The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (4 page)

There, the thin light from the oil lamp illuminated his face as he tugged her around and pinioned her to the wall with his arm. She inhaled sharply at her first good look at him. It was the scar that caught her breath, a slashing, flat red line that cut from the top of his left cheek to nearly his mouth. It was the only flaw in an otherwise shockingly handsome face that indeed branded him not as a full-blooded Cheyenne, but at least half white.

He jerked her upward and grated close to her ear, "Where is he?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I think he's run away."

His hand tightened on her arm. "No one runs away from this place."

"No one
escapes
from this place," she corrected.

"What were you looking for in there? Under his bed?"

"His medicine bag. He smuggled it in when he came here. The mattress was a secret hiding spot."

"A secret he told
you
?" He snorted his disbelief.

"Yes."

His gaze slid away from her, in the direction of the stairwell below them and down the hallway they'd left. Clearly he didn't believe her.

It could only help her cause to convince him. "It was a... he said it was a gift from his cousin or uncle. Someone named Black... Black Thorn. Do you know him?"

His eyes narrowed with a little flinch of surprise, but the look disappeared so quickly she might have imagined it. "Tell me where he's gone."

"I already told you," she repeated, leaning away from the knife blade. "I don't—"

"
Séaa
—" he hissed back, then spat out a handful of words in Cheyenne she didn't understand.

"If he's run, you're wasting time here with me," she said, cutting him off. "I've told you the truth. Just let me go and I promise I won't make a sound. Go and find him. He will be in terrible trouble if he's caught."

He loomed over her, raking a look down her as if he were assessing her ability to fight him should he choose to squash her like a bug. She supposed he enjoyed peeling her naked with his eyes, as a way to intimidate her.

Leaning close to her ear, he said, "How simple your life must be, that you'd imagine I would trust you with mine." The blade dug deeper into her skin, slicing her, drawing a bead of blood that she felt trickle down her neck.

"Simple? Cut me again and I will show you how simple it is to scream. I have very little left to lose here myself. You can kill me, but then you'll never find him. Because you'll be dead by dawn."

His free hand moved to her jaw and he squeezed. "Not before I slice open your throat."

"But you won't. Or you would have already." She turned her head and met his hard gaze with one of her own.

One side of his mouth lifted in something that was not a smile. "Are you sure,
vé'ho'á'e
?"

She knew that word.
Vé'ho'á'e
. It meant '
white woman
,' but, like all words that referred to her kind, it was a word mostly spat by the Cheyenne when the whites turned their backs. Strange, from a man whose blood clearly came from both worlds.

"Go on, then," she hissed back. "Do it. What are you waiting for?"

A small line formed between his eyes as he considered her words, and his nostrils flared with anger. Lifting the knife away from her throat, he kept the blade pointed near her side. "One sound—" he warned again and tugged her down the stairs beside him.

They made their way past the kitchen and the great room, and were almost out the side door when, from somewhere behind them, came the sound of glass shattering on the pine planked floor.

It was Abigail, standing in the hallway in her wrapper, staring at them in horror—a broken glass spreading a white pool of milk on the floor.

In the next instant, the girl screamed bloody murder.

He cursed and hauled her out the door into the dark. Essie could hear Abby screaming and screaming behind her and knew it was only a matter of moments before the whole place was up and after them.

Oh, Abby! Thank you!

She stumbled as they raced toward the barn but he refused to let her fall. He tugged her beside him so hard she couldn't get her feet under her enough to kick at him. Behind them, shouts of alarm sounded and lights came on in the dormitory.

With the moon half out, he yanked her into the tall shadows of the fort-like lodgepole pine walls that enclosed the yard, toward the barn. Of course, it would be the first and only place Daniel would go, to his beloved paint pony, Lalo. He pretended to hate the job of mucking stalls so they would be sure to keep him there.

"The horses are gone," her captor said as if reading her mind. "All of them."

She felt the blood leave her face. "What?" Running away was one thing. Stealing a dozen horses was something else altogether. They hung people for horse thievery here. That he was a Cheyenne boy would only go against him. "You must find him before they do."

He shot a surprised look back at her. Or it might have been hate. Yes, it probably was.

Far across the yard, she thought she caught the glint of rifles pointed in their direction.

Oh, no. No!

She flung herself at the man holding her and knocked him forward just as two bullets tore into the wood fence behind them with a splintering explosion.

* * *

He pulled her back to her feet as two more gunshots exploded nearby. Hauling her inside the barn, he yanked the doors shut behind them. Did she just...? No. She could barely put one foot in front of the other without falling.

What are you doing? Let her go,
some vestige of his common sense warned.
Let her go and get out before they kill you.

Another voice argued,
She could be useful. As a hostage. Or a distraction.

But with his arms around the half-dressed woman, some baser instinct fought him. He told himself it had nothing to do with the fire in her eyes—no, that was hatred. Or the way the woman felt, flush against him—
irrelevant
.

Or almost irrelevant.

I have very little left to lose here myself,
she'd said,
so kill me, but you won't get the boy.

She was right. He wouldn't. Maybe either way, he was already dead.

The sound of voices and rifles cocking outside the far end of the barn reached them at the same instant. They both jerked a look at the doors they'd come in. He heard her suck in a breath, but she didn't scream. With the roll of one shoulder, he pulled his Winchester rifle around on its strap from behind him and into his free hand.

He backed her toward the open doors at the other end of the aisle, where dawn was lightening the horizon, but before they could get out of sight, the far doors flew open. Two men with shouldered rifles spotted them and began to fire.

