For a moment, Longarm stood there and studied the face of the bluff, trying to pick out a good route that would lead him to the cave. He could still see the opening in the rock face above him, but not as well since he was almost directly underneath it now. When he had settled on his first series of footholds and handholds, he took a deep breath and started climbing.
The way was easier than he had expected it to be. Anybody who had grown up in West-by-God Virginia was part mountain goat anyway, Longarm thought. He ascended quickly, pausing every now and then to figure out which way to go next. As fast as he was climbing the bluff, there might as well have been a path hewn into it.
He was breathing a little heavier than normal from the exertion of the climb as he neared the cave. He stopped just below the entrance and inflated his lungs several times, replenishing his supply of air. Then he reached across his body and slipped the .44 from its holster. There was no telling what might be inside the cave, and Longarm knew from painful experience that a fella didn’t go sticking his head into a dark hole without asking for trouble. He eased a little higher, to the point where he could almost see into the cave, then called, “Hello? Anybody in there?”
For a long moment, there was no response. Longarm was about to pull himself up into the entrance when he suddenly heard a low, muffled moan. His hand tightened on the grip of the revolver. He decided the sound was definitely human, not animal.
“I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long,” he called, not knowing if whoever was in there could understand him or not. “I’m armed, and I’m coming in there.”
That was fair warning. He wouldn’t feel any compunction about shooting back if anybody in the cave blazed away at him.
Moving quickly so that he wouldn’t be silhouetted against the sky at the entrance any longer than necessary, he vaulted up and into the cave. As soon as he was inside he flattened himself against the wall on the right side, holding the pistol out in front of him, ready to fire. He had to stoop quite a bit, because the ceiling of the cave was only about five feet tall.
Longarm was aware that his heart was thudding rapidly in his chest and his pulse was pounding inside his head. His breath hissed between tightly clenched teeth. The cave was dim inside, but his eyes adjusted rapedly. He saw a small, shelf-like arrangement built on the opposite side of the cave. It served as a bunk for the shape huddled on it.
Long, lank blond hair told Longarm the person lying there was a woman. She was gaunt, her wrists looking painfully thin where they were lashed together in front of her with cord. Her ankles were tied as well, and there was a thick rope around her waist. The other end of the rope was fastened to an iron ring driven into the limestone wall of the cave, so that she couldn’t move more than a few feet. The dress she wore was in tatters, revealing just how thin she really was. Longarm’s eyes widened in horror at the idea of anybody being treated like this.
There was a black cloth tied over the woman’s eyes, keeping her in perpetual darkness. She could hear him but not see him. He wondered if her mind was coherent enough for her to have understood him earlier when he called out his identity. Lowering the revolver a little, he said, “Ma’am? Ma’am, are you Mrs. Emmaline Thorp? Can you understand me?”
She gave that pathetic moan again and twisted her head on her stalk of a neck, trying to turn toward the sound of his voice. She writhed feebly on the bunk. Obviously, she was too weak to pull herself upright. Someone had been systematically starving her to death. As Longarm came closer to her, he saw faded bruises on her face and body as well. She had taken quite a beating sometime in the past.
“Mrs. Thorp, I’m a federal lawman,” he said as he knelt beside her and holstered the gun. “I’m here to help you.”
Most folks were skeptical, and often rightly so, when anybody from the government announced he was there to help. This time it was true, though. Longarm reached out and carefully, gently, worked the blindfold away from her eyes. She flinched violently from the light as it struck her eyes. Longarm knew it would take a moment for her to get used to it.
He glanced around the makeshift prison. On the shelf behind her was a glass bottle with a little water left in the bottom of it. That was probably what he had seen shining in the sun, he thought. The rays weren’t reaching it now, since the sun had climbed a little higher in the sky. Only for a few moments each day would the light shine directly enough into the cave to reflect off the bottle. He had been in the right place at just the right time to see it. Only that stroke of luck had brought him here to this chamber of hellish captivity.
“You are Mrs. Thorp, aren’t you?” Longarm prodded. He couldn’t think of any other woman who might be held prisoner out here. She might be mad by now; if she wasn’t, she was surely on the brink. He wanted to pull her back if he could.
Blinking rapidly, she managed to narrowly open her eyes. Her expression was more coherent than Longarm had expected. She was half-dead from her ordeal, so weak that she couldn’t sit up, but she wasn’t crazy. Her tongue came out and licked over cracked lips with zigzag patterns of dried blood on them.
“M-Marshal?” she husked.
“That’s right, ma’am,” Longarm said, relieved that she had understood who he was. “You’re Mrs. Thorp?”
Her head moved a fraction of an inch, just enough for him to know that she was nodding.
Longarm grinned reassuringly at her. “There’s been a lot of people looking for you these past few weeks, ma’am. Your husband’s been mighty worried about you. I’ll step outside and fire some shots to get the attention of him and the other folks with him; then we’ll see about getting you loose from those ropes.”
He drew away from her, intending to back out of the narrow cave and signal the others. Helene Booth was still missing, but at least one object of the long search had been found. Emmaline Thorp stopped him, though, by reaching out and laying her hands on his arm. There was no strength in her grip; the fingers she pressed against his sleeve might have been nothing more than small bundles of twigs.
“No,” she croaked. “Not … Ben …”
“But he can be here in just a little bit,” Longarm said.
She shook her head, her motions more emphatic. She was drawing strength from desperation. “Not … Ben …” she repeated. “He … put … me … here …”
Longarm’s eyes widened even more. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He said, “But the Brazos Devil.”
“Not … Devil. Ben!”
Longarm looked around the cave again. The whole setup would have required some intelligence, all right. It was hard to imagine a creature such as the Brazos Devil seemed to be having the mental capacity to tie up and blindfold Emmaline like this, let alone leaving water for her so that she wouldn’t die of thirst. The captivity had been designed to provide a lingering, painful, horrible death for Emmaline Thorp.
She was right. The Brazos Devil hadn’t done this. Longarm knew that now.
But Ben Thorp? The woman’s husband, the man who had raised such hell with Marshal Mal Burley in Cottonwood Springs, the man who had offered a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for the beast he’d said had stolen his wife?
What better way, Longarm thought grimly, to insure that Thorp himself wouldn’t be a suspect in the disappearance of Emmaline and the murder of Matt Hardcastle?
“That son of a bitch,” Longarm said under his breath. The whole thing had been some sort of perverted game. Thorp had put on a big show, when all along he knew, right where his wife was. He had probably visited her from time to time, giving her just enough food to keep her alive so that he could continue to gloat over what he was doing to her.
Some men, Longarm reflected, were born to deserve a bullet through the brain. Evidently, Benjamin Thorp was one of those men.