“What do you want?” Carmen said disdainfully, as though she’d just swallowed a bug. She stood at the ranch house door as if guarding the premises from the plague.
“I would like to speak to Elizabeth Winslow, if you please,” Cindy Lou said sweetly.
“I do not please. I will give her your message,” Carmen responded stubbornly, and when Cindy Lou said nothing, she tried to shut the door. The strumpet stopped it with her foot.
“I have to deliver it to her personally.”
Carmen slowly opened the door, crossed her arms and just stared at Cindy Lou.
“This is important, Carmen.”
Carmen studied the woman suspiciously, but she “tsked” and huffed. “Follow me,” she said as coldly as she could. She knew Garrett had spent some time with the woman, but for the life of her, she could not figure out why. Cindy Lou was a tramp and gave her body freely, but Carmen was fairly nonjudgmental about that. What she objected to were the woman’s mean spirit and manipulative actions, always trying to charm the men who had money and treating so many of the women, the ones she obviously saw as threats, cruelly.
Cindy Lou, dressed in a too-tight satiny outfit of sea green, flounced into the ranch house, her white front lace-up boots clicking on the polished oak floor and her hips swaying so much Carmen could practically hear them. She led the scheming creature into the dining room and stopped abruptly. “Wait here.” She started to walk out and then turned back. “And do not touch anything.”
“Thank you,” Cindy Lou said, smiling sweetly.
As if she had a sweet bone in her body. “Puta!” Carmen mumbled under her breath as she walked off to find Libby. Well, maybe she was a bit judgmental about the woman’s morals. She would have gone straight to Jackson if he wasn’t out on the range somewhere. She found Libby in the library, reading. The young woman looked up when Carmen entered the room.
“I saw her when she drove her carriage up. What does she want?”
“She says she has a message for you. I do not think you should hear it.”
Libby set her book on the side table and sighed. “It could be about Garrett. I have to.” She stood, straightening the skirt of her pale rose day dress.
“Do not let her get in your head, cariña.”
“I don’t think her breasts would even fit in my head,” Libby said and Carmen laughed heartily.
“I left her in the dining room. We had better count the silverware.”
“Thank you, my dear friend. I might as well get it over with.” Libby squeezed Carmen’s shoulder and walked out of the room, feeling for some reason as if she were heading to her doom. She was fairly well recovered from the latest attack and was definitely not ready for another one. As she approached the dining room, she saw the ever-voluptuous, ever slightly slutty Cindy Lou studying the sideboard, as if she were assessing its value. “It is not for sale,” she said.
“I was just looking,” snapped the tart. “You don’t have to act so high and mighty.”
Libby felt a little guilty because the comment was rather nasty. “Would you like something to drink, Cindy Lou? Tea, coffee? Lemonade?”
“No. I will not be staying. You do not look like you’re expecting a child. Why else would Garrett ever have married you? You will never keep him.”
Libby was pretty much immune to Cindy Lou’s criticisms of her. “Is that your message? I think you already delivered that one.”
“No,” Cindy Lou said. “I have a message from your father.”
“My father?” No one in town knew Jackson was her father, as far as she knew.
“Elias Parminter.”
In spite of herself, Libby paled and sunk into a chair. She didn’t miss the gleam in Cindy Lou’s eyes when she saw how the name affected her.
“He’s here?”
“Yes, he’s in Deer Lodge.”
“What does he want?”
“He knows now that you have a husband and you will not be marrying Edward whatever-his-name-is. He is sorry for any trouble he has caused you and wants to give you your mother’s jewelry.”
Libby’s heart leapt. She had left St. Louis so quickly, she had nothing to remember her mother by. But she was no fool. “Where is it? Give it to me now.”
“I did bring it with me, but I left it behind a rock on the trail.”
Libby looked at her suspiciously. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I wasn’t sure you would see me or how you would treat me. I did not want you to take it from me if I decided I did not want to give it to you.”
“And now you do. Why?”
Cindy Lou hesitated a moment. “Truthfully, your father kind of scares me. I do not want to do anything to make him angry at me. I can take you to the jewelry.”
