Untethered (17 page)

“Help! Help us!” Cricket managed to shriek a moment before the man’s dirty, rough hand covered her mouth from behind.

“You hush, girl!” the man growled in her ear. He held a pistol to her head. “You hush! And if any of you others have any ideas of runnin’ or hollerin’ out, I’ll put a bullet right through your pretty little friend’s head here.”

Another man stepped forward, leveling his rifle at Marie. “Now, you girls come on outside with us. You do just as we say, and we won’t kill ya.”

The man with his hand over Cricket’s mouth ordered, “And bring that thoroughbred with us. He’ll fetch a nice price.” Chuckling—his rancid breath hot against Cricket’s ear—he added, “But not as nice a price as you, darlin’. No, sirree. Not as nice a price as you.”

❦

“Of course I’ll come with you, Cooper,” Zeke Cranford assured his friend. He patted Cooper Keel twice on the back and added, “The more people that’s lookin’ for your niece, the faster we’ll find her and bring her home.”

“What’s goin’ on, Zeke?”
Ada
asked
, drying her hands on her apron as she stepped out onto the front porch.

“It’s my niece,” Cooper Keel answered. “My brother’s daughter, up in Thistle…they can’t find her.”

“What?”
Ada
gasped.

“My brother don’t know if she run off with a boy she was sweet on, fell into a ravine, or if it’s somethin’ else,” Cooper explained. “But they can’t find her, and it’s been more than a day. I just got a telegram askin’ me to come up and help search for her.”

“Cooper’s asked me to go, honey,” Zeke explained to his pretty young wife. He hated to leave
Ada
and Cricket for any length of time—but he knew Cooper needed the help. “I hope that’s all right.”

“Oh yes, Zeke! You have to go. You must!”
Ada
exclaimed with sincerity. “You all have to find that girl!”
Ada
ran a hand over her head in nervously smoothing her hair. “Why…she could be layin’ out there in the wilderness hurt…or somethin’ the like.”
Ada
looked to Cooper. “Go now, Cooper. You and Zeke go. Don’t waste any more time.”

“Thank you, baby,” Zeke said, quickly kissing
Ada
on the mouth. He looked to Cooper. “Let me get saddled and get my rig, and I’ll meet you over at your place.”

“Thank you, Zeke,” Cooper said with nod. Looking to
Ada
, he smiled. “And thank you,
Ada
.”

“Of course, Cooper,”
Ada
said, forcing a smile. “No need to thank anybody for anything. You boys just be on your way. You find your niece, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Cooper Keel touched the brim of his hat and nodded to
Ada
.

“You and Cricket…don’t be worryin’ the way the two of you do whenever I’m gone,” Zeke told
Ada
. He kissed her once more and then hurried down the porch.

“Oh, we will worry, Zeke,”
Ada
whispered as she watched him head toward the livery. “We will worry.”

Ada
frowned. She was already anxious. She felt a shiver of unease travel through and hugged herself, rubbing her arms to dispel the unpleasant goose bumps erupting there.

Glancing around, she wondered where on earth Cricket had run off. But she quickly remembered Friday—the day Cricket visited old Maymee Maude Maloney and then ran off to who knows what mischief with Marie King, Ann Burroughs, and Vilma Stanley.

Ada
sighed, feeling somewhat comforted in knowing that with Cricket either visiting Maymee Maloney or off wading in the creek with her friends, she wasn’t alone. And besides, Pike’s Creek was a nice town with nice people in it.

Having decided her prickly goose bumps and strange anxiety were caused by Zeke’s leaving and nothing else,
Ada
turned around and went back into the house. She did hope Cricket didn’t linger too long with her friends. It wasn’t that there was choring to do—just that
Ada
had begun to truly enjoy Cricket’s company. They were becoming friends—at last.

Heath slowed Archie to a slow walk when they reached the row of ancient willows lining the west side of the creek. He knew Archie enjoyed the cool, fresh caress of the green-leafed willow branches as they swept over his head and haunches as much as Heath did. There was something soothing about tree shade and the touch of a leaf to hot summer skin. Archie whinnied, and Heath smiled.

