The Stranger by Suzy

“Chris, we can’t know for sure she needs our help.” Mary said tired and aggravated Chris would risk his life over a woman he didn’t know. “You could be riding blind into a trap.”

Chris wouldn’t hear it, not from her, not from anyone else who shook their head at him and his quick temper to get out and search for this woman. He put his boot in the stirrup and looked Mary right in the eye. “To have to cut out a man’s tongue just to keep him quiet?”

“But what about you?” she waved her arms wide. “What do you really know about this woman?”

“I know enough, Mary!”

“Enough to die over?”

He swung into his saddle, adjusted his weight. “Everyday you wake you have a chance of dyin’. What makes today any different?”

As intended, his words sidetracked her attention. She wanted to ask him how he really knew this woman. How did she come into his life in just these couple of days being in town? And she huffed out a breath, avoiding the almost obvious answers in her questions.

Her abstracted expression tightened and she looked up at him sharply. “Don’t go, Chris.”

“It’s not up to you.”

And before she could speak again, Vin and Josiah rode up fast, saddled and ready to go with him for this insightful adventure.

“You ready?” Chris asked as he looked away from Mary’s expression and gathered his reins. This was not the way things were suppose to happen, the journalist thought. She didn’t even know this woman, what she looked like, who she really was, and all Mary could think about was the safety of these men who protected the town. She found she had to ask how long they’d be and what they were in for but they didn’t know themselves, and she was without a reason to ask.

She turned abruptly when a breeze of two other horses rode up occupying their owners, Nathan and Buck, she was forced to move out of their way and stand back by the Clarion doors.

“If we leave now, we can get there by nightfall.” Buck’s voice rang deep and swore in Chris’s ears as he turned his horse around to face the newlywed.

“Buck, you’re not comin’ with us.”

“I have to. I’m involved now.”

Chris clenched his teeth, locked his jaw, and gripped the reins tighter. “You’re not comin’, Buck!”

Then the Clarion doors swung open and Louise stepped out amongst the threatening news with her new husband riding out to seek trouble again. She didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to use her wit tongue and tell him to stay. She heard Chris do that for her, but not even his long time comrade could make it clear through Buck’s head that this was not a good idea.

But he tried again anyway. “Stay here, Buck. You’re not making Louise a widow the day after your wedding. Go to her, celebrate, and make love till you fall asleep.”

Vin kicked the side of his horse with his heel and started to ride off with Josiah and Nathan following.

“Come on, don’t do this.” Chris said, easing the rough sound in his tone. He glared at Buck hard in the eyes as Buck did the same right back. And before they broke the glare, Buck gave a nod and a tip of hat then unsaddled his horse.

Chris then turned to Mary standing in front of the Clarion and back at Buck, who waited to see what he’d do next in this time of need and self-alliance. He kicked his horse gently and his stallion gave a nudge and Chris was off riding into a blind war leaving behind his most valuable friend as Buck watched him ride away into the war he was no longer apart of.

Natalie was tired. She wasn’t allowed to ride one of her own horses and she had to trudge behind burly Andy Scout as they rode hard and fast and long through thick, windy trees. At times she’d find herself bumping her head into his masculine back, wanting to fall asleep from the pain this ride carried deep into her muscles, but she couldn’t. She had to stay awake, alert of the area they rode past, so when she found the courage, she’d lost hours before, she could run off and leave these men in the blink of an eye.

And when she knew she wasn’t dumb, Andy and these men she did not recognize were leading her to a place she never wanted to go back to. A life she lost, the love she had for it now gone, and the painful memories it carried in the depths of the soil. How she never wanted to go back.

When the ride slowly came to a halt, Natalie lifted her weakened torso off Andy’s backside and held herself up and stiff. Un-ladylike she kicked her legs on one side of the horse and found enough strength to lift her bottom off the saddle and jump to her feet and begin her run like crazy through the deep, dark forest until she was lost in the eyes of Andy Scout and whoever cared to search for her.

But it didn’t happen like that and she only wondered what would happen if she made these stunts. She watched Andy unsaddle the horse instead and without expecting it, his hands came up and gripped her hips, the hardened corset she wore didn’t give her a lick of air to breathe, and Andy literally forced her off the horse and he held her in front of him, hands still on her hips.

“Let me go,” she protested and pushed him off her body and away from his. She looked around where she finally was and she only needed a few seconds before reality struck her and her mind would bring her back to the place she voided for the last two years. And how she hated being right all the time.

