A dry, lazy wind blew over the landscape, bending golden stalks of grass to its will as Buck Wilmington sat astride his horse Beavis, travelling up the overgrown path through the terrain at Whitley Pass. Seldom taken by those heading north, the trail was swiftly returning to the untamed ruggedness of its past before the arrival of settlers. Buck soaked in the sight of tall aspens and pines, their leaves and needles turning golden with the fall. Their rich, differing shades of gold were a stark contrast against the cerulean sky.
Next to him, Cassandra’s eyes were closed as she tilted her head towards the sun, taking in the light heat against her creamy coloured skin. He observed her for a few minute and admired the beauty of her, the way her golden hair seemed to gleam under the light and wondered what it was like to run his fingers through the strands. He had known many women in his time but this one, had a lot of hidden depths and there was mischief in her blue eyes that told him she didn’t take him seriously, and he was okay with it.
She was riding side-saddle on a chestnut morgan as they took in the day, enjoying each other’s company and though Buck was anxious he might not have that much to say to a woman of her ilk, it turned out she was pretty down to earth, beneath all the fancy trimmings. Much like Miss Alex and Miss Julia had layers it had taken time for all of them to see, to the benefit of Vin Tanner and Ezra Standish. He supposed Miss Cassandra was the same way, and whether or not she ended up being his mystery to solve, Buck didn’t mind making the attempt anyway.
“So what’s it like growing up in England?” Buck asked, breaking the silence.
She blinked, shaking away whatever hidden thoughts lay behind her blue eyes and offered him a little smile. Despite the ulterior motive for this invitation, she was somewhat surprised by what good company he was, even if he was a bit rough around the edges. There was a charm to him, not even a woman as jaded as she, could stay immune to.
“Dull,” she admitted readily with a little laugh. “When you’re a woman of good breeding in England, there’s only one thing to do with your time. We spend our days trying to become accomplished so some man will choose us for marriage.”
“Becoming accomplished? What does that mean?” He made a face, hoping it was not as distasteful as it sounded. Buck loved women, whatever the flavour. Their differences were half the fun. What made them special was usually how much they stood out, not conformed. Of course, there were some conventions the times demanded they obey but still. The most exciting women he’d ever known or would like to know were the ones who did things their own way.
He hated the idea being accomplished meant giving up that quality just so they passed muster before some fella could even look at them, let alone marry.
“Oh, you must have extensive knowledge of music, be able to carry a tune, must be able to paint, be an excellent dancer, speak several languages, be graceful in one’s walk and demeanour, the usual.” She recited and took note of the distaste falling over his features. “You disagree?”
Buck listened to her recital with nothing less than shock. “That’s a lot of learning just to be considered accomplished, and for what? Just for someone to ask for your hand?”
Buck knew his view on women had changed considerably since meeting Mary Travis, Alexandra Styles and Julia, Pemberton, to say nothing about Inez Recillos. He couldn’t imagine thinking any less of those women if they didn’t possess any of these skills. All four were fiercely independent and although he was somewhat intimidated in the beginning, the joy they brought to the lives of their men was predicated largely on their ability to speak their mind and be capable of surprising them.
“Believe it or not, yes,” Cassandra replied, finding his horror rather amusing. “What do you look for in a woman, Mr Wilmington?” she asked coyly.
“Well, being pretty always helps,” Buck winked playfully in her direction, prompting Cassandra to utter a small laugh. “But in my experience and I’ve been fortunate to know quite a few ladies in my time, the best ones always know their own mind, can give as good as they get, have a sense of humour about things especially if they’re putting up with me, and being kind.”
Cassandra was rather impressed by that list. “Those are good qualities to have. I wish it were the way in England. I grew so tired of trying to live up to an ideal, I just wanted to leave. I didn’t wish to be married and if you’re measured any less by society than what is expected, you have to settle for what man will ask you.”
“What about love?” He asked, having seen the catastrophe or the misery following entering the marriage state without that very important component. Sure, you might be able to get by without it, but it made the hard times easier to bear. Also, when there was only the sunset of life left to look forward to, it was nice knowing you could look into the eyes of the one you loved and know there was still excitement in the feeling for one another.
“In the upper classes Mr Wilmington,” she spoke in a tone of mock haughtiness, “love and marriage are not exclusively mutual to each other.”
“Well I couldn’t do that,” Buck shook his head, unable to imagine anything worse than a loveless marriage. “When I marry someone, I want to be able to look in her eyes and know I’m all she wants, me and all my foolishness. I want to be grateful every day for being alive so I can come home to her and see she’s happy to see me when I do.”
The words were spoken with such earnest, Cassandra couldn’t help but feel something tug at her heartstrings when she heard it. “You’re a romantic.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” she shook her head genuinely saddened by this. Life had beaten such notions out of her head. Being forced to leave England to make her fortune alone rather than face ruin made sure of that. The decade spent in the Americas sharpened her cynicism so much, it made the idea of love seemed quaint, even elusive in the face of the ugliness she had seen.
“Well that’s a shame darlin’,” he said with a smile. “I was hoping to charm you with moonlight and flowers. Now I guess I’m going to have to come up with another plan.”
Cassandra smiled at him from beneath her lashes and reached for him. Her fingers brushed lightly against his shoulder, a suggestive gleam in her eye. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Buck caught on quickly, always adept at interpreting the signals from a lady. “I can think of a few things if you want to take a break from riding. There’s a pretty spot not far from here, has a nice view of the creek.”
“I think that would be lovely, Mr Wilmington,” Cassandra smiled, more than willing to see what those things were. “Lead on.”
*********
An hour later, they were lying on Buck’s spread out bedroll, watching the clouds forming patterns overhead while drifting over them across the blue sky. Cassandra’s blond hair formed a crown over Buck’s shoulder as she lay in his arms, perfectly content after a wonderful bit of lovemaking with the sun over their backs. The light mist of sex still lingered in the air, making them feel young like teenagers who didn’t know better than what they felt for each other.
“As plans go, Mr Wilmington,” Cassandra sighed, nuzzling against his bare shoulder, “I approve.”
“Yeah I do surprise myself,” he grinned, tilting his head to plant a soft kiss against her hair, savouring the smell of her perfume in his lungs. In truth, he expected a few more rides and suppers before finding himself in this position but its premature arrival did not lessen the experience one bit. It had taken him by surprise how passionate she was, and supposed being an independent woman allowed her to indulge her passions in whatever manner she pleased.
“You are making it very easy for me to remain in Four Corners, Mr Wilmington,” she said, enjoying his skin against hers. “I shall have to work harder to convince Riley he must give Heidegger whatever he wants for his hotel so we can remain in town.”
Buck smiled at that. “I would hate to see you go, that’s for sure.”
It was true, he would. Even though he loved Inez, he worried she might never admit what she felt for him and Buck wasn’t sure he wanted to wait around indefinitely. Not when someone like Miss Cassandra might care for him. He let Louise Perkins slip by his fingers because he had been reluctant to leave his friends, but seeing how happy Vin and Ezra were with their ladies, Buck wondered if that had been a mistake.
“So would I,” she craned her neck upwards so she could press her lips to his in a kiss. “But we can figure that out later. How about another ride tomorrow? There’s still a lot of Territory I haven’t seen yet.” She winked at him suggestively.
Buck made a face of disappointment. “Oh darling, I’d love nothing more but I gotta work tomorrow. We’re needed to escort the stage for the Army from Bitter Creek. Be back by sundown though, if you want to grab a late supper?”
She stared at him thoughtfully for a long moment before breaking into a smile, “I’d love that.”
*********
Riding towards Purgatory, Vin hated leaving Alex in the state she was but she would hear none of it. Alex being Alex however, would not allow him to change his plans just because she was, according to her, having a moment of weakness. Vin didn’t think her melancholy and her self-reproach on the anniversary of her father’s death to be a weakness, but could do little to convince her otherwise. Once she composed herself, the demeanour of the tough doctor returned and all signs of her distress were hidden away for his benefit Vin was certain.
Unfortunately, the rendezvous with Johnny Miller was important, particularly if he and his twenty men had designs on some mischief in the area. Reluctantly, he accepted her assurances she would be alright, and she would seek solace in the company of Mary Travis and her other friends until his return. Saddling up Peso and riding out of town, Vin rode out of Four Corners, still feeling a little torn at having to leave her, while admonishing himself for not seeing just how deeply Alex was wounded.
How had he never suspected she harboured such feelings of guilt over her father’s death? Like him, Alex kept her feelings pretty close to the chest but considering how intimate they were, Vin felt he ought to have at least seen it. Furthermore, Vin suspected her guilt had preyed on her mind long before the approach of the anniversary of William Styles’s death. While he could see why she might think herself responsible for her father’s murder, because she drew Randall Mason’s affection, what happened could not possibly be her fault.
Vin had experienced firsthand Randall's insanity. When had engineered Vin’s capture at the hands of bounty hunters, he’d boasted how he always loved Alex and knew she would be his no matter what. Considering Alex had met Randall when she was still a girl of sixteen, Randall’s obsession had plenty of time to mature into full-blown madness. The utter fury in the man’s eyes when Vin taunted Randall with the knowledge of his intimate relations with Alex, had nearly driven the man to kill him on the spot. Only the timely intervention of Randall’s henchman, Mr Rihs, prevented his death. Against such an insane obsession, William Styles’s polite refusal of the man’s offer of marriage for his daughter’s hand stood no chance.
The anguish and fury Vin saw in Alex’s eyes when Randall chose to make this revelation known to her was something Vin never wanted to see again. By all accounts, until her arrival in Four Corners, her father had been her entire world. She hadn’t known her mother long enough to have anything more than vague memories of her and Vin knew, her father’s kin in England saw her as a half-caste mistake, better to be forgotten. When Randall killed William Styles, he hadn’t just taken her father, he’d taken the only person in Alex’s life who gave a damn whether she lived or died.
He realised they never had a chance to speak about how she felt learning about Randall’s hand in her father’s death, beyond that moment of revelation. Events tumbled by so quickly after that declaration, with Randall almost killing Alex with a cowardly shot to the back. In the days that followed, Vin was so grateful she was alive after such a grievous wound, he saw no need to revisit such a painful subject. Even when he told her Randall had died in his jail cell, Alex had barely reacted to the news, probably thinking it mattered little in the face of what the man had taken from her.
In any case, it was nothing he could deal with now, as he rode across the desert terrain towards Purgatorio, hoping it wouldn’t take him too long to learn what mischief Jay and his men were up to in the area. By the time he was halfway there, it was late afternoon, with the sun disappearing over the horizon, turning the mesa in the distance a deep amber, like a fire god watching over the desert with indifference. The clouds were stretched thin across the sky, like white spears frozen in place.
Vin soaked in the beauty of the land, taking its solitude and calm for as much as he could because once he arrived in Purgatorio, such loveliness would give way to the seedy harshness of the shantytown where hope came to die. The nature of the place allowed it to be nothing else. It was peopled by folk driven there by desperation because society abandoned them, either through circumstances or their own choices. To him, Purgatory always seemed on the verge of being swallowed up by the desert. Outlaws and bushwhackers gave it a temporary lease on life but even Vin understood, the time of outlaws and gunslingers was coming to an end.
Like the buffalo.
It was almost dusk when he arrived in Purgatory, keeping his promise to make it back in time to meet Jay’s deadline. The dust storm that dogged him yesterday was gone, leaving only a thick veneer of sand on the iron roofs of the shacks and the deeper stain of red dust on the calico tents. As he rode through the dirt streets, towards the livery where Peso could wait out his time in Purgatory in comfort, Vin could hear the sounds of rowdy behaviour, the odd gunshot, and raucous laughter riding the wind through town.
Upon reaching the livery, Vin stabled Peso before he made his way towards the open flap of the tent saloon where Jay was waiting. The rumble of voices greeted him as soon as he stepped through and it didn’t take him long to find Jay in the crowd. The man and his gang were occupying the largest tables in the establishment, with the other patrons giving them a suitable berth because the danger reeked off them like the stench of foul water.
While they had all been in a celebratory and jovial mood the day before, this time, there was a mood of sobriety among them, even with the shot glasses on the table. These weren’t men who were there to have a good time, these were men with a job to do and were hip deep in planning it as he approached them. Jay caught sight of him immediately and Vin noticed his eyes narrowing in calculation, with hidden meaning that immediately put the tracker on guard.
“Runt!” Johnny called out as he saw Vin. “You made it!”
“Told ya Jay, I ain’t no Runt anymore.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Johnny threw up his hands in mock apology. “Everyone, this here is Vin Tanner. Vin and me go way back. He’s going to be joining us on this run.”
The men at the table regarded him with hard stares and suspicion, which did not surprise Vin in the least. Men like these, did not live long if they didn’t size up a threat immediately but Vin was seeing something more and once again, a gnawing suspicion tugged at him. Unfortunately, making a hasty retreat at this point was more or less impossible. If there was something wrong, he’d be dead before he even got to the flap.
Whatever happened next, he was going to have to ride it out.
“Just in time,” Zeke threw him a smile but Vin saw no humour in it. It was the kind of a smile a rattlesnake gave you before it sprung. The man pushed out a chair between himself and Johnny. “Looks like we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Vin spoke in his usual laconic drawl, giving no indications he knew something was up. “What’s the job?” He waved at one of the barmaids for a drink. Vin had a feeling he was going to need one.
“Just got word, the army’s moving something from Bitter Creek to Eagle Bend in the morning,” Zeke explained once he got the nod of permission from Johnny to proceed. “They’re sending it to the railway on the stage.”
Shit. Vin thought to himself, wondering how the hell had Jay gotten wind about that goddamn stage. Simmerson had contacted Chris directly through a telegram and Franklin at the telegraph office knew better than to divulge its contents to anyone. The man considered it a sacred duty. Secrecy was necessary when they were moving cash intended for removal from circulation, otherwise, they would have every varmint in the area making a run at it.
“Do we know what they’re moving?” Vin asked, revealing nothing in his expression, wanting to know how much secret information these men were privy to.
“Not sure,” Johnny answered before Zeke could, downing the contents of his shot glass with one neat swallow. “But the word is, the shipment is being protected by lawmen, so it’s gotta be worth something.”
“What kind of numbers?” Vin asked seemingly unconcerned as he took a sip of his drink when the shot glass was placed in front of him.
“No more than seven,” Johnny eyed him with those watery coloured eyes, devoid of expression so hard to read. “There’s enough of us to take care of them without much trouble.”
He wasn’t wrong, Vin thought. Under normal circumstances, the seven would have no difficulty dealing with outlaws trying to hold up a stage but twenty men, who were going to take Chris and the others by surprise, had the potential for disaster. Somehow, he had to get past these varmints to warn them.
“What about the Army?” Vin allowed himself one more question because any more than that would draw suspicion, even if he suspected it might be already too late. “If this is their shipment, where are they in all this?”
“Seems they got the fever,” Zeke explained and once again, Vin wondered where the hell they were getting their information. That was something the Army would have kept a lid on and the only persons who knew this were the seven.
“That’s why they’re getting the law around these parts to do the escorting for them.” Johnny’s second in command concluded.
“Fair enough,” Vin shrugged, feigning nonchalance at news that would under any other circumstances, have him running for Peso to get back to Four Corners. Looking around the table he added, “You got enough men to deal with them anyway. Near three to one odds is always good in my book.”
“Oh, we’re ain’t all going,” Johnny declared with a little smile. “Zeke’s going to take a dozen men to deal with the stage but the rest of us have got another job on. I got the feeling that one is going to be of more interest to you Run... I mean Vin.”
There was something about the way he said it that made Vin’s skin crawl but he continued the act for as long as he could. “Didn’t know you were so ambitious. What’s the second job?”
“This one is a bit more subtle,” Johnny leaned closer as if he didn’t want anyone else privy to the details. He drained his drink and called upon another to be served before asking. “You know these parts much?”
“I know every corner of the Territory,” Vin replied automatically, “what do you need?”
Behind him, Vin heard the scrape of chair legs against the dirt and knew Zeke was pulling his chair closer to them. He saw Jay’s eyes shift slightly, making contact with the man over his shoulder, in the same way, Chris passed signals to Vin, and knew whatever came next, he wasn’t going to like.
“Gotta find a place called Four Corners.” Jay was eyeing him closely now and Vin had a terrible premonition the man knew exactly who he was, and where he had come from. It wasn’t impossible of course. If one looked hard enough, one might have found someone in Purgatory who might know he ran with Chris Larabee and the protectors of Four Corners. Suddenly, staying alive came to the forefront of his mind. Maintaining his calm for the moment, Vin let things progress to see how this played out.
“I know it,” Vin replied, “little place. Flat as a tack. It's got lawmen protecting it but there’s little else there.”
“Yeah, that’s what the little lady who hired us said,” Johnny said with a smile, wondering if Runt had noticed it was more than Zeke who was paying attention to him now. At least five of his men were watching Vin Tanner closely. “That’s why I’m sending Tucker and the others after this stage tomorrow. Keep the lawmen busy so me and the others can slip into town.”
This was getting worse by the minute. What did Jay want in Four Corners? All this subterfuge seemed a bit excessive to rob a bank, which was the only thing a group of outlaws like this might find interesting in the town.
“What’s happening in town?” Vin showed genuine puzzlement at this. “I know the place, it’s got a small bank, not much else. “
“We ain’t after a bank,” Zeke said behind him and the man’s breath on Vin’s neck told the tracker how close he was. Vin had no doubt if he made a move for his mare’s leg, he would be dead before he even managed to draw.
“We’re after a woman,” Johnny declared. “We’ve been hired by some fellow who is after someone in town. Some woman who killed his brother. Seems she filled him up with poison to make it look like a heart attack while he was in the jailhouse.”
Heart attack.
Jesus Christ. It hit him like a bullet to the brain. Randall Mason! Jay was talking about Randall Mason! The horror of Randall Mason’s brother being in Four Corners, managed to shatter Vin’s unflappable expression once and for all. Suddenly, it all fell into place, Riley Marshall was Mason’s brother. All the man had to do was change his letters and no one was the wiser. That’s why the son of a bitch was so interested in Alex! The man thought Alex had killed his brother.
It was impossible. How could he even think that? According to Chris, Riley had been asking around after Alex, he would have known Randall had shot her. When that son of a bitch met his end in the jailhouse, Alex was home recovering from a gunshot wound to the back. She was hardly able to move after that, let alone murder anyone. There was no way she could have made it to the jailhouse and done the deed.
Then as the thought crossed his mind, Vin remembered waking up in the darkness, two days after she was injured. A surge of panic had filled him when he realised she wasn’t in her bed. For a split second, he entertained the absurd idea Randall managed to abduct her after all, even though the man was languishing in the jailhouse with a shattered ankle, courtesy of Chris Larabee. After a quick search of the house, Vin found Alex on the porch, fast asleep on the wooden bench she used to watch the sunset.
What had she said when Vin woke her up? She had gone for a walk?
What if she had actually done just that? Gone for a walk all the way to the jailhouse. Randall would believe her weak enough to let her get in close, allowing her to inject him. In the condition she was in, Randall would not have seen her as a threat. Had Alex used that to get close enough to Randall to inject him with poison? He’d seen her drug the men who were taking him to Tascosa without batting an eye. Could she have done the same to Randall with something far worse? After all, Randall didn’t just threaten to kill him and chase her forever, he’d killed William Styles.
Was Alex angry enough that day to actually kill Randall?
As a doctor, murder was abhorrent to her but Vin remembered her eyes when Mason gloated the kill, the absolute rage that passed over her face. Is that what was eating her lately? Her regret at killing Randall? Such an action would fly in the face of everything she believed in but Vin could appreciate the wound that could not be forgiven. Randall had been a rabid dog and if he had come after Alex one more time, Vin would have done the deed himself.
If Randall’s kin was in town looking for vengeance, Vin had to get back to Four Corners immediately. Remembering his present situation, he turned his attention back to Jay, whom he suspected knew what Alex meant to him.
Letting out a sigh, Vin met Jay’s blue eyes with pretext surrendered. “So what’s the plan, Jay?”
“He wants the woman alive,” Johnny replied, aware they were nearing the edge of civility. “Apparently he’s got a ship waiting in Galveston. We grab her and give him an escort to Texas. He plans on taking her back to England to hang.”
Whatever restraint Vin had left snapped at that statement. He was on his feet before he knew what he was doing. Even as he stood, Vin could hear the guns clicking to life around him, with Jay appearing unsurprised by his reaction.
“You knew all this time?” Vin accused.
“Actually no,” Johnny shrugged, nodding at Zeke behind him to relieve Vin of his gun. “Figured it out when they told me the lady doctor they were after was engaged to a tracker named Vin Tanner.”
Vin cursed under his breath, furious at himself for walking into this situation and becoming trapped and unable to help Alex. Worst still when they made their move to snatch her, Chris and the others would be dealing with the ambush by Zeke and the rest of Jay’s men. Behind him, he felt Zeke removing the Winchester from his holster, keeping him still with the cold press of a gun barrel against his back.
