My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains Page 7

  “Rest now,” he said, corking the bag.

  She leaned back, with the unyielding stone behind her, and closed her eyes. What a sight she must make. She had lost her frivolous hat somehow, probably where they had tried last to sleep. Her foot throbbed, but she was thankful. Only one foot hurt. It could have been so much worse.

  Freeland lifted his hat and settled it farther forward on his brow. He leaned back and started to fold his arms, dragging Carmela’s wrist along with the motion.

  “Sorry.” He lowered his left hand to the ground between them.

  “It’s all right.” She didn’t open her eyes. If she could just sit still a few more minutes, she would drift into sleep.

  A metallic click brought them both upright and alert. Her eyes flew open. Dix stood six feet away with Uncle Silas’s derringer aimed at Freeland’s chest.

  Chapter Seven

  Dix laughed. “Well, look at you two. Cozy as two peas in a pod. You must be getting pretty well acquainted by now.”

  Freeland clenched his fists. What was Dix doing here? If he hadn’t been chained to Carmela, he would have lunged at the escapee. He made himself sit still, knowing the wrong move could endanger Carmela even more.

  “Have you got the key?” he asked.

  “Who, me? I didn’t steal your key. The little lady took it.”

  Carmela’s jaw dropped. She glanced at Freeland and snapped her lips together, turning her face away.

  Good, Freeland thought. Just keep quiet. Don’t let him get to you. He took stock of the man. Dix looked played out. His skin, kept from the harsh sun for several weeks while he was in jail, had burned and begun to peel.

  “I thought you went after a loose horse,” Freeland said.

  Dix’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, well, I never did get the horse. I’ve been walking, same as you. When I went back to where we were held up, you were gone, and I figured you were headed for the next stop, so I followed along. No sense trying to go all the way back to Tucson.”

  “You’d never have made it,” Freeland said.

  “That’s the way I saw it. Figured I might get a horse at the next station.”

  Steal one, you mean, Freeland thought.

  “You got anything to eat?” Dix asked.

  “Nope. Haven’t had anything but some cactus fruit.” Carmela had spotted it. It hadn’t filled their stomachs, but Freeland figured that at this point, anything was better than nothing.

  That peashooter fired only a single shot. He could overpower Dix if his hand were free. Maybe he still could, if Carmela caught on and didn’t hold him back. It would be worth the chance if he could get the gun from Dix.

  “Reckon we ought to move on.” He stood cautiously, giving Carmela a hand to help her rise. He looked meaningfully into her eyes and then away. Would she understand?

  Apparently she did. As she got to her feet, she scooped up a stone with her right hand and concealed it in the folds of her skirt. Freeland quickly looked away so as not to draw Dix’s attention to her movements.

  “Go on.” Dix waved the derringer toward the trail. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Freeland knew his chances to act would drop if he began walking in front of Dix. He paused, seeming to defer to Carmela, sending her a glance. She gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  He stepped forward, closer to Dix than necessary to pass him. As the man started to draw back, Freeland pounced, grabbing Dix’s forearm with his free hand and shoving it away, so the small gun no longer pointed at him. His rush carried them both to the ground. He felt Carmela thud down next to him. In his struggle with the escaped prisoner, he was too busy to worry about her, or if he was straining her wrist by yanking on the chain. He and Dix wrestled in the dirt, with Freeland concentrating on forcing his opponent to drop the derringer.

  Carmela scrambled beside him. She pushed on his back and shoulder, working her way up to his head. Freeland could scarcely believe it when she reached over him and whacked Dix smartly on top of the head with her rock. Dix stared up at her and then gave a low, feral snarl.

  Though she hadn’t struck Dix hard enough to knock him out, Carmela had given Freeland the opportunity he needed. He drew his fist back and punched Dix as hard as he could in the jaw. The prisoner sagged back on the ground.

  Freeland pulled in a deep breath and looked into Carmela’s face, just inches from his.

  “Thanks.”

  “I should have hit him harder.” She gave a rueful laugh and rolled away from him, pushing back her disheveled hair.

  “You did fine.”

  “I didn’t want to break his skull.” She rubbed her wrist, where the handcuff had chafed.

  “Let’s see if we can get these things off.” Freeland stretched beyond Dix’s lax hand and picked up the derringer. He cocked it and squinted at the barrel. “Great. Just great.” If he were a swearing man, now would be the time.

  “What is it?” Carmela pushed up on her knees and laid her hand on his arm.

  “It’s empty.”

  She gazed into his face for a long moment and swallowed hard. “Perhaps he really does have the key.”

  As quickly as he could with the awkward handcuff arrangement, Freeland checked the unconscious man’s pants pockets.

  “It doesn’t seem to be here. He probably dropped it somewhere in the desert so we’d never find it.”

  Carmela sat down heavily. “What do we do now?”

  “I think we’d better pick up the water bottle and my hat and start walking again.”

  “He might wake up and follow us.”

  “Probably,” Freeland said, “but we don’t have any way to restrain him.” Technically, that wasn’t true. He supposed they could tear strips from their clothing and tie him up. But he didn’t want to leave him here to die, the way he and Carmela had been left. He looked around. “We can put him in the shade of the rocks. Maybe he’ll wake up by the time the sun gets around them.”

