“Come on, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Let me take you back to camp.”
She tried to peel one of his hands from her arm. “Please, Mr. Spencer, you don’t understand. I have to do this now.”
“Do what now?” He was almost afraid to hear her answer.
“Let it happen,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Before someone else gets hurt. If I put it off, I’ll lose my nerve.”
Race was starting to get a really bad feeling. “Rebecca, what are you—”
As if he wasn’t speaking, she turned her head to gaze out over the flatland. “It’s not going to stop. Don’t you see that? Not until I make it stop.”
When she tried to pull away, he released her arms, then trailed behind her, leaning around to watch her face as she wandered along the crown of the slope, the overlong hem of her skirt snagging on the grass. “I’m not supposed to be here. You can’t change the way things are meant to be. That’s what I did. I ran and escaped it. And now it has come for me.”
The hair stood up at the back of Race’s neck and he shot a wary glance around. “What’s come for you, honey?”
“Death,” she said dispassionately. “You can’t cheat death. I was supposed to die in the arroyo.”
The bad feeling Race had been starting to get was quickly becoming an awful understanding. “Sweetheart,” he said, injecting a reasoning tone into his voice, “if you was supposed to die in the arroyo, you’d be gone coon.”
“No. I ran.” She glanced up at him, her eyes haunted. “I never told you all about that, did I?” A muscle near her mouth began to jerk. “Little wonder. What I did was—it was shameful.”
“Running, you mean?” Race ran a hand over his hair. “Rebecca, running is all that saved your life!”
“Yes.”
Just that one word. Hollow, yet filled with a world of heartache. He circled it cautiously, trying to make sense of what she was trying to say. “And now you think you’re bein’ punished?”
“No. Gathered. Or perhaps collected is a better word. Death always takes its due.”
Gathered?
She looked up at him. “I was marked to die. Don’t you see? Everyone else. All of them. I’m the only one who survived. Why would I be chosen as the lucky one?”
Gazing down at her, Race could think of a thousand reasons, none of which he felt he should share with her at that moment. He thought of Tag and imagined her lying in a hole next to him. He wanted to slap her. Shake her. Grab hold of her and never let go. What in God’s name was she thinking?
“The fact is, I wasn’t chosen,” she continued, her mouth beginning to quiver again as she formed each word. “I’m alive only because I’m the worst kind of a coward.”
His guts clenched at the look on her face. “Rebecca,” he whispered, “you ain’t no coward.” He recalled how she’d walked out to warn him about the ruffians, how afraid she’d been to tell him the truth. “Trust me on that. I know better.”
She held up a hand. “No. You weren’t there. I’m a coward. You’ve no idea.” Tears filled her eyes. “They were all screaming, begging for help. My mother…” She gulped, and her face seemed to dissolve, like wax melting in the sun, before she gathered herself together again. “And…and I ran. I hid in some bushes. Shut my eyes. Covered my ears. While they all faced death, I hid from it. Don’t you see? Death won’t be cheated.”
A horrible urge to laugh came over him. Only this wasn’t funny. She was serious. “Rebecca, death don’t take potshots, then say, ‘Oh, shit, I missed and got the wrong fella!’ That’s what you’re sayin’, ain’t it? That death is huntin’ you down and has bad aim.”
She closed her eyes, and her face twisted as sobs began to jerk her shoulders. “It’s me. Don’t you see? That boy. He’s dead because of me. All because of me.” She bent slightly at the waist and pressed a fist between her breasts. Her sobs were horrible. “I can’t bear it. It’ll happen again. It will. I have to make it stop!”
Race grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. Her eyes snapped wide and she stared up at him in stunned bewilderment.
“Tag is dead because some lowdown, heartless son of a bitch shot him. That’s why Tag is dead! Because the world’s full of snakes pretendin’ to be men. That’s why he’s dead. It don’t have nothin’ to do with you. You ain’t marked, for God’s sake! And you’re not a coward. What was you s’posed to do, Rebecca? One small woman against sixteen men. Run out into the thick of it so the bastards could rape you? So they could slit your throat?”
