Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (3 page)

Never in her life had anyone spoken to her like that! “I will not! It’s certainly nice to hear your real opinion of me!”

“You think you could get hungry enough to marry somebody you hate, but not hungry enough to sell yourself to strangers? Why do you think women become whores - because they like it?”

That was exactly what she thought, but she wasn’t about to say so now. She glared at him.

“I’ll take you to Grenerton if you’ll take the money. If you want to be stupid, walk there with your damn twenty dollars. It’s up to you.”

She stared at him in amazement. His condition was blackmail in reverse, and it was ridiculous. Before she could even decide how to try to argue further, the dog started barking. There had been no sounds of horses approaching, but now male voices sounded outside.

Cord got to his feet. “Guess they have some idea where you are after all. Play your cards right, and you won’t have to worry about Detrick.”

He seemed unconcerned, but Anne’s stomach contracted with fear that approached panic. “How much trouble will this be for you?” she whispered.

“You’re not crying. Just lots of cussing and threats. Get your things and come along.”

* * *

Chapter 2

OBEDIENTLY, ANNE ROSE AND FOLLOWED
him toward the door. As she picked up her shoes, she saw that for all his casualness, Cord was reaching for the rifle that hung on the wall near the door. The door crashed open before he had the weapon free.

“Leave it.”

Anne dimly recognized the swarthy, big-bellied man pointing a pistol at Cord, but she could not put a name to the face. He stepped out of the doorway, gesturing with the gun. Cord walked out without a word.

The intruder tipped his hat at Anne. “You better be thinking of a good story for your daddy, honey. He got more exercised with every mile we rode even before Browers started us looking here. We snuck up on this place like we were the Injuns. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now.” He raked his eyes over her with deliberate insult, then laughed. “Or out of them.”

He seized her by the upper arm, roughly pushing her toward the open door. Anne dropped her shoes to fight him, but then heard her father’s voice rising over the confusion of sounds in the yard.

“You half-breed bastard, what have you done to my daughter? She’s here. Those are her footprints!”

Anne stopped resisting and let her captor push her outside. Later she would realize that there were only ten men and horses in the yard, but right then it seemed like a hundred, all milling and churning around. Besides her father, she immediately picked out George Detrick. The rest of the men must have volunteered when her father looked for a search party to help find her. Three of them had guns drawn, all aimed at Cord.

She barely recognized the man standing face to face with Cord. The very erect military bearing was her father’s, as was the dark hair only touched with gray. But Edward’s face was mottled red with rage, and under his precisely trimmed mustache, his mouth was a thin, twisted line.

More frightened than ever by the sight, Anne ran to her father, reaching for his arm, crying, “No, don’t.”

Edward rounded on her, grabbing her by the upper arms and shaking her like a rag doll.

“Did you think you’d get away with it? Did you think nobody saw you get in Browers’ wagon? I thought we had to save you from them, but this is worse! You fool, you couldn’t obey me and marry a respectable man, you had to run off and get yourself ruined by Bennett trash!”

He was shouting, spitting a fine spray of saliva. “Anyone can tell what’s been going on here. Either he forced you or you were willing. Say he forced you!”

Defying her father further in front of all these other men would be the worst thing she could do - except for telling the lie he demanded. When he stopped shaking her, she said very carefully, loudly, and distinctly, so that everyone would hear, not just her father, “He never touched me.”

She expected disbelief and more anger, but never the full-strength backhanded blow that smashed into the side of her face. Stunned, she staggered back against a porch post, the only thing that kept her from falling. Her mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. She had never been hit before.

All Anne could see was her father and his anger, but she heard Cord’s words clearly enough.

“Leave her alone, damn you. She didn’t….

The sound that stopped his words wasn’t the crack of flesh on flesh, but a dull thud. A gun barrel Anne thought.

Her father again seized her by the upper arms. “Say he forced you!”

