“The hell I can’t.”
Matthew’s voice was low and almost expressionless when he spoke. “Mr. Spencer, we’ve made you welcome here, accepted you into our fold, treated you like one of our family. Is this how you’re going to thank my parents for their goodness?”
Saving their lives was exactly how Race intended to thank them.
“You won’t be welcome here anymore if you do this!” John cried. “You’ll have to leave! Stop and think, Mr. Spencer! Of Rebecca, if nothing else. She may die if you take her away from here!”
Rebecca was going to die out there in the common unless Race did something. Race aimed his rifle at the man on horseback who was riding around the enclosure, setting fire to the rooftops with burning torches. “Matthew, those men out there are gonna kill everyone. Not just the adults, but the children.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t know that for certain.”
“Oh, yes, I do.”
Race squeezed back on the trigger. The sudden explosion of sound in the room made both young men squeak in fright.
“Father in heaven, what have you done?” John cried. He ran to look out over Race’s shoulder. “Dear God, you killed him! Are you mad?”
Race jacked another cartridge into the chamber. “John, either go find a rifle and help me, or take your brother and go hide. I’m one man against several. My chances—”
“Spencer!” a man outside yelled. “Throw down your weapons and come out with your hands up! Do it! Do it right now or she dies!”
Race froze with the rifle butt not quite to his shoulder. Oh, Jesus, God. The bastard had Rebecca.
The gray blanket had ripped wide open, and Rebecca had been dumped out into a waking nightmare. Sunlight, blue sky, grass-scented wind cutting through her clothes to chill her skin. Gunshots, screams, people whom she knew and loved being herded into groups, the men apart from the women, the children apart from their mothers. It was like what had happened in the arroyo, all over again, only worse. Far worse. This time, it wasn’t just older men and women who might die. One young woman held an infant in her arms. There were toddlers, screaming for their mothers. Older children, sobbing and moaning.
In the past, Rebecca had awakened a few times not recognizing where she was, but it had never been like this, in broad daylight, with a man’s arm clutching her around the ribs and a huge, curved knife held to her throat. A dream? Reality? Her legs and arms felt rubbery. She had a sense of having been deeply asleep and being suddenly awakened by a noise—a blank, disoriented, fuzzy-headed feeling.
It didn’t stay with her for long. A gleaming knife held to one’s throat had a way of jerking a person awake fast—as effectively, if not far more so, than a splash of ice-cold water in the face.
Despite the explosion of terror in her mind, Rebecca held herself perfectly still, convinced that her throat would be slit if she so much as stiffened. The man who held her—she couldn’t see his face—was tall, and her bare feet dangled above the ground, her heels bumping against the insteps of his boots. Without moving her head, she angled her gaze downward and glimpsed white, which told her she was wearing a nightgown, the only kind of white clothing she owned.
She had been asleep then. Madness. She didn’t know where she was or how she’d come to be there. With a sweep of her gaze, she once again took in the faces of the people who huddled, sobbing and chuffing, in groups around her. Beloved friends, one and all. Members of her church family—those who had preceded Rebecca and her traveling party to New Mexico. Was she at the new farm in Santa Fe?
A wild glance at the buildings told Rebecca she must be. Dreaming. She had to be dreaming. She had no recollection of coming here. None. The last thing she remembered was—Horror grabbed her by the throat. Oh, God…the last thing she recalled was hiding behind the wood stove in Race’s cabin and being so afraid that her mind began going black. Shock? Had she gone back into shock? If so, how had she gotten here?
“I’ll kill her, Spencer! So help me, God! On the count of ten! Either you drop your guns and come out with your hands up, or she’s dead! One, two, three, fou—”
“You bastard! She’s in shock. She doesn’t even know what’s happening!”
Race’s voice. Rebecca followed the sound to the window of a house. She glimpsed a flash of blue-black hair. Race. Shock. She’d been unconscious? Oh, God. What was going on? Who was this man? There were houses burning.
“Four!” the man who held her yelled. “Five! Come out, Spencer. You gonna let her die in your place? Six!”
“You’ll kill her anyway, you son of a bitch! Do you think I don’t know that?”
