Chapter Forty-Seven
U.S. Marshal James Crown awoke in the dark only to find himself--surprise! surprise!--still up on the back of some horse! With someone still seated behind him! His grandfather? No. The sounds and silhouettes of at least a dozen mounted men surrounded them. Koree! No-o. He and Koree--and the rest of the DD's crew--never traveled at night. Estefan? Nah. The horrendous hurt he was experiencing seemed to be in his chest--not his le-eg.
Speakin' a' whi-ich...
He started to reach for the stabbing pain in his chest--and then stopped...as he realized his wrists were cuffed together. He also took note that his Stetson had been returned to its rightful place--atop his sweat-soaked, and still slightly reeling, head. Which meant that-- "...Katelyn?" Jim Crown tentatively called out--in a cracked, hoarse whisper. Then he held his breath and sat there, stiff-as-a-board in his saddle, positively dreading the reply that his cautious question had called for. He hadn't guessed right even once all night! 'Plea-ease?!' the peace officer silently pleaded, 'Let me be wrong this time, too?!'
But he wasn't...
It was Katelyn's calm, hushed voice that answered him, all right. "I was hopin' you'd wake up," the lady said, sounding somewhat relieved, "'cuz we're almost to the canyo--"
"You shouldn't a' come here!" the Marshal shouted, sounding somewhat--no, sounding very--no-o extremely upset!
"I brought you yore 'ha-at'," the little lady replied as she opened and then pressed a canteen up to the lawman's parched lips. "Besides, this is our weddin' night'! Remember? Where else would a woman be on her weddin' night, but with her husband!" the bride calmly concluded--and calmly began pouring the canteen's cool contents carefully down her husband's incredibly dry-y hatch.
Jim Crown couldn't believe his ears! Why, Katelyn had actually sounded surprised that he should be upset with her! The little lady had just voluntarily placed her life in the hands of a very dangerous group of me-en! How could he be anything but upset about tha-at?! An', why was it that, whenever he woke up these days, the pretty--but pig-headed--nurse was right there--pourin' water down him?! The woman's water did the trick--soothing both her husband's thirst a-and his anger. "Thi-is...is hardly the 'time'...o-or the 'place'...for a honeymoon!" the grumpy groom grumbled--between swallows. "A-an'," he added, once again in a whisper, "speakin' a' rememberin' things...When I said there wouldn' be much of a future for a Mrs. Marshal, wasn't it you that said you were willin' ta accept that fa--?"
"I know what you said!" the woman suddenly interrupted, sounding a tad bit grumpy herself, "An' I know what I said! But--bein' a woman an' all--I jes' naturally felt obli-iged ta CHA-ANGE my mind!" She stopped talking and tightened her tender hold on him, "I want ta grow old with you, Jim Crown! I want the two a' us ta grow very o-old tagether! An'--ta make good an' sure a' that--I had ta bring you yore...'hat'!" she tacked on--and tucked the lawman's loaded Colt into the front waistband of his black trousers. (A sharp slap in the face had kept that Stevens' fellah's groping fingers from finding the peace officer's 'Peace-Maker', which the resourceful little lady had tied--high--on the inside of her right thigh).
"In case you haven't counted," her deeply touched and impressed--but still extremely unhappy sounding husband glumly pointed out. "They have more...'hats' than we do. About a dozen more than even I kin handle," he added even more glumly.
"Yah don' have ta handle 'em a-all...if yore's is pointed at the right person..." the resourceful woman hinted--in an even more hushed whisper.
"It wouldn' work."
"Why wouldn' it?!"
"'Cu-uz. If I was ta aim my 'hat' at his 'Honor', an' tell them all ta drop theirs, they would jes' aim their 'hats' at 'you-ou', an' tell me ta drop mine! An' the-en, we'd have us a MEXICAN STAND-OFF--with you-ou stuck right in the middle! An' I won' have you layin' yore life on the line!"
Katelyn was still confused. Weren't they already 'stuck in the middle'?! Weren't their lives already 'on the line'?! "Bu-ut, even if yore deputies agree ta trade--whoever it is they're after--for us...they're never gonna let you--"
"There ain't gonna be any 'trade'," the U.S. Marshal glumly assured her.
"So, then, what happens when we get to the canyon?!" the now extremely nervous woman wondered, "If you ain't already got a pla-an, you better come up with one real soo-oon! Like I said, we're almos' there!"
Jim Crown had had a pla-an. Right up until the little lady's arrival, the lawman had planned to slip the rope up over his head--and the bridle from off'n his horse's--an' then make a run for it! However, Katelyn's appearance meant that that plan would have to be altered...but only slightly. "You-ou won't be goin' ta the canyon. Wisper, here, kin out run any horse in the Strip!" the thoroughbred's owner proudly--but not too loudly--proclaimed. "Providin' she's not carryin' double the weight..." he added conditionally--and then cringed as all hell broke loose behind him.
