Chapter 7

Eyes open or closed, the darkness was the same for Anna. She listened to the soft snores that filled her room and guessed which raucous sound belonged to which girl. The game would keep her worried mind busy.

Anna tipped her head back against the wall and shifted in the wooden rocker. The creaking chair didn’t seem to bother anyone. She unhooked the top button of her shirt and took a calming breath. They decided this first night together everyone would wear riding clothes, just in case. No one felt it necessary to explain what the case was.

Rachel slept to the right of Anna’s bed. The thought felt rude, but the former prostitute’s soft snores were delicate and appealing. Did she teach herself to be attractive even when asleep?

With every breath, Becky clicked. Would the sound remind Scott of a spinning chamber on a gun when the two were married?

The trouble was Beth. Her ten-year-old sister slept on the bed and competed with the distant train rolling into town with a high whistle. Then inhaling, she growled like a cougar. Beth snored in a steady rhythm, so Anna’s mind fell into the pattern. Whistle, growl. Whistle, growl. Then stopped. Anna opened an eye, panic rising in her chest. Had her sister stopped breathing?

Beth whistled again, and relief flooded Anna.

After a deep breath, Anna curled around the feather pillow on the side of the rocker. She flipped her hair past her neck and resettled.

Sometimes having an imagination is a curse. In her mind she saw the stars beyond the walls, the moon shining bright on the stone building across the lane. How could she feel safe this night? Jacob was returning. Even if the marshal hadn’t warned them, she would know. She could sense it in her bones.

Evil was coming.

The distant sound of the train’s steam escaping as it pulled into the station was somewhat comforting. People going about their nightly tasks meant life was normal for some.

All that stood between her and the vile darkness of Jacob’s soul was a thin pane of glass. That and she was on the second floor. Her fingers gripped the pillow until they felt numb.

Father was downstairs, sitting in the parlor, shotgun in hand. Mother slept across the way.

Was Philip in his barn, nestled in the straw, guns close by?

Why couldn’t he be here? She would feel safe if Philip were near.

She trusted God. But Philip made her feel safe too. Perhaps she should trust only God? Don’t be silly, Anna. What else were men good for? Isn’t that why God made men? To help her feel safe?

Thoughts of Philip were always on her mind, always ripping a hole through her very existence. Did he know how much she suffered, just for him? She didn’t want him to know, but yet in some small way she wished he would suffer her pain as well. There was small comfort in the fact that she knew he wanted nothing more in life than to settle down on his farm with her and to be held back was driving him mad.

Footsteps on the gravel road pricked her senses. She recognized the gait. Leroy. The old man insisted on taking a watch. Scott waited with Deputy Boothe in the stone building across the way. Marshal Stone had ridden to talk to Philip and should be back in town soon. Ryan was watching Jeb.

Was that a good idea?

She felt like she could trust Ryan. Philip did not.

Time to focus on sleep.

How to sleep when she knew with every fiber of her being that Jacob was coming to kill them all?

She patted her waistline to feel the small derringer against her skin. Then she recited a Longfellow poem in her mind.

For I am weary, and am overwrought

With too much toil, with too much care distraught.

And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.

Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,

O peaceful Sleep!

She must have drifted, because the sound of thunder brought her wide-awake.

The long, continuous roar continued.

He was here. This was the end. Death had arrived on the sound of horse hooves.

For the end to be coming, she was surprisingly calm. Perhaps she didn’t really believe Jacob had come for them.

Perhaps the thunder wasn’t the sound of hooves.

The first gunshot she heard rattled any illusion the riders were peaceful. Her mouth went dry, and her heart thumped in her chest.

Beth’s scream was short. “What was that?”

“Don’t light a match,” Anna said as she heard someone fumbling in the darkness.

“What’s going on?” came Becky’s sleepy voice.

Anna couldn’t say it, couldn’t admit it aloud.

Rachel could, and her gravelly voice filled the room. “He’s here.”

Beth scrambled out of bed and threw herself in Anna’s arms. “No! Please no!” Her fingernails bit into Anna’s shoulders.

A roar of gunfire shook Anna’s soul. Did all she loved and cared for just die?

