The posse, led by John Jacob, wound up the rocky mountain trail that led to Taig Sutter’s shack. Everyone knew that the man they sought wouldn’t be there. They wanted Sutter’s hounds. The men would give them a whiff of something that had the man’s scent on it, then send them off searching for Sutter.
The men’s wives, walking some distance behind their husbands, were coming to dress Ida Sutter in her burial clothes.
When the posse arrived at the weed-choked yard of the Sutter shack, all was silent. Apparently, the children had run off, probably to nearby kin. Even the bravest man among them felt a cold shiver run down his spine as he thought of frail little Ida, battered and bruised, lying alone in death.
The posse was soon greeted with the howls of Taig’s hounds. There was hunger as well as threat in their barking.
“They probably haven’t been fed,” one of the men remarked.
John Jacob swung out of the saddle and entered the kitchen. He saw in the semigloom a man’s shirt hanging on the back of a chair. He had no doubt it belonged to Taig. He jerked it up and hurried outside. He couldn’t bear to go into the next room and look upon Ida’s dead, battered face. He preferred to remember her as the beautiful woman he’d loved, young and trusting and so full of life.
He mounted up, and as he and the men followed the baying hounds, they heard the women coming up the trail.
The ten men hadn’t gone far when the hounds suddenly cut across country. “Why would he go in that direction?” one of the men asked. “There’s nothing there but a bluff that drops straight down.”
“He’s probably making for a cave higher up the mountain,” another man answered.
“Yeah,” another agreed. “There’s a whole passel of Sutters living up there. That’s where he’s headed, I betcha.”
Taig had been riding for about an hour, always climbing, when he spotted in the distance the cave he was looking for. Very few people knew about this cave. None knew that it ran back under the mountain for at least a mile. Once he got there he would be safe. After all the commotion died down, he’d sneak out to one of his relatives. His kin would help him get away.
He pulled his horse in. There was a small creek nearby, and before he continued on he must let his horse have some water. Better quench my own thirst, too, he thought.
When he came to the stream of clear water, he swung to the ground. Throwing aside his hat, he stretched out on the ground and drank deeply.
He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when his horse lifted its head, ears up and nostrils flared. What had the animal seen or heard? Taig asked himself.
He listened intently. All was eerily quiet. Then he froze. He had heard the whisper of a moccasin in the brush. He trembled with fear. How many were out there? He knew that the Indians of Yellow Feather’s band roamed these mountains.
Taig stood up and, leading his horse, slipped from tree to tree, his scalp pricking with every step.
He felt that he was giving the Indians the slip when suddenly there sounded a blood-curdling yell and red men seemed to rise out of the ground all around him. He swung into the saddle and brought his quirt down across the horse’s rump.
Within moments, the Indians were close on his heels, their arrows whizzing past his head, their shrill yells falling painfully on his ears. He could almost feel a knife making a circuit around his scalp.
Taig soon realized that the Indians were driving him away from the safety of the cave. He swore angrily. The heathens had guessed what his plans were. A bleakness came into his eyes when he saw that they were crowding him toward a line of deep bluffs. They meant to force him over one of them.
Taig’s pulse leapt with relief when he saw a stand of aspen trees a few yards ahead. There would be no bluffs there.
He soon learned that his assumption was wrong. Suddenly there was a narrow avenue opening up between the trees. Before him loomed a wide bluff. He looked over his shoulder. The Indians were pressing at his horse’s heels.
The animal screamed when a deep chasm opened up under its feet. Taig joined his horrified cry to the horse’s as down, down they went into a mass of coiling rattlesnakes.
The Indians circled their ponies alongside the bluff, watching impassively as Taig screamed and screamed.
When all was quiet below, the red men kicked their shaggy ponies in the flanks and rode off in the direction they had come from. After a mile or so they came across the posse. Yellow Feather raised his hand palm up as both sides reined in.
“You search for Taig Sutter, my friend?” he asked.
