She shook her head as she heard the soft whicker of greeting from the showy bay Renny had named Finn McCool after the ancient Irish hero.
From the moment she had purchased the animals Renny had shown a kind of kinship with them, lavishing them with affection, rubbing them down, combing mane and tail, making excuses for the equine foibles that had Ash near tearing her hair out before she had driven them ten miles from St. Louis.
But though he loved all the beasts, it was Cooley Renny stroked most often, Cooley who rubbed its soft muzzle against Renny's brow whenever the boy was near.
Even if the wagon was rickety, Ash thought with a grimace, at least she had managed to do one thing right in buying the stock that would pull it.
She was drawn from her thoughts by the weight of a sudden silence, aware that Kennisaw was standing behind her. She turned, looking up into those open, animated features, and what she saw there filled her with dread. Jones was staring off toward a cluster of buildings, his face pale beneath its leathery tan.
"Mr. Jones, what is it? The wagon?" Ash followed the path of his gaze and glimpsed two figures melting back into the shadows, the midmorning sun filling the place where they had been.
Kennisaw seemed to shake himself, but the smile he flashed her lacked sparkle. "No. No. The wagon's fine, ma'am. It's just for a moment there I thought I saw a ghost."
"Someone you know?"
"Someone I should’ve plugged with a bullet years ago." There was a deathly cold to the voice that had been so warm.
Ash regarded him quietly until his lips twisted into a mockery of a smile. "Don't worry, missy. I'm not some half-crazed, glory-hungry fool 'bout to go off in a hail o' gunfire. And those men I saw... well, couldn't be the ones I was speakin' on anyways. They've both been buried in some hellhole prison for passing twenty years. Probably dead by now. Hope they're roastin' on the devil's own spit."
Ash crossed herself, and Kennisaw seemed to force his dark away.
"Pardon, ma'am. My mouth's always been a little too free, my wits a little too slow. Now, as for your wagon, I think it'll hold right enough. Logan's good with his mendin', and if you take care with the wheel, nurse it along a bit, you should be fine. But..." Jones drew out the word, his eyes tracking to where Renny stood amongst the horses. "Ma'am, those ain't—tell me those ain't yours."
"The horses? I bought them from the man who sold me the wagon. They're a little, er, restive now and again, but—what's wrong with them?" She groaned, weighed down with a kind of hopeless foreboding.
"Probably nothin'. 'Cept the chances of those horses pullin' this heavy wagon all the way to Oregon..." Kennisaw's voice trailed off. Ash couldn't bear to look at him, see one more disaster reflected in his eyes.
"Mr. Jones." She struggled to keep the quaver from her voice. But the confidence Kennisaw's humor had renewed in Ash minutes before crumbled, doubts crashing down on her again.
"Oxen," Kennisaw muttered, but it was as if he didn't know what he was saying. "Now, that's what you... son of a bitch!" The virulence of the oath stunned Ash, and she looked up to see Jones's bead-bright eyes glittering with hate, disbelief, and a very real fear.
The world seemed to explode in a heartbeat. The two figures Ash had glimpsed between the buildings charged out from behind the corner of the saloon as Jones grabbed for the gun stuffed in his belt. Liam, engrossed in a game with Shevonne, darted into the line of fire.
The sight of the boy seemed to slam into Kennisaw with the force of a blow, and the man cursed, dodging behind the wheelwright's shop. Ash knew instinctively that he was trying to draw his pursuers away from her and the children. Knew, as well, that he had probably lost his best chance to face his attackers.
She had to do something... something to slow them... help...
The footfalls of the men cracked into the hard-packed earth as they bolted toward her, toward the place where Kennisaw had vanished.
She screamed—the terrified princess scream she had delighted the children with in countless make-believe games—and, with a dramatic skill that would have made Sarah Siddons proud, faked a stumble, flinging herself into the two running figures, entangling both in arms and legs and the folds of her skirts.
They tumbled over her, cursing, elbows and knees slamming into her as they fell. Ash heard the children shriek as the impact drove the breath from her lungs, dust filling her nose and mouth until she couldn't see, couldn't breathe.
She struggled to pull herself upright as the men rolled off her, her fingers clawing the tangle of gold curls from her face. But as her eyes locked with those of the men she had duped she wished she had kept her face buried in the dirt.
Images burned into her mind, and she knew that as long as she lived, she would never forget them. A scarred visage with soulless eyes, the other face atop a giant of a man, features carved with a kind of bestial savagery, dull, yet no less frightening.
Evil.
The sensation jolted through her as if she were peering into the world of demons and devils and spirits that old Father O'Hara had told of. She tried to raise her fingers, cross herself, certain in that instant the men would kill her.
But the wiry one only cracked his fist into her face with a power that sent her careening backward. Pain shot through her, the world spinning crazily on its axis as she smacked back into the hub of a wagon wheel.
Black splotches swam before her eyes, dragging her toward unconsciousness, but the desperate cries of Liam and Shevonne, the panic in Renny's shouts made her fight the whirling mists.
She struggled to open eyelids seemingly weighted with lead, the tear-streaked faces of the children spinning in sickening circles before her. Arms were helping her up—hands smelling of wood shavings and hot iron. The wheelwright... what had his name been? Logan...
"Ma'am? Are you all right, ma'am?" His anxious voice drove spikes of pain into her skull.