Bullets ripped at the wood beside his head and inches from hers. He shoved her outside and pushed her behind the wooden doors. She went flying, skidding across the dirt in her white camisole and petticoats with a small gasp as bullets tore into the ground near his feet.

He fired back, two, three, four rounds before diving outside beside her and crawling to his knees in the straw-littered dirt there.

Náhkohe, his Appaloosa, pranced—quivering—fifteen feet away as more bullets tore at the edges of the door. The pony he'd brought for Little Wolf had bolted from the paddock at a gallop and was already disappearing up the hill.

He grabbed the woman by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Terror filled her expression as he dragged her toward his horse.

"Please!" she cried, but he ignored her, turning back to fire another round behind him as he heard the men leave their cover in the barn and run toward the open doors.

He threw her up onto his horse and vaulted up behind her. Corralling her with his arms, he jammed his heels in Náhkohe's sides and the horse raced forward out the open corral gate at a flat-out run.

Two more bullets whizzed by him, close enough to feel as they screamed past his head. Shoving the woman down against the horse's neck, he fired blindly back. Maybe he hit one. Maybe he didn't. He didn't bother to look. Instead, he pulled his focus to the stand of pines a hundred yards ahead and closing.

He counted the distance in hoofbeats. Each ground-eating plunge of his horse's stride took them farther out of gun-range and expanded his odds of surviving this fiasco. Blood roared in his ears and suddenly throbbed in his left thigh.

Two more shots came close, but by the time they reached the trees the gunfire had faded in the distance. He didn't slow the horse. They plunged into the thick stand of white pine and aspen on some slender animal track that wound through it. Low-hanging branches slapped at them, slicing at their skin and ripping at her hair and shawl. Roughly, he shoved her head down against the horse's neck and bent over her, taking the brunt himself.

Aspen branches cut and stung his bare arms, but he didn't slow. After a few minutes, the aspen gave way to a thick stand of taller pines and he followed the hoofprints of the herd of horses Little Wolf had freed this morning.

This had all gone so wrong.

Options chased through his brain and he discarded each just as quickly. None of them were good. Most ended with him swinging at the end of a rope.

He cursed under his breath, knowing they had minutes—at most, hours—before their lead evaporated. Once those men located the escaped horses, his survival would all depend on his ability to disappear up in these wild mountains.

The woods grew thick and dark, and even he lost his sense of direction. The woman in front of him clung for dear life to the horse with her knees. She hadn't begged him to stop. Hadn't cried. Hadn't so much as spoken since they'd taken off. Probably scared spitless, being taken by a beast of a man like him. So be it.

He grimaced.

After a mile or so, they broke free of the woods and into a clearing that dipped down into a wide track of grassland. Náhkohe grunted with the effort of their combined weight. By now, they were deep into a wilderness where telling north from south was near impossible, except by the sun.

Another handful of minutes and he slowed at the sight of a gathering of horses grazing in the high summer grass. No doubt the ones from the school. At their approach, the horses herded up, watching nervously as he turned the Appaloosa abruptly in their direction. He shouldered his rifle again and fired over their heads.

The herd exploded into a run, pounding across the long, flat track of land ahead of them.

Following the path of the herd's churned-up ground over a hill, they veered abruptly—and dangerously—down a steep slope that led to the briskly running Buffalo Wallow Creek below. He cinched an arm around the girl's waist as they plunged down the slope, pulling her weight backward against him toward the animal's rump to counterbalance the near vertical drop.

Miraculously, they reached the mist-shrouded creek below without breaking their necks, turned the Appaloosa sharply upstream, and stopped as the other horses disappeared across the water and up the far slope. At the end of summer, the creek ran only at knee-height down the twenty-foot-wide, rock-strewn creek bed.

With his arms still around the woman, he paused at the edge of the water, indecision pulling at him. He'd wrestled with discarding her here or keeping her since they'd ridden away from the school, her extra weight already a strain on Náhkohe.

Common sense told him to throw her off the horse, right here, right now. Leave her here where the others could find her. Maybe they'd turn back then, leave him alone. Not likely. Especially if he'd managed to shoot one of them back there.

Then again, they were already miles from where they'd started. He'd brought her to the middle of nowhere. Leaving her here, alone... anything could happen to her. She could easily get lost trying to find her way back and die of exposure. Or be attacked by one of the predators—animal or otherwise—hunting these slopes.

On the other hand, why should he care?

On the other hand, he believed she knew where the boy was headed. And he would find out where.

Still breathing hard and hunched over the Appaloosa's neck, the woman looked like a battle survivor. Which, he supposed, she was. Her petticoat was ripped in a dozen places, her braid had torn loose from its moorings and her hair had exploded in a reddish tangle around her head.

He dismounted into the frigid water, snagging the reins over Náhkohe's head. A sharp pain ricocheted up his left leg that made him hiss in a breath. Glancing down at his leg, he guessed he had less time than he'd imagined. He waded into the strong current of the creek, dragging the horse behind him.

* * *

Essie gripped the saddle horn along with a hunk of the horse's mane as they started into the water. He wasn't crossing the creek. He was taking a path straight down the middle, putting the shoreline and possible salvation out of her reach. Anger, more than fear, washed over her. Anger at him for taking her, anger at Daniel for running away. Anger at herself for... for...

Everything.

The sun poked through the damp mist here and swathed him in a halo of light that sparkled across the water in a surreal way. She couldn't seem to take in what had happened, what
was
happening, to her.