Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (51 page)

   
Tish smiled slumberously at him. “All the better for us, my darling. He is a genuine war hero, even if it was the War for Independence. I shall manage him quite well and with Daddy’s backing, well, he’ll win the nomination and the election quite handily.”

   
“No. I won’t stand for it—that old goat pawing you. No more husbands, Tish. You’re mine,” he snarled, furious that she and Worthington Soames had cooked up this scheme behind his back. He grabbed her arm and yanked her against him roughly, pressing her lower body to his with one arm while his other hand seized a breast and squeezed it. He lowered his head and bit her neck, growing rougher as she struggled, cursing at him, kicking and trying to break free.

   
“You are mad,” she screamed, clawing at his face, raking a bloody furrow across his cheek.

   
But he seemed impervious to the injury as he continued savaging her breasts and throat, drawing blood as his teeth fastened on a nipple and clamped.

   
Tish pushed and kicked, all the while groping for the small English pistol he always carried in his satin waistcoat. Her hands finally found it and fastened around it with claw-like desperation. He was making low ferocious noises now, deep in his throat, snarling like a lion staking his claim on a downed piece of game.

   
“You belong to me—do you hear? Me!” he growled, looking up into her wild eyes, his own glittering with a bizarre mixture of crazed lust and utter despair.

   
“No, Richard. I belong to no man,” she said, pulling the gun free and shoving it against his chest. “Let me go.”

   
One hand still pressed her against his body as the other slid free of her hair where he had entangled it. He slipped it down toward the gun and tried to pry it from her white frantic fingers. “Let go, my pet, before you do something we’ll both regret,” he said, a bit of the old smooth swagger back in his voice.

   
“Let me go, Richard,” she replied frantically, still trying to twist away from him as he maintained his grip on the gun she clutched.

   
“No Tisha, my love—”

   
Suddenly the loud report of a shot echoed in the small room and a look of surprise widened her pale gold eyes. Then the thick silvery lashes fluttered and she sagged against him...dead weight.

   
Richard looked down with horror at the small crimson hole in her breast, directly in front of her heart. How milky pale the skin looked around the angry red wound. “No, Tisha, no...no...no.’’ He crooned to her softly as they both sank to the floor.

   
His hold on her never slackened as he lowered her onto his lap. Then he took the gun, which had become twisted and turned inadvertently on her, and he pried it free of her lifeless fingers. Tossing it away, he began stroking her naked breasts which were now liberally smeared with blood.

   
“So beautiful, my beloved. Even in death, you are so utterly perfect.” He bent down and kissed her lips, then the tips of those magnificent breasts. They were beginning to show the marks of his hands with purplish bruises.
   
Tenderly he caressed them, then pulled her bodice closed and fastened it once more.

   
For a moment he held her and stared across the room at the gun. Slowly he shifted Tish’s body from his lap and stretched her out carefully on the floor. He got to his feet and retrieved the small pistol. He righted an overturned chair and then sat, a smile spreading slowly across his handsome face.

   
“Yes, my pet, it is true. Blood calls out for blood.”

   
With a calmness borne of utter madness and despair, Richard Bullock carefully reloaded and primed his pistol...

* * * *

   
Olivia looked up at the darkening sky and shivered. There were no clouds per se. The sun simply vanished behind a lowering slate gray veil. Not a breath of wind stirred but a strange hint of sulfur hung ominously in the cold, damp river air.

   
“Chilly, my dear? You’d best go back inside else you’ll take a lung fever,” Wescott said solicitously, walking up behind her as she stood in the door of the keelboat cabin, looking at the dark churning waters of the mighty river that bore them relentlessly downstream, farther and farther away from Samuel.

   
“And we couldn’t have me take ill and die before claiming my inheritance, could we?” she replied acerbically, pulling her woolen shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Before he arranged her abduction, Wescott had seen to it that the best of the wardrobe she had left behind at his house was carefully packed for the trip.

   
“What’s this talk of dying?” he scoffed jovially. The last thing he wanted was for the troublesome chit to get the idea that he planned to kill her once the Durand wealth was securely in his hands.

   
She raised one eyebrow disdainfully and fixed him with a cold green glare. “You’re the one who talks of dying. You threatened to have Samuel murdered if I didn’t cooperate—you even leveled your own pistol on that poor messenger boy at the tavern. You’d have shot him in a trice if I hadn’t given him that note for Samuel, pretending it was from me.”

   
Samuel. Would he come after her? Or did he believe Wescott’s awful letter? She had been foolish enough to fall for his skillful forgery and place herself in his hands. For the hundredth time since he had seized her at the deserted racetrack, she cursed her folly.
You wanted the note from Samuel to be true so badly that you abandoned all common sense.

   
“That ugliness is past and behind us now, gel Once you see the bright lights and elegant refinements of the Queen City, you’ll soon forget about your colonel. You’ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams, Olivia.”

   
“No,
you’ll
be rich,
Uncle
Emory,” she said, emphasizing the formerly affectionate title with utter contempt. She had to stop him before they reached New Orleans—even sooner if Samuel was following her. If Wescott got Shelby in his sights, she knew he would kill her love.

   
He muttered to himself and walked off to the front of the boat where several of the men were sharing a bottle, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Tonight when they moored up for the night she would escape. She had eluded Pardee and his Osage. Surely she could outsmart the likes of Emory Wescott and the pack of half-drunken river rats he had hired. Olivia stared at the river that carried her south, looking to the northern horizon. Would he come?

   
Darkness fell, sullen and cold. Not a star shone in the night sky. They were nearing the Chickasaw Bluffs, a particularly rough stretch of river called the Devil’s Race. No one, not even the most experienced rivermen dared to attempt it at night. They moored up beneath a steep bluff and began preparing an evening meal. One of the men, a lecherous looking little weasel with dirty yellow hair and a pockmarked face, was assigned to watch her. His name was Gruener.

