Chapter Three
Slowly backing out of the livery, Jess' palm wrapped around the handle of his revolver, expecting at any moment one of the shadows to turn into an outlaw ready to down him. It wasn't much, but he could cling to the thought that it appeared that they were wanted alive, unlike the other times the Mort Cory gang had been pursued, when the outcome was always death. If whoever was out to get them wanted tombstones in their place, Jess would have just walked upon the dead body of one of his best friends just now, and Slim would never have had opportunity to jot down a hastily written note, but would have been tattooed by death's mark long before a piece of paper had been grabbed.
But they were still wanted. Maybe not by the same reasoning that would get a man's name printed on a wanted poster with a tempting price tag dangling in front of their faces, but the presence of danger was still just as startling, even if he didn't know why they had been captured. An unknown threat was often the worst kind, a fact that Jess knew all too well, and to do his friends any good, Jess had to stay on the opposite side of those that had been responsible for enlisting that threat in the first place. Because of the roads Jess had traveled in leading up to his life in Laramie, he was an experienced man, and it would take every shred of skill he had stored in his being to stay safe. But even then, it couldn't be guaranteed.
He studied nearly every one, but there were too many tracks in and out of Laramie to properly trace, which put Jess on Traveler's back heading eastward. Riding home to start a renewed search at the first point of Slim's abduction, he started to pull wide of the Laramie-bound stagecoach, but when Frankie's arms started pulling on the reins, Jess, however reluctant to do so, maneuvered Traveler alongside of the slowing coach. His gaze rose upward as they stopped, and as there was a shadow from the rim of Frankie's hat covering his eyes, Jess couldn't tell if there was alarm written there or an entirely different emotion being emitted from the driver.
"Maybe you ought not to head home just now," Frankie said, releasing one hand off of the reins long enough to jut a thumb toward the ranch.
"Why," Jess fired the question through his tight jaw, "what's wrong?"
"Oh," Frankie replied, the smile that twitched across his mouth giving Jess only a slightly lessened thumping in his chest, "just Ben being madder than a hornet. You and Slim not being there when he showed up put his head out of alignment. Grumbled the whole time he was switching teams."
"That all?" Jess released his question with sharp, jabbing prongs, but then he quickly dipped his head, shaking it back and forth. He needed to show gratitude not attitude and he hoped the right emotion showed on his face when he lifted it back toward the driver. "Thanks for the warning, Frankie. Ben'll get his head fixed right when I get back and carry the chores myself or maybe I'll go ahead and let him land a solid right to my jaw."
Jess moved Traveler out of the stagecoach's trail of dust but kept the coach in his line of vision, the sound of Frankie's last guffaw growing silent as they reached a bend in the road. He had left the ranch abruptly, and Slim had done just the same, just not by his own will, leaving the ranch and stagecoach duties to a part-time ranch hand who must have wandered in. Even at his age, Ben could still bicker like the best of them, but everyone working for the stage line knew he was too gentle for anyone to believe that he would raise a hand to one of his bosses, even if it was merited. But even if Ben was mad enough, it wasn't about to be the old-timer's fist that Jess would soon encounter, but one attached to a much more solidly built arm.
He was less than a mile from the house, his eyes never stopping their search of his surroundings, and when Jess saw the movement, his gun was ready to fire. The shot ricocheted from a rock, spewing dust on the ground where it made its final landing, and then the second bullet ended up in the air, for a rope was yanking him out of the saddle. Jess' face hit the dirt, his eyes closing on impact, and when they reopened, there was a pair of black boots merely inches from his head. He tried to look up, but another foot was placed on his back. Someone else might say they were stuck with no way out, but Jess was only being primed for the next attack.
"Get up," there was no mistaking the sound that followed being the cocking of a gun, its point unseen, but not unknown, yet that still didn't make Jess dismiss the thought he could turn the table.
"Glad to," Jess said, tasting the dirty road as he spoke, giving him double the reasons for wanting to spit, "as soon as whoever's standing on me gets off."
