Wild Embrace

His horse was still saddled from his journey. Earl quickly mounted and sunk his heels into the flanks of the animal. Snapping the reins harshly, he urged the stallion into a hard gallop. Something terrible must have happened to his daughter for her not to have returned home by now. If anything had happened to her because of her foolish do gooding, he would have no one but himself to blame—and he would never forgive himself. He shouldn’t have given her cause to be restless. He should have spent more time with her.

And Frannie had said Elizabeth had saved the strange girl while wandering about the Sound. Who was to say where Elizabeth had wandered in his absence?

His jaw tightened and his eyes became lit with fire. “Damn it, Frannie,” he grumbled to himself. “I thought you had more hold on her than that.”

But he knew that he could not blame Frannie for any of it. Frannie had tried with all of her might to keep Elizabeth in line. Even in San Francisco. Elizabeth had given him and Frannie fits at times. Frannie had never been unable to stop her. His daughter had a mind of her own. She was even more stubborn than her mother had been.

And that gave Earl much cause for concern.

The ride to Seattle seemed to take forever, but finally he was riding up the steep hill that led to the prison.

When he arrived at the ramshackle building, he dismounted, his eyes locking on the swaying noose on the hanging platform. An involuntary shudder coursed through him at the sight. He had seen many hangings in his lifetime.

But the worst sight of all for him had been when he had been in China. The Chinese did not hang their condemned. Instead, they lined them up in a row in the center of the city, and chopped their heads off.

Shaking the memory from his mind, Earl walked quickly to the prison, and marched into the office. The sheriff was sitting with his feet propped up on the desk. What Earl saw on top of the desk made him pale and feel light-headed.

“Elizabeth’s books,” he gasped, knowing them well, for he had bought every one of them for her during his travels. He now knew that she had been there.

She had brought the books to the incarcerated women. as Frannie had said. But what then had happened to her?

“What’d you say about those books?” Sheriff Nolan said, rubbing the raw, aching knot at the base of his skull. “Do you know the woman they belong to?”

Earl sighed heavily as he shifted his gaze to the sheriff. “More to the point,” he said dryly, “do you know her? Do you recall her being here?”

“Who wants to know?” Sheriff Nolan asked, rising slowly from his chair. He ambled out from behind the desk and stood eye to eye with Earl.

Earl squared his shoulders. “I’m her father,” he said, leaning his face into the sheriff’s, repulsed by the foul odor of chewing tobacco and rotgut whiskey. “Now you tell me. Where is she? She didn’t make it back home after comin’ here with her books.”

“Oh? Is that a fact?” Sheriff Nolan said, resting his hands on the handles of his pistols at each hip. “Describe this daughter to me and I’ll tell you whether or not she’s been here.”

“Damn it, Sheriff, I already know she’s been here,” Earl said. He nodded toward the books. “Those are hers. You don’t look like the sort that reads, or pays for books.”

Sheriff Nolan shrugged and went to his desk, lifting up a book and slowly turning the pages. “She’s an educated redhead, is she?” he asked. He recalled yanking her basket from her and wrestling her to the floor. Right after, he had been knocked unconscious. Ever since he had regained consciousness he had thought of hardly anything else but the redhead and that she had probably participated in the escape. She had been the distraction, and it sure as hell had worked.

Sheriff Nolan quickly decided not to let Earl in on his assumptions about Elizabeth. He had his own score to settle with the slut.

“So you did see my daughter?” Earl said, impatient with the sheriff’s vagueness.

“Yeah, guess I did at that,” Sheriff Nolan grumbled, slamming the book back down on his desk. “But that was short-lived. Soon after our introduction, someone knocked me out.” He shrugged. “As far as I can figure, she’s been taken captive by whoever hit me and set the Injun loose from his cell. Yeah, that’s how I see it.”

On hearing the sheriff say that Elizabeth had been abducted, the reality of the situation hit Earl hard. It was as if someone had slapped him across the face. He tottered, feeling a sudden queasiness. His sweet, his precious daughter’s life was at the mercy of hardened criminals, one of them an Indian condemned to die!

It was hard for him to bear—the possibility of having lost his daughter forever.

Then he came to his senses, realizing that something had to be done.

A posse. Yes, a posse had to be formed. Why was the sheriff here when Elizabeth had to be found?

The sheriff moved behind the desk again and slouched down into his chair. He reached for a fresh plug of chewing tobacco and bit off a large wad, stuffing it into one corner of his mouth.

Earl had to work hard at controlling his temper at the sheriff’s indifference. He leaned his hands on the desk and looked the sheriff square in the eye. “You say my daughter has been abducted and you just sit there twiddling your thumbs and chewin’ that damn tobacco?” he said, his voice co

ld and steady. “Am I to expect nothing more from you? You allow an innocent girl to be abducted and you talk about it as if it is something that happens every day, and nothing to concern your ass about?”

“I wouldn’t get myself riled up too much before knowing everything,” Sheriff Nolan said, turning his head, to spit a long stream of tobacco juice into the stained spittoon. “There’s a posse out there somewhere busy lookin’ for the criminals, and your daughter. That’s all that can be done at this point.”

The sheriff leaned his elbows on the desk. “Now I’d suggest you go home and wait for the posse’s return. Do you get my meaning? There ain’t nothin’ you can do here, ’cept get me riled, and I don’t think you want to get me riled, eh? What did you say your name was?”