Chapter 2 #2
“You’re leavin’, Parson. We get it done now, today, or she’ll be livin’ with one of us for months till you come back. Griff’s young’un’ll be born, and she’ll be broodin’ with a new one by then.”
“She will if she don’t marry an old codger like you.”
An outburst of laughter sent Cassie stumbling backward. Her stomach heaved at the sickening things they were saying.
“It took Griff years to get a babe on her. Maybe it’s her.”
“I’d be willin’ to keep trying were you to choose me, China Doll.” That brought the loudest outbreak of laughter yet.
She knew what they were talking about, but she kept turning her mind away from it.
Without Griff, the only choice she could see before her was to die bravely.
It had never occurred to her to save herself by choosing another husband.
She looked around the crowd, and more than ever, death sounded like a better option.
“A barren woman’s better than no woman at all.”
“Choose, Miz Griffin. I’m young. I’ve got a good place, well started.”
“You live in a soddy, Harv. Think she wants that after what she’s livin’ in now?”
The men bandied their crude jokes and shoved each other, trying to get close to her.
The parson fell beside her, and arms jerked him sideways until he disappeared in the crowd. Someone slid his arm around the girth of her protruding belly and pulled her hard against him.
Her head started to spin, and her knees threatened to give out.
The mob pressed closer, and more hands clung to her, touching her, sometimes improperly, but there were so many that each bit of contact was as much a violation as the next, regardless of where that touch occurred.
If only she could sink beneath the dirt that sheltered her husband.
“Miz Griffin will marry me,” a voice thundered from the back of the crowd. The men turned at the harsh, tyrannical voice that overwhelmed even this rough assembly.
Cassie recognized that awful voice. Mort Sawyer had arrived.
A huge black horse pranced right up through the middle of the mob.
Mort seemed unconcerned if he trampled anyone under iron-shod hooves, and the men seemed to know it.
They snarled and grumbled in protest, but they fell back far enough to allow the man through, like wolves giving way before the leader of the pack.
Five other horses followed the black, driving the mob back farther.
Cassie recognized several of the riders, particularly Wade Sawyer, the young, hungry-eyed son of the rancher.
The younger man rode one pace off the lead horse.
Wade studied her with piercing green eyes that sent a shudder of fear climbing like a scurrying insect up the back of her neck.
“Miz Griffin, I’m mighty sorry to hear of your loss.
” Mort tipped his black Stetson. He spoke like a man paying heed to a social nicety with no emotional interest in his words.
And why not? He didn’t really know her. She’d taken pains to never speak to him and to stay out of his sight.
And the little Mort had to do with Griff had been unpleasant, including tense meetings over the natural spring just behind Griff’s house, one of the few in the area that flowed freely even in the dry season.
Mort had the bad habit of turning his cattle out during the long summer months so they could drink from that spring.
Mort Sawyer, the name Griff had spoken with his dying breath.
Most of what he’d said toward the end was incoherent, so if he was cruel, she didn’t hold him to blame.
If in his delirium he knocked her to the floor a few times, it wasn’t his fault.
He’d fallen into a stupor, occasionally rousing to swallow a few drops of water or rant at her for letting him get so sick.
Then, as Griff’s breathing became shallow and his eyes fell shut, he found the strength to speak one last time. “Sawyer never got the spring while I lived.”
Cassie remembered the triumph in Griff’s voice, as though his life had been a success and now he could die happy.
“I reckon Miz Griffin’s comin’ with me. Parson, let’s get it over and done.
” Mort had dispensed with his hollow expression of sympathy and returned to his usual imperious tone.
Mort’s ability to dominate with that voice had made Griff’s endless chiding sound like playful schoolyard banter by comparison.
A howl of protest exploded from the other men and brought Cassie back to the present. The volume of the noise forced her back a step. She ran into someone and turned to face the heavy, tobacco-chewing man and be assaulted by his breath again.
Wade pushed his mount past his father and reached for Cassie. He leaned down, grabbed her under her arms, and yanked her up onto the saddle in front of him. Her legs scraped painfully on the saddle horn.