“All right, you lazy piece of horsehide,” he chuckled as he dismounted and allowed Archie to drink from the cool water of the stream. “And save some for the rest of us, boy.”

Heath hunkered by the creek bed, plunging one hand into the cool water and raising a cupped palm of refreshment to his mouth. “Ahhh!” he sighed. “It’s good, ain’t it?” He scooped a few more mouthfuls of fresh water to his lips and then removed his hat and ran wet fingers through his hair.

He was near the old Morgan place and could see the dilapidated roof rising above the tree line a ways upstream. He shook his head and frowned, wondering whether the four young ladies from Pike’s Creek who had pulled that little “welcome to Pike’s Creek” prank on him more than a week before were somewhere nearby, plotting their next do-gooding activities. Still, he couldn’t maintain his frown for long—not when the memory of that girl’s kiss was on his lips—not while he was still torn between the guilt he owned for so ruthlessly kissing her in return and the pleasure he’d relished while doing it.

Yep. That little blossom bottom had really rung his bell the week before. He’d had a hard time thinking on anything else since.

In an effort to divert the course of his thoughts, Heath looked downstream instead of upstream for a moment. It was a butterfly of a day—bright, fresh, warm, green, and colorful. Even the bank of the creek seemed calm and happy. At least up to the point where there’d been something to muddy it up.

“What done that, I wonder?” he said out loud as he stood and strode to the place where the grass and flowers had been disturbed.

Heath’s frown returned as he studied the ground—looked across the stream to see even more disturbance there. The disordered wet mud and grass on Heath’s side of the creek had been made by boots and shoes—many pair. As he looked behind him, he could identify at least six or seven different men’s boot prints on the bank of the creek—and what looked to be three or four different sets of women’s shoes. One shod horse as well.

A familiar and unwanted anxiety rose in him as his mind ran back a year to a similar scene he’d come across. Not wanting to think about it, he sloshed his way across the creek to the other bank and followed the multiple sets of prints a ways. Not too far from the creek, nestled in a clearing located in the center of a group of trees, Heathro Thibodaux found what he’d hoped he wouldn’t—what he’d silently prayed he wouldn’t. There in the grass and dirt of the clearing, numerous hoofprints now joined all the boot and shoe prints. Furthermore, as he reached down and touched the horseshoe print of the horse that had crossed the creek with the group of people, he realized the horse was a thoroughbred.

There was only one thoroughbred in Pike’s Creek, and it belonged to Ralph Burroughs—or rather his daughter. Heath studied the ground only a moment more. Then he stood and ran back to the creek, across it, and to Archie.

Mounting in one smooth leap, Heath yelled, “Yah!” and sent Archie off on a mad gallop toward the old Morgan place.

He didn’t need to be told, and he didn’t need more evidence. Texas Ranger Heathro Thibodaux knew exactly what had gone on near the creek. But if he was going to convince the men of Pike’s Creek to raise a posse, then he knew he better damn well be certain they had enough evidence.

As he reached the Morgan place and dismounted, Heath was not surprised at what he saw. There’d been a scuffle all right. It was obvious by the prints in the dirt. And it looked like the outlaws had had to drag at least one girl out of the house; he could see the drag marks in the dirt leading away from the old threshold and out into the yard.

“Dammit!” he growled as he mounted Archie once more.

The Texas Rangers had hunted down and hanged all the outlaws who had killed the eight girls they’d stolen the summer before. But where one outlaw hanged, it seemed three more sprouted from the hanging tree on which his corpse was left to rot.

Heath knew exactly who had been taken too—the four silly but well-meaning girls who prowled around town in their black underwear every few Friday nights. Heath had often wondered how the citizens of Pike’s Creek could be so blind to exactly who the little do-gooders were. But then again, not everybody had the sharp eye or training he had. Furthermore, maybe some folks did know that it was the
Cranford
, King, Burroughs, and Stanley girls doing it all. Maybe they just chose to keep their mouths closed about it for the same reason Heath did—because they were sweet girls, doing sweet things in a world that needed a whole lot more sweet in it.

