Sisters (27 page)

He met her eyes. "Let's
get her into the shack and tie her up," he said.

"Jake, dammit, I don't
think--"

"Let's get 'er in
there! She's nuthin' but a damn squaw. Look at her. Look how she's
dressed. A squaw, that's all."

The one thought was Huber
looked at the shirt, the trousers, and seemed emboldened. He rode up
her her on the left and reached for her reins. As soon as she saw his
hand go out, she pulled the buckskin to the right, gave the animal a
hard kick, and set out across the prairie. She could hear the two men
shouting; they she heard the pounding of hooves behind her. She
kicked her horse again and again, urging him on, but the sound of the
hooves behind her grew nearer and nearer. She turned to see how close
they were, and felt her hat fly off, her hair come loose. But none of
it mattered, because they were very close indeed, and gaining.

Within seconds the black
horse was alongside. She knew the riding would be reaching out either
to grab her or the reins, and so she reached down and closed the
fingers of one hand around the tip of the cane she had tucked in the
saddle. She looked over, and when she saw the rider's shiny black
eyes flick away from her for a moment, she pulled the cane out and
swung the heavy ivory handle at his head. She connected, not solidly
enough to knock him from his mount, but she heard him grunt, saw his
hand go up to his face, saw him drop back.

Suddenly she was jerked
from the buckskin with a force that took her breath away. It was as
though a huge vise had closed around her waist, and she struggled
against it, struggled to breathe. Rodman had ridden up on the other
side of her, and with an arm around her middle, pulled her from her
horse. With a strength his side belied, he held on to her with one
arm as he reined his horse around and headed back toward the Wilson
homestead. When Sophie realized what had happened, she struggled, but
he had managed to imprison her arms, and when she lashed out with her
feet, she only kicked his horse.

Finally she quit struggling
and let herself go limp. She watched the ground rushing past and knew
what she had to do. She was afraid, but but as afraid as she was of
what would happen if Rodman got inside the shack. She waited, giving
him time to conclude she had given up. Then she tensed her body,
twisted around suddenly, and sank her teeth into the flesh of his
cheek. With a shout of pain, he released her, and she felt herself
falling. She remembered to relax, tried rolling herself into a ball,
and while the impact jolted her, it did her no injury. But when she
got up to run, she fell immediately. Her ankle had given way.

She saw Rodman riding back
toward her, saw him take a coil of rope from his saddle, and she got
up and tried to run away. And failed again. Tears of rage and
frustration ran down her cheek as she watched his lasso arc through
the air and settle around her. She grabbed hold of the rope to
prevent the loop from drawing too tight, and felt herself being
dragged over the prairie. She was bumped and twisted and turned,
pulled gasping through the icy creek. When finally Rodman stopped his
horse, she found herself unable to release the rope. Her fingers were
cramped around it, and every one of her bones felt broken, every inch
of her body cried out in pain.

Rodman pulled her up
roughly, pushed her inside the shack, and tied her to a chair. She
managed a few words. "Others are coming. You won't get away with
this."

"We'll be through with
what we have to do by the time they get here."

He left her alone, and she
looked around dazedly. Baby must have been washing dishes when the
lynching party came. There were broken plates on the floor, and two
buckets of water on the kitchen table, one still with soapsuds in it.
Sophie struggled with the ropes for a moment, but the knot was
tight--and she hurt so many places. She'd wait, just wait until
someone came. Lydia and Anna May and Amy would be here soon.

But what was it Rodman had
said? "We'll be through by the time thye get here." Through
with what? What else were they going to do? She shut her eyes and
listened, suddenly frantic to know what was going on outside the
shack. She could hear the creek, and somewhere high in the sky an
eagle cried out. Voices, too--she thought she heard voices, but their
murmur was low and far away, and she wasn't sure.

Then she heard something
else, an almost imperceptible sound from beneath her feet, and she
knew instantly what it was. The children. Baby had hidden them down
in the cellar.

Before she had time to
think what to do, there were voices close by. "What're we going
to do with her?" Wasn't that Huber?

"Get rid of her,"
Rodman answered.

