After the Thunder (34 page)

“You strike me as the kind of little tart who likes it rough,” he said. “But just in case I’m wrong about that, you might want to give me back what you took from me.

Her mind raced as fast as the blood pumping wild through her veins. What tack to take? Should she go on the verbal attack? Could she get him into a shouting match loud enough for the rest of the household to hear?

Maybe she could provoke him into yelling that he was the one who killed Jacob.

“I’m not giving you anything.”

He advanced on her, pure menace in his slitted eyes.

“You damn sure are.”

“I can’t,” she said quickly, “if I don’t even know what it is you’re after.”

“You damn sure know, all right.”

“Peter, you have to stop talking in riddles. Please.”

He turned abruptly, and her heart lifted because she
was thinking that he was going to give up and leave, but she should have known better. He went to her armoire, jerked open the door and starting pulling clothing out, throwing clothes in every direction.

“I’ll find it,” he said, “and then I’ll make you pay for not telling me where it is, for making me look for it.”

“What if I already gave it to Tay?”

“You didn’t. I watched his face at supper. He’s in the dark.”

“Several hours have passed since supper.”

“I don’t care if you gave it to the Judges themselves. Nobody can prove a thing against me.”

He continued to toss her things everywhere.

“So this … whatever it is that you think I stole from you could be evidence in a crime? Perhaps a murder? Jacob’s murder?”

He ignored her completely and continued searching until he’d gone through every corner of the armoire, then he moved on to the chifforobe.

“You think you’re so clever, Cotannah,” he said. “But you’ve outsmarted yourself this time, gal. You should’ve confided in somebody instead of trying to get more out of me than I intend to tell.”

“What in the world are you talking about? You’re the one who came to my room, if you recall.”

“But you were all ready for me,” he said, turning away from his task to look around the room as if counting the hiding places left.

“I was not. I had no idea that you were coming here.”

“Do you normally keep a bottle of whiskey and two glasses sitting on your table?”

As he spoke, he strode across the room, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her down into one of the chairs.

“Let’s have a little drink, darlin’,” he said roughly.
“It’d be a shame to waste the hospitality you’ve prepared.”

Her blood began roaring in her head. She was completely losing control over this situation that she’d felt so confident about. No, to face the truth, she had lost control of it several minutes ago.

He poured each glass half-full.

“Drink up,” he said, and he suddenly sounded as jovial as ever. “And think about whether you want to give me back what’s mine or have me beat it out of you.”

A devil of rebellion took over her tongue.

“I don’t know what makes you think I won’t scream the house down,” she said. “Besides, you’d better not mess with me. I learned to fight from the Mexican vaqueros, and once I escaped from a whole bunch of
bandidos
.”

“But not from me, honey,” he said, lifting his glass and tossing down his drink. “You won’t escape from me.

He scowled at her and his eyes turned to ice.

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps this was the time to scream for help.

“Drink that,” he said.

She took a sip.

“All of it,” he demanded.

She drank a little more.

“Tell me how you think you’re going to get out of this,” she said, “before I yell for Tay and all the other men in this house.”

“You won’t yell for anybody as long as you think there’s the remotest chance you can get me to talking while we’re alone,” he said. “Because I proved to you at supper that you can’t trick me into talking in public.
You’re a stubborn girl, Cotannah, my love, and that will be your downfall.”

She smiled at him and lifted her glass, pretended to sip at the drink.

“Your downfall was keeping that bottle,” she said. “Why did you? Did you plan to use it again?”

He smiled a smile cold enough to freeze a summer day.

“Why, what are you talkin’ about, Miss Cotannah?” he said, in a eerie imitation of her voice. “Use what again?”

Then his face went solemn and hard.

He poured himself another drink, then left the glass on the table and reached across it to take her wrist in a painful, twisting grip.

“Drink that one, and I’ll pour you some more,” he said. “Don’t give me any guff about it.”

“What’ll you do if I don’t? Put a little monkshood in it?”

“Very funny. Drink that.”

