Only The Strong Read online

  “Life never goes as we think it should.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Harrod picked up another flat stone and skipped it—four times before it sank. Searching for more, he came around the bay. “You probably never figured on nursemaidin’ a black family, did you?”

  Nate glanced up. “Why mention them?”

  “No reason, except that it shows things happen to us we never plan on.” Harrod bent and picked up a stone, but it wasn’t flat enough and he dropped it. “Take me, for instance. I’ve done things I can’t believe I did. Nearly always, I did them for money.”

  Nate set down his Hawken and dipped both hands in the water. “I try to get by with needing as little as I can.”

  “Wish I could. But I’ve got me a few vices. I like to drink. I like whiskey an awful lot. I like cards on occasion, and now and then I pay the painted ladies a visit. All that takes money.”

  “You could always give them up.”

  “I wish it were that simple. My vices are as much a part of me as what ever virtues I have.” Harrod sighed. “Precious few, I’m afraid. No, I’ll do just about anything for money except hurt women. That’s the one thing I’ve never done and won’t ever do.”

  Nate cupped water and pressed his hands to his face and welcomed the relief it brought from the heat. Through his fingers he said, “But you’d hurt a man for money. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Harrod selected a rock as big as his fist. “As a matter of fact, it is. I’m being paid extra in this case, seeing as how the man is more dangerous than most and the gents who hired me want him alive.”

  “ ‘This case’?” Nate started to turn. He saw the frontiersman’s reflection in the water, saw Harrod’s arm sweep down, and the back of his head exploded with pain.

  His last sensation was of pitching into black emptiness.

  “Well, this a fine how do you do,” Emala complained. “Our Chickory went missing. Mrs. King went after him and never came back. And now Mr. King and that Harrod are overdue.” In her anxiety she plucked at her dress and fiddled with a button.

  “Want me to go look for them, Ma?” Randa volunteered.

  “And have you taken captive by some red devil? I should say not.” Emala planted her thick legs. “The three of us will stay right where we are until someone shows up.”

  Samuel had been quiet a while, but now he said, “I don’t think that’s smart.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  Samuel stared to the west at the reddish orange ball a few hours from setting. “It’s been so long, they must be in some kind of trouble. You two wait here while I go look for Chickory and Mrs. King.”

  “Without a gun? What will you do if they are in danger? If it’s Indians, you wouldn’t stand a prayer.”

  “We can’t sit here doin’ nothin’.” Samuel turned to the horses, but he only took a step when his wife had his arm in a vise.

  “No, you don’t. I’ve lost my boy today and I’m not losin’ my husband, too. The only way you’re gettin’ on that animal is if you lift me up with you.”

  “I’m strong but I’m not that strong.”

  Randa, anxious to end their bickering, stepped between them. “Why don’t we go together?”

  That was what they did, in single file, with Samuel in the lead and Randa bringing up the rear.

  Emala gazed about them with eyes as wide as saucers. “Lordy. I see now why you like havin’ that gun. These woods are spooky even in the daylight. We never know but that one of them big bears or a bunch of hungry wolves or a pack of them big cats will jump us.”

  Randa said, “Mrs. King told me they’re called mountain lions. And they don’t go around in packs.”

  “How can they be mountain lions when the highest thing we’ve seen in weeks was a puny hill? Maybe they’re mountain lions in the mountains, but here they’re prairie lions or maybe plains lions or even grass lions, but they sure ain’t mountain lions.”

  “I could use wax to plug my ears,” Samuel said.

  Emala took exception. “There you go again, speakin’ ill of me. And you don’t even have the courtesy to do it behind my back.”

  Randa wished she had some wax, too. She remembered how nice her parents were to each other back when they were slaves, and she wondered why they argued so much now that they were free. It seemed to her it should be the other way around. She shut out their squabbling and admired the scenery. The blue-green of the river, the various greens of the trees, yet another shade of green for the grass, and over all the brilliant blue of the sky. She never saw anything like this back on the plantation.

