Ryan Rides Back Read online

  "Don't be too long," Billy said.

  Even in the darkness, he could feel Ryan's gaze on him. "I didn't mean anything," he said.

  "I hope not," Ryan told him. He moved away.

  He was glad that Virginia lived above the cafe. Not many of the locals did, except for Congrady, but it was more convenient here than it would be among the houses, where someone was always looking out a window. Here they could stay on the second floor and be safe even if the sheriff was eating in the room below. No one would think to look for them here.

  Or at least Ryan hoped no one would.

  He climbed the outside stairs and reached for the doorknob. The door was already slightly ajar, and Ryan's touch sent it swinging inward.

  Ryan felt a sudden chill, as if someone had stuck the cold muzzle of a rifle against the back of his neck.

  He stepped into the room, and his foot touched a pillow. He knew that something was very wrong.

  The room was in a complete mess. Bedclothes were on the floor. Chairs were overturned. Something bad had happened here, and Ryan thought suddenly of Sally and how she had died.

  Ryan made his way to the lamp-table, mostly by feel. It was still upright, and there were matches in a glass holder. He struck one on his boot and lit the lamp.

  The sight of the room confirmed what he had thought. There had been a struggle there of considerable proportions.

  Then his eye was caught by a piece of paper stuck under the lamp base. On it there was a brief note written in pencil: "Ryan. I have the woman. You have my brother. Perhaps we could trade."

  The note was not signed, which made no difference at all. Ryan knew who it was from. Kane had outfoxed him again.

  Virginia Burley was determined not to show her fear. She was trussed up in the back of Kane's wagon, and Martin Long was sitting in front holding the reins. That was enough reason for any woman to be frightened, and she was no different from any other woman.

  She was frightened.

  She was also determined not to let Long know it.

  She had awakened earlier to find him standing over her in her bedroom, with his hand over her mouth. She had tried to scream, but she could not even take a breath because of his hand.

  "You just be quiet," he said. "We can have us a good time if you just be real quiet."

  She wrenched her head to the side and tried to twist away from him, but he had been waiting for that. His hand tightened on her mouth and did not slip an inch.

  He leaned closer to her. She could feel his breath hot on her face. "Don't move again," he said.

  She paid no attention, shifting under the thin cover and trying to get a knee into his side.

  He was too quick for her, moving away, still keeping his hand over her mouth.

  "I told you not to move," he said. "But if you want to ..."

  He lay down on top of her. "Now move," he said. "Wiggle around all you want to. Come on!"

  She lay absolutely still, hardly breathing.

  After what seemed like hours, he got off and stood beside the bed once again. She could breathe a little through her nose, but his hand remained clamped over her mouth like an iron band.

  "Now I want you to get up real slow," he said. "Real slow."

  She put her legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

  "Now," he said, "I want—"

  She didn't listen to what he wanted. She threw herself backward on the bed and tumbled off the other side.

  He was after her instantly, but she slid under the bed and out the other side before he could reach her.

  She got almost to the door before his hand grabbed a hunk of her hair and jerked her backward, popping her neck in the process.

  Pulling her by her hair, he whirled her around and slapped her backhanded across the face, then came back with the palm, the slaps sounding like gunshots in the room.

  She felt the terrible sting as the blood rushed to her face, and her hair seemed ready to come out at the roots, but she continued to fight, kicking at Long's thin body and twisting this way and that. She flailed her arms in an attempt to strike him in the face.

  The blows, when they struck, were so feeble as to have virtually no effect on Long. She could hear his laughter over the harsh and ragged sound of her own breathing.

  Then her nails raked down the side of his face. She could feel the skin tear, and she felt the wet blood on her fingertips.

  Long stopped laughing, but his grip on her hair tightened as he pulled her suddenly forward, wrapping his powerful arm around her body.

  He was panting, and she felt his hot breath against her face. Then he pressed his lips against hers. His tongue worked between her lips, but she clamped her teeth together to stop its progress.