   
Olivia sat in the bow of the boat on a small barrel, clutching a tin pan filled with burned beans and a greasy unappetizing hunk of pork. She pushed the noisome mess about with her fork after taking a few mouthfuls of the less charred beans for sustenance.

   
“You are not hungry tonight,
Leibchen
?” Gruener said in a thick Westphalian accent.

   
She shoved the plate at the ugly riverman. “Here, you eat it. I’m going to get some sleep.” She walked calmly to the cabin box and slipped inside the darkness, knowing he would not dare to follow, but would position himself outside the door. Emory and the boat’s captain would sleep at the opposite end, effectively sealing off that exit to her. The best she could do was prepare herself for when everyone slept except for the sentry on land and Gruener.

   
Olivia felt around in the dark for the flint, then used it to light a tallow candle. Setting it down beside her trunk, she opened the lid after making certain no one else was inside the crowded room. There beneath a froth of lace gowns and undergarments lay her secret weapon—a high-heeled boot made with a decorative nickel plating on the bottom edge of the heel. Hefting it against her palm, she felt the cool weight and smiled grimly. If wielded properly it should put Herr Gruener to sleep for quite a while, perhaps forever, and at this point, she cared not which.

   
Dousing the candle, she crawled beneath the covers, preparing for a long night’s wait. Gradually the men retired one by one, falling into drunken slumber. Wescott and the captain were among the last to go to bed. Unfortunately, she could tell from beneath veiled lashes that although the captain was in his cups, Emory remained sober. She would just have to be very quiet when she disposed of Gruener.

   
On the shore, Samuel climbed through a thick stand of cattails and reeds, then peered at the keelboat Wescott’s men had secured for the night. Shelby waited patiently, watching them retire for the evening. A sentry was posted ashore and a squat little man sat watch in front of the cabin box where Olivia must be held.

   
Several times during the course of the afternoon he had caught sight of Wescott’s boat from his own. Using the spyglass he had brought along, he saw her on deck, seemingly unharmed. He had not dared to approach closer in the smaller, swifter craft for fear of what Wescott might do to her. Instead he had bided his time, waiting until they moored up for the night.

   
As he crouched in the wet cold, Samuel felt an eerie premonition of doom. The sky had been dark all day and the air peculiarly becalmed with a nasty acrid aroma permeating it. All the wildlife was restless, too, as if sensing that something unnatural was about to occur. In the faint reflection from the water, he watched a rabbit bound out in the darkness, dashing erratically across an open stretch of shoreline grass, heedless of danger. Frogs croaked loudly, though they should be in hibernation by now, and swarm after swarm of wild birds and geese moved across the sky, screeching deafeningly as they flew blindly in the darkness.

   
Nervously he rubbed the back of his neck, then turned his attention back to the boat. One dim lantern flickered on the prow of Wescott’s keelboat. He began moving through the brackish water toward the sentry, coming upon him from behind. Since there were seven men aboard with Wescott, Samuel knew he must move swiftly and silently to get Olivia free without alerting anyone.

   
Just as he reached the tree stumps where the guard sat dozing lightly, leaning on his musket, Samuel saw Olivia appear in the cabin doorway. She raised some sort of a cudgel and smashed it against the squat bloke’s head. Taking his cue from her, Shelby raised the butt of his pistol to crack the sentry, but in that very instant a noise like the scraping of a boat running aground filled the night air, a rasping, irritating sound, followed by a dull roar. The earth began to vibrate, at first only a low tremor, but quickly accelerated in intensity.

   
The sentry jumped up, snorting with surprise as the earth beneath his feet moved. Shelby whacked him hard on the back of the head and he crumpled silently. Samuel almost followed him down, so great were the tremors growing. He struggled to stand, then took off running toward the dim gleam of the lantern on the boat where Olivia was attempting to regain her balance on the shifting deck.

   
Suddenly all the forces of hell broke loose. The ground began to buck up and down like a crazed horse. The earth rumbled, hissed and cracked open with a sound like hollow deafening thunder. Now the sulfurous smell became overpowering as a miasmic vapor filled the air, issuing from the crevices. Whole circular sections of ground around Samuel simply disappeared as if being sucked into the bowels of the earth that belched forth mud, water, sand and a hard black substance that looked like coal.

   
One such giant sink dropped right beside him. He scrambled away from the vile debris being hurled skyward thirty yards into the air. Nearby a giant cottonwood split at its roots as the earth opened beneath it, splintering the tree upward until it was rent in two like a ninety-foot matchstick.

   
Looking with horror at the scene unfolding on the river, Samuel struggled to reach the riverbank where the keelboat was moored. He could not see Olivia, but he could hear the cries of Wescott’s men when several were thrown overboard. The roar of angry water grew louder. Across the wide expanse of the river an entire bluff collapsed, a massive avalanche of trees and earth sliding into the foamy, boiling waters with a deafening noise, creating a tidal wave. In the middle of the channel the waters rose up, a solid wall rolling toward the boat. Where was Olivia?

   
Screaming for her, he jumped and dodged, struggling to keep his footing as he drew nearer. The heavy keelboat was picked up on the crest of the water with a sickening crack. He clawed at the bow, feeling it lift, knowing if he did not hold fast, he would be swept away downriver to certain death.

   
Suddenly Olivia was there, her hands frantically seizing hold of him, hauling him aboard as the boat pitched wildly, flying toward the bluff in front of them. He took her in his arms, throwing them both onto the deck and covered her with his body. In an instant the craft landed, crashing loudly into the soft wet earth on top of the bluff.