Libby stood up and approached Cindy Lou, her eyes narrowed. “Describe it to me.”
“I did not really look at it.”
“I don’t believe you, not the way you were looking at the furniture as if you’re planning to move in.”
“Well, maybe I took a little peek.” She squinted her eyes as if deep I thought. “Let’s see, there was a gold brooch with purple stones and a diamond necklace in the shape of a teardrop with matching earrings. Oh, and a rosebud pin that I am guessing is rubies.”
Libby gasped and Cindy Lou knew she had her. Libby twisted her hands as she thought frantically. How could she protect herself and still get the jewelry? Finally, she stood. “Wait here. I’ll change clothes and get my cloak. I’ll ride, so you can drive your carriage back to town from there.”
“As you wish,” Cindy Lou smiled.
Libby started to leave the room but stopped and turned around. “What are you getting out of this, Cindy Lou? Some of my mother’s jewelry?”
The woman smiled again. “Just a small item.” Garrett. He had been nasty to her and she had been angry with him, but that was water under the bridge. Garrett could not possibly want this bland woman he married. Even if he did, she was about to disappear. Garrett might be upset, and Cindy Lou would be there to make it all better. She smiled. Oh, she knew Garrett wasn’t rich, yet there was something about him. And if she didn’t miss the mark, he would most likely inherit the Butterman spread anyway. He was so close to being hers, she could almost taste him. She looked around the room again. When she lived here, this rustic décor would have to go.
A few minutes later, Carmen trailed after Libby, trying to stop her. “You cannot trust that viper. At least wait until señor Butterman returns. He can go with you. Por favor, I am begging you, señora.”
Libby adjusted her new dark blue split skirt and donned her cloak. “It’s my mother’s jewelry, Carmen. It is all I have of her. She left it out in the elements where anything could happen to it or anyone could find it. I have my pistol in my reticule. It will be all right.”
“Garrett or Jackson will buy you more jewelry in your mother’s name.” She was holding onto Libby’s cloak at this point.
Libby dragged the woman with her for a few steps and then stopped. “It is not the money, Carmen. It is the only tangible memories I have of my mother. I have to go. I know Cindy Lou is not trustworthy. I’ll be careful.” She gently removed Carmen’s clutched hands from her cloak, one finger at a time.
“I will go with you.”
“You will not. You will stay here and prepare a wonderful lunch for the men as you do every day. I will be back in less than an hour. It will be fine. I am armed and not the weak woman you saw a few days ago. Do not worry, Mamacita. I won’t be taken by surprise.” I am Lionhearted Libby.
Cindy Lou waited impatiently by her carriage, brushing dust off her wrap, while Libby saddled a horse and led it out of the barn. When Cindy Lou and Garrett were married, she decided, she’d talk him into buying a big house in town, far away from all this dust and the smelly cattle. And he could get a job in the bank or something so he would not smell like cows either. They could come out here occasionally to get away from town.
“How far is it?” Libby asked her nemesis, who was studying her painted fingernails.
“I’m not good on distances. Maybe a mile or a mile and a half from here, toward town.”
“Okay, lead on. I’ll be right behind you.”
As Cindy Lou climbed into her conveyance, Libby felt in her pocket where she’d moved the pistol she had brought along as insurance. She could not take the chance that Cindy Lou was not telling the truth, but she realized that something that looked too good to be true probably was not true. While it seemed like a stupid move, she was not stupid. Lionhearted Libby was done being a victim. If this was some kind of a trap, she would turn the tables or go down fighting. She just could not take a chance that she could have a tangible memento of her mother. She should have taken the jewelry when she had fled her home. The new, tougher western Libby would have.
She estimated they had gone a little over a mile, as Cindy Lou had predicted, when the dirt road curved sharply to the right around several large boulders, in front of which was a sign with an arrow: Deer Creek – 11 miles.
Cindy Lou stopped the carriage. “It’s here.” She pointed. “I put them behind that rock.”
Libby looked suspiciously where Cindy Lou indicated and dismounted. “You come, too.”
“You don’t need me.”