“Don’t do nothing stupid Tanner,” Zeke warned. “I ain’t got Johnny’s feeling for you, I’ll blow a hole in your back if you try anything.”
“You go near her and I’ll kill you,” Vin hissed, even if the warning was impotent. Provoking Jay was never a good idea but the fear of any harm coming to Alex was more than he could stand. Whether or not she killed Randall Mason, the man had it coming and he was damned if she was going to hang because of it.
“This ain’t personal Vin,” Johnny looked at him genuinely apologetic. “If I’d known she was your woman, I’d have turned it down but I’ve been paid a lot of money to make sure she gets to that boat in one piece.”
“So what? You kill me?” Vin glared at the man, deciding that Jay hadn’t changed one damn bit. He was still a cold bastard who would do anything for his own ends. Dying didn’t frighten Vin, not in the slightest, but knowing his death meant he would be unable to stop Alex from being taken across the sea against her will, was more than he could stand.
“I ain’t killing you, Runt,” Johnny stared at the tracker. They weren’t friends, not in the slightest, but in the cage they had grown up together, they earned each other’s respect. He meant what he said when he claimed he wouldn’t have taken the job if he knew of Tanner’s involvement but it was too late now. Business was business. “You and me, we go a long way back and I respect you for wanting to save your girl but I can’t let you get in the way of what I gotta do. Man who hired me doesn’t care what happens to you, he just wants the woman. So you’re just going to have to sit this one out.”
With that, Johnny nodded at Zeke behind Vin, and before the tracker could react, something hard landed on the back of his head and he knew nothing more.
*********
So far, the duty to escort the stage had been quite routine. They’d arrived at Bitter Creek to find the few soldiers from Fort Stanton not struck down with fever loading up the crates of old currency unto the back of the stagecoach, in the privacy of the depot to maintain the secrecy of what was being carried. The currency was stashed in nondescript crates that looked like it might have been carrying farm equipment, instead of a fortune in cash. Leaving the town before noon, the lawmen remained out of sight because Chris wanted to make sure no one suspected there was anything out of the ordinary with this particular trip.
Once out of town away from prying eyes, they caught up with the Conchord, taking the route through Baker’s Pass. While flanked by craggy mesas in the distance, it was relatively flat, providing a clear line of sight for some distance. Interspersed with Yucca and cacti, there were tufts of grasslands trying to make a go of it through the red dirt, without much success and its general lack of green, kept most travellers off this particular path.
Chris was riding on his own, while the others were spaced around the stage, maintaining a good pace alongside as it rumbled across dry, rocky soil so hard-packed, the wheels barely left the normal tell-tale tracks across the ground. Even though he kept the stage under close scrutiny, his mind was still fixed on Riley Marshall, recalling the conversation with Mary the night before and liking none of the conclusions her words led him to.
After meeting the man, Chris had asked Mary to see if she could enlist her newspaper contacts to learn anything about the foreigner. Over the years, Chris had found Mary’s ability to ferret information from the most unlikely sources to be quite reliable and hoped, she would have some connections, even in a place as far as Australia. She hadn’t held out much hope of it but Chris had asked her to try nevertheless. The man just bothered him.
As expected, she was unable to learn anything about him. No one ever heard of Riley Marshall anywhere. Not even how he came into the country. Mary had reminded him, this was not unusual. If Riley did indeed come from Australia, there were limits to what her contacts could gather from such a distant place. The man might be exactly what he claimed to be and yet Chris had not forgotten how the stranger reacted to him and Nathan when he first learned their names.
Riley knew them from somewhere and it was driving Chris to distraction, not knowing how.
When the stage came to a stop for the horses to be watered, Josiah sidled his horse alongside Chris’s own, having noticed the gunslinger’s somewhat preoccupied mood.
“You worried about Vin?” Josiah inquired.
“Always worried about Vin,” Chris remarked, prompting a slight chuckle from Josiah. “Not this time though. He can take care of himself.”
Although now Josiah mentioned it, he wondered why Vin wasn’t back yet. The tracker left yesterday afternoon and Chris’s instructions had been clear, learn what Johnny Miller was up to and come straight back. Of course, Vin had a mind of his own, especially when he was onto something. When he was stalking prey, whether buffalo or the human variety, the man could be relentless. If he got his teeth into something, he was liable to burrow in to see what he could find. Then again, the numbers Vin described were formidable and Chris didn’t want him tangling with the gang, no matter how capable he was.
Chris made a mental note to ride into Purgatory if Vin was still absent when they got back to Four Corners tonight.
“So what’s on your mind?”
“Riley Marshall,” he admitted after a moment. “Mary wasn’t able to find anything out about him.”
“The man did come all the way from Australia.”
“True,” Chris had to concede the point, “or there’s nothing to find because Riley Marshall doesn’t exist.”
“You think he’s hiding his identity?” The preacher raised a brow.
“I think there’s a good chance of it. He knew me and Nathan by name, that’s not a coincidence and he’s been asking about Alex on the quiet. He’s not asking anyone who knows her, just the town gossips. Vin thinks it’s because the man’s sweet on her but...”
“Mr Marshall wouldn’t be the first man who’s taken an interest,” Josiah pointed out. As much as the doctor tended to ignore the attention of admirers, there was no denying she was one of the most beautiful women in town. The woman made no effort to use that beauty, relying on her skills as a healer to take her through life. “Francis Lamont for instance and before that Randall Mason. Hell, he even has the same initials as Riley Marshall.”
Chris’s spine straightened. In a sudden burst of clarity, the pieces fell into place and all the loose strands nagging Chris since the man arrived finally formed a picture with ominous implications. The familiarity that struck Chris when he first laid eyes on the man, the fact Riley knew Nathan and him by name, not to mention his surreptitious inquiries into Alex’s relationships in Four Corners. Josiah was right, the initials were the same. Just a simple bit of wordplay to hide who he really was.
“Jesus Christ, that’s it! That’s how he knows us!” Chris shot Josiah a look.
“What?” Josiah didn’t follow.
Chris’s mind was whirling. “When we sent Randall Mason’s body onto his people in England, mine and Nathan’s name were on the paperwork. That’s why he recognised both of us. That’s why he’s been asking after Alex. He’s related to Randall Marshall.”
“We need to get to her....” Josiah started to speak when suddenly Buck’s voice cut through his words, interrupting anything the former preacher had to say.
“CHRIS!”
Both men exchanged glances with each other, digging their heels into their mounts almost at the same time, forcing the horses into a sputtered trot before they were galloping at full stride towards Buck who was on the other side of the carriage. Without even seeing what caused Buck’s worried call, Chris barked at the stagecoach driver and JD who was playing the role of shotgun messenger for this journey.
“Get moving!” Chris waved his arm at the man to hurry because whatever was coming, was most likely coming for the stage.
Wallis the driver, wasted no time questioning the man in black, racing towards the carriage. He was in his fifties and had spent years performing his duties across the Territory, to have encountered his fair share of stagecoach robbers and Comanche raiders to know what was coming. Despite his age, Wallis was pretty spry and clambered into the driver’s box to get the stage moving within seconds. Climbing onto the cargo area of the carriage with equal speed was JD, who immediately began checking Ezra’s Remington rifle in readiness for use.
Buck and Nathan who were astride their horses, were facing the jagged line of rocks forming part of the mesa flanking the pass. As Josiah and Chris neared them, Chris was able to see why Buck had called for him so urgently. Emerging from the rocks and closing the distance quickly, possibly in an effort to catch them by surprise because they had come to a stop, was no less than a dozen men, however, instead of breaking off in pursuit of the stage, the men were coming at them.
“We got company!” Nathan hollered at Chris, stating the obvious.
“How the hell did they find out about this?” Josiah demanded as Wallis got the stage rumbling away from the scene. The team of horses were slow to break into stride, which only allowed the men who would soon be in pursuit to narrow the gap and catch up with it.
“Beats the hell out of me!” Buck declared hotly. The gang of men were still a distance away and at this time, the only course seemed to be to lessen those odds before they got any closer. This was one time, they could have used Vin. The tracker’s sharpshooting skills could have reduced those numbers significantly before it came time to conduct the fight with pistols.
“Any chance those men are the ones Vin was talking about?” Nathan asked, suddenly concerned about the tracker’s welfare. Because if they were here, where was Vin?
Chris tensed at the thought and hated it when his natural suspicion was proven right. He should have ridden after Vin in Purgatory this morning when the tracker hadn’t returned. It was too late now. If those men were Johnny Miller’s, then they had more than just one problem. For the moment, however, the immediate situation needed to be dealt with.
“Could be!” He answered Nathan tautly and the healer saw by his dark expression, he expected the worst. “But we ain’t got time to worry about it now.”
Too many things were crowding his concentration at the moment. From the possibility Riley Marshall might be related to Randall Mason and to Vin’s absence, Chris had to focus on one problem at a time. Retrieving his rifle from his saddle, he started loading the weapon. “The rest of you keep going after the stage!” He ordered. “I’m going to narrow the odds a little!”
“Not alone!” Buck stated firmly, meeting Chris’s gaze with an expression that indicated he wasn’t about to leave the gunslinger’s side. They were out in the open and on his own, Chris could get cut down when those men returned fire because they had rifles too.
Chris didn’t bother to argue. “Nathan, Josiah go!”
The duo nodded and took off after the stage before Chris turned back to Buck, his rifle primed and ready to fire. “We got maybe two or three shots.”
“Better make them count,” Buck nodded, raising his own weapon to take aim.
The rifles fired simultaneously and while they were not sharpshooters like Vin, both men were accustomed to shooting across distances well enough. No sooner than they fired, they could see two men tumbling from their horses, their bodies hitting the dirt hard, causing the horses behind them to rear up in an effort to avoid trampling them. The brief confusion was one both Chris and Buck took advantage of because it allowed them to fire again. This time, downing two more men. As they fell into the dirt, Chris could see the riders reaching for their own weapons.
“Let’s go!” Chris shouted, not needing to elaborate because they were about to be beset with gunfire from the rest of the gang. Even as he said those words, the first eruption of ammunition exploded around them, forcing both men to lean forward in their saddles as their horse broke into gallops beneath them.
Holstering their rifles in favour of their irons, they rode hard after Josiah and Nathan, who were narrowing the lead between themselves and the stage. Keeping their heads down, aware they were in danger of being hit in the back, they looked behind them only to squeeze off a few rounds at their pursuers. At least the enemy numbers were cut down from twelve to eight and the odds were somewhat in their favour.
Approaching the stagecoach, the two men split up with Chris joining Nathan at one flank of the stage while Buck did the same to cover Josiah. The bullets were coming faster now the men behind them were closing the distance. On top of the stage, Chris could see JD lying flat on his belly across the cargo area, taking aim with his rifle. The kid had waited long enough for them to get out of his way before he started shooting. Meanwhile, Ezra showed himself through the window of the stage, preparing to add his fire to the fight.
The enemy had fanned out across the flat plain, perhaps realising that approaching in clusters was making it easier to be shot at. Instead, they attempted to outflank the lawmen escorting the stage. While groups of two and three fell into direct pursuit of the escort, the remaining three surged ahead towards the stage itself, with guns blazing.
Forced to defend themselves against the outlaws trying to shoot them from behind, Chris recognised the strategy. They were trying to shoot down Wallis. Chris was about to yell out a warning at JD but the kid was no longer the greenhorn he was when he trailed them to the Seminole Village. From behind the sight of his Winchester, JD remembered everything Vin Tanner ever taught him about sharpshooting, draining his mind of all the noise and fuss around him, focussing on nothing but the target in his crosshairs, not even seeing the thing in front of him as a man.
He squeezed the trigger gently, a subtle movement considering the chaos around him and unseated one of the riders, even as he felt a bullet whizz past his ear, close enough to feel its heat. The rider tumbled off the saddle, landing hard against the ground, a ball of dust created upon his landing. The death of their comrades made the remaining two men concentrate their fire on him and JD had to keep his head down as bullets tore into the wood of the carriage. Behind him, he heard Wallis utter a cry.
A stain of crimson spread across the man’s back as he slumped forward, the shot having gone straight through Wallis’s heart and ending him with one bullet. JD swore under his breath and scrambled across the roof of the carriage, determined to get to him before Wallis fell out of the driver’s box to be crushed beneath the wheels. Dead or not, JD wasn’t going to let his body be further desecrated. They had conversed during the ride here, enough for JD to have developed a liking for the man and feel the sting of his loss.
*********
Meanwhile, Ezra leaned out the window, determined to put an end to the duo who took Wallis’s life.
Like JD, he liked the down to earth man, who had survived too long as a coach driver to have such a fate befall him. Ezra took careful aim and fired, making sure the bullet met its mark. Although he did not see from this distance, where it had impacted, seeing his target slump forward in his saddle, the reins dropping from his fingers, gave Ezra proof of his accuracy. However, he could not rest on his laurels because the final member of the triad was firing at him. A bullet splintered the wood beneath his window, sending jagged pieces in all directions.
Ezra averted his gaze to avoid being blinded by wooden splinters when something struck him in the collar bone hard enough to make him groan in pain. He could feel the lead impacting against bone and the smell of blood and burnt flesh. Falling backwards into the carriage, he landed heavily against the seat, hissing in pain. While it burned white-hot, he allowed himself a moment to recover, before he returned to the window again, poking his head through to see the third gunmen riding hard alongside the carriage.
Ezra kept low, as the outlaw rode past, intending to take out JD who had at this point, taken hold of the reins to control the team of horses. The coach was no longer threatening to careen to one side after the loss of Wallis. Ezra kept out of sight, allowing the outlaw to believe, he’d dispatched the gambler with that last shot. As he rode by, Ezra suddenly emerged at the window, surprising the man who turned to him just in time to see Ezra snapping the derringer into his palm and pulling the trigger.
The bullet blew out the back of his head.
Dead before he hit the ground, he disappeared beneath the wheel of the coach, crushing bone and flesh with little more effect than a slight jolt of the carriage. This time when Ezra fell back into the leather seat, he had no intention of moving again because the pain was done allowing him all the easement it intended. He could feel it in waves causing Ezra to reach inside his burgundy coat, which was now ruined by a single bullet hole. Unscrewing the metal flask, he took a good swing of the liquor inside wondering how his life had been reduced to this. Bleeding for a stage full of cash he would never be able to touch.
Sometimes Fate could be a capricious wench.
*********
When Buck saw the three riders going after JD, he reacted as he always did when the kid was in trouble. Throwing caution to the wind, he was determined to get rid of the varmints behind him and Josiah so he could help JD out of his predicament. He fired a succession of shots even as bullets were surging past him. Pulling at the reins, Buck veered Beavis into a sharp turn, heading towards the outlaws instead of away from them. Keeping his head low, he rode hard and fast, paving his way with a deadly hail of bullets.
Ensuring Buck didn’t get his head blown off, Josiah covered his back by riding after him, deciding if he was going to meet the crows today, he might as well do it head-on, instead of his back to them. Shooting at the trio of men converging on them, they met across the plains like two titans about to meet in a final, cosmic battle.
Buck switched from pistols to his double-barrel shotgun as the distance between them narrowed. Josiah dropped one of the riders with two remaining. When Buck fired, the loud, thunderous boom of the shotgun did more to aid the cause than the pellet it ejected. One of the horses, probably the one closest to the blast, reared up on its hind legs, startled by the explosion of sound, throwing its rider off the saddle.
He fell backwards, the gun he was carrying landed against the hard dirt and discharge impotently into the air. Landing badly, the man did not move after he hit the dirt although Buck couldn’t tell from this distance, whether or not he was alive or dead. The last of the riders fired at the same time at Josiah. The preacher’s accuracy ensured he would not survive the bullet tearing into his chest, while the outlaw’s shot, struck Josiah in the arm.
“Josiah!” Buck shot the older man a look, continuing to gallop to the outlaw he’d unseated, uncertain if the man was still a threat, but needing to make sure.
“I’m alright!” Josiah shouted, his good hand holding onto the reins while the injured one felt every gallop beneath him.
From where he was, Chris saw Josiah taking the hit and so did Nathan. As usual, when the healer saw anyone of their number hurt, the man’s first impulse was to render assistance no matter how damn inconvenient it was. Fortunately, by this time, there were only two outlaws left since the plains were covered with the corpses of Miller’s gang if this was indeed who they were.
“Go!” Chris told Nathan, seeing the conflict in the man’s eyes as he squeezed off another round, this time catching the flank of the horse instead. He wanted to know who these outlaws were and that meant leaving one of them alive. The animal was struck in the side and bucked hard, the sharp whinny of pain that made Chris wince. Shooting horses was not his first choice and he hoped he aimed well enough not to hurt it permanently. Throwing its rider off the saddle, Chris saw the man go over the animals head to hit the dirt in front of the horse. The beast stopped moving immediately, determined to protect its legs after sustaining one injury already.
The other rider fired at Chris in turn, with the gunslinger dropping low to avoid being hit. The bullet caught him against the thigh. It spread white-hot pain across Chris’s leg before it kept going, ensuring the injury was superficial and one Chris could live with. Nathan on the other hand, realising he had another patient, veered back to Chris and dispatched the last of the outlaws with a shot of his own. The rider slumped backwards, managing to remain in the saddle, with the reins tumbling from his fingers to flap uselessly against his horse's neck.
“Chris!” Nathan approached.
“I’m okay!” Chris declared and knew the healer was not going to take his word on it. With a grimace, the gunslinger decided if there was one thing he hated more than being shot, was being fussed over by healers.
With Nathan Jackson away from town, taking up his duties as lawman, playing escort to the stage journeying from Bitter Creek to Eagle Bend, Alex found herself the sole medical practitioner in Four Corners. While most licensed doctors tended to be territorial about having other healers practise on their patch, Alex never felt that way about Nathan. After all, he had been attending most of the town’s medical needs long before her arrival and it was the height of arrogance to simply oust him because she had a piece of paper.
True, she was a London educated medical physician and surgeon but she had travelled the world with her father and encountered many healers with extraordinary skills, who never attended a day of medical school. Nathan was one of the most skilled healers she knew and it was her great privilege to help him achieve his dream of becoming a general practitioner. Just like Vin embodied her father’s wild, untamed spirit, Nathan too, reminded her a great deal of William Styles. Like her father, Nathan was a natural healer who simply knew how to help by just looking at a person. It was why she felt it fitting she passed on her father’s copy of Gray’s Anatomy to him.
When he was gone, she often found herself especially busy. While most of the womenfolk in town and some men had no difficulty coming to her clinic, there were still enough men in town who got nervous submitting to treatment by a lady doctor. Annoying as it was, it was still a man’s world and Alex had to concede to it. Besides Nathan knew how to consult if he encountered anything beyond his knowledge. She did advise him not to do anything more than conduct minor procedures where surgery was concerned. It wasn’t that he was incapable but without a license, he could find himself in serious trouble with the law if someone took exception to it.
Today, Alex was grateful for the distraction. A year ago today, she stood in the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar and held her father in her arms as he slipped away from her. She still remembered it as clearly as if it was yesterday. They had been walking through the stalls, while he floated the idea of spending a social season in England, thinking it was time she met someone. Of course, she had no idea at the time, Randall Mason approached him for her hand in marriage and when refused, resorted to murder to get his way.
She wondered what Randall would have thought knowing it was his actions that drove her across the Atlantic and ultimately into the arms of Vin Tanner.
When she first arrived in Four Corners, it was Ezra Standish who caught her attention, but there was a moment that first day when she saw Vin and was briefly lost in his blue eyes. In retrospect, Alex suspected her attraction to Ezra had to do with the southerner being more like the men she’d known in Europe, with his handsome good looks, polite manners and charm, than any deep attraction. Oh she cared for him well enough, but the burning passion that made one person yearn for each other, made them long for their touch and dream what a future together would look like, was never there for her when it came to Ezra.
The first time she felt anything like that, was when Vin took her hands in his.
The instant he did that, she knew. It would take months before she would admit it to herself or do something about it, but in that one perfect moment, he obliterated the walls she kept around her inner self and found a place in her heart. No matter how much she tried to ignore it, tried to remind herself she made obligations to Ezra and breaking faith with one man to take up with another, could potentially fracture the unity of the seven, Alex was unable to ignore the pull towards Vin.
Once again, it was Randall Mason who forced her to admit how she felt about Vin.
By then, Ezra had injured her pride by taking up with Julia Pemberton, although in truth, her heart had not been broken. After Vin accompanied her on the trip to treat Agnes Doherty, which turned into a three-day ordeal, Alex returned to Four Corners, knowing she had feelings for Vin that made anything she felt for Ezra pale in comparison. There was no denying she was in love with him, but obligation to Ezra and fear of causing a rift between the seven, kept her silent.
It was when Vin asked her to the dance, and he held her in his arms as they moved to the music of the waltz, Alex knew there was no denying how she felt. She was in love with him and it had taken this long to acknowledge it. That night, they made searing love to each other and by the time they collapsed in each other’s arms, sweaty and panting in a tangle of limbs, Alex knew she belonged to Vin Tanner forever.
