Mail Order Josephine - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides) (9 page)

Fortunately for her, Billy knew where to go. For the most part, he completely ignored whatever lame signals she sent him through his reins. He ran after Andrew with reckless abandon, leaving Josephine to discover the best position to take advantage of his motion. Pretty soon, she found she could lean forward, extending her arms out over his neck, giving him all the free rein he desired, and that the flex of her knees and legs maximized his freedom of movement as well as affording her the greatest possible security on his back. With every discovery of hers, lending her still more comfort and connection with the animal underneath her, he took his lead from her and ran faster until he drew up abreast of Andrew’s mount and eventually nosed ahead of him. Both Andrew and Josephine laughed, and Andrew spurred his horse forward until they both strained to the utmost of their strength to leave one another behind.

The race ended at the top of the ridge before either of them achieved enough of a lead to claim the victory. Andrew and Josephine reined their horses at the crest of the slope near the trees, laughing and panting in exhilaration. Andrew just opened his mouth to speak to her when he caught his breath and listened, his face instantly sober. From the distance, over the hill and out of sight, a short crack like the breaking of a stick of wood rang out, followed by another, and another. Andrew closed his mouth with a snap and wheeled his horse away from her.

“What is it?” she called after him.

“Rustlers!” he growled between clenched teeth, and with a touch of his spurs against his horse’s sides, he charged away in the direction of the noise. Josephine took another long minute to understand his answer, and by the time she fully comprehended the situation, he was already out of sight.

She paused there, unsure what to do. Billy tired to run after his master and Josephine realized that, though in the course of her brief association with the horse she trusted him as implicitly as she trusted Andrew, she probably couldn’t stop him if she tried. She spun him around with her reins and dug her heels into his sides to urge him after Andrew. Billy galloped off, but as fast as he ran, she could not see Andrew anywhere. Only the repeated cracking, which Josephine didn’t recognize, led her in the right direction. Billy tore along the ridge until he reached the fence. Then he ran along it, down the slope into a side gulley Josephine hadn’t seen before. Down they plummeted toward a bend in the river out of sight from their previous ride.

At the bottom, the fence disappeared into dense scrub, but Billy knew where to go and burst straight through the undergrowth without breaking his stride. At a full gallop, he crashed through the brittle branches of shrubs and low trees, his hooves crunching through drifts of dried leaves, until he forced his way to a clearing at the bottom of the ravine. Here, in the open space in a ring of trees, Josephine saw Andrew. His horse lay on its side, kicking its legs in the air and rearing up its head before falling helplessly down again. Andrew stretched out on his stomach next to the horse, taking shelter behind the animal’s prostrate body. Andrew’s arm extended out over the top of his horse’s belly, his pistol in his hand, and he fired intermittently toward the fence. In an instant, Josephine spotted two other men hiding behind a low hummock of sod, shooting back at Andrew.

As she watched, Andrew rose up from his shelter to take aim at his opponents, but as he did, one of the others reared up at the same instant and fired first. Andrew collapsed backward on his back behind his horse, his gun fallen ineffectually at his side, and he did not rise again. Josephine yelped in alarm, and a hollow sickening sensation crushed her lungs as though the bullet ripped through her own chest. She goaded Billy toward Andrew and jumped down from her saddle at his side. Immediately, she ducked down behind the protective mass of the fallen horse, while Billy darted away into the bushes, away from the line of fire.

Josephine stooped over Andrew, resting her hand lightly on his chest while she scanned the growing pool of blood saturating his shirt.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he groaned.

“You left me all alone,” she observed. “I had no choice but to come. But you’re hurt. We have to get you up to the house.”

Just then, a bullet whizzed past her head and she realized she’d lifted her head too far above the safe bulwark of the horse. Without thinking, she reached for Andrew’s pistol on the ground at his side, but he dropped his hand between it and her. “It’s empty,” he sighed. “It’s no good.”

“We’re pinned down here,” she vocalized her own thoughts, expecting no response from him. “We have to get you out of here somehow.”

“It’s useless,” he grumbled.