“Just in case they’re not there, you come, too.”
Cindy Lou complained about the inconvenience, the dust and the heat, but she got out of the carriage huffily and led the way.
“This jewelry is the only thing I have to remember my mother by. It better not be damaged.”
“It isn’t,” Cindy Lou said, with little empathy. Libby doubted she had any to give.
They walked around the large boulder. Cindy Lou bent down and reached under an overhang. “I can’t quite get it,” she grunted.
Libby crouched down beside her and tried to look under the rock. “I can see the pouch!” she said.
She started to reach under the rock when she was grabbed from behind. She struggled mightily but was not at full strength since her last ordeal. If she had time to think about it, that might have been a familiar thought. She was fumbling to reach the pistol in her pocket when her assailant pressed a sweet-smelling rag on her face. She tried desperately to hold her breath as long as she could, but finally she gulped in air and began to lose consciousness. Carmen’s words of warning came back to her as she saw the smirk on Cindy Lou’s face. Her last conscious thought was that she apparently was stupid after all, just before everything faded to black. Once again Libby Butterman Winslow—that’s who she was in her mind—was unconscious.
* * *
By the time an exhausted Jackson rode in from the range, Carmen was in a frenzy. Hiking up her multi-colored, billowy skirt, she took the porch steps by twos and ran across the expanse to the barn, her boots kicking up dust as she scurried. Jackson had just dismounted as she burst into the building.
“Señor Jackson…su hija…peligro…peligro.” She chattered so fast that Jackson, who was fairly fluent in Spanish, could not make out what she was saying, although he knew it had something to do with Libby. He grabbed her firmly but gently by the elbows.
“Carmen, slow down; take a breath,” he said calmly. “Or at least speak English if you’re going to rant.”
“Señor, señor,” the woman began to sob. “Libby…Libby…”
“What is it? Now what happened?”
“It was that evil woman…”
“Who?”
Carmen took a deep, shaky breath and then managed to convey, in stops and spurts, what had taken place with Cindy Lou’s visit to Libby and the claim she had made about her mother’s jewels.
“Libby…the señorita said she would return in less than an hour.”
“How long ago was that?”
“More than an hour and 30 minutes. Almost two hours. Something is wrong. I am so afraid. That woman is bad, el diablo.”
“Oh, for the love of God. How hard is it to keep one slip of a woman on the ranch?”
“I am so sorry, señor.”
“I’m not blaming you, Carmen. None of us have been able to keep her here. She’s hardheaded.”
“And I wonder where she got that trait.”
“Hm. Yes.” In spite of himself, he smiled.
Then Jackson got that steely look in his eyes that Carmen had seen over the years in times of crisis. Part of his brain was certainly in crisis mode. Another part was thinking he needed to lock Libby in a room and throw away the key. “I’ll go after her now, and I will not come back without her. If they have hurt her or worse, they have breathed their last on this earth.” He could kick himself for not having put an end to this sooner, and for counseling Garrett not to take vengeance into his own hands when he was ready to do just that.
Quickly he fed his horse from a nearby bucket of oats and led him to the water trough.
“Dios mío. Be careful, señor. While your horse drinks, I will pack some food for you.”
He turned to her, calmly and almost deadly quiet. “Do not take more than a minute. Joss should be making repairs on his cabin. Tell him to ride and let the sheriff know what has happened. But first, he should find Vern in the south pasture and have him track me.” He swung into the saddle. “One way or another, this will end soon.”
He walked the horse out of the barn over to the area in front of the porch, found the tracks from Cindy Lou’s carriage and studied them. Carmen made the sign of the cross and rushed to the house, where she grabbed a sack and hurriedly filled it with apples, cheese, bread and some cold ham. She rushed the sack outside and thrust it to Jackson, then hurried behind the barn toward Joss’s cabin. By the time she had explained the situation to the cowhand and relayed Jackson’s orders, the ranch owner was long gone.
Virtually nobody, with the possible exception of Garrett, could track any better than Jackson Butterman. In his younger years, he had trapped with a Blackfeet half-breed and learned the Indian way of reading sign. He could follow Cindy Lou’s carriage without even dismounting. It took him less than 20 minutes to get to the cluster of boulders where Libby had been accosted.