Of course Randall had not taken it well. After feeding Vin to bounty hunters, determined to claim the bounty in Tascosa, he’d come for her and made his triumphant declaration of how she would be his wife. Alex managed to escape and rescue Vin through sheer recklessness, but it was in the Seminole Village, Alex finally said the words Vin was longing to hear.
Unfortunately, Randall tracked them there too and in the confrontation that followed, Randall told her what he had done. He murdered her father.
A madness took over her then, one almost as powerful as her love for Vin. The black hatred that rose up within her had only ever surfaced once since then, when Francis Lamont tried to rape her, but it still paled in comparison to Randall’s sin. Even before he shot her, even before Chris Larabee and Nathan Jackson came to their rescue, Alex knew she was going to kill him.
When she confronted Randall days later, when her body was screaming in pain from the bullet he put in her back, she listened to him boast his eventual escape from incarceration and his promise to come back for her. Just as he had lain in wait all those years, like a cobra, waiting to strike at her father, Alex had no intention of looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life. He had already taken her father, she was not going to let him take Vin too.
It would be easy to say necessity prompted her to kill him but Alex knew she would be lying. She wanted him dead. She wanted the satisfaction of looking into his eyes and have him know how wrong he’d been to assume her oath as a doctor protected him. If she had cared enough to enlighten him, Alex would have revealed doctor’s knew how to amputate and cut out cancers to save the patient. Randall was a cancer and she was excising him before he did any further harm. The decision had been so easy to make then because rage had propelled her.
In the days since then, she had much cause to wonder if she was any better than him.
*********
After almost a whole day of treating a plethora of injuries from broken bones, fevers, a bit of dentistry and one unfortunate accident with a branding iron, Alex was ready to return home and forget the world existed. As she walked down the boardwalk, she noted the seven had not returned from Sweetwater and felt a pang of longing for Vin, wondering if he would be back tonight. It was a busy day and there were still people walking along the streets, finishing up their business for the day. She saw Mary through the window of the Clarion News and waved at the blond widow who waved back as she passed by.
It didn’t take long for Alex to reach the front door of the clinic and realised she left it open. Frowning because she could have sworn she locked the door, Alex entered the foyer and found someone was in her waiting room. A well-dressed and beautiful blond woman, she did not recognise was waiting patiently for her return.
“Good evening,” Alex said quizzically, once again glancing at the front door to see if there were any signs of tampering. She was sure she locked it.
“Doctor Styles,” the woman rose to her feet. “My name is Cassandra Heglund, I hope you don’t mind but I needed to see a doctor and your door was open.”
“Was it?” Alex frowned and supposed it was possible. She was distracted today. The anniversary of her father’s death, the part Randall played in it and her guilt at the justice she thought she dispensed could have led her to such carelessness. She would deal with it later. Right now, she had a patient to attend to. “No matter, how can I help you?”
“I would prefer to speak of it privately,” the woman said somewhat embarrassed and Alex guessed it was most likely a feminine complaint.
“Please, this way.” She led the woman to her office and surgery.
Cassandra followed the doctor into the next room, the office and surgery split by the white partitioning in the middle. Allowing the doctor to go first, Cassandra reached subtly into the purse she was carrying.
When Alex reached her desk and turned around to gesture at the woman to take a seat, she found herself staring into the twin barrels of a small derringer, not unlike the one Ezra Standish carried underneath his sleeve. The woman was aiming it directly at her stomach, with a gleam in her eyes that told the doctor she would not hesitate to shoot.
“What is this?” Alex looked into her face, feeling a mixture of confusion and fear at the sudden turn of events.
“What it is, Doctor Styles,” Cassandra said with a little smile, “is that we are going on a little trip.”
*********
They were racing against time.
As it was, the was sun setting over the Territory, dragging its blanket of darkness over the horizon told Chris how much of it was against them. Riding with him, was Buck Wilmington, who hid the pain of the day’s discoveries under a grim expression. Chris would have felt sorry for him if the situation wasn’t so urgent. It was bad enough the seven were divided trying to deal with the calamity taking place thanks to the machinations of Riley Marshall.
Nathan and Ezra, despite the gambler’s injury were forced to escort the stage to Eagle Bend and deliver the remaining outlaws to Sheriff Gregg Cross, the replacement of corrupt Sheriff Stane. Cross was a good man who was once a Texas Ranger. Meanwhile, Josiah and JD were headed back to Four Corners, hoping to reach Alexandra Styles before it was too late, even though Chris suspected it already was. If mischief had already been visited upon her, it was going to take all seven of them to retrieve the lady doctor.
Which was why Chris was riding hard to Purgatory to find Vin Tanner.
Earlier that day, following the confrontation with the outlaws who tried to rob the stage, the full measure of Riley Marshall’s plans were unfolded by a repeat offender by the name of Alley ‘Teaspoon’ Turner. Teaspoon, a hired gun whose only real expertise was how often he got caught undertaking any kind of criminal activity. The seven were familiar with Teaspoon from previous encounters and knew the man had only recently got out of Yuma Prison, providing a damning verdict on 19th-century prison rehabilitation techniques.
“Come on Teaspoon, don’t make Chris here get surly,” Buck advised the outlaw, a wholly unremarkable man in his forties, with thinning hair and several teeth on a fast horse to rotten, was tied up and being interrogated at the back of the coach, away from his other injured counterpart. The other captive, whom none of the seven recognised was kept apart a short distance away, guarded by Josiah and JD.
“Screw you Wilmington,” Teaspoon bit back petulantly, trying not to look frightened by the black-garbed gunslinger who was intimidating as hell without even needing to say a word.
“Teaspoon,” Buck said with a sigh. “You’re heading back to Yuma Prison, one way or another. Would you rather do it with your kneecaps shot out or would you rather walk in there on your own two feet?”
Buck’s tone was a cross between seriousness and mischief, making it very difficult for Teaspoon to decide how credible the threat was. Nevertheless, he did notice how Larabee’s hand was poised over the butt of his pearl-handled Peacemaker.
“Who knows, we might be inclined to talk to Judge Travis and tell him you cooperated with us, maybe get you some time off your sentence.”
Teaspoon scowled, not liking to give in to the two lawmen but was forced to admit he would be looking at a long stretch when he faced a judge again. Any chance of lessening his time was not an opportunity he could ignore. Besides, he had no loyalty to the gang he rode with. This was supposed to be an easy hit, not the bad box this job turned out to be.
“Shut your goddamn mouth!” The other outlaw who was able to hear the conversation, barked from where he was standing.
Without giving him a second glance, Chris drew his gun and fired a bullet at the ground near the man’s feet. While Josiah and JD were perfectly accustomed to such behaviour from the gunslinger, the outlaw showed his fright and uttered a litany of curses, but said no more to Teaspoon.
“Talk,” Chris addressed Teaspoon for the first time.
“You’ll talk to the Judge right?” Teaspoon asked, directing his question at Buck because he suspected Larabee wouldn’t have the patience to respond, at least not verbally.
“As soon as we see him,” Buck assured him, although how much sway his cooperation would affect his sentencing was problematic since Teaspoon was a proven bad risk by his inability to stay out of trouble. Still, there was no reason for Teaspoon to know that. “So who hired you?”
“Johnny Miller from Kansas” Teaspoon answered with a growl. “He wanted a few extra guns to ride out on this job to kill some lawmen escorting the stage. I guess that meant you.”
Chris stiffened, hating to have his suspicions confirmed. When he saw the number of men coming after them, he feared the worst because Vin hadn’t come back with what he’d learned at his meeting. The possibility of what fate might have fallen the tracker sent a cold stab of fear through his heart. Had Miller known Vin was one of their number? Suddenly, his desire to find Vin jumped up a notch.
“Kill us?” Buck demanded, thinking the same thing about Vin when he heard whose gang this was. However, what was more worrying was the fact, Miller had intended to have them killed. “So you weren’t here for the stage?”
“The stage was just the perk,” Teaspoon revealed, a veritable fountain of information now he had gotten going. “We were supposed to get rid of the lawmen escorting it. It seems they were needing to be kept busy so they weren’t someplace else.”
“We didn’t see Miller among the dead,” Buck spoke up, exchanging a quick glance with Chris because suddenly this situation was escalating into something a great deal more sinister. While none of the lawmen knew what Miller looked like, there was no need for Teaspoon to know that. “Why ain’t he here?”
“He got another job in Four Corners. Got something to do with a lady doctor in town.”
Lady doctor? Buck’s eyes widened and immediately lifted his head to meet Chris’s icy blue stare. “Jesus Christ. This is about Alex?”
Before he could even finish saying her name, Chris was ready to stride towards his horse, preparing to ride out before the full weight of the situation descended upon him. Ride where? Ride to Four Corners to intercept Alex? Or to Purgatory to find Vin? Not to mention, the little matter of the stage they still had to deliver to Eagle Bend. There were so many separate pieces of this mess they needed to pull together, Chris’s mind was whirling, trying to decide what to do.
“We got trouble!” He rallied the seven, heading instead to the front of the carriage so he could address them all, including Nathan who was tending to Ezra inside the coach.
“What is it?” Josiah asked, confident the prisoner who was bound was not going anywhere if he and JD left him alone for a time. If the man-made a run for it, they’d be on him in seconds. As he approached Chris, he saw the gunslinger’s expression to be one of dark concern, which immediately made the preacher tense.
“I was right,” Chris met his eyes directly, prompting Josiah’s earlier memory about their discussion regarding Riley Marshall. “This is about Randall Mason.”
“Randall Mason!” The alarm in Nathan’s voice was clear. Other than Vin Tanner, it was Nathan who was closest to Alex with their sibling-like relationship. It was due to the doctor, Nathan’s dream of achieving a legitimate medical license was within reach and Alex filled the void in Nathan’s heart left by his sister Rebecca.
“What’s that crazy bastard got to do with this?” Buck asked, puzzled about how Johnny Miller could have any connection to Randall Mason, the foreigner who’d come to town at the onset of Vin’s relationship with Alex. Randall, who bore a more than terrifying similarity to Don Paulo, had been determined to possess the doctor at any costs, even resorting to abduction and murder.
“We think Riley Marshall is kin to Randall Mason.” The preacher explained.
“Damn,” Ezra whispered and then hissed when something Nathan was doing to treat him, hurt a bit more than usual. The gambler was presently in the back seat of the carriage, with his shirt and coat divested as Nathan dealt with the bullet wound he sustained during the failed ambush of the stage.
“What?” Chris shot him a look.
“It is nothing,” Ezra admitted unhappily, thinking how obvious it all was in retrospect. “When I first encountered the man, I was struck with a sense of familiarity but it never dawned on me how.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Chris shrugged, absolving the gambler of any guilt when he too, felt the same thing. “I should have figured it out when I saw how he recognised me and Nathan by name. He would have known who we were, because both our names were on the paperwork when Mason’s body was sent back to his people in England.”
“And by his initials,” Nathan grumbled. “It should have been obvious. This whole thing about buying Heidegger's is just a lie, so he can get close to Miss Alex, but what’s Miller got to do with him?”
“Teaspoon just told us, this ambush was never about the stage,” Buck explained, his expression darkening because something else was dawning on him now in light of Chris’s revelation about Riley Marshall. Something that left a bad taste in his mouth because Riley hadn’t exactly come to Four Corners alone, had he? “They were out to kill us all, to keep us out of Four Corners so they could go after a lady doctor.”
“Wait a minute,” JD blurted out. “How would they know about the stage? We didn’t tell anyone about it.” Due to the nature of the cargo the stage was carrying, Chris was adamant about maintaining the job a secret.
“Its my fault,” Buck said quietly. “Marshall would have found out about the stage because of me.”
Suddenly, they all noted the pained expression on his face. There was nothing but betrayal and anger in it. Most things usually washed off Buck and hard as he could be when the situation warranted it, it never penetrated the emotional core of him. Chris supposed it was how he maintained his good nature. Except what Chris was seeing on his old friend’s face, did penetrate. The last time Chris had seen Buck wear a similar expression was the night they waited in fear and worry whether JD would make it through the night after Maddie Stokes had nearly killed the boy.
“What?” JD stared at him, unable to imagine Buck letting something like that slip to anyone. “How?”
“Because you told Cassandra,” Chris guessed, realising why Buck seemed so hurt now. The woman had not hidden her interest in Buck since her arrival, going out of her way to seek him out. Buck, whose Achilles Heel was always a pretty face, was easily manipulated when a woman of Cassandra’s calibre set her sights on him.
“I didn’t tell her we were escorting a stage full of cash Chris,” Buck said coldly, glaring at Chris to give him a little more credit than that. “She asked me to call on her today and I told her I couldn’t because we had a stage to escort from Bitter Creek. That was it.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Chris dismissed the misstep, because Buck’s face showed enough guilt and hurt for Chris to spare his old friend the added insult to the man’s pride. The gunslinger had the idea Cassandra might have gotten under his skin, and none of them present could ever confess to not being manipulated by a woman at least once in the past.
“That’s right,” Josiah declared, also able to see the pain in Buck’s eyes to wish this matter forgotten for now. “We need to deal with this.”
“We gotta go after Miss Alex,” Nathan stated, looking up from Ezra’s shoulder. “If they went to all this trouble to make sure we were out of the way, then they got plans for her.” His voice was filled with anxiousness for the doctor’s wellbeing. “We can’t let them get to her.”
Nathan still stung with the memory of what Nicholas Serfonteine, his former master, had almost let happen to Alex because of his Klan and his desire to make Nathan suffer. The healer would never forget the sight of the woman after they rescued her from the hands of Francis Lamont after the man beat and damn near raped her. In fact, she hadn’t been quite right since then, Nathan noticed. He would hate to think she was about to undergo another ordeal of similar brutality.
“We won’t,” Chris said firmly, understanding all too well why Nathan was so concerned. Both he and Chris knew there was only one reason why Randall Mason’s family wanted Alexandra Styles. Revenge. There was no telling what they would do to the doctor to get their pound of flesh.
“Alright, this is what we’re doing. Nathan, you and Ezra keep going with the stage to Eagle Bend, we need to get these bastards to the sheriff, and Wallis's body needs seeing to. Not to mention making the train.”
“But...” he started to protest until he realised that it was the best course. Ezra wasn’t up to making a hard ride and there was no way Nathan was leaving the gambler in his present occasion. “It'll get done.”
“Mr Larabee, I am certain I will be functional under Mr Jackson’s ministration soon enough,” Ezra declared, hating it that their efforts to help Alexandra might be hindered by his condition. “We must retrieve Alexandra before Mr Marshall...Mason, whatever he calls himself, works his will upon her.”
“Don’t worry about sitting this one out Ezra,” Chris said, not hiding the fact things were a lot worse than they appeared. Vin was still missing, which meant they didn’t just have to reach Alex, they needed to find out what happened to the tracker too. No plan to harm Alex could have left out that vital component. “As soon as you two are done in Eagle Bend, head to Four Corners. Ezra rest up on the way there because we might need you.”
“Rest assured, I will be in suitable condition to lend my assistance by the time we encounter each other again in Four Corners,” Ezra stated firmly, his concern for Alexandra apparent on his face.
“Josiah, you and JD get riding to Four Corners,” Chris said to the preacher and the youngest member of their set. “If we’re lucky whatever they want Alex for hasn’t happened yet. If they’re expecting us to be dead, they may not be in a rush.” Somehow he doubted it, but he had to hope.
“What about Vin?” Josiah asked about the tracker, whose absence in the light of all this was glaring. “If Miller knows about Vin and Alex...”
“That’s why Buck and I are riding to Purgatory,” Chris said tautly. “If Vin’s still there, we’re going to find him.”
What Chris didn’t say but they were all thinking it. If Vin was still alive, that is.
*********
Alex.
It was the first thing that flashed in Vin Tanner’s mind when he woke up with the worst headache imaginable, pounding the inside of his head like the angry beats of a Comanche war drum. He’d awakened on a bed in one of those hooches made of tin, wood and whatever was lying around able to be nailed into shape. Through the throbbing pain in his head, he knew he was tied up, with his hands behind his back and at the ankles. There was also the sharp sting that came with broken skin on the back of his skull and Vin knew the coolness he could feel there was the damp of blood.
There would be, he realised. They needed him out for a good while and though he could see daylight outside, it offered him no comfort because he was still tied up and Four Corners was a few hours away. Jay and his men had a head start and if they were already on their way to get Alex, he wouldn’t get to her in time. It don’t matter, Vin told himself. If he had to follow her to England or to hell itself, he was going to save her. The idea of anything else was unimaginable.
Taking a deep breath, Vin centred himself and focussed on his surroundings, taking stock of everything around him so he could think about escape. Jay wouldn’t leave too many men behind to guard him because the man probably needed every gun he had if he planned on ambushing the stage and going to Four Corners to get Alex. Thinking of Alex in Jay’s clutches made Vin grit his teeth in fury but it was not as bad as thinking of her in the power of Riley Marshall, or was it Mason? All this time, he’d been ambivalent about asking her hand in marriage or telling anyone they were courting because of this bounty on his head, and now it looked like she was the one in danger of hanging.
In the distance, he could hear the clunky sound of an old piano, the chatter of voices and the whinnying of horses at the livery. These were sounds he was familiar with, telling him he was still in Purgatory. He was in a room with a bed, a table with a glass lamp and chair. Sunlight still poured through what passed for the window so he must not have been out for too long since it was still light when he arrived in Purgatory.
There was no one in the room with him and Vin decided to test the limits of what he could get away with in his attempt at an escape . It could have been he was watched until they had ridden off, convinced he would not wake up in time to interfere with their plans. The bed he was lying on was actually a cot, with a thin mattress that smelled musty with sweat and Christ only knew what else.
Rolling around despite his throbbing head, Vin winced as he rolled over to the edge of the bed and allowed himself to tumble onto the dirt floor. A bit of dust rose up in a small cloud over his nose and he shook his head to keep from sneezing before he rolled onto his back and sat up. Searching the room, he saw nothing of use to him until he noticed a section of wall fashioned by a piece of tin, with edges sharp enough to suit his purpose.
Deciding it was better than nothing, Vin made his way clumsily over to it and quickly begin to work on the ropes, trying not to think of what was happening to Alex in the meantime. He thought about all her insecurities of late, the business with Randall and of course the trauma of what Lamont had done to her. Now if he didn’t get there in time, she would find herself in the clutches of another man with cruel designs on her. Vin did not think the strong demeanour she maintained for the benefit of everyone could bear up to that much abuse.
Suddenly, the ropes binding him gave way with a sudden snap and Vin’s hands jerked free at last. No sooner than his hands were free, he bent over and untied the rope around his ankles. Once freed to move, Vin made his way to the window and peered outside. He saw someone seated along the outside wall of the shanty, a few feet from the door. The tracker’s eyes narrowed when he saw the man, whom Vin recognised as a hired gun named Dwight McLean, was examining Vin’s Winchester with interest.
Having run into the man a few times, Vin knew Dwight was dumb as a post and was only good with someone watching his back. Alone, he couldn’t be counted on to sit the right way in an outhouse. Vin watched him for a few minutes, making sure he was alone before making his move. Going to the table, Vin kicked it hard, making enough sound to be heard from the outside. As anticipated, Dwight’s footsteps soon approached the door. Taking up flanking position by the doorway, he made sure he could not be seen when the door swung opened and Dwight barged in without thinking twice.
Vin grabbed the barrel of the gun that passed through the opening between the door jam and the door and snatched it away before Dwight could pull the trigger. The gun left the man’s hands and Vin immediately threw one punch that caused Dwight to stagger backwards. Closing in on him, Dwight was clutching a bloody nose before he realised he was staring down the barrel of his own gun.
“How long have they been gone?” Vin demanded.
“Couple of hours,” Dwight managed to say, aware of the tracker’s reputation well enough to not give him trouble.
“A couple of hours?” Vin stared at him. Just how long was he out? “What day is today?”
“Tuesday,” Dwight replied.
Vin’s eyes widened in shock. “I’ve been in there since yesterday evening?” He wasn’t hit that hard on the head. He expected to be out for a couple of hours but not for almost a whole day. It meant Jay would have Alex by now and Chris and the others, would have been ambushed at the stage.
“Yeah,” Dwight grinned despite the gun in his face, feeling some vindication by the tracker’s astonishment. “The doc on the hill gave you a dose of something to keep you sleeping.”
The doc on the hill? Vin thought furiously, thinking Purgatory had no doctor or sawbones, just that quack he’d beaten up some months ago, who took care of women who’d gotten in the family way. Julia Pemberton had gone to him for such a service and changed her mind, only to have him drug her and perform the procedure anyway. Vin thought he’d run the son of a bitch off but should have known better.
Outraged by the revelation, Vin brought the barrel of the gun against the man’s head, knocking him out cold before running to the livery where he’d left Peso, praying his horse was still there. He had to get to Four Corners before it was too late. When he first woke up, he was aware of how deep he had been under but assumed it was because he was struck hard. Except that wasn’t the reason at all, Jay had wanted him out of commission, without resorting to killing him.