“Okay, Andy, you’ve had your fun.” Natalie mumbled, and brought her hands up to her hair and adjusted the hairpins and her satin violet cape over her body, around her woman curves.

“Not yet I haven’t.” Andy said then laughed and pushed Natalie ahead to make her start walking where their destination really was. He and Maxton, and the others began to walk with her, beside her, behind her, next to her. They all circled Natalie so she’d have no way to escape. And this only boiled and chilled her veins to a point of suffocation.

Andy pushed again, his force hard on her shoulders, a pain in her back, chills running down her spine as she moved faster along the muddy trail toward her old ranch.

“Okay now. This is enough.” Natalie said and began to turn around and when she did, Andy punched her in the face and she went down in the grass, the mud soaking her violet gown. With her hands pressed down into the wet mud, and her now loose brunette curls lathering her face, she let her tears fall from the fist impact and just because she was so scared. She tried to suck up those tears, and it was useless but she promised herself only to sob quietly and not jerk her shoulders as much and she begged for her arms to not fold and give out for that would give away her tears to these men she didn’t know anymore, not even Andy Scout.

“Hell, Andy, I told you to bring her here, not torture her.”

A familiar voice, Natalie thought and her synapses snapped back into wonder and curiosity. Then she felt a pair of hands take hold of her upper arms, squeezing a bit but not as rough as Andy’s grip, and pick her up off the muddy path. She looked up then and right into a familiar pair of blue eyes she couldn’t remember the last time she’d look into.

“Alexander?” she whispered.

“Hello Mrs. Rose.” Her husband smiled, but not the gentle smile Natalie knew and fell in love with. And hearing him say Mrs. Rose sounded just awful coming out his mouth.

And Alexander must have known what she was thinking because he turned that smile right down to a frown. “Not happy to see me, love?”

“Should I be?”

“Of course you should be.” The grip on her arms now tightened and Natalie felt the rush of burning tears surface her red-rimmed eyes. “It’s not everyday the husband finds his wife after she left him two years ago.”

“You left me!” she raised her voice, her shaky, uncontrolled temper.

“I was comin’ back.”

“Before or after you left your mark on me, Alexander?”

He glared at her, his nostrils seething with fire to the thought of raping her. How she had to just bring that up! “It was a good mark.”

“How’s that?” scared out of her wits, she still managed to use what little spice she had left into her tone. She cocked her head to the side and asked him again.

Too much talking, Alexander said to himself and looked behind his wife at Andy Scout and his other men and nudged them to follow him and Natalie toward the house.

Alexander squeezed her arms and led her in the direction of their homestead, in the distance, standing alone in the dark like ghosts of confederate soldiers haunted it. Little candle light shown through the windows and Natalie’s heart pumped harder and harder as Alexander talked.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through these past two years just lookin’ for ya. You have no idea what went through my head not knowing where you were. Thinking that you were off loving on another man. Raising another family. Forgetting completely about what we had, what we shared, and what we lost.”

“Alexander, that’s not true.”

“And you blame me for what happened to our son. You blamed me and you ran off because you thought I’d do it again…to you.”

“No, I didn’t blame you. I believed you.”

“But you left anyway.” He stopped in front of the house, just before the timber porch steps.

“You don’t understand, do you? I didn’t leave you.” Natalie said through a shaky voice now as she was not about to go inside that house she’d been trying to avoid for so long now. He was not going to make her walk in there and pretend as if nothing happened to her, to her son’s bedroom, their bedroom where they last kissed, last loved each other. She begged in her mind that he wouldn’t do this to her.

“Please, Alexander.”

“Please what?” he asked and he turned her around hard and made her look at him in the eye. “Please don’t? Don’t make you go into this house? Don’t make you remember what we shared?”

“Yes…” this was it. “Don’t make me remember.”

“Don’t you love me anymore, Natalie?” he said her name and she felt a pinch of regret fill her eyes and she knew she was done for when he saw the answer. He released her arms then and stepped back. “Don’t worry, babe, because I’m about to show you just how much I still love you.”

Then everything went dark.

It was a long ride and the sun set earlier than most nights. It was damn near impossible to make clear where they were exactly headed but having Vin Tanner on your ride, he knew the right place, which direction, and whose tail you were on. And Chris rode just as hard and fast beside him with Nathan and Josiah in the rear.

Just a few more acres and they’d be over Dover’s Creek. Just a few more hard gallops over the creek and they’d be lost in the lands of Natalie’s old ranch.