Wade turned to his father. “I want her, Pa.”
“She’s mine, boy. We’ve had it out. The spring’s gotta be in my hands.”
Wade lifted Cassie’s chin roughly until she looked straight into his eyes. She’d looked into those eyes before. Too many times.
Wade had the habit of dropping by her home when Griff was gone.
He’d done it too often for it to be chance.
Now he studied her with those weird, bright green eyes, the color of envy and rot.
Wade Sawyer was responsible for one of the few true acts of defiance Cassie had to her name.
She’d learned to shoot, practicing when Griff was away.
And she’d kept a gun close at hand all the time.
Of course, she didn’t have it now when she needed it.
Wade sank his fingers into her jaw and leaned his face so close that for a second, Cassie thought he meant to kiss her. She jerked her head sideways to escape his grasping fingers and pushed at the hand that shackled her waist but couldn’t dislodge Wade’s grip.
Her struggles only brought an amused smile to his slightly swollen lower lip. His black eye seemed to underscore the violence in him. If only she’d been responsible for Wade’s as she had for Red’s.
He said loudly enough for the crowd to hear, “Well, then, I guess you’re gonna be my new mama.” Then Wade kissed her until she felt bruised. Releasing her, he looked at her with greedy eyes that didn’t match the humor in his voice. Dead serious eyes that claimed her in a way no marriage could.
Mort edged his horse next to Wade’s and grabbed Cassie, then hefted her into his lap. His beefy arms settled around her, even before Wade’s had left her body.
The touch of the two men induced shudders so violent that she lost a battle with self-control, just as she had this morning with Red. She wrenched against Mort’s grip and started shrieking like a madwoman.
She caught Mort in the belly with her elbow, and his response was a mild grunt. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her fat middle and roared, “Where’s the parson?”
She struggled more wildly, kicking at Mort’s leg and making his horse prance sideways. The other men had fallen back and seemed content now to watch the show.
She heard the parson say, “I’ll not marry a woman to someone against her will, Sawyer. I won’t stand before God and conduct such a travesty. This isn’t something you can dictate. You let her go right this?—”
Mort’s horse charged forward under his master’s skillful hand.
Mort reached down and grabbed the parson by the front of his black suit.
He lifted the man onto his tiptoes with one hand while he controlled Cassie with his other.
“You’ll marry us, Parson, or I’ll take her home, and when she’s broken in, maybe after she’s given me a son or two, she’ll agree nice enough. ”
Wade laughed, but it was a sickening, hollow sound. “I’m gonna have a baby brother.”
Mort shoved the parson back, and he fell to the ground. A man who would do that to a preacher would do unspeakable things to his wife.
Darkness spun in front of her.
A quiet voice behind her cut through the noise. “I’ll marry Mrs. Griffin, if she’ll have me.”
Cassie’s head cleared, and as she twisted around to locate the owner of that kind voice, her eyes focused on Red Dawson.
The man she’d hated more than any other on this earth ten minutes ago.
Even though she had always been sheltered, she knew terrible things were in store for her if she was taken to the Sawyer ranch.
“Beat it, Dawson. She’s mine,” Mort said.
Mort marched the horse straight at Red.
Red stopped the horse by patting its nose. “Whoa, boy, easy there.” Then he looked at Cassie. With a voice as out of place as a breeze in the midst of a tornado, he asked, “Whattaya say, Cassie? Will you marry me?”
“Parson, it’s settled. We get it done now!” Mort roared.
She still hated Red Dawson, although less than she had a few minutes ago. Or more correctly, she now hated other people more. Red’s eyes reflected decency, at least.
Unless Griff’s grave opened this minute and let her jump in, Cassie didn’t see as she had much choice. A minute passed as the chaos went on around her and the trampled grave stayed closed, and as if someone else spoke out of her lips, she said, “Yes…”
She almost said, Red, before it occurred to her that Red must be a nickname. She didn’t know the name of the man who proposed to her. It would be humiliating to ask him.
Somehow it seemed less humiliating to just say, “Yes, I’ll marry you.”