The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (52 page)

      
“And here we have the most infamous raider of our generation right in the Rawlins city jail. To cap off the matter, he's half-white, a real renegade. The perfect man to make an example of. If you entertain any hope of wiring Jeremiah, abandon it. My men are stirring up that lynch mob even now. I expect by midnight they'll be ready to string you up to the nearest tree...I make it that big cottonwood at the corner of Front and Third.”

      
Chase knew Burke was baiting him, waiting for a response. As a boy he'd flown at his tormentor kicking, biting and punching and Burke had cuffed him away, amused by a boy's powerlessness. By the time he'd returned from the Cheyenne as a seventeen-year-old youth, those days were past. Their hatred had ripened into a more subtle thing after that. Denied all weapons and watched like a hawk at first, Chase knew he would have to wait out his uncle. Keeping his mother out of an asylum depended on his good behavior. A flat absence of reaction and sarcastic taunts became new weapons in his arsenal as he bided his time until Freedom Woman was beyond Burke's reach. And now things had gone full cycle. Once again he was as powerless as he had been as a boy, caged behind bars like an animal.

      
“Gloat while you can, Burke. I will kill you before I die.” Having said that with quiet unshakable resolve, he let the words have their effect on the gray-haired aristocrat standing in front of him. Then Chase turned his back and stared impassively out the window, dismissing Burke Remington as if the senator were a petitioner.

      
After Burke had left, Chase burned to know if Stevie had actually betrayed him and his people, but he would never ask. His uncle would revel in describing every detail—or lying through his teeth even if she was innocent. He moved around the small cell, studying the long narrow hall between the cubicles and the doors at either end, then settled back in the corner again to wait until the sheriff or a deputy appeared. There had to be a way out of here other than being dragged by a lynch mob.

* * * *

      
Down in the next block, Stephanie was ushered into the same room in the Rawlins House Hotel that she had occupied the past fall on her fateful excursion with Emma Boyer and Abigail Shaffer. Still numb from all the horrifying events of the past hour, she desperately wanted time to sort out her chaotic thoughts and find some way to escape and send a wire. Jeremiah Remington was Chase's last hope.

      
Hugh did not intend to leave her unattended for even a moment. He had bidden Mrs. Shaffer good day in the lobby, thanking her and Lieutenant Grimes profusely for rescuing his poor abused wife, wandering unescorted through the streets of Rawlins. He then ordered Grimes to ride post haste to the fort and fetch her trunk, which had remained unpacked since it had been returned to him after her abduction. Once they reached the privacy of their room, his solicitude vanished abruptly.

      
Hugh raked her disgustedly with cold dark eyes. “You look like a sodbuster's wife with those ghastly clothes and sun-darkened skin. I'm surprised you weren't all tricked out in buckskins and beads after living with savages.” He waited a beat as Stephanie remained silent, simply meeting his gaze without flinching. Her calm demeanor infuriated him and he ached to reach out and backhand the serenity from her face. But the situation was already bad enough. He must remain the long-suffering husband for now and not mark her. Perhaps there were other ways to crush her spirit. However, before he could begin she surprised him by breaking her silence.

      
“I never intended to embarrass you by coming back into your life, Hugh. I was going to get on that train east and never return. You could’ve told everyone I was dead if Abigail and Lieutenant Grimes hadn't dragged me to you. I know you despise me. I didn't do the honorable thing and take my own life after surviving an Indian captivity.”

      
“I knew you went with Remington when his uncle came last fall and told me his nephew was the raider I'd been searching for. Imagine my added surprise to learn he was also the breed who gave me this.” He touched the scar on his cheek. “Burke Remington has returned to Rawlins. He wants that bastard dead as much as I do...if that's possible.”

      
“I'm not surprised, Hugh. Burke paid an assassin to kill Chase while we were still in Boston,” she replied deliberately, refusing to give in to the panic clawing at her. “Chase knew Burke was behind the reward posters with the photograph circulating across the territories. I suspect he was also behind your receiving your major's bars so quickly.”