And Chris couldn’t think straight. He was filled with angry emotions he thought he controlled while on this long ride out here, but it was impossible by this point as they were almost at their destination. Someone took Natalie, the woman who taught him nothing more but sorrow and grief with her past stories, about her husband and what he did to her, how he left her and never came back. And now that he was back, Chris only thought that’s why she was kidnapped. Her husband would want nothing more to have her again, kill her if need be and hell that’s what he didn’t understand. The poor woman did nothing but love this man with her whole being. There was no reason to torture her, or tortured the crippled even, just to have his way. No man who treated woman that way should live to see the new dawn. And if this kidnapping was about to lead into another killing spree, then so be it because Chris wasn’t thinking about nothing but the worse.

“Just over that ridge! Directly!” Vin hollered loud enough over the rushing of the horses’ gallops, the hard dirt beneath their hooves so Nathan and Josiah could hear.

Chris gripped the horse’s reins tighter as all four gunslingers heaved up a steep hill and just as they reached the top, and looked beyond to find a bushel of dead woods, a small lit ranch shown through the cracked branches.

“You ready to fight like Kilkenny cats?” Vin asked as all four men hang fire at the top of the hill to consider what to do next instead of riding in with spit and vinegar.

“Is that a bluff, or do you mean it for real play?” Josiah asked.

Chris didn’t take the time to look over his comrades. All he had on the mind was getting down there in time. They were too far away to tell of any activity outside the ranch and hell he wasn’t going to wait to hear a scream or gunshots. But he didn’t want to kick up a row either because that’d surely cause a lost gunfight with many dead.

With guns or knock galley west, it didn’t matter to Chris and it sure as hell didn’t matter to the others as they sat and watched and thought about what to really do in this moment in time, sitting in the dark, under the moon and stars.

“I’m not takin’ any chances,” Chris said tightly. “I’m ridin’ out there.”

“We better not waste this fine ride out here then.” Nathan said with a crooked smile.

“Make sure your plunders are in tight. Looks like we’re on the shoot.” Vin said quietly to himself, but really giving advice to the others.

Chris couldn’t wait anymore. He kicked the side of his horse with spurs and the horse neighed and kicked up high in the air, standing on his hind legs then lighting a shuck, he galloped off the hill and down the steep narrow ridge, riding deep into the broken branch forest as fast as he could. Chris couldn’t pull in his horns, looking for trouble was his gift and he was damn near good at it every time and smart, but when this trouble included a woman he didn’t know nor want feelings for, he had no other choice but to ride with blind rage.

With Vin following up on one side of him and Nathan on the other, before they reached the exit out of the forest, Chris aimed for Josiah to hideaway behind some bushes and lose his horse as fast as he could muster and then he motioned for Nathan to follow him and he looked over at Vin as he already gave him the initiative that he had a plan of his own and he already peter out, goner from Chris’s sight in a bleak of a second.

Before Chris and Nathan became too close to the ranch, he told Nathan with the glare in his eyes to stop and they unsaddled their horses behind three thick blooming green bushes. Nathan grabbed Chris’s reins and he tied their horses to a tree while Chris took no chance to wait and he got on his hands and knees in the mildew grass and began to slyly crawl up to one of the ranch’s side windows. Simon pure, he thought, and his heart began to race a mile a minute with each crawl. He loved every second of this excitement, but he had to think serious and dispose of any sick, silly grins because this inflicted someone…someone that meant something to him but again he tried to get the mitten and he passed the buck to be lost of any kind of shindy.

But even when he didn’t think of Natalie as a woman he’d ever get close to, he still had to save her. He peeked his head up and looked through the broken glass window and tried to look for somebody, anybody…Natalie… but there was no one in sight and that knowing left an uneasy pinged in his gut. Not knowing where these men were, if maybe Randall McArthur lied to them, Chris had to find out and he had to now. He leaned back from the window, lifted his hands off the wood siding and looked behind his left shoulder at Nathan.

“No one?” the healer asked and Chris nodded.

“Best check around the side.”

“Maybe they knew we were comin’.”

“If Mrs. Rose was speakin’ the truth about her husband, then that can’t be true. He’s not smart enough.”

“How do you know for sure, Chris?”

Chris looked around the land, the moon shining hard on them. “Just know.” He took his peacemaker out of the holster and held it to his chest. “Gotta trust me on that. No movement on in the house. None that I can see. Be ready for anything.” Chris gave Nathan a nod of relief, letting him know he had his back on whatever situation had in store for them, and just like that, he swiftly shuffled past Nathan and slowly maneuvered back to where their horses waited.