“I should have helped my parents!” she cried, knotting her hands into fists at her sides. “I should have tried!”
“How?” Race knew he was yelling. But he couldn’t seem to stop. She’d come out here to die. Making a target of herself. Hoping those bastards would come for her. And it was nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t. “Listen to yourself! How could you have helped them? Name me one way!” He gave her another little shake. “You think you can take on a grown man? That’s plumb silly. You don’t even have the know-how to shoot a gun. What was you gonna do, take after ’em with a switch?”
“I could’ve”—she brought up a fist and thumped his chest—“hit them! I should’ve hit them! Bit them! Kicked them! Fought them! With everything I had! With all my strength!” She drew back and struck his chest again. “My mother! Oh, God! My mother! She screamed! She screamed and screamed.” With a broken sob, she pummeled his chest and shoulders frenziedly, delivering a rash of punches. “She screamed my name! God forgive me. Oh, God! She screamed my name! And I covered my ears!”
Race scarcely felt her blows. But what she was saying nearly took him to his knees, every word breaking his heart. He understood now. Why she had come to this knoll. Why she looked as if someone had blacked both of her eyes. Why she’d been in shock when he found her. God help them both, he understood, and wished he didn’t.
“Honey, listen to me. Listen, all right? There was nothin’ you could’ve done. Nothin’! Save die beside her. You did what came natural. It’s instinct to run if stayin’ means you’re gonna die! You think I wouldn’t? Think again. I woulda left you to eat my dust.”
“You liar!” She punched his shoulder again. “You wouldn’t have run! You would have fought! If she’d screamed your name, you would have tried to save her!”
“If I was armed, damned straight! But you wasn’t.”
“Don’t!” She held up her hands as if to block out the sound of his voice. “Even without guns, you would have fought them. Tried, anyway. With your fists if nothing else!”
“And you think you should’ve? That just plain don’t make sense. With your fists, Rebecca? You really think you can belly up to a man? No way. He’d knock you into next week. Turn you every which way but loose!”
“You don’t know that. Not for sure! I could’ve tried! I could’ve done something!”
Race could see she wasn’t registering anything he said to her. In one ear and out the other. Christ Almighty. The guilt was tearing her apart, eating her alive. She screamed my name, and I covered my ears!
He bent and caught her behind the knees with one arm. When he tossed her over his shoulder, she shrieked. That was fine. He meant to startle her. Meant to scare the hell out of her, in fact.
“What!—You put me down! What’re you—”
He jostled her to get a better hold. “Be still! Start throwin’ yourself, and I’ll drop you on your fool head!”
As he struck off toward camp, she made fists over the back of his belt to lever herself up. “Where—? What do you think you’re doing?”
That was a damned good question. He was tempted to stop and put her down. Just because she’d gone loco didn’t mean he had to go with her. But if he put her down, then what? The first time he turned his back, would she be here again, hoping to die? Hell, yes. As long as she had those crazy thoughts in her head, she wouldn’t feel she deserved to live, and he couldn’t say he’d blame her.
He had to do something—even if it was wrong.
“Where are you going?”
Lengthening his strides to carry them closer to camp where he at least knew he had men riding guard, he said, “I’m lookin’ for a patch of soft grass.”
Her voice breaking with every bounce of his stride, she said, “So-o-ft gra-aa-ass?”
“I gotta a bad knee. When I rape a woman, I gotta do it on soft grass.”
Silence. Then a shrill, “What?”
At least he had her undivided attention. He saw Preach in the distance, riding circle, and lifted a hand. Preach swung his Stetson above his head to return the greeting. Race veered in that direction, Rebecca swinging back and forth over his shoulder like a burlap bag filled with hissing and spitting cats.
Preach, seeing that Race was heading toward him, wheeled his sorrel and rode to meet him. Race waited until horse and rider were nearly upon him, then gave his hired hand an exaggerated wink, after which he reached up and gave Rebecca’s upturned fanny a friendly pat and squeeze. She made a sound that sounded like a cross between the bray of a jackass and one of Cookie’s snorts.
