Karl Redpath and Rachel Greystone crossed the Brazos River on a small, steam-driven ferry painted white. It was hardly large enough to stay afloat laden as it was with the team and buggy and heavily loaded freight wagons. Redpath paid the ferryman and climbed into the buggy beside Rachel.
"Ready to travel, Marcella?" Karl asked. The woman had accepted the name and he was pleased at that. With luck, she would never know her real name.
"Yes, I'm ready," Marcella replied.
"Then off we go," Karl said, and smiled at his good fortune of finding the lovely woman who couldn't remember. He popped the long buggy whip over the ears of the pacers and drove the buggy onto the shore.
Marcella settled herself on the seat of the buggy, glad for the padding in the seat, and prepared for the grueling hours of travel that lay ahead. The morning was barely half spent and already the heat had built to a sweltering temperature.
They climbed up from the river with the iron-rimmed wheels of the buggy grinding and screeching on the gravel and rock of the steep grade. The wheels became quiet as they encountered the clay soil of the forested hills to the west. They traveled swiftly, as they had every day since Marcella had awakened from the unconsciousness of her fall six days before. The days were long from daylight to dark, and many miles had rumbled past beneath the rolling wheels of the buggy.
Karl always drove straight through the small towns widely scattered along the road, refusing her request to stop and find a hotel for the night. When darkness overtook them they simply stopped. Most times they were fortunate enough to find a farmhouse close by the roadside, and Karl would pay for food and a night's lodging for them. Once they had simply spread their blankets on the ground and slept under the open sky.
Marcella had asked Karl about the reason for the rapid, exhausting journey, and he had replied that they must reach El Paso at the earliest possible time so he could launch his new business. She thought it unusual to push so hard even for that reason, but did not voice her thought. When she questioned him as to the type of business, he told her it was a form of entertainment. She had pressed him to describe it more fully, but he had laughed and told her that she must wait for he wanted it to be a surprise.
"You all right?" Karl asked, turning to look at Marcella as he often did.
"Yes, just hot," Marcella replied, not looking at Karl. And no, I'm not all right. I'm in awful condition for I can't remember one thing from the past. "I'm thankful for the shade," Marcella added to soften her terse answer.
She stared straight ahead along the road. The woods were dense and the road barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. The limbs of the trees reached out over the road and met in the center. Driving along the road was like moving down a hot, green tunnel.
To battle the heat, she was dressed in a thin cotton dress and a straw hat. She had other clothing in a trunk in the rumble seat of the carriage. Karl had told her that her suitcases had been stolen shortly before her fall.They had stopped at the first town and purchased several outfits. He had spent lavishly for the new garments.
She felt Karl's eyes still on her, but she did not turn. He had strange, tan-colored eyes; mud-colored always came to her mind. They seemed to have no depth and betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. The nearest thing to emotion she had ever detected was that sometimes when she looked unexpectedly at him, there was a kind of watchful, probing expression. It always quickly vanished when their eyes met.
She knew Karl had a very strong feeling for her. It was apparent in the way he frequently touched her, and every night he came to her and she had to take him into her bed. She did not feel like a married woman; still, she performed all the wifely duties a vow of marriage required. She often wondered why she had chosen Karl for a husband for she felt no love for him. Truthfully, she did not even like him.
There was a nagging feeling that she couldn't shake that something wasn't as it appeared. The feeling was most strong when she would awaken in the darkness of night with a terrible sensation of wrongness, wrongness of where she was, of what was happening to her. She couldn't crystallize the reason for it. She tried to console herself that most probably all of it was rooted in her inability to remember. If she could recall events, the happenings and emotions of the past, the present would be an extension of them and everything would fit into its place. Then she would have no concern.
Karl asked Marcella every morning when they awoke, and sometimes again during the day, if she had remembered anything of her past. She had tried many times to go backward into the past. Oh, how hard she'd tried. There was nothing before her awakening, as if she had been spontaneously created and there she was. The past wasn't a black emptiness, not some dense impenetrable fog. It was just nothing. Yet her mind was starved for memories of things, of places, of people and emotions. The immense hunger for the tiniest memory shook Marcella to the very core.
Marcella had asked Karl to tell her about their life prior to the accident, and about her family. He told her they had been married for two years, that her parents had died of yellow fever the summer before, and that she had no close relatives. They had owned a great house in New Orleans with many servants. Then the Union Army and Navy had captured the city and she and Karl had decided to leave and start a new business in El Paso, a town far beyond the boundaries of the war. They had talked long about the War Between the States. How very strange that a great war was in progress and she knew nothing about it.