This time Anne was ready for his reaction as she again carefully enunciated, “He never tou…,” but that was as far as she got before the second blow exploded on the other side of her face. She didn’t fall because someone had come up behind her and was holding her upright.

“I didn’t come along to watch anybody beat a woman.”

Anne managed to bring things back into focus, and saw Dick Brown, a farmer who lived near Turrells, mount his horse and ride away. Then Cord snaked into motion, using the diversion to dive under the guns, taking the man on his left down with him, kicking the feet out from under another. There were simply too many of them, and a fight wasn’t what they had in mind. A shot rang out, and when Cord got slowly to his feet, blood soaked his shirt on one side just above his belt.

Violence charged the air as palpably as the electricity of the storm had the night before. Anne was afraid to look at Cord, couldn’t bear that she had brought this horror down on him. George Detrick broke the ominous silence, making things worse.

“Ed, I’m sorry as hell, and I sure sympathize with what you must be feeling, but I can’t marry her now.”

Edward’s color had almost returned to normal. Now it rose again. “It’s bad enough she’s so stupid she was in his house in this condition, but if she says he didn’t hurt her yet, he didn’t. God knows she’s got her faults, but lying isn’t one of them. You heard what she said.”

“I heard, and if you need to believe her, I understand. But I don’t.”

As Detrick reached a pudgy hand toward her, Anne cringed away, but he didn’t touch her, just plucked at her hair, then held up a stalk of hay, twirling it between his fingers so the seed tassle at the end danced.

“I slept in the barn,” Anne said furiously. “Cord didn’t even know I was here until just before you found me.”

She couldn’t even hear her own last words over the coarse laughter of the man holding her. Samuels, she thought. Lem Samuels. His dirty looking friends, who had their guns on Cord, were the Meeks brothers and Red O’Brien. All four worked for the Double M Ranch east of town, an outfit known to hire hands willing to intimidate small land owners over grazing and water rights.

Now Charlie Meeks spoke up. “I think you’re trying to marry the wrong couple, Wells. Bennett here will make things right. Won’t you?”

“Absolutely not,” said Edward. “There are no circumstances under which I’d allow….”

Meeks pulled Edward away from the others. At first as Meeks talked, Anne could see her father shaking his head steadily, but then she saw a slow nod, then several more.

When the men returned there was an ugly smile on Meeks’ face. “I rode out here for a wedding, and I’m going to see a wedding. Now, tough man, you’re going to make it right, aren’t you?”

“There’s nothing to make right,” Cord said flatly.

“Oh, yes, there is, and you’re going to do it,” Meeks said.

“Like hell.”

Moments later Cord sagged almost unconscious. He had not said another word, but the defiance in his eyes made it clear Meeks wasn’t going to get what he wanted.

With the first blow, Anne tried to cry out, but Samuels shifted his hold on her to just his left hand across her mouth, pulling her head viciously back against his shoulder, and forcing her spine into a painful arc. She clawed at his hand and arm but only tore her fingernails on his heavy jacket and leather glove. Kicks from Anne’s stocking-clad feet only gave Samuels cause to mock her.

“You might as well quit tiring yourself out. You ain’t hurting nothing but your feet.”

He then pulled his right glove off with his teeth. Muttering vile obscenities, he began to paw, pinch, and twist at every bit of her he could reach.

Trying to see what Charlie Meeks was doing to Cord, squirming to avoid the disgusting pawing of her own person, Anne still saw stealthy movement across the yard. The brown, fox-faced dog that had escorted her to the barn last night was stalking hesitantly toward Cord and the men who held him.

The movement also caught Charlie Meeks’ eye, and with a wider grin, he drew his pistol, boasting, “Watch this, boys.”

Cord’s violent lunge caught them all by surprise, and spoiled Meeks’ aim. The sound of the shot and the dog’s scream came together, but the dog streaked under the porch ahead of Charlie’s second shot.