Jacob’s hatred knew no end. Nothing she had known could cure his indefatigable cruelty. This was inevitable. Why hadn’t they prepared more?

Because they had harbored some hope he would run to a distant country, never to return. Because somewhere in her dreams she saw Jacob losing interest in Philip.

Windows shattering and the shouts of men and the screams of horses ended the illusion.

Sounds of Becky and Rachel shuffling through the room brought her to her senses. “Stop. Stop moving.” She hugged Beth tight then gave a push, and Beth slid off her lap. “Barricade the door with anything you can find. Here, Beth, help me with the dresser.”

Despite the darkness, the girls got to work. Doing something helped stop the shakes.

Becky burst into tears. “I don’t want to die!”

“If we can hold them off for a bit, help will come,” Anna said.

The gunshots reverberated in the night, sending waves of fear through her. Philip would know what guns were used, maybe even whose guns the shots belonged to.

But Philip was far away.

One heavy blast echoed, and all was silent.

“Is it . . . is it over?”

Anna reached toward her sister, where she’d heard her voice. “Time to be quiet.” She dared not open the curtains.

The sounds of horses again, more individuals speaking below, and then the crash of wood. The house shook.

The front door hadn’t held them long.

Which meant the guard outside was dead. Scott and Leroy were dead. The deputy, dead.

God, please!

A shotgun blast—her father’s—then more gunfire and crashing glass.

Anna closed her eyes as Beth screamed.

Philip, will you come save us? Anyone?

“Anna!” Beth’s voice, the terror. “Anna!” Beth’s fingers tore into Anna’s skin.

Heavy boots on the stairs pounded.

The other two women moved close to Anna.

The room opposite hers was their first target. The door smashed in.

Swearing filled the hallway. The door on the far end of the hall crashed as well.

Her door rattled as someone tried to break through.

“This one’s got stuff behind it.” The voice was a country drawl.

“Perhaps you are a little girl,” said another in a similar accent.

The door again.

“Idiots.” This voice had a much different accent. From another country she didn’t recognize. “They wait behind this door.” She heard a tap, as if a pistol were used on the wood. “Señorita, come out. It’s time for you to go.”

Anna surprised herself by returning his request in a calm voice, “No, not today. Perhaps another time.”

Rough laughter was her reward.

“Señorita? You are brave, but we must take you with us.”

“Don’t come in. I have a Gatling gun.” She sounded more like Scott than herself. But what else could she say?

Silence from the other side of the door. On this side, Beth gasped for air.

A wicked smack, and the doorknob fell with a thud.

The door scooted an inch, and a sliver of light drove through the door and split the black. The beam drew a yellow line down Rachel’s face and flannel shirt.

Anna jammed her shoulder against the dresser. “Help me!”

Another smack against the door and the crack grew an inch wider.

Rachel braced her back against the dresser as Becky pushed with both arms.

Anna had only one bullet. One bullet against the many men beyond this door. What could she do?

If they had wanted the girls dead, the door would be riddled by now. She and her sister and friends would be bleeding out on her bedroom floor.

The door seemed to explode as she flew backwards, tangled with Rachel and Becky’s arms and legs. Beth’s scream shattered her ears.

A massive shadow filled the doorway, the man’s hat so round, the brim almost touched both sides of the frame. “Which Señorita is Anna?” There was no mistaking the outline of a pistol in his hand.

“I’m Anna.” Rachel pushed away from Anna’s body and groaned as she stood, hunched. “I’m Anna. Let the rest go.”

Anna couldn’t stop trembling, and blood roared in her ears. She leapt toward the man. “You killed my father!”

His gloved hand caught her throat and stopped her cold. His laughter ripped through her body as he squeezed. Air. She needed air, and her lungs had just exhaled. Her lungs pumped as if they were about to burst.

“This is her. A wildcat.”

He brought her close, lifting her toes off the floor, so that his unshaven cheek brushed her skin.

She needed a breath now.

He squeezed tighter.

Air. Please.

Her eyes felt like were about to pop out.

Rachel and Beth’s voices echoed through a tunnel. Just in her view, Beth’s small fists pummeled the man’s stomach.

A man with what would be white skin if he washed reached past Anna’s captor and slapped Beth. She flew to the side and slammed against the hallway wall.

