"Yes."

"Give me the address."

Rob took a pale blue envelope with Clara Wainwright's return address on it out from under the whiskey bottle and handed it over. He watched Cord fit the matching piece of stationery into the envelope then push both deep into a coat pocket.

"So your aunt wrote the note," he said.

"Yes."

Cord helped himself to a cup of coffee and sat down opposite Rob at the table. "You'd better tell it."

Relief sluiced through Rob, yet the fear and guilt were not diminished. His mouth moved, but no words came. The amber eyes narrowed. "She's all right isn't she?"

Rob stuttered, "N-no, yes, well, mostly." Did he really see raging contempt in those terrible eyes, or was it his own opinion of himself reflected back from an icy void?

Cord snarled, "Tell it!"

After a few false starts, Rob told it.

For months, Edward Wells had all his friends alert, waiting to see Cord in town without Anne. When it finally happened today, Edward shut his shop and he and Rob hurried home. Edward told Leona that the thought of a grandchild had made him realize he was wrong and want to reconcile with Anne.

As Anne had known she would, Leona had thought over the prospect of a grandchild herself after that terrible day at Ephraim's. Although unable to see Anne again, she visited Martha during the week to tell her that she did not share her husband's or son's feelings about the baby and wanted Anne to know. Leona had admitted as much to Rob, but neither one of them said anything to Edward.

Now Leona was moved to tears by Edward's change of heart, innocently believing every word. She didn't seem to consider the appearance in the street of a team and carriage owned by Edward's friend unusual. Edward, Leona, and Rob drove to the ranch, Leona happily antic.i.p.ating her family reconciled again. Rob rode in grim silence, knowing and disagreeing with what he thought was his father's plan.

The first difficulty was Anne's att.i.tude, for she came to the door with the Colt revolver in her hand. "You have no business here. Go home."

Leona thought a simple explanation would move her daughter, but it did not. Unlike Anne, Edward could lie convincingly when he wanted to, but nothing he said alleviated Anne's suspicion or unyielding att.i.tude.

"I don't care if you've had a change of heart. I haven't. You can go to h.e.l.l and so can Rob. If you want to act decently for a change, let Mother visit me here and in town without Rob sulking around in the background all the time. Neither of the two of you are welcome in my house or in my life."

The argument went on and on until Leona was shaking with the cold. Anne was willing to have her mother come in and warm up, but Edward saw his wedge and used it.

"Your mother's either going inside with all of us or staying outside with all of us.

There's no reason we can't at least discuss this rationally. I never realized you had such an unforgiving nature. Don't you think it would be better for everyone concerned if we began to work things out?"

"You and your friends tried to murder Cord right here in this yard. There's nothing about it we can work out."

But in the end her mother's misery, standing in the bitter wind, moved Anne to let them in the house. Rob still hoped that her suspicion would prevail, for she did not put the pistol down. She let down her guard for seconds to reach for the coffeepot, however, and Edward jumped her, knocked the gun across the room and began to struggle with her.

Part of Rob's great guilt was that he knew without his help his sister might have been able to fight free, but he helped his father subdue her. Edward even had lengths of rope ready in his pocket and soon had Anne's hands tied behind her back, and when she continued resisting, her ankles.

Her fury shocked Rob. She cursed and swore in ways he never believed a woman could. So Edward gagged her.

The original plan was to pack enough of her things to heighten the illusion of her leaving willingly, but Anne's suspicion had consumed a lot of time. Leona was too distraught to be bullied into packing. Rather than take a chance on Cord and Frank catching them at the house or on the road, Edward settled for merely putting the pistol away and leaving the note. They pulled into another ranch road to wait and actually saw Cord and Frank returning before heading back to Mason on the main road. Leona wept and protested and Rob again tried to make his father see the futility of the plan as he knew it, but to no avail.

Back at the house, Edward forced Leona to pack bags for the trip to Chicago. He pushed Anne into a chair in the parlor, and never took his eyes off her. Rob had never imagined hate could radiate from a person as it did from his sister that afternoon. The air in the room seemed smoky with it.

When everything was ready for their departure, Edward poured a dose of laudanum into a small gla.s.s and removed the gag to force Anne to drink it. Tied and helpless for almost three hours at that point, Anne had had plenty of time to think of what she wanted to say to her father. She spit the liquid in his face. He hit her with the same kind of blow he had used over a year before. Leona tried to stop her husband, and he backhanded her so hard she was knocked against a wall and fell. Rob was helping his mother up when the words began, venomous and hate-filled.

