Wife Stealer Read online

  "There's the Apache camp we came to find," Tattersall said.

  Eight tipis were grouped in an open stand of large trees. The skin lodges were heavily stained with the soot of many fires. Up near the smoke holes they were nearly black. Spring storms had damaged the structures, and the patches that had been used to close the rents and tears showed like white scars.

  "So they're still here," Adkisson said.

  "They had no reason to move," Tattersall said, scanning the encampment. "It's a good place with water, wood, and game. And fish in the river."

  The band had spotted the small village during their scalp hunting earlier in the spring, but had passed it by with the intention of hitting it on the way back south into Mexico. They had hunted first to the west, striking the villages in Gila River country, and then had ridden far to the north up the Pecos River Valley. Now it was time to take the last scalps.

  In the camp, a group of squaws knelt around a buffalo hide stretched on the ground and worked on it with sharp flint scrapers. The women wouldn't live long enough to finish the hide.

  A group of laughing children romped and played near the river. Men were gathered around a horse and talking and gesturing, obviously discussing the qualities of the animal.

  "I count eight bucks," Adkisson said.

  "Best we can come up the river through the trees," Tattersall said. "That way we can hit them without being seen until it's too late for any of them to get away."

  "Yeah, should be easy," Adkisson agreed.

  Tattersall and Adkisson dropped down from the crown of the hill and returned to the other men. They all climbed to their feet and looked at Tattersall for his orders.

  "Check the loads in your guns, then mount up," Tattersall ordered. "We'll take them from horseback in case some try to run."

  * * *

  The band of scalp hunters were gathered in the woods near the river and downstream from the Apache village. The sun had turned red as it floated down to rest on the chain of mountains to the west. The water of the San Pedro River, bathed in the last light of the sun, had become crimson as blood.

  Tattersall knew the outcome of the battle to come wasn't something to worry about. The Apaches, though fierce fighters, had no discipline and fought as individuals. An organized group such as he had would kill every one with ease. In a few days he would be in Chihuahua selling a sack of their scalps to Governor Antonio Beremendes. The savage raids of the Apache into the northern Mexican provinces had so angered the governor that he had placed a bounty of one hundred dollars in gold on every Indian man, and fifty dollars on each woman and child. The coarse, long-haired scalps proved their deaths. Tattersall and his gang would make twelve to thirteen thousand dollars in only a few weeks of hunting. Tattersall's cut would be one quarter.

  "We'll use rifles first as we close in on them," Tattersall told his men. "Then pistols to finish the job. Shoot the bucks first. Let nobody escape. Now line up on me and go quiet."

  The men rode silently, holding their rifles ready to fire. The trees thinned as they drew nearer the encampment. Then the tipis and the people were in sight hardly more than two hundred yards away. The horse that had been under discussion by the men was being led away by one of them. The other men were dispersing, ambling away among the tipis.

  Closest to the scalp hunters was a little boy about seven wading in the edge of the river. He saw the strange riders and screamed a warning.

  "Shoot them," Tattersall shouted.

  He raised his rifle to his shoulder and shot a warrior turning to look at them. The Indian was knocked flat by the heavy bullet.

  The other Indian men bolted for their weapons hanging on posts near their tipis. As they raced through the village, they shouted shrill orders at the women and children to run and hide.

  The women added their cries for the children to flee. Then screaming with fright, every woman and child began to run in frantic haste, scattering up the riverside.

  Beside Tattersall, the snarling cracks of his men's heavily charged rifles were deafening. In the Apache camp two braves were hit with deadly blows and fell to the ground. Another was knocked tumbling. He rose to his feet and hobbled toward the thick stand of trees growing along the foot of the bluff. One warrior had been close to reaching his musket. As he reached for it, a bullet broke his spine and he went down with arms flopping. A sixth warrior was running strongly for his weapon. He suddenly fell face-forward as if tripped, slid along to a stop, and did not move again.

  "Keep shooting!" Tattersall shouted. He jammed his empty single-shot Sharps into its scabbard and drew his second one. He knew his men were doing the same.

  The two remaining Apache warriors had now gained their weapons, both old muskets. They fired at the white men. The bullets missed, whining past the scalp hunters. The warriors were cut down by multiple bullets.

  "Snyder, that wounded buck in the woods is nearest to you, so you go get him," Tattersall said to the man on the far right side of the gang.

  "Right," Snyder called back.

  "Now ride the squaws and kids down," Tattersall shouted. "Catch every one of them."

  The scalp hunters pulled their pistols and spurred their horses up the riverside. Five chased after the fleeing women and children. Snyder veered off into the deeper woods.

  As Tattersall gouged his horse ahead, an old grandmother jumped up from some bushes. He killed her, a shot from his pistol through the center of her back. A boy of seven or eight came out of the same bushes and tore off at an angle. He leaped over the trunk of a fallen tree and then straightened out in a flat-out run. The little brown bastard sure could travel, Tattersall thought.

  Lashing his horse, Tattersall drew close to the boy. He slashed down with the heavy iron barrel of his revolver, clubbing the child to the earth. Tattersall dragged his mount to a halt, whirled it around, and ran it back to the small, still body of the boy.