  “I don’t want you to have to fight him again.”

  Freeland flexed his jaw. “We should reach the station before he comes to and can catch up to us.”

  “All right. Let’s move him. Tell me what to do and I can help you.”

  The sun hung in the dome of the sky almost directly above them for what seemed like hours. Carmela trudged beside Freeland, her mind racing as her body cried out for rest. He kept looking at her, and she wondered what was going on in his mind.

  “What is it?” she asked at last.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that … well, your tattoo on this side looks a little faded.”

  Her heart lurched, and she stopped walking. Freeland stopped, too. He took her chin gently in his hand and turned her head.

  “I hadn’t noticed that before. The left side is darker than the right.” He let his hand drop. “Sorry. I didn’t intend to embarrass you.”

  She put her free hand up to her cheek and touched it lightly. The skin was taut and painful. How much of the tattoos would peel off with her sunburn? Maybe it was time to tell Freeland the whole truth.

  “Could we sit for a while?”

  “Sure.” They found scant shade beneath a Joshua tree, but its branched stem and spiky foliage did little to relieve the palpable heat. Carmela gazed at Freeland for a long time, and he looked back, waiting patiently for her to begin when she was ready. She felt fairly comfortable with him now. She had trusted him from the start, especially since he confirmed he was Will’s brother, but now she was ready to confide in him. What he did with her secret was up to him.

  “When my parents died, Uncle Silas was made my guardian. He’s my mother’s older brother. I didn’t know him very well before … before he went to Yuma to get me. On the way back, he hatched this plan. Or maybe he’d been thinking of it all the way out from New England. It took him weeks to get there.”

  Freeland nodded, and she supposed he knew how difficult travel was in the West. Uncle Silas had been able to get a train to the Mississippi, but after
that it was stagecoach most of the way, and he’d had plenty of time to think.

  “What sort of plan?” Freeland asked.

  “He wanted me to give speeches for money.”

  Freeland blinked. “That’s what you do now.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been doing it a long time.”

  “All through the war?”

  “Yes. We made a long trip through the Midwest, down to Texas and through New Mexico. When we left Tucson five years ago, the war was just starting. We went back to the North as fast as we could, but once we were out of the South, Uncle Silas started setting up more engagements for me. We stayed away from the conflict, and he always seemed to be able to find an audience. I had to tell about my parents dying and Indians capturing me. Lots of things. Sometimes I spoke twice in one day.”

  “Sounds tiring.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  She couldn’t help the twist her lips took. “I hate it, but I was young. Only twelve when it started. I didn’t know how to get away from Uncle Silas and put an end to it. He was my legal guardian after my folks died on the trail.”

  “You mean, after the Indians killed them?”

  Carmela hesitated. Should she tell him the entire, shameful truth? She decided to slide over that point if Freeland would let her.

  “Before we heard about Fort Sumter, Uncle Silas wanted to continue on with our western tour, hitting all the major towns. He thought we could go as far as San Francisco then head back toward Missouri. But with the war going on, he thought it was better to get to Albuquerque and then Santa Fe and up to Denver, so we turned back shortly after I spoke in Tucson and met your brother. But all the way east, he booked presentations wherever he could. I think we made quite a lot of money—though we often had to stay extra nights in a city to do it, and that cost more for the hotels and meals.”

  “Sure.”

  “By the time we got to St. Louis, travel was becoming difficult. The farther east we went, the more crowded the trains were. He rented a house in Massachusetts, outside of Boston, as a home base, and we lived there off and on throughout the war, traveling for my engagements.”

  “You’re from Massachusetts?” he asked.

  “Maine originally, but … he didn’t want me to speak in Maine.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed? She was too naive to realize it then, but Uncle Silas was afraid of being caught. If people who knew her family personally heard her speak, they might know her claims were false. They would know the family had left their area much later than she claimed in her speeches. Better to stay a few hundred miles away from those who knew them best. But she hadn’t put that together then.

  “I thought it was because we could make more money in a more populated area,” she said, not meeting Freeland’s eyes.

  “I don’t understand why some people are so eager to hear about others’ troubles,” he said softly.

  “Me either. But he wanted me to make it sound exciting.” She shifted and rearranged her skirt. “Have you heard of Olive Oatman?”

  “Sure. She was held captive in roughly the same area you were, I’d say.”

  Carmela nodded. “Yes, but before … before what happened to me. Uncle Silas had heard her speak once, several years previously. People paid good money to hear her tales. He insisted I do the speaking to earn ‘donations’ to repay some money my father owed him.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t. My father never mentioned owing money to his brother-in-law.”

  Freeland’s lips pursed. “You were young, as you say. Do you think he would discuss it with you?”

  “I don’t know. My father and mother seemed carefree when we headed west. They were starting a new life together. I heard nothing about debts and obligations back home.”

  “So, all through the war, you did this speaking in Massachusetts?”

  “Yes, and Connecticut and New York. We even made trips to Ohio and Indiana. But we stayed well away from the battle lines. If the audience was small and the receipts were too little to pay for lodging, someone among the organizers would give us a meal or invite me to stay in their home.”

