DARK INTRUDER
DARK INTRUDER© nesciri
Part 8
Rachel stretched her back as she straightened herself after standing bent over the hot washing water. She hated doing laundry, but even with only three riders left at the station, there was enough to drive her crazy. There must be a better way to do this, she pondered as picked up the basket to finish the last chore, hanging up the laundry to dry. Fortunately it were done quicker than she had expected and she realized that she had time to head over to the school to review some of the kids' papers. And even time to make that long overdue trip over to Mrs. Hansen. Rachel sighed. She had postponed that discussion for a long time. She hated to have to talk to the parents of her students. Normally she could handle the kid just fine on her own, but Matthew Hansen had been impossible lately and she really had no choice. She pondered it while she returned the empty laundry basket to the house after hanging up the laundry. Maybe it was better if she first went to see Mrs. Hansen, she pondered. Then she would have that done and could concentrate on the papers. She sighed as she decided to make the wagon ready - she was going to see Mrs. Hansen first.
Half an hour later she was on her way to the Hansen homestead. The road to them went along a small canyon and she made sure she kept a safe distance to it while she pondered in her mind what exactly she would tell Mrs. Hansen. She never noticed the woman dressed in dark that observed her from a small hill not far away.
Baruk stared at the woman in the wagon. He had been deeply disappointed when nobody had been home at the station at his arrival. At least she had been easy to track. And now he had found her. For a minute he just stood there, watching her before he ordered Rosemary to get closer. To his surprise his mental order met with resistance for the first time.
"No," Rosemary mumbled. "She's the schoolteacher - and she has been nice to me. Not her."
"Kill her," Baruk instructed in her mind.
"No," Rosemary whispered, but her voice lacked conviction.
"Don't you dare disobey me," the voice in her mind hissed. "Do you think I need your help to kill her? Then I'll show you!"
Baruk took over the woman's mind but let enough of her conscience stay with her so that she could witness what happened. He stared hard at the wagon and mumbled a few words. A cold breeze suddenly emerged from the hill and swept the road beneath them.
Rachel pulled her jacket tighter around her as a cold breeze swept over her. She felt it odd that there could be any cold breezes but assumed that it was a reminder of the storm that had hit them earlier. Even the horses seemed to have notice it, because suddenly Rachel found them tripping nervously and they became hard to handle. She tried to sooth them and urged them forward, when one of the horses clipped with it's ears and shrugged, bumping in to the other. In the next second Rachel fell backwards over the seat. Her head came in hard contact with the boards on the wagon floor and for a second she saw stars before her eyes. She desperately struggled to get up as the wagon bounced over the uneven grounds. Rachel knew that the horses must have left the road as another bump forced her back on the floor. When she finally reached over the edge of the wagon, she saw with despair that the wagon was heading towards the canyon.
If she couldn't stop them, they would rush over the edge! She managed to climb over the bench and holding on with one hand she reached out for the reins. She had just managed to grab them when the horses swayed and she fell down on the floor, hitting her elbow on the side of the wagon. Ignoring the pain in her elbow, she dragged herself up to the bench, holding the reins tightly in her hand. She had no more started to pull on the reins before she knew that she was to late. The last thing she saw was the image of a dark shadow riding one of the horses as a sinister laughed seemed to reach her, carried by a cold breeze. In the next second the horses disappeared over the edge, screaming in fear and dragging the wagon with them. The wagon immediately turned over, flinging Rachel off it. With a crashing sound the wagon continued to roll down the slope until it came to a stand at the bottom, or rather the remains of it. The slope was filled with parts of the wagon. One of the horses tried to rise but with one broken leg, he hadn't much of a chance. The other was dead, its neck broken. Half way up the slope laid a lifeless Rachel, blood pouring from a deep cut in her forehead. The only sounds that were heard was that of the dying horse trying to get to his feet.
Baruk took a deep breath.
"See what happens when you defy me?" he whispered to Rosemary, who placed her hands before her eyes. She had not wished for Rachel to die. Baruk was still angry with her and she could feel her head pounding. Without looking back she silently turned and walked back to her horse, no longer fighting for herself. From now on she would follow the voice inside her mind. Urging her horse into a canter she headed back towards the plains.