"Let him up," the man with the gun said, and when Jess felt the release of pressure against his shoulder blades, Jess rose, his eyes barely finding a face before his hand crashed into it.
The gun fell to the ground and Jess expected quick victory, as two against one rarely failed him, but as he turned to the face the other, he felt an explosion of a punch hit his jaw. This other man knew how to fight, which likely meant they both did. He had his work cut out for him to make a swift rescue for Slim and Mort, but it was what propelled Jess' own battle forward. His body swung backward from impact of the hit, but he was ready to release a stout punch of his own. He saw a head of dark hair and he aimed for it, and then when he made contact, there was another punch coming his way. The sound of his flesh being torn was nauseating, but he wouldn't allow his stomach to react, not when he wanted to share the feeling with someone else. Jess lunged ahead, making every strike count, but there was too much strength against him. Jess' knees dropped to the dirt, blood trickling from both his lip and behind his ear, and when he began to sway, he knew there was no stopping the light from going out. It hit him as hard as the first punch, and Jess fell into the darkness as his body dropped all the way to the ground, but there were eager hands ready to pick him up. Not to give further bodily damage, but to deliver him like the others had been.
With their final captive slung over his horse and a firm grip on the reins they hastily made their exit, their destination being described as somewhere in the hills, at a small brick square not standing alone, not necessarily hidden, but out of way enough that normal passersby never knew of its existence. There Jess was left, momentarily handled by a diminutive, elderly woman who wound a rope across his body as if she were crocheting with finesse. Somehow she was able to complete the task by the light of a single candle, and then she rose, without a word uttered despite one man in the room urging her to speak. When the closed door had been shut for a solid half-hour, the silence was broken, not by another's entry, but by a groan through a partly opened mouth.
"Dad-gum," Jess uttered, pulling on his arm as the need to rub the pulsating mark on his head cried out in his mind, but he could do nothing to loosen the bands around him, and the throb would go untouched.
"You all right, Jess?" Slim's voice reached through the fog and shook Jess to a higher level of arousal. "You've been out a long time. We were getting worried."
"Slim?" Jess blinked his eyes in the dim light, focus starting to take shape, although there was still enough fuzz that he shook his head in a further attempt to clear away the darkness, but the pain almost put him back under. "I reckon I'll live, but dad-gum that's a blow. You said, 'we'?"
"I'm here, too, Son," Mort's voice brought Jess' head to turn to his right and as Mort came into focus, Jess sighed, resting his head on the solid surface behind him. "Take it easy, Jess. You're the only one of us that took a beating."
"Yeah," the corner of Jess' mouth turned up into a slight curl. "I fought all I could until everything went dark. Where are we?"
"Wish we could give you an honest answer," Mort said with a shake of his head. "But my eyes were covered and my mouth was gagged until I was thrown in here and got the same rope-weaving treatment that was just given to you."
"Same with me," Slim said, trying to shift his legs to a more comfortable position, if there was one with their backs against a cold, brick wall with the intricately woven rope wrapped around each man's waist that intertwined with their wrists. "Jess, I was sure hoping you wouldn't get caught."
"Me too, especially since I knew what was gonna happen," Jess answered, wincing against the pain in his skull as he turned his head to look at Slim. "How'd you get a chance to warn me with that note in the first place?"
"When a man came up to the house asking for us both, I got suspicious. I told him you were away in Cheyenne for a few days. In reality you were, but I didn't mention you were due back this afternoon. Then he pulled a gun, and by the way his eyes were shifting between the hill and the house, I figured he wasn't working alone, so I didn't try to fight. He asked one more time about you, and I repeated the same. That's when he told me to get Alamo saddled for a ride, a long ride, which told me he wasn't going to wait for your return. So then knowing that you'd have to be targeted separately when you got home, I said I'd better leave you a note, so you wouldn't be expecting an ambush, and he agreed, watching over my shoulder as I wrote it."
"It's a good thing he didn't catch your real message or you might have had your head bashed in, or worse," Mort said, casting his brown eyes in Slim's direction. "But I'm curious to know, how did you ever know to give the proper warning signal, that this was about the Mort Cory gang and not just a sidewinder that was after the two of you?"