  He pulled away and spoke, his face only inches from hers. "You like it. You know you do."

  His hand tangled in her hair forced her head forward to his mouth again, and his arm forced her body against his. She was wearing a cotton gown, worn by many washings, and she could feel his hard body through it. He seemed to be giving off heat, like a woodstove in winter, but it did nothing to warm the coldness she felt inside, a coldness that reached into her very bones.

  One of her hands brushed the pistol at his side. She managed to get her fingers around the handle and to begin slipping it from its holster. She tried to ignore the fatty feeling of his lips rubbing against her own.

  He must have felt what she was doing. Suddenly he pushed her from him, hard, sending her reeling backward to strike the wall. She heard the thud of the pistol on the floor, and then she struck the door frame, her head hitting the wood with the dull sound of a mallet on a melon.

  Long picked up his gun, kicked a chair out of his way, and walked over to where she lay slumped on the floor. She jumped up and butted him in the face.

  Long screeched and fell backward, putting his hands to his nose. He had never felt any pain quite like the one he was feeling now, which seemed to start at his nose and shoot out all over his body, right down to his toes.

  Virginia scrambled with her hand at the door, knowing that she had only a few seconds to escape. She found the knob, but Long was on her again.

  Long dragged her down to the floor, his pain absorbed into a red haze that filled his head and blotted out the darkness in the room. He slapped her face, back and forth, back and forth. He straddled her body and got his hands on her throat. He clamped his hands together and began to squeeze.

  Virginia screamed when he slapped her, but then her breath was suddenly cut off. Her neck was caught in an unbreakable grip and she found the thought of Billy Kane flashing into her mind—Billy Kane and the hang rope. She thought briefly and fleetingly of Sally Ryan.

  And then she stopped thinking.

  Long never knew exactly why he relaxed his grip before it was too late. Possibly it was because Kane had been so explicit in his instructions: "The woman won't be any use to us dead, Long. I want you to understand that. We must have the quid pro quo."

  "Huh?" Long was not a stupid man, but he was ignorant. He had heard of a quid of tobacco, but he didn't know what that had to do with anything he and Kane had been discussing.

  "Quid pro quo. That's Latin. It means that we must have an equal exchange. Something we can hand Ryan when he hands Billy over to us, as he must, of course, as soon as he sees that we have the woman."

  "I don't know about that," Long said. "We've used the woman against him before. She turned him over to us. He might not be in much of a mood to get her back. He might not even care about her this time."

  "You don't understand men like Ryan," Kane said. "He has what we call a sense of honor."

  "You think I don't?" Long said.

  "I know that you do," Kane told him. "But not of the same kind. Your own sense of honor would lead you to defend yourself against insults, but it would not lead you to defend a woman who had betrayed you."

  "You're damn right it wouldn't."

  "And that is precisely where you are different from Rya
n. While personal insults might not bother him, or at least might not move him to any action, a threat to someone he regards as helpless will no doubt cause him to come immediately and foolishly to the rescue."

  "He's dumber than I thought, then," Long said.

  "Yes," Kane said. "And that is the difference between his sense of honor and yours."

  "I still don't think I follow you."

  "It doesn't matter. While we could possibly lure Ryan here if the woman were severely harmed, or dead, he most certainly would not be fool enough to give us Billy. Therefore, let me stress once again the fact that the woman must be delivered back here in good health. Do you understand?"

  "I guess so," Long said, and he did. So that meant he couldn't keep on squeezing the neck of the woman he was now sitting on, as much as he would like to continue doing so.

  He eased off on the pressure.

  Virginia didn't move.

  Long released his grip completely and put his face to her lips. He could feel the faint touch of her breath.

  She was alive. He felt faintly disappointed, but then he hadn't really wanted to kill her. At least, he hadn't wanted to kill her so soon. He could think of a lot of things he'd like to do to her before he killed her.

