Longarm took a small clasp knife from the pocket of his jeans and started cutting the cords that bound Emmaline’s wrists and ankles. “I’ll sure get you out of here, ma’am,” he told her as he worked, “and then I’ll settle up with your husband.”
“He’s a … powerful man…” Emme whispered.
“Not powerful enough to get away with this,” Longarm promised her. “You got my word on that.”
When her hands and feet were free, Longarm tried to untie the knot in the thicker rope around her waist. It was too tight to come loose easily, however, so he started cutting through that rope too. As he sawed on it with the small blade, he asked, “Did your husband kill that Hardcastle fella?”
“Yes …” Emmaline’s voice was as light and fragile as a feather. “He shot Matt … then used an ax … and a knife … to chop … to cho-” A shudder went through her at the memory, and she couldn’t finish what she was saying.
“Damn,” Longarm breathed. He hadn’t seen Hardcastle’s body, of course, but he had heard the descriptions of how the man had been torn apart. Evidently that had been some skilled butchery on Thorp’s part, not only to conceal the bullet wound that had actually killed Hardcastle, but also to cast blame for the killing on the Brazos Devil.
That thought raised questions in Longarm’s mind. Thorp might have been responsible for Hardcastle’s murder and Emmaline’s disappearance, but what about the Lavery boys? Who—or what—had killed them? Something had scared the hell out of Mitch Rainey that first day along the Brazos, and something had left all the various tracks Longarm had seen. Thorp wasn’t responsible for the death of that gray gelding either; Longarm was sure of that. Nor had he carried off Lady Beechmuir—who was still among the missing, Longarm reminded himself.
Obviously, there had been more than one monster roaming along the banks of the Brazos lately.
Longarm’s blade was nearly through the thick rope now. Once he had freed Emmaline, he could pick her up and carry her out of the cave. She was so light, it wouldn’t be much trouble to make his way back down the bluff with her in his arms. Thorp must have picked this spot for her prison with ease of access in mind. He’d had to get her in here after killing Hardcastle, and if his plan had succeeded, eventually he would have had to dispose of her body.
“I’m sure sorry you had to go through all this, ma’am,” Longarm said as he cut through the last strand of rope. “It sure beats me why anybody would do such a horrible thing.”
The sound of a rock moving near the entrance of the cave warned him, but before he could do more than start to turn around in the cramped confines, something blocked the light and the metallic click of a gun being cocked echoed hollowly from the limestone. “I can tell you why, Long,” Benjamin Thorp said. “I did it because the bitch deserved it.”
Longarm turned his head enough to see Thorp standing there in the entrance. The rancher must have seen Longarm’s horse tied up down below at the foot of the bluff, and had feared that the lawman would discover his wife’s prison. So he had slipped up to the entrance of the cave, and now Longarm knew that unless he was able to turn the tables on Thorp, he might well wind up as another victim of “the Brazos Devil.”
“Nobody deserves to be treated like this, Thorp,” he said hotly, not so much to vent his justifiable anger as to get Thorp talking. As long as Thorp was gloating, Longarm still had a chance to save both himself and Emmaline.
“What do you know about it?” snapped Thorp. “I gave her a home, more money, nicer things than she ever would have had in that parlor house in New Orleans where I found her.” It was hard to see the man’s face with the light behind him like that, but Longarm could hear the sneer in his voice as Thorp went on. “Once a whore, always a whore, I guess. I’m not surprised she took up with Matt Hardcastle. But she could have had the decency to keep it from me! I might have been able to live with it if she hadn’t admitted it to my face, hadn’t told me that Matt was more of a man than I’d ever be!”
“It … was … true…” Emmaline gasped out.
“Shut up!” Thorp shouted. “Shut up, you slut! I don’t want to hear your lies anymore. I listened to enough of them after I first brought you here to this cave. I listened to you swear that it was me you really loved, that Hardcastle didn’t really mean anything to you, that you’d never betray me again. But by then I knew better, didn’t I? I knew I could never trust you again. I knew all that was left was to punish you for what you did to me.”
Emmaline started to sob, quietly, wrackingly. Longarm’s muscles ached from the awkward position in which he was frozen. He couldn’t risk moving much, though, not with Thorp’s gun cocked and aimed at him. If he had been alone in here, he might have taken a chance and thrown himself to the side, trusting that his own speed and accuracy with a gun would allow him to kill Thorp before Thorp could kill him. But in these close quarters, with Emmaline right beside him, he couldn’t risk it. One of Thorp’s bullets could easily hit her.
“What about the Brazos Devil?” Longarm asked. “What do you know about that, Thorp?”
“The same things you do,” Thorp replied with a shrug. “There’s something out here in these woods, but I don’t really give a damn about it. All I knew when the Lavery boys got killed like that was that I’d found a perfect way to get rid of Hardcastle and punish Emmaline. I could do whatever I wanted, and everybody would blame it on the Brazos Devil as long as it was savage enough.”
“And if we’d found the critter and killed it?”
“Then everyone would have believed that it dragged Emmaline off and killed her. Her body would never be found. That would end it all.”
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Longarm said. “That’s the real reason for the bounty on the Brazos Devil and for bringing in Lord Beechmuir. You wanted the varmint dead, so that all the loose ends would be tied UP.”
Thorp laughed coldly. “And it certainly made me look more like a loving husband who was worried out of his mind about his missing wife. I fooled all of you, Long, and I’ll keep on fooling the others. You’ll have to disappear, of course, but maybe everyone will think that the Brazos Devil got you too.” He lifted the gun a little, the barrel looking as big around as the mouth of a cannon in the shadows of the cave. Looked like he was going to have to take that chance after all, Longarm thought. Thorp was through talking. Longarm tensed his muscles, ready to spring away from the bunk as he grabbed for his gun. Before either of the men could make a move, though, Emmaline surprised both of them. With a strength she shouldn’t have possessed in her withered body, she exploded up off the bunk. Freed now, since Longarm had cut through the rope tied to the iron ring in the wall of the cave, Emmaline flung herself toward her husband. A hoarse scream ripped from the raw gash of her mouth.
“Mrs. Thorp! No!” Longarm shouted as he threw himself forward, landing on his belly on the floor of the cave. His .44 was in his hand, even though he didn’t remember pulling it from the cross-draw rig. He couldn’t fire, however, because Emmaline was between him and Thorp. The murderous rancher didn’t have to worry about that. His gun crashed, sending bullets slamming into his wife’s body at close range. The impact of the slugs should have thrown her back or at least dropped her in her tracks, but the rage and hate that had jerked her up from the bunk were too powerful to allow her to be stopped. Her arms outstretched, the claw-like hands reaching desperately for Thorp’s neck, she ran full-tilt into him. With a startled yell, Thorp fell backward out of the entrance of the cave. Longarm scrambled to his feet and leaped out after them, the revolver held ready in his fist.
He didn’t need it. Thorp and Emmaline were both tumbling head over heels down the face of the bluff, bouncing off rocks but somehow staying together. A second later, they hit the ground at the base of the limestone cliff. The sound of the impact sent a wave of sickness through Longarm’s belly.