"How? Can't have her
found with a bullet in her, wouldn't look right. Could cause a lot of
trouble. Back East, she's a big name. I mean, it's one thing to hang
that whore, but, hell, that one, I don't know..."

Screw back East. She's
nothin' but a squaw."

"But a famous one,
dammit."

"We'll make it look
like an accident. Like she was out here and got caught in a prairie
fire."

The other voice took a
moment to consider. "Ought to be easy to manage, parched as the
grass is. But you'll have to cut her loose to make it look right."

"Get everybody across
the creek. Then I'll get a fire going along this side of it. I'll cut
her loose just before I get outta here myself."

The voices faded away, but
what they had said stayed with Sophie. Her mind was muddled with pain
and exhaustion, and she kept hearing their words: "... hangin'
that whore... nothin' but a squaw..." Whores and squaws
together. No difference to these men. Whores and squaws, no better
than animals to them, things that could be killed with little
compunction. Stupid. She'd been so stupid not to think how that
attitude endangered her.

Suddenly she thought of
Helen. She would have faced the same danger! Deer Woman was her
grandmother too, and Helen must have been a thorn in the side of
these men, coming out here, taking up with the Wilsons. Could these
men have killed Helen? The thought sent a shot of adrenaline through
Sophie, and she began to struggle anew with the rope. Rodman could
have killed Helen. He could have gone to the Stevenson house to warn
her off and Helen had refused to listen and Rodman had pushed her
down the stairs. It was easy to imagine how it could have happened.
And now he would kill her! And the children in the cellar. My God,
she'd forgotten about them. The children! If she told him they were
there, he'd let them go, wouldn't he?

She heard a far-off
crackling noise. It sounded as if someone were wadding up a piece of
paper, but she knew what it really was: fare! Rodman had begun
setting the grass near the creek on fire. Her mind raced, trying to
think what she should do, and then Rodman was in the doorway of the
shack. "The children!" she cried out. "You must get
them out of the cellar!" But his eyes were glittering with a
peculiar excitement, and he ignored her, seemed not even to hear her
as he cut her ropes with a bowie knife and ran from the shack.

She pushed herself out of
the chair and limped after him. "Rodman! Rodman!" But when
she reached the doorway and looked out, he had ridden his horse
almost to the creek. The flames along the edge of it had begun to
quicken, and she saw his horse shy away. He jerked the animal around
roughly, lashing it until it jumped the fire, carrying him to the
water on the other side.

Then she saw the bodies.
They were hanging from a limb bent by their weight until their feet
almost touched the ground. The hanging tree had begun to smolder, but
the grass was burning more quickly, and flames beneath the dangling
feet leaped up, and Sophie saw Baby's red dress catch fire. In the
flare and the motion of the flames, she imagined she saw the body
move, jerking in a macabre dance. Then, as though the finale had
come, the flames reached the rope around the neck, parted it, and the
body fell to the ground. Baby no more, merely a burning lump of a
thing lying alongside another lump that had once been Zack Wilson.

Suddenly a great flame shot
out the top of the cottonwood from which Baby and Zack had been
hanged. It was as if the flame had eaten through the heart of the
tree and was being funneled skyward, blown to the heavens by a
giant's breath. Then the tree burst open, exploding outward with a
loud bang and sending flames in every direction.

Sophie saw how quickly the
fire was moving toward the shack, creeping along under the grass like
a bright liquid, then setting the stalks ablaze. She turned from the
doorway and went to the trapdoor at the cabin's center. The children!
Amid the pain and fright, a single thought prevailed. She had to help
the children. She struggled with the trapdoor until she finally got a
hand underneath and could pull it aside. From the cellar, Jenny
looked up, her mouth a round O of fright. The boy slept in her arms.

"Here, can you lift
him so I can reach?" Sophie asked. As she pulled the boy up, the
pain in her arms and shoulders was almost unbearable, but through it
she noted that the child's sleep was unnaturally deep. Baby must have
drugged him, used laudanum to keep him quiet. So they didn't
completely surprise her. She'd had some time to prepare.

