Natchez Flame (7 page)

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” She kept on walking. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

The man started walking beside her, the silver circles on the side of his trousers flashing in the afternoon sun. “Your husband?”

She shook her head. “I … I’m not married.”

“That is good.” He grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. “Then I will not have to kill him.” He made a grating sound of laughter at Priscilla’s look of horror, then grabbed her wrist and jerked her against him.

“Let me go!” she cried out, but he silenced her words with his wet sticky lips. Terror welled up inside her. Priscilla squirmed against his hold as his beard rasped her cheeks and his mustache prickled her skin.

When he tried to force his tongue into her mouth, she tore free and started running. She’d gone only a few feet when he caught her, laughing, enjoying her fear, making her cry out in terror. Ignoring her struggles, he shifted both her wrists into one wide hand and jerked the bonnet from her head with the other. His thick fingers raked through her hair, painfully tearing the pins free, and the heavy dark mass slid loose around her shoulders.

“Let me go!” she wailed, trying to kick him, fighting to hold back her tears. “Somebody help me!”

“You want help,
señorita? Bien
, we will go and find my friends.” He laughed again, the sound more chilling than any she had heard. He dragged her toward the rear of the trading post, but stopped just outside the back door.

Priscilla’s heart beat so hard she feared it would tear through her ribs. The only thing controlling her terror was the knowledge that Brendan was inside the building. If the Mexican took her in, surely he could help her.

“Y-your friends are inside?” Priscilla whispered.

“Sí,
señorita.
But first I wish to see for myself the prize that I bring them.”

Priscilla felt his thick fingers at the neck of her dress, heard the rending of fabric, and screamed as he ripped the gown to her waist. Circles of darkness whirled at the edge of her mind.
God in heaven, please don’t let me faint.
Willing her legs to hold up, she tried to fight him, her breasts heaving, and all but exposed above the top of her steel-ribbed corset.

The Mexican just laughed. Wrenching her arm up behind her back, he ripped at the bodice of her dress until it hung in tatters around her waist. Her hair appeared a jumble of dark glistening brown against her pale skin.

“Now we will meet my friends,” the Mexican said.

Priscilla whimpered as he wrenched her arm higher, and salty tears rolled down her cheeks. What if something had happened to Brendan? What if the man’s friends had captured him? Dear Lord, what would she do if he wasn’t there to help her?

Brendan paid the clerk and picked up a box of supplies. He had just pulled open the door when he heard a scuffling at the back of the room. A woman’s high-pitched scream whipped him around, but at first he didn’t see her.

Not until he realized she stood in the center of the circle of men, the fifth of whom, a tall olive-skinned Mexican, had an arm around her waist and a hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet.

Brendan’s blood ran cold. Priscilla! With her hair unbound and her bosom nearly exposed, he almost hadn’t recognized her. Now that he had, it took all
his control to keep from storming across the room and tearing the man’s dirty hands off her.

“Silencio!”
the Mexican warned her, tightening his hold till she pried at his fingers, gasping for air. “Be quiet,
señorita
, and I will remove my hand.”

Priscilla nodded, trembling all over. The man uncovered her mouth, but kept her pinned against him, his forearm wedged beneath her chin.

Brendan set the box back down on the counter, picked up the rifle lying beside it, and quietly checked the breech. When Priscilla finally spotted him, he flashed her a look of warning, and she dragged her eyes away.

The Mexican grinned at his companions. “I have brought you a present,
amigos. Muy hermosa, no?”

Damned right she’s beautiful, you bastard.
Brendan forced himself to stay calm, to look at her terrified face with an air of detachment. He scrutinized the rifle in his hands.

“Eight-shot revolving breech Colt,” whispered the little clerk, his green eyes huge behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “She’s loaded and ready.” That said, he slipped quietly down behind the counter.

Brendan turned back toward Priscilla. Her eyes looked bigger than the clerk’s as she fought to stay calm in the grip of the rough-looking men.