She raised her head just enough to determine that the two gunmen still threatened them from the other side of the fence, but as she did so, her eye fell on a wooden object sticking out of the side of Andrew’s saddle. She waited another fraction of an instant until a lull provided her an opportunity to reach over the top of the horse. Then she pulled Andrew’s rifle from its sheath and retreated to the safety of her hiding place again.

Andrew observed her between rasping coughs rattling deep inside his chest. “Do you know how to use that thing?”

Josephine stared at the heavy steel gun in her hands. “No,” she admitted, “but I’ll give it a try.”

“Just make sure you point it at them and not at me,” Andrew joked, and then he fell into another grating coughing fit. A splatter of blood stained his lips.

“Right,” she confirmed, and cradled the rifle in her hands. She wrapped her right hand around the trigger guard and propped the barrel against the side of the stricken horse. Only its heaving breath, growing gradually calmer with each inhalation, disturbed the position of the rifle. Josephine took a deep breath to steady herself and pressed her cheek to the cold metal of the grip. Ever so slowly, she tilted the barrel of the rifle upward until she sighted the cattle rustlers crouched behind a hillock on the other side of the fence.

“Use the sights,” Andrew suggested behind her. She didn’t understand fully what he meant, but she did understand that she didn’t have to hit either one of the men over there. She only needed to return their fire enough to drive them away so she could remove Andrew from the danger of the situation. With her eyes, she found the two slots of metal on the top of the gun, one just in front of her eye and one at the very furthest tip of the barrel, but she still couldn’t fathom how to use them, so she gave it up and pointed the gun in the rustlers’ direction as best she could. When she determined that she had the gun aimed as well as could be expected, she fired.

A deafening explosion rocked her almost off her feet, and a cloud of smoke blinded her. She squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened.

“Work the lever,” Andrew instructed her. “Load another cartridge.”

She bent down behind the horse and examined the rifle quizzically, trying to figure out what he meant. At a loss, she stared blankly at him until he waved his hand in a signal to her to hand the rifle over to him. He took it expertly, placed his hands where she held the gun, with one hand under the barrel and one hand wrapped around the trigger guard, but as she watched in fascination, he quickly flicked his right hand outward, pushing the lever forward and then decisively drawing it back into its place. As he did so, the empty shell shot out of the weapon and she recognized the sound of the next round slipping into place. Andrew handed the rifle back to her and leaned his head back against the wet ground.

Josephine took her position again and fired the rifle three more times in the direction of the fence. When she paused to adjust her aim, the rustlers made a feeble attempt to return her fire, but very soon, they slipped down behind their hillock and did not re-emerge. Josephine listened to the ponderous silence, holding her rifle at the ready, wary of some ruse, until Andrew piped up, “They’re gone. Let’s get out of here.”

“Can you walk?” she inquired.

Andrew shook his head. “Where’s Billy?”

“I’m not sure,” she scanned the clearing. “He may have run all the way home.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Andrew assured her. “Take a look around. He probably didn’t go too far.”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she hesitated.

“Sure,” he asserted. “These rustlers always strike and run. That’s their way. Once someone starts shooting back, they slink off. Find Billy. If you can get me on his back, I can ride back to the house.”

Reluctantly, she stood up and glanced over in the direction of the fence, but as Andrew claimed, no rustlers poked their heads up to look back at her. Growing bolder, she started toward the line of trees at the edge of the clearing to search for Billy. She didn’t go far, though, because the horse waited for her not more than a dozen yards from the clearing, nibbling the tender grass at the riverside. He peered at her as she approached, munching placidly, as though he expected her all along. She grasped his bridle and led him back to the clearing.

“Are you sure you can move?” she speculated. “I don’t like moving you in this condition.”

“I can’t stay here. That’s for sure,” Andrew declared. “Help me up.”

Josephine hauled awkwardly at one of his arms until she succeeded in dragging him up to a sitting position. Andrew whined in pain, and she tried to stop. “You should stay here,” she suggested.

“No,” he snapped. “Get me out of here.”

