Longshadow's Woman. Bronwyn Williams
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a show of boldness she was far from feeling, she tested the knot, nodded, and climbed back up in the cart, wincing as she settled her tender backside onto the hard, splintery seat. Her hand throbbed all the way up to her shoulder—she had a hardened criminal on the other end of a rope, and she was just now starting to wonder if she’d have the courage to let him off the leash long enough to do any work.
This might not have been one of her better ideas.
Just before she slapped Sorry into motion again, she turned and glared over her shoulder. “Out of the kindness of my heart, I was willing to let you ride. Well, you flat out used up any kindness I had to offer, so you can just damned well crawl, for all I care.”
As if he could understand a word she was saying. All the same, she said it because it needed saying. At least God, if He happened to be listening, would know her heart was in the right place.
Over her shoulder, she spoke again in a loud voice, enunciating each word clearly. “And just so you don’t go getting any crazy notions, I can shoot the toenail off a one-legged crow at a hundred yards. I’ll shoot you dead if you try to run away, you understand me?”
Jonah understood every word the woman spoke, but he had long since learned the advantage of keeping such knowledge to himself. The woman was weak and foolish. She lied. She was also afraid of him, but Jonah did not make war on women.
Uttering not a word, he weighed his options. He had been away from his farm for twelve days. His horses were pastured. There was grass. There was a creek for water. One of his mares was due to foal soon. He needed to be with her, for she was a foolish animal, but first he must retrieve the deed to his property and the bill of sale for his stock before his parole ended, which would be when the circuit judge arrived. Even then, his chances of convincing a judge of his honesty were low. He had paid for everything he possessed, but there was no way he could prove the money he had used had not been stolen.
Overpowering his captor would be easy, but would accomplish nothing. They’d been traveling somewhat west of north. By now he was beginning to recognize a few familiar landmarks. When they passed the one-lane road that led to his own property, he focused his mind on the thought that one way or another he would reclaim his freedom. He had not come this far and survived this much to give up now. He had no way of knowing where the woman was taking him, but he knew it could not be too much farther. She had not brought along food.
So he walked behind the cart, breathing in the sweet, dusty air of freedom. While his mind turned over various ways he might prove his innocence, his gaze rested on the straight, narrow back of the woman. When she lifted her ugly straw hat he saw that her hair was thick and pale and shorter than his own. Only children had hair so short. She was not a child, but she was young. Even with two good hands she would be no match for the willful mule. The mule knew it. The woman still held onto her illusions.
He studied her bandaged hand and wondered how grave the injury was. Though her arms were pink, he thought it was from the sun, not the telltale signs of an inflammation streaking up from under her wound. He had seen people die from such an inflammation.
Jonah didn’t particularly want his captor to die. He had heard the jailer tell her she must feed him. By remaining her prisoner now, he could build his strength and have a far better chance of escaping.
Shortly before they turned off the main road, she stopped to allow the mule to drink from a broad creek, beckoning for him to do likewise. He refused to be grateful, even when he was able to use the opportunity to step behind a massive gum tree and relieve himself. When the rope between them pulled even tighter so that he could barely lift his hands, he muttered under his breath. His trousers securely buttoned again, he moved back into the clearing just as the woman emerged from behind another tree, adjusting her skirt. For reasons he didn’t even try to understand, Jonah felt like laughing.
She had turned off the main road a mile back, following a smaller road until they turned off once more. Jonah fixed in his mind the landmarks. Eventually they came into a clearing. Passing by a cabin that was scarcely larger than his jail cell, she stopped outside a barn that looked as if it would take only one hard wind to collapse.
“You’ll sleep in there.” She pointed first at the prisoner and then at the gaunt, tin-roofed structure with a collapsed shed at one end.
Jonah could have told her he would be far more comfortable sleeping out under the stars, but that would require speaking her language. Silence could work to his advantage. He was still attached to the cart, though he could easily have freed himself, but to what end?
Instead, he waited for the woman to unhitch the mule. When she turned to look at him, a frown on her face, he saw that she was even younger than he had first thought. Turning abruptly, she picked up a stick, marched across the clearing and drew a line in the dirt surrounding the house. Turning back, she said, “I’m going to untie you now, but you’re not to step over this line, you hear?”
To emphasize her words, she pointed to him, then to the house, and shook her head vigorously. “Not go to house? Do—you—understand?”
He understood lines. The U.S. Government drew lines in the earth and called them reservations. Jonah would not cross her line. Wooden houses stifled him. They were ugly and drafty and too often smelled of unwashed bodies. Bitterness coloring reluctant amusement, he nodded solemnly.
“Then I reckon we’d better get you settled first and then see about cleaning you up. I don’t hold with fleas and lice, not even in the barn.”
Jonah would rather not “hold with” them, either, given a choice. He could feel the miserable devils crawling on his scalp and the skin of his groin. At this moment, he couldn’t have said who he hated more, the man he’d been forced to become, or the woman who reminded him of it.
Chapter Two
Carrie led her prisoner to the barn holding her rifle under one arm, with the lead rope wrapped around the wrist of her bandaged hand. Inside, it was barely light enough to see, but she didn’t dare put down the rope or the rifle in order to light the lantern. The man glanced around, his gaze going immediately to the new stall Darther had had built for his gelding. There was a cot just outside the slat wall where Liam slept when they were here. According to Darther, Liam, who usually reeked of whiskey and lineament, was both jockey and trainer. So far as Carrie was concerned, he was just another mouth to feed. She liked him no better than she did her husband, but evidently, he was part of the bargain.
So when the prisoner moved toward the cot, she jerked on his rope. “Not there,” she said, and then swore because talking to a heathen was like talking to that blasted mule. Neither of them understood a word she said.
Grabbing a hoe, she scratched a line in the earthen floor, dragging him with her as she moved. Then she pointed to the line and shook her head, indicating that he was not to go beyond the mark.
When he nodded his head she decided the poor wretch was not entirely without understanding. Next she would have to fix it so he could go outside to relieve himself without being able to run away. The privy would have to wait until she could think of a way to give him more slack. Rope was no solution. Even without a knife he could hack through it the minute her back was turned, using any of several rusted, broken implements lying around the barn.
He could simply jerk the end from her grasp, come to that. The rifle was all that kept him from freeing himself and taking off into the woods. Which meant that she was going to have to keep it nearby at all times.
Selecting a length of chain from among several hanging on the wall—hoping there were no weak links—she secured her prisoner by padlocking one end to his leg irons and the other to the hasp on the open barn door. Having to hold the heavy rifle and work with her good hand was an awkward, not to mention painful, process, but at least he had the freedom to step outside when he needed to.
“There now, I reckon that ought to do it, long’s you don’t trip over the chain,” she said, and then shook her head because it was useless, trying to talk to him. Which reminded her that