Wife Stealer Read online

  Rachel knew the engine would soon be turned around on the turntable in the switching yard and headed back to the east. The passenger coaches would fill with new recruits for the Confederate Army and the flatbed cars loaded with military supplies. She would be on board the train, for she had made her decision to play a role in that war and not sit safely home in Marshall.

  The wounded soldiers, nearly two hundred of them, came straggling along the street from the station. Most of the soldiers were dressed in various degrees of a gray uniform. All of the uniforms showed hard usage. Here and there a man wore civilian clothing. A few soldiers were using crutches, one because he had one leg. Three of the soldiers had each lost an arm. Many were limping. In half a dozen instances, one soldier was helping another to walk. Rachel's vision blurred with a mist of tears as a wave of sorrow for the men cane over her.

  A tall, rail-thin man in civilian clothes and a shorter man in a frayed uniform came parallel to the hotel. The taller man walked hunched forward with his hand pressed to his chest. The other man moved with a limp. The two halted and had a brief conversation. They separated, the shorter man continuing along the street while the other came toward the hotel.

  The man moved with a slow pace toward Rachel, standing on the porch and watching him advance. He put each foot down carefully as if walking on ice. His face was gaunt and strained and glistening with sweat. He appeared ready to faint in the heat. He lifted his foot to step upon the wooden decking of the porch. He tripped when his toe snagged the edge and started to fall.

  Rachel swiftly stepped close and grabbed the man by the arm.

  * * *

  Evan wanted to hurry and escape the sun that was sucking the moisture out of his weakened body. However, his muscles felt like wet strings and he was having difficulty walking. The final jolting stop of the train had hurt his damaged lung and he was having difficulty breathing. As he stepped upon the hotel porch, he tripped.

  A pair of strong hands caught hold of him and stopped his fall. The person pulled strongly upward, and Evan managed to straighten.

  "Thank you," Evan said, and turned to look at his savior. A lovely, young woman was watching him with a concerned expression. She had large green eyes, clear as crystal. They were the most beautiful, the most feminine eyes he had ever looked into. For the moment, all he could see were those green eyes.

  "May I help you to a seat inside the hotel?" she asked. She still held him by the arm with both hands as if she feared he would fall again. "There are chairs inside the hotel and it's cooler there."

  "Yes, please. Seems like I need help to stay on my feet." Evan thought he might be able to navigate the short distance by himself, but he didn't want the pretty woman to leave him. He managed to take his sight from her eyes and see the rest of her. She had long, light brown hair crowned with a bonnet, a delicately carved nose and generous mouth, and a chin perhaps a trifle square. Still, an altogether delightful face. She wore a yellow gingham dress with a row of ruffles down the front and the hem of the skirt brushing the floor. A small purse dangled from an arm.

  "Lean on me as much as you need to," she said.

  Evan leaned more than he really had to on the woman, and let her guide them through the open door and into the shadow-filled interior of the hotel. On the far side of the lobby, Evan lowered himself onto a leather couch. The woman released his arm and sat down beside him.

  "Thanks again," Evan said.

  "No thanks are necessary," she said, her green eyes still fixed on him with that expression of worry about his physical condition.

  "I'm all right now," Evan assured her. "My name's Evan Payson."

  "I'm Rachel Greystone. I saw you come in on the train. Were you at Vicksburg?"

  "At Vicksburg, yes. And other places before that." Since they were in Texas, and Texas was aligned with the South, let her think he was fighting for the Confederacy. The fact that he had become a surgeon for the Union Army was purely by chance, since he had come upon their wounded first. He had been unable to pass by the bleeding, dying soldiers without helping them.

  "Was the fighting bad?" Rachel asked.

  "There were many killed and even more wounded, And not enough surgeons and nurses to tend to them." Evan was experiencing a strange sensation. He was very ill, and they were talking about fighting and dying, yet the world around him had come to feel gentle and safe. Also, the pain of his wound had greatly lessened and he was breathing more easily. All of this had happened but a moment after the woman had touched him. It all was due to the woman's nearness, her obvious kindheartedness, he was certain of that. He basked in the wonderful feeling, but why should she have that effect on him?