“If you come out, we’ll give her and the others until morning to clear out,” the man who pressed the knife to Rebecca’s throat cried. “It’s your ass I want, Spencer. Fourteen of my men! You killed fourteen of them! And you’re gonna pay. You hear me? It’s you I want! You and me, we got unfinished business. Come out, and we’ll give the others a period of grace to get out of here! Seven! Eight!”
“Hess!” Race roared from inside the house. “Give me your word, goddamn it. Swear that you won’t harm any of ’em or allow any of ’em to be harmed. Otherwise I’ll open fire, and you’re gonna take the first bullet, you bastard!”
“You have my word!” a man yelled from somewhere behind Rebecca. “My word of honor. None of them will be hurt if they leave before morning.”
Rebecca felt the knife pressing against her throat and a horrible, watery sensation trickled through her. Fear. Race. Her gaze clung to the window. Come out. Save me. Please, don’t let him kill me. Please, please, please…
His rifle appeared in the window. Rebecca nearly dissolved with relief when he tossed it outside. The Henry hit the dirt, butt first, then thudded onto the patchy grass. He was going to come out. He wasn’t going to let her die. Thank you…thank you. Oh, Race…thank you. His dark arm appeared in the window opening again, his gun belt clutched in his fist, the pearl handles of his Colts gleaming like creamy wedges of cheese against the dull black metal and dark leather.
“I’m comin’ out!” Race called as he chunked out the side arms. “Stop countin’, you murderin’ bastard. Harm a hair on her head, and I’ll see you in hell.”
Rebecca felt the man’s chest jerk with laughter against her back. “That’s big talk for an unarmed man, Spencer! Get your ass out here. I gave you my word. Hess gave you his. I ain’t gonna harm the woman.”
Within seconds, Race’s tall, black-clad frame appeared in the open doorway. As he stepped out onto the porch, he raised his empty hands, his palms forward, his long fingers slightly curled. The wind caught his black hair, whipping the strands across his dark face. Rebecca stared at him. So glad. So very glad. The knife wasn’t going to slice into her jugular. She wasn’t going to die. Race would always keep her safe. Always. He’d promised. And he never broke his word.
He looked so big and strong and formidable. As he stepped off the porch, the thick ropes of muscle in his thighs snapped the black denim of his jeans taut. That long-legged, loose-hipped stride. The hard, relentless cut of his features. The grim set of his mouth. He made all other men look like pathetic near-misses. He would always keep her safe. Always.
His dark gaze cut to her face. Their eyes met. She saw his stride falter and knew he’d just now realized she was aware. He kept coming, his gaze locked on hers now, as if he were trying to tell her something. Run, darlin’. You hear me? Run. Rebecca swallowed, horribly conscious of the sharp blade pressed against her throat. She couldn’t run until this filthy animal turned her loose. His stench rose around her, acrid and searing.
When Race was about five feet away, the man drew the knife from Rebecca’s throat and tossed her aside. She saw the ground coming at her, tried to break her fall, but her arms and legs didn’t react well to the messages from her brain. Shock. She recalled the last time she’d awakened from a stupor and how her body had refused to work. It seemed a dozen times worse now. Numb, weak, disconnected. She hit
the dirt like a boneless rag doll, the side of her head cracking against the earth. For an instant, she saw stars. Oddly, she felt no pain, even though she knew hitting the ground so hard would normally hurt.
“You bastard,” she heard Race say. “You got feelin’s for nothin’ and no one, do you?”
She managed to get an arm under her to push up. Run, darlin’. Run. Oh, God. How could she possibly? Her body felt like a mass of half-set jelly. Nothing worked. She doubted she could get to her feet, let alone run anywhere. Only somehow she had to. If Race had to worry about her, he’d be distracted. He might get hurt if he wasn’t completely focused on those men.
Rump on the ground, Rebecca dug in with her elbows and pushed with her heels to drag herself away. A few inches. Then a foot. Pain. She was beginning to feel some sensation now. Along her side, where she had struck the dirt. And in her elbows, where she shoved them repeatedly against the ground.