      
Hugh's face reddened with rage and he raised his hand to strike her, then regained control of his emotions. “Burke went to the jail to see your breed lover. By now he knows that his dear uncle has men whipping up a lynch mob in the saloons along Front Street.”

      
“You planned this together, you and Burke Remington,” she accused. The certainty of Chase's death closed in on her with crippling pain.
Be strong. You carry his child, the only hope for the future
.

      
Hugh watched for some chink in her armor, some sign that she was weakening. He wanted her to plead, cry, get down on her knees and beg. By God, he would reduce her to cowering, shivering terror so repugnant and uncontrollable that when she appeared to die by her own hand, everyone would accept it as a blessing and commiserate with him, the noble suffering husband! She stood with her back stiff and her chin, that irritatingly willful chin, held up proudly. He walked around her, but she remained motionless, staring straight ahead. He had to rattle her somehow.

      
‘‘What, nothing more to say, my dear? I can hardly let you ride the rails east now, can I? After all, you are still my responsibility, my
wife.
” He accented the word as if it were an epithet, hissing in her ear, as he raised his hand and insinuated it along her throat, then down to the swell of her breasts, straining against the weight of the shapeless dress, which was too tight across the bust and hung loosely around her waist. The slightest hint of repugnance seemed to emanate from her when he cupped her breast, but she did not flinch or draw away, just continued to stare straight ahead.

      
She did ball her hands into tight little fists, almost hidden in the folds of her skirt. That made him smile. “You always were a cold stick in bed, Stephanie. Perhaps that was my mistake. I shouldn't have allowed you the comfort of a bed! Tell me, did lying in the dirt with a naked sweating savage pumping over you make it better?”

      
“What made it good was love, Hugh. Something you know nothing about,” she replied quietly. He was going to play this out until he got some perverse sort of satisfaction from her.
Damned if I’ll give it to him!

      
“Love,” he sneered. “I'd believe it if he were still a Boston Brahmin, rich enough for one of the vaunted Summerfields to marry. But he left that all behind, more the fool he.”

      
“You put a price on everything, Hugh. That's been your downfall all your life, cursing the Baltimore Phillips' decline in social position. You've become so obsessed with covering yourself in martial glory you've sacrificed your soul to achieve it...if you ever had one.”

      
“I suppose that renegade killer has a soul? Or was it something as crass as his dark-skinned body that you craved? You broke your marriage vows for that buck!” Finally he struck a nerve. Her face flushed and the pulse at her throat sped up. “So, the truth at last. My prim little bluestocking lusted after that renegade. My mistake was believing you possessed ladylike sensibilities when all the while you had the morals of a scarlet poppy. Fitting since you seem to prefer red meat.”

      
“You are a vile hypocrite who'd know a lot more about scarlet poppies than I would!”
Don't rise to the bait! Stay calm,
she admonished herself, but it was too late. A cruel twisted smile spread across his face.

      
“Jealous, my dear? Perhaps you'd like me to return my undivided attention to my husbandly duties.” He reached up and seized hold of her hair, pulling the pins loose as his fingers dug into her scalp. His other hand squeezed her tender breast in a viselike grip.

      
Sensitized and swollen in pregnancy, the delicate tissue ached sharply. She bit down on her lip to keep from crying out. Sour with bile, his breath touched her face as he pulled her head closer. Stephanie fought the nausea beginning to churn in her stomach but made no attempt to fight him.
That's what he wants.

      
When she still did not beg or struggle, his anger began to rise. He forced her to her knees, rasping out, “You think I'd take the leavings of that red-skinned bastard? Take my pleasure where he'd been! No, the cheapest whore in the lowliest crib is better than you now. But I'm going to teach you how your sort should behave.”

      
He was breathing hard now as he reached down and grabbed her chin in his hand, forcing her to meet the insane glaze of his eyes. “Strip for me, whore. Do it! Take off your clothes. I'm certain you did it for your lover—you who were so modest your own husband had to slip between the sheets under cover of darkness to take you with your prissy little night rail buttoned up to the neck!”

