Winter's Grasp

Chapter 11

Beta's Saddletramp and Nakoosay

Jess's POV

Just as I'm thinking that now is my chance to try to get free of the ropes which bind me, I hear murmuring outside of the house I'm staring into the kitchen, longingly thinking about the knife we have in there for cutting food, when I hear feet shuffling outside the door.

I lay still and keeping my eye lids open just a slit I pretend to still be unconscious. I hear hoofbeats leading away from the house and the door opening. The mustached man comes inside, incredibly angry. Two other men start to follow him inside, but he stops them and tells them to keep watch outside. They obey like obedient dogs and the door closes, leaving me alone with the mustached man.

He takes a chair from the table a few feet away from me. Swiveling the back of chair around he sits in it. He is now facing me with his angry eyes but as he continues to stare at my limp frame the anger vanishes and gets replaced with a smile that peeps out from beneath his droopy mustache. He gets up and upon reaching the door, opens it and yells at one of the men.

I can't hear what he says but one of the men comes through the door with a large wooden bucket in his hands. Seconds later my eyes pop wide open and I'm sputtering as water drips off of me and onto the hardwood floor. I'm soaked through and must have swallowed a good amount of water, some going into my lungs, as I cough uncontrollably. I cough a little longer until the rest of the water which went into my lungs coughs up and laying my head back down on the now wet floor I can finally gasp greedily for air.

"You awake down there?" the mustached man asks, his face showing his pleasure in my discomfort. The cold, freezing water makes the aching bruises on my body come alive as if on fire. Not willing to let this beast of a man see my pain, I get my breathing under control and ask with a rasping voice.

"What do you want?"

"Ohhh, I'm hurt Jess! You mean you don't remember me? Why surely you must remember the man who you stabbed in the back and whom you stole 15 thousand dollars from." I could have sworn right then and there that I had never seen that man before. But when he mentioned 15 thousand dollars, I knew in a heartbeat who he was. The man who stood towering over my freezing, bloody and battered body was a very evil man whose name was Josh Heifer.

It must have been over 6 years ago that I had been in a jail over a little hassle I had with a couple of men who were cheating at cards. I was hotheaded back; then just a tiny spark could send me or my fists flying. I landed up in jail when a fight broke out in the bar when I won at cards and proved that the men were cheating at cards. I had stayed in jail for a couple of days-cooling off when the sheriff being an old and sympathetic, man decided that I was more trouble than I was worth and let me go.

Thinking back on it, I wish the sheriff hadn't let me go. Because what happened next was bad, so bad; that I wince just thinking back on it.

TBC