His answers always came easily. He would repeat the stories, telling her that he was doing this so she might more quickly break through the block that hid the past.
Knowing she didn't love the man, Marcella had asked him to describe their courtship and marriage. He told her they had met at one of the gala dances the rich of New Orleans frequently held. They had fallen in love almost at once and had married less than a week later.
Marcella again thought of that statement of Karl's, about love and a quick marriage, as they drove through the woods. If she had been so much in love with him before the accident, then why should she not feel some of it now? The chemistry of love should have survived the blow to her head and be present at all times.
At that conclusion, the distasteful feeling of wrongness swept over her more strongly than ever. So powerful was the sensation that Marcella shivered. She controlled the shiver, but there came immediately afterward a dizziness, and a fuzziness to her vision. She felt herself swaying in the seat, and caught hold of the nearest upright iron rod that supported the top of the buggy. She struggled to clear her vision.
Slowly the dizziness left Marcella, and the fuzziness of her vision cleared. However, instead of seeing the road in the forest ahead of her, she was looking along a narrow, dimly lighted channel walled with blackness. At the distant end of the channel was a woman's face. The woman was of middle age and pretty. Marcella felt she should know the woman, but no name would come to mind. The woman didn't speak, or show emotion, merely looking in Marcella's direction.
Even as Marcella studied the face it began to fade. Hurry, she told herself, and identify the woman, for you may never get another chance. She concentrated upon the picture, desperate to put a name on the woman, to know the relationship between them. She examined in minute details the woman's features, the oval of her face, the curve of her mouth, the shape of her eyes. The powerful focus of her attention held the picture for a tiny moment longer. Then it was gone and a terrible sensation of loss fell upon her.
"What's wrong, Marcella?" Karl asked. He was holding her firmly by the arm. "Are you sick?"
"If not being able to remember the past is being sick, then I'm sick."
"It's more than that. You were shivering."
"I suppose I was. I was trying to remember something, anything, but just can't."
Some instinct told Marcella to keep the vision of the woman's face a secret from Karl.
The woman was haunting Marcella. She should know her. Surely she was someone Marcella once knew, for there was no reason for her injured mind to conjure up a stranger's face. Marcella prayed the woman would appear again and stay long enough to be identified. Perhaps then Marcella could begin to build a past.
"It will all come back to you," Karl said. He popped the metal tip of the buggy whip over the ears of the horses. They picked up the pace, the buggy rolling easily on its greased axles.
* * *
Near noontime, Marcella and Karl came within sight of a two-story log tavern where a north-south road crossed the one they traveled. The tavern sat in a clearing of some four acres in the forest. Several horses were tied to a long hitching rail in front. A skillfully carved wooden sign declared there was food, drink, and lodging to be had. A garden fenced with tall woven wire lay on the right and close by the tavern.
"Are you hungry?" Karl asked.
"Starved," Marcella said. The villages and farms were infrequently encountered now. The last house had been miles behind them. Karl had told her that soon would be only wilderness.
"Then we shall stop and obtain the best food they have," he now said.
As the buggy drew near the tavern, a man came out of the building. He turned to look at the buggy and its occupants as he went toward the tied horses. He had mounted and was riding off to the west as Karl brought his vehicle to a halt in front of the tavern.
Karl helped Marcella down from the buggy and they entered the tavern.
* * *
Marcella half dozed as the buggy rolled smoothly along on its flexible iron leaf spring. She had enjoyed the delicious food especially the blackberry pie. Its taste still lingered in her mouth. The pleasant woman who had served them had told Marcella that she had picked the berries in the edge of the woods that morning. The danger to the friendly people of this isolated place was brought starkly to Marcella by the man who wore a pistol buckled around his waist as he helped his wife to serve the customers.
The road they traveled again ran through the thick forest. It had narrowed to such a small width that had they met another vehicle, it would have been a difficult task to pass each other. The huge trees crowded in close on both sides, and only a stray ray of sunlight here and there penetrated the leafy crowns of the trees to fall upon the ground.
Ahead of them some one hundred feet, a huge mountain of a man came out of the woods and into the road. He carried a length of tree trunk, longer than he was tall and nearly a foot in diameter, on his shoulder. As he moved toward the center of the road, he turned his head and glanced at the occupants of the buggy. The man's head was overly large even for his size and the brows of his forehead bulged over deeply set eyes. He was smiling in a childlike way, a mischievous child who was playing a trick. He dropped the log crosswise on the road, thus blocking it to the passage of the buggy. He continued on to disappear in among the trees on the opposite side.
"What? . . . Marcella started to speak.