As she pulled and pushed herself away from the men, she fixed her gaze on Race, who seemed even taller and more powerfully strapped with muscle from her prone position than he had when she’d been upright. He was a head taller than the man with the knife. Rebecca cast the thinner, leather-clad man a look of sheer aversion. Filthy, horrible crea—
She froze and stared, her heart starting to slam violently against her ribs. It was him. The monster who had raped and tortured her mother.
The man smiled and sheathed his knife. Her gaze followed the weapon to his hip. The knife that had slit her mother’s throat. Oh, dear God. It all came back to her in a rush, the faces of the men who’d slaughtered her loved ones no longer featureless. Her mother’s killer…
In a blur of tan leather, he moved forward and began to pummel Race with his fists. Rebecca shoved frantically with her feet to get farther away. None of the strangers seemed aware of her. She was just another Bible thumper to them—and a barely conscious one, at that. They were paying her absolutely no heed. Oh, God. Oh, God. Her mother’s killer. It was he. She remembered now. All of it. Oh, dear God. Merciful Lord. Run, hide, get away from him. Away!
She slithered backward between two horses. Glancing up, she saw that both animals were riderless. Horses? Riderless horses? She couldn’t believe her luck. She could get on one of the animals. Before any of these men realized what she was about, she could ride away. Later, when it was all over, she’d come back for Race. A horse. Oh, thank you, God.
Keeping her terrified gaze fixed on her mother’s killer, it took Rebecca a moment to realize that Race was doing nothing to defend himself. That horrible sound of fists striking flesh. Thud. Thud. Thud. That murdering monster was battering Race’s face, and he was just standing there, with his booted feet braced wide apart to keep from reeling backward under the blows.
Rebecca blinked. This wasn’t right. Race? He was her warrior. The one who would always wade in, fighting. The one who would always, always win. Why was he just standing there, doing nothing to defend himself? He could break that horrible man into little pieces. Smash his face to a bloody pulp with a few blows from his massive fists. Why wasn’t he fighting back?
The smaller man started burying his fists in Race’s abdomen, the force of the blows knocking Race backward with such force that he staggered to stay on his feet. Yet still he made no move to defend himself. He just stood there and took it. Rebecca couldn’t believe it. If she had screamed your name, you would have tried to help her. You would have fought them with your fists, if nothing else! As clearly as though it had happened yesterday, Rebecca remembered telling Race that, and to this day, she believed it with all her heart. He was a fighter. Nothing frightened him. He was the kind of man who would walk right up to death, stare it directly in the eye, and spit in its face with his last breath.
It hit Rebecca then, with the force of a blow to her own midriff, that Race was doing exactly that right now—engaging in a stare-down with death. He hadn’t come out here to fight for her.
He had come out here to die for her.
She dug her fingernails into the grass and dirt, staring at him. Watching him take the punishment of the other man’s fists. Her Race. Her heart. He had made a trade with these murderous animals—his life in exchange for hers. No! She wanted to scream it, but her throat wouldn’t work. He couldn’t die! He couldn’t. How would she live without him?
Like the giant tree with injured roots that grew beside his cabin, Race suddenly went down. Over two hundred pounds of muscle-hardened flesh and bone. He fell unimpeded, the dull impact of his body as it hit the ground seeming to resound in the air. Other men wearing tan leather descended upon him, seemingly from out of nowhere, to grab him by the arms and lift him between them like the Savior on the Cross. Her mother’s killer laughed. The sound slithered through Rebecca like a legion of scorpions, a horrible, despicable sound, in part a memory, in part reality, that made her shudder. While his murderous cohorts held Race slumped between them, the monster pummeled him. His face, his midriff. Blow after blow. Thud. Thud. Thud.
She had to do something. Oh, God. Someone had to do something. She turned an imploring gaze on the group of church brethren who stood nearby. They merely gaped, their horrified expressions nightmarishly reminiscent of the looks on the brethren’s faces that evening in the arroyo as her father had been shot down in cold blood. Dazed, uncomprehending, incredulous. They weren’t going to do anything, she realized. Not to help Race or to help themselves. It simply wasn’t in the brethren to resort to violence, not even in self-defense, and it never would be.
“Rebecca!”
Race’s hoarse cry jerked her gaze back to him. He had fallen to his knees. Blood streaked his dark face. His dark eyes burned into hers.
