The Rocking R Ranch. Tim Washburn

you goin’ to ask me that?” Seth asked. “Ain’t being beat up and branded enough?”

      Knowing that some people were capable of the most vile, deviant behavior, Rachel was hoping her son was telling the truth and that nothing else had happened. “I’m just glad you’re home safe now.”

      “When’s Pa comin’ home?” Seth asked.

      Rachel shrugged. “Who knows how long it’ll take them to find Emma.”

      Seth looked away then did a double take. “Where’s Emma?”

      “You didn’t hear?”

      “No, but I heard Uncle Percy shootin’ the Gatling gun. I wondered why. What happened to Emma?”

      “She was kidnapped by Indians last night.”

      Seth hung his head. “Oh no.”

      “They’ll find her,” Rachel said with more conviction than she felt. “Now, go inside and wash up and put on some clean clothes.”

      Seth pushed unsteadily to his feet. “Which Injuns took her?” he asked.

      “Don’t know yet,” Rachel lied. “Now go on.” She didn’t have the heart to tell Seth that it was most likely the Comanches. Everyone along the frontier knew what happened to Comanche captives. They’d all heard the horror stories. And Seth needed to focus on healing rather than wonder what tortures his cousin might now be enduring.

      Seth limped into the house and Rachel stewed. If Amos and the others hadn’t gone off on a wild-goose chase after rustlers, she thought, things probably wouldn’t have gone sideways. “Damn him,” she muttered.

      CHAPTER 17

      Emma wanted to die. Not figuratively, but literally—a bolt of lightning out of the blue, an arrow to the heart, or a broken neck from a fallen horse—any of those would be welcome relief from the excruciating pain pulsing through her body. Still tied to the horse, her pale skin was blistered, and she was sitting in a mixture of her own bodily fluids—blood, urine, and feces. And having ridden endlessly for hours with no water, her tongue was swollen with thirst. She would have begged them to stop, but she knew what would happen if they did.

      Emma winced in pain with every lunge of the horse. To her it felt like her insides were going to fall out and deep within her, it felt as if something had torn loose. What it was she did not know, but she was still bleeding, and the constant pain felt like someone had placed a burning coal deep in her stomach. During the very brief periods when the pain subsided to a dull ache, Emma worked to remove the rope encircling her wrists. She thought it a futile task because even if she were somehow able to free her hands, they were now so far beyond civilization that escape was impossible.

      Big Nose, the name she’d given to the savage now leading her horse, never once glanced over his shoulder to check on how she was doing or even to acknowledge her presence. Not that she wanted him to. The less they thought about her the better.

      The area they were riding through would appear as a blank space on a map. There were no towns, no houses, no man-made structures of any kind—a vast open space where a person could ride for hours and feel like they hadn’t gone anywhere at all—the big empty. Occasionally, when they came to a patch of soft ground, the Indians would slow and rein their ponies first one direction then the other in an attempt to throw off any pursuers. A few seconds of random riding would add hours to those tracking them. Emma had also noticed that when they were leaving a stream or creek, the braves would always choose an area of rocky ground to make their exit. How her father and grandfather would ever find her was something that weighed heavy on her mind.

      Thinking of creek crossings only heightened Emma’s desperation for water. She was so parched she could barely swallow, and her thirst was exacerbated by all the blood she’d lost and continued to lose. Finally, around midday, they came upon a wide muddy river and the Indians herded the stolen horses into the water and allowed their mounts to dip their muzzles in for a drink. Big Nose and the others made no move to dismount and Emma worried they wouldn’t allow her an opportunity to drink.

      Emma’s fears were put to rest when Big Nose rode his horse into the middle of the stream and pulled Emma’s pony up beside him and untied the rope, pushing her into the stream. The four savages laughed as Emma sputtered back to the surface. She splashed the water with her hands and shouted a string of obscenities, but in truth, the water felt glorious, cooling her blistered skin and her chafed inner thighs. Emma rode the gentle current as it pushed her downstream and, once she quenched her thirst, began plotting an escape. Trees lined both sides of the river, but they were sparsely spaced and unsuitable for hiding. She didn’t know what the Indians would do if she tried to escape again and, despite what she’d been telling herself throughout the long ride, she came to the sudden realization that she didn’t want to die. Not here and not now. She had too much life left to live and if she could just hold on long enough, her grandfather and father would come.

      After gently scrubbing her torso clean, she swam for the far bank where the Indians waited, not knowing if she would be molested again or if the four savages had some other form of torture in mind. As she got closer, she began feeling for the river bottom with her feet, found it, and walked out of the water.