"You unnatural, miserable, mean-minded, son of a b.i.t.c.h, you can't keep me in Chicago forever. When Cord finds out what you've done I hope he kills you the way his mother's people kill their enemies, with a knife, inch by inch."

Anne cursed her father in every way conceivable. She verbally a.s.saulted his Christianity, his humanity, his morals, ethics, sanity, and his manhood. In the end Edward was driven to such rage he hit her a second time, and so forgot himself he told her - and thus Rob and Leona - what his real plan was.

"You think you're just going to Chicago until you can run off again, don't you? Not this time, daughter. As soon as we get there we'll complete the paper work and have you in a private asylum. It will all be absolutely legal in case Mr. Ephraim Bennett tries to make trouble over his brother's whelp. You're going to stay right there, locked up and under guard with the other lunatics until we see some real indications you're ready to rejoin the human race, and as for that mongrel you're carrying, they'll have it cut out of you before you're there a day."

Anne's face had been flushed with anger. Now she went white. "You can't do that."

"Your aunt can. The arrangements have already been made with her friend Judge Davis. And as soon as I've been appointed your guardian, your marriage is going to be annulled."

Rob tried to argue with his father, but that only brought out more horrifying details.

Clara Wainwright had made all the arrangements. The day after the Wells family arrived in Chicago, Anne would be examined by doctors who would sign the required legal doc.u.ments. The next morning there would be a short, predetermined competency hearing, and she would be committed to a private asylum. The doctors at the asylum were not unfamiliar with charges who conceived unwanted children. Families of patients knew abortion could be obtained - for a price. Anne would be free of Cord's child before that night fell.

At first Edward would talk to Ephraim as if the child would be given to the Bennetts to raise after it was born, but after a month or two, he would tell the Bennetts that Anne had miscarried. Edward believed Cord would be indifferent about Anne and the baby and that his family would lose interest as soon as they knew there was no Bennett blood involved.

As Rob spoke, Cord felt the room begin to spin. He wondered wildly if it were possible for a man to die of fear just sitting in a chair. It had seemed merely a matter of going after her, bringing her home. Maybe some ugliness in convincing Edward Wells he no longer had any say in his daughter's life. Definitely ugliness if he had dared to hit her again. Bile rose in the back of his throat.

"You mean he'd risk killing her just to kill the baby?"

Rob wouldn't meet his eyes. "He says the doctors do it a lot. He says there no danger to her. She might not be able to have any more children is all. He doesn't think that matters."

"It's a wh.o.r.e's operation. They die from it - bleed to death - or scream their lives away from the infection after."

Rob shuddered as if he had been struck but made no answer. Cord hated liquor, hated the taste, the smell, and the effect it had on men, but now he reached out to the whiskey bottle, twisted off the cap, and poured a measure into his half empty coffee cup. He took a swallow of the foul mixture, seeing his own hands as if from far away. The whiskey left a fiery trail from his mouth to his empty stomach, but the room swam back into focus.

Rob looked deathly ill - gray and shaking, covered with a film of perspiration that shone in the lamplight. He said, "I didn't know. I thought he was just going to take her to Chicago and try to change her mind, and I knew he couldn't. I figured he couldn't keep her. It's not like when he locked her up over Detrick. She has you now, your whole family. I knew it was wrong, knew it would make a mess, but I couldn't bring myself to stand against him. It didn't seem like it would do any real harm. I never believed what you said it was like - last year. He said those other men got out of hand and he couldn't stop them, said you exaggerated anyway."

Rob's voice quavered. "I didn't mean what I said that day at Ephraim's. It came out because I was afraid. I knew how he'd be about a baby, but then he didn't seem too upset about it. Oh, G.o.d, I know she's happy with you. I've known it for a long time."

Still struggling for control, Cord managed only to grit out, "Finish it."

There was no comfort in the rest of Rob's story. Edward's words seemed to destroy Anne before their very eyes. She slid from the chair to her knees, begged. If he would let her go, Cord would take her far away. Edward would never have to see her or the baby. If he would just let the child live she would swear to stay in Chicago for the rest of her life and never disobey him in any way again.

Rob felt he was watching his sister dissolve. She had always been so proud, no matter what criticism or discipline she had been subjected to in the past. Through the fights with her father over marrying George Detrick, she had never once seemed cowed. Now she begged, weeping hysterically.

Edward forced the laudanum down her, standing over her full of self-satisfaction.

Later Rob would realize he should have tried to get to Sheriff Reynolds, to Ephraim, to anyone who might stop the madness. He should have gotten a pistol and tried to stop it himself, but that afternoon he followed his father's orders like a mindless machine.