She tried to pull free, but he was so much stronger than she that she couldn’t believe it. He looked fat and flabby, but his muscles weren’t.

It wasn’t panic that she suddenly felt. It was a simple certainty that she was making no progress, that she could not make him confess or trick him into confessing and that it was time that she got some help.

“Drink it yourself.”

She threw her drink in his face and jerked her arm free, leapt up to run for the door.

But he was also quicker than she’d ever thought possible, and he caught her before she could get the key in her hand, clapped his hand over her mouth.

“You’ve done yourself in, now, sweetheart,” he growled, and she knew it was true.

So she twisted in his arms and kicked at his shins, elbowed him in the ribs and bowed her back until she freed her mouth enough to scream. At first, for one horrible, frozen second, she thought she was too scared to make the slightest of sounds, but then she got out one loud cry before he tried to close her mouth again.

She bit his finger and he pulled his hand back and she screamed.

The next instant he was smothering her with both hands but it was all right because somebody was running in the hall, somebody was rattling the doorknob.

“It’s locked!” Emily screamed. “Cotannah, oh, ’Tannah!”

“Damn it, Phillips, open up!”

It was Tay’s voice, roaring.

Then the roaring was inside her head and everything went black.

To Walks-With-Spirits’s great shock, not one of his pursuers had fired a single shot, and now he was thundering into the house yard at Tall Pine. None of them was even in hearing distance yet, even though he felt sure they were galloping their horses on his trail as fast as they could. Or maybe not.

He grinned to himself. Maybe they had deliberately stayed behind far enough so that he couldn’t cast a spell on them.

Probably. He had shouted at them when they’d first left Tuskahoma, at the top of his lungs, that he was sent on this mission by a medicine vision, and then, when no one answered, he had begun chanting again, in the Choctaw tongue, every charm of protection that he knew. So far, it had intimidated them into staying far back and not shooting at him.

“Only an
alikchi
could make such an impossible escape!”
one of them had yelled, and then they had all been silent.

As he rode into sight of Tay and Emily’s house, he gave a great, shuddering sigh of relief that the Lighthorse were afraid of his powers. They had followed him somewhere back there, but they wouldn’t keep him from saving Cotannah, thanks to the powers of the Great Spirit.

And to the powers given this gallant, spirited horse who had carried him so swiftly. He was surefooted in the darkness, and he’d raced even faster when the trees thinned and the moon and stars gave them light. The time had dragged at first, then it had passed in a flashing moment, it seemed, and Walks-With-Spirits’s heart was in shreds when the two of them jumped the horse over the fence and galloped up to the house at Tall Pine.

He was off the horse and running before they reached the steps to the veranda; he pounded across it and burst into the house. Blocking everything else from his mind, he tried to open his spirit, tried to feel where, exactly, Cotannah was.

Upstairs.

But something was wrong, he couldn’t get to her this way. He stopped in his tracks at the bottom of the stairs.

“Phillips! Open the door!”

Tay’s voice.

“Break it down,” Emily screamed. “Brother Jones! Come help Tay break down this door. It’s solid oak.”

Loud pounding knocks and more yelling echoed through the house.

He whirled on his heel and ran through the empty parlor, stepped out through the window onto the veranda, darted across it, and immediately shinnied up one of the posts to the veranda above it, threw himself bodily over the baluster rail. Cotannah was in the room immediately
to his right, he could feel her spirit calling to his.

Below him, the Lighthorsemen and the others were just turning into the long driveway from the road, with their horses’ feet all drumming against the earth. He breathed a little prayer of thanks. They hadn’t stopped him, and now he would save Cotannah.

The window was closed, and one slight tug proved it was locked. He could see Cotannah’s feet and her full skirt hanging off the bed, with Phillips looming like an evil monster above her upper body.

Choking her!

“Phillips!” he yelled. “Turn her loose or the Black Lightning will strike you!” Then he hid his face behind his shoulder and drove his elbow into the glass, his spirit reaching ahead to feel hers.