“That is so.” John Jacob nodded. “Have you seen him?”
“Yes,” the Indian nodded. “He is now lying with the snakes at the bottom of a bluff about a mile back. His cruelty to his wife and daughter had to end.” A grim smile creased his face. “Sutter will kill no more.”
John Jacob studied the stern face a moment, then said, “I don’t know how I can ever repay you, Yellow Feather.”
“There is no payment between friends,” the chief replied.
Dylan had slept only one hour before taking up his vigil in a chair at Rachel’s head. He gazed sadly at her face. There was no beauty in it now. It was bruised and swollen beyond recognition. But he remembered every detail of her countenance and he knew that it would be the same again.
But it wasn’t just her beauty that attracted him to her so. Yes, at first he had been drawn to her pale loveliness, her long, long legs, but he had come to realize that she had an inner beauty as well.
Dylan stood up to stretch his long legs. He walked to the window and stared out. John Jacob had recognized her courage and sweetness. The owner of the trading post loved Rachel as well. It was as if he wore a map on his face that declared it to the world.
Dylan shook his head in confusion. But the older man was sleeping with Rosie. And often enough that the saloon girl kept her clothes in his room, her nightgown in his bed.
Was it possible that Andrews had a different sort of relationship with Rachel? Could his feelings for her be fatherly rather than sexual?
He wished he could ask Rachel how she felt about the older man. He wished still more that he knew how she felt about him.
Dylan suddenly felt eyes upon him. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Rachel had woken. She was staring at him, looking confused and afraid.
“Don’t be frightened, Rachel,” he said gently, walking back to the bed and resuming his seat in the chair. “You’re back at the post, honey. You’ll be safe here. I found you on the mountain, half dead from the beating Taig gave you.”
Dylan saw her brow crease as she tried to remember. Then a look of pain entered her eyes as everything came back to her.
Rachel’s voice was flat and expressionless as she began talking. “Taig, as usual, was drunk, and as usual he was being very nasty to me. My poor little mother intervened and he turned on her. He hit her hard and she fell to the floor.”
Rachel’s voice began to rise. “I ran to help her and he went crazy. He beat me in the face and kicked my body when I fell to the floor. Thank God I finally fainted.
“That’s all I remember until now.” Her voice dropped again. “I pray Mama is alright.”
She looked up at Dylan’s face and saw the pity there. She struggled into an upright position and grabbed his arm so hard her nails bit into his flesh. “Is my mother alright, Dylan?” she cried. “Did he beat her bad?”
With a low, pitying sound, Dylan pulled her onto his lap and pressed her head down on his shoulder. “Be brave, little girl,” he murmured. “Your mother has had her last beating from that bastard.”
Rachel pulled away from Dylan and looked up at him with wide, suffering eyes. “Do you mean that she . . .”
“Yes, honey.” Gently Dylan pushed her head back onto his shoulder and with infinite tenderness stroked her hair. “She has gone to a better place.”
Rachel was sobbing hysterically when John Jacob burst into the room. He looked questioningly at Dylan.
“She knows about her mother, John,” Dylan said quietly.
John Jacob sat down on the edge of the bed and lifted Rachel out of Dylan’s arms. And though Dylan didn’t like the big man’s action, he didn’t say or do anything about it. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what was going on between the pair. He did know that Rachel hadn’t protested at being taken away from him, and that she seemed quite content cuddled in John Jacob’s arms, her head nestled on his shoulder.
He sat a moment, feeling very much a third wheel, then decided that he would go ask some of the men if they had found Taig.
When he heard the story of how Yellow Feather’s band of Indians had chased Taig over a bluff into a nest of rattlers, he agreed to go to Jackson Hole with the posse to celebrate.
“We deserve a poke after chasing that bastard all over the mountain,” one man laughed.
However, when they came to a break in the trail that led to his ranch, Dylan silently fell behind his companions and took it. He had no desire to take a whore to bed.