"I didn't at first," Slim replied, the vision behind the brick wall across from him melting away until he saw the exchange again with a man about an inch taller than his own height, gun in hand, professional stance with a chilling stare. "But he had with him a newspaper slightly sticking out from his saddlebag. Any other newspaper I wouldn't have paid any mind to, but I'm sure you both would recognize it too if you saw it, as all I needed was a glance at the headline, blazing like a beacon in the night. The Mort Cory gang. Our names, well, the ones created for us anyway, and our accurate descriptions were printed in that article, and anyone with it could only want one thing, so I knew then this wasn't just a random threat to me, Jess or the ranch, but to all of us. I'm sorry it didn't help out like I intended, though."
"It did," Jess said, his hands flexing against the ropes around his wrists, but the weaves were too tight to bend, "but they were already one step ahead of us before I could do more than just tell Mort about it. There musta been at least two after me, waiting on the side of the road, otherwise, I wouldn't have so many knocks on the back of my head and only bruises on my fists instead."
"One got me," Mort said, releasing a slow sigh, "he was a bit older, more like my own age. He was in the stall next to Badge's and all I got out was an afternoon greeting and then his gun was in my ribs. If I did more than take a deep breath, he said it would go off. Maybe I should have called his bluff, and then Jess could have stopped him before it got this far."
"Not at the possible cost of your life, Mort," Jess answered, his voice sharpening to end the sheriff's name with a snap. "I'd rather be in this condition than standing over your grave."
"I'm not sure they want us dead," Mort said with a slight shake of his head, "at least not yet. They didn't go to all of this trouble just to invite us over for tea."
"Yeah, but I sure wish I could stop saying this," Jess frowned, stilling his hands when blood started to seep underneath the rope as it burned into his skin, "but I never thought the Mort Cory gang would be back together again. And now look at us."
"We are, whether we like it or not," Mort said with a sigh, wishing he could reach the handkerchief in his pocket to help blot Jess' newest wound.
"At least we're in a cleaner place," Slim said, raising his eyes to look toward the ceiling. "I see one spider in the corner, not an entire room full of them wanting to make a home in your hat, Jess."
"No spider comments, Slim," Jess frowned, trying not to squirm as he couldn't dismiss the crawling sensation up his backbone, not just created out of their uncertain future, but by something that could actually creep and crawl, even if there wasn't one there.
"Right now I don't know what," Mort said, his eyes tracing every inch of the small room that was lit by a single candle. "But something more venomous than a black widow is behind this, boys."
Mort had no clue how right he would be. She came through the door less than ten minutes later, a lantern in one hand that she placed on a hook that hung from the ceiling. The brighter light making the candle no longer necessary, she puckered her lips, creating a pop as they parted, the air being expelled taking the flame away in a wisp of smoke. She turned toward them, the small room only then feeling its tight quarters as her full skirt seemed to cover the entire length, or at least they blamed the woman's dress, and not that it was her itself, the woman. She took a step toward them, the green fabric brushing across the floor, drawing upward in variegated colored lines that met with a velvet-like waistband that highlighted her small waist, which made the part of her body that was more ample stand out even more. There the dress was dotted with a line of buttons, the top two being separated, not in a revealing manner, as something lacy hid her shapeliness, but a man wouldn't be a man without giving her a full glance, even if there was no interest beyond that look.
"Well now," she said, knowing full well she had all eyes upon her, but it wasn't their satisfactory taste she was interested in, for what she was viewing instead was far better, "isn't this a sight? One that I've been hungering to see for a long time. This is as close to being perfection as I'd dared to hope for."
"Who are you?" Mort asked, his eyes unable to look away from the woman who wore a similar age as his own, but still held onto every ounce of beauty that she had carried since her youth, and then some. He would have liked to say he recognized her, but of the few women he had seen printed on a wanted poster, none of them had looked like this, and the instinct pounding in his veins told him that she belonged on one. Where there was the obvious beauty from head to toe, with a more than appealing figure in between, there was something far more fetching about her in his eyes, and that was her deadly side. It hung in the air around her like freshly stirred dust, and it had nothing to do with the strong perfume that she must have recently dabbed behind each ear and splashed across her throat.