It’s all right. I’m here. Cotannah, my darling, my precious one, I’m here
.

She swam back into consciousness in a haze of happiness wondering where the rock that had fallen on her throat had gone. Her whole neck was hurting horribly, yet the pain of it passed her by, wiped out by joy. She opened her eyes to the lamplight when the tinkling bells began to ring and tried to think what was happening.

The next breath caught in her hurting throat, she gasped for more air and turned her head.

Walks-With-Spirits burst right through the window, half-naked, flying straight through, shattering glass everywhere, hurtling magically through the air with his bare feet tucked up against his tight bottom and his arms reaching for the prize like a stickball player straining to catch the ball. Except that this time his prize was also his prey, and he was stretching his big muscles to get hold of Phillips with hands like a hungry eagle’s claws instead of a playing stick.

He was here! Oh, thank God, Walks-With-Spirits was here! By what miracle? How had he ever gotten away? Or had he not gone to Tuskahoma yet?

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. All she knew was that he had come to save her and he was right here in her room, wearing only his breeches, fringes flying, his face fierce as Basak’s on the attack.

Phillips turned to meet him, but he never had a chance. Walks-With-Spirits collided with him like a tornado hitting a house.

There was another horrible thud, right then, this one at the door, which came crashing in to fall flat on the floor with an awful screaming noise of tearing wood that sounded almost human.

Helpless to speak or move, Cotannah glimpsed Tay and Emily and Brother Jones all watching Phillips and Walks-With-Spirits fight. Emily’s face was frighteningly pale.

She saw Walks-With-Spirits, with Tay helping him now, throw Phillips face down and start to tie his hands behind him with Tay’s belt. Emily ran to her, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Tay jerked the belt tight around Phillips’s wrists and stood up, setting one booted foot deliberately in the small of his back to hold him down.

Then Walks-With-Spirits got up and came toward her. He broke her heart. The cross of white paint stood out against his gleaming copper-colored skin, marking the target, and it made her tremble to think how close he had come to losing his life, how close she had come to losing him.

He filled her eyes. Every step he took moved something inside her, some deep core of her that had stayed locked away for a long, long time, perhaps since she was born.

Or since she was old enough to know that she had no mother.

And no father.

For the first time since Phillips grabbed her, she was able to take in great gulps of healing air, able to breathe deeply in a calming rhythm that soothed her soul. No, no. It was the sight of Walks-With-Spirits, alive and unhurt that comforted her beyond belief.

He was scooping her up then, into his arms, he was holding her close, so close, that they were one body once more. She nestled her cheek onto his naked chest, gloried in the feel of her skin against his skin, and laid her ear against the steady, pounding beat of his heart. Safe, it said. Safe. We are both safe now.

Slowly, the shivering inside her began to subside. He held her even tighter, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of his feet while he held her in his arms.

Emily hovered near her.

“Her throat is nearly crushed!” she cried. “You can see the marks of every one of his fingers on her neck!”

The room quieted completely.

“Get up, Phillips,” Tay growled, dragging the man to his feet as he spoke. “Get up and tell us why you were choking her.”

Phillips’s face was so red with rage that it was almost purple.

“Because she’s a sneaky, lying little thief!” he cried, in a tone so aggrieved that a person would think he was the one who’d just been strangled and choked half to death. “If I could’ve found that bottle of poison, I’d have poured the rest of it down her throat.”

Tay slammed him against the wall.

“What poison?”

“The damned monkshood, that’s what poison! The poison that killed Jacob! None of you simpleminded idiots
ever even thought that he might’ve been poisoned, now did you?”

“Why’d you want to kill your own partner?”

“He was trying to back out of our deal with the Boomers. I couldn’t do without that money after it started coming in—I didn’t have a rich father to give me anything I wanted the way Jacob did.”

He said the last as if it absolved him completely.

Tay glared at him.

“What deal with the Boomers?”

“The deal for Jacob and me to talk up white settlers and individual allotments.”

“They were paying you both for that?”