Jackson dismounted and crouched down to study the disturbed ground. He could smell the sweet odor of the chloroform and knew what had happened. After his daughter was overcome, Cindy Lou rode off in the carriage toward town, and Elias Parminter or whoever he had hired dragged Libby to his horse and rode off on the old trail toward the abandoned Clearwater Copper Mine. The rancher narrowed his eyes as he studied the carriage tracks. He would deal with Cindy Lou, who set Libby up, later. That woman was a menace. He climbed into the saddle and spurred his horse toward the old mine, praying Libby’s luck hadn’t run out this time.
* * *
For the love of God, now what was wrong with her head? Libby struggled to open her eyes, fighting against the nausea that was nearly overwhelming her. Before she had a chance to get her wits about her, a hammy hand slapped her face. Twice. Now that was familiar. Elias.
“That’s it. Wake up, my dear daughter.”
She coughed, sending a jarring jolt through her head. Oh, yes, it was coming back to her. Cindy Lou and the jewels. Even as she knew she was being stupid to trust that arse-swiveling breast flaunter, Libby couldn’t take the chance that Elias had had a change of heart or that she could finally have a keepsake to remember her mother by. What a fool she was. Leopards didn’t change their spots.
Elias. As her eyes focused, she saw that he looked surprisingly unkempt and out of control. Even his fingernails were dirty. Come to think of it, she had never seen him with so much as a hair out of place, and for a moment she had to fight an urge to giggle. Then the nausea returned. She sucked in a deep breath, trying to clear the fog. How did she end up here?
The smelly rag. Libby took another quivering, deep breath and looked around. She was lying on the ground on some pointy gravel, her hands tied with some kind of thin cord. Then she had another stray thought. How commonplace was it to get tied up out West? It seemed to happen to her often enough. She turned her head, painfully, and saw the opening to what looked like a boarded-up cave or mine.
“Where…where are we?” she said, trying to sound a little weaker than she actually felt, to buy time while she gathered her strength. Libby Butterman would go down fighting this time, by God. They could shoot at her, knock her out, drug her, threaten her ‘til the cows came home. But nobody was going to drop another acrobat on her head without serious consequences. Now, if she could just sit up without vomiting…
“We’re at your final resting place, Elizabeth.”
That should probably make her quiver. Oddly, it didn’t, though. “Is…is it a cave?”
“It’s a mine. Or it was. I scouted it out thoroughly. It’s abandoned, and there is no one around for miles and miles, in case you would like to scream. Would you like to scream, my dear?” He smiled a feral kind of smile that distorted his face.
Had she ever seen him smile any kind of smile? She could not remember when. Yes, this definitely was not an attractive smile. It was dastardly, like the smile of a dime novel outlaw.
“I think I would like that.”
“What?” She was confused. She should not let her mind wander, even if his was.
He grabbed her chin and squeezed. “To hear you scream.”
He actually let out an evil laugh. The man truly was a lunatic. Had he always been? A thought to ponder when her circumstances were less dire.
“Yes, you can scream, my dear, and no one will hear you. No one!”
“Why are you doing this? I am married now, you know. You cannot get the dowry. It’s over. You’ve lost. What do you want?”
“What do I want? What do I want?” He screamed the last sentence and shoved her roughly across the gravel. “I want the money I deserve. It’s mine. All mine. I want my thoroughbred horses back. I had to sell them because of you. I want your mother back. I want you dead.”
This time Libby did struggle to a sitting position. As she did, she casually felt her pocket. The revolver was still there. Elias would never suspect his obedient little daughter would stand up to him. Spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth, almost as if he was foaming. She again marveled that he barely resembled the in-control, straight-laced, dictatorial father figure she had grown up with.
“What…what happened to you?”
“Your insolence! Your disregard. Your irresponsibility. I had it all planned. It was mine. You ruined everything. Selfish, selfish girl.”
“It was my mother who sent me off.”