"You're sure this is the way Buck took?" Cody asked as they looked out over the landscape.
"Yes," Kid replied, wondering if he should mention that they had lost Buck's tracks by the canyon and that he wasn't all together sure of the if Buck had gone round or if he had jumped the gap. Surely he hadn't jumped it - not even Katy would manage a jump like that, he pondered. They just had got the tracks wrong back then. Anyway, now that he knew of it he had chosen the way around it from the start. His only concern was that so far they hadn't found anything that suggested that Buck had taken that way.
"S'pose there's nothin' but to continue them," Cody stated and urged his horse forward.
"Maybe we should take it a bit slow," Kid suggested, remembering the Indians he had encountered the last time. "We're pretty close to some sacred grounds here."
"You think that there might be trouble?" Cody asked and turned around in the saddle.
"You never know," Kid replied as he scrutinized their surroundings.
"If you say so," Coda agreed and lifted his rifle out of its saddle holster to have it ready before him on the saddle. He had no wish to be ambushed by Indians and he felt a lot safer with his rifle handy.
They continued for another couple of hours without finding any clue to Buck's whereabouts. Finally Kid called it a day.
"It will be dark before we're back," he stated. "Might as well turn around while we still got some light left."
"I won't argue with that," Cody replied and turned his horse around. "I hope Rachel have saved us some supper, I'm starving."
"The army ain't feedin' you enough?" Kid joked as he tried to hide his uneasiness. There should have been some tracks after Buck. Buck had no reason to hide where he was going and the absence of tracks or leads was worrying. What if Lou had been right? What if something had happened to Buck? He wished that Rosemary hadn't killed the man that had Buck's horse. If he'd been alive he might have been able to answer their questions. As it was now, they had no clue to what had happened and Kid didn't like it - didn't like it one bit.
"Army grub ain't what they said it would be," Cody replied. "Besides nothin' beats a home cooked meal, especially Rachel's." Then he turned serious. "I don't like this Kid - Buck's missin' like this and the way Rosemary found his horse. I think Lou might be right."
"I agree. Something has happened to Buck or we'd found him by now. Something ain't right, Cody, I can feel it."
"Funny you should say that - I've had the same feeling since I came back. At first I just thought it was my mind playing tricks with me - after all I didn't leave in the best of moods - but it ain't that at all. It's like," Cody hesitated for a second, "like there's some sort of ghost over the station."
"Ghost? What kinda rubbish are you talking about? There are no ghosts," Kid muttered. "There nothing strange over it at all - Buck's missing, that's all there is to it. And if he ain't back soon, then we'll have ask for some help finding him."
"You asked," Cody muttered back, angry that Kid hadn't taken him seriously. There was something scary over what had happened, even if Kid couldn't admit it. Maybe I should have stayed with the army, he thought to himself, but changed his mind immediately after the thought entered his mind. He enjoyed being together with the others again. We'll find Buck, he thought, we have to.
Wearily they turned back as the sun slowly started it way down towards the horizon. They hadn't ridden for more than a few hours when they ran into the army patrol. It was the same unit that Cody had taken his leave from, but he hardly recognized them. Some of the younger ones looked paled and shaken and even the more experienced of the men seemed shaken to the core.
"What happened?" Cody asked the Sergeant while he scanned for the officer. "Where's the captain?"
"He's dead." The sergeant said in a tired voice. "He's dead," he repeated as if he didn't believed it himself.
Kid and Cody dismounted and helped the soldiers down of their horses. Soon they were sitting around a campfire in a primitive camp made for the night. So far none of them had pressed the soldiers to tell them what had happened, but with the briskly burning fire and coffee, the sergeant seemed ready to talk.