"My name's Beryl Monroe, but you might get more of the obvious wide-eyed stare if I told you my maiden name. Bates. Beryl Bates. Oh yes, there's that flicker I was looking for, but if there's still a foggy cloud around any of you, my brother was Bosley, and my son was Ernie. They are both dead because of you."
"They're dead because they were outlaws," Mort said, his voice hinting at the hammer that was pounding away at his insides as the true realization for their capture had been made. A sister and a mother filled with hatred, or the better word would be spelling out as retaliation. "They were killers and thieves, the worst kind."
"Careful," Beryl leaned down, the fabric of her skirt brushing across Mort's boot tips as she stared him in the eye, and he felt his nose start to tickle as her fragrance wafted toward him, "I don't take it kindly when someone badmouths my family."
"You don't look so wicked," Jess said, the grit in his voice unable to convey the softness he had wanted to deliver, as knowing by his past circumstances with an unsavory woman that to tap into her true womanly side was always an advantage. "You ain't like your brother."
"Oh really?" Beryl gave a slight laugh as she turned away from Mort and kneeled alongside Jess, a smile forming on her red-painted lips. "And how would you know that? Just because I'm shaped differently, or is it something else?"
"You're a woman all right," Jess said, lowering his tone to his desired drawl. "There ain't no doubt about that."
"Hmm. It's too bad you're on the wrong side of the law," she said, tracing Jess' cheek with her finger, the touch pausing at his chin as she raised it slightly, as if she yearned for his kiss. "You're even prettier than the other one."
"What other one?" Jess asked, wincing slightly as he tried to pull away from Beryl's touch, the discomfort rolling across his flesh as her eyes bore down his front as if she were undressing him. He had wanted to reach a soft level in the woman, not a lustful one.
"One of the men I hired to bring you here," Beryl frowned, pulling away from Jess at his sudden rejection that was easily noted on his features, even down to the way the tips of his boots turned in the opposite direction of her body. "Like him, you'd make me feel like I was twenty again, as my late husband had a similar flair as you both, but this isn't why I'm here. No, I want you, all three of you, but for something else entirely desirable."
"It's obvious you want us to pay for the death of your son and brother," Mort's voice brought Beryl's eyes away from Jess to collide with the firmness of Mort's jaw. "With our lives?"
"Make no mistake," she said, a hand reaching inside of her skirt for a gun, and not a dainty derringer like most woman carried, but a full-sized sidearm. Beryl didn't point it at any man, but its presence made a profound difference in the air, making an icy chill come through unseen cracks in the walls as she fingered the weapon. "You all are going to die, but I want something from you first."
"What's that?" Mort asked, one eyebrow slowly rising as he shifted his gaze from the gun back to her face.
"Revenge," she said the word like she had been practicing its delivery for weeks, and it came out in sizzling perfection.
"Seems like you're already winning with that right here," Mort said, watching the lines that spoke of her age grow tighter as she frowned, "especially since you've already said we're going to die."
"True," Beryl returned the gun to her pocket and clasped her hands together as she took a step backward. "But I learned some things from being a part of an outlaw's family and I intend to use it. You see, revenge is at its sweetest when it's consumed like a cake. There are different layers to devour with the last taste being the icing at the top. Right now, we're only on that bottom layer, and I've only begun to slice into the edge and you better believe I'm going to enjoy taking every bite of you between my teeth."
"The slow and suffering kind," Jess said, watching the eyes on the beautiful face turn a chilling shade, and even though a tickle went up his spine, his body would never show the shudder.
"In a way," Beryl gave a short nod, her head angling toward the door. "Just be aware, that every man in my clutch will always do what I say. Always. Are your hearts racing yet? They should be, because that sweet, wicked revenge is about to start right now, in a way you'd never thought imaginable."