Chapter 3
Grace gasped. Despite living in a small town in the mountains, she had never had a gun thrust in her face before. All the guns she’d ever come in contact with were pointed in entirely different directions than her own body. She felt the swoon coming on and fought to keep it at bay.
No, you cannot faint here, she warned herself sternly. Do it later. Not now!
She gripped Hunter’s arm fiercely, as though he was a lifeline between her and the world. He squeezed her hand but didn’t take his eyes off the weapon leveled in their direction. “Now, look,” he began. “We?—”
“We just wanted to hide from the storm,” Jeff’s voice croaked weakly from somewhere.
The match went out, plunging them into total darkness.
There were scuffling noises. Hunter’s hand on her arm vanished abruptly and she muffled a shout of fear, praying desperately for peace and trust and safety—above all, for her dratted nerves to cooperate so she wouldn’t?—
Too late.
The world closed in on her, cold and wet and heavy. Grace’s eyelids crashed shut for the second time that day and she slumped bonelessly to the ground.
It was the jolting that brought her back to consciousness more than anything. Lying on her stomach, it took her senses a moment to recognize she had a face full of horse.
Horse?
Looking around, her head and neck aching and her eyes watering, Grace saw that she had somehow been draped across a horse’s back and that someone was holding her in place.
There were loud booms, and she slowly realized they weren’t all thunder despite the pouring rain.
The pressure on her back eased up a little, and the man who was holding her turned in the saddle to … to shoot, she realized. The man, apparently her captor, was firing a gun. Was he firing at Hunter and Jeff? Who else could it be? What was going on?
Grace took a moment to gather her thoughts. So, she’d fibbed a bit to Hunter. Fine. Ever since she was a little girl, she had been a fainter. The smallest scare, the slightest fright, and she was passed out cold, coming to sometimes hours later, wondering what had happened.
It hadn’t been this bad in a long time, which was why Grace had dared to fib to Hunter, but then, Grace had worked hard to make sure that she lived a quiet, calm, secure life so she could avoid the need to faint.
Yet here she was, in peril, and all she could feel was the world closing in on her again as she began to panic.
There had to be a way to calm herself. Her mother always said she should take deep breaths.
That wasn’t possible now, lying as she was over a horse’s back with her face in its hide.
But perhaps she could change that situation.
Perhaps she could do something that would save her and Hunter and Jeff.
One thing was for certain. Sitting around doing nothing wasn’t an option.
Not in this scenario. In this scenario, if she fainted, she might never wake up again!
The man turned in his saddle to fire behind him again, and this time, Grace took advantage of his distraction.
She let herself slide off the horse’s back and onto the muddy ground.
Because of her almost boneless state, she didn’t feel the fall too much.
The grass they were riding through was thick enough that it cushioned any particularly hard thump, and she rolled instinctively to the side, praying no outlaw would ride her down or trample her to death.
Huddled in the wet grass, her nose full of the scent of wet earth, she could feel the faint wanting to come, creeping up on her, coming ever closer. Her vision was narrowing, and darkness was closing in.
Breathe, she told herself, then tried to work out how this initial plan of hers was supposed to help her new husband and his friend. What was I thinking?
A couple of breaths later, a cart pulled up beside her.
“Get up!” a voice yelled, and Grace realized with fear-addled slowness that it was Hunter!
“Grab on!” he cried, reaching down to her. She slowly extended her hand, fumbled around until it closed on his rough fingers, and held on tight as he hauled her up none too gently.
Once she was safely in the cart, Grace clung to him for a moment, so grateful to be relatively safe again that she forgot all about propriety. Hunter patted her awkwardly before setting her more firmly in the seat and resuming his stance with the gun.
“Hold on tight, Grace,” he warned, jaw set grimly.
She spotted men on horseback chasing them, getting ever closer. Dear Lord, what is happening? she wondered in horror. It was like something out of a dime store novel!
Jeff turned the horses’ heads, and they galloped even faster across the field.
“Keep your head down!” Hunter said, pushing her almost under the seat.
Grace obeyed and huddled there, her hands over her ears, her heart beating so fast she thought she might throw up, faint, and have a heart attack at the same time.