“You done real good, Ruiz,” said a man the others called Shorty.

With a raspy chuckle, the Mexican turned Priscilla into his arms, slid his thick brown fingers around the back of her neck, and forced her mouth to meet his, grinding her soft pink lips against his teeth.

Priscilla whimpered.

Clamping his jaw against the rage he suddenly felt, Brendan thumbed back the hammer of his rifle, propped it against his hip, and leveled it toward the men in the back of the room.

“Let the lady go,” he warned with soft menace. Five men turned in his direction—and the smiles slid from their faces.

“You would do well to stay out of this,
señor
” The Mexican motioned, and the men began to spread out, making themselves more difficult targets.

“The next man who moves, dies,” Brendan warned. From the corner of his eye he caught a flesh-colored blur, just the flicker of Shorty’s hand toward his pistol. Brendan swung the rifle, fired, and the stocky man’s chest blossomed red with blood. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he slid with a moan to the floor.

The rifle fixed on the Mexican. “I said let her go—unless you want to be next.”

The Mexican released her, and Priscilla stumbled away. For a moment she swayed on her feet, her eyes looking vacant and glassy, then she drew herself up. Brendan heard a tiny whimper as she raced across the room to his side, clutching her tattered dress, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

He wanted to hold her, to comfort her. “Get those supplies out to the wagon,” he said instead, afraid a sympathetic word might end the last of her control.

Priscilla gazed at him numbly. “Go on,” he commanded. “Get the clerk to help you.”

The little man popped up from behind the counter. “Whatever you say, mister. I don’t want no trouble.”
He grabbed a box of supplies and headed out the door. Priscilla still didn’t move.

“You too,” Brendan said to her harshly. “If you’d damned well stayed where I told you in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

Priscilla gaped at him. Her bottom lip trembled. “But I … I … only wanted—”

“Go!”

Priscilla faltered a moment more, then stiffened her spine and picked up one of the boxes.

Brendan steadied his look on the men. “You boys reach for those guns real slow and let them drop to the floor. Easy now. We don’t want another … accident.”

Cursing, the four men did as he said. Brendan held them at gunpoint until the rest of the gear had been loaded, then he started to back toward the door.

In a single lightning-quick motion, Ruiz leapt for his pistol, grabbed it and fired, the muzzle spitting flame. Brendan fired back, rolled behind some boxes, and fired again. He heard the whistle of a blade, saw it thud into the crate near his head, and pulled the trigger again. Ruiz cried out and plunged headfirst over a flour barrel, spilling the contents as he crashed to the floor, his dead eyes staring into space.

Brendan’s own heavy breathing matched that of the other three men.

None of them moved, just crouched where they were, unwilling to reach for a weapon. The fight had gone out of them the minute their leader had died.

“You men better listen and listen good. That little lady you assaulted is Stuart Egan’s intended.”

“Egan,” one of them whispered, almost with reverence. “I don’t want no part a’ him.”

“Very wise. The rest of you better heed your friend’s words. You come after us, and if Idon’t kill you, Egan will.”

The men said no more, just rose slowly to their feet and nervously stared at the floor.

“Get their weapons and toss them outside in the bushes,” Brendan instructed the clerk, who did exactly what he was told.

When he had finished, Brendan pulled open the door, stepped outside, and closed it behind him. Beneath the oak, Priscilla sat atop the wagon seat, clutching the front of her dress in a death grip. Hennessey’s big black gelding stood tied to the rear.

Knowing he should stay behind to cover their back trail but unsure how much more Priscilla could take, Brendan climbed up on the wagon seat beside her.

He released the brake, slapped the reins on the rumps of the mules, urging them into a quick-paced trot, and headed off down the road that led out of town to the north.

“Keep an eye out behind us,” he ordered, careful to keep his tone firm. Priscilla said nothing, just stared over her shoulder, holding onto the remnants of her dress.

“Christ,” he swore and kept on driving.

