KIDNAPPED
Lorraine had once had a nasty fall from riding down hill at a gallop.
She remembered that accident and permitted Snake to descend Granite
Ridge at a walk, which was fortunate, since it gave the horse a chance
to recover a little from the strain of the terrific pace at which she
had ridden him that morning. At first it had been fighting fury that
had impelled her to hurry; now it was fear that drove her homeward
where Lone was, and Swan, and that stolid, faithful Jim. She felt that
Senator Warfield would never dare to carry out his covert threat, once
she reached home. Nevertheless, the threat haunted her, made her
glance often over her shoulder.
At the Thurman ranch, which she was passing with a sickening memory of
the night when she and Swan had carried her father there, Al Woodruff
rode out suddenly from behind the stable and blocked trail, his
six-shooter in his hand, his face stony with determination. Lorraine
afterwards decided that he must have seen or heard her coming down the
ridge and had waited for her there. He smiled with his lips when she
pulled up Snake with a startled look.
"You're in such a hurry this morning that I thought the only way to get
a chance to talk to you was to hold you up," he said, in much the same
tone he had used that day at the ranch.
"I don't see why you want to talk to me," Lorraine retorted, not in the
least frightened at the gun, which was too much like her movie West to
impress her much. But her eyes widened at the look in his face, and
she tried to edge away from him without seeming to do so.
Al stopped her by the simple method of reaching out his left hand and
catching Snake by the cheek-piece of the bridle. "You don't have to
see why," he said. "I've been thinking a lot about you lately. I've
made up my mind that I've got to have you with me--always. This is
kinda sudden, maybe, but that's the way the game runs, sometimes. Now,
I want to tell yuh one or two things that's for your own good. One is
that I'll have my way, or die getting it. Don't be scared; I won't
hurt you. But if you try to break away, I'll shoot you, that's all.
I'm going to marry you, see, first. Then I'll make love to you
afterwards. I ain't asking you if you'll marry me. You're going to do
it, or I'll kill you."
Lorraine gazed at him fascinated, too astonished to attempt any move
toward escape. Al's hand slipped from the bridle down to the reins,
and still holding Snake, still holding the gun muzzle toward her, still
looking her straight in the eyes, he threw his right leg over the
cantle of his saddle and stepped off his horse.
"Put your other hand on the saddle horn," he directed. "I ain't going
to hurt you if you're good."
He twitched his neckerchief off--Lorraine saw that it was untied, and
that he must have planned all this--and with it tied her wrists to the
saddle horn. She gave Snake a kick in the ribs, but Al checked the
horse's first start and Snake was too tired to dispute a command to
stand still. Al put up his gun, pulled a hunting knife from a little
scabbard in his boot, sliced two pairs of saddle strings from
Lorraine's saddle, calmly caught and held her foot when she tried to
kick him, pushed the foot back into the stirrup and tied it there with
one of the leather strings. Just as if he were engaged in an everyday
proceeding, he walked around Snake and tied Lorraine's right foot;
then, to prevent her from foolishly throwing herself from the horse and
getting hurt, he tied the stirrups together under the horse's belly.
"Now, if you'll be a good girl, I'll untie your hands," he said,
glancing up into her face. He freed her hands, and Lorraine
immediately slapped him in the face and reached for his gun. But Al
was too quick for her. He stepped back, picked up Snake's reins and
mounted his own horse. He looked back at her appraisingly, saw her
glare of hatred and grinned at it, while he touched his horse with the
spurs and rode away, leading Snake behind him.
Lorraine said nothing until Al, riding at a lope, passed the field at
the mouth of Spirit Canyon where the blaze-faced roan still fed with
the others. They were feeding along the creek quite close to the
fence, and the roan walked toward them. The sight of it stirred
Lorraine out of her dumb horror.
"You killed Fred Thurman! I saw you," she cried suddenly.
"Well, you ain't going to holler it all over the country," Al flung
back at her over his shoulder. "When you're married to me, you'll come
mighty close to keeping your mouth shut about it."
"I'll never marry you! You--you fiend! Do you think I'd marry a
cold-blooded murderer like you?"
Al turned in the saddle and looked at her intently. "If I'm all that,"
he told her coolly, "you can figure out about what'll happen to you if
you _don't_ marry me. If you saw what I done to Fred Thurman, what do
you reckon I'd do to _you_?" He looked at her for a minute, shrugged
his shoulders and rode on, crossing the creek and taking a trail which
Lorraine did know. Much of the time they travelled in the water,
though it slowed their space. Where the trail was rocky, they took it
and made better time.