But now the boy would have
to be carried, and Sophie didn't know if she could do it.

Suddenly it occurred to her
that the best thing might be to leave the children where she'd found
them, crawl into the cellar with them, pull the lid tight, and let
the fire burn over them. But the shack was all wood, would burn
fiercely, and how would they breathe down there? The cellar would not
save them; likely it would become their grave. She laid the sleeping
boy on the floor, helped the girl out, and knew she had to think of
another plan quickly.

When she stood, she knew
for certain she could not carry the boy and outrun the fire. Her
ankle was the main reason, but there were other pains, bone-deep
ones, and she knew no effort of will would move her very far,
especially if she were carrying the boy.

What could they do? How
could they escape? Smoke was heavy in the air now, stinging her eyes,
and the crackling noise grew louder. She knew she hadn't long to
devise a scheme, but what? What could they do?

She saw the water in the
dish buckets. It was so pitifully little, but she used it in the only
way she could think. Pulling the blankets off the beds, she wet down
three of them until the water was gone. She would wrap herself and
the children in wet blankets. That would give them a few minutes.

The girl screamed, and
Sophie whirled around to see a ball of flame shooting through the
window. It streaked around the floor of the shack, making an
unearthly noise. Cuhh-ruck! Cuhh-ruck! Sophie saw the feathers, knew
the half-live fireball was one of Baby's chickens. She grabbed a
broom from the corner and struck the bird again and again until she
had killed it and extinguished the flames.

The smell of burned flesh
and feathers added to the smoke, and Sophie knew they had to flee.
She wrapped each of the children in a wet blanket, then herself,
instructing the girl to hold onto her no matter what. Sophie picked
up the sleeping boy and stepped out the door.

She had not realized the
fire was so close. Just yards away, the flames were roaring, turning
the world bright and hot as though the sun had fallen. Sophie ran,
but each step was agony. How long could she keep it up? Even without
the pain, how long could she outrun the fire carrying one child and
pulling another?

Then she saw the sod house,
and she knew that's where they had to go. The earth wouldn't burn.
No, the earth wouldn't burn, though everything on it might turn to
ashes. As she ran toward the soddie, a huge jackrabbit ran across in
front of her, nearly causing her to fall, but she held on to her
footing until she had stumbled into the sod house with the children.
She turned to close the door behind her, to shut out the approaching
flames, but there was no door! Nor windows either!

She pulled the wet blanket
off her shoulders and held it up to the door, trying frantically to
jam the top edge of it into the dried earth over the door. She
pounded with her fingertips until she had bent all her fingernails
back. Each jab with her fingers pained all the way to the shoulder,
but she finally managed to get the blanket hung at the door, and she
put the children's blankets up at the windows.

She pulled the girl to the
floor where the sleeping boy lay, and they waited. The room grew hot,
then hotter still, and the air was thick with smoke. The noise of the
fire grew louder and louder, sounding like the roar of a huge, hungry
beast. Jenny began to whimper, and Sophie tried to soothe her,
stroking her back. Breathing was even more difficult by the second,
and the child would only make it worse for herself by crying.

Sophie fought to keep her
panic down, tried to ignore the aching tightness growing in her
lungs. Would they die here? Had all her effort simply brought them
into an oven where they would die?

It was hot, so hot. Sophie
could feel rivulets of perspiration running off her, stinging the
scratches and abrasions. HoT! It was so hot! How long before the
fluids inside their bodies began to bubble, bursting them apart just
as the boiling sap had exploded the cottonwood tree? She struggled
for each breath, pulling and pulling with lungs frantic for oxygen.

The great growl of the
flames approached a crescendo, and she felt herself growing faint,
slipping away. Louder and louder grew the roar of the flame, louder
still...

And then the heat and noise
began to fade. Gradually she came fully conscious and realized the
fire had passed over them, by them--and they were alive! She rolled
over and breathed deeply. The air was acrid still, but it fed her
starved body, and she lay there gasping at it, pulling at it, as
grateful for its ash-filled nourishment as if it were the sweet air
of the mountaintop.