As the drug took effect, Anne sobbed herself to sleep, crying Cord's name. They cut the ropes. Her wrists were torn and b.l.o.o.d.y from struggling, but Edward refused to let Leona take time to doctor them. They had wrapped Anne in a carriage robe for the trip from the ranch. Now Edward put one of Leona's coats on her and carried her to the carriage and the train.

Edward told the station master that his daughter was ill and had taken laudanum, and no one questioned his explanation. Rob returned the carriage to the friend who had lent it and came back to the house - to wait.

"I know there's no way to save the baby," Rob said. "The Tuesday train isn't soon enough, but surely you can get her out of there. Ephraim can do something, can't he? I'm afraid, Cord. The way she was - I'm afraid she isn't going to be Anne any more."

Cord said nothing, rose and headed for the front door. Rob followed. As he opened the door, Rob pleaded, "Please, tell me what you're going to do. Can Ephraim get her out?"

Cord turned then. He had little feeling to spare for Rob, but it ran through his mind that after this, Rob Wells would either finally mature into a man with the sense and courage to think and act for himself or forever become a useless weakling. One way or the other there was going to be some well-deserved suffering.

Viciously, he turned on the other man. "You agreed with your father from the beginning. I'm just a rutting savage who enjoyed your sister for a while when it was convenient. Why the h.e.l.l should I care what happens now?"

Standing in the open doorway, Rob watched the tall form disappear within a few feet in the swirling snow of the ever-increasing storm, then stood there staring as if Cord would magically materialize again with a different answer. The cold eventually broke through his trance. He shut the door, turned and went back to the warm kitchen, shuffling like a very old man. He collapsed into his chair, took a large gulp of whiskey straight from the bottle, then another. Until the whiskey brought a kind of peace, he remained haunted by scenes of his sister in his memory, but the pictures of the lean dark man on the bright red horse were gone.

CHAPTER 38.

GENTLY RUBBING KEEPER BEHIND THE ears in the darkness, ignoring stinging snowflakes numbing his face, Cord forced himself to calmly consider his options. There would be other towns to the east, north, and south with trains running tomorrow or the next day, but he didn't know the schedules. Any attempt by him or even by someone outside the family like Windon might result in a telegram to Chicago. If Wells had any inkling anyone would come for Anne, he could make it almost impossible to find her, and it sounded as if he had friends spying for him all over town.

Denver lay sixty miles to the south and east. Trains would leave there daily. Without the storm such a ride would be unpleasant but not difficult; with it, it would be h.e.l.l, and if the threat of blizzard materialized, impossible. The wind was howling out of the north now, making seeing more than a few feet difficult. The decision was his, and he would have to live with the consequences of a wrong choice.

He stopped rubbing the gelding's ears, pulled his slicker free and shrugged into it. It would help break the knife-like wind. In seconds he and Keeper were swallowed by the storm, heading out of Mason - south.

Even though the threatened blizzard never quite materialized, it was early afternoon, sixteen hours after leaving the Wells house, when Cord reached the slushy streets of Denver. He had pushed the big brown gelding to the limits of his strength, but the snow and killing wind had not let up until dawn. In places the drifts were so high the horse had had to lunge through. Snow and ice had encased them both, making just breathing an effort. Although the road was well traveled, it had often been hard to find it, for visibility didn't improve until the snow stopped.

Keeper was barely able to hold his head at knee level and was stumbling often. Cord had been on the ground for over an hour. When he first dismounted he was so stiff he almost fell. Now the combined effects of hunger and exhaustion were almost pulling him off his feet. His bones felt like spikes of ice embedded in his flesh, and walking had not stopped his shivering.

He had asked directions three times and was now walking south on Sherman Street, looking for a particular intersection and a particular house. The area was filled with stately homes on well-tended grounds. Surprisingly, no one had run from the sight he and the horse presented. Once again he covered the spent gelding with the slicker as he stopped in front of one of the big houses.

His knock brought a maid complete with black uniform, white cap, and ap.r.o.n. She was contemptuous. "The likes of you shouldn't be here at all, but if you have something to say, get around to the back door."

Cord swung the rifle straight up at her chest. He had to try twice before he could get the words out. "Get Howlett."

The woman ran back into the house as Cord walked into the entrance hall. With any luck, Paul Howlett would be at home, not at his law office, on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and he would not have to deal with Marie. It was indeed Paul who rushed to the hall to see what the trouble was. Cord had seen Paul only a few times many years ago, but would have recognized him instantly in spite of the silver now in his brown hair and extra lines around the brown eyes.

Paul also recognized his wife's brother instantly. "I don't believe it! Cord!"

Before either man could say another word, Marie was there. The years had been kind.

