CHAPTER 28
Jay listened in horror to the loud scrapes of the table being moved back into place over the cellar door and then to thudding of the boots above her head.
She heard the cabin door close with a raspy thump and a click of the latching bolt. She heard the men’s muffled voices outside. She heard the stomps of their boots as they descended the stoop.
Surely, they weren’t going to leave her here all trussed up in the cellar! Leave her here to die or to be driven mad as she slowly died all alone here in the darkness!
She pricked her ears, hoping and praying. She could barely hear above the whistling of the blood and the thudding of her heart. But then she heard the drumming of the wagon. Sure enough, they were leaving. She listened in wide-eyed shock, staring into the darkness of the gunnysack, as her captors abandoned her.
The hoof thuds dwindled quickly to silence and she was alone here in the black silence.
Essentially, she was buried alive.
She drew a breath through the gag in her mouth, through her nose, and told herself to stay calm. But instantly, panic overcame her. There was no denying it. Her heart raced and her hands sweat as she struggled against the ropes tying her arms against her body, over the sack, and also binding her ankles together. She wriggled around, grunting and snorting, fiercely trying to loosen the ropes. She quickly grew dizzy as she sucked up all the oxygen in the gunnysack.
She relaxed her body, but not her mind.
Terror flowed in behind the panic, and she squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d lain there, bawling against the neckerchief tied over her mouth, so terrified that she thought her heart would explode, when she heard something outside the cabin. Instantly, she stopped sobbing, lifted her head inside the bag, and pricked her ears, listening.
Nothing. Only silence.
She continued listening, though it was hard to hear anything but the thudding of her relentlessly racing heart.
Still nothing. Whatever she’d heard had been her imagination.
Oh, God. Dear God, she thought. How am I ever going to get out of here? Am I really going to die here in the darkness, gagged and bound in the cellar of what is most likely some abandoned miner’s shack?
No one would ever even find her bones.
A fresh wave of panic was about to overcome her when a tapping sound rose from somewhere above. Again, she lifted her head from the cellar’s earthen floor and, pressing her face against the stinky burlap, listened intently.
She heard another soft tap. At least, she thought she did, unless it was only her imagination.
A click. The latch bolt had been tripped.
Hinges squawked briefly. A female voice: “Jay?”
She recognized it immediately. She flopped around and grunted with a start and tried to scream, to yell, to shout: “DOWN HERE! MYRA, I’M DOWN HERE! OH, FOR CHRISSAKES, PULL UP THE CELLAR DOOR!”
But again, the only sounds she was able to make through the gag were those of a strangling cat.
They must have been enough.
“Jay!” Myra shouted.
Above Jay came the loud scraping sounds of the table being moved.
Hope rose in Jay’s chest, tempering her panic. Above her, she could hear Myra grunting as she tried to lift the door. More grunting—fierce, desperate grunting. Jay did not hear the door budge in its frame.
Oh, no. The door was too heavy for her!
Myra stomped around the cabin. There was a clanking sound and then more stomping. The floor creaked over Jay’s head. There was a soft thumping sound as Myra toiled against the door. She heard a clank. Myra must have grabbed a tool—maybe a fireplace poker or a lid hook. Hinges squawked. Music to Jay’s ears! They were followed by the booming slam of the cellar door falling back against the floor . . . and by Myra’s voice, no longer muffled.
“Jay! Are you down there?”
Jay writhed violently, grunting.
“Hold on!” Myra said. “I’m going to light a lamp!”
Boots thudded again as Myra moved around the cabin. Jay remained in a near state of panic, imagining her captors riding back to the cabin and finding Myra here. Unable to stop herself, she continued to fight against the ropes. Faintly, through the gunnysack she watched a light grow. It was like the slow rising of the morning sun.
Nothing more beautiful here in this cold, dark grave!
“Hold on,” Myra said. “I’m coming down!”
Jay heard a grunt and a thud as Myra dropped into the hole beside her. Jay tried to tell the young woman that she was tied, but Myra must have seen the ropes already. She said, “Here, here—let me get those.”
Jay heard the knife slicing through the hemp. Myra must have had a small knife because it took what seemed forever for her to chew through the ropes. In the meantime, Jay kept listening for the clatter of the wagon. She wanted so much to get out of this hole that it took all of her might to keep from thrashing around violently and making it impossible for Myra to free her.