When Vin arrived at the livery and found Peso where he left the animal, it appeared the horse was just as irate with having to wait for his master’s arrival, greeting Vin with an impatient whinny. As Vin prepared to ride, he hoped he could get to Alex before they crossed the border into Texas. Vin was under no illusions as to what kind of trouble he would be facing if he was forced to enter that state. Out here in the Territory, hunters may occasionally try to claim his head for the $500 bounty but in the state where he was accused of the crime, it would be the Texas Rangers that came after him.
Mounting his horse, Vin prayed that when he got to Four Corners, Alex and the rest of the Seven would still be there.
*********
Josiah and JD arrived in town shortly after dark.
The two men rode hard to Four Corners after the discovery the ambush with the stage was meant to eliminate the seven as a threat, instead of any real attempt to steal its cargo. As they saw the familiar lights of the town when they approached the small community both men called home, Josiah hoped they weren’t too late to help the doctor. Although Josiah hadn’t missed the gleam in Chris’s eyes indicating otherwise. There were too many instances when they had come too late to help the doctor and as much as Josiah hated to admit it, this was going to be another one of those occasions.
Josiah’s worry was not merely for the doctor however, but also for Vin's continued absence. If Riley Marshall... no Mason, had taken such pains to eliminate anyone who was able to help Alexandra Styles, what would he have done to her fiance? Randall Mason’s hatred of Vin Tanner was apparent from the moment, he and Alex turned up at the dance together, going so far as to feed the tracker to bounty hunters to remove his rival. Did Riley hold the same hatred?
The idea Vin might be dead was a possibility Josiah did not wish to entertain in any shape or form. The preacher felt as strongly for Vin as Chris Larabee and it would hurt him profoundly if anything happened to the young tracker. During that business with Silas Poplar, Vin’s unswerving faith in Josiah, even when Josiah was starting to doubt himself, earned him the preacher’s affection as more than a comrade in arms. That night, Vin had become family.
People tended to forget how young Vin was, that he was only a few years ahead of JD and it was his experience living a hard, solitary life that made him what he was. Josiah often saw through the unflappable expression Vin wore for everyone’s benefit to see the young man beneath, the one who was somewhat shy, a little insecure because he was painfully aware of his shortcomings and possessing an idealistic streak that ran as wide as the Rio Grande.
Although Josiah had to admit, Vin hid his feelings pretty well about the doctor.
Even now, it brought a smile to Josiah’s face seeing them together. When Vin was in the company of Alex Styles, it was easy to see his youth because he behaved like a young man in love, even more so than the misstep with Charlotte Richmond. While Josiah had opted to keep his opinion to himself during that episode, the conflict in Vin’s face about the relationship had been plain to see. There was no such hesitation in his courtship with Alex.
While outwardly, they might seem like a mismatched pair, in truth, Josiah thought they were exceedingly compatible if one looked beneath the facade of their everyday persona and got to the souls beneath. Both were reserved people, accustomed to hiding their emotions, with the same dry sense of humour and subtle approach to everything. They loved each other with the intensity of a blazing fire and smouldered in the quieter moments. Josiah remembered what Vin had been like the night the Klan took Alex. The pure terror in the young tracker’s face made Josiah pray when they arrived at the doctor’s clinic, she would be there.
They went straight to Alex’s when they hit town, not bothering to stable their horses, not with the urgency of the situation pressing up against their spines like the night descending upon them. Hurrying up the front steps to the door of the clinic, the lack of light illuminating from any of the windows seemed to echo Chris’s worry they were too late.
JD Dunne’s expression was a dark frown as he reached for the doorknob and twisted it. It turned with the ease of an unlocked door before JD pushed it open, meeting Josiah’s gaze as he did so. Stepping inside, the house was silent as a tomb, with neither light or life to give any indication the doctor was in. The cold air sent a chill down JD’s spine as he recalled the night the Klan had taken Alex. On that occasion, he had been the one to discover her absence too.
Trying to shed some light on the matter, Josiah went to one of the lamps against the wall and lit it, flooding the room with some illumination a few seconds later, allowing JD to move deeper into the place. He caught sight of Alex’s doctors bag immediately, having become accustomed to seeing it with Alex whenever she was doing her healing. She always carried it and if it was here, wherever she went, it was not as a doctor.
“You look down here,” Josiah instructed, “I’ll go upstairs. Just in case.”
Neither of them wanted to entertain the possibility Riley Marshall’s attack on Alex Styles might be to simply kill her in vengeance for Randall Mason’s death, but they could not discount it either. There was still the chance she might be in town, on some personal errand and that search would get underway as soon as they were finished here, but for now that possibility had to be eliminated before they could proceed.
Moving into her surgery, where he and the rest of the seven occasionally come under the lady’s ministrations, JD lit another lamp, noticing it was larger because Alex needed the light for her doctoring. The brightness flooding the room allowed him greater clarity of everything within it, from the benches and shelves that looked like the back wall of an apothecary store, to the gleaming instruments laid out neatly for use.
“JD,” Josiah called out when JD heard the preacher’s footsteps descending from the stairs leading to the doctor’s residence. Josiah’s expression was grim. “Doesn’t look like she’s been at home in a while. Did you find anything?”
“No,” JD sighed and met Josiah’s gaze. “Nothing at all.”
*********
Vin was on his way back to Four Corners, when he saw the familiar shape of two riders approaching across the flat, desert landscape surrounding Purgatory. The speed in which they were crossing the hard-baked land made Vin reach for his Winchester, just in case they were intending to cause him trouble. With the urgency to get back to Four Corners and Alex utmost in his mind, Vin was prepared to kill any varmint intending to delay him from reaching the woman he loved.
As it was, he was furious he was delayed in Purgatory by a whole goddamn day and had no idea how much of a head start Riley Marshall already had on him. Worse yet, his fears for Alex meant he could not investigate the situation of Chris and the rest of the seven in the ambush set up to keep their attention away from Riley’s plans for Alex. Just like his mad dog brother, Vin thought bitterly.
He should have killed Randall himself. Alex should not have been forced into the position of having to do it. Vin had promised Alex he wouldn’t let Randall hurt her and yet the son of a bitch had shot her in the back, and Vin had still let him live. If he had done it, then it would be him Riley would come after, not Alex.
As the riders closed in, Vin’s night vision which was sharper than most due to his years tracking and buffalo hunting, soon recognised familiarity not only in the horses approaching but the men astride the mounts. The black duster trailing behind in the night, like Death’s own cloak brought no fear to Vin, but a surge of relief. It was Chris and Buck. It gave him the idea perhaps they may have guessed his troubles and come to Purgatory looking for him since this was the route he’d shown them to take to reach the den of outlaws.
“Vin!” Buck exclaimed with a grin as the horses approached each other and the moonlight above allowed the friends their nocturnal reunion. “You’re in one piece! We weren’t sure you’d be. “
“Is everyone alright,” Vin asked quickly, needing to get this bit of business out of the way. “I found out Jay’s gang was gonna ambush the stage.”
“We know,” Chris replied quickly. “Teaspoon Turner was with them. He told us Miller wanted hired guns to kill the lawmen escorting the stage. Ezra got hurt but not too bad. Wallis didn’t make it though.”
Vin swore inwardly. He met the stagecoach driver once before and liked the man well enough. At the mention of Wallis, Vin noticed the grimace on Buck’s face and wondered what that was about. In any case, Vin knew Teaspoon Turner as a frequent visitor to Purgatory, when he wasn’t spending another sentence at Yuma Prison. He hadn’t seen Teaspoon at Purgatory before he was knocked unconscious but if Jay was recruiting more guns to join him, as he had Vin, then it was reasonable he’d have picked up Teaspoon.
Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. Vin had bigger problems.
“Chris, Riley Marshall is Randall’s brother. He’s hired Jay to help him take Alex back to England to hang for Randall’s murder.”
“Jesus Christ,” he heard Buck exclaimed. While Buck and Chris suspected the man was kin, they had no idea the relationship was that close. What was Cassandra’s connection to all this, Buck wondered. She obviously had some attachment to the Masons’ after her spectacular manipulation of him. “How could he think that? Alex was shot in the back when Mason died!”
Even through the dim light of the evening, Vin caught the flash in Chris’s eyes and knew immediately, the gunslinger was privy to something they did not know.
“Chris?” Vin stared at him, using the same tone of menace Chris often employed when people were holding onto something he ought to know.
Chris let out a sigh. “He may be right, Vin. She may have killed Randall Mason.”
Vin already suspected Alex might have done the deed but he wanted to know what secret knowledge Chris possessed to think the same.
“That’s crazy,” Buck rose immediately to the lady’s defence, unable to believe they could think such a thing. The woman was a dedicated healer. Hell, she’d put Francis Lamont together after the bastard almost raped her. Alex commitment to life was fanatical, she’d marched into places no woman ought to be going just to save a life. “Alex ain’t no killer! She wouldn’t even let you gut Lamont after he beat on her! You’re telling me, you two think she actually murdered Randall Mason when she was still carrying a bullet hole in her back?”
Buck was incredulous.
“Buck, the man murdered her father,” Vin said quietly. “He was everything to her and Randall just lorded it over her at the Seminole village, when he told her nothing was stopping him from taking her. Hell, he was ready to shoot me in front of her.”
“He was crazy Buck,” Chris replied. “The way Ella is crazy.”
At the mention of Ella Gaines’s name, both Vin and Buck understood why Chris might have kept silent if he thought Alex killed Randall Mason. Like a trapdoor spider, Ella had lain in wait for years before she chose to kill Sarah and Adam Larabee. There was no doubt in either man’s mind, if Randall managed to elude justice for his crimes against Alex in Four Corners, he would commit the same act of murder before making another bid to take the doctor for his own.
“How do you know Pard?” Vin finally asked, wanting to confirm his own suspicions.
“The morning Randall died,” Chris said after a moment, ignoring Buck’s disbelief. “Me and Nathan found a needle mark on his hand.”
That was it then, Vin thought. Alex had murdered Randall and it explained her state of mind of late. Alex might have been driven out of self-preservation to murder the man, but her conscience was eating away at her and on the anniversary of her father’s death, it must have felt especially acute.
Vin didn’t care. A man who would force a woman against her will or put a bullet in her back didn’t deserve to live anyway. To say nothing about murdering her pa, a man from all accounts, Alex loved dearly and still mourned secretly. Vin had only to listen to her talk about William Styles to know how much his loss weighed upon her. It was bad enough she considered herself guilty for not having seen the danger Randall posed, to begin with.
No, in Vin Tanner’s book, Alex had nothing to feel guilty for and he’d face down any man who said otherwise.
“It doesn’t matter if she did it or not,” Vin stated firmly, indicating to both Buck and Chris, this was to go no further than that because they had all done things in recent years for which they could be held accountable. “Jay told me Riley plans on taking her to Galveston. There’s a ship there that’s going to take them back to England so she can hang. It’s why they had to keep you away from town, so they could get a head start towards Texas. The only reason I’m here is because Jay didn’t know what Alex was to me when he signed on. He had that quack in Purgatory dose me with something so I’d be knocked out for most of the day. I guess he still had enough feeling for me to not want me dead.”
Buck cursed under his breath, furious at how easily Cassandra used him to get to Alex. “If they got her, they’ll be riding hard towards the Texas border.”
“Then we don’t have a lot of time,” Chris said staring at Vin, perfectly aware of what the tracker risked if he was forced to enter Texas. It was two days ride to the border if they had a fresh change of horses. That was how long they had to get to Alex. “We’ll hit town first and grab Josiah and JD, they should be there already and start riding.”
With any luck, Nathan and Ezra might be back from Eagle Bend too and they could ride after Alex as seven. Chris knew Vin wanted to ride immediately after Alex, but they had no idea what numbers they would be facing. Vin had to concede Chris’s point. The last thing he needed was to make an attempt to rescue Alex and fail.
God knows he’d failed her enough already by not killing Mason when he had the chance.
After Francis Lamont, Alexandra Styles thought she would be accustomed to taking a punch to the face by now.
Unfortunately, as the darkness receded around her and she returned to clarity, it was painfully obvious she had not. Her unconscious state was brief but it was long enough for her to wake up to find herself lying on the floor of a wagon, rumbling forward at a brisk enough pace to jostle her awake. The side of her face throbbed and the heat along her jawline implied swelling. She wondered how long it would take this bruise to fade.
Lifting her head, she saw the evening was dragging the curtain of night across the sky and the lights of Four Corners were nowhere in sight. The land was flat all around her, which meant nothing really, the immediate terrain surrounding the dusty small town was flat as a tack, as Vin always said. So, she had no idea how far away from home she was. She could taste blood in her mouth and realised at some point she must have bitten the inside of her cheek when she was struck.
Shaking the disorientation out of her head, Alex saw the woman called Cassandra in the driver’s seat, at the reins of the horses galloping swiftly through the encroaching darkness. The wagon wasn’t alone either, because she noticed the hoofbeats of other horses surrounding them and had to crane her neck to see the five riders in flanking positions. They were galloping just as hard to keep up with the wagon and Alex wondered if they were fleeing with such haste to avoid Vin and the rest of the seven.
“You’re awake,” she heard a voice behind her.
Alex hadn’t noticed she wasn’t alone on the buckboard. As she turned her neck, she saw Riley Marshall, who had been sitting at the other end of the wagon, his legs stretched out, watching her as if he had been waiting for her to regain consciousness. He was dressed in travelling clothes and still managed to look ridiculously out of place in the harsh terrain of the Territory.
The last thing Alex remembered after she was taken through the back door of her clinic, was being struck so hard, it rendered her unconscious. She was unaware of who hit her, only that the blow blindsided her and sent her tumbling to the ground. Had it been Riley who committed the deed? After what happened to her at the hands of Lamont, Alex was far from being reduced to panic. If anything, she looked upon this whole thing with resignation, as an inconvenience to be endured until Vin delivered her from captivity.
“So,” Alex spoke first. “What is this all about?” Her voice was calm as if she were addressing one of her patients, inquiring as to the reason they had come for treatment.
Her aloof response surprised Riley somewhat. He was expecting fear and panic considering the situation she was in, abducted and on route to parts unknown. Instead, she stared at him with oddly detached eyes, almost unconcerned. Perhaps she was employing her doctor’s facade to hide the depth of her fear and required only a bit of nudging to bring it to the surface. In any case, they had plenty of time before they got to Galveston for him to induce the terror he wanted to see in her eyes.
“Randall Mason.” He said simply, expecting the revelation to engender a more fearful response. There was no reason to hide anything now his hand was played and she was spirited away from the safety of the seven lawmen of Four Corners, to say nothing of her fiancé.
Alex stared at him, eyes widening just enough to show her surprise before she started laughing.
Her response prompted even Cassandra, to look over her shoulder at the strange reaction. The blond woman had been listening over the rumble of wooden wheels and hoofbeats, to Riley’s conversation with the good doctor. Her puzzlement at Alex’s reaction showed on her face as the doctor continued to laugh.
“What is so bloody funny!” Riley growled, the sound feeling like cuts to the skin as he crossed the buckboard and hauled Alex up to sitting position, forcing her to look into his face.
After all the planning to reach this point to finally ensnare this woman, her laughter made all that effort seemed foolish. Until now, Riley’s dislike for the doctor was borne of the pain she caused his mother by taking away her favourite son but Alexandra Style's reaction was provoking a surge of rage in him by her emasculating laugh.
“Tell me, or I’ll break every bone in your hands. See how good a surgeon you are, when your fingers are gnarled pieces of meat.”
The threat did not frighten Alex, because she could see in his eyes, his revenge did not allow for her survival. He planned on killing her. Perhaps the method eluded her, but the result would be the same. Alex had stopped laughing but she continued to smirk, finding this situation exceedingly funny, even if it was gallows humour. Why shouldn’t she find this whole thing hilarious? What else was there to do but laugh? She certainly was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her beg. Francis Lamont taught her that much.
“All right,” she said almost pleasantly. “I’ll tell you.”
Riley shoved her against the side of the buckboard, allowing Alex to sit up as she faced him. He retreated to the opposite side and watched her, waiting for her to speak. “Go on then, let’s hear it.”
Alex continued to regard him as if she were enjoying a joke only she was privy to, further infuriating the man who had the power of life and death over her. “It almost seems like fate you should turn up today, of all days.”
“What’s so special about today?” Riley asked, still scowling in the face of her calm.
“My father died today,” Alex said quietly, the humour draining out of her face to be replaced by the sorrow of losing William Styles. “He died in Cairo, on the floor of a market place, surrounded by strangers, dust and flies. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. Just tumbled to the ground, cut down like Death himself decided it was time he was reaped. He was my entire world. I never had anyone else and he just died in my arms, in the middle of a square, while I could do nothing but watch.”
Riley stared at her hard, wondering what was the purpose of this story and why she had laughed. There was something about her that seemed oddly distant, as if the place he intended to send her was no worse than where she was already. At this moment, she looked a far cry from the doctor he had seen about town these last few days in Four Corners. “So why are you laughing?”
“Because of you,” Alex shot him an icy glare. “I assume you’re one of Randall’s family?” She didn’t know which Mason he was, but now she was aware of his connection to Randall, could see some similarities in his features.
“He was my brother,” Riley replied tautly, returning her glare with one of his own.
“So, you’re Rylance Mason,” Alex remarked, studying him closer now she knew him to be Randall’s youngest brother. When she kept Randall’s company in London, he made mention of a younger sibling who was travelling abroad. Observing him now, she saw more similarities, slight as they were. “You were the brother off somewhere making his fortune in the Indies. Did you give it all up to come after me?”
“I gave nothing up,” Riley bristled at her tone. “My plans are simple. You are going to pay for murdering my brother.”
Alex flinched a little at the accusation because it was the first time anyone guessed the truth, other than Nathan and Chris Larabee. Reacting to the accusation however, was not the same as admitting to it and she wasn’t about to do that just yet. Not until she knew the full extent of his plans. So far, being told she was taken to face justice meant nothing. She needed details to decide how to proceed next. If she intended to save herself, she needed to use her head.
“So, what?” Alex stared at him, “you kill me to get your revenge?”
“I am not a murderer,” Riley spat back at her. “You will answer for what you did to my brother. We’re going back to England where you will face English justice.”
Alex hid her reaction to that statement. It was a long way to England. Did he seriously believe he was going to cross the Territory and reach a coastline before Vin reached her? Somehow, there had to be more to his plan than just that, so she prodded him further to see what he would reveal.
“And what about my justice? Randall’s death allowed him to escape justice for murdering my father.”
Riley stared at her sharply, trying to hide his shock at that accusation but it slipped through nonetheless. He knew who Alexandra Styles’s father had been. When his mother sent him on this course of gaining justice for their family, she mentioned the scandal around the girl’s parentage.
Alexandra was the only daughter of black sheep William Styles, who did the unthinkable by marrying a heathen. The house of Styles, with its attachments to the Duke of Rutland, ostracized William but did not have the heart to disown him or his daughter. The girl was supposedly allowed to keep her inheritance. If such was the case, the possibility Randall may have killed Styles could raise some rather uncomfortable questions if it were made public.
“Why would Randall kill your father?” Riley asked but even as the question escaped him, he knew why. After everything Riley learned about his brother’s activities in Four Corners, going so far as to orchestrate kidnappings and shooting a woman in the back, how much of a leap was it to believe he had murdered a fellow Englishmen in his attempt win the man’s daughter?
Brother, had your madness gone that deep?
Alex saw the realisation in his eyes. Even the woman Cassandra appeared disturbed by this news. Did they really believe they had come here to avenge a saint? They had no idea what kind of animal Randall had been. Why should they? Not even Alex saw the truth until that day in the Seminole village. Nevertheless, it was a weapon she could use, because, in the last few minutes, she realised something she had not, until now.
She was done being sorry for herself.
Until she spoke the crime out loud, the enormity of what Randall took from her didn’t seem to justify his death. However, now that it was spoken in the open, its fetid stench turning the air rank with its venom did Alex realise how Randall wronged her. Because of Randall, her father would never meet Vin, would never know she found the happiness he so wanted for her and would never know their children. He would never even see the Amazon like he wanted. It drove home to her why Randall deserved to die and she was done regretting any of it.
“Let me be clear,” Alex stated coldly. “If I stand on the dock for anything, they will hear how Randall had my father murdered in Cairo in some pathetic attempt to win my hand. I will tell everyone who can hear, how he boasted what he did before giving me a choice to surrender to him or else he’d butcher an entire village of people, including women and children. I will let everyone know the heir to the Mason family, intended on murdering my fiancé and anyone else who stood in his way. You may have me under your power here, but once I get to Scotland Yard, I have the resources to make sure every filthy thing Randall did will be known to everyone in English society.”
“They won’t believe you,” Riley snorted, but the words sunk in.
From across the wagon, Riley and Cassandra exchanged furious glances. For the first time, there was concern in her eyes that perhaps the doctor did have a point. She could be tried but there was nothing to keep her from speaking once she became a guest of the Old Bailey. Worse than that, what if the family of William Styles paid attention to her words? While they may not accept this half-caste as one of their own, they would still be listening with interest if she were to face English law.