“How far to the pass?” Hunter cried.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Jeff replied, and someone fired his gun over and over again—it took Grace’s beleaguered senses a moment to realize it was Hunter. “Just hold them off until then.”
The cart seemed to tip a little to the one side and then the other.
It was just like the train, only far worse.
Grace realized that she’d been screaming and clamped her hands over her mouth.
This was all too much. Why had she agreed to come out here?
She should have told Hunter to come to Coalsville, and they could have stayed where it was safe and where people were civilized.
She wasn’t made for bandit ambushes and wild horseback rides with people shooting at her!
Something smacked into the wood right by her head. Grace saw the glint of metal in the wood as lightning sliced through the sky.
That was a bullet. And it almost hit me. It almost …
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
Grace came too sometime later—how long, she wasn’t quite sure. She realized she’d passed out again. But this time it seemed she had awakened rather quickly, given that circumstances didn’t seem to have changed much from earlier.
The cart was still going at a crazy pace. Rain was still pelting down. People were still shouting from somewhere behind them. And Hunter was still firing his gun.
So … maybe I should’ve just stayed asleep until we got to safety, she muttered to herself.
She raised her head a fraction and saw large boulders on either side. As they went through, both Jeff and Hunter made swinging motions with their hands and something snapped loudly. There was a rush, as of something moving very quickly, and then both horses and men were screaming.
“There. That should hold them back for a bit,” Hunter said. He holstered his pistol and, bending down, offered Grace his hand. “I’m so sorry. It’s not usually this?—
“Don’t lie to your wife,” Jeff scolded. “It’s like this often enough for us to have come up with a plan ahead of time to deal with it. Grace? Do you think you can handle it?”
Grace tentatively allowed Hunter to pull her up and onto the seat. There she sat, huddled miserably, not knowing what to say. She wasn’t sure she could handle it, honestly.
“I—”
“Jeff, that wasn’t fair,” Hunter said. “How should she know if this is something she can manage?” He smiled at her kindly. “It’s not always like this, despite what Jeff says. The last time the bandits gave us trouble was over a month ago when they burned down parts of the town.”
“When they what!” she cried in alarm.
“That was after we blew up their dam,” Jeff said. “It was wonderful!” He grinned like a mad person.
“Burning down … blowing up … This is a lot to take in,” she mumbled, swallowing thickly. Suddenly, her stomach was in her mouth. “Stop the cart!”
“What?” Hunter asked.
Grace didn’t have time to explain. “Stop the cart right now!”
Jeff pulled on the reins and the cart came to a halt.
Grace tumbled out of the cart, hitting the ground with a hard thump this time. Her stomach roiled and she retched painfully, then vomited. Then, just because she wasn’t embarrassed enough, she threw up a further three times before her stomach finally settled.
Looking up, squinting in the rain that was only a hard drizzle now, she found Hunter standing over her.
“Did you get it all out of your system?” he asked, offering her a handkerchief.
She patted her mouth dry and nodded weakly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting all of this.”
“I know. It does take getting used to,” he said, handing her the water skin. “But it’s not all bad out here. Honest. I never would’ve asked you to come west if it was, Grace.”
Grace poured some water into her mouth and swilled it around a bit before spitting it out.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about being told she would have to get used to being shot at, kidnapped, burned, and/or blown up.
So far there wasn’t much good that she’d seen since her arrival.
Hunter was handsome and kind, admittedly, but was that enough to make up for?—
Her stomach gave a jolt and threatened to bring everything back up again, but she managed to master it with a stern command this time.
Getting to her feet, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She glanced around at the dark, rain-soaked field and shivered, grateful that it now seemed to only be them and the nervously stomping horses.
“We really have to keep going!” Jeff called from the cart. “It’s not like they won’t get through that barrier eventually.”
“I know, I know. We’re coming,” Hunter answered. Then, turning to her, he said, “Are you okay to go on? We can wait a little longer.”
The thought of having those ruffians catch up to them was too much for Grace. She turned and almost ran back to the cart. She climbed up and sat on the seat, arms crossed tightly across her chest as cold and shock started to truly set in.
When Hunter climbed up beside her, she turned to him. “We are going to have a long and in-depth conversation about this when we get to the town. Aren’t we?”