No one meeting the lovely Mrs. Paul Howlett would ever suspect she was half Cheyenne.

From Marie there was no welcome. "Get out, or I'll have you thrown out."

Cord had had long, cold hours to decide how to force what he wanted from his sister.

"You don't know anyone who could throw me out. I need help, and you're going to give it. If you don't, everyone in this whole d.a.m.n town will know exactly who and what you are before another hour pa.s.ses, so help me G.o.d."

Bright red spots appeared on Marie's cheeks. Before she could speak again, Paul laid a gentle hand on her arm. "What do you need?"

"I need to be on a train to Chicago - yesterday. Got a horse outside all used up and needing help. He may not make it anyway, but I want you to try, and to get me to the train station."

Paul looked at Cord, considering, then turned to his wife. "You go calm the servants down. I'll take care of this."

She opened her mouth as if to argue, thought better of it and went.

Paul went and got his coat and followed Cord out. Looking at the trembling, barely standing horse, he said, "This must be h.e.l.lishly important."

"It is."

"All right. Bring him around to the stables."

Behind the house in the s.p.a.cious, airy barn, Cord ignored the scorn of the stableman and told him what he wanted done for Keeper while a stable boy helped Paul hitch a fancy chestnut horse to an even fancier phaeton. In minutes they were trotting towards Denver's Union Station, the boy driving.

Cord had a good idea how Paul must feel about having a brother-in-law he hadn't seen in ten years show up on his doorstep, threatening Marie and making demands. And he knew if his normal appearance intimidated people, right now, with the twitch he could feel spasming along one cheekbone, his jaw clenched into ridges, and still shivering from head to toe, he'd probably scare the devil. Too bad. Paul and Marie could d.a.m.n well deal with it.

After openly studying him for the first part of the drive, however, when Paul spoke it was with sympathy. "Can you tell me anything about it?"

"My wife's people came to the ranch yesterday when I was gone and took her - to Chicago. She didn't want to go."

Cord knew it wasn't enough of an explanation for the horse-killing hurry, for not taking the next train out of Mason, but the ma.s.sive arches of Union Station were now in sight.

Paul said, "I've been telling Marie for years she needs to talk to you. You'll have to get the horse anyway. Stop back on your way home. I'd like to hear the whole story."

Getting ready to jump out of the phaeton, Cord forced himself to say more. "Thanks for the help. Tell Marie I'm sorry."

As he turned and started walking to the station, he heard Paul shout after him, "Think about it." He pushed through the station doors without looking back.

CHAPTER 39.

CHICAGO WAS WORSE THAN ANY nightmare Leona Wells had ever dreamed. Anne was locked in a bedroom that had been prepared as a prison, even to metal grates bolted over the windows. Leona herself was also a prisoner of sorts. She was not allowed to see Anne without Clara or Edward present, and an attempt to leave the house un.o.bserved had had Clara's butler politely escorting her back to Edward like an errant child.

Leona tried again to reason with her husband, and he slapped her cruelly again. Long ago she had accepted that the handsome young man who had seemed so charming when she married him was an arrogant, selfish husband, but Edward had never been physically abusive to her or their children. He had crossed some emotional line last year in the yard of the Bennett Ranch. Leona knew now he would never cross back.

The doctors came to the house the morning after they arrived in Chicago to examine Anne and left smiling. They were usually called - and paid their hefty fees - by families that wanted insanity certified in troublesome but healthy relatives. Anne's deathlike stillness, white face, and refusal to meet anyone's eyes left the doctors with clear consciences. She made no response to their gentle, probing questions, only huddled with her arms around herself. Helpless under Edward's hard glare, Leona watched her daughter through a haze of pain.

Clara Wainwright did not physically resemble her brother. She was a short, stout woman with hair already turned gray, but her inflexible self-a.s.surance was very like Edward's. Her sister-in-law had never been more than coldly polite to Leona, but now Clara was the only hope left. She managed to see Clara alone after the doctors had gone.

"Please, Clara, listen to me. Edward isn't telling you the truth. Her husband is a decent man from a good family. She loves him. It's a good marriage. Please don't do this."

Clara was no longer even polite. "You know, I told Edward years ago he should never have married you. If he'd just waited, with the shortage of men after the war he could have had his choice. You didn't inherit for years anyway. You were a silly, simpering girl, and now you're a silly, simpering old woman. It's probably your influence that's led to this mess, although I wouldn't expect even you to defend that wretched girl calling herself married to some aborigine savage. Don't you have any pride?"

Clara ignored the silence that followed her insults. "Why don't you do something useful and come upstairs and help me see if we can't do something with your daughter.