The sergeant looked pensively into the fire as he sipped his coffee. Kid and Cody looked expectantly at him, hoping that he would be ready to tell them what had happened. Especially Kid was waiting impatiently. It was already dark and he wanted to be back with Lou. At least she was safe at the station, he pondered, with Teaspoon, Rachel and Jimmy. They wouldn't let anything happen to her. The thought comforted him some and he rose his head as the sergeant begun to speak.
"We made camp where you left us, Mr. Cody. I must say that some of us agreed with you, Mr. Cody - it was not a good place to make camp."
"Never mind that, and it's Cody, by the way. What happened? Indians?"
No, we never saw any of 'em Injun's. We're just getting ready to eat. The Captain was pacing and givin' out orders. He was mighty upset with you leavin' and I guess he wanted to make sure we knew who was in command. He got rather irritatin' as he continued. We were too tired and finally I suggested that he let the men be. That caused another outburst and he sent half of us scouting for hostile Indians. Five men left. They never returned, so we asked the captain if we could go look for 'em. He agreed and we found them not long after, dead. All of 'em. They had been shot and two of them had their throats cut. That scared the daylights out of the rest of us, I tell you. Well, the captain ordered us to giv'em a decent burial so that was what we started to do."
"So it was Indians?" Kid asked.
The sergeant shook his head. "I doubt it - never seen Indians kill that way. Besides they had all their hair left and not a single gun was missin'. I known of Indians that don't take scalps, but never heard of any missing out on good weapons. Had it been Indians there wouldn't been a single rifle left."
"That's true," Cody agreed. "So it wasn't Indians. Then who killed them and what happened to the captain?"
"Comin' to that. As I said we were busy burying the men, when the captain saw something. He told us to continue with the burial while he took a look. I warned him from going out there alone, but he wouldn't listen. So he took off. I'd say about twenty minutes later we heard him scream - never heard anything like that in my life. It was as the devil himself had gotten hold of him. we left everything and headed after him. when we got there, all we found was his dead body, ripped into pieces. No human could have done that, nor any beast I know off. The devil's work that's what I think!" The sergeant crossed his chest as if the act would protect him from the evil things he'd encountered.
"And you didn't see anything?" Kid asked incredulously.
"No, not a thing."
"I saw something." A young soldier looked up. The others turned to him and he looked nervously around him.
"What did you see?" Kid asked.
"I saw - a woman."
"A woman?" Cody looked at the soldier. The sergeant laughed harshly.
"That's what the captain saw - that's why he left," the young man insisted.
"A woman? You're seeing things," the sergeant barked.
"No, I swear. A woman, dressed in black." The young soldier stared defiantly at them. The others looked in disbelief at each other.
"It's no use arguing over it," Kid said slowly. "It's better we concentrate on what we should do. You remember where this happened?"
"Sure. But we ain't going back there tonite."
"There's a town not far from here - Rock Creek. That's where our Express station is as well. I suggest that we break camp and head over there. Then you can tell your story to the marshal."
The sergeant nodded his consent and an hour later they were on their way back.
Not having found anything else around the murder site, Teaspoon sent Jimmy after the undertaker as he himself sat down to wait for their return. he placed himself far enough that he wouldn't have to look at the body. He also took care that he didn't sit downwind from the place to avoid the smell. He sat there watching the sun go down as he pondered Rosemary's story. There was something that didn't add up. Time for one thing. Jimmy had left Rosemary just before Buck had left the station. And he had a feeling that Rosemary hadn't waited too long before heading out to confront the man with the boy's killing. So when could the man have run into Buck and taken his horse? It couldn't have been to close to the station or they would have noticed. And what about the place where Cody found Buck's knife? It was far from where Rosemary had met this Brown fellow - too far.
Still deep in thoughts, Teaspoon was relieved when Jimmy arrived with the undertaker shortly after dark. As soon as they were ready they headed back to town. After leaving the undertaker, they tied the horses at the marshal's office, intend on getting a cup of coffee before turning home - which for Jimmy's part meant returning to Rosemary's cottage. Teaspoon had no more put the key into the lock when a rider came into view, approaching them in a dangerous speed. It took them a few seconds to recognize Kid as the young man reined his horse before.
"Lou's missing!"