  Thinking about those things made him reluctant to get up, but he did. He fished the paper that Kane had given him out of his pocket and put it on the lamp table.

  He had asked Kane about the note earlier. Long didn't like the idea.

  "It's a risk, I admit it," Kane said. "I believe it's a small one, however."

  "If the sheriff sees it . . ."

  "Then I've made an error," Kane said. "But I think Ryan will go there, or send someone for her. If her loss is discovered by an employee, as it is likely to be if Ryan does not show up, then I suspect the employee will see that Ryan gets the note instead of the law. I want Ryan to know who he is up against."

  "All right," Long said, but he had misgivings. There were too many "ifs" in it for him. He liked certainties.

  Still, he had been told to leave the note, and he left it. Then he picked Virginia Burley up and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of grain and carried her down the stairs. No one would be surprised if a man like Barson had performed such a feat, but Long's wiry strength was often surprising.

  He put her in the wagon he had parked behind the cafe, taking only a few extra seconds to run his hands over the cotton gown and feel the contours underneath. The pain in his nose had subsided somewhat, and he was feeling an urge to be a bit more tender.

  He also took a few seconds to tie her hands behind her back with a piece of rope he had in the wagon. She had proved that she was not one to lie down and go along with being hauled off in the middle of the night.

  They were almost at Kane's ranch house when she regained consciousness. At first she was disoriented by the motion of the wagon and the smell of the outdoors. Then the events prior to her blacking out came rushing back.

  She knew that she was being carried somewhere, and she thought that she had a pretty good idea where. She also knew that her neck hurt from the pressure of Long's hands and that she had come near to dying.

  Naturally she was afraid, but Long would never know it. That she was sure of.

  And if they were headed for Kane's, as she was sure they must be, Kane would never know it, either. She wouldn't let him use her again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryan's thought was almost the same as Virginia's. He was not going to let Kane use her against him again, especially now that he knew that Kane was using her, and how.

  He didn't feel that he could let Kane get away with taking her. Something plainly had to be done, but Ryan wasn't sure exactly what that something was.

  He crumpled the note in his hand and shoved it in the pocket of his jeans. Maybe Billy would have a suggestion.

  "You mean he wants to trade her for me?" Billy said when Ryan reached him. "What for?"

  "I don't know," Ryan said. "What do you think we should do about it?"

  Billy was stumped. No one had ever asked him for a suggestion before, and he didn't know how to respond. "What do you think he wants with me?" he said.

  "I don't know that, either," Ryan told him. "Long and Barson didn't seem to be handing out party invitations, though."

  Billy slipped down off the horse. "You're not gonna trade me, are you?"

  "No," Ryan said. He climbed awkwardly into the saddle.

  Billy sighed and relaxed slightly. He had been prepared to take off on a dead run if Ryan had said yes. The more he thought about Long and Barson, the more certain he was that he didn't want to go back to his brother. On the other hand, he didn't want to go back to jail, either.

  He pulled himself up behind Ryan. His other choice seemed to be to stick with Ryan and see what happened. That wasn't a good choice, either, it seemed to Billy. He knew that Ryan at one time had felt a certain amount of affection for the woman, and he was fearful that Ryan might fight to get her back. Billy had already had more fighting in the last day or so than he ever wanted to have again. He thought about how his face had felt as Barson mashed it into the mud, how his nostrils and mouth had been clogged with the gooey stuff.

  "Maybe we could steal her back," he said. "Like the jailbreak, only we'll take her from the house."

  "It wouldn't work," Ryan said. "Your brother will be too much on his guard, and I want her back now. Not later. I don't know what might happen to her there." He didn't say that he was afraid of what might have happened already in the upstairs room.