Snake lagged a little on the upgrades, but he was well trained to lead
and gave little trouble. Lorraine thought longingly of Yellowjacket
and his stubbornness and tried to devise some way of escape. She could
not believe that fate would permit Al Woodruff to carry out such a
plan. Lone would overtake them, perhaps,--and then she remembered that
Lone would have no means of knowing which way she had gone. If Hawkins
and Senator Warfield came after them, her plight would be worse than
ever. Still, she decided that she must risk that danger and give Lone
a clue.
She dropped a glove beside the trail, where it lay in plain sight of
any one following them. But presently Al looked over his shoulder, saw
that one of her hands was bare, and tied Snake's reins to his saddle
and his own horse to a bush. Then he went back down the trail until he
found the glove. He put it into his pocket, came silently up to
Lorraine and pulled off her other glove. Without a word he took her
wrists in a firm clasp, tied them together again to the saddle horn,
pulled off her tie, her hat, the pins from her hair.
"I guess you don't know me yet," he remarked dryly, when he had
confiscated every small article which she could let fall as she rode.
"I was trying to treat yuh white, but you don't seem to appreciate it.
Now you can ride hobbled, young lady."
"Oh, I could _kill_ you!" Lorraine whispered between set teeth.
"You mean you'd like to. Well, I ain't going to give you a chance."
His eyes rested on her face with a new expression; an awakening desire
for her, an admiration for the spirit that would not let her weep and
plead with him.
"Say! you ain't going to be a bit hard to marry," he observed, his eyes
lighting with what was probably his nearest approach to tenderness. "I
kinda wish you liked me, now I've got you."
He shook her arm and laughed when she turned her face away from him,
then remounted his horse, Snake moved reluctantly when Al started on.
Lorraine felt hope slipping from her. With her hands tied, she could
do nothing at all save sit there and ride wherever Al Woodruff chose to
lead her horse. He seemed to be making for the head of Spirit Canyon,
on the side toward Bear Top.
As they climbed higher, she could catch glimpses of the road down which
her father had driven almost to his death. She studied Al's back as he
rode before her and wondered if he could really be cold-blooded enough
to kill without compunction whoever he was told to kill, whether he had
any personal quarrel with his victim or not. Certainly he had had no
quarrel with her father, or with Frank.
It was long past noon, and she was terribly hungry and very thirsty,
but she would not tell Al her wants if she starved. She tried to guess
at his plans and at his motive for taking her away like this. He had
no camping outfit, a bulkily rolled slicker forming his only burden.
He could not, then, be planning to take her much farther into the
wilderness; yet if he did not hide her away, how could he expect to
keep her? His motive for marrying her was rather mystifying. He did
not seem sufficiently in love with her to warrant an abduction, and he
was too cool for such a headlong action, unless driven by necessity.
She wondered what he was thinking about as he rode. Not about her, she
guessed, except when some bad place in the trail made it necessary for
him to stop, tie Snake to the nearest bush, lead his own horse past the
obstruction and come back after her. Several times this was necessary.
Once he took the time to examine the thongs on her ankles, apparently
wishing to make sure that she was not uncomfortable. Once he looked up
into her sullenly distressed face and said, "Tired?" in a humanly
sympathetic tone that made her blink back the tears. She shook her
head and would not look at him. Al regarded her in silence for a
minute, led Snake to his own horse, mounted and rode on.
He was a murderer; he had undoubtedly killed many men. He would kill
her if she attempted to escape--"and he could not catch me," Lorraine
was just enough to add. Yet she felt baffled; cheated of the full
horror of being kidnapped.
She had no knowledge of a bad man who was human in spots without being
repentant. For love of a girl, she had been taught to believe, the
worst outlaw would weep over his past misdeeds, straighten his
shoulders, look to heaven for help and become a self-sacrificing hero
for whom audiences might be counted upon to shed furtive tears.
Al Woodruff, however, did not love her. His eyes had once or twice
softened to friendliness, but love was not there. Neither was
repentance there. He seemed quite satisfied with himself, quite ready
to commit further crimes for sake of his own safety or desire. He was
hard, she decided, but he was not unnecessarily harsh; cruel, without
being wantonly brutal. He was, in short, the strangest man she had
ever seen.