OUT OF THE DARKNESS (THE PRESCOTT SERIES) (24 page)

Tears roll
ed down her face as she remembered the first fatalities of that fateful morning. Jason moved from his chair to sit beside her and took her into his arms. Holding her tight as she traveled back to a place she could scarcely confront. Her body trembled as memories swept her back in time.

“We weren’
t prepared when shots were fired. Samuel Davies and his little boy, Sammy was the first to die. The little boy stood next to his father, helping with the horses.” She blinked back tears. “Sammy was so proud his father let him help with the horses.” Jade didn’t understand how someone could harm a child.

“
Leona knelt at her husband’s side holding their dead child. The scared faced man rode up and shot her in the back at close range.” She remembered the scene vividly, as they lay there in a macabre embrace. A family perished for another man’s greed.

“Nicholas rolled under our wagon to take cover, firing on the ten riders circling the wagons. I crawled in beside him. Jeffery Leghorn ran to his wagon to get his family to safety
. The outlaws shot him in the leg. His wife, Ellen, managed to gather their three children, ages two, five, and six. Jeffery dragged himself to their wagon, sat on the ground with his back to a wheel, and fired as his family ran to get under the wagon. A man gunned down five-year-old Timmy, and his mother screamed in terror.

“She put two-year-
old Sarah down to hold Timmy close as he whimpered, dying in her arms. The frightened little girl ran toward her father, and was trampled to death by the outlaw’s horses.”

She would never forget how
pitiful the toddler looked, crumpled, lying in the dirt, in her favorite blue dress, her body torn and bloody.

“They never tried to stop their horses from trampling that poor
child. Nicholas nor I could do nothing but watch,” Jade agonized. The remembered horror of being so helpless brought a tremor to Jade’s body. Jason pulled her tighter. She gained strength from his warm embrace.

“I felt a burning sensation in my upper arm as I took aim at the riders wh
o shot Jeffery and realized I’d been hit. Blood oozed from Nicholas side. Ignoring our wounds, I lay beside him, and used my father’s rifle to help protect the Leghorn family until they could take cover.

“Jeffery shot one of the riders. He fell n
ot ten feet away from him, wounded. The man pulled his holstered gun and shot Jeffery while he reloaded his rifle. Two men rode up to help the wounded man on the ground remount, as they did, they shot two-year-old Adam and his mother.

“Just as I saw the mother and child murdered, I felt Nicholas jerk.
A man rode up next to our wagon and shot him again and again. One bullet went through his shoulder, into my side. He had thrown his body over mine to protect me. The last thing I remember was blood. Blood everywhere. Blood on everyone. Blood on me.”

Jason watche
d as Jade walked through the darkness of her mind. Her bright eyes dimmed, and she wore a dazed expression. He realized why the sight of his blood, when he had cut his hand, had such a profound effect on her. He pulled her onto his lap.

“I’m here
, Jade. Come back to me, sweetheart. I’m waiting for you.”

Jason picked up
her hand and rubbed back and forth with his thumb until her eyes focused again. Speaking softly, he encouraged her into the present, where his love waited, not to be lost in the horror of her past.

Jade looked at him with haunted green eyes. He knew she had walked in the darkest part of her past alone and survived. She was with him now, in the present, to finish her agonizing journey.

“When I awoke, it was dark. Wounded, I felt stiff and sore. I wiggled out from underneath Nicholas’ lifeless weight and crawled from beneath the wagon. The full moon cast an eerie light on what remained of our lives. Each wagon had been ransacked, every item worth taking, had been stolen, along with the horses.” Jade shuddered. The scene before her had been deathly quiet, much like the lull after a storm. The air was heavy with something unnamed, something unseen, yet felt.

Remembering how she brushed Nicholas’ blond hair from his face brought
a tightness to her throat. He seemed so peaceful, if not for the blood covering his body. She had to leave them there. Each one where they fell. She couldn’t bury them. The thought of what had happened to their bodies, preyed on her mind. Putting away the gruesome thought, she concentrated on Nicholas’ last moments.

“He saved my life
, Jason.” Tears ran down her cheeks and dropped on their folded hands. “If he hadn’t covered me with his body those men would have known I wasn’t dead.”

“He must have loved you very mu
ch to protect you even in death.”

Jason
’s words consoled her. Nicholas hadn’t realized that by his unselfish act, he had also saved his daughter’s life.

“Yes, we loved each other very much. But, I don’t believe we were in love. If that makes sense,” Jade said
, trying to explain the emptiness in her life after the loss of everyone she knew and loved.

“Stumbling around, dazed and in pain
, I knew without a doubt I was alone. Totally alone for the first time in my life. In the middle of nowhere. Without food. Without water. But most of all without Nicholas who had been a big part of my life for as long as I could remember.

“That’s when
the panic set in, swelling, rising within me until I wanted to scream. The fear was so great I heard nothing, only the screams echoing in my mind. I felt the screams inside me would never stop.”

Reaching up she smoothed her hand over his rough cheek, drawing his lips down for a soft whisper of a kiss.
She pulled away and stared into his sky-blue eyes.

“
I was all alone until I heard your voice calling to me out of the darkness that had consumed me,” Jade told him.

How could she explain
that she loved him, how the simple sound of his voice had brought her back from the edge of the darkness her mind had nearly been totally lost in? He had given her a reason not to give into the madness, the despair, the darkness. He was her light of hope that she had nearly given up of finding.

“Do you want to stop?” Jason g
ave her hand an encouraging squeeze.