Myra said, “There!” and the ropes around Jay’s waist came loose. Jay’s arms ached from pinched blood flow, so she was able to help Myra only a little in lifting the sack from her head. Suddenly, fresh air engulfed her and she saw the shadowy figure of the curly-haired young woman kneeling before her, sparsely lit with weak, red light from a lamp perched near the square hole in the floor above them.
Jay grunted against the gag, shaking her head. “Here, here,” Myra said. “Let me help.”
Myra took the folding barlow knife in her teeth and reached around to untie the gag. When Jay felt it go slack in her mouth, she spat it out and gulped air pouring into the hole from above.
“Oh, God!” she raked out in a mad rush of relief.
“Are your ankles tied?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get them.”
“Hurry!”
“I will!”
“They might come back.”
“Don’t worry.” Myra lifted her head to stare frankly into Jay’s. “I came armed. If those rascals come back, I’ll blow them out of their boots!”
Jay laughed huskily, deeply relieved. Still, she couldn’t get out of the hole fast enough. As soon as Myra’s knife had chewed through the ropes on her ankles, she rose to her feet. She was very unsteady. The hole was about six feet deep. With Myra grabbing her around the waist and lifting, Jay reached up, nudged the lamp out of her way, and snaked her arms through the hole, planting her elbows to either side. With great effort and much grunting and cursing and Myra pushing from below, she hoisted herself up through the hole and then rolled away from the hole along the floor.
She gained her knees, caught her breath, and then turned to the hole to help Myra. There was no need. The girl leaped upward, thrusting her head, shoulders, and arms out of the hole and then easily hoisted her legs out, as well.
Jay threw herself at the young woman, hugging her tightly, sobbing. “Oh, God!” she cried. “How did you ever find me?”
Myra hugged her back. “I followed you out from town. I’m so glad you’re all right, Jay. I wasn’t sure what they had in mind.”
“You followed me?”
“I heard someone around the freight office earlier, looking for me, I think. One of them must have been spying on me, the other on you. When you headed this way, they . . .”
“Right.” Jay cursed. “Cisco! He sicced them on us, probably told them that if it looked like we were going to interfere, to step in.”
“I think the other one planned to kidnap me just like they did you, but I heard him outside, blew out my lamp, and headed outside by the back door. I hid in the wagon shed. He tried to find me, and when he finally gave up, I followed him . . . to where they grabbed you. I ran back and saddled my horse, and followed you here.”
“Cisco,” Jay said again, tightly, angrily, shaking her head. “I wonder if he planned to leave me down there . . . forever.” She looked into the gaping cellar hole in the floor beside her and gave a shudder. She looked around the small, crudely appointed cabin. “Where are we, anyway? What is this place?”
“We’re in Redstone Canyon, one canyon east of Horsetooth Station at the base of Horsetooth Rock. This is Tumbling Box H Range. This must be one of Jason Hall’s line shacks, maybe a roundup cabin.”
“Figures.” Jay glanced at the hole again and hugged herself. “Under the circumstances, it gives me the creeps. Let’s get out of here. You said you have a horse?”
“Yeah, my filly is up in the rocks behind the cabin. I wasn’t sure if any of Hall’s men were still here, so I came up from behind.”
“I wonder if they’re robbing, or did rob, that gold tonight,” Jay said, heaving herself to her feet, wrinkling her nose against the smell of the gunnysack clinging to her like a second skin. “That’s why they needed us out of the way tonight.”
“Could be,” Myra said, also rising and dusting floor grime from her denims. “Or maybe it’s still on their schedule.”
“In that case, we’d better get back to town and have your boyfriend alert the other sheriff’s deputies, maybe form a posse.” Jay started for the door, but Myra grabbed her hand, stopping her.
The younger woman’s eyes glinted anxiously in the weak light from the lamp on the floor. “Del’s the reason I wrote that note to you asking you to visit me at the freight yard.”
“Del is?”
“Jay, Del disappeared. I haven’t seen him for two days. Day before yesterday, he said he was going to ride out to Horsetooth Station and tell the station manager what you overheard about the planned robbery, and do some sniffing around Hall’s ranch.”
“And he never made it back to town?”
Myra shook her head. “No, he’s not my beau, you understand—we’re just friends—but I’ve been worried sick about him. I wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t think we should be seen together.”
