knees and scooped her up with his free arm. “It’s all right, Laurie. Daddy’s here.”
The twelve-year-old was only slightly shorter than her mother, but felt light as a feather in his arms. She winced and blinked a few times, but was more than able to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight. “Ma’s still inside, they’re—”
From inside the house, Anne let out another scream. The sound of it ripped a hole through Joseph’s heart. When he looked into the house, all he could see was a mess of overturned shelves, splintered wood and shattered glass. He picked his daughter up and started inside.
“What the hell do you think you’re gonna do?” Dutch asked, watching the scene with an amused grin as more and more of his men gathered around him. “You got lucky and killed a few of my men, but you don’t think you’re actually walking out of here, do you?”
Joseph was still moving. As much as he wanted to run to his wife’s aid, he wasn’t about to put his daughter down. The only compromise he could stomach was carrying her with him as he headed toward the dwindling sound of his wife’s screams. “Where’s your brother?” he asked Laurie.
Laurie was breathing in frantic gulps. Between them, she said, “He ran off when they kicked the door in. I don’t know where he is.”
“Watch yourself in there, boys!” Dutch shouted from outside as if he was watching a show. “You’re about to get some company!”
Joseph was glad to hear the sounds of fighting from his bedroom come to a quick stop. He was even glad to see the men start drifting out to meet him. “Stay right here.” He set Laurie down. “I’m coming right back.”
The girl’s face was pale and her leg was bloody. The moment she was lowered onto one of the few chairs that was still standing, she pressed her hands to the fresh wound and forced herself to breathe deeply.
Without hesitation, Joseph raised his gun and took a shot. His bullet clipped one of the intruders, but wasn’t enough to hold them off. The shot was immediately answered by several more from the men, who pulled their triggers as quickly as they could manage.
Joseph felt a few jolts of pain, which were like a small animal’s teeth biting viciously into his flesh. He ignored them and fired again and again until one of his shots managed to drop the closest gunman. Shifting his aim to the next closest man, he shouted, “I’m coming for you, Anne! Just hold on!”
That promise could be heard even over the crackle of return gunfire and the slap of a hammer against empty bullet casings.
Once they saw that Joseph had emptied his gun, the intruders stopped firing and came out from behind the cover they’d managed to find. The men began to chuckle. One of them walked over and stood in front of Joseph, dropped his spent pistol into a double-rig holster, and drew another to replace it.
“What should we do with him?” the man shouted.
From outside, Dutch asked, “He still alive, Bertram?”
Bertram looked down at Joseph’s face and studied it. The whiskers of his mustache hung just below his chin and skewed at odd angles when he smirked. “Yep.”
“Bring him out!”
Joseph gathered his strength and swung his empty pistol, which smacked against Bertram’s leg. Bertram answered by using his own pistol to deliver a devastating blow to the side of Joseph’s neck. Laurie screamed as she watched her father drop.
“Bring them all out!” Dutch commanded.
When Joseph finally reopened his eyes, he was looking down at the ground and his own two legs bent beneath him. He tried to move his arms, but quickly realized they were each being held by a different gunman. Joseph tried to struggle, but barely had the strength to lift his head. Just then, the gunman to his left grabbed Joseph by the hair and lifted his head for him.
Dutch and two other horsemen stood a few paces away. One of the horsemen was in the middle of saying something, but Joseph’s ears were roaring and he didn’t catch all of it.
“…herd into New Mexico by next week.”
“Good,” Dutch replied. “Do you how many head the others rounded up?”
“About twice as many as we got from the last place.”
“Perfect.” Finally looking over to Joseph, Dutch said, “I was just about to lose patience with you. Did you want to see your wife?”
“An…Anne?” Joseph groaned through all the pain flooding through him.
“Show the man his wife, Bertram.”
The hand that had been grabbing Joseph’s hair wrenched to one side and twisted Joseph’s face around. Joseph couldn’t see much, but he could make out shreds of Anne’s dress on the bloody mess of the body lying beside him.
Joseph’s stomach clenched. “Jesus.”
“You’re the one fighting to get to her,” Dutch sneered. “I could have told you not to waste your time. You might like to know that your boy got away from the house, although I’m sure he’s being tended to as we speak. My guess is that you won’t want to get a look at him, either.”
“Wh—why? Why do this?”
“I think he’s talking to you, Georgie. You want to answer the man?”
The ranch hand was on a horse, sitting quietly nearby in much the same way he’d been when Joseph had seen him earlier that night. Now, as before, the young man could only look at Joseph for a second before averting his eyes.
“I got to hand it to you, Mister Van Meter,” Dutch said. “You gave us much more of a fight than we ever got on any of these jobs. Maybe after folks hear about what happened here, they won’t get as worked up as you did when they see us coming.”
“Laurie?”
Dutch squinted and cocked his head for a moment before finally nodding. “Oh, you mean your little girl? You want to see her too? I can arrange that if you tell me where you keep that stash of money of yours. The missus down there wasn’t too helpful.”
Joseph held his eyes shut as the fresh images of his wife coursed through him in an unwelcome torrent. He gnashed his teeth and clenched his fists, sapping nearly all the strength his body had left.
“She didn’t know anything,” Joseph snarled.
Dutch nodded and said, “I guessed as much. My boys may have had their fun, but there ain’t a woman alive who would keep quiet through all of that. If you’re more helpful, I might let you see that pretty little girl of yours.”
“It’s under the boards in my den,” Joseph said quickly. “Take it and go!”
Dutch threw a quick nod to his right. “Go get it, Georgie.”
As much as he wanted to pull his arms free, Joseph simply couldn’t. He felt like a damp sheet hanging from a line. “You…didn’t have to do all this.”
“Maybe not,” Dutch said. “But variety is the spice of life.”
George came out of the house with a strongbox under his arm. “I found the money, Dutch.”
“Now show me my daughter, you bastard!” Joseph shouted.
“You want to see her, Mister Van Meter?”
In the few times he’d wondered what hell was like, Joseph had never even considered anything this bad. The possibilities that raced through his mind only got worse the longer he thought about what his family had endured.
“I think he does want to see her,” Dutch finally said. “Go on and show him.”
This time, Joseph’s head was twisted in the other direction. The sharpness of the movement sent a warm pain through his neck, which he felt as much as a raindrop was felt against the surface of an ocean.
The girl’s eyes were blackened, but they were open and alive. Her entire body shook as tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You see?” Dutch said. “I’m not such a bad fellow. I waited around all this time to see if you’d wake up just to make certain you’d have something to watch.” With that, Dutch looked to one of the gunmen and nodded.
The sound of a hammer being cocked back echoed through Joseph’s ears. From the corner of his eye, he saw the gun. Since he didn’t have the strength to fight, he savored the sight of his daughter’s face one more time.
