“It’s her. I swear it is. Her husband tossed me in the dirt, and he’s worth millions.”
Frankie, in disgust, pushed the boy away. “How stupid I was to send a boy to do a man’s job. You see this?” She held up a torn newspaper. “They are identical twins. One is married to a rich man, and one is…” She turned to glare at Blair, who was listening with wide-eyed interest. “And one is my dear, beloved Leander’s wife.”
Blair was much too upset, hungry, tired, and too ready to believe what she thought to be true, to hear the sarcasm in the woman’s voice.
“Get out of here,” the Frenchwoman shouted at the boy. “Let me think what’s to be done.”
She might have thought faster if she’d known that at that moment a man was lying on his stomach on the rock above, his rifle aimed and ready, three more rifles at his side. And another man waited at the entrance to the hidden canyon to receive a signal from the man above.
Chapter 21
Blair was sure that her spirits had never been lower in her life. Maybe it was a combination of hunger, thirst, fear, everything combined, but it suddenly seemed that very few people in her life had ever really loved her. Her stepfather had always hated her, and in school, the only man who’d ever been interested in her had ended by jilting her, and now her husband was actually in love with another woman—and always had been. She didn’t actually believe that she could get him back. Back? She’d never had him to begin with.
“I need to go to the outhouse,” she mumbled to Françoise at dawn, when the woman returned to the shack. Blair had waited as long as possible, because the last time she’d gone, Françoise had sent one of her outlaws to guard Blair, and then she’d caught the man peeping through a knothole.
“I shall go with you this time,” the Frenchwoman said as she untied the knots on Blair’s wrists.
When Blair stood, she was dizzy and began to sway on her feet. The lack of circulation in her body was making her extremities cold.
“Come on,” the woman said, jerking Blair. “You didn’t look too tired when you were scaling that wall.”
“That might have been what did it,” Blair said, as the woman caught her arm and half dragged her from the shack.
The outhouse stood near the entryway into the box canyon, as if someone had planned to keep guard from inside that malodorous place. Blair went inside while Françoise stood outside, a rifle across her shoulder, keeping watch.
Blair had no more than closed the door when she heard a muffled scream. With some curiosity, but also with a feeling of dread that something awful had happened, she leaned forward to look out the convenient knothole. The next moment, the door was rattled and, when it was found to be locked, she was knocked backward by the force of an enormous fist, knuckles wrapped, coming through the weathered boards of the door. Before she could straighten up and look for a weapon to protect herself, the sound of shooting came from outside.
The hand that was coming through the door fumbled for and opened the latch. Blair poised herself to leap at the man who was trying to take her.
When the door was opened, she jumped and landed against the big, hard form of Kane Taggert.
“Stop that!” he ordered when she started beating him with her fists. “Come on, let’s get you two out of here. Another minute, and they’ll see that you’re missin’.”
Blair quietened and glanced down at Françoise, tucked under Taggert’s left arm as if she were a sack of flour. “Is she hurt?”
“Just a nick on the chin. She’ll wake up in a little while. Run for it.”
Blair ran through the narrow opening, ducking the bullets that seemed to be coming from everywhere. Behind her was the big body of Kane and she wondered who it was shooting from the cliff above them. She prayed that it wasn’t Houston.
Kane tossed Françoise’s unconscious body across the saddle of his horse. “I hadn’t figured on her. Get up there,” he said, as he picked Blair up and dropped her into the saddle behind the inert form of the Frenchwoman. “Tell Westfield that I’ll stay here a while and keep ‘em busy down there. The three of you head on up to the cabin and I’ll meet you there.” With that, he slapped the horse on the rump and started Blair up the hill.
Blair hadn’t gone but a few feet when Lee jumped out from the trees and grabbed the horse’s reins. The grin he wore threatened to split his face. “I see you’re all right,” he said, as he put his hand on her leg and caressed it.
“And so is she,” Blair said with all the haughtiness she could muster, as she gave him Kane’s message. “I’m sure you had Taggert rescue her for yourself.”
Leander gave a groan and looked at the woman as if he’d just noticed her. “I hate to ask this, but is s
he the Frenchwoman who is the leader of the gang that kidnapped you?”
“I’m sure you know who she is as well as anyone. Tell me, did you arrange for me to be taken?”
Lee swung up on his horse. “No, but I may arrange for something lethal to happen to my father. Let’s not waste any more time. Taggert says there’s a cabin hidden up in the mountains. We’ll stay there while he gets the sheriff and a posse. Let’s go—and stop giving me death looks!”
Blair tried her best to maneuver the big horse up the mountainside to follow Lee, but it wasn’t easy. Françoise began to wake and moan, and when her movements caused the horse to shy, Lee stopped and looked back at the women. With a sigh of exasperation, he glanced at Blair’s face, then away. He pulled the Frenchwoman onto his horse in front of him, and told her that if she knew what was good for her, she’d be quiet.
Blair turned her nose up in the air and moved away from them both.
Kane caught up with them by taking a shortcut up a steep bit of rock that the horses couldn’t travel and met them before they’d gone very far.