“Hey, there, Preach!” Pat, squeeze. “I gotta favor to ask. You reckon you can ride circle for a bit, right around this here spot? Off a ways, of course, to give us some privacy?”
“You put me down!” she shrieked. She shoved harder on his belt and swung up, trying to see Preach. “This man has lost his mind! Tell him to put me down this instant!”
Preach gave Race a long, hard look. Then he smiled slightly. “Well, now, ma’am. Him bein’ the boss, he don’t take orders from me any too good.” He turned a twinkling eye on Rebecca, who’d lost her grip on Race’s belt and was back to dangling upside down again. In a lower voice, he said, “What’n hell are you up to, boss?”
Race patted her on the fanny again. “Well, it appears I gotta prove a point to this young lady. She’s from Missouri. One of them mule-headed folks that’s gotta learn every damned thing the hard way.”
One of Preach’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t say.”
“Mr. Spencer! You—put—me—down—this—instant! If you don’t, mark my words, you shall live to regret it!”
“Darlin’, I told you, I gotta bad knee. First I gotta find soft grass.” Race gave Preach another wink, then started walking again. Rebecca thumped him on the hip. When that didn’t get his attention, she made another awful sound, and then he felt her trying her damnedest to bite the small of his back. He whacked her on the rump, putting enough force into the swat to make it sting. “Don’t you dare bite me.”
“Ouch!” She twisted and swung. “You let me down! I swear, if you don’t end this foolishness this minute, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll report you!”
“When you reach Denver, you be sure to do just that very thing!”
She hung limp for several seconds, saying nothing. Then he heard her release a long-suffering sigh. “I know what you’re trying to do, Mr. Spencer,” she informed him, her voice jiggling with his every step. “And I appreciate the thought behind the gesture, even though I disapprove of your tactics. But it won’t work. You’re not a ruffian, first of all. So you see, the correlation you hope to draw isn’t—”
“The what?”
“The—oh, never mind! Truly, this is very sweet. I don’t think anyone has ever gone to such lengths to make me feel better before, but I’m telling you, it won’t work.”
She had stopped sobbing. That was a leg up. “It ain’t like I’m goin’ to a lot of bother. Makin’ love to you might be a hair more taxin’. A man’s gotta put some effort into that. It ain’t like that with rape, though. Lot of fun for him, not much for her.”
She sighed again, loudly, the sound stuttering with each bounce. “I’m not in the least afraid of you, Mr. Spencer. Yesterday morning, this may have worked. But I assure you, it shan’t today! You’re nothing if not kind and caring, and I know it. You’d never harm me. Not in a hundred years.”
“Horny as a three-pronged goat. That’s what I am. Damn. If I don’t find a soft spot soon, I’m gonna be plumb tuckered before I get to the fun part.”
“Oh, bother!”
He chuckled. “You don’t think I mean to do it, do ya?”
“Well, of course not! Which is why this won’t work. I know very well you’re not about to hurt me, which means I shan’t be afraid of you no matter how fiercely you snarl, which means that I shan’t fight you as I would a ruffian. Which brings us back to my point, no correlation!”
Race slung her off of his shoulder, angling an arm up her back to break her fall just enough that she wouldn’t be hurt, but not enough to prevent a landing that gave her a good hard jolt. She blinked in startlement. He followed her down, vising her hips between his knees.
As he captured both of her wrists in the grip of one hand and reached to unbuckle his belt, he said, “Honey, you got it all wrong. You ain’t gonna fight me at all. In case you ain’t noticed, I’m a hell of a lot bigger than you.”
“Exactly,” she said, looking up at him as if he weren’t too smart. “I shan’t fight you. So what is the point?”
Race gazed deeply into her blue eyes, almost as pleased by the trust in him that he saw there as he was surprised by it. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly serve him well at the moment. “You ain’t real savvy, are you, darlin’?”
Belt unbuckled, he sat back and gazed down at her with what he prayed was a lecherous grin pasted on his mouth. Her eyes widened when he reached to unbutton her bodice. “Mr. Spencer, it is possible to carry this too far.”
