and knew she hadn't heard them correctly.  It sounded like he'd said to his brother, “No, no more! Never again!  You've hurt your last woman!”

Then the axe came through the doorway of the coach, barely missing the door frame, to bury itself in the skull of the man who'd attacked her.  The man jerked twice and then collapsed as if the air had simply been removed.  Blood welled out from the blade and slowly trickled past the man's ear, rivulets of darkening crimson that formed into a pool on the floor.

Then, as if everything in the universe had slowed, the axe unburied itself from the man's skull and went sailing out the door.  The distorted figure of Poll Soll, an ugly, fierce frown on his face and what might have been eternal sadness in his eyes, loomed in the doorway.

Ann fainted.

 
 

CHAPTER 12

 

When she woke, cold and shivering, all that was once beautiful in the world had turned to ash.  Rachel's skin was the color of slate.  The floor of the coach was smeared with Rachel's blood and, revulsion rose inside her – a new, fresh horror – as she saw the smeared trail of her attacker's blood mingling with Rachel's.

The wind whistled through the open coach door.  Beyond that, nothing moved on the frozen land.  Inside the coach, Rachel's unseeing eyes stared at her accusingly.  Guilt replaced shame; shame replaced horror.

Ann sobbed and threw herself onto her friend's lifeless body. “I'm so sorry!  Rachel!  I'm so sorry!  Oh, God!  I'm so sorry!”  

Outside, Lewey regained consciousness.  In tremendous pain, he tried to stand but his legs wouldn't support his weight.  Trying to stand brought darkness where light had been.  He stopped trying to stand.  On his knees and in a muffled voice, “Ann, Ann, can you hear me?  Are you girls alright?”  He reached for a handful of snow and rubbed it over his face and eye.  The cold snow brought him around, and he shuddered as he saw blood everywhere. The coach was tilted as if the springs had broken on one side and a trickle of blood leaked from the coach door frame.  Lewey grabbed the coach wheel and struggled to his feet and swayed for a moment with eyes closed. Then he reached for the handle on the coach door.

Ann didn't know how much time had passed until she heard another noise at the door. She closed her eyes, waiting for Poll Soll's bloody hands to drag her off Rachel and inflict whatever horrors he wished.  She couldn't scream or fight.  Rachel's body, growing cold under her had sapped her will to live or fight.  But the hand that touched her was kind, and the voice that called her name was Lewey's.

Ann moved away from Rachel's body, crying hysterically when she realized it was Lewey at the door instead of her attackers.  She saw horror in Lewey's good eye.  He was applying pressure with a gloved hand to the cut above his other eye.

Lewey struggled to overcome his nausea.  Rachel lay still upon the cold floor.  The evidence of a horrendous struggle was written in the quantities of blood upon that same floor and Ann's clothing was shredded.  Ann herself was shriveled into the corner as if she'd been violated and would never be able to face life again.

Lewey ignored Ann.  She'd live.  He climbed into the coach and lifted Rachel's face.  He removed a glove and felt for her pulse, but he knew it was useless.  There was too much blood pooled under and around her.  No one could lose that much and be alive.

Ann cried small mewling sounds like a kitten bereft of its mother.  She seemed incapable of speech.  Lewey looked for blankets and found two that had not been stained by blood.  He handed them to Ann.

Ann took the blankets and pulled them around her body. “Is she dead?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper, so low that Lewey could only guess what she'd asked.

“Yes.”  He found a third blanket and pulled it over Rachel's head.  “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”  She shuddered. The raw truth of that sank like a stone into her gut.  Rachel was dead, and she lived.  It seemed only a moment ago that they were teasing each other, and now Rachel lay lifeless.

Lewey looked through the doorway and saw the Lieutenant several feet away in the snow.  He climbed down and hurried to Phillip who showed no sign of life, no movement at all. Lewey thought for sure he was dead.  

He lifted the lieutenant's head and noticed the wound along his temple, a glancing blow, enough to render a man unconscious or perhaps put him into a coma for a while, but insufficient to kill him.  “Phillip!  Phillip!” he shouted.  “Wake up, wake up!  I need your help, get up,” Lewey said urgently.  When the lieutenant did not respond, he grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed Phillip's face.  

Phillip groaned and lifted a hand to push Lewey's away from his face.

Lewey dropped the snow. “Can you hear me?”

“What happened?” Phillip put his hands under his body and pushed himself up.  His eyes rolled in his head and Lewey grabbed him, holding him upright.

“You were shot, but you'll live.”

“The girls?”  Phillip's eyes adjusted and focused on the tilted coach, the door hanging open.  “Where are they?  Are they okay?”

“No,” Lewey said.  “Rachel's dead.  Ann's in shock.  She must have put up one hell of a fight, though.”

Phillip lifted a hand to his head. “What do you mean Rachel's dead?  How?”  He wiped blood from his head and stared at it as if it were a foreign substance he couldn't recognize.

“She's dead!” Lewey said, more fiercely than he intended.

Phillip shook his head and moaned. “No, it's not possible. She was alive…I heard their screams…I tried to help.”  He stared at the blood-crimsoned snow.  Anguished eyes regarded Lewey.  “I grabbed the attacker and tried to pull him out of the coach but he kicked me…the lights went out.  I must have hit that tree.  Oh! God! No!”