“Run, darlin’!” he cried. “Run!”
A dizzying sensation of tumbling backward came over Rebecca. As if separated from her own body, she saw herself in the arroyo, huddling in the bushes with her hands over her ears. Rebecca! her mother had screamed. Rebecca! Run, sweetheart, run! Save yourself. Run, baby. Run! Only she hadn’t been able to move. Terror had held her in its grip. So she had huddled in the bushes, and soon, all her mother had screamed was her name. Over and over and over. Rebecca!
“Run!” came Race’s broken cry again. “Get out of here, damn it! Run!”
Rebecca lay there, frozen, her gaze darting from the brethren to the sisters to their weeping children, then back to Race—her husband, her life, her very heart. He was going to die. He could have stayed in the house and battled his way out of this. But to save her, he’d thrown down his guns and walked out here, knowing with every step he took that they would kill him.
In her mind’s eye, she saw herself, clasped to that monster’s chest with his knife at her throat, her gaze clinging to the window. Please, Race. Save me. Please, don’t let me die. And he’d loved her so much that he’d come out to trade his own life to save hers. Now, here she lay—a quivering, sniveling coward.
I should have done something! I should have fought them—bit them, kicked them, hit them with all my strength! She screamed my name, and I covered my ears!
Rebecca pushed to a sitting position. Not again. She wasn’t hiding, not ever again. She’d rather die.
If you won’t fight for yourself, love me enough to fight for me. She staggered to her feet. Dizzy. Legs like rubber. She couldn’t help Race, she thought frantically. God help her, she could barely stand up. Shock. The horrible trembling assailed her body. A marionette, controlled by a prankster. She was too weak. Horribly weak. Her bones seemed to have no substance.
She grabbed hold of the horse’s saddle to hold herself up. Don’t ask God to fight your battles. Ask Him to give you the strength to fight them yourself. Strength. She needed strength. Love me enough to fight for me. She couldn’t remember when Race had said that to her, she only knew that he had. And she did love him. If she couldn’t save him, then she would die beside him. Better that than to crawl away like a whipped dog. Never again. Never. She couldn’t live with it.
Please,
God. Give me strength. Just for a few minutes. Help me to think. To stop shaking. Help me, please. So I can help him!
Still clinging to the saddle to hold herself erect, Rebecca found herself staring at a rifle. Seconds ticked past as she gaped at it. A rifle? An insane urge to giggle came over her. There was a rifle in the saddle boot, just inches from her nose. A rifle! Pictures flashed in her mind—of Race, of the barn, of the haystacks. Take a steady bead, sweetheart. Now breathe in and breathe completely out. That’s it. Now, squeeze slowly on the trigger. Don’t pull your shot. Good girl, Rebecca Ann! That’s a bull’s-eye, darlin’!
Rebecca glanced at the horse’s dangling reins. With a trembling hand, she reached to grab them. Going up on her tiptoes, she brought them back over the horse’s head and wrapped them around the pommel to maintain tension on the bridle bit. She hoped the horse would feel the constant tension and stand still, just as it might if a rider drew back on its reins. Her hands seemed to become less shaky as she secured the strips of leather. Thud. Thud. Thud. She blocked out the sound. To help Race, she had to stay focused.
With any luck, this horse had been conditioned not to panic at the sound of gunfire, just as Dusty, Race’s stallion, had. If the animal would only stand fast while she was shooting, she could use its massive body as a shield so she wouldn’t be felled immediately by return fire. Knowing these men and their ignoble traits, imperviousness to gunshots would be an important trait in one of their mounts. Please, God. She would fight this battle by herself. She just needed a little luck and the strength to do it.
She unfastened the strap on the saddle boot and withdrew the rifle. It was a lever-action, rapid-fire weapon, similar to Race’s Henry. After shoving hard against the horse’s haunch to bring it around broadside to the killers, she brought the rifle to her shoulder and sighted in, just to see if she would be able to hold the weapon steady enough to shoot it. A sense of calm settled over her as she recalled Race’s telling her there was no such word as “can’t.” She could do this. All you have to do is believe in yourself as much as I do.