Chapter 11 #2
He had nothing. He’d left his rifle behind on his horse. Another check told him his Colt revolver was gone, too. He kept a knife inside his shirt, and he fumbled for it. With a sigh of relief, he found the knife was there.
He hurt everywhere on his body. He didn’t think he had any broken bones thankfully, but he’d been through fistfights that didn’t leave him feeling as badly assaulted.
Turning to look at Stella, he found her unconscious or maybe asleep.
She was soaking wet. Her hair, long and blond, was swept back from her forehead and reached to her waist. She was sunburned, the tip of her nose peeling.
She had a bruise or two he could see and figured she probably had a dozen more he couldn’t see.
She was tall for a woman and slim, her neck slender, graceful.
The attraction he felt toward her alarmed him.
He tried to ignore it, to remind himself that she’d been living the life of an outlaw, robbing folks and running from the law.
He wondered if they’d settle the crimes her family had committed on her strong but slender shoulders when they took her before a judge. He wondered if that graceful neck was due an appointment with a noose.
There were hard things ahead for the pretty Miss Duncan, and he’d see that she faced up to them, but for just a few moments he let himself forget about that and instead think about how pretty she was.
He sorted through the years of his past, going back as far as he could remember. Had he ever been alone with a woman?
That struck him as wrong. He lived a strange kind of life. Plenty of it riding with other men, but more of it alone. Riding with a group of Marshals wasn’t the usual way.
He thought of Stella’s reckless escape. She’d risked her life to be free. He had to wonder what all she had on her back trail to be willing to die trying to get free. Or was she just a wild spirit willing to take such chances?
Tex glanced at her wrists and saw she still had a rope tied around each of them, though the link between her arms had definitely been cut.
How had she gotten a knife? He knew how to search for hidden knives, weapons of all kinds, and he knew he hadn’t missed any stashed away on the prisoners.
A wily bunch, these Duncans. He’d’ve sworn he’d been watching them real close. Bringing up the rear was his job.
But today that crazy rattlesnake of a trail had taken most of his attention. Was that what had given Sly and his family the distraction they’d needed to break free?
He couldn’t really blame them for trying to escape. But he wasn’t going to allow it anymore. He had a code he lived by, and being attracted to a beautiful woman didn’t change that.
She’d be a handful when she woke up, unless the beating from the head-over-heels plunge down the cliff and the battering river ride had left her as stoved up as it had him.
For now, she slept. It was an idea with merit, and that was Tex’s last thought for a while as his eyelids gained weight and exhaustion dragged him into sleep.
Hester and Grizzly rode into Elk Point late in the day, starving, exhausted, and worried to a frazzle.
“I regret we didn’t explain where we were going. You should wire Mortimer.” Hester mentioned the man Grizzly had left in charge.
“He saw us heading south. He knew we were riding out to meet the youngsters.” He called them that even though his youngsters were full-grown adults.
But Grizzly had missed a lot of their childhood, so maybe he wished they were still youngsters.
He’d come home from the war to their older three sons gone.
The two younger of them, Jedediah and Crockett, had fought with him in the bloody conflict, while Bowie had gone west before the trouble broke out.
He’d never come back to throw into the fight, at least not as far as Hester knew.
The raising of his two youngest had been left to her for a few years, but she knew what she was doing.
When her husband had returned from the fighting, his youngsters were nearing adulthood.
He’d never really caught up with the details of the time he’d missed.
Hester was delighted that Boone and Delaney had agreed to join them at Fort Russell.
Hester hoped he’d get to know at least part of his family again.
“I’ll let him know we’re taking that trail that led into the mountains.” Back to where they’d seen blood. “Then if Boone and Del do get to the fort, they’ll know better where we are.”
“What do you think happened?”
She must be upset or she never would’ve bothered asking such a question.
She watched him shake his head and look back the way they’d come. “Something bad, I reckon.” He pulled her into his arms. “Hester, girl, marrying you was the best thing I ever did. How’d I get lucky enough to pick the perfect woman for myself?”
That got a smile out of her. “Have you been under the impression all these years that you picked me? Because I most certainly arranged this marriage all by myself.”
“I was so determined to have you,” Grizzly said, “I gave up these mountains. Best thing I ever did.”
She’d been standing there in Jefferson Forge, Indiana.
They’d both been about sixteen. They were married by their seventeenth birthdays, and Grizzly had joined the Army by the time he was eighteen.
He’d built her a cabin and bought a cow and a few chickens before riding off.
She’d known Bowie was on the way by then but kept it to herself because she knew how much he wanted to join the Army.
He’d stopped by home a year later and met his son.
“Let’s send a wire,” she said quietly.
Grizzly nodded, then repeated himself. “Yep . . . something bad, I reckon. I want to ride back to where we saw blood on the trail and get busy finding our children.”
“I wonder what happened to them.” She could tell he was just as worried as she was.
“Can’t say what happened, but it figures that something did, even if the place we came upon had nothing to do with them.”
Hester gave a sigh and said, “Let’s send that wire and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’ll pack a supply of food to last us in the wilderness, then go find our children.”
“And we’ll keep at it for as long as it takes, even if we have to tear down these blasted Rocky Mountains, stone by stone.”
Grizzly walked to his buckskin stallion, where it stood patiently beside Hester’s mousy-gray mustang mare.
They’d gotten some beautiful foals out of this pair over the years.
Now the horses were aging, just like she and Grizz were.
But they were still strong, and still eager to do whatever needed doing.
She reached over and squeezed his hand hard, then spurred her horse onward. Grizzly would have his hands full keeping up with her.