“I never get mad, Peleg. I never raise my voice. I never threaten. You should know that by now. I don’t forgive, either. You should know that, too.” Wesley’s right hand rose, holding a flintlock. He thumbed back the hammer.
“Wait!” Harrod bleated.
“What for?”
“You can’t kill me in cold blood.”
“Why not? You’ve served your purpose.”
“But you need me, remember. You need my experience.”
“I needed you to help cross the prairie. But now we’re heading back. I can manage right fine without you.”
“You bastard. You just want to get out of paying me the rest of the money you owe me.”
The pistol boomed and the back of the frontiersman’s head exploded. Peleg Harrod’s mouth fell open and his features went slack, and like so much mud he oozed into a heap and lay quivering.
Nate started to rise, but Wesley centered the Kentucky on him.
“I’d think twice, mountain man. But if you’re in a hurry to die, you are welcome to try.”
The others came running and stopped short at the sight of Harrod.
Olan laughed and slapped his thigh. “I never did like that old fart. Him and his airs about females.”
“Fetch them,” Wesley commanded, and when they hustled off, he turned to Nate. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Want me to turn my back to you to make it easy?”
“What I want is to know why,” Wesley said.
“Why what?” Nate was watching for Winona. At that moment nothing else in the whole world mattered.
“Why did you help the blacks? What are they to you that you went to all this trouble?”
“We like them.”
“That’s all?”
“What else should there be?”
“I lost my best friend back in Missouri and had to trail you halfway across the plains, and all because you took a shine to a bunch of wooly heads?”
“They’re our friends.”
“Hell. You haven’t known them that long. Yet you and your woman gambled your lives to save theirs.” Wesley shook his head. “I’ll never understand people like you.”
“People who care for other people?”
“No. Whites who don’t give a damn about their own color. You took a red wife and you made friends with these blacks. Don’t you have any pride? Don’t you have any dignity?”
“My wife could be any color under the sun and I would still be proud to be her husband.” Nate was angered by the insult, and he fed on that anger for renewed vigor. “She’s the finest woman I ever met.”
“She’s still a red squaw.”
Nate balled his big fists and would have struck him if not for the unwavering muzzle of the Kentucky rifle.
“I suppose you don’t believe in slavery, either?”
“Need you even ask?”
Wesley let out a long sigh. “One of those. You’re from north of the Mason-Dixon, aren’t you?”
“I was born and raised in New York.”
“That explains it. You damn Yankees with your soft hearts. You cry and moan about how awful it is that we in the South lord it over blacks, and then you go and try to lord it over us by demanding we do as you want whether we want to or not, and set all the blacks free. You’re a bunch of hypocrites.”
“Making slaves of people is wrong.”
“Slavery has been around since Bible times. It’s nothing new.”
Nate had more to say but just then the Worths were shoved and prodded into the firelight. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Samuel’s ankles had been bound, as well, and the only way he could move was to hop like a rabbit.
Emala saw Nate, and sobbed.
“Where’s Winona?”
“Your bitch is coming,” Trumbo said.
Nate churned with fear. He scarcely breathed. When three figures came out of the dark he started to rise, but Wesley took a half step.
“Stay right where you are, mountain man.”
Olan was on one side of Winona, Bromley on the other. She was as limp as a wet cloth, her long black hair hanging over her face.
“Here’s your squaw,” Olan said, and laughed.
They hurled Winona roughly to the ground and she rolled onto her back and was still.
Her hair fell from her face.
Nate looked, and thought he would scream.
Chapter Sixteen
They’d beaten her. They beat her about the face and head and neck, beat her so bad that every inch of skin was a bruise or a welt or a bump. Dry blood caked her chin and the corners of her mouth, and red ribbons were under her nose. They must have mashed her face in the dirt after they beat her because her wounds were smeared with it, and dirt was in her hair and speckled the top of her dress.
Deep within Nate King something snapped. He stared down at the woman he loved more than he loved anything or anyone, and it was as if an invisible hand reached into his chest, wrapped around his heart, and squeezed. A red-hot blaze of fury coursed through his veins and his temples throbbed to the beat of pure rage. He had thought he would scream, and now he did. But not a scream of anguish or despair. He screamed a scream of fury. He screamed in molten hate. He screamed as a man screams when all he is or was or ever will be lay hurt before his eyes. He screamed a scream ripped from the depths of his being.
Nate was up off his knees in a blur. The Kentucky boomed but he sidestepped and the slug missed. He drove his fist into Wesley’s face with all the might of his iron muscles. Flesh pulped and teeth crunched, and Wesley went down, spitting blood. Still a blur, Nate whipped a backhand that caught Olan across the jaw and sent him tumbling. A pistol cracked, Bromley this time, but again the shot missed. Nate kicked him in the groin, and it was as if a hog squealed at its own slaughter.
Then Trumbo pounced, closing from behind and wrapping his huge arms around Nate’s. “I’ve got him!”
Nate rammed his head back and cartilage gave way with a wet
That left the blond man, the one called Kleist. He had wisely stayed back and now he took aim with a pistol, thinking he had the time.
Nate bent and grabbed the unlit end of a burning brand from the fire and threw it at Kleist’s face. Kleist did what anyone would do—he ducked. It gave Nate the second he needed to take a long bound and drive his fist deep into the blond man’s gut.
All the men were down, some not moving, some thrashing and cursing and spitting.
Nate had eyes only for Winona. He dashed to her side and gently lifted her. The sight of her battered, bloodied face so close to his caused another cry to be torn from his innermost being, and then he was racing for the