“They won’t have to believe me,” Alex saw she drew blood with words and sunk the unseen blade a little deeper. “But I swear to you, they won’t forget me.”
*********
The minute Vin Tanner saw Josiah Sanchez’s face, he knew they were too late.
Inwardly, Vin suspected as much when he met Chris and Buck halfway back from Purgatory, but as always, when it came to Alex, he hoped against hope he might just make it before Riley Marshall or Mason, whatever the hell he chose to call himself, had gotten to her. Entering the town limits of Four Corners, the three lawmen rode straight to the doctor’s clinic and sighted Josiah and JD’s horses tethered to the hitching post nearest to the front face of the building.
Probably guessing the thunderous roar of hoofbeats coming down the main street of town might belong to them, Vin’s stomach hollowed when he saw Josiah and JD emerge from the doors to the clinic, their faces grim. He exchanged a glance with Chris, who recognised the same look on the former preacher’s face and tried to project an expression of assurance that everything would be alright even if Vin’s heart was running a mile. When it came to Alexandra Styles, Vin was never capable of keeping his calm.
From the day he met her, Alex’s ability to penetrate the unflappable facade he wore around himself like a shield, was how he knew she was the love of his life. The idea she might be spirited away from him, across the sea, to a land so far away he would never be able to track her, made his insides knot with terror. He had not felt this kind of fear since the Klan had taken her when he realised she might be in the hands of that animal Lamont, whom Vin still regretted not killing for what he had done to her.
Dismounting as soon as they neared the hitching post, Vin was the first one off his horse as he strode towards JD and Josiah who was waiting for them on the boardwalk. A dust storm had blown into town, which made Vin curse because if there were tracks, they would almost certainly be gone now. The wind whipped at his skin, with signs swaying like flags while window shutters banged against walls. It howled its claim across the small town as it lashed against the lawmen waiting to greet each other.
“Is she gone?” Vin demanded, making no effort to say anything else because nothing else mattered until that one important question was answered.
“Yeah,” Josiah nodded, his expression sombre. “Mary saw her heading for the clinic hours ago and that’s the last anyone’s seen her.”
“We thought she might have gone on a doctor’s call,” JD added. “But her horse is still in the stable.”
Chris’s expression hardened as they saw Vin brush past them and head towards the open doors of Alex’s clinic, worry dogging every step he took there. The gunslinger lingered a moment, waiting until Vin was out of earshot. Next to him, Buck appeared just as miserable. Chris understood the reason for his old friend’s mood and knew nothing would alleviate it until they retrieved Alex.
“Was there any sign of a struggle in the place?” Chris glanced at the clinic.
“No,” Josiah shook his head. “Door’s been forced open though. If you take a look at the lock, someone’s been at it with a pick. She probably wouldn’t have noticed it when she walked into the building. It’s been done by someone with skill.”
“They’re planning on taking her to Galveston,” Chris explained to Josiah.
“Galveston?” JD exclaimed, taking note of Buck’s expression and making a mental note to speak to his friend when the moment allowed. No doubt, Buck was beating himself up for being duped by Cassandra Heglund. “Why Galveston?”
“Because that’s the nearest place with a port,” Chris answered. “They intend to take her back to England. Marshall thinks Alex murdered Randall Mason and wants her to hang for it.”
“That’s Texas,” Josiah stiffened, throwing a glance at the clinic where Vin was undoubtedly searching for tracks or some trace of what happened to Alex. “Chris if we cross into Texas...”
“I know,” the gunslinger nodded, perfectly aware of how much danger Vin could be in if they had to pursue Alex’s abductors into that state. Out here in the Territory, where every other man had a price on his head for one thing or another, Vin could lose himself in the anonymity of the wilderness, but in Texas, where the warrant for his arrest originated, it was another matter entirely. If anyone caught wind of Vin’s presence, they could send the Texas Rangers after him and that was a confrontation Chris did not look forward to facing.
“We’ve got to get to her before they get there,” Buck spoke suddenly, finally pulling himself out of the guilt that facilitated Alex’s situation. He could beat himself up over Cassandra’s deception later, right now, they had to find the doctor.
Vin stepped out of the building a second later, the stoic expression on his face, like a mask of stone that no one except Chris could see through. He might appear calm to those around him, but only Chris could tell just how frightened he was. The gunslinger would feel no different if it were Mary in the same position.
“Her doctor’s bag is in her office,” Vin announced to everyone quietly when he reached them. “She wouldn’t go anywhere doctoring without it. It belonged to her pa, she takes it everywhere. I think she came back here, and someone was waiting for her inside. They took her out through the back door, it’s open and...” he paused a moment. “There was a bit of blood.”
“Damn,” Buck cursed.
“Not much though,” Vin said quickly, more to reassure himself than the men in front of him. “Not enough to make me think she’s hurt bad.” Of course, the fact Alex might have shed any blood at all had provoked Vin’s fury which he intended to take out on Riley Marshall’s hide.
“Well if they’re headed towards Galveston, and they need to get there fast, we know which way they’re headed and we can catch up to them. If we get riding now, we can get to them before they hit the border.”
“I don’t give a goddamn hell if they cross the border or not,” Vin said sharply, “I ain’t letting them take her to England to hang. I should have killed that son of a bitch Mason when he shot her. At least she wouldn't have had to do it herself and wind up in this mess!”
“Vin take it easy,” Chris tried to calm him down, aware just how hot Vin’s temper could burn when it got going. Nothing got it burning faster than the possibility of any harm coming to Alex. “We’re not going to.”
“Right pard,” Vin forced himself to calm down, aware he would be no good to Alex if he lost his head. He needed to be thinking clearly. "Okay, they’ll be wanting to get to Texas fast, thinking I won’t cross over after them. Marshall may not know the terrain but Jay does, he’ll keep by the river for the horses. Even riding hard, they gotta rest the animals, since I don’t think Jay would risk stopping at a town with Alex. He may think his boys dealt with us during the ambush but he ain’t gonna bet the bank on it. The son of a bitch never left much to chance.”
“Then let’s get going!” JD prompted, seeing the worry in Vin’s eyes and not liking it much. The last time Doctor Styles was kidnapped, they let it happen under their noses and JD could tell Chris was seething at letting the same thing take place now.
“We’ll freshen the horses and then head out,” Chris looked at Vin, giving him the hard glare which told the tracker this couldn’t be avoided. If it was a race to the border, they needed their horses fresh, not near run down from a hard day’s riding already.
“What about Nathan and Ezra?” Josiah inquired, aware the gambler and healer were headed back to Four Corners after delivering the stage and their prisoners to Eagle Bend.
“I don’t know if Ezra is in any shape to make the ride,” Buck commented. “He was pretty banged up.”
Josiah frowned because any search that involved Alex was one neither Ezra or Nathan wanted to sit out. Nathan and Alex had developed a sibling affection for each other since her arrival in Four Corners and Josiah knew, if anything happened to the lady doctor, the healer would be as devastated as Vin. The same went for Ezra. Despite his romantic relationship with the doctor ending some time ago, Josiah knew Ezra still felt warmly towards the lady.
“Either way, we can’t afford to wait for them,” Chris answered, glancing at Vin who was chomping at the bit to go after Alex. The only thing holding him back right now was the realisation that Riley intended her to reach England alive, so she was not in immediate danger. Still, after what Randall Mason had tried to do to Alex, Chris could understand why Vin wanted to reach her as soon as possible. Randall had been held back from seriously hurting Alex because of his obsession with her, Riley was not.
“If they ain’t here by the time we’re ready to leave, we’ll go without them.”
*********
It was well into the night before the band of abductors finally came to a stop, to feed and water the horses by the banks of some unknown river, which could have been the Rio Grande. Having put enough distance between themselves and Four Corners, not to mention Vin Tanner’s comrades or the tracker himself if he managed to escape Purgatory, Johnny took the gamble it was safe enough to take a break in the journey.
Although they were on the main cattle trail between the Territory and Texas, the dead of night meant they were so far able to cross the terrain without running into anyone. As everyone stretched their legs and the doctor was allowed her ablutions, Johnny took the opportunity to finally meet Alexandra Styles, somewhat curious about the woman who had given her heart to Vin Tanner.
She was standing by the rocks above the rushing river, staring into the darkness at something only she could see. He wondered if she was afraid of what was going to happen to her but as the moonlight illuminated her face, he saw no signs of fear and was struck by how beautiful she was. She might have been a half breed but she was the prettiest one he’d ever seen. Johnny could understand why Runt had gotten so riled up at the thought of any harm coming to her.
Keeping her under guard a few feet away, were Zeke and Del, who were unmasked in their appreciation of the woman. In Cassandra’s company, they were forced to mind their manners but no such restraints held them back from openly desiring their captive.
“Gotta say,” Del remarked as Johnny walked up to them on the rocky embankment framing the great river rushing past them. “Tanner’s got taste. I wouldn’t mind getting a bit myself.”
If she heard them, the lady made no reaction, continuing to stare at the river and what lay across it. Johnny wondered if she was trying to see if there was anyone coming for her, or any help she could cry out for?
“She’s awful pretty,” Zeke agreed. “Any chance we could get a poke before we gotta deliver her to Galveston?” He eyed Johnny with a lascivious smirk. “I mean as long as we get her alive to Texas, it don’t matter does it”
“Just keep your mind out of your britches,” Johnny warned, already disliking the idea of having taken this job without knowing how closely it was connected to his past. While he’d told Runt it was nothing personal, Johnny had a feeling the man would not see it that way. Even though he and Runt hadn’t been really close friends, they’d respected each other and if Runt did catch up to them, the last thing Johnny needed was to face the man’s fury at having taken his woman.
Alex did hear their words but she ignored them and the knot that formed in her stomach, because of it. Rape was a fact of life in the Territory when the ratio between men and women were twenty to one. If you were single and unmarried, you were ripe for violation. After Lamont, Alex was more than painfully aware of how vulnerable she was to this when she saw the way her minders looked at her. It only solidified the course she was about to embark upon, no matter what the risks to herself.
She had to delay them from getting to Texas. If she could slow them down somehow, it would give Vin and the seven the time to catch up to her. Rylance or Riley as he preferred to be called, had told her why they were heading to there. The man knew about the bounty on Vin’s head and how exceedingly dangerous it would be for her fiancé to cross over into Texas. Entering the state would put Vin in the crosshairs of the Texas Rangers and Alex was willing to risk her life to avoid that possibility.
“So, you’re Runt’s girl?”
So lost in her ruminations, she didn’t hear him come up behind her and frankly, his voice made her jump a little. She was reminded of Chris Larabee’s stealthy approaches, with its silent, predatory deliberation. He did not walk as much as he stalked and his voice had that slow, measured drawl that could switch from pleasant to menace in a second.
“Runt?” Alex stared at him with puzzlement.
“Vin.” He said stopping in front of her. His watery blue eyes studied her closely, admiring her as well as trying to discern what kind of woman she was.
Runt? Alex didn’t like the idea of Vin being called that and didn’t imagine her fiancé would appreciate it either, but then again it sounded like the nickname one would get in childhood. “He’s my fiancé, yes.”
“Fancy lady like you taking up with a tracker?” Johnny asked, finding her use of the word fiancé amusing.
“What makes you think I’m fancy?” Alex returned, hating it whenever people thought Vin wasn’t good enough for her.
Of course, he was lacking in the things society thought important, a fortune, lineage and prospects thanks to that damn bounty on his head. Yet Alex cared for none of these things. She saw a man who would never break her heart, who was kind and compassionate, who was honourable in how he conducted himself and was loyal to a fault. He was also one of the most capable men she knew and if they did not have a penny to their name, either of them, Alex knew he’d able to take care of them both.
“I’m a half breed coloured, according to them.” She glanced at Cassandra and Rylance who were talking amongst themselves near the carriage, throwing dark glances at her direction every so often, like they needed to keep their prize in view, like all true obsessives.
“You’re fancy,” Johnny stated firmly with a little smile. “Smart too. Ain’t never met no lady doctor.”
“Now you have,” Alex stared at him, sensing his curiosity and decided to indulge him, to see if she could gain an advantage. “How do you know Vin?”
“We grew up together in the orphanage in Texas.”
That did surprise Alex. Vin never liked to talk about his past. While she was aware he lost his mother at a very young age and was placed in a state orphanage, he did not like to speak of it. If it was anything like the workhouses she chanced to visit during her time in England, she knew such places were little more than prisons for unwanted children. Vin’s reluctance to speak of his time there convinced her of his suffering since he fled the place as soon as he could. If anyone had raised Vin Tanner after his mother, it was the Comanche tribe who found him.
All the orphanage had done was beat into Vin the virtue of self-reliance.
“He doesn’t talk about it much,” she said quietly, suddenly missing him very much and hoping he was out there somewhere, trying to find her. “I get the impression it wasn’t a nice place.”
“It weren’t,” Johnny admitted and then looked at her. “But he was tough. He got out sooner than the rest of us before they could ship him someplace worse.”
“He always said life for him didn’t really start until he ran into the Comanches,” Alex replied. “And you? Did you stay there long?”
“Nah,” he shrugged, “I got out as soon as I could too.”
“I’m glad,” Alex admitted. “I don’t like thinking about anyone being trapped in such a terrible place for their entire childhood.” The sentiment was genuine and once again, Alex found herself grateful for her father and renewed her belief what she did to Randall was the right thing.
Almost as if he could hear her thoughts, Johnny asked, “You really kill that man’s brother?”
“If I did, he had it coming,” Alex was not about to admit anything, although her eyes spoke volumes.
Johnny grinned, understanding the tactic well enough and recognising the gleam in her eyes that gave him her answer. Yeah, she killed him alright and he was actually interested in knowing why. Maybe he’d find out later.
“Just so you know,” he said instead. “This ain’t personal. I didn’t know you were Runt’s girl when I decided to take the job.”
Alex rose a brow, seeing he genuinely meant it. She had no malice towards him, he was a mercenary, the way Conrad Rihs, the man Randall hired to trap her, had been a little more than a tool. “If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else. If there’s one thing I know about that family, they are persistent.”
“I reckon you ain’t wrong about that.” He agreed, knowing by the lengths Marshall was going to and the money he was being paid, she was right.
“Can I be excused?” She asked, sensing his attempts to be conciliatory might be an opening she could use.
“Excused?” He looked at her blankly. “For what?”
“Mr...?” Alex looked at him with feigned exasperation.
“You can call me Johnny,” he replied.
“Johnny,” she spoke with some impatience, “I’ve been travelling for hours and since I do not see a privy anywhere, do you mind if I take some refuge behind those bushes?” She pointed to a cluster of bushes, near the rocky edge of the river.
“You wouldn’t be trying to escape, would you?” He eyed her with suspicion. She was pretty but he wasn’t a fool.
“Where exactly would I go?” Alex challenged. “Into the river?” She gestured to the river rushing past them, with its frothing white water and strong currents. “Or shall I try to outrun a half dozen men on horseback and a wagon on foot, in the middle of the night?” She shrugged her shoulders to indicate just how ludicrous this sounded before speaking in a sober tone. “I would just like to make the rest of my journey a little less uncomfortable.”
“Alright,” Johnny conceded, agreeing she couldn’t go far even if she had escape in her mind.
“Thank you,” Alex said sweetly and walked towards the bushes, ensuring she was out of sight before she got to work.
*********
When Rylance Mason set out for the Americas, spurred on by the heartbroken mother left in England, his course had been clear. Emilia Mason demanded justice for his older brother Randall, convinced he was murdered instead of suffering the alleged heart attack resulting in his death. Furthermore, she was convinced the woman whom Randall was willing to flout convention to have was responsible. While Riley had yet to be convinced of the doctor’s guilt when he came to Four Corners, he still had every intention of bringing her back to England to face her accusers.
However, his subsequent investigations soon changed his mind. Randall’s behaviour was objectionable to say the least and Riley suspected she might have murdered his brother simply to be rid of him. Whatever the cause, however, Randall was still his brother and if she had taken his life, Riley wanted her to pay. More than that, he wanted her to admit it so he would know for sure, this course he had embarked upon at the cost of his conscience was right.
Until the doctor revealed Randall’s complicity in William Styles’s death and placed a greater dilemma on his hands.
“You need to consider the situation seriously Riley,” Cassandra advised as they faced each other out of earshot of Miller and his men, not to mention the doctor. She was manageable at the moment, confident of her safety because they needed her to reach England alive. If she overheard this conversation, she would be no longer that accommodating.
“I know,” Riley answered. Listening to Cassandra speak, he knew the argument she was making was a convincing one. This was no longer a matter of assuaging Emilia’s need for vengeance. If the doctor was correct and Randall had indeed murdered William Styles in Egypt, then it was intelligence that could not be made public. Whether true or not, the scandal would damage the family’s name, to say nothing if it could be proven. “I knew Randall was obsessed but killing a relation of the Duke of Rutland? I never thought he could be so stupid.”
Even if the Styles family had ostracized William, it did not mean they would take kindly to learning he was murdered by Randall. And if his mother was able to apply to the Royal College of Surgeons to gain an autopsy on Randall, what was to stop William’s family from doing the same thing. If the man was buried in England, there was no reason he could not be exhumed to determine the cause of death. The doctor had claimed he collapsed in her arms in Cairo, would that mean a poison was administered? And if so, what if it were still present in the man’s remains? How difficult would it be to trace Randall’s whereabouts in Cairo to add more smoke to the fire?
“Once you hand her over to Scotland Yard, she’ll be free to say whatever she pleases. If we were able to learn what Randall was doing in Four Corners in a matter of days, I am certain she would be able to gain the same intelligence. She has money, resources and numerous collaborating witnesses. She could smear your family’s name all over Fleet Street, Riley.”
He was painfully aware of that and as the avenues of avoidance began to close themselves off, Riley saw only two courses of action. The first, which was to let her go was unimaginable to him. Randall’s death demanded retribution and Emilia would never stand for it. The other, as much as it might prey on his conscience would satisfy all requirements.
“What if she doesn’t arrive in England?”
Cassandra exhaled loudly, grateful she did not have to wait too long for him to reach the conclusion she had arrived at a good deal sooner than him. “What indeed?”
Glad she was of the same mind, Riley continued his dark train of thought. “I could tell my mother, the lady suffered an unfortunate accident that prevented her from being taken alive. As long as she is dead and admits her guilt, I think my mother will be able to accept the situation. She wanted justice, this is as close as she can get to it, without destroying the family name.”
“Exactly.” Cassandra, who was an expert at fixing problems, saw no difficulty in altering the arrangement with Miller and his men, from their duty as escorts as assassins. As long as they were paid well, she was certain Miller would have no trouble making the adjustment. “I don’t think it is going to be too difficult for these men to coax a confession out of her. Besides,” the woman said with a little smile. “Judging by the way some of them have been admiring the doctor, I think they might rather enjoy it.”
“You are a vicious beast,” Riley replied, finding nothing to smile about but then a decade in the Americas had given Cassandra a mean streak. “See to it. Before she dies, I want her to admit to me she killed Randall. He may have been a mad bastard, but he was still my brother.”
*********
With Zeke and Del keeping an eye on the bushes where Alexandra Styles had withdrawn to relieve herself, Johnny saw Cassandra and Mason approaching him with purpose. Uttering a short bark at both men to keep watch for the woman’s return, he went to deal with their employers. He was not about to let him play her for a fool if her request for privacy was for anything than what she indicated. Just because he liked her didn’t mean he was stupid enough to trust her.
“Something up?” Johnny asked meeting the fancy folk halfway.
Cassandra exchanged a glance with Riley who confirmed his permission for her to act with a nod. “We’ve decided on a change of plans. We’re not taking her to Galveston.”
Judging by the cold look in Cassandra’s eyes, he guessed things were about to take a nasty turn for Runt’s woman. “What have you got in mind?”
This time it was Riley who spoke, deciding he wasn’t going to leave all the dirty work for Cassandra. Besides, he wanted no ambiguity on what he wanted to be done. “I want her to confess she killed my brother,” he said meeting the outlaw’s eyes with dark intensity. “I want her to tell me before she dies, I want her to beg for forgiveness.”
“She don’t look like the kind to beg,” Johnny remarked, thinking on his brief conversation with the lady. If anything, Runt’s woman looked like she had a lot of spirit and breaking her wouldn’t be as easy as these two might think. “It could take a while.”
“I don’t care,” Riley repeated himself. “If you must make her scream it out loud, do it. I want her confession. I was under the impression from Cassandra you were men who could make this happen. Was she wrong?”
Johnny bristled, straightening up in annoyance which Cassandra saw immediately. While they might have him under their employ, it was wise to remember the man killed for a living and had been known to react badly to being treated like a servant.
“I’m sure Mr Miller here is more than capable,” she said quickly diffusing the situation. “I believe he is simply mindful how much time it will take.”
“It won’t take that long,” Johnny glanced at Zeke and Del, who were more than capable of making a woman talk if needed. “You want her to confess, we can do that.”