"No-o!" Katelyn all but screamed. "No-o! I can't! I won't leave you!" she finished, forcing herself to speak more softly.
"You ca-an!" Jim Crown quietly corrected, "An' you wi-ill! About all that'll be waitin' for me--when we reach that canyon--is a bullet or two in the back. But I expect these...me-en'll have somethin' else in mind for you-ou!"
And it was Katelyn's turn to cringe. The woman could easily picture what they would have planned for her. The lady shuddered as she recalled how the fellah with the groping fingers had tried to fondle her. (The man may not a' been no 'baby killer', but Clayton Stevens had absolutely no 'qualms' attall about 'rapin' an' pillagin''!) Katelyn choked back her anguish and grief and then held on to her apparently still doomed-to-die marriage partner--for dear life! It appeared to her that it would take an 'act of God' now to save hi-im!
"When I jump," Jim Crown quietly continued, "I'll slip the bridle off an' get her turned around--so that she's headed back towards town. You jes' hold on tight! An' don't STOP 'til yah get there! An'--when you do-o...give Jamie a big hug for me..." the lawman added by way of a reminder--and clinched his argument for the little lady's leaving.
A calm followed...
Which the Marshal found most disturbing. Things were too calm...an' too hot...an' too humid. The trace of a breeze--that had been tugging on some of the longer locks of his sweat-drenched hair--had jes', suddenly, disappeared! The air was so completely 'still' now, that it was almost...eerie!
It was a rather striking 'stillness' in that it caused their little procession towards the canyon to stop.
And Jim Crown to stiffen--as the former cowboy suddenly remembered why-y he had found the 'calm' so dang disturbin'! He had experienced that eerie 'stillness' once before--on a cattle drive northeast a' Coldwater, Kansas! It took 'em over two weeks ta round up what was left a' the herd! An' two years ta rebuild what was left a' the town!
An' speakin' of an 'act a' Go-od'...
Katelyn sat there, listening to a sound somewheres off in the distance...a distance to the southwest of their location. It was a loud, 'roaring' sound, like that of a locomotive running towards them--at full throttle! "I didn' know trains came through here..." the bewildered woman blurted--right out loud.
"That ain' a trai-ain!" the Marshal out-right shouted, "That's a twister!" Then--just as Judge Rutgers and his rather alarmed acting associates were about to make a mad dash for the ridge on their right--their prisoner slipped the noose from around his neck, and the bridle from off'n his horse, and nudged the high strung animal straight ahead! (The critter loved ta run, so it didn't need much coaxin'.) Their captive had decided to take advantage of the sudden diversion and make a run for the canyon's entrance. They were close to the canyon all right! Close enough for Jim Crown to clearly see the opening in the silhouette of its forty foot tall front wall!
Unfortunately for them, they didn't quite make it that far. (The Marshal's mare may have been fa-ast, but even Will-O'-the-Wisp couldn' out run the hundred plus mile per hour winds of a tornado!) The pair only made it as far as the huge rock outcropping that was about a quarter of a mile away and--thus--several hundred yards short of their goal! As they neared the landmark, the fear-crazed filly reared up in response to the wind-blown debris in her face. And her passengers were part 'blown' and part 'thrown' from her bucking back.
The lawman landed hard and had the wind knocked out of him for the nth time! (It had happened so often of late, that he had actually lost count!) The Marshal did--however--remember that it was the second time--in less than a week--that he had been 'blown clean out a' his saddle'! Ah well, at least his shoulder had remained in place--this particular time! At long last, his lungs started working again and--following several 'gasped' in and ex-halations--Crown collected Katelyn, (Who had crash-landed beside him, but was, seemingly, uninjured.) and crawled, blindly, (Because of both the darkness and the extreme degree of flying debris.) into a protective crevice of that rock outcropping they'd been forced to drop in on. The wind was blowing so hard now that they could barely breathe! The lawman lay there, crammed into that crevice--with one of his cuffed hands clutching onto Katelyn's--and his other onto his hat! Above the already deafening 'roar' of the wind, the couple could hear the even louder, and almost constant, "KA-BOO-OOM!"ing of thunder--which accompanied all the lightning that kept streaking from the swirling clouds overhead!
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Doctor Jarrod Micheal Ellis was exhausted! And rightfully so! The fatigued physician hadn't been in a horizontal position in da-ays! To top off the weary young man's misery, the liveryman had lied! After traversing at least ten or fifteen miles, Jarrod's backside still had NOT adjusted itself to his saddle's WESTERN seat. He had let the horse plot their course. And the duo had been plodding steadily along--hopelessly lost--for hou-ours now! Needless to say, the saddlebred had deviated--greatly--from the route the deputy had so painstakingly drawn for them. (Lancer didn't need ta read no ma-ap ta find the Marshal.)