"Get down!" Karl exclaimed. "It's a holdup!" He caught Marcella by the shoulder and shoved her down onto the floorboards of the buggy.
"Stay there," he ordered, at the same time reining the horses to a fast stop.
He sprang from the buggy, pulling his pistol as he landed. He swiftly pivoted to look around.
Two men had come out of the woods and into the road thirty yards behind the buggy. Both carried rifles raised to their shoulders. One of them opened his mouth to shout at Karl.
Before a sound could come from the man, Karl shot him twice in the chest with his pistol. The man staggered backward. His legs gave way and he fell.
The second man dropped his head to sight along the rifle and fired. Karl was already moving, and the bullet cut the air where he had stood. He swung his pistol and fired at the bandit.
The bullet hit the man and sent him staggering backward. He caught himself, and dropping his single-shot rifle, reached for his pistol.
Karl shot the bandit again, knocking him flat on the ground.
Marcella hadn't been able to see the bandits at the rear of the buggy because the luggage in the rumble seat blocked her view. She did see a man with a pistol come into sight near the log on the road.
"Karl! Behind you!" she screamed.
Karl leapt to the side and spun to the rear in one swift movement. His pistol roared twice, the shots so close together that they seemed to be but one continuous explosion of sound. The range was short and the man went down as if hit by a powerful fist.
"Damn fools," Karl said as he looked about at the corpses.
Trembling, Marcella rose up from the floor of the buggy. The effortless way Karl had killed three armed men astounded her. Never had she imagined a man could move so swiftly and shoot so accurately.
"Using the halfwit to block the road with the log was a good idea," Karl said, addressing the comment to Marcella. "But then they came out in the open to be shot. That was a dumb thing to do."
He watched Marcella and waited for a response. When she only stared back, he spoke again. "That was quick thinking to call and warn me about the other one. Do you remember seeing him before?"
Marcella shook her head.
"He was that man who rode off from the tavern as we stopped." Karl smiled. "We make a damn fine pair, you and I."
He began to reload his revolver, whistling happily.
A cry erupted in the woods close by Karl. The cry was full of sadness and of rage all mixed together into a frightening sound not quite human. The man Karl had called a halfwit burst from the woods and leapt upon him.
The two men crashed into the side of the buggy and rocked it violently. Karl was driven down hard with the man mountain on top of him. The man began to flail at Karl, striking at him with both fists.
Marcella hurriedly scooted across the seat of the buggy and away from the fighting men. She watched them, mesmerized by the rage on the face of the halfwit and his wildly swinging fists. One of his hands hit the oak spokes of a buggy wheel, but he didn't seem to feel pain from it. The halfwit with his monstrous strength would kill Karl.
Then Marcella saw an astonishing, unexpected thing. Karl, his back pinned to the ground, struck upward with his hand through the fists striking at him. Two fingers of the hand were extended, and they stabbed into the eye sockets beneath the bulging brows of the larger man.
The halfwit's screams instantly became ones of horrendous pain. He ceased the swings of his fists and covered both eyes with his hands.
Karl struck again, a powerful blow of his fist into the man's throat. The screams cut off abruptly. Karl heaved mightily and lifted the man up, and rolled from under him.
Karl rose to his feet and shook himself. Then he stood rubbing at the bruises on his face and watching the halfwit struggle to a sitting position. The giant's chest heaved as he strained to breathe through a crushed throat.
Marcella too was watching the man on the ground, and she saw a clear liquid that was stained with a little blood leaking from both of the man's eye sockets. His eyes were missing.
"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed.
She tore her sight away from the blind man and looked at Karl. "What do we do now?"
Karl was watching her. Now there was depth to his mud-colored eyes, rage so deep, so deadly that it frightened Marcella just to see it.
"I'll show you," Karl said in a grating voice.
He bent, reached under his right pants leg, and extracted a small-caliber pistol from a holster strapped there. He stepped up beside the sitting man, sucking air with a hissing sound. With a movement almost too swift to see, Karl leaned down and shot the halfwit between the eyes.
The giant man went over backward and flopped like a maimed crow, and sprayed blood in the dust of the road. His heels drummed upon the ground and his arms thrashed wildly about.
After a quarter minute, the frenzied motion of the dying halfwit ceased and he lay still. Karl turned away from the dead man and without looking at Marcella, went to the log blocking the road and moved it aside. He came to the buggy and drove away from the corpses of the robbers.
Marcella was so overwhelmed by the attempted robbery and the killings that she could find nothing to say. She sat with the awful memory of the halfwit dying frozen in her mind.