  "I'm going to be a nurse for our Army," Rachel said.

  "Nursing is a difficult task, and a sad one when one of your patients dies."

  "But a necessary one," she said, contented with her decision.

  "Yes, very necessary."

  "Where were you wounded?" she asked with compassion furrowing her brow.

  "A bullet hit me here." Evan touched his right breast. "I'm on my way home to El Paso."

  "I hope you make it there safely. Are you traveling alone?"

  "There's a fellow soldier with me. He's seeing about buying horses for us now. We'll leave tomorrow."

  "It's good that you have somebody to travel with you. I hope all the wounded soldiers get home safely. I feel badly that I've waited so long to go and help our soldiers. I'm on my way now."

  "Your home is here in Marshall?"

  "Not right in town. My parents have a farm a few miles to the south. My father knows the commander of the garrison here in Marshall and he has given me a pass to ride the train east. My two brothers and an uncle are fighting with General Lee in Virginia. I hope to be able to see them."

  "Please be careful. It will be difficult to find General Lee and your relatives, for the armies are always marching and maneuvering as they try to get an advantage on the enemy." She was a brave woman to journey more than halfway across the continent in time of war, and then to put herself in danger close to the battle lines.

  "I'll find them. Now I must go to the station for I don't want to miss the train." She climbed to her feet.

  Evan felt an immediate loss. He wanted to touch this delightful creature. He stood erect and took her hand, enclosing it totally within his. He felt the fine bones within their covering of soft flesh and smooth skin. He continued to hold her hand, not wanting to let go, for he knew he would never see her again. He should say something to prolong her stay, but he was tongue-tied.

  "Good-bye," Rachel said. She smiled, seeming to read his thoughts exactly.

  "Good-bye and good luck," Evan said hoarsely. His heart was tapping high in his chest and his breath was flowing quickly. It wasn't safe to breathe so fast with his damaged lung, but he couldn't help it.

  Rachel pulled lightly on her hand and extracted it from Evan's. She crossed the lobby and picked up her satchel by the door. She turned and fastened Evan with her green eyes.

  Evan's pulse hammered. The touch of Rachel's eyes upon him was like a kiss.

  Rachel smiled at him and lifted her hand in a little wave. The smile increased her beauty to a dazzling thing. Then she stepped through the doorway and was gone.

  With her going, Evan felt the sensation of a gentle, safe world evaporate. Once again he was a very ill man journeying through a harsh, dangerous land. He marveled at the woman's effect on him. The period of her presence had been short, much too short, but he was thankful that he had been allowed to experience even that brief moment of time.

  THIRTEEN

  Rachel fanned her face with a little fan that she carried in her purse, and stared out the window of the railroad coach. Low, wooded hills lay on both sides of the unmoving train. A well-traveled road ran parallel to the railroad tracks. The road lay empty and fall of dust.

  The train had been on the railroad siding for half an hour as it waited for the westbound train to pass on the single set of
tracks. The interior of the coach was sweltering hot and not a breath of air stirred. Every seat was occupied. She was the only woman. The Army recruits, still in civilian dress, sat listless and silent in the heat. Most of them were from farms or ranches and had tanned faces and calloused hands. The men from the towns appeared pale in comparison.

  At the beginning of the train ride east out of Texas and into Louisiana, some of the more daring young men tried to strike up a conversation with Rachel. However, the heat, and smoke from the engine, often streaming in through the open windows, soon put a stop to all talk.

  The heat had built to a formidable level and Rachel felt suffocated. She rose from her seat and went to the back of the coach, and out onto the little outside platform on the rear to get some air. She had chosen the coach farthest from the engine so as to escape, as much as was possible, the smoke and cinders from the smokestack. She fanned herself and leaned out over the safety chain that enclosed the platform, and looked along the tracks in the direction from which the westbound train would come.