They had crossed the Cimarron--somewhere. And they had found a ridge, all right. Only, it wasn't where it should have been--which was to their right. The doctor was still completely in the dark as to their whereabouts--when he suddenly heard it. A TRAI-AIN! Great! All he had to do now was to find the tracks--and then follow them back to town! So the lost soul swung his 'leader horse' around and started heading towards the sound.
Then, just as their little search party of two topped the ridge, Jarrod stopped. The heat and humidity seemed to hang even more heavily in the air up there! But it was the atmosphere's sudden--and rather stifling--stillness that the physician had found to be so...arresting. Jarrod was thinking to himself, 'Something doesn't seem quite right around he--'
When somebody in the blackness below them suddenly shouted, "That ain' a trai-ain! That's a twister!"
Both the young man, and his mount, immediately recognized that somebody's shouted voice as belonging to the object of their search--the Marshal! The kid doctor from back East had no idea what a 'twister'! was. But, judging by the lawman's extremely high anxiety level, Jarrod was most definitely not about to stick around and find out! So he swung Lancer in a semi-circle, and started back down the leeward side of the ridge. The stiff-legged doctor dismounted when they reached the bottom and then led the big, black gelding over to an enormous boulder--behind which, he intended to take shelter from--whatever it was that a 'twister!' di-id! (Besides 'twist', i.e.)
The successful searchers stood there, under the protective cover of that really BI-IG rock, and watched as a rather large group of riders went galloping--wi-ildly--by! 'Perhaps,' the physician nervously pondered, 'we stopped too soo-oon!' The extremely anxious young man was contemplating remounting--when the 'twister!' suddenly hi-it!
The 'thing' came ROARING! up the windward side of the ridge--took a flying leap over their little hide-out--and then touched back down again--in a gully, several hundred yards to the northeast of them!
The physician had fallen to the ground out of fea-ear, and had landed in a fetal position, with his raised arms wrapped tightly around his head for protection from--whatever it was that seemed to be rushing so VIOLENTLY! towards them--er, over them--uh, away from them! Even though his eyes were tightly shut and his arms were clamped over his ears, the doctor could still 'see' the steady streaks of lightning and 'hear' the continuous claps of thunder which contributed to the 'twister!'s truly TERRIFYING! effect! Jarrod just laid there like that and listened--for a long, lo-ong time--until he could hear no mo-ore the 'twister!'s' gawd-awful "ROA-OAR"!
"We-ell, now," the doctor quipped as he slowly picked his trembling body back up off of the ground he'd been 'hugging', "THA-AT certainly was 'interesting', wasn't it!" he sarcastically understated to his unbelievably calm (In lieu of all the lightning...) companion. Things like 'THA-AT' never happened to doctors in New York, neither!
The animal nickered and tossed its head a few times--as if in agreement.
And its--now tremendously relieved--rider was forced to smile. "You do good work!" the young man admitted--aloud--and liberally began applying pats of praise to Lancer's sweat-lathered neck, "Think you can find him again?" The horse's rider grinned outright as the outstandingly intelligent animal snorted--and then, once again, tossed its head. "Then, lead the way!" the physician wearily invited--after hauling himself back aboard. "Wro-ong!" the doctor declared as the animal pivoted and started plodding off towards the canyon. "They went this-a-way!" he patiently pointed out and proceeded to tug the 'dumb plug' back around.
The horse proceeded to firmly plant all four of its huge feet in the ground and--despite the feel of the doctor's boot heel digging into its ribs--refused to take so much as even a single step in the direction that the wi-ildly galloping group had gone.
Speakin' a' whi-ich...
Jarrod was about to employ stronger methods of persuasion, when the regrouped group suddenly reappeared and went cantering back up the ridge they'd just raced down-- less than a hundred yards from their exposed position.
"You sure that was Crown's horse?!" someone angrily asked, speaking in an authoritative manner.
"Yes, sir!" someone peevishly replied as they topped the ridge, "And I swear--its saddle was empty! They got ta be down there--somewheres! We jes' got ta get ta them before they get ta the canyon!"
"So, start looking!" 'Sir' angrily suggested--er, ordered.
And his 'underlings' obediently disappeared down over the ridge.
And--suddenly--Jarrod knew what he had to do! "Go on!" the young man urged as he grabbed his medical bag and dropped back down--onto the ground. He started to tug the rifle clear of its case. 'He might need it more than me,' he silently realized--and his hand froze. Instead, he knotted the reins together and tossed them back over the horse's high head. "Go on, big fellah! Go find the Marshal...again! You've got to find him--fa-ast!" 'A-and fi-irst!' he silently pleaded as the animal--unerringly--plodded off, freely tossing its head. The young doctor quietly ducked back behind that BI-IG boulder--where he--and his medical bag--immediately hugged the ground.