  Nate King had told her that the sky back east was different from the sky in the west. How that could be, Randa couldn’t fathom. To her, sky was sky. Why should it change from one place to another?

  Out in the river a fish broke the surface, spawning ripples. Randa couldn’t begin to guess what kind it was. In Georgia she had known every animal and plant by name. Out here so much was new, it was like learning how to live all over again.

  A big yellow and black butterfly fluttered past, and Randa grinned. To find such beauty in the midst of so many perils…Winona King mentioned once that there were just as many dangers in the mountains, but that the valley they were bound for was a paradise where they could live in peace the rest of their days.

  Randa would believe it when she saw it. From the time when she was old enough to remember, life had been hard. Granted, the most danger she was ever in as a slave was when Master Brent took a liking to her. But no place on earth could be as wonderful as Winona King made King Valley out to be.

  Suddenly Randa realized her mother was talking to her.

  “…bad enough your father treats me so shabby, I won’t have it from my children. Now you answer me and you answer me this second. You don’t want me riled.”

  “Sorry, Ma,” Randa said. “I was thinkin’ of how our life was before we ran away.”

  “No sense in livin’ in the past, girl. We’re free now and we’ll have to make the best of it.”

  Samuel said quietly, “Hush, woman.”

  “There you go again!” Emala was stupefied. “Now that we’re free I will talk when I feel like talkin’ and there isn’t a thing—”

  By then Samuel had turned his horse, reached out, and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Hush!” he said again. “Someone is comin’.”

  They all heard the thud of hooves. Riders were approaching at a gallop. Quickly, Samuel reined toward the Platte River. Up ahead, part of the bank had washed away, leaving a drop of some ten feet. He rode to the cutoff and motioned for his wife and daughter to do as he was doing.

  Emala balked. “Will you look at him? Hidin’ down there when it could be Mrs. King and our Chickory.”

  “It could be Indians, too,” Randa said.

  Emala ficked her reins and flapped her legs and got her horse down next to Samuel’s.

  Samuel placed a hand on his belt where his pistol should be. He moved it to the hilt of his knife.

  The drumming grew louder.

  Samuel bent low. Randa copied him, but Emala sat there straight as she could sit. “Get down, woman.”

  “I have a cramp.”

  “What?”

  “In my leg. From when I slapped it against this horse. It hurts somethin’ awful.”

  Randa asked, “Would you rather it was an arrow in your leg, Ma?”

  Emala bent, but she wasn’t happy about it. She wasn’t built for bending. She was too thick across the middle—she liked to think of herself as pleasantly plump—and besides, her bosoms were so big that she had to press them against the horse’s neck and get its sweat all over them. The only sweat she liked was her own. “What did I ever do to deserve all this sufferin’?”

  Then the bank seemed to shake and the water to stir and riders flew past above them.

  Samuel twisted his head to look. He counted four, all white, men he never saw before. One was short and one was young and another had a b
ushy mustache and held a shotgun. The last man had a hard cast to his face. They went by fast, staring straight ahead.

  Samuel waited until the thunder died, then straightened. “I didn’t like the looks of that bunch.”

  “Me neither,” Emala said. “Praise the Lord they didn’t see us. We have enough troubles.”

  “What worries me,” Randa said, “is that they were comin’ from the direction Chickory and Mrs. King went.”

  “We best keep goin’.” Samuel rode along the bank to a grassy incline, and up it into the trees. He twisted in the saddle. The four men were nowhere to be seen. “We were lucky.”

  “Luck had nothin’ to do with it,” Emala disagreed. “I keep tellin’ you the Lord is lookin’ after us. I prayed, and He made us invisible.”

  “That is the silliest notion you’ve ever come up with, and you have come up with some whoppers.”

  “I’ll whopper you, oh ye of little faith. The Lord is our rock and our salvation.” When Samuel didn’t say anything, Emala prompted him with, “Well?”

  “No, you don’t. Every time you bring religion into things, I get a blisterin’ that would bring Samson to his knees.”

