Chapter 5
Mary Sullivan gasped when she heard them come into the house. She crouched in the shallow basement among recently harvested crops, trembling with fear.
The intruders shouted for her, calling her “woman” and “lady” and “Mrs. Sullivan” and laughing in between.
Bootheels knocked all over the small house. There were clearly several men up there.
Where was Cole?
He would never allow them inside.
Her heart hammered in her chest. Was Cole all right? Had these men hurt her husband?
Furniture scraped. Something shattered. There was more laughter, more shouting.
She flinched at every outburst.
“Come on out, lady, we just want to have some fun!”
This was what Cole had meant by trouble.
Where was he? Was he okay?
She didn’t know, couldn’t know, and she knew there was nothing she could do to help him. Not now, not yet.
All she could do was follow his advice and escape.
Because it would only be a matter of time before the men moved the rug and discovered the hatch and came down here.
Carrying the candle, she crossed the dirt floor to the other side, where she entered the small tunnel Cole had dug in case something like this happened.
Breathing thanks for her forward-thinking husband, she crawled on hands and knees out the long tunnel, which surfaced behind the cabin in a thicket of thorny scrub brush at the base of the hill.
She snuffed the candle before crawling out of the tunnel.
Then, remembering what Cole had told her when he’d dug the tunnel, she rolled the heavy round stones he’d placed nearby into the hole.
Working quickly, she picked up the shovel he’d left beside the old hollow tree and started tossing in dirt from a pile beside the tunnel exit.
In no time, she had blocked the end and bought herself a good deal of time should anyone try to follow her through the tunnel.
Finally, she reached inside the hollow tree and retrieved the haversack Cole had stored there. Its contents were few and simple: a rolled-up rain slicker, matches, jerky, rope, a knife, and a pocket pistol with a box of ammunition.
She checked the pocket pistol and found it loaded. Holding the pistol in one hand and the bag of items in the other, she hurried into the thicket, knowing the best way from the dry runs she’d taken with Cole, who thought of everything, God bless him.
Everything, that is, except his own safety.
Where was Cole?
Had those men hurt him?
She could hear them faintly inside the cabin calling for her. They no longer sounded amused. Now, they sounded angry and determined.
Looking back, she was horrified to see men riding away from the house with torches. They trotted out in all directions, sweeping the torches back and forth and hollering for her.
“We won’t hurt you, Mrs. Sullivan,” one of the men lied. “Come on out.”
Where was Cole?
He would never stand by and let them break into their house and shout for her like this. Never.
Where was he?
How could she find him? How could she help him?
Escaping the thicket, she scrambled up the steep slope.
Finding the going too slow, she checked the pistol to make sure the hammer was down, then slid it into her dress pocket, freeing one hand, which she used to grab saplings and tree roots, speeding her ascent.
Most women would have found the going terribly difficult, but Mary was strong and fast and durable. Raised by a father who treated her like a son, she spent her childhood outdoors, exploring the wilderness, and now, she charged up the steep slope like a mountain goat.
Reaching a bench a few hundred feet above the valley floor, she paused to catch her breath and check her back trail.
What she saw stole her breath all over again and took her hopes and dreams with it.
There, hanging lifeless from the branches of the big cottonwood, illuminated by a pair of torch-bearing riders rooting through his pockets, was her husband.
Cole was dead.
She stared in disbelief, heart hammering.
It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be, couldn’t be…
But it was.
She knew that it was him and knew he was dead and knew there was nothing she could do to help him now.
They had murdered her husband.
She turned and retched then stared numbly into the darkened forest for a long moment, not wanting to see him, not wanting to see the ghouls searching his pockets.
Then she narrowed her eyes and turned back. If only she had a rifle instead of a pocket pistol.
She was a good shot, and with a decent rifle, she could kill both of those men from this distance, then kill a good number more if they tried to come up here after her.
But she didn’t have a rifle. She had a pocket pistol, good out to ten or twenty yards, maybe. And a knife.
A pitiful arsenal considering the task at hand.
Unable to kill them, she wept, but even as the first tears fell, Mary hauled back on those reins, knowing that she needed to control her emotions if she was going to get justice for her beloved husband.
And she would get justice.
She was determined solely upon that point.
Which meant she needed to be smart. She needed to be smart and survive and get help.
Help from whom?
She didn’t know.
Nor did she know who those men down there were.
Except one of them was the short man from the hardware store. Cole had said that.
That was a start.
Now she just needed to evade these men and do whatever she could to bring the short man and his friends to justice.
She looked back down into the valley to where her poor, dead husband swayed back and forth, jostled by the men searching him. Then they rode off, their laughter growing faint with distance, taking their torches with them.
Darkness enveloped her husband.
And then she was truly alone on that darkened hillside, peering down at the torches that rode back and forth across the valley, the men holding them calling out for her by name.
Finally, the men gathered around her home.
“Burn her out!”
She watched in horror as they tossed their torches inside.
A short time later, her home was ablaze, and her horror turned to rage.
Please, Lord, she prayed fervently. Please avenge my husband.