It appeared Zeke and Del just might get the taste they were wanting. While he didn’t like the idea of killing the woman, it was like he told Runt in Purgatory, it wasn’t personal.
Anything else he was thinking was interrupted by the sound of gunfire.
All three of them immediately ducked at the sounds, with Johnny thinking perhaps Runt had caught up to them after all, but the shots were coming from the river, followed by Del’s enraged shouting.
“YOU GET BACK HERE YOU BITCH!”
Del’s loud cry attracted the rest of the men to the scene as Johnny ran to meet Zeke. He arrived just in time to see the lady perched on the rocks, a good distance away. She’d used the cover of the bush to put as much distance between them as she could. Draped on the bushes where she used to make her demand for privacy, Johnny saw her dress, and petticoat, discarded. Clad in only her underthings, with her boots in her grip, she paused long enough to see their approach before jumping. Del squeezed off another round but she had already stepped off the rocks, to plunge into the water rushing by them.
Zeke and Del continued to fire at the frothy water as the doctor disappeared beneath it, with only a brief glimpse of her white underthings visible before the river’s strong current claimed her and swept her beyond their reach, into the night.
“Goddamnit!” Zeke cursed as he saw Johnny approach them, with Cassandra and Riley following close behind.
“How did she get past you?” Riley demanded. “I thought you said these men knew what they were doing!” He aimed his question at Cassandra and immediately saw Zeke stiffening in anger, taking great exception to the man’s tone.
“She was smart!” Zeke snapped, “made sure those bushes kept her out of sight, even when she was getting farther away.”
“Doesn’t matter how,” Johnny growled, giving Cassandra a warning look to rein in Riley’s mouth or money or not, Johnny would do it himself. “She’s heading downriver. She can’t stay under for long. We’ll run her down.”
*********
The cold swallowed her whole until she could feel its icicles burrowing into her skin like needles. She knew it was pure desperation that drove her to jump into the river but the truth was, Alex was a strong swimmer and knew freed of her cumbersome clothes, she could put a good distance between herself and her captors, with the aid of a strong current. Thanks to her father allowing Alex to ‘dress native’ in whatever country she and William Styles happened to be visiting at the time, Alex had learned to be quite adept in the water.
When she took her leave of Johnny Miller, she knew what needed to be done. She needed to get away from these men before they took her across the border where Vin would be forced to come after her. If she could delay them in any way, or keep out of their clutches long enough, Alex had faith Vin or Chris Larabee would find her but first, she had to get to the river.
Only in the water, did she have a chance of eluding them. Once there, Alex knew the current was strong enough to give her the speed needed to carry her far enough away from them, to make them rethink their plans. That took time she could use. She left enough of her clothing behind to ensure her movements would be unhindered and laced her boots together because she would need them once she returned to the shore.
Furthermore, Alex also left something for Vin. If he tracked her this far, she was convinced he would find it.
The instant she stepped out from the line of sight of the bushes, she knew they would see her. She started sprinting, now barefoot and unencumbered by layers of clothes. Fortunately, it took them a moment to realise what was happening and even longer to decide if they should shoot. They were meant to get her to Galveston alive and it was certainly something that could not be done with a bullet in her back.
The one called Del had given chase but he hadn’t been fast enough to keep her from jumping into the water. She dove down immediately and started swimming, allowing the powerful current to add more speed to her efforts. Under the waves, their voices were muted but the gunshots were not. She saw bullets whizzing past her as she stayed under for as long as she could, careful to avoid the rocks and boulders on the river bed, through the darkness.
Until one of the bullets met their mark.
Riley Marshall and Jay were gone by the time Vin and the others arrived at the embankment at dawn.
The trail had been non-existent until they got past the edge of the dust storm, with Vin picking up the tracks that escaped the harsh winds. It placed them on the main cattle trail to Texas and Vin supposed it made sense Jay might take this route.
Even if they intended to get out of the state fast, there were some realities Jay had to face, such as the need to keep their horses fresh and the imperative of seclusion. Besides, there was no way Alex would sit still and allow herself to be restrained if they got anywhere near a town. To save himself the trouble, he would avoid them altogether.
For the second time in months, Vin Tanner found himself staring at Alex’s dress, the pretty red one she bought in Sweetwater the last time they went there together, discarded on the ground.
He was grateful at least this time, it was not ripped to shreds as if it were torn off her back and there was no animal like Francis Lamont trying to rape her, surrounded by Klansmen. Vin remembered what it was like to find those scraps of fabric in that shack on the Jacobsen property, left on the floor like trash, with no signs of her anywhere. That night, he had prayed to the god he no longer had any faith in for her life and was rewarded. Was a similar gesture needed now?
Vin didn’t think so because this didn’t feel right. The dress was intact, lying in a pile at the base of a wild olive bush, one of the clusters of riparian vegetation framing the fast-moving river only a few feet away, beyond the rocks. It wasn’t just her dress either, there were several layers of undergarments including her corset, lying across the dirt.
“What did those bastards do to her?” Buck demanded, staring at the same scene Vin did. Horrified at the possibility Alex might have been subjected to rape, he felt his guilt at his culpability in this situation ratchet up another notch. Once again, he cursed himself for being taken in by Cassandra Heglund.
“None of these clothes are torn,” Chris pointed out, taking note of how the dress had been cast aside. There was no way the doctor would have cooperated with any violation of her body by undressing for her rapists. She was too proud and wilful for that.
Vin said nothing because his eyes were studying the tracks around the garments, trying to make sense out of them. Suddenly, his eyes glimpsed a handful of leaves near the collection of clothes and dropped to one knee next to them. He knew enough about the land to know leaves didn’t fall that way naturally. Brushing them away, he spotted the fresh mound of earth they concealed.
“What is it, Vin?” Chris asked, aware of the tension in the tracker’s gait as Vin examined the space.
“Not sure,” Vin replied, digging his fingers into the soft, damp soil and finding something almost immediately. It was hard and smooth. Clutching it, Vin extracted the object out of the soil and realised immediately what it was. The gold links and the small stones dangling from his hand was covered in grit but otherwise undamaged.
“This is Alex’s.” Vin stood up and held up the bracelet Vin was convinced Alex left behind for him. “Her Pa gave it to her. She’d never leave it behind unless she knew I’d find it.”
“Smart lady,” Josiah commented standing next to Buck, watching Vin as closely as Chris because like the gunslinger, Josiah knew how Vin felt about Alex and how volatile he could be when there was any danger to her.
Vin surveyed the ground and saw more tracks, they were overlapping each other but experience allowed him to shift through the conflicting indentations and prints. It was the bare footprints that struck him immediately. They were wider spaced, indicating flight and their direction led toward the river’s edge. Vin followed them to the large rock, with only Chris behind him. The gunslinger gestured the others to hold back as he joined Vin on the large boulder. Beneath them, the white water of the river continued to rush by with a loud hiss.
“I think she escaped,” he looked at Chris. “I think she escaped into the river.”
“Can she swim?” Chris asked the obvious question.
Vin had to think. During that ride to Agnes Doherty’s cabin, he remembered her mentioning wanting to take a swim in Whiskey Creek, but did that mean wading around or actual swimming? The question made him study the clothes she left behind again, and suddenly all the disparate pieces of information he had seen so far including what he knew of the woman, came together to form a picture of what had taken place here.
“She can swim,” he stated firmly, not because he knew it for certain but because the clues Alex left behind indicated it. “That’s why she took off her dress. Her shoes ain’t here but she’s barefoot. I think she made a run for the river.” Now he spoke the words out loud, Vin was more certain than ever. “She probably thought it could give her enough distance to keep ahead of them.”
Chris reached the same conclusion when he studied the scene himself. Alex rarely did anything without a plan. Even when he believed she was behaving typically female, she had more than enough ability to surprise him. When she rushed off to save Vin after Randall Mason delivered the tracker to bounty hunters months ago, Chris thought she was insane until they discovered she always had a plan to deal with those men.
“She wouldn’t be wrong about that,” Chris agreed but still, he winced at the ferocity of the river rushing past them and did not like to think Alex taking her chances in those currents. Aside from the jagged rocks jutting along the white water, the river was filled with detritus collected during its journey downstream, with broken branches, rotting leaves and other discarded pieces of flora. There were plenty of ways for her to get hurt if she chose this as her route of escape.
“They’re probably after her now!” Vin exclaimed, hurrying away from the edge. “She can’t stay in there all night. It was mighty cold for her to be wet for all that time.”
Chris followed him closely exchanging glances with the others who were allowing the tracker his space, aware of how worried he was about the doctor.
“Miller and his men will know that. They’re likely skimming the banks to see if they can spot her, “Chris declared, not waiting for Vin who was collecting Alex’s discarded clothes. Secretly, Chris was grateful for Alex’s escape attempt. Any tactic she could employ to delay her kidnappers from reaching the Texas border would keep Vin’s scent away from the Rangers. He couldn’t help wondering if that was her plan all along. It would be just the kind of thing she would do.
Vin said nothing for the moment, gathering the red garment and holding it to his face briefly, capturing the light whiff of her perfume clinging to the fabric. He used her scent to centre his mind on what was at stake. After a second, he saw the others already mounting their horses and hurried to join them.
Hang on Doc, he thought quietly to himself, I’m coming.
*********
At least she couldn’t feel the pain any more.
After spending most of the night in the river, she didn’t think she would ever know warmth again but so far, remaining mostly submerged had kept her hidden. Her white underthings were so covered in mud, they were now a mottled grey, allowing her to hide amongst the clusters of fallen logs and branches that ran along the river.
Despite her state, however, Alex ensured she left a trail of breadcrumbs for Vin to find. Tearing off pieces of fabric from her clothing, she left scraps of it, usually stuffed between rocks or buried under fresh mounds of earth because Alex knew he’d be able to see it. From what Chris and the rest of the seven often claimed, Vin was the best tracker in the Territory. If she left something behind for him, he’d find it. Her love for him was coupled with a faith as strong and she believed he would find her if she could just hold out.
Right now, however, it was the blood that concerned her. She was bleeding badly and her efforts to staunch the wound with the makeshift bandage did little to help the injury. The only thing keeping her from descending into shock was the bleeding slowed by the temperature of the river. Each time she emerged to plant her clues for Vin to find, she could feel its creep threatening to rob her of her faculties, or worse yet consciousness.
Alex had been hiding under what appeared to be an abandoned beaver dam, running across the width of the river. The structure was crumbling but left behind enough cover for Alex to remain hidden beneath it while she rested. However, with the amount of sediments, insects and God only knew what was floating in the water, and no doubt into the bullet wound, she was in danger of infection. It was bad enough she was hit in the abdomen and knew if she didn’t get treatment, she may well die of septic shock.
Moving slowly across the dwindling height of the water as she approached the embankment, she almost sobbed out loud at the pain. The lower half of her chemise had been sacrificed to make a bandage, but it was sodding wet and she could see the stain of blood spread over the filthy fabric. Groaning in pain as she clutched her side, she felt dizzy as she got to the shore. She’d lost her shoes despite her best efforts to hang onto them and climbed onto the muddy shore barefoot.
Alex was panting, aware she was in shock, even if the icy cold night had managed to stave it off. She took a moment to rest at the shoreline, trying to take stock of where she was. Deciding they were probably scouring the river’s edge to find her, she realised she was going to have to get to the other side to keep them off her trail. She hadn’t seen a crossing but that didn’t mean Riley and his men weren’t determine to dismount and come after her on foot. If they did that, she could not outrun them. Her plan of escaped had hinged on not being shot.
But not only was she shot, but she was also certain her injury was an abdominal one. Not a stomach wound, but she estimated an intestine had been nicked. Suddenly, she heard horses and sat bolt upright once more, searching the tree line for them. She didn’t have long to wait and was on her feet almost instantly, catching sight of three riders breaking through the branches and leaves to approach the embankment. She sighted Riley, Johnny and the man called Zeke.
Just as she saw them, they saw her. Alex scrambled to her feet, clutching her side as she dashed back into the river, determined to make it to the other side at least.
“Doctor Styles!” She heard Riley shouting after her. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be!”
She ignored him, not about to fall under his power again. The prolonged bleeding from the bullet wound was sapping her strength and she knew she had to regain some distance before she succumbed to it completely. As it was, she could feel the pains in her chest and the sweat against her skin, even though she ought to be shivering with cold. Splashing into the water, she jumped when she heard the exploding sound of a gun being fired.
Alex did not look over her shoulder to see which of the men had fired the weapon, knowing only that the bullet passed over her shoulder. She felt it whizzing by her skin and realised how close she had come to being hit again. Hoofbeats thundering behind her told Alex one of them was attempting to reach her on horseback. Uttering a frustrated cry because the pain prevented her from moving any faster, her situation was not helped by the slowing of the current in this part of the river.
It was Zeke who tackled her from the saddle of his horse. Guiding the animal into the water, he jumped off and landed on her hard.
“Where are you going bitch!”
He tackled her in one movement, sending them both into the river. With his weight landing on top of her, she sank all the way to the bottom, her head submerged as she felt water rush into her mouth and nose. With pain wracking her body, she was too slow to recover because the next thing she knew, his fingers were in her hair dragging her to her feet. Alex uttered a soft cry of pain followed by a louder one when he threw a punch into her stomach.
“Give us any more trouble and you’ll get more of that!” He shouted, anger in his voice, most likely because she escaped under his watch and probably endured some repercussions because of it.
The pain was so intense, she could not move, and Alex doubled over paralysed, clutching her stomach. Zeke’s fingers dug into her scalp as he dragged her out of the water towards Riley and Johnny on the shore. She was in a sorry state, clad in her underthings, her midriff showing her wound, while the rest of her was covered in mud from head to foot. Alex looked up and saw Johnny’s stormy face, and he supposed he was going to make her pay for taking advantage of his goodwill.
“Well Doctor,” Riley stared at her from astride his horse, taking her dishevelled state with some amusement. “Just what do you think you achieved with this action?”
Alex didn’t speak at first, she was trying to remain standing, despite Zeke’s fingers in her hair, holding her up. She clutched her bandaged side and more blood oozed past the stained fabric. Without the cold water slowing the bleeding, she was feeling everything now and it was starting to make her feel disorientated. The shock she managed to avoid most of the night was coming down on her like a ton of bricks.
“I got you to slow down didn’t I?” She eyed him defiantly.
“And got yourself shot doing it,” Johnny pointed out, staring at her hard. “Don’t seem all that smart.”
“Oh, she’s highly intelligent,” Riley said with a hint of smugness, wanting to break through that defiant expression on her face. “Too intelligent for her own good. She’s convinced me taking her back to England is a bad idea, so she’s going to die here.”
“Do it then!” Alex challenged him, aware of something he wasn’t. She was in shock and soon, she was going to be beyond anything he might try to do to her. “I’m already dying. This is an abdominal wound and unless either of you fools know how to do a transfusion, I don’t like my chances. At least, I’ll die without having to deal with any more pathetic members of the Mason family. You’re all like dogs with a bone.”
Riley jumped off his horse at the insult and strode towards her. Without saying another word, he punched her across the jaw, tearing her hair away from Zeke’s hand so she fell to the ground with a clump of it still in the man’s fist. He was furious even now, even while she was bedraggled and muddy, about to die, she still maintained her defiance.
“Don’t you talk about my family, you bitch!” Riley snapped, watching the lady fall to the muddy embankment. “Because of you, Randall went mad! You’re a half breed outcast, no decent man would ever touch! You should have been grateful my brother wanted you! Instead, you rejected him for what? A nothing drifter, without a penny to his name!”
“Yeah” Alex nodded, turning her head just enough to look at Riley. “I rather have a nothing drifter than a pathetic aristocrat who has to resort to kidnapping to get a woman. How could you expect me to love your brother when all I could feel for him was disgust and pity?”
The boot that landed in her stomach made Alex cough blood. She was starting to get disorientated when she heard him hiss in her ear.
“Before I’m done with you, you’re going to feel quite a bit. You’ll beg to tell me the truth.”
*********
Alex left him breadcrumbs.
After the discovery Alex escaped her kidnappers, they followed the river, pausing every so often because Vin realised Alex was leaving him a trail. While he was certain he’d missed a few during the search, he discovered enough of them to realise she was trying to help him find her. She knew he could read the land well enough to know what mound of earth was dug up by human hands and what was not. Such differences were easy enough to spot and every time, he found a fresh scrap, he let out a sigh of relief.
Until he realised she was leaving him another trail, one she was probably unaware of herself. Blood.
There was blood on the ground. Not a lot to be immediately noticeable by anyone other than him but it was there nonetheless. At almost every place they stopped, he saw it and seeing it made his heart clenched. The flow was steady, and it had not stopped despite the distance they covered along the river. Worse yet, she had been using the river to stay ahead of Marshall and Johnny. Yet the blood was still flowing, even though she had been in the cold water. Had she been shot while trying to escape?
“Vin, we’ll find her,” Chris assured him after Vin dismounted to fish out the latest clue Alex had left behind for him. This one hadn’t been as subtle as the others, a scrap of white cloth, clinging to a broken branch lying against the rocks at the river’s edge. Chances were Miller might have seen this too, but then that was always the risk.
“She’s bleeding bad Chris,” Vin spoke as he clutched the bloody fabric in his hands.
Chris tensed, wishing they had been able to wait for Nathan to get back from Eagle Bend before leaving Four Corners. However, if they did that, the gap between them and Alex’s abductors would have been widened even further and at the time, they could not afford it. Not if the lawmen wanted to catch up to them before they reached the Texas border. Alex bought them time with her escape, halting their progress by making them search the river. The gunslinger had to admire the lady for staying ahead of the enemy, obviously having picked up some things from Vin since they began their love affair, but it was distance she was paying for in blood.
“But she’s a doctor,” JD spoke up, seeing the distress in Vin’s eyes as he climbed back into the saddle. “She’d know how to fix herself up right?”
“Depends on how badly she was hit,” Josiah drawled, seeing the same worry on the tracker’s face.
“Alex is tough,” Buck stated firmly, always the optimist, even more so now because the possibility his relationship with Cassandra might result in Alex’s death was than he could stand.
Vin didn’t answer because he knew just how much blood loss there was, and it was no small wound Alex was suffering. She hadn’t managed to stem the flow from where she had escaped until now. It meant it was a little bit more than a flesh wound and he feared what state she’d be in when he finally caught up to her. The idea he might lose Alex even if he did rescue her, filled Vin with such terror he could barely think. All he could do was to shove fear into someplace deep because he had no time to deal with it now.
Vin climbed back into the saddle, having shoved the scrap of cloth into his pocket, joining the other bits he had found on route here. He didn’t know why he was keeping them but couldn't bring himself to throw them away either.
Then he heard the gunshot.
All five men exchanged furious glances with each other as the shot shattered the silence of the morning air, the way only something unnatural could do in such a rustic setting. There were two shots, the first had surprised them but the second told them exactly how far away it was, and which direction to go.
“It came from further down the river!” Chris exclaimed meeting Vin’s gaze. He no sooner said those words before they dug their heels into their mounts and the quintet of horses broke into a furious gallop.
Vin didn’t know what those shots were but if any other bullet harmed Alex, God help the son of a bitch that pulled the trigger.
*********
Johnny Miller stood watching impassively as Riley Marshall stood over Runt’s woman, Alexandra Styles and with Del and Zeke’s help, prepared to exact his vengeance over his brother’s death. Around them, the rest of his men were gathered on the embankment of the river where they had recaptured the woman, watching the proceedings with interest. Cassandra stood next to him, her expression glacial as she watched the doctor bleeding against the dirt, staring at Riley with stubbornness that would no doubt have pissed off the Englishman because what the man wanted to see was fear.
Johnny was certain he wasn’t going to get that.
There was something in her eyes, almost manic. The fierce determination to keep her head up no matter what they did to her was impressive. Johnny could see the blood pulsing beneath the filthy bandage she wrapped around her waist to stop the bleeding and knew whatever Del’s bullet had done, it was bad. She knew she was hurt and possibly wasn’t long for this world. He had to admire her for wanting to go out with her head held high. Hell knows he’d do the same.
“You okay with this?” Johnny asked Cassandra next to him.
Cassandra would prefer they just killed the woman, but Riley needed his confession to justify the action he was taking against the doctor was deserved. She had no thoughts on the matter really. Randall was an obsessive fool who finally went after someone who wouldn’t tolerate his behaviour. He deserved what happened to him, but she was here because Riley wanted vengeance and since she was being well paid as an intermediary, she cared little beyond that.
“She’s a half-caste murderer,” Cassandra shrugged, “and I don’t care what he does as long as I get paid.” She turned her gaze at him. “Do you?”
“No,” Johnny replied promptly. “Not at all. This isn’t personal.” He repeated himself and wished he didn’t feel this gnawing in his gut at breaking faith with the brotherhood of misery, he’d forged with Runt in that goddamned state orphanage.
Meanwhile, Alex was disorientated from more than just the blows Del seemed to enjoy inflicting on her while Riley continued to shout at her, demanding a confession. She was well into shock now, noticing a dozen symptoms attached to the condition, to know if she didn’t get treatment soon, she’d die.