  “At least you remember his name. Given how little you read Scripture, that’s somethin’.”

  “See what I mean?” Samuel said to Randa.

  “ ‘Unto thee will I cry, oh Lord, my rock,’ ” Emala quoted. “ ‘Be not silent to me, lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. Here the voice of my supplications when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle. Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity.’ ”

  “I’d sure like to know the Bible as good as you do, Ma,” Randa said, with a wink at her father.

  “It’s taken a lifetime of study, child. If more people kept their nose in the Word and out of the affairs of others, this world would be a lot nicer place.”

  Fresh clods of dirt marked the trail. Samuel studied the tracks, trying to make sense of them. Nate King had promised to teach him how to read sign. He couldn’t wait. He was so intent on the ground that he didn’t realize the trail was blocked until his horse stopped and nickered.

  Samuel looked up.

  “Dear God!” Emala blurted.

  Not ten feet away, lying on their backs and bound hand and foot and gagged, was their son and Winona King.

  Chapter Ten

  “Chickory!” Randa cried, and started to goad her horse up past her mother’s to reach her brother.

  Emala was struck speechless; the unexpected always unnerved her, and this was as unexpected as could be.

  Samuel started to swing down. Suddenly he was aware of men on foot closing in from all sides. “Look out!” he shouted to his wife and his daughter.

  Randa hauled on her reins. She didn’t want to leave, but instinct warned her that if she didn’t escape, she would end up trussed and helpless. A short man snatched at her bridle, but she jabbed her heels and her horse knocked him aside.

  “Stop her!”

  Samuel was torn between helping his son and Mrs. King, and fleeing. He started to dismount, thought better of it, and swung his leg back again. But before he could use his reins, two of the men reached him. The one on the right had a bristly mustache and was holding a shotgun, but made no attempt to use it. The one on the left had blond hair and cold blue eyes. Each grabbed one of Samuel’s legs.

  Emala squealed in panic. Two men were converging on her. “No, you don’t!” she cried, and reined around. She smacked her horse with the flat of her hand and it broke into a gallop. Pleased with herself, she suddenly realized she was riding toward a low limb. She ducked, but she couldn’t duck low enough; her bosoms got in the way. She tried to twist aside, but the limb caught her across the shoulder. The next thing she knew, she was on her back on the ground with the breath whooshed from her lungs and a short man and a young man standing over her and grinning.

  “You sure made that easy, you tub of lard.”

  Still on his horse, Samuel kicked the man with the mustache and jerked his leg free of the blond man. He sought to flee. He would have made it, too, except he saw his wife fall and he reined over to help her. That was when another white man, a burly brute with a beard, came hurtling out of the undergrowth. Samuel recognized him; it was a slave hunter called Trumbo. Trumbo rammed into him like a two-legged battering ram.

  To his dismay, Samuel was unhorsed.

  Fifty feet into the trees, Randa looked back and saw that her father and mother were down. She almost turned back to help them, but the youngest of the whites whipped out a pistol and took aim at her. There was no doubt he would have shot her except that another man appeared, a man she had encountered before—Wesley, his name was—and swatted the younger man’s arm. The pistol went off, but the ball dug a furrow in the ground and not through her.

  Randa kept riding.

  Emala was on her back, but she wasn’t helpless. She kicked the short man trying to seize her.

  Cursing fiercely, the man backed off and leveled his rifle. “Try that again and I will by-God shoot you!”

  “Lower that weapon,” Wesley commanded. “How many times must I tell you that they are worth more to me alive than they are dead?”

  Samuel barely heard that. He was too busy fighting. Trumbo had slammed him onto his back and sought to pin him, but Samuel was just as big and a lot stronger. He gave the bearded man-bear a shove that sent Trumbo flying. Before Samuel could rise, the man with the mustache and the man with the yellow hair were on him. They got hold of his arms, and the blond man tried to bend his arm behind his back.

  Bellowing like a mad bull, Samuel threw them off and heaved to his feet. He turned to help Emala.