  “What about Mr. Holden?”

  She shrugged. “Where I was welcome, Uncle Silas went, too.”

  “So … do you still owe him money?”

  Carmela eyed him sharply. Freeland McKay was a good man, and a lawman. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him outright that she had never been a captive. That would be fraud. But she would dearly like to know if Uncle Silas’s demands on her were legal.

  “I started keeping track of the receipts as soon as he told me what my father owed him. We passed the mark last fall.” Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money, she reflected. She swallowed hard. Her uncle, and before him her parents, had told her many times not to discuss family finances with outsiders. But Freeland could tell her what she wanted to know without being privy to the amount. “When I said something to the effect that I had earned back my father’s debt, Uncle Silas said I still owed him money for the expense my care had been to him.”

  Freeland’s features darkened. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “That’s what I thought, but he said that counted against what I brought in, and I was honor bound to pay it all back.”

  “I’m not sure a child is liable for debts their parents incur. But then, law varies from one place to another.”

  He was silent for a while, frowning, thinking. She watched his eyes. He wasn’t happy with her story. Maybe he guessed the part that she hadn’t told him, and if he had, maybe he was figuring what the law would do to them for defrauding all those good people. Or maybe he felt sorry for her, for all those years Uncle Silas had dragged her from pillar to post and forced her into a public role. He had no idea the hours she had put in memorizing the stories and studying all the material Uncle Silas brought her about the Southwest Indians. She had read all the captivity narratives he could get hold of, from colonial days to the present. She also read what little they could find on pottery, weaving, and herbal medicine, as those were some of the skills of the tribes in the area where he said she was captured.

  “We’d better go,” Freeland said at last. The sun had moved so that the Joshua tree no longer shaded them.

  She rose stiffly and looked back. There was no sign of Dix.

  Freeland took her hand and led her up the trail. Each step was harder than the last, with the punishing sun beating on her head and her foot lancing with pain. Without the deputy’s firm lead, she might have given up. At last, she staggered the final few steps to the summit and looked out over the vista below.

  Freeland lifted his hand and pointed. “There it is. The station is still standing.”

  Chapter Eight

  Plodding along the trail, they took nearly half an hour to reach the stage stop. As they entered the yard, Carmela stumbled and Freeland whipped out a hand to catch her, surprising himself that he could still react that quickly. She righted herself and surveyed the station house and corral, where a half-dozen mules stood, swishing their tails and dozing in a tiny strip of shade afforded by a small outbuilding.

  Carmela jerked her chin toward the animals, and Freeland nodded. Their presence was a good sign.

  “Anyone home?” he yelled toward the station, but his throat was bone dry, and his voice cracked. He knew it wouldn’t carry far. Fumbling for the water skin, he saw a flicker of movement at one of the small windows.

  “Who are you?” came a male voice with a southern twang.

  He put the flask to his lips and took a swallow of water then called back, “Deputy US Marshal Freeland McKay and Miss Carmela Wade.”

  “You off the stage?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The shadow moved from the window, and the door opened. A short man, his face creased by years out in the weather, came out and walked toward them carrying a shotgun with the barrel pointed toward the earth. Two others came behind him, one a gangl
y young man whose pant legs and shirtsleeves were too short, and a burly, middle-aged man with a thick black beard. Both had sidearms, and the bearded man carried a rifle.

  “I’m Price, the station agent. What happened?” the first man asked.

  “We were attacked by outlaws. Five of them. Our driver and shotgun messenger were killed.”

  “Dwight Herder?”

  “Yes, and Tom. I don’t know his last name. Sorry.”

  Price’s mouth twisted. “Any more passengers?”

  “This young lady’s uncle was wounded. The outlaws drove the stage off with him in it,” Freeland said.

  Price’s eyes shifted to Carmela for a moment and appraised her quickly. He nodded.

  “And …” Freeland hesitated, not liking to admit his own failure. “I had a prisoner.”

  “Her?” Price frowned at the handcuffs.

  “No,” Freeland said. “Fellow by the name of Dix.”

  “He tricked me,” Carmela said. “Mr. McKay was unconscious, and Dix had got hold of a gun in the fray. He made me unlock the handcuffs, and then he hitched me to the deputy and left us there to die.”

  All three of the men from the station stared at Carmela as she spoke. The muscular man scratched his chin through his heavy beard.

  “You was out cold the whole time?” His eyes flicked to Freeland.

  “I’m sorry to say it’s true,” Freeland said. “I wasn’t much help in protecting Miss Wade and her uncle.”

  “You got me here,” Carmela said stoutly.

  “Well, come on in and tell me ever’thing,” Price said. He clapped the bearded man on the shoulder. “This here’s Windle, our blacksmith. Reckon he can get you out of them cuffs.” He jerked his head toward the young man. “That’s Jerry. He’s one of our tenders. When yesterday’s stage didn’t come through, I sent the other one off to take word up the line.”

  “I wish you’d sent him our way,” Freeland said as they started toward the adobe.

  “Couldn’t do that. He might have run into them road agents between here and the previous stop.”