Jimmy Meeks gave his brother a knowing look and drawled, “The tough man didn’t like that one bit, Charlie. Maybe digging that mutt out would get us some cooperation here.”

Charlie shook his head thoughtfully, then turned to Thomas White, a saloon keeper from town, and said, “See those horses in the corral? Catch one up and bring it over here.”

Anne had been trying to convince herself that neither her father nor Reverend Pratt knew what Samuels was doing to her. Now, as everyone waited while White got a halter from the barn and caught one of the all too friendly horses, she saw her father, Reverend Pratt, George Detrick, and Michael Benton, the Mason butcher, give furtive looks her way.

There was no doubt they all knew what Samuels was doing, saw her desperate struggles against his painful, invasive groping, and just looked away again. None of the townsmen were going to stand against the casual violence of the Double M men, and her father had come to some agreement with Charlie Meeks.

White led the bay gelding he had caught to Meeks. Charlie pointed his pistol at the animal’s left front knee and turned to look Cord in the eye.

“What do you say, tough man? I hear you raise good horses. How about I shoot one knee on each one of that bunch over there?”

Even Samuels was concentrating on Charlie so intently his hand had stopped, and what Anne saw burning in Cord’s eyes made her swallow hard, even as he gave in. “All right. You win.”

White dropped the rope. The bay gelding wandered to the edge of the yard, and began eating grass there. Anne wanted to shout at the animal.
Run, run so far they can never catch you again,
but she knew that was foolish. There were still half a dozen potential victims confined in the corral.

Charlie called, “Hey, bring the bride over, Lem,” and Samuels shoved Anne next to Cord, who was standing unaided now although with Jimmy Meeks’ gun in his back. Things began to seem more and more unreal. Reverend Pratt came forward, pulled his prayer book from a pocket with a shaking hand, and at Charlie’s direction, began to read the words of the wedding ceremony in a setting that made a travesty out of the ages old vows.

Anne did not look at Cord, but heard him slurring the words, unable to speak clearly if he had wanted to with the damage Meeks’ fists had done to his face. When her turn came, she found she too could barely form words with her swollen mouth and split lips. She repeated everything the preacher told her to until he said “to love, cherish, and to obey.”

Then she lifted her head, found a small spark of defiance left, looked Pratt right in the eyes and said, “to love and to cherish.” No one else seemed to notice, and Pratt quickly dropped his gaze.

Finally, the preacher intoned, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” snapped his book shut, and hurried out of the way.

Lem Samuels dragged Anne backward behind the men all looking toward Meeks and Cord. Charlie shouted, “And now for a little shivaree,” and then Anne’s own nightmare intensified to where she was only barely aware of Meeks’ steady, rhythmic beating of Cord. The rain of blows continued long after he slumped insensate in the cowboys’ grip.

Samuels again shifted his hold to across her bruised and bleeding mouth, and this time she felt his right hand running up under Cord’s shirt to the top of the back of her dress.

“Now hold still, bitch, and you won’t get cut.”

She could not see, could only feel the knife cutting through her dress and all her under things, and into her back. At first she felt only the icy blade itself, then her blood welled, warm and wet, and with it came fiery pain.

The bulk of her dress and petticoats and the tough cloth of her corset had spared her the worst of his previous pawing. Now when his hand returned, under the shirt and inside her gaping dress, there was nothing to protect her flesh from his deliberately cruel hand. The steady stream of threats and filthy talk was interrupted only when his mouth came down on her face, neck, or shoulders. The first time he bit her she screamed against his gloved hand. He pinched and twisted her breasts and nipples mercilessly, then moved down to her stomach and thighs.

As Anne struggled against him with all her strength, the breakfast that had seemed so good a lifetime ago started to come up, sour in the back of her throat. She began to retch helplessly, choking under Samuels’ relentless hold. He cursed in disgust, shoved her away, and Anne fell to her knees on the muddy ground, vomiting up not just her breakfast but it seemed the very lining of her stomach.