      
“You don't want me, Hugh. You told me so. Why—”

      
“Now!” he cried, giving her a swift stinging blow across her cheek. “Remove every stitch or I'll rip those rags off myself. I spent a fortune dressing you in the best. No wife of mine will be seen in cheap calico.”

      
He shoved her away and stood up, towering over her with his arms across his chest, waiting. Not patiently. If she refused, God only knew what he was capable of doing. And no one would interfere. After all, she was a pariah, a woman who'd lived among savages. The way that young lieutenant and Abigail Shaffer had treated her, they were certain she had been deranged by her captivity. Hugh could do whatever he pleased, say she'd gone berserk and attacked him. Who would believe her story? Slowly, she began to unfasten the buttons down the front of the shabby dress.

      
Hugh poured himself a generous slug of whiskey as he watched her slowly take off the ugly calico, then the petticoats. Her skin was sun darkened half the way up her arms and around her throat. “You look like a squaw,” he sneered, polishing off the glass and refilling it. “Or some homesteader's daughter. Now, the corset and the rest of the underwear.”

      
There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes. He had always been erratic and prone to violence when he drank. Stephanie looked around for some way to defend herself but the hotel room was bare, with not so much as a fireplace poker in the spartan sleeping chamber. The only weapon was the pistol at his waist. Somehow she would have to lure him into lowering his guard and seize the gun. Or outlast him and pray he drank himself stuporous and passed out, a feat he often performed in the past years of their marriage. She unlaced the corset and let it fall behind her, glad to have the freedom of movement in spite of the hot wash of shame that scalded her when he looked down at her.

      
“Stand up and pull off that tatty chemise and under-drawers.”

      
She got as far as removing the chemise, baring her breasts, but could not slip the drawers over her hips. “Please, Hugh, don't make me do this.”

      
“Yes, beg! I love to hear you beg.” He reached out suddenly and grasped one breast in his hand, threatening to punch her in the stomach with his other fist.

      
Stephanie paled, her arms flying protectively to her mid-section. Everything was revealed in her eyes in a split second. His snarling oath exploded as he backhanded her, knocking her against the bed. She fell onto the lumpy mattress.

      
His eyes took in the new fullness of her breasts with their aureoles enlarged and darkened. Her belly did not swell yet but soon it would—if she lived. “You're breeding! God damn you, you carry an Indian bastard—that bastard's bastard! After all the times I bedded you, your protestations that you wanted children—I actually thought you were barren...and now this.”

      
The deliberate calm of his last words sent an icy prickle of pure terror racing along her spine.
Please God, no! Don 't let him harm Chase's baby. This is all that's left of our love.
Stephanie sat up on the edge of the bed, waiting for an opening to go for his gun if he moved in to strike her another blow.

      
But he surprised her and turned away, walking back to the table to pour a second drink. He raised it in a mocking toast. “To your delicate condition, dear wife...which will ensure that you do precisely as I tell you to...lest I decide to do the only just thing and remove that bastard from your belly.”

      
“I'll do what you want, Hugh,” Stephanie said quietly. He was going to kill her. Perhaps she'd known that all along and only suppressed it to save her sanity. She had to stall for time, to find some way to save Chase's unborn child.
I will not let it end this way!

      
“What an obedient wife you've suddenly become,” he slurred. “Grimes should be back with your clothes shortly. Once you're dressed, we're going to take a little stroll under cover of darkness...down to the jail. You see, a couple of my handpicked men have bribed the sheriff's deputy to leave the White Wolf unattended for an hour or so. Mere hanging's too good for him.

      
“I want him to suffer the way I have first...and you will watch. No crying out, not a sign of sympathy. If you make one sound while my men and I deal out justice, I'll rip his bastard out of your belly in front of his eyes. He'd better believe you're enjoying my little amusement as much as I am. Is that quite clear, my dear wife?”