I considered the landscape, the trees spreading out thin behind the ranch, growing thicker up the mountainside. “He’s taking them into the woods, most likely up onto the mountain.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’d do, if it were me,” Max said. “The Barstow boys were like the rest of us. We all grew up hunting on that mountain. We played in the caves and the miles of old mining tunnels.”
“If they’re up there, this won’t be easy,” Mullins said. “That mountain’s got more hiding places, more twists and turns than a maze.”
Forty-Three
The climb up the mountain through the pine forest hurt Delilah’s legs. The trail, overgrown with scrub brush and thistles, looked like no one had traversed it for decades. Delilah was in the lead, and had to pick her way through the darkness. The man aimed a powerful flashlight ahead of them, casting a blue-white light on the ground and trees, but it bounced with the rhythm of the horse.
It turned out that the man liked to talk. Ever since they’d left the house, he’d babbled on about the mountains, the hunting he’d done as a boy with his brothers. “The miners used to use this trail, but they haven’t been around in years. Follow it all the way and it dead-ends at an abandoned mine.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Delilah asked.
The man’s eyes grew round and he smirked at her. “Is that where we’re going?” he mocked. “Don’t think you can figure me out. I’ll always surprise you.”
It scared Delilah that the man’s mood worsened so fast. “I didn’t mean to…” she stammered.
Scowling at her, he warned, “Don’t ever think I don’t know what I’m doing. I got another place in mind. Even better. A place no one knows about. It’s not on any maps.”
Delilah swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
The sweat that trickled down her back dried in the cooling night air. Her ankles kept twisting on the rocks; she wore her sandals and old white socks the man had given her with holes in the heels. She wished she had a pair of tennis shoes to protect her feet. A round, deep-red bloodstain saturated the right sock where a stone must have cut her. The chain pulled on her arms. The dress too long, it dragged in the dirt, got under her feet and threatened to trip her. The hem caught on branches as they made slow progress up the mountainside.
Something darted across the path in front of her, and Delilah stopped, startled. “What’s that?”
“A damn jackrabbit, nothing that’ll hurt you,” the man said. “But watch out for rattlers. There’s a lotta them around here. They’re active just after dusk. Don’t put your feet under anything.”
Delilah looked at the scattered rocks and wondered what hid beneath them.
“Move on!” the man shouted.
Carrying the heavy chain with them, Delilah and Jayme huffed and puffed farther up the mountain, heads down, the man effortlessly riding behind them on the horse.
“Are we going to stop and rest soon?” Delilah asked.
“We got a ways to go,” the man said. “No stopping.”
“My legs hurt something terrible,” Jayme said.
“Keep going,” he answered.
Delilah tried, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. They felt wobbly. She hit a patch of loose rock, and her feet slid out from under her, skidding across the dry earth. She tried to grab a scrawny pine’s trunk to break her fall, but couldn’t with the handcuffs. The man tugged at the chain and she went flying, taking Jayme with her. When they landed, Delilah lay flat on her stomach with Jayme beside her. Slowly, they sat up, dazed. Delilah pulled up her skirt to see why her knees burned. Badly skinned, they seeped blood.
Jayme had a deep cut on her forehead. She put her hands down to push up, but immediately pulled up her right arm and screamed in pain. “My elbow. It hurts bad.”
“It ain’t nothin’,” the man said.
“Maybe you broke it.” Delilah thought back to a time one of her brothers broke a finger. Mother Ardeth mashed up comfrey from the herb garden and tied it over the break in a cotton wrap.
“Damn it, you girls! Shut up!” the man grumbled. “We gotta get moving. Get up.”
It was awkward with the handcuffs, but Delilah stood and gave Jayme her arms to brace on. “I’m trying,” Jayme said. “It hurts real bad, though.”
The man shook his head. “Maybe you girls are more trouble than you’re worth.”
Delilah thought about what Jayme had told her about the other girls. She considered how Jayme heard the man screaming at them, and then they disappeared. The older girl, the one who vanished right after the man took Jayme? The man had said that he left her on the mountain. Now he was taking them there.
“Are you going to kill us?” Delilah asked.
“Nah, I wouldn’t…” he stammered.
“You would.” Jayme looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, almost daring him to tell the truth.
The man pulled on the chain. “You two do what you’re told, and nothing will happen to you, except you’ll be happy. You’ll be my wives, and we’ll have a family. But we gotta go. Now!”
Delilah shot him a distrustful look, then turned and started back up the trail. She’d walked fifty feet when she heard a horse’s hooves hitting the hard earth behind them.
Someone was coming.
“Behind that rock,” the man ordered. “Over there!”
The man jumped off his horse, pulled it alongside him and hustled the girls toward a vast boulder, taller than the man. In a panic, he pulled them with the chain, making them run between the pines, jumping over shallow roots. He pushed them behind the massive rock, and then took his rifle out of the sling on the mare’s side.
“Not a sound,” he warned as he backed in beside them, the rifle aimed around the