  A sense of trepidation at her daring for undertaking a journey that she knew was perilous crept into her mind. Had she made a foolish decision? Should she get off the train at the next station and return to Marshall? She hastily shoved the thought away. The danger to her was as nothing compared to the danger facing the young men inside. They would soon be fighting enemies making every effort to kill them, and they weren't running away.

  The whistle of the westbound train sounded shrilly through the woods. She leaned farther out over the safety chain to look for it. The train broke into sight, bore on ahead, came even, and went rumbling past. She watched the train recede along the two glistening rails.

  Rachel's train started with a jerk. The sudden movement caught her unexpectedly and she lost her balance. She started to fall and grabbed for the safety chain. Her hand missed the chain and found only air. The chain caught her across the waist and she cartwheeled over it.

  Rachel crashed down onto the stone ballast of the railroad bed. Her head struck one of the wooden railroad ties with a sodden thud. Daylight left her with one last blinding flash.

  * * *

  Karl Redpath was two days west of Shreveport and traveling in a Phaeton buggy drawn by a team of black pacing horses. Both the buggy and the horses were stolen.

  After killing the Confederate lieutenant, Redpath had hurried west across the town. He had little concern that he would be caught. Most likely the man's body would not be found until daylight the following morning. Still, he knew it was wise to put distance between himself and the soldiers stationed in Shreveport, who would be searching for him.

  As he had made his way across the town through the darkness, he had come upon the team and buggy hitched in front of a general store. The buggy was one of Phaeton's largest sizes and had padded leather seats, leather side curtains, and a large rumble seat. The matched pacing horses were of excellent quality. Wanting the vehicle, Redpath looked through the wide front window to the inside of the store for the owner. In the light of two coal-oil lamps, a man and woman were talking and paying no attention to the outside. He had simply dropped his trunk into the rumble seat of the buggy, stepped up into the vehicle, and driven away into the night.

  Redpath noted that some distance ahead of him a piece of yellow cloth lay near the railroad track that ran parallel to the road. He thought little about the cloth as the pacers stepped lively along. Just cast-off trash. As he drew ever closer, the amount of cloth visible grew larger. Then it became a woman's dress. Redpath thought he could make out the form of a woman's body within the dress.

  He reined the horses off the road and up beside the body and stepped down. The woman lay on her back on the crushed-stone ballast of the railroad tracks. So still and quiet was her body that he thought her dead. He went closer.

  The bosom of the woman rose ever so slightly. Then it sank, the smallest of breath taken. Redpath went quickly to her. She lay on her back, and he saw her eyes were half open and staring into the sun. He leaned hastily over her to put her eyes in shadow to protect them from damage by the bright rays of the sun. A huge bruise on her forehead leaked lymph and a little blood.

  Redpath knew about broken bones and wounds, for in his business they were often encountered, and he set about examining the woman thoroughly for injuries. He turned to the head wound first. The flesh was badly bruised over an area more than an inch square. He could not detect any damage done to her skull. Most often the seriousness of such a wound could only be determined with time. She had scrapes and cuts from falling onto the stone ballast of the tracks. None of them were of a nature to cause worry.

  Though she was bruised, bleeding, and unconscious, the young woman's beauty struck Redpath powerfully He had owned many women, all of them above the ordinary in prettiness, some exceptional, and he had made love with every one of them before he sent them out to ply their trade of being a whore. But never before had a woman affected him as this one did. He was staggered by the sudden and overwhelming impact of desire for her.

  He saw no rings on her fingers and judged she was most likely single. He took the purse off her arm and examined all the contents, discovering her name and address. There was nearly a hundred dollars in gold. She hadn't been robbed and thrown from the train. So what was a single woman doing in this particular place, at this particular time?

  From her position on the side of the railroad track, Redpath believed she had fallen from the train. He eliminated the possibility of her being pushed because of the presence of the money. Two trains, one going west and one east, had passed him within the last hour. Which one of them had she been traveling on?