He struck her again, splitting her lip this time. “Liar! Filth!”
“I am not lying,” she gasped, lifting her bound hands to her mouth to wipe the blood. “It was her idea for me to get away from you. She gave me the money and even told me what route to take.”
He thought about that for a moment, shaking his head. “Bitch! I should have known she would betray me too.”
“We didn’t betray you. You gambled away your own money and tried to take mine.”
“It’s not yours. I raised you, clothed you, fed you. It’s mine.”
“Yes, you did that. With my mother’s money that she brought to the marriage. You gave me everything but concern. Or compassion. Understanding. Love.”
“Love! You have to be lovable to get love. You’re selfish. You’re nothing, the by-blow of some backwoods cowboy.”
He kicked her, sending a shooting pain up her leg, causing her to fall back on those painful pieces of gravel. Or was it ground glass? She turned sideways and vomited. Elias screeched and stumbled backwards. Libby sucked in couple of deep breaths and struggled back to a sitting position again. “Then let us both be thankful you are not my father.”
“No, I am not,” he said ominously. “I’m your executioner.”
“And they were married.”
He grabbed her by the hair, which had long since come out of its neat chignon, and began dragging her toward the mine as she frantically tried to reach into her pocket with her bound hands to grab her pistol. Holding her hair twisted tightly in one hand, he used the other hand to rip the rotting boards from the mine entrance and began dragging her inside.
“Why didn’t you just shoot me back at the boulders and be done with it?”
“That would be too easy. I want you to disappear from the face of the earth. I want your pathetic husband and that stupid rancher to think you left them. I want them to wonder for the rest of their lives where you are. Just like with Elinora.”
“You’re insane.”
“Oh, and that won’t be long for your father, since I’m going to kill him, too.”
She struggled to free herself. “No!”
“In you go, princess.”
“You won’t get away with this. Carmen knows where I went, and my husband and father will hunt you down and kill you.”
“I was going to cut you up in little slices to watch you bleed and scream and then post a little package of them back to that ranch, but I cannot stand the sight of you any longer. I cannot wait to be rid of you. And the best part is that your new family will hunt and hunt and never find you. It will torture them forever.”
His laugh was positively demonic as he dragged her into the mine. She glanced behind her. She saw a shaft with a cobwebbed wooden car hanging precariously from some sort of a cable mechanism as she pulled the little pistol out of her pocket.
“Let. Go. Of. Me,” Libby spat out, and Elias heard the click of the revolver in her tied hands. Her finger was on the trigger.
He let go of her hair near the edge of the shaft, laughing maniacally again. “You don’t even know how to fire a gun, and you wouldn’t have the nerve to do it anyway.”
“Just try me,” she said, remembering all those slaps and cruelties over the years, all the times she had bit her lip, schooling her features and swallowing her fear or distaste.
He smiled and took a step toward her, intent on pushing her down the mineshaft. As she fired the gun, she involuntarily took a step backwards. Too late she realized she had no foothold; she had stepped over the edge, into the mineshaft. Just as she fell into the shaft, her brain registered Elias clutching his chest, a red stain spreading quickly. She did not see the stunned look on his face as she desperately tried to grab on to anything to stop her descent, grimacing at the pain as she hit the car and banged off the wall. Finally, about 20 or 25 feet down, she managed to hook an elbow on a platform under the car and plant her feet on the wall at the same time. She felt as if her shoulder had been ripped out of its socket in the process, her sore ankle screamed and the backs of her hands were scraped and banged up. She also could feel bruising forming on her right arm and hip. After a few moments to get her breathing under control and focus on her immediate problem, she managed to hoist herself slowly onto the platform. The exceedingly dirty and rough platform. Ugh…was that a dead, decaying rat in the corner? Maybe it was a bat. She scooted a ways and used her foot to push it off the end of the platform, watching as it plummeted below. It was a long, long way down. She shifted back and laid down, still breathing heavily. Against her will, she was crying a little bit, too, although it was more in frustration than out of pain or fear. She was alive. She had survived numerous attacks, and she was alive.