  "I don't see how you can get her," Billy said. "You can't just ride right in and—" He broke off. He had expected Ryan to be agreeing with him, or at least nodding his head. But Ryan wasn't agreeing. "You're not thinking about that, are you? There's no way we'd ever ride in there and get back out alive. They'd kill us, and her, too. I won't do it!"

  Billy's voice was frantic, but Ryan ignored him. Kane's note had proposed a trade, but there could be no trade without a meeting. Who was to say what might happen at such a meeting?

  "We've got to talk to Kane," he said.

  "No, we don't. We don't have to do that. You don't know what he's like! He'll never let us out of there! I'm not going!"

  "Yes, you are." Ryan's voice was cold. "If I say so, you are."

  Billy didn't want to argue, but his fear of his brother was greater than his fear of Ryan. After all, Ryan had done nothing to harm him so far. "It's a trick," he said. "We'll ride out there, and he'll shoot us down as soon as we show our faces. I know he will."

  "I don't think so," Ryan said.

  "He will. He will."

  "It's dark," Ryan said. "He won't see us coming.”

  “He'll have somebody watching for us. Long, or somebody. He won't let us just ride up on him."

  Ryan thought about Long lying in wait for him. He thought about what he'd like to do to Long. He felt a warm glow spreading over his body, warming a coldness that had been in him for what seemed like years. It was like his blood had stopped flowing that night at Shatter's Grove and had only just now found the old familiar paths through his body.

  He wondered for the first time if he had known all along, known without knowing, if that was possible, how Kane had taken him that night. Could he have somehow suspected that Virginia had helped Kane, that she not only had not sent the sheriff but had never intended to send him? Could that knowledge, which he must have had, even though he had never allowed himself to think it, really explain why he had stayed away from Tularosa for so long? Suddenly all the other things he had told himself seemed unconvincing, and it was as if he knew for the first time the real reason for his delayed homecoming.

  And Kane was at the bottom of it. He had been kept away by Kane, or by Kane's schemes, just as surely as if Kane had killed him that night.

  To tell the truth, Kane had killed him, or a part of him. Not his physical body, though he had surely done his part to kill that, but his mental body, if there was such a thing. Knowing
that Virginia had betrayed him, even though he would never admit it, had caged his mind and spirit as surely as the eagle in the dream was held first by bars of wood and then by bars that he couldn't even see.

  Now Kane was working on him again. And Long was in on it, too, and Barson and McGee. They were after him again, and they were using Virginia again.

  Ryan felt his blood pounding in his ears.

  This time they wouldn't get away with it.

  Long dragged Virginia out of the wagon, took her inside the house, and threw her on an Indian rug in Kane's office. He threw her down somewhat harder than was strictly necessary.

  Kane looked up. "I hope you haven't damaged our quid pro quo."

  "She's alive," Long said.

  Kane glanced at the woman. Then he got up from his desk and walked around to get a better look. "I warned you," he said to Long.

  "Warned me, hell. She fought me like a damn squaw. She hit me in the nose. Hell, she hurt me worse'n I hurt her." Long's fingers went to his nose and touched it gently. There was a string of dried blood running from one nostril down past his mouth.

  "You don't look much the worse for wear," Kane said. "She does."

  Virginia's face was beginning to blacken in several places where Long had hit her. Her hair was in disarray, and one of her eyes was swelling shut.

  "I hope he hasn't hurt you too badly," Kane said.

  She didn't answer, but she looked up at him coldly.

  "It will do you no good to be uncooperative, I assure you," Kane said. "You might at least speak to me. I told Long not to hurt you."

  Still she remained silent.

  "I should think you might be curious about why I had you brought here," Kane said.

  "Whatever it is, I won't do it," she said. "I've done my last for you."

  "And well rewarded you were for it, too," he said. "But never mind that. What I want from you now is relatively painless. In fact, you have no real part to play. I require only that you be here."

  "Be here?"

  "That is all. You see, your friend Ryan has something I want, but he seems reluctant to give it to me. I am offering to trade you for what he has of mine."