He knew she was hurting when she didn’t protest his swearing. Still, he kept on. Not far out of town, the road became a wagon-rutted lane. An hour after that, he pulled off the path up onto a knoll into some shade where he could get a good, clear view of his back trail.

Seeing no one behind them, for the first time since they’d left the trading post he felt his tension ease. Climbing down from the seat, he walked around the wagon and reached up to help Priscilla, holding her around the waist and lifting her gently to the ground.

Her hair fell over his arm, dark yet sparkling with golden highlights, brushing against him as soft as silk. Tears had dried on her cheeks, and her eyes looked bleak and forlorn.

“Are you all right?” he asked gently.

Her stiff fingers moved over the ragged fabric of her dress. “I … I’m not properly clothed.”

He looked down at her soft white breasts, nearly exposed above her corset. They rose and fell softly, the strands of her dark hair curling against their whiteness.

“No,” he said, touching her cheek, “you hardly look proper at all.”

Priscilla stared up at him, and fresh tears gathered in her eyes. “I … I didn’t go far,” she said. “I was just so thirsty.”

Brendan laced his fingers in her hair, cradling the back of her head, and pulled her against his chest. “It wasn’t your fault.” His voice sounded odd, rough with worry and something he couldn’t quite name. “I was hard on you because I needed you to be strong.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks and trickled across his fingers. She turned her face into his shoulder and started crying harder, deep, wracking sobs that touched him in some dark, secret place he had closed up long ago. Her fingers clutched his shirt and her tears dampened the fabric.

“Odds are they won’t come after us,” he soothed.
“Not without a leader. You’ll be safe once you get to the ranch. Egan’s got an army of men to protect you. Nothing can hurt you there.”

She only clutched him tighter.

“You would have been safer with Hennessey. He’s known around these parts. Once they knew you were traveling with him, they probably wouldn’t have touched you.”

He lifted silky tear-damp hair from her cheeks, noting the smoothness of her skin and the graceful arch of her neck. His body stirred, hardened, and he hated himself for his wanting. “You did good back there. You never let on you knew me. I was proud of you.”

Priscilla drew back to look at him. “You were proud of me?” “Yes.”

She leaned back into his chest, but her crying had slowed.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, his voice husky. “Why do you work so hard to hide it?” When Priscilla looked up, he handed her his handkerchief. She blew her nose and dried her eyes.

“You think I’m beautiful? Really?”

He smiled at that. “Really.”

“Not just sort of pretty?”

“More than pretty.”

“No one’s ever said that before.” Over the gently sloping land thick with salt grass, Priscilla looked back toward the trading post, no longer visible in the distance. “You killed another man.”

Maybe two.
“It didn’t appear I had much choice.”

A hawk circled above them, soaring and diving
with the currents of hot summer air. “I don’t suppose you did.”

“I told you, Priscilla, this is rough country. A man does what he has to. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t survive.”

“What about a woman?” She turned to face him. “How does a woman survive?”

“Some of them don’t,” he said bluntly.

“And those who do?”

“Learn to adapt. They change what they can, accept what they can’t, and find a good strong man to protect them.”

“A man like Stuart Egan?”

Brendan looked away. “Egan’s a survivor, that’s for sure.”

“Then the rest is up to me.” She spoke the words more to herself than to him, her eyes staring off in the distance. When she came back from wherever she had been, she was the very proper woman he had first met in the street.

Chin held high, she started toward the rear of the wagon. “I’ll need something else to wear.”

Knowing it was necessary, Brendan climbed up into the rear and opened her trunks. Though he willed himself not to, he couldn’t resist just one last glance at the tempting curves of her body. Prim and proper she might be, but underneath her prissy clothes she was a woman. He wished he’d be the man to find out just how much woman she was.

“Is money the reason?” Brendan’s eyes remained fixed on the team as they rumbled along the dusty trail that served as a road. “For marrying Egan, I mean.”