How had her life gone from one of civilized loneliness to living on the edge of death and disaster in such a short time? Once again, she realized she had never felt so alive as she had these last few weeks. She had had the thought once before. Maybe one needed to be on the edge of danger and death to truly appreciate life. Still, enough was enough. She needed a rest. That brought a little gravelly chuckle. She might indeed experience a long rest on this platform if she didn’t get Lionhearted Libby into action.
Looking at her raw hands, scraped and bruised as she frantically tried to catch on to something even though her hands were still tied together, she realized this was not the time to philosophize. Had she killed Elias? Libby hoped she had not, although he certainly deserved it and that blood spreading over his chest did not bode well. She imagined he would be hard to kill, though, and would still try to finish her off with his last breath. She used her teeth to slowly, painstakingly loosen the cord on her wrists, finally getting her hands free. Next she looked around for her pistol; of course it was gone, somewhere at the bottom of the mineshaft. With the dead bat-like thing, no doubt. No matter if Elias was alive or not, she still had to figure out how to get out of this predicament. It was dark and damp and creepy in the mine, and the cable mechanism did not work. Well, she would just have to devise a way to climb the cable. Right after she took a long nap. No! She just needed a little rest.
Surprisingly, Libby fell asleep on the platform. That alone should tell her how far she had come from the St. Louis maiden she once was. She awoke some minutes later and took a moment to realize where she was. What was that noise? Had she heard someone calling her? How could anyone else be in this mineshaft? Slowly she sat up, rubbing her eyes. That’s when she finally understood the voice was coming from above. Was it Elias? Would he shoot her? It wasn’t that sing-songy voice he had been using, though. She held onto the cable, then leaned over and looked up, around the car above her, squinting at the light. It took her a moment to realize Jackson was peering into the shaft.
“Libby, can you hear me? Are you hurt?” he called down.
“N…No,” she said, surprised at how weak her voice sounded. Again. “Just banged up a little. As usual,” she couldn’t help adding.
“Don’t move. I’ll get my rope.”
“I’m not going anywhere. What about Elias?”
“I’m sorry, Lib. He’s dead.”
Dead? She had killed him. She had not really aimed at anything except his general direction. She waited for the dread, the horror, the tears, but they didn’t come. She felt bad about killing another human being, she realized, but not as bad as she thought she would feel. He was an evil man, and obviously rather mad at the end. He tried to kill her and almost succeeded. Still, she wished there could have been another way.
“Hang on.”
“Yes, I’ll wait here,” she called back, and he chuckled.
Moments later he returned and dropped a length of rope down to her. She managed to grab the end of it and pull several feet of it onto the platform.
“How are you at knots?”
“I know just the basics, I guess.”
“Tie the rope under your arms with a double or triple knot and pull it as tight as you can.”
She did so and called up to him.
“Now grab the rope and wind it around your hand in case the knots come undone.”
That hurt her sore hands. “Okay.”
“All right. I’m going to start pulling you up. When you feel the pull, jump out a little so you don’t hit the car.”
She did as he instructed. Gradually he pulled, trying to ensure she didn’t swing or bang into the walls of the shaft or the cable mechanism. It was slow going, and as she neared the top, she could see the muscles in his arms bulging with the strain. He was still a strong, virile man in his mid-40s, which somehow made her feel proud. At last, she reached the top and he pulled her up and helped her over the edge. Then he pulled her up and hugged her tightly.
“Thank you, Papa,” she said.
His heart glowed. “I honestly believe you would have gotten yourself out of there if I hadn’t come along. You are something else, Libby Winslow.”
She stepped back and smiled. “I know I would have. I’m glad you came.”
They walked out of the mine. She looked down at Elias’s body and shook her head. “Why?”
He put his arm around her shoulder. “I don’t know why some people are driven by greed. Even if he had gotten your dowry, it would not do him any good now. You did what you had to do.”
“I think he was really quite mad at the end.” She shook her head. “I guess we should go to town and tell the sheriff.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“Oh, yes. And I would not miss Cindy Lou’s date with justice.”
He chuckled, yet it had a hard edge to it.