  He went to the buggy for a canteen of water from his supplies. On the second day of his journey, he had stopped in a town and bought provisions for a long journey. He returned to the woman and began to bathe her face.

  "Wake up, miss," he said.

  She gave no indications she felt the water or heard his voice. He shook her, somewhat roughly. Still, there was no response, her body loose and slack as a rag doll. He spread a blanket on the floorboards of the buggy and placed her upon it. The side and rear curtains were dropped to put her totally in the shade. He popped the whip over the ears of the horses, and they quick-stepped with the buggy off along the road.

  Now and again he passed people on the road, and each time put a fold of blanket across the woman so she could not be seen. In the evening, he came to a town, but he continued straight through it. The town was large enough to have a doctor, but there was nothing a doctor could do for the woman's wounds that Redpath couldn't do.

  He made camp beneath a large tree far enough back from the road that they couldn't be seen by passersbys. He tended to the woman first, spreading a blanket on the grass and laying her tenderly down on it. He doctored her head wound and the lesser ones on her body with salve. The one on her head was bandaged.

  She must have water, so he turned her head to the side and poured a few teaspoons from the canteen into her mouth. He was pleased when she swallowed the water.

  Rachel's eyes opened and she looked up at Redpath. She instantly shrank back from him, and uttered a cry of fright.

  "It's all right," Redpath said. "You're safe."

  "What happened?" Rachel asked in a scared, bewildered voice. She was totally confused.

  "You fell," Redpath replied. "I've doctored your injuries." His mind was racing to conceive how he was going to keep her with him. She was the most desirable woman he had ever met and he meant to possess her. That was so regardless of how much she resisted him.

  Rachel touched her bandaged head. "I fell?"

  "Yes, from the buggy."

  "Where am I?" The fear in her voice was intense.

  "With me. How do you feel?"

  "I'm sore all over. But there's something wrong."

  "In what way?"

  The woman appeared baffled by some question she was asking herself. "I don't know who I am. Who you are."

&n
bsp; Redpath had his answer. Somehow the blow to the woman's head had damaged her mind to the degree that she had lost her memory.

  "Who am I?" Rachel asked, her voice trembling.

  "Why, you're Marcella Redpath, my wife."

  FOURTEEN

  The band of six scalp hunters, mounted on strong, long-legged mustangs, crossed the yellow sand hills and halted just below the crest of the hill standing above the San Pedro River in the Arizona Territory.

  Tattersall, the leader, swung his wiry frame down from his mount. He stretched once, ruffled his thick, black beard with his hand to brush the dust out of it, then shook himself like a wolf flinging off water. The kinks, bent into his muscles from riding fifty miles since daylight, fell away from his tough body. He checked the sun. There was still an hour of daylight remaining, plenty of time to take these last scalps.

  He looked at his riders. They were bandits and ruffians hired by him for their toughness. Adkisson was a short, powerfully built redhead. Oakman, a rail-thin man, had fits now and again; still, he was the best marksman with a rifle of the bunch. Crampton, a mean man who just liked to kill, was almost as skinny as Oakman. Butcher was a blond German who like money and probably had most every penny he had earned killing Apaches. Snyder, a small man, spent all his money on whiskey and whores.

  The men stared back at Tattersall from lean, hard faces shaded beneath broad-brimmed hats. Each member of his band wore two Colt .44-caliber pistols. On their ponies they carried two Sharps .50-caliber carbines. All were expert gunmen. They were the finest bunch of fighters Tattersall had ever assembled. He believed the heavily armed band could whip a war party of fifty Apaches.

  "Adkisson, come with me," Tattersall said "The rest of you take care of the horses and keep out of sight while we take a gander down below."

  The two men went quietly to the crest of the hill and looked down on the San Pedro River. The mile-wide valley of the river spread itself before them. The meandering river, lying some three hundred yards distant and a hundred feet lower in elevation, flowed north in a slow green current lined with giant cottonwoods and walnut trees.