“Right, right. Good thinking.” Jay stared off, not seeing anything but thinking, worrying. “Poor Del. I hope I haven’t gotten him in trouble now, too.” She turned to Myra. “Did you talk to the other sheriff’s deputies?”
Myra nodded. “And . . .”
“They told me not to worry about it. That they’d look into it.”
“And . . .”
“Nothing. No word from them so far.” Myra reached out and squeezed Jay’s hand again. It was a desperate squeeze. “Jay . . . I have a feeling those two might be in on it . . . right along with Hall and Walsh.”
That made Jay’s head reel. “If so, what are we going to do?”
“I sure wish Slash and Pecos were here. They’d know what to do.”
“I know. But they’re not due back for another two days.”
Myra opened her mouth to speak again but closed it when hooves drummed in the distance. She and Jay gasped at the same time. The drumming was growing louder. Riders were heading toward the cabin.
“Oh, my God!” Jay said. “The lamp!”
Myra dropped to a knee and blew out the flame, then grabbed her Winchester carbine off the table. “Let’s get out of here!” she said, scrambling to her feet and moving through the door. Jay stepped up beside her on the small stoop fronting the cabin. Both women stiffened when they saw the riders—a half-dozen men on horseback—rounding a bend in the trail about a hundred yards to the west. There was a quarter moon, and the pale light gave the riders’ shadows definition and flashed off guns and bridle bits. It also glinted off the water off the narrow creek hugging the trail.
“Come on!”
Myra took Jay’s hand and led her left along the front of the cabin. Jay hoped the moonlight wouldn’t reveal them. When they reached the cabin’s southeast side, Myra pointed to a footpath that led down a rocky rise, and said, “My filly’s this way!”
“Wait.” Jay stepped up against the shack’s east side, where its shadow concealed her. “I want to hear what they have to say.”
“What?”
“You go on, Myra. I’ll catch up to you.”
“No way!” Myra stepped up beside Jay and pressed her back against the cabin’s wall.
“Myra, please,” Jay whispered. “I don’t want to get you into any more trouble than—”
“Too late!” Myra placed a finger over her mouth as the riders reined up in front of the cabin only a few feet away from the two women’s positions.
Jay’s heart thudded heavily. She glanced around the cabin’s front corner. The half-dozen men were swinging down from their horses, one angrily saying, “I don’t understand why you didn’t kill her. Those were your orders!”
A frigid winter chill swept through Jay to settle at the small of her back.
She’d recognized the man’s voice. It belonged to Keldon Reed, the Tumbling Box H foreman.
“I’m sorry, boss,” one of the other men said in a faintly wheedling tone. “I just couldn’t do it an’ Anders couldn’t, either. I mean, she always treated us nice at the Thousand Delights, an’ . . .”
“So you were just gonna leave her in that cellar to starve to death or die of fright?” Reed gave a caustic laugh without an ounce of humor in it. “You get in there, open up that cellar door, and shoot her!”
“Walsh won’t like it, boss,” said another man.
“I don’t care what Walsh does or doesn’t like. We don’t take orders from Walsh. We take orders from Hall. Now, get to it, Sully! You’ll be doin’ her a favor—puttin’ her out of her misery!” Jay tensed, heart pounding. Myra must have sensed her trepidation. Standing close beside her, she took Jay’s hand in her own and squeezed it.
“All right, you got it, boss.”
Jay heard Sully’s boots on the porch. She tensed as she heard him go inside the cabin. There was a brief silence. Jay imagined the shock on Sully’s face as he stared down at the open hole in the floor. She imagined the dread he was likely feeling right now, knowing he was going to have to go back outside and say:
“Uh . . . we . . . I got a problem, boss . . .”
“Oh, good Lord—don’t tell me!”
“Yeah,” Sully said, awfully. “Yeah . . . she seems to have gotten out.”
“You damn fool!”
A gun blasted twice. A man screamed, dropped.
“Oh!” Jay said with a start. Instantly, she covered her mouth as though to shove the involuntary exclamation back down her throat. No doing. It was out there now.
Had the killers heard it?
“What was that?” one of them said.
Jay turned to Myra. Myra stared back at her, wide-eyed with trepidation.
“What was what?” said Keldon Reed.
“I heard somethin’. Came from that side of the cabin. Sounded like a woman!”
“Well, it’s probably her!” Reed yelled. “Get after her, you men!”
Tugging on Jay’s hand, Myra bolted out from the side of the cabin. “Come on, Jay! Run! Run! ”