King.
Chapter Ten
“Chickory!” Randa cried, and started to goad her horse up past her mother’s to reach her brother.
Emala was struck speechless; the unexpected always unnerved her, and this was as unexpected as could be.
Samuel started to swing down. Suddenly he was aware of men on foot closing in from all sides. “Look out!” he shouted to his wife and his daughter.
Randa hauled on her reins. She didn’t want to leave, but instinct warned her that if she didn’t escape, she would end up trussed and helpless. A short man snatched at her bridle, but she jabbed her heels and her horse knocked him aside.
“Stop her!”
Samuel was torn between helping his son and Mrs. King, and fleeing. He started to dismount, thought better of it, and swung his leg back again. But before he could use his reins, two of the men reached him. The one on the right had a bristly mustache and was holding a shotgun, but made no attempt to use it. The one on the left had blond hair and cold blue eyes. Each grabbed one of Samuel’s legs.
Emala squealed in panic. Two men were converging on her. “No, you don’t!” she cried, and reined around. She smacked her horse with the flat of her hand and it broke into a gallop. Pleased with herself, she suddenly realized she was riding toward a low limb. She ducked, but she couldn’t duck low enough; her bosoms got in the way. She tried to twist aside, but the limb caught her across the shoulder. The next thing she knew, she was on her back on the ground with the breath whooshed from her lungs and a short man and a young man standing over her and grinning.
“You sure made that easy, you tub of lard.”
Still on his horse, Samuel kicked the man with the mustache and jerked his leg free of the blond man. He sought to flee. He would have made it, too, except he saw his wife fall and he reined over to help her. That was when another white man, a burly brute with a beard, came hurtling out of the undergrowth. Samuel recognized him; it was a slave hunter called Trumbo. Trumbo rammed into him like a two-legged battering ram.
To his dismay, Samuel was unhorsed.
Fifty feet into the trees, Randa looked back and saw that her father and mother were down. She almost turned back to help them, but the youngest of the whites whipped out a pistol and took aim at her. There was no doubt he would have shot her except that another man appeared, a man she had encountered before—Wesley, his name was—and swatted the younger man’s arm. The pistol went off, but the ball dug a furrow in the ground and not through her.
Randa kept riding.
Emala was on her back, but she wasn’t helpless. She kicked the short man trying to seize her.
Cursing fiercely, the man backed off and leveled his rifle. “Try that again and I will by-God shoot you!”
“Lower that weapon,” Wesley commanded. “How many times must I tell you that they are worth more to me alive than they are dead?”
Samuel barely heard that. He was too busy fighting. Trumbo had slammed him onto his back and sought to pin him, but Samuel was just as big and a lot stronger. He gave the bearded man-bear a shove that sent Trumbo flying. Before Samuel could rise, the man with the mustache and the man with the yellow hair were on him. They got hold of his arms, and the blond man tried to bend his arm behind his back.
Bellowing like a mad bull, Samuel threw them off and heaved to his feet. He turned to help Emala.
“Not another step,” Wesley said, jamming the muzzle of his Kentucky against Samuel’s thigh. “Shooting you in the leg won’t kill you, but it will sure as hell tame you.”
Samuel froze.
“The girl got away,” Trumbo said.
“She won’t get far,” Wesley predicted. “As soon as we tie these two, I want you and Bromley and Kleist to go after her. She’s heading for the open prairie, so it shouldn’t be hard to catch her.”
Emala sat up and jabbed a finger at the back-woodsman. “I should have known it would be you!”
“You’re money in my poke, woman,” Wesley replied. “A lot of money. I wasn’t about to give up this side of the hereafter.” He backed away from Samuel but held the Kentucky on him. “Listen good, you Worths. So long as you do what I say, when I say, you’ll make it back to Georgia in one piece. Give me trouble, any at all, and you’ll suffer.”
Samuel was quivering with fury. He thought the slave hunters had given up, but here they were again. But there was no way he was going back again. No way in hell. He would rather be dead than a slave. Besides, they weren’t taking him back to put him to work in the cotton fields. They were taking him back to hang him. Trumbo went into the trees and reappeared leading horses. From one he took a coiled rope and came over. “Turn around and put your hands behind you.”
Samuel did no such thing.
“You heard him,” Wesley said. “Or is it that you want me to shoot your wife?” He trained the Kentucky on Emala.
“No. Don’t hurt her. I’ll do what you want.”
“Oh, Samuel,” Emala said.
It was just about the hardest thing Samuel ever had to do. He hated it, hated having rope looped tight around his wrists, hated being made to sit and have his ankles tied, too.
“Now do his wife,” Wesley directed.
Emala balled a pudgy fist. “Just you try it,” she warned. “I’ll bean you on the nose. You just see if I don’t.”
Wesley sighed. “Do you have a lick of sense?”
“I don’t care if you put lead into me. I ain’t bein’ tied and that’s all there is to it.”
“Then how about if I put lead into your man?” Wesley aimed at Samuel’s leg.
“All right. All right.” Emala held out her wrists. “Why are all slave hunters so vile?”
“I’m just doing my job, woman. How easy or hard it is depends on you. Keep that in mind and we’ll get along fine.”
Emala fought down a wave of fear. She turned to Winona King and said softly, “I’m sorry to get you mixed up in this. I truly am.”
Winona tried to spit out the gag but couldn’t.
Chuckling, Olan walked over and yanked it out for her. “Usually I don’t give a lick about squaws. But you’re so pretty I’ll make an exception.”
“Pig.” Winona shifted toward Wesley. “My husband will come after us. And he will not be alone. If you are smart, you will let us go and ride away while you still can.”
“I’m smarter than you think,” Wesley told her.
At that, all of their captors laughed.
Pain. A lot of pain. It told Nate King he had returned to the land of the living, although given the throbbing in his head, it might have been better if he stayed unconscious. He felt a swaying motion and something gouging his gut. He must be belly-down over a saddle. He tried to move his arms and legs, and couldn’t.
“I tie good knots,” Peleg Harrod said. “You can open your eyes. I know you’ve come around.”
Nate blinked in the bright sun and turned his head. The old frontiersman was leading his bay by the reins. “Why?”
“That’s the first question I would ask, too. The answer is simple. Money.”