  The firing of his men dwindled and stopped as Tattersall stepped down from his mount. He deftly cut a circle around the top of the boy's head and ripped away a large segment of scalp and hair. He halted at two other bodies, one the old woman, as he returned to the camp, each time cutting away the victim's scalp.

  Adkisson, carrying a handful of bloody scalps, came to meet Tattersall. "Mighty fine target practice we all had," he said.

  "Stretch and dry these with those you have, "Tattersall directed, and handed Adkisson the scalps he carried. "Did anyone get away that you saw?"

  "Nope, we got them all," Adkisson said, separating the scalps to see how many had been given to him. "That makes twenty-two of them," he added in a pleased tone.

  "Pure gold, just pure gold," Tattersall said with a laugh.

  FIFTEEN

  Karl Redpath and Rachel Greystone crossed the Brazos River on a small, steam-driven ferry painted white. It was hardly large enough to stay afloat laden as it was with the team and buggy and heavily loaded freight wagons. Redpath paid the ferryman and climbed into the buggy beside Rachel.

  "Ready to travel, Marcella?" Karl asked. The woman had accepted the name and he was pleased at that. With luck, she would never know her real name.

  "Yes, I'm ready," Marcella replied.

  "Then off we go," Karl said, and smiled at his good fortune of finding the lovely woman who couldn't remember. He popped the long buggy whip over the ears of the pacers and drove the buggy onto the shore.

  Marcella settled herself on the seat of the buggy, glad for the padding in the seat, and prepared for the grueling hours of travel that lay ahead. The morning was barely half spent and already the heat had built to a sweltering temperature.

  They climbed up from the river with the iron-rimmed wheels of the buggy grinding and screeching on the gravel and rock of the steep grade. The wheels became quiet as they encountered the clay soil of the forested hills to the west. They traveled swiftly, as they had every day since Marcella had awakened from the unconsciousness of her fall six days before. The days were long from daylight to dark, and
many miles had rumbled past beneath the rolling wheels of the buggy.

  Karl always drove straight through the small towns widely scattered along the road, refusing her request to stop and find a hotel for the night. When darkness overtook them they simply stopped. Most times they were fortunate enough to find a farmhouse close by the roadside, and Karl would pay for food and a night's lodging for them. Once they had simply spread their blankets on the ground and slept under the open sky.

  Marcella had asked Karl about the reason for the rapid, exhausting journey, and he had replied that they must reach El Paso at the earliest possible time so he could launch his new business. She thought it unusual to push so hard even for that reason, but did not voice her thought. When she questioned him as to the type of business, he told her it was a form of entertainment. She had pressed him to describe it more fully, but he had laughed and told her that she must wait for he wanted it to be a surprise.

  "You all right?" Karl asked, turning to look at Marcella as he often did.

  "Yes, just hot," Marcella replied, not looking at Karl. And no, I'm not all right. I'm in awful condition for I can't remember one thing from the past. "I'm thankful for the shade," Marcella added to soften her terse answer.

  She stared straight ahead along the road. The woods were dense and the road barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. The limbs of the trees reached out over the road and met in the center. Driving along the road was like moving down a hot, green tunnel.

  To battle the heat, she was dressed in a thin cotton dress and a straw hat. She had other clothing in a trunk in the rumble seat of the carriage. Karl had told her that her suitcases had been stolen shortly before her fall.They had stopped at the first town and purchased several outfits. He had spent lavishly for the new garments.

  She felt Karl's eyes still on her, but she did not turn. He had strange, tan-colored eyes; mud-colored always came to her mind. They seemed to have no depth and betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. The nearest thing to emotion she had ever detected was that sometimes when she looked unexpectedly at him, there was a kind of watchful, probing expression. It always quickly vanished when their eyes met.

  She knew Karl had a very strong feeling for her. It was apparent in the way he frequently touched her, and every night he came to her and she had to take him into her bed. She did not feel like a married woman; still, she performed all the wifely duties a vow of marriage required. She often wondered why she had chosen Karl for a husband for she felt no love for him. Truthfully, she did not even like him.

  There was a nagging feeling that she couldn't shake that something wasn't as it appeared. The feeling was most strong when she would awaken in the darkness of night with a terrible sensation of wrongness, wrongness of where she was, of what was happening to her. She couldn't crystallize the reason for it. She tried to console herself that most probably all of it was rooted in her inability to remember. If she could recall events, the happenings and emotions of the past, the present would be an extension of them and everything would fit into its place. Then she would have no concern.

  Karl asked Marcella every morning when they awoke, and sometimes again during the day, if she had remembered anything of her past. She had tried many times to go backward into the past. Oh, how hard she'd tried. There was nothing before her awakening, as if she had been spontaneously created and there she was. The past wasn't a black emptiness, not some dense impenetrable fog. It was just nothing. Yet her mind was starved for memories of things, of places, of people and emotions. The immense hunger for the tiniest memory shook Marcella to the very core.