So she stuck her head under his arm and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Then she forced her legs against the soft earth and propelled Andrew up onto his feet. They staggered together to Billy’s side, where Andrew caught hold of the horn of the saddle with his one good hand. He managed to get one of his feet into the stirrup. Josephine wedged both her hands underneath him and pushed him up into the saddle. When he landed in the seat, Andrew slumped down with an exhausted groan. Josephine took hold of Billy’s bridle, but the thought of leading the horse back to the ranch house, where she hoped to find Andrew’s parents, made her stop in her tracks.

“What’s the matter?” Andrew rattled.

“I can’t show myself at your parents’ house dressed like this,” she told him.

He grinned ruefully. “Take me back up to the top of the ridge. We have to pass the trees on the way to the house anyway. We’ll stop by and you can change back into your dress.”

A gurgling noise, remarkably similar to the bubbling sound coming from Andrew’s chest, drew her attention back to the scene of the fire fight. “What should we do about Paul’s horse?”

Andrew grimaced. “He won’t live. We should put him down before we go.”

“How will we do that?” she shuddered.

“Do you think you can do it?” he asked.

“What are you suggesting?” she persisted. “He’s already been shot.”

“You’ll have to shoot him in the back of the head,” he told her. “It’s the quickest, most painless way.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” she choked on a sob pressing up in her throat.

“I know it’s hard,” Andrew confirmed. “But you’ll be doing him a favor. It’s the most humane thing you can do at this point. We can’t leave him here to die. He could take hours, and he’s obviously in distress already. If you don’t want to do it, then get me down from here and I’ll do it myself. I never liked that horse, but I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy to suffer like that.”

Seeing his resolve, she shook her head as much to hide the tears burning at the corners of her eyes as to answer him. In addition to her concern for his injury, she doubted whether, once he came down from the saddle, she could get him back into it. “Stay where you are. I’ll do it.” She lifted the rifle in her hands and threw the lever out to load a fresh cartridge into the chamber. She stood over the horse,
who rolled his eyes in agony but no longer kicked his legs or craned his neck in a fruitless effort to stand. The first tear fell from Josephine’s eye and disappeared into the grass at her feet. She pointed the barrel of the rifle at the horse’s head.

“Put the very tip of the barrel right against the knob at the back of his head,” Andrew commanded from his perch. She obeyed.
“Right. That way you won’t miss.” The tears welled up in her eyes and mercifully prevented her from seeing the animal on the ground at her feet. Blindly, she pulled the trigger.

A jolt shot through the horse’s body, and he struggled momentarily against some unseen assailant. “Shoot him again,” Andrew ordered.

Numbly, Josephine chambered another bullet into the housing of the rifle, strained her eyes to focus between her tears just enough to place the muzzle of the gun against the shattered head of the great beast, and fired again. The horse’s thrashing movements escalated temporarily before settling down into a generalized twitching and shuddering that racked his whole body. Then he lay perfectly still, without a flutter of breath to disturb his lifeless body. Hot tears coursed down Josephine’s cheeks. She almost threw the rifle away from her into the bushes, but instead, she staggered over to Billy’s side and handed it up to Andrew, who cradled it with his good hand against the crook of his other elbow. Taking hold of Billy’s bridle again, Josephine marched up the hill, following the fence line and the tracks left by Billy on his descent to the clearing, without looking back again.

She sobbed openly as she walked, making no effort to stem the flood of tears or to suppress the noise of her crying. When they exited the trees into open pasture land, she no longer made any conscious effort to keep track of where they were going. She simply followed the fence to the top of the ridge. Then she traced the precipice of the ridge back to the trees, where she found her clothes lying in a pile at the foot of the tree. Without a word to Andrew, she took her bundle into the trees and changed her clothes. She balled up the trousers, shirt, and hat and left them under the tree, glad to be rid of her alternate personality and to leave behind her excursion into liberation. She hoped she never laid eyes on those clothes again as long as she lived, and she hoped she never held a gun in her hands again, either. She prayed to God no one, especially not Aunt Agatha or her father, ever found out what happened today, or what she had done. The thought of the day’s events started the tears in her eyes again.