“Tell me, Doctor!” Riley slapped her again and Alex’s head snapped back, hardly feeling it.
“She’s spirited,” Del grinned at Zeke. “I can make her talk if that’s what you want Mr Marshall.” The lascivious gleam in his eyes made his intention plain.
Riley did not like this idea, but he was furious at seeing her defiance. So far, the beatings had done little to move her and he realised a more intimate assault might be necessary. He wanted this odious task done with, so he could get back to his life but before he killed the woman, his own conscience demanded to know he was right, that she had indeed killed Randall.
“Do what you have to do,” Riley turned away, not wishing to see it. “But I want to hear her tell the truth.”
Alex’s eyes shot to Del whose hands were already moving towards his belt buckle. She recognised the gleam in his eyes and suddenly knew death was not on the table anymore, not yet anyway. Her eyes widened as she saw the leer in Zeke’s eyes, indicating, he would take his turn right after Del. She was on the ground but that prompted her to move, to get away before this got any worse.
“Come on Doctor,” Del reached for her leg, “now we can play.”
The words, which were the same Francis Lamont had used on her, penetrated her stubborn demeanour far more effectively than anything Riley had so far threatened her with. It snapped her control and she tried to scramble away on her hands and knees, only to have the man grab her ankle and drag her back to him. Kicking and screaming, Alex clawed at the sand, determined to prevent this awful thing from happening to her.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” She screamed.
She didn’t get far when a boot came down on her spine, forcing her to land on her stomach, while she was pinned against the pebbled ground. “Not so fast doctor,” Zeke sneered. “We ain’t done with you yet. You got a confession to make.”
Alex uttered another cry of pain, warm blood pulsing out of the wound at that action. She was starting to blackout.
“What words?” Alex finally grunted, looking over her shoulder at Riley standing next to Zeke, watching the proceedings even though it was clear he had no taste for this but was determined to see it through nonetheless. Well, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. “That I killed Randall? Let me think. No, I didn’t kill him.”
Riley’s face showed his disbelief immediately and he nodded at Del, whose sneer at being allowed to do his worst split his face in half. As Riley and Zeke stepped back to let him get down to business, Del started dragging her towards him again, his wrists clamped on her ankles. Panic filled Alex and she finally decided to let Riley have what he so desperately wanted.
“I didn’t kill him!” She spat and then added with an almost sadistic smile. “The embalming did that.”
Riley’s eyes widened, and he pushed past Del to hover over her, grabbing her hair so she was forced to look at him. “What do you mean?”
The disorientation, the exhaustion, not to mention the pain, had finally snapped Alex’s desire to remain silent and she decided if he wanted the truth, so be it. If she was going to die, she was going to give Riley Marshall all the truth he wanted. Let him sleep well after that.
Smiling at him, her teeth stained with blood, Alex looked almost savage as she gave him a sinister smile. “I dosed him with curare. Do you know what that is? It’s the same drug South American Indians use to hunt. All they have to do is shoot a dart into the animal and sit back and watch. In seconds, it starts to paralyse them, so they can’t even move. Oh, they’re still alive but they can’t do anything, not even blink. Their heart rate is so slow, you would think they were dead.”
“Jesus,” She heard Zeke say next to Riley.
Interested in her confession, Johnny and Cassandra left their spectator positions and approached them, wanting to hear the doctor’s final words because she would certainly die after her confession.
“After he shot me in the back,” Alex spoke loudly, letting her eyes move not to Riley but to the gunmen watching because, in the Territory, there wasn’t a much lower act than shooting another man in the back. If she was going to admit to murdering Randall, she would have them know what kind of man he was. “I paid him a little visit in jail. He told me your family would get him out of trouble, even after he tried to kill me, my fiancé, a village full of people. No matter what, your connections would get him off.”
“Just get to it!” Riley barked, noticing the disgust seeping into the eyes of the men around him. While they would do nothing to jeopardise their payday, he could see the standing of his cause decreasing rapidly in their eyes.
“He wasn’t ever going to stop,” Alex continued. “He was going to keep coming back until one of us was dead. Your brother had become rabid and I decided to put him down. It's what you do to a dog.”
He slapped her again, but Alex was too weak to care. She raised her head and looked at him, her glare icy. “When I offered him my hand, he was actually stupid enough to take it. Once I had him, I put enough curare in him to make sure he couldn’t move a muscle. I’m a very good doctor you know, I knew how much to give him to make sure he didn’t register a heartbeat. When they took him away to the undertaker,” she smiled, “he was still alive.”
“Fuck,” she heard Del hiss. “You mean he was alive when they were cutting him up?”
“Alive and awake for everything.”
Riley moved to strike her again, but Alex kept speaking. “Randall killed my father, taking away from me the only person I loved because he refused to give Randall his blessing for my hand! I was never going to let Randall get away with that! I was not going to live looking over my shoulder, waiting for him to murder Vin or any children we might have, because that was what your brother was reduced to by the time I put him down, and you know what? For what he did to my father, I wanted him to scream and I hope he did, right until the moment they gutted him!”
The horror of her words made Riley’s throat go dry and the fear and agony Randall must have endured in his last moments of life made him turn immediately to Zeke who was standing next to him. He snatched the man’s gun out of Zeke’s holster and aimed it straight at her face, prepared to shoot her dead where she stood.
He never got a chance to pull the trigger because no sooner than he’d taken aim, Zeke’s chest exploded outwards, spraying him in blood.
*********
It took every ounce of strength Vin Tanner possessed when he and the lawmen of Four Corners finally closed in on Alex, to not react to seeing Riley taking his fists to her. There were at least five men surrounding her, not including Riley and the woman Cassandra. He saw Jay standing there, watching the woman he loved being brutalised, covered in mud and blood, looking as if she was at the end of her rope. He thought she’d looked terrible when he and Buck fished her out of that well, but it was nothing compared to seeing her like this.
From the crimson soaked bandage she made, using a strip of cloth torn from her undergarment, Vin could tell where she was hit, and it was as bad as he feared. He needed to get her to Nathan quickly if it was not already too late. It wasn’t just her injury though, it was the look in her eyes. He’d never seen her look that way before. Her eyes were black with fury. For a minute she didn’t look too different from Chris after the gunslinger learned about Fowler and what the man had done to Sarah and Adam.
Alex had always clung to her doctor’s oath to do no harm and learning she killed Randall, no matter how much it was justified, surprised him. However, hearing for himself, the details of her final confrontation with Randall Mason, Vin understood why she reacted as she had. It wasn’t just about Randall’s murder of William Styles, it was also about him and their future together.
While he knew Alex was his soulmate from the moment he met her, and every day after that had been an odyssey of pain because she had given her affections to Ezra first, Vin’s thoughts about Alex had never progressed beyond wanting to be with her. Even after their love had become a mutual affair, what lay between them remained unspoken. He assumed there was no need for it because they loved each other and whatever happened would unfold with time.
It never occurred to Vin, Alex saw their future together as man and wife as early as their first night together. When they got engaged, he assumed it was done to keep silent the wagging tongues in Four Corners after that whole business with Nicholas Serfonteine. Vin never realised she was waiting for him to solidify their relationship because she already saw him as the father of her children. It made him a little ashamed after sharing her bed for months, he had taken so long to formalise their relationship
Chris could see Vin fighting the urge to react and kept the man in place, by keeping a hand securely clamped over the tracker’s shoulder. Buck and the others were spreading out stealthily across the area, trying to find the best place for cover when the shooting started, and they put the outlaws out there in a crossfire. Even so, none of them would react until he gave the signal which had only one flaw, keeping Vin under control. The man could be downright savage when it came to Alex and Chris was probably the only one who could restrain him.
Still, Chris could understand Vin’s difficulty as he saw what Alex was enduring and in what condition she was presently in. They had held back from riding in shooting to keep Alex from getting hurt but looking at her current state, he knew it wouldn't make that much difference. Nevertheless, listening to her words to Riley did make him smile inwardly, at how perfectly exquisite her justice to Randall Mason had been. While he guessed by the tic in Vin’s jaw, her revelation about Randall’s threat of relentless pursuit bothered the tracker, Chris understood perfectly.
For years, Ella Gaines had lain in the shadows like a serpent in the dark, waiting for the right moment to spring. Chris never had any idea of the danger she represented, having dismissed her as an old love he left behind in the past. The cost of that assumption was losing Sarah and Adam in a fiery death. Whether or not Alex was using him as an example of what might be if Randall wasn’t dealt with, Chris could not say, but he could surely understand why she would kill him. While nothing about murder was ever rational, Alex’s decision was nothing but logical.
Unfortunately, it was an argument lost on Riley because the instant the man went for his gun, Chris knew their time had run out.
Vin reacted first, putting down the man who stood between him and Riley. Zeke, he recalled and fired the rifle once and in Vin’s case, one shot was all that was needed. The man’s chest became a spray of blood covering Riley as Zeke sank to his knees, dead before he even hit the dirt. No sooner than he fired the weapon, he took aim at Riley, even as Jay’s men scattered for cover, with the leader of the gang, searching the tree line for the source of the shot.
It didn’t matter because this was the opportunity Buck, Josiah and JD used to open fire, their bullets coming from the opposite direction. Next to him, Chris’s peacemaker fired, ending Del with a single bullet to the head. It was a shot the gunslinger was happy to deliver with brutal precision, especially after what the scum had intended to do to Alex. Riley dove for the ground the instant Vin fired again, convinced and rightly so, the next bullet fired would be for him. Still clutching Zeke’s gun, he scrambled towards Alex.
“Chris!” Vin called out, seeing the man closing in on the woman he loved, still on the ground. “Cover me!”
“Vin!” Chris snapped, knowing that the area was too open for Vin to make a run for Alex. Of course, he also knew if it was Mary, he’d be doing the same thing. “Just keep your goddamn head down!”
“Always pard,” Vin cast him a glance and ran out.
*********
When Alex saw Zeke die, she knew Vin had come.
Knowing he was out there and not just him, but Chris and the others too, Alex knew she had to move. There was pain everywhere, but she had to get out of the line of fire so Vin and the seven could do what was necessary. With reserves she did not think she possessed, she got to her feet, her adrenaline surging with the explosion of gunfire. She saw Riley starting to recover and knew he’d come after her because like his brother, he was obsessed.
Clutching her wounded side, Alex started to run, heading towards the bushes she could see nearby, intending to lose herself in the vegetation. Once in the woods, Vin would be able to track her with little trouble.
“You’re not getting away that easily!” Riley closed the distance, the gun aimed in her direction as he came forward. Alex didn’t care, she wasn’t going to stop running until she got to the tree line.
When he fired, she was weaving across the ground, determined to make it difficult for him, even though she was gasping in agony, her hand pressed against her side like she was suffering a bad cramp instead of a gunshot wound. Uttering a soft cry as the bullet grazed her thigh, Alex kept going ignoring the burning heat against her flesh that made her eyes water. Still, the pain gave her some measure of clarity and she saw the woods that were maddeningly close, even as Riley shouted after her, demanding that she stop.
Reaching the shrubbery, she hoped she could lose him in the bushes and trees, but as her bare feet crushed rotting leaves and twigs on the ground, she could hear him behind her and her strength was giving out. Suddenly, she slid on a slight ditch of mud and went tumbling down, landing so hard on her side the agony almost made her pass out. Curling up into a ball, she hugged her knees in pain only to see Riley come up to her, with gun brandished, ready to fire.
“It’s time you paid for your sins doctor.”
*********
Cassandra Heglund knew when to cut and run. When she saw the first man go down and the bullets erupting from the bushes, she knew it was time to leave. The doctor’s gamble to delay them had obviously worked because this ambush could only be the result of Buck’s friends tracking them down. As Johnny barked orders at his men to act, she ran for the wagon that awaited beyond the shore, on the other side of the tree line.
Keeping her head down, she left behind the hail of bullets traded by the two camps and noted another one of Johnny’s men hitting the dirt. Del, she recognised. The man collapsed onto the dirt where what was left of his brain matter soaked into the shore. Her stomach hollowed as she disappeared into the trees, searching for the trail through the length of the tall, thin tree trunks that covered much of this country.
Lifting her skirts like the lady she was, she trudged across the damp soil and rotted leaves, the sound of gunfire growing distant as she crossed the terrain to make her escape. Her wagon was just in sight when suddenly, she heard a tree branch snap behind her, followed by the slow cock of a gun.
"I ain’t never shot a lady, but I’m willing to make today a first,” Buck Wilmington said coldly.
Cassandra let out a heavy sigh, like a child who’d gotten caught and knew she was going to have to face the music. She turned around with a little sigh, trying to decide how to play this. She knew something of the man and was fairly convinced she could extricate herself from this situation if she appealed to his affection.
“Buck, you have to understand this wasn’t personal,” she said taking a step backwards.
“Don’t,” he warned, more than accustomed to women who employed the feminine arts to get what they wanted. He’d spent enough time in the company of Julia Pemberton to know the technique. He only wished he had seen through Cassandra earlier. After much reflection, Buck knew she had been playing him the instant she realised who he was and what his affiliation was to Alex.
“What we shared, it meant something to me.” She insisted.
“I’m sure it did,” he said with utter scepticism. “It meant you got all the information you needed about Alex, not to mention my friends so you could stage your little ambush.”
He thought about Ezra’s injuries, the death of Wallis the stagecoach driver, a good man he liked and of course, the scene they happened upon when they finally caught up to Alex. Like Vin, it had taken every ounce of restraint he had to not rush out there and shoot Riley down like a dog for what he was doing to Alex. Nothing incensed Buck more than seeing a man beat on a woman, to say nothing of one who was his friend. Alex was his friend and one of the finest people he knew. She was also the love of one of his best friends and Buck did not take kindly to anyone treating his friends that way.
“Buck, that’s my job. I collect information, I can’t be held accountable for what it’s used for can I?” She started to back away slowly, keeping him talking as she widened the gap between them, confident he had enough feeling for her to not pull the trigger. Cassandra could see the hurt in his eyes and knew she could play on that affection to make her escape.
“Ms Heglund,” Buck said formally, “I wouldn’t take another step if I were you.”
“Ms Heglund?” She smiled at him, doing it anyway. “You didn’t call me that when we were alone together.”
“You hadn’t gotten around to trying to kill me and my friends yet,” he returned just as smoothly, aware she would probably try to switch tactics once she realised her words were not going to sway him. “One more warning is all you get Ms Heglund.” He cocked the gun.
“You don’t...”
Before she could finish the sentence, he pulled the trigger. The bullet flew past her and struck the bark of the trunk of the aspen behind her. It drove into the wood, creating a tan chip in the surface as splinters flew out in all directions. Cassandra reacted with a startled cry of fright at the abruptness of it all and she stared at him with shock when the ringing in her ears subsided.
“You were saying?” Buck asked.
“It wasn’t all a lie,” she admitted with a sigh, conceding defeat at the realisation she was going nowhere. “I did like you, but I had a job to do, and you were useful.” For some reason, Cassandra felt the need to explain. She saw the emotion in his eyes and realised he had cared for her and to her surprise, she felt it affecting. “It was beautiful, what it was but I think we both knew it for what it was, didn’t we?”
“Maybe I did,” Buck couldn’t deny that, “but that still don’t change how this is going to go.”
“And how is it going to go?” Cassandra stared at him, watching him approach and knew there would be no talking her way out of it because his hurt had made him unmovable.
“With you in jail for what you’ve done,” Buck reached her and jammed the gun in her side. “Now move it. I ain’t gonna kill you Cassie, but you are going to do as I tell you one way or another.”
Cassandra frowned, realising he was far stronger than she gave him credit and was going to come undone for the presumption. “This isn’t over between us you know Buck.” She said as he nudged her forward towards her wagon. They would need the buckboard for Alex.
“Probably not, but that’s another day. Get moving.”
*********
Johnny saw Cassandra take off as soon as the shooting started and was hardly surprised. The kind of woman she was, made her extremely predictable. Johnny for his part, ran for cover, finding concealment in a boulder so slight, he practically had to get on his knees to take advantage of it. With gunfire exploding in three different directions around them, Johnny knew he and his men were in trouble. As it was, he could see Zeke and Del bleeding into the ground, both very much dead.
The emergence of Runt from the bushes, taking after Marshall who was running the doctor down, told Johnny Runt’s gang had them surrounded and caught in a crossfire. With virtually no cover on this embankment and Runt’s men having the advantage, Johnny had a pretty good idea they would continue shooting until he and his gang were picked off one by one. Furthermore, it was likely he and his men weren’t getting paid for their troubles now the lawmen had caught up to them.
This job hadn’t felt right since Johnny learned about Runt’s part in it. Not to mention, the more Johnny listened to Runt’s woman talk about this Mason fella, the more he found himself admiring her. Instead of letting this bastard come after her, she’d taken care of him and quite nicely too. Once the money was taken off the table, Johnny’s opinions became his own again and right now, he had no wish to die when he wasn’t even going to get paid for it.
Thinking quickly, he weighed his options. Johnny Miller was a survivor and he had done so by learning to be pragmatic when making decisions, devoid of pride or emotion. When he attacked, he did so for a reason, letting nothing hold him back to reach his end, not even morality. They could fight it out, but Riley Marshall was no match for Runt and went Runt came out of those bushes, the man would be madder than hell. Having been on the other end of that fury once before, Johnny knew he had no wish to tangle with Runt’s rage.
In fact, the best solution right now was a rather easy choice to make.
“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” He shouted, not just at Runt’s men but to what remained of his own. Only Campos and Rebbi were still standing, the others were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, while their blood stained the pebbled embankment. “Campos! Rebbi! Hold your fire!”
The shooting tapered off with that command and Campos, hidden behind a log, riddled with bullets, his clothes covered with wood dust and splinters, raised his head just enough to meet Johnny’s eyes to make sure he had heard right. “What?”
“You heard me!” Johnny repeated. “We ain’t dying for nothing. You hear me, we ain’t getting paid and I ain’t fighting for free! You want to die for that?”
Another voice entered the conversation, and this was a voice Johnny did not know, filled with calm deliberation. “Drop your guns and no one else has to die.”
The man who stepped out of the trees with supreme confidence, his peacemaker held steady in front of him, was someone Johnny recognised immediately as the one you didn’t take lightly. With a flash of insight, Johnny suddenly realised the enemy wasn’t Runt’s men, but those of this black-garbed gunslinger in front of him. This stranger with the icy blue eyes who exuded menace and a warning with his hard stare, would not hesitate to bring this gunfight to a bloody end if Johnny didn’t capitulate right this minute.
Johnny thought for a moment, it might be damn interesting to face this man on more even ground but right now this wasn’t it.
“Tell you what,” Johnny proposed instead, standing up from behind the boulder, so he and the man in black could meet each other eye to eye. Like the gunslinger, Johnny had his own Remington aimed in his direction. “This whole thing is becoming might more trouble than it’s worth and I ain’t got no loyalty to Mr Marshall, especially when it don’t look like we’re getting paid for the men we’ve lost. Seems to me, we might be able to reach an understanding.”
The instant Miller ordered his men to stop shooting, Chris guessed he was attempting to extricate himself from this situation without losing any more of his gang or his life if it could be avoided. Chris wanted an end to the fighting because they could not afford to waste time. Alex was hurt, and she needed a doctor herself, once Vin caught up to her and Marshall out there in the woods. Whether Riley Marshall would need the same treatment was another thing entirely because Vin tended to react with extreme violence to those who dared to put a hand to his lady.
“It’s possible,” Chris spoke up. “I think it might be easier for everyone if you and your men got on your horses and start riding out of the Territory. I hear the senoritas in Mexico are pretty accommodating at this time of the year.” He remarked aware both Josiah and JD had their guns aimed at Miller during this palaver.
Johnny regarded the gunslinger with a faint smile, “I reckon they are.”
With that, he lowered the barrel of the gun and made a gesture of conciliation before sheathing the weapon back in its holster. “We’re taking Del and Zeke with us,” he glanced at the dead men lying across the ground. “Give ‘em a proper burial.”
“We won’t stop you,” Chris nodded at them to proceed, “but anyone of you try anything stupid,” he gestured to Campos and Rebbi, “and you’ll be dead before you know you’ve screwed up.”
“I reckon that’s fair,” Johnny nodded at his remaining men, “Come on boys. Let’s get out of here.”
Neither Campos nor Rebbi appeared as if they liked the idea of tucking tail and running but recognised how untenable their situation had become. Showing their agreement with slight nods, they obeyed Johnny begrudgingly before making a move towards their fallen comrades. This fight wasn’t worth it, and they weren’t prepared to die today for anything. Rebbi went to grab Del while Campos did the same for Zeke, lifting the man over his shoulders and dragging his body off the embankment, all the while with the gunslinger’s peacemaker watching their every move.
As Johnny prepared to leave, he said finally to the man in black. “Tell Runt, it wasn’t personal, and I’ll see him again sometime soon.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed at that, uncertain whether or not a threat was implied but replied coolly nonetheless. “We’ll be waiting.”