  “Not another step,” Wesley said, jamming the muzzle of his Kentucky against Samuel’s thigh. “Shooting you in the leg won’t kill you, but it will sure as hell tame you.”

  Samuel froze.

  “The girl got away,” Trumbo said.

  “She won’t get far,” Wesley predicted. “As soon as we tie these two, I want you and Bromley and Kleist to go after her. She’s heading for the open prairie, so it shouldn’t be hard to catch her.”

  Emala sat up and jabbed a finger at the back-woodsman. “I should have known it would be you!”

  “You’re money in my poke, woman,” Wesley replied. “A lot of money. I wasn’t about to give up this side of the hereafter.” He backed away from Samuel but held the Kentucky on him. “Listen good, you Worths. So long as you do what I say, when I say, you’ll make it back to Georgia in one piece. Give me trouble, any at all, and you’ll suffer.”

  Samuel was quivering with fury. He thought the slave hunters had given up, but here they were again. But there was no way he was going back again. No way in hell. He would rather be dead than a slave. Besides, they weren’t taking him back to put him to work in the cotton fields. They were taking him back to hang him. Trumbo went into the trees and reappeared leading horses. From one he took a coiled rope and came over. “Turn around and put your hands behind you.”

  Samuel did no such thing.

  “You heard him,” Wesley said. “Or is it that you want me to shoot your wife?” He trained the Kentucky on Emala.

  “No. Don’t hurt her. I’ll do what you want.”

  “Oh, Samuel,” Emala said.

  It was just about the hardest thing Samuel ever had to do. He hated it, hated having rope looped tight around his wrists, hated being made to sit and have his ankles tied, too.

  “Now do his wife,” Wesley directed.

  Emala balled a pudgy fist. “Just you try it,” she warned. “I’ll bean you on the nose. You just see if I don’t.”

  Wesley sighed. “Do you have a lick of sense?”

  “I don’t care if you put lead into me. I ain’t bein’ tied and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Then how about if I put lead into your man?” Wesley aimed at Samuel’s leg.

  “All right. All r
ight.” Emala held out her wrists. “Why are all slave hunters so vile?”

  “I’m just doing my job, woman. How easy or hard it is depends on you. Keep that in mind and we’ll get along fine.”

  Emala fought down a wave of fear. She turned to Winona King and said softly, “I’m sorry to get you mixed up in this. I truly am.”

  Winona tried to spit out the gag but couldn’t.

  Chuckling, Olan walked over and yanked it out for her. “Usually I don’t give a lick about squaws. But you’re so pretty I’ll make an exception.”

  “Pig.” Winona shifted toward Wesley. “My husband will come after us. And he will not be alone. If you are smart, you will let us go and ride away while you still can.”

  “I’m smarter than you think,” Wesley told her.

  At that, all of their captors laughed.

  Pain. A lot of pain. It told Nate King he had returned to the land of the living, although given the throbbing in his head, it might have been better if he stayed unconscious. He felt a swaying motion and something gouging his gut. He must be belly-down over a saddle. He tried to move his arms and legs, and couldn’t.

  “I tie good knots,” Peleg Harrod said. “You can open your eyes. I know you’ve come around.”

  Nate blinked in the bright sun and turned his head. The old frontiersman was leading his bay by the reins. “Why?”

  “That’s the first question I would ask, too. The answer is simple. Money.”

  “Someone paid you to bash me over the head?”

  “They paid me to lead you into a trap so they can shoot you. The head bash was my idea. You’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve done you a favor.”

  “You’re right. It is hard to believe.” The pain was making a jumble of Nate’s thoughts.

  “You’ll savvy when I tell you who I work for.” Harrod paused. “Does the handle Wesley mean anything to you?”

  In a rush of memory Nate relived his clash weeks ago with the slave hunters after the Worths. “I figured we were safe once we crossed the Mississippi River.”

  “You figured wrong. Those blacks are worth a lot of money. I’m not talking hundreds. I’m talking thousands.”