“Not a chance. I done it enough times to know when I’m finished.” Two buttons, three. He thanked God she had so many buttons. “Now this is what we’re gonna do,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes again. “I’m gonna hold you down and have myself a real fine time, and you pretty much won’t. And when you figure that out and start tryin’ to get away, that’s when you learn a hard fact. Which is there ain’t a goddamned thing on this green earth you can do to stop me. You understand how it’s gonna go now?”
The clear blue of her eyes darkened slightly as he unfastened the fourth button. They darkened considerably more with the fifth and sixth. By the eighth, she was beginning to look a little panicked.
A little panicked wouldn’t quite get the job done. He avoided looking into her eyes again. Everything in him rebelled against doing this. But, damn it, he had to. At this point, he didn’t care if she hated his guts for it. Anything to get that pain out of her eyes. And talking sense to her sure as hell wasn’t going to do that.
Race parted the front plackets of her dress. “You sure are a pretty little piece of baggage. I think I’m gonna have more fun doin’ this than I thought.” He trailed his fingertips along the neckline of her exposed chemise. “Oh, yeah.”
She bucked. And he had to hand it to her, she put more strength into it than he would have given her credit for, almost unseating him. Then she surprised him yet again by twisting a hand free from his grasp. Slash. She caught him with her fingernails at the corner of his eye and ripped her way along his jaw.
“Ouch!” Race reared back and grabbed for his face. Bad mistake. In the process, he relaxed his grip on her other wrist. She jerked that arm free as well. “You got me in the eye! Damn it, Rebec—!” Her fist landed in his other eye socket—not on, but in, the size of her knotted hand a perfect fit. Race felt as if his eyeball jammed into his brain. “Jesus!”
Blind. He couldn’t see anything but a blur, that being a totally pissed-off, panicked female. He cupped both his hands over his eyes, leaving only his nose exposed, and she went for that next, shoving hard with the heel of her hand. Pain. It slammed up the bridge of his nose, and, lo and behold, he could see something again.
Stars.
“Son of a-aa-a bitch!” He grabbed his nose, felt the unmistakable warm wetness of blood on his palm, and threw up his other arm to shield his face from further attack. “Yo
u broke my goddamned nose!”
She went suddenly still. Race swung off of her to kneel hunched over. “Rest period!” he cried. “No fair hittin’ a man when he can’t see!”
Pain. He couldn’t believe this. He hadn’t even touched her anyplace important. Damn. She had broken his nose. Right at the weak spot. Slicker than shit.
He heard her slither away from him, her breath coming in fast pants. Then he heard her get up. The sound of little feet pattering across the grass to escape him brought no joy to his heart. He wanted to roar at her to get her little butt back there, that he wasn’t finished with her yet. Not by half.
He twisted to sit cross-legged, elbows braced on his knees, face cupped in his hands. Instead of teaching her a lesson, he’d learned a couple, the first being not to tangle with a female unless he was willing to hurt her, which he wasn’t, the second that he couldn’t count on her to give him the same quarter.
Oh…damn. His nose! Crooked as the Allegheny. He pictured her running into camp, screaming, “Rape!” with her dress half-unbuttoned and her hair going every which way. He groaned. Pete would probably come out and finish what she had started. Race doubted he could defend himself. Blind. He stood corrected. The girl never should have run and hidden in the bushes. She should have waded right in and kicked ruffian ass.
“Mr. Spencer?”
He almost parted company with his skin. “Jesus H. Christ! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“Oh, Mr. Spencer!” she said in a faint, shaky voice.
“I thought you ran off!”
“Well…” Catch of breath and a squeaky mewling noise. “I did run off a ways. Oh, lands! I just had to come back.”
“Why? To drop kick me?” He wiggled his nose and cursed under his breath. “You’d best haul ass while you can. I’m gonna be damned mad as soon as I can see!”
He gave his nose another wiggle, then clenched his teeth and made a humming sound at the back of his throat to keep from cursing to turn the air blue.