“No, I want you to know what you mean to me.
What your voice meant to me. If it had not been for you, I would still be lost in the grip of my nightmares. Now that I’ve started, I want to tell it all. Perhaps, it will help wash away the memory,” she told him with a warm smile.

“I picked up a canteen of water lying at my feet, along with a small sac
k of food which belonged to six-year-old Adam,” her voice broke.

She had staggered into the night. For two days,
she’d walked wherever her feet took her, not knowing if she traveled in a straight line or in circles. Her clothes were stiff with blood, her hair matted, which added to the horror she endured as she trudged on. Her flesh wounds began to scab over. Without food or water, which she had used the last of that morning, she was completely lost.

“I saw
a group of trees about the same time I noticed men on horseback riding toward me. I had been walking in a stupor, not really seeing the forest until then. Then, I saw it as a refuge from the oncoming riders. I dashed into the underbrush just as I heard the riders give a shout for me to stop.

“On foot
, I could find small places to hide. For two-and-a-half-days, I eluded them. Late in the evening, on the third day, they spotted me. They were crisscrossing the forest floor searching for signs. I grabbed up the hem of my dirty, torn dress and ran. They chased me. I splashed across a stream of water into a clearing.”

Fear
had washed over her in waves of panic. Indians! She had run straight into an Indian Village. The stories she had heard about Indians made her blood run cold.

“I stopped when I saw all the huts placed in a circle around a larger hut made of animal skins. The Indian village was not
large but there were several warriors sitting beside small fires. I didn’t know whether to continue on or to turn around and take my chances with the men behind me.”

“The men who had been chasing you, were they from th
e village?” Jason asked.

He
r mind drifted back to the day she’d had to make a life or death decision. She looked over her shoulder and that’s when she saw him, sitting his dark horse: the man in black with the soulless black eyes, the scar streaking across his face.

Her decision
made, she calmly walked into the Indian encampment, and accepted whatever lay ahead. Because what lay behind was certain death. To her, one death was not any different from another. But it wouldn’t be at the hands of those who had cruelly taken everything else from her. She boldly walked into the Indian’s camp. The outlaws rode away while the Indian’s attention centered on her.

Drawing herself from the past, she
finally answered his question.

“No, they were white men.
They were the same men who had killed Nicholas and everyone on the wagon train.” Warm tears trickled down her cheeks, and her voice broke. “They would have killed me at the wagon train if they hadn’t thought I was already dead. Covered in blood the way I was, they thought I was dead until they saw me in the woods.”

Jason watched pain flicker across her beautiful face. He understood why she had blocked her mind from the horror she had suffered. He felt her pain as if it were his own. He had come to know and love her over the months, but he never realized what inner strength she possessed, until this moment. Her fragile appearance was only a facade for the person who had survived tremendous grief, pain, and loss.
Pulling her tighter in his arms, he laid his chin on the top of her head. He knew this was only part of what she had endured.

“Are you sure they were white men who did this? You were lost and in shock. Could you have been mistaken?” It was hard for him to believe white men being that savage.

“No Jason, they were white men,” she said with certainty. “The Indians never harmed me, not really. I think they were more afraid of me than I was of them. They wouldn’t touch me, but poked me with sticks to show me what they wanted done. They made me put animal fat in my hair to change the color. I think the color of my hair scared them most of all. That or all the moaning and whining you said I did in my sleep,” she said, trying to inject a lighter tone. “I believe, they thought if I left, I would tell where their village was located. Then soldiers would come to destroy them. So they wouldn’t let me go, finally I escaped.

“Trackers from the village came after me. I was trapped in a stream under a hollowed out overhang, behind a large tree when Three Feathers found me.” Jade shuddered as she remembered her fear as she
saw his head break through the water right in front of her. “You can imagine my surprise when he gave me his pouch of food and a skin of water, then left. I wandered in the forest several days before I stumbled onto the wagon trail.”

“That’s
when Margaret and I found you.”

He wiped the tears from her cheek with his thumb,
kissing her deeply, yet gently.

“I wish I knew what happened to Three Feathers pouch. It meant a great deal to him. I never saw him without it until he gave it to me. I would like to have ha
d it to give to Nicky someday.”

“I have it,” Jason told her.

“You do?” Jade asked in surprise.

“Yes, when Margaret insisted that all the buckskins you ha
d on be burnt, Cookie saved it.

The design on it was very intriguing and unique. Pete said it was some type of marriage pouch. You’ll have it to give to Nicky when the time comes.”

Jason was glad he could do this one small thing for Jade. The love he saw in her eyes was all he had ever wanted. How little did he know, when he stopped to investigate the ragged bundle at the side of the wagon trail, how it would change his life. Smiling he bent to kiss his reason for being.

“Someday
those men will face justice for the crimes they’ve committed. No one can escape forever. They’ll never change. One day the law will be waiting for them.” Jason only wished the trail wasn’t so cold, he would have gladly brought justice to their necks.

Jade was right. Telling her story had brought healing to her mind and to her soul. The last few months were some of the happiest she could remember. She and Jason laughed, loved and their children shared in their joy. Their ‘marriage of convenience’ was now a marriage of deep abiding love; the kind of love John and Margaret shared.

Last night Jason had made love to her as never before. Their lovemaking had always been frenzied, intense, their desire matched and fulfilled. Last night Jason had made love to her, slowly, comforting her with his body, soothing her with words of love. Holding her during the night, as if she were his most treasured possession. It had brought a new dimension to their love.

Jade opened the backdoor to step out onto the porch. She looked over the land and sighed. This was her home. The large oak with its outstretched branches swayed gently in the breeze. The swing where Jason asked her to marry him rocked gently to the rhythm of their love.