He had to raise a posse and get after them. From the looks of the dirt and dried mud, the outlaws had a day on him at least. Heath knew there were good men in town—good men who would believe him. At least, he hoped they would.

As Heath and his horse galloped toward town, the beauty of the day was lost to him. What did willow branches and cool water mean? Blue sky and green grass, for that matter? Heath Thibodaux knew exactly what the outlaws had in mind for the girls of Pike’s Creek, and it made his stomach churn. He thought again of the sweet, innocent, kindly offered kiss he’d returned with brutality. What he wouldn’t give to take it back—to kiss that girl again the way she deserved to be kissed.

He growled as he rode, sick at heart, enraged, and with the taste of a kiss he’d desecrated in his mouth.

❦

Heathro Thibodaux arrived in Pike’s Creek to find nearly every resident of the town holed up in the church. Heath learned that Zeke Cranford and Cooper Keel had headed up to Thistle earlier in the day to look for a girl that had gone missing there. So wh
en
Cricket Cranford had not come home for supper the night before, her stepmother,
Ada
, had gone to the King, Burroughs, and Stanley residences looking for her. Naturally she’d found three sets of other concerned parents, and the missing girls’ fathers had ridden out in search of their daughters until the sun set. They’d returned home with no information, and thus everyone in the town was alerted and had gathered at the church in order to coordinate search parties.

Reverend Stanley was in charge, of course. Heathro could hardly stomach the preacher. He liked preachers as a rule. But he did not like the Reverend Edgar Stanley. The preacher of Pike’s Creek seemed far too arrogant, self-important, and downright bossy to be a good man of the cloth. He rubbed Heath Thibodaux the wrong way at every turn.

In fact, as Heath stood leaning against the back wall of the church, listening to the reverend openly criticizing Ralph Burroughs and Clifford King for refusing to wait to go searching for their daughters that morning until the town had been called together, Heath’s stomach turned one too many times. It appeared almost as if the self-centered preacher were burning daylight just to buoy ego. But daylight was precious, and Heath needed help—whether he liked it or not. The past had taught him a hard lesson in that.

“I hear there’s a girl missin’ over in Thistle,” Heath called from the back of the church when Reverend Stanley paused for one brief moment.

“Mr. Thibodaux,” the reverend greeted rather coolly as Heath strode up the church aisle to the podium.

“Yes, there is a girl missin’,” Ada Cranford answered as Heath turned to face the congregation.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cranford,” Heath said with a nod as he stepped in front of the podium, blocking Reverend Stanley from the townsfolk’s view.

“I’m afraid that a missing girl in Thistle confirms what I know happened to your girls here,” Heath began. “There’s white slavers in the area, and they’re gathering up girls to sell.”

Gasps and groans, shouting and crying commenced.

“You don’t know that,
Thibodaux
!” the preacher shouted. “How dare you come into my church and—”

“Well, unless I’m mistaken, preacher…this here is the Lord’s church, not yours,” Heath growled as the townsfolk settled a bit. “Furthermore, I’m tellin’ you that these girls are in the hands of white slavers. I’ve seen their tracks outside of town. Seems to be eight or nine of them at least…and I figure they took the girl in Thistle and all four of ours too.”

“And how can you be so sure it’s these…these…outlaws that have our Pike’s Creek daughters?” the preacher argued. “Who are you to be makin’ these kinds of conclusions from some tracks?”

The Pike’s Creek folks gathered in the church had gone silent—listened—waited for Heath’s response.

“How can I be sure? You mean other than the fact that Ralph Burroughs’s thoroughbred—the one his daughter rides—other than the fact that thoroughbred is with them?” Heath growled. “Well, I’ll tell you how. I’m a Texas Ranger,
Stanley
…still papered up, badged, and legal. And I’ve had experiences you cannot imagine! Experiences nobody ever should have to imagine. And I am tellin’ you here and now, this is white slavin’! Do you understand what I’m tellin’ you? These girls are gonna be sold into brothel life if they’re lucky! We have to get our men together and get after these outlaws. I figure they’ve probably got sixteen to twenty hours on us already.”