This was a nightmare. A dream would explain the fog that clouded her eyes.

Finally, it came to her. This man was Mexican. The other men beyond were a mixture of white or tan skinned.

These were mercenaries. Jacob hired men to do his dirty work.

Why not just shoot her?

The grip shifted to the back of her neck, and as cool air filled her lungs, the grasp straightened her spine as the man dragged her to the stairs. They marched down and her legs thumped on every step.

The scenes came in flashes as she struggled for breath through her bruised throat. Rachel pulled by her hair. Beth squirmed in the thick arms of a gunman. Becky was prodded in the back by a shotgun.

At the foot of the stairs, the dining room smelled of gunpowder. The table where her family had spent so many happy hours, so many precious moments with Philip, so much laughter and joy now acted as a shroud for her father’s body. The carpet beneath was stained in red.

Before she was hauled through the front door, she thought his chest rose and fell. Please! Let it be real.

An ancient Conestoga wagon waited with four horses stamping in their tresses. Nearly a dozen men, some with lamps, stood guard on the street, pistols held high.

The night air brought her mind to life.

“What took so long?” a man with wizened face asked. As the struggling girls were brought up, he reached out, grabbed Beth’s wrists, and bound them as quickly as a cowpoke would tie up a calf. He gagged her, grabbed her collar and back of her pants and picked her up like a bag of flour. He chucked her into wagon, and she landed with a loud thump.

Another horse thundered through the night, and Anna had a vision of Raven bursting from the darkness, Philip in the saddle with his pistol ending these men’s reign of terror.

She almost laughed, thinking of the revenge God had planned for these villains.

“You better run,” she said in a low voice to the men nearby. “If that’s Philip, you’re all dead.”

The horse that burst into the lamplight wasn’t black, and the rider wasn’t her hero.

Jeb rode high on the back of Alita, her horse.

She stared up at him, the light deepening the grooves in his demon face. “Get off my horse.”

“Now Anna, aren’t you lookin’ pretty this fine evening.”

“How did you escape the—”

He grinned, and his mouth opened into a wide, toothless cave. “Pick in my false teeth.”

She shook her head.

“What are you all waiting for? Load these darlings.” He turned his eyes to her. “Marshal Stone’s dead. Had to take him down or this wasn’t going to work.”

She pushed the image of Marshal Stone’s bulldog face covered in blood out of her mind. Her world was changing too fast.

Becky was tussled and tossed into the wagon’s covered bed. If only Anna had taught Alita to leap at a whistle as Philip’s horses could.

Anna looked up at him in defiance. “What are you going to do with us?”

Instead of answering, he pointed an arm toward the house. “No. Not her. I said kill ‘em.”

Anna spun to see her mother in the grasp of two Mexican men.

“Amigo. She cooks.”

“But we won’t get a dime for her. Kill ‘er and let’s go. We’re outta time.”

“No!” Anna broke from the grip on her wrists and dashed toward her mother.

In the five seconds it took for her to reach the front gate, Anna heard a click behind her. “Stop.”

The tone was so powerful it acted as an arm that wrenched her around.

Jeb had Beth’s hair clasped in one hand, a gun in the other.

This was too much.

Too much. She turned away as the hammer fell with a loud snap. There was no bullet in the chamber.

Jeb burst out laughing then stopped. In the following silence, he offered one word. “Behave.”

He shoved Beth under the canopy, then motioned his pistol inside the wagon. “Load ‘em all, quickly.”

Anna was the last in the wagon. The word behave pulsed in her mind like a heartbeat in her head.

She would most certainly not behave.

Before they gagged her, she looked into Jeb’s flakey eyes. “You know he’ll follow. He’ll hunt you down and justice will be served.”

The gag was shoved into her mouth.

He and another man grasped her legs and tossed her onto Rachel, Becky, her mother, and a sobbing Beth.

Jeb’s face appeared in the small opening. “Dearie, you’re putting your hopes in a dead man.”

Anna tried to respond, but he simply laughed.

Did he mean Philip was dead?

She laid her head back and shut her eyes as the tears trickled down her temples and into her hair.

The wagon jerked, and her body bounced as they left her father bleeding under the kitchen table.