*********
Alex stared at the barrel of the gun as Riley Marshall stood over her.
Aside from the fact she was in shock, probably bleeding to death and covered in bruises and cuts from a night spent in the river, Alex found it funny, it was the sprained ankle she noticed the most. Keeping her eyes fixed on him, she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her frightened. Sitting in the mud, staring up at him, she was too tired to move and frankly, too exhausted to care anymore.
“If you’re going to kill me,” she glared at him. “Get it over with but you’re not going to hear me say I’m sorry. Your brother was a rabid dog and I did the world a favour by putting him down.”
“Well, I’ll be happy to do the same for you,” he cocked the gun and was about to fire when suddenly something twirled through the air and struck the man in his arm. Riley uttered a cry of pain as the knife was driven into his bicep, the shock of it making him squeeze the trigger but the shot went wild. Alex ducked in reaction but where the bullet ended up was anyone’s guess. Instead, she saw the familiar hilt of a knife sticking out of the man’s flesh.
Alex quickly looked to where the blade originated and saw Vin bursting out of the bushes, heading towards Riley, who despite the pain, saw the tracker’s approach and tried to take aim. Without thinking twice, Alex kicked out suddenly, the ball of her foot connecting with his ankle and throwing Riley off balance before he could squeeze the trigger. It was just enough delay to allow Vin to close the distance.
Not giving Riley the chance to try again, Vin leapt forward and downed the man in a full-body tackle, toppling Riley to the ground. The force of his attack made the foreigner lose his grip on the gun and it went flying, landing soundlessly against the soft ground, covered in mud and leaves. Vin did not care much for where exactly it was, only that it was out of Riley’s reach. Besides, Vin wasn’t going to need a gun to deal with him. Not after what he had seen the man do to Alex. Rolling onto his knees while Riley was still reeling from the attack, not to mention the pain caused by the knife sticking out of his arm, Vin slammed a fist against his jaw, snapping the man’s head backwards.
“How about you try beating on someone who can fight back?” Vin growled before throwing a second punch, this one, shattering Riley’s nose, sending spurts of blood across the man’s face and against his knuckles.
Clutching his bloody nose with one hand, Riley managed to throw a punch back at the lawman, who bent backwards to avoid the strike, giving him just enough time to get to his knees before Vin Tanner attacked again. Blood was running down his arm, leaving droplets against the damp leaves as he saw the enemy close in with nothing less than murder in his eyes.
Intending the man to feel as much pain as he inflicted on the woman he loved, Vin closed the narrow space between himself and Riley. This time, Vin avoided the formality of throwing a punch and simply grabbed the hilt of the knife still protruding from Riley’s arm. He twisted the blade hard, forcing a scream of pain from Riley before tearing it from the man’s flesh with a vicious yank. While Riley was gripped in agony over that action, Vin grabbed him by his jacket and pulled him forward, slamming his forehead against Riley’s skull, this time sending the man to the ground, flat on his back.
Vin had every intention of beating the man senseless when suddenly a single gunshot stopped both men in their tracks. The bullet hit the ground next to Riley’s head, causing leaves and mud to splatter against the foreigner. Riley clutched his ear at the sound, ears probably ringing from the loud bang. Both men turned towards Alex, who was standing a few feet away from them, with the gun in her shaking hands. Her eyes were glazed, appearing as if she couldn’t focus. She looked ready to drop.
Forgetting all about Marshall, Vin got to his feet immediately, the fist of rage gripping his mind a moment ago, giving way to concern as he saw the state she was in. Frankly, he was amazed she was still standing. Despite her horrific condition, there was something in her eyes, black and unreadable that made him uneasy. The way she was aiming that disconcerting glare at Riley had enough power to make him forget about the man and go to Alex.
Coming up alongside her, he covered her shaking hands with his, trying to give her comfort in the manner he had done some months ago when he unwittingly won her heart without even realising it. “Alex, honey, let me have the gun.”
The sound of his voice seemed to register in her ears then, dispelling the cold mask on her face to one filled with relief. She relaxed her grip of the weapon and looked up at him, eyes brimming with emotion when she saw those familiar cobalt coloured eyes. “I knew you’d find me,” she said with a small smile.
“You’re my woman ain’t you?” he kissed her forehead gently, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, while keeping the gun trained on Riley, daring the man to move.
“Always cowboy,” she leaned into him, his warmth against her body making the pain feel just a little less. “Always.”
Once he was sure Miller and his gang were gone, Chris Larabee went in search of Vin and Alex. It didn’t take the gunslinger long to find the couple shrouded within the woods flanking the river. Despite himself, Chris was relieved to see Riley Marshall, or more accurately Riley Mason, still in one piece when he reached the place of their final confrontation. Considering Vin’s extreme reaction to anyone who harmed Alex, Riley was lucky to still have his head attached to his body, even if he didn’t entirely escape Vin’s wrath. Chris could see enough blood and wounds on the man to indicate he had not emerged from his abduction of Alex unscathed.
While Vin’s mare’s leg was still in its holster, Chris assumed the unfamiliar weapon the tracker was aiming at Riley was the man’s own gun. Vin was holding the man at bay, appearing as if he were waiting for one of his comrades to arrive. The younger man let out a sigh of relief when he saw it was Chris stepping into the small clearing. With Alex's ruises and injuries, Chris wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t seen her in such a state since the night of her abduction by the Klan and a repeat of it now, made his jaw clench in anger. There and then, Chris made up his mind, the couple needed to get riding to Four Corners right away or to any town close by with a doctor.
“Vin,” Chris announced himself.
“Chris,” Vin acknowledged him with a nod. “You want to deal with this trash while I take Alex back to town.”
“I got him,” Chris replied. He hadn’t holstered his gun since the gunfight with Miller and his men and now aimed the peacemaker at Riley’s direction. “Miller’s gone,” he directed the comment at the foreigner. “Decided he wasn’t going to get cut down in a crossfire when it didn’t look like he was going to get paid. So, it looks like it's just you and Cassandra, Mr Mason.”
“Go to hell,” Riley hissed angrily. “You call yourselves lawmen? You’re protecting a murderer! This isn’t over I’ll come...”
But before he could finish that sentence, Alex who until now seemed barely aware of anything as she clung to Vin, suddenly came alive and pulled away from her fiancé, to cut him off.
“You’ll do nothing.” She hissed, taking a slow but ginger step towards Riley Marshall.
“Doc, be careful,” Vin warned, not wanting her anywhere near the bastard.
“I’ll be fine,” she spoke as if she barely registered the warning and paused beyond arm’s length of the prisoner, confident both Chris and Vin’s guns would protect her if he tried to make a move. She had more faith in these two men than the heavens above. Staring at Riley, she glared at him with cold hatred.
“Get this through your head right now because, after today, I’m done with you and your family.” Her voice was so cold and so far removed from her usual tone, it chilled Vin’s blood to hear it. Chris merely watched in interest, thinking he had seen killers with kinder eyes.
“If you manage to slither out of what you’ve tried to do to me and get home to England, you better stay there because you’re not the only one who has family there. Mine may not care about me, but I swear to you they will very much mind what your brother did to my father. I’ll make sure if anything happens to either me or Vin, the whole of London society will know Randall murdered my father, was prepared to kill me and butcher an entire village of women and children.”
“You don’t have any proof of that!” Riley spat.
“In London society, that’s not really needed is it?”
Vin and Chris who knew nothing about English aristocracy or the reverential attention it paid to propriety and reputation, caught Riley flinching at the threat and knew Alex was absolutely right.
Riley said nothing because his decision to kill the woman instead of bringing her back to England was based on that ugly possibility. Scandal was more fatal to the aristocracy than the loss of a favourite son. His mother would have to accept that as unpalatable as it might be to her. Still, the defiance hadn’t entirely left Riley and he glared at the doctor, furious at being thwarted by this woman and her primitive associates.
“So, what, I am to let you get away with killing my brother?”
“Why not?” Vin spoke up before Alex could. “Your brother got away with murdering her pa.”
“And we do have proof of what he did here,” Chris added. “I can have a dozen folk from the Seminole village willing to put down on paper, your brother ordering his men to gun them down. I got three decent, law-abiding women who are willing to make a statement that your brother’s employee, Mr Rihs ordered their abduction to keep the law busy while he went after Doctor Styles. We have a lot more proof about what your brother did than your confession from the lady, extracted under the threat of rape.”
Chris’s words were like a lash and Riley glowered in impotent fury because each word drew blood.
“And if that’s not enough,” Alex said after she gave Chris a grateful smile before returning her attention to Riley. “If you ever come back here, I’ll be as merciful to you as I was to your brother. Don’t make the mistake of assuming my being a healer, will save you if I ever see you again."
Leaning forward, she spoke with a tone of menace, not unlike that of a she-wolf ordering away interlopers to her den. She spoke in a tone so cold it told the Englishman, her next words were a warning he better pay attention to. Randall, Francis and now Riley had created a perfect storm of hatred inside her that was finally finding its voice.
“I know how to keep you alive while I’m carving you up like a Sunday roast. I know what arteries to keep the blood flowing so you’re conscious while I amputate every limb on your body until all that’s left of you is a stump that needs wheeling around on a cart. With a scalpel, I can make you do it while you’re deaf, dumb and blind. The worst they can do to you is kill you,” she glanced at Vin and Chris respectively. “I can keep you alive and make you wish you were dead. Randall went to his death screaming. With you, I won’t be that kind.”
“And we’ll be happy to help,” Chris remarked with a vicious sneer as he exchanged a look with Vin who seemed somewhat taken back by the vehemence of Alex’s threat, but said nothing to refute her words.
In truth, Vin had no idea whether Alex could ever carry out such actions but judging by the fear he saw in Riley Marshall's eyes, it didn’t matter, she sounded convincing enough to make him believe it.
*********
Leaving Chris and the others to deal with Riley Marshall and Cassandra Heglund, Vin decided not to waste time getting to Four Corners by wagon, not when Alex’s formidable rage had burned itself out and her remaining strength had finally dwindled. When her legs gave out under her, Vin was there to catch her, and he spared just enough time to wrap up her wound and stem the bleeding before they were riding hard to Four Corners.
During the ride, he ruminated on what took place in the clearing. Vin had no idea she harboured such darkness inside of her but supposed after the ordeal of the last two months, he couldn’t blame her. Being pursued by Randall Mason, brutalised by Francis Lamont and by extension, the Klan, and then abducted by Randall’s brother Riley. After all that, he couldn’t blame her for her rage. People often underestimated how smart and resourceful she was, because of her beauty and gender. However, Vin knew what she was capable of when she aimed her intelligence at something other than healing.
At any case, it mattered little if she had some darkness inside her. So did he.
If there was any consolation to be had in this entire affair, Vin believed this would quash any feelings of guilt she felt about her actions regarding Randall Mason. In having to explain herself to Riley, she was given a timely reminder about just how insane Randall had been and how much danger he posed towards their life together. Confronting her guilt would allow her to live with it and heal.
Holding her close to him as Peso carried them home, Vin also considered the future Alex had been so willing to kill Randall to protect. Honestly, he considered their engagement as little more than a device to silence the wagging tongues of Four Corners and assumed, she believed the same. It never occurred to Vin, she considered a lifetime with him as early as the night they first made love.
Vin fell in love with Alex from the moment he saw her and the odyssey of discovery leading them to the same place in each other’s hearts had been difficult enough without him thinking so far ahead. Truth be told, he never considered her the marrying kind because she was so independent, then realised with shame, he never asked the question to know any different. Listening to her speak to Riley, made Vin realise she had been waiting for him to make some kind of declaration of understanding between them, as it was the proper thing to do for two people who were courting.
Vin felt somewhat ashamed he hadn’t seen it. After all, she gave herself to him body and soul, even with a bounty on his head and earning a dollar a day, while she despite her exotic parentage, was a lady in every sense of the word. He never thought someone like her could love him and yet she did, enough to want to bear his children and spend her life with him. It filled his heart with such a swell of happiness, Vin didn’t think he could feel any more for her than he already did.
As a young man, he seldom gave thought to a family, let alone having children but Alex’s hopes for the future made him turn his mind to the question. While he knew nothing about what kind of father he would make, he did know, any child of his would never experience pain or abuse while it was in his power to prevent it. They would never be forced to run away to the wilderness because it was kinder than a state-run orphanage. They would be loved and more importantly, they would have his name without ever needing to fight to claim it.
Thoughts of the orphanage turned Vin’s mind to Jay. While they were never friends at the orphanage, but they gained a healthy respect for each other. Vin truly believed Jay’s sincerity in claiming he would not have come under Mason’s employ if he had known about Vin’s relationship with Alex. Nevertheless, he had stood by and allowed Alex to be manhandled by his men and that was a slight Vin did not forgive easily. When they next encountered each other, he would decide whether to put a bullet between the man’s eyes for that sin.
After all, it was nothing personal.
*********
Hours after Vin Tanner returned to Four Corners with Alexandra Styles Buck Wilmington found himself at the Standish Tavern in dire need of a drink.
With Mason and Cassandra, safely tucked away in jail, charged with kidnapping and attempted murder, they learned Nathan was still with the doctor at his Infirmary. Chris and the others had gone to see how she was doing and offer Vin their moral support, while Ezra kept watch over the prisoners. The gambler had a day to recover from his injuries and while he was nowhere fully restored, was well enough to guard the prisoners for a stretch.
Before Buck fronted at the Infirmary to see how the doctor was doing, he needed a drink or two to numb the pain of his guilt and the humiliation of being played by a woman he genuinely cared for. Even though Chris and JD assured him no one harboured any ill-feeling towards him, Buck still felt the finger of accusation pointed in his direction, because once again, he’d been swayed by a pretty face.
Raised in a bordello, surrounded by women Christian society called ‘working girls’, Buck had known nothing but love and kindness from them and knew it coloured his view of the sex at times. His mother loved him like he was the most precious thing in the world and he supposed to her, he really was. Growing up, he saw the indignities suffered by women, not just the ones in the bordello with him but even the good Christian ones, who were expected to be virtuous, obedient and respectful, even though most of them were married to men who treated dogs better. Buck swore he would never be the same. Unfortunately, it was a trait, women like Cassandra found easy to exploit.
“You okay Senor?” Inez asked, having noticed Buck’s melancholy the instant she served him his drink before having to go attend other patrons at the bar. Now that it was quieter, she took a moment to observe him and saw the sadness in his eyes, an emotion she did not at all like seeing on his face.
No matter what Inez might tell herself, she knew she cared for the man. When he smiled, it was like seeing the sun come out from behind the clouds to cast golden rays on an otherwise grey day. No one who stood in his presence could feel unaffected by that light or the warmth it generated. Women were drawn to it; the way ancient princesses were drawn to gods visiting them like showers of gold. However, it was more than just warmth Inez saw. She saw his reverence for women, saw a heart so big, it made for an easy target. There was a fierce need in her to protect it but also stay away because she knew if she fell for him, it would be the end of her.
She would love Buck Wilmington until the day she died but was unwilling to put up with his philandering ways, no matter how much she cared for him.
Buck looked up and saw Inez staring at him, her expression not impatient or flippant as usual, but soft with genuine concern.
“I’ve had better days,” he frowned. “I suppose you know about Miss Cassandra?” He was certain Ezra would have told her about Cassandra’s complicity in Alex’s abduction by now, if not his part in the stage ambush.
“I do,” Inez remarked, glad to see her instincts about the woman had not been wrong. She hadn’t trusted Cassandra, not because of the way the woman had put her down, but the way she’d pursued Buck. It was altogether too forward of a lady of her supposed refinement. “It is not your fault Senor, she uses her charms very well.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Buck grumbled, taking a sip of his beer.
“Si,” she nodded, “but also because it’s true. She played you because she’s good at it Senor. There are women who know how to do that because, for them, there is no other way to get along in life.”
Buck raised his eyes to her and said seriously, “that ain’t right.”
“It is the way it is Senor,” she said kindly, feeling her affection for him surface a little more at how sincerely he said those words. “Buck, you cared for her and she took advantage of that. I am sorry she hurt you but what happened is not your fault. If she couldn't use you to get what she wanted, she would have tried something else. This plan to kidnap Alex was in motion long before she met you. It would have taken place with or without your presence.”
Buck tried to tell himself that all the way home, but it did not penetrate until she said it with such conviction. Once again, the feeling of heart-stopping excitement filled him whenever he looked at Inez, with her lovely skin and dazzling smile. He realised as beautiful as Cassandra was, she did not have the power to make his heart skip whenever Inez served him a drink with a smile, and how even a kind word from her could make him whistle all day.
“Thank you, Inez,” he said gratefully.
She reached for his cheek and touched his face, intending only to offer him comfort when his big hand covered her own. For a few seconds, that simple gesture generated more heat than a thousand suns and Inez felt her breath catch as she looked into his blue eyes and became lost in the intensity of his feelings for her.
“Why ain’t we together?” He asked, pleased by the fact she hadn’t drawn away yet.
“Because I’m worth waiting for,” she replied with an affectionate smile, breaking contact by withdrawing her hand. The smile remained on her face even when she turned away from him and went to serve other customers.
As he watched her go, Buck had to admit, he felt slightly better and agreed with her assessment.
“You sure are,” he said quietly, watching her take the sunshine with her. “You certainly are.”
*********
They lay in her bed, both of them bare, facing each other across the cool sheets, the moonlight pouring through the open window of her bedroom, bathing them in sapphire colours. A slight breeze made the curtains flutter as they felt it across their skins, offering a stark contrast to the heat of their bodies.
It was almost a week since Alex’s abduction by Riley Marshall and though she was recovering nicely, she was nowhere entirely healed. Upon returning to Four Corners, Nathan had promptly performed a blood transfusion, using Vin and Mary Travis as donors, before he would even begin to think about repairing the damage caused by the gunshot.
As Alex suspected, she was nicked in the intestines and it was nothing less than luck that prevented her from becoming septic. The healer had done the best he could, repairing the damage and administering tinctures of coneflower to fight the infection resulting from her night in the river. Vin had kept watch over her during the days and snuck back at night when Inez, Mary and surprisingly enough Julia Pemberton, were unable to spare the time.
Riley Marshall and Cassandra Heglund had been moved to Eagle Bend for their trial, charged with attempted murder, kidnapping and attempted rape. Neither Riley nor Cassandra made any mention of Alex’s complicity in Randall Mason’s murder. A confession extracted by duress was worth nothing and Chris was convinced, Alex’s threat to release the truth about Randall’s activities in Four Corners to London society kept the man silent.
Meanwhile, rumour had it Johnny Miller and what remained of his gang, crossed the border not long after their confrontation. If they remained there, Chris was content to let them be someone else’s problem. Vin saw no reason to disagree with the gunslinger. He had no desire to face his old acquaintance any time soon. Not when he was more concerned with Alex’s recovery.
“I’m sorry Doc,” Vin said staring across the bed into her eyes.
While she was in no condition for anything lusty, Alex still wanted Vin to share her bed and they’d spent the nights he stayed with her, spooned against each other, simply enjoying each other’s warmth. Tonight, Vin thought with some pleasure, they had talked for the first time in ages, something that was absent since her ordeal with Francis Lamont. It was the surest indicator Vin had, Alex was finally moving past the traumas of the past few months.
“Sorry?” She looked at him, her fingertips brushing his lips. “What do you have to be sorry for, cowboy?”
“I should have asked you to marry me a lot sooner than that whole thing with the Klan. I should have asked you as soon as you woke up after Randall shot you.” He held her hand in place over his lips and kissed her fingertips gently.
“You weren’t ready,” Alex shrugged, not at all upset. She knew it was hard for him to make such solid plans, not with the price on his head. “I understood.”
“It still wasn’t right,” he replied, not about to absolve himself. “I love you Alex, I loved you from the minute you got off that stage. It wasn’t a matter of being ready, it was just assuming you were always going to be in my heart and there weren’t any need to say it because you knew it already.”
“I did,” her heart melted at his declaration. “Vin, I love you more than anything in this world. When I think of tomorrow, there’s only you and I could have waited for you forever because I knew you’d never break my heart. I trust you.”
“As soon as this price is off my head Alex,” he swore to her. “We’ll be married the way we should be. I can’t see tomorrow without you either. I want to grow old with you Doc.”
Alex blinked and through the darkness, Vin could see the moisture glistening in her eyes at the pleasure she took in hearing those words. It still astonished him, he could mean so much to anyone but what was reflected in her eyes, spoke nothing else.
“You know,” she said with a sad smile. “On the day my father died, he actually said he wanted me to meet someone. I think he was starting to worry I’d follow him forever and forget about having a life of my own.”
Vin wished he could have met the man and then worried what William Styles would have thought of him. “I don’t think he reckoned on you settling for someone like me.”
Alex shook her head and slid forward across the mattress towards him. Vin was more than willing to roll on his back and let her rest her head against his shoulder, while they held each other in the shadows and watched the moon staring at them through the window.
“Actually,” Alex replied, nestling comfortably into Vin’s arms. “I think you are exactly what he would have wanted.”