  Marcella had asked Karl to tell her about their life prior to the accident, and about her family. He told her they had been married for two years, that her parents had died of yellow fever the summer before, and that she had no close relatives. They had owned a great house in New Orleans with many servants. Then the Union Army and Navy had captured the city and she and Karl had decided to leave and start a new business in El Paso, a town far beyond the boundaries of the war. They had talked long about the War Between the States. How very strange that a great war was in progress and she knew nothing about it.

  His answers always came easily. He would repeat the stories, telling her that he was doing this so she might more quickly break through the block that hid the past.

  Knowing she didn't love the man, Marcella had asked him to describe their courtship and marriage. He told her they had met at one of the gala dances the rich of New Orleans frequently held. They had fallen in love almost at once and had married less than a week later.

  Marcella again thought of that statement of Karl's, about love and a quick marriage, as they drove through the woods. If she had been so much in love with him before the accident, then why should she not feel some of it now? The chemistry of love should have survived the blow to her head and be present at all times.

  At that conclusion, the distasteful feeling of wrongness swept over her more strongly than ever. So powerful was the sensation that Marcella shivered. She controlled the shiver, but there came immediately afterward a dizziness, and a fuzziness to her vision. She felt herself swaying in the seat, and caught hold of the nearest upright iron rod that supported the top of the buggy. She struggled to clear her vision.

  Slowly the dizziness left Marcella, and the fuzziness of her vision cleared. However, instead of seeing the road in the forest ahead of her, she was looking along a narrow, dimly lighted channel walled with blackness. At the distant end of the channel was a woman's face. The woman was of middle age and pretty. Marcella felt she should know the woman, but no name would come to mind. The woman didn't speak, or show emotion, merely looking in Marcella's direction.

  Even as Marcella studied the face it began to fade. Hurry, she told herself, and identify the woman, for you may never get another chance. She concentrated upon the picture, desperate to put a name on the woman, to know the relationship between them. She examined in minute details the woman's features, the oval of her face, the curve of her mouth, the shape of her eyes. The powerful focus of her attention held the picture for a tiny moment longer. Then it was gone and a terrible sensation of loss fell upon her.

  "What's wrong, Marcella?" Karl asked. He was holding her firmly by the arm. "Are you sick?"

  "If not being able to remember the past is being sick, then I'm sick."

  "It's more than that. You were shivering."

  "I suppose I was. I was trying to remember something, anything, but just can't."

  Some instinct told Marcella to keep the vision of the woman's face a secret from Karl.

  The woman was haunting Marcella. She should know her. Surely she was someone Marcella once knew, for there was no reason for her injured mind to conjure up a stranger's face. Marcella prayed the woman would appear again and stay long enough to be identified. Perhaps then Marcella could begin to build a past.

  "It will all come back to you," Karl said. He popped the metal tip of the buggy whip over the ears of the horses. They picked up the pace, the buggy rolling easily on its greased axles.

  * * *

  Near noontime, Marcella and Karl came within sight of a two-story log tavern where a north-south road crossed the one they traveled. The tavern sat in a clearing of some four acres in the forest. Several horses were tied to a long hitching rail in front. A skillfully carved wooden sign declared there was food, drink, and lodging to be had. A garden fenced with tall woven wire lay on the right and close by the tavern.

  "Are you hungry?" Karl asked.

  "Starved," Marcella said. The villages and farms were infrequently encountered now. The last house had been miles behind them. Karl had told her that soon would be only wilderness.

  "Then we shall stop and obtain the best food they have," he now said.

  As the buggy drew near the tavern, a man came out of the building. He turned to look at the buggy and its occupants as he went toward the tied horses. He had mounted and was riding off to the west as Karl brought his vehicle
to a halt in front of the tavern.

  Karl helped Marcella down from the buggy and they entered the tavern.

  * * *

  Marcella half dozed as the buggy rolled smoothly along on its flexible iron leaf spring. She had enjoyed the delicious food especially the blackberry pie. Its taste still lingered in her mouth. The pleasant woman who had served them had told Marcella that she had picked the berries in the edge of the woods that morning. The danger to the friendly people of this isolated place was brought starkly to Marcella by the man who wore a pistol buckled around his waist as he helped his wife to serve the customers.

  The road they traveled again ran through the thick forest. It had narrowed to such a small width that had they met another vehicle, it would have been a difficult task to pass each other. The huge trees crowded in close on both sides, and only a stray ray of sunlight here and there penetrated the leafy crowns of the trees to fall upon the ground.

  Ahead of them some one hundred feet, a huge mountain of a man came out of the woods and into the road. He carried a length of tree trunk, longer than he was tall and nearly a foot in diameter, on his shoulder. As he moved toward the center of the road, he turned his head and glanced at the occupants of the buggy. The man's head was overly large even for his size and the brows of his forehead bulged over deeply set eyes. He was smiling in a childlike way, a mischievous child who was playing a trick. He dropped the log crosswise on the road, thus blocking it to the passage of the buggy. He continued on to disappear in among the trees on the opposite side.

  "What? . . . Marcella started to speak.

  "Get down!" Karl exclaimed. "It's a holdup!" He caught Marcella by the shoulder and shoved her down onto the floorboards of the buggy.

  "Stay there," he ordered, at the same time reining the horses to a fast stop.