Vin made right and clear to stay out of the way in the direction of the homestead. He made himself invisible behind a stock of deadwood, still propped high on his horse and to get off the horse he’d surely be the one the bad guys never find. He held the butt of his gun on his hip, unlocked and ready to fire at any given moment. He narrowed his stare on the homestead in the not so far distance for any movement. In the darkness of the now late evening, he wanted nothing more than to be right where he was: hidden and ready to go.

And when he thought he was lost in the world of mindless thoughts, movement stirred on the front porch of the homestead and Vin’s lips curled into a smile. He looked to his west and tried to locate Chris and Nathan but he couldn’t find them. He then looked further west and tried to spot Josiah somewhere in the depths of the forest, but he was no where to be seen either. Knowing he wasn’t the only one who spotted this man wandering around on the front porch, Vin was none too excited about him more than he was about the man just inches from him.

A man, purposely a gunslinger to some but a dumb pard to Vin, walked right into the dead forest to take a piss. Not any further than he was to the bounty hunter, Vin thought he should make a noise, a rattle, a mistake on purpose just to get this man’s attention.

And he did. He clicked his gun’s ready to go latch, the sound ringing through the deadwood and Ronald Chest looked up and right into the black forest, not seeing a soul in sight. Nervous as he was being out here all alone, half drunk and out of it, he zipped up his trousers and as he was taking mouse steps backwards, keeping an eye on the forest, he bumped into a stiff body frame and he instantly jerked around, pulling out his pistol from the leather holster, but Josiah slapped it out of his hand.

“Goin’ somewhere?” Josiah asked using that mystified tone of his, the creepy tone that shrink any man’s courage.

“I think he was about to.”

Ronald turned around and felt another hard body block him from running off to spread to the others they were not alone.

“Who the hell are you guys?” Ronald demanded to know. “And where the hell is my gun?” he started to bend over and search for his gun but Vin knocked back up and grabbed his collar.

“Where is the lady, mister?”

“What lady?”

Josiah laughed softly to this. “You know what lady.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ronald tried to rasp out of Vin’s tight hold but he’d just pull tighter. “I suggest you get off me, sir, before you have a whole gaggle of men on ya.”

“Do I look scared of that?” Vin asked, putting a bit of cockiness in his tone. He looked at Josiah then and motioned for him to turn around. “You see that other man up there at the house, Josiah? Maybe if we, say, cut out this man’s tongue, do you think he’ll do something about it?”

Ronald’s eyes widened, “I didn’t do that to that man!”

“Don’t matter! You took a part!” Josiah barked.

“Get off of me!”

“Askin’ you one more time, mister. Where is she?”

“I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about.”

Without a warn, Ronald was ripped out of Vin’s hold and turned abruptly around to face the ex-preacher’s hard eyes. “You tell us now because if you don’t…my face will be the last thing your eyes will see. The breath you’re breathing on me will be your last. So tell me where Mrs. Rose is.”

“Sweetheart, this…”

She knew that voice. She recognized it clearly but she could not see the mouth it spoke out of. Natalie wanted to open her eyes, she tried, but all she had was a blurry vision, unsettling tears rocking in her eyes, and when she tried to reach down and wipe at her eyes, she couldn’t.

“Nope, don’t even try it.” Alexander said and the bed, she guessed was lying on, tilted to the side when he sat his bottom on the edge of the cotton mattress. “Hands are tied, love, and you can’t get free. Not even to wipe your own tears away.” And then when her vision cleared a bit, she felt hot hands on her face, then a gentle, cool massage on the delicate skin beneath her eyes as Alexander padded her tears away.

“Don’t cry, my love. It will all be over soon.”

“What do you mean?” Natalie coughed up.

Alexander wavered his hand around the room and with startling eyes; Natalie saw before her a room full of waxed candles. She dropped her bottom jaw, amazed with how many candles could fit in this tiny room, the room she recognized to have once been their bedroom two years ago, and she laid on the same bed he made love to her time after time, the bed he gave her a child, the bed where she gave birth to that child. The same bed she’d cry in night after night while he was away getting drunk, getting into fights at the local saloons, and she’d just cry.

But now the room was slightly different and the hundreds of candles made her feel neither comfortable nor safe in her position, especially with her arms tied above her head. What was going on…?

“Alexander, what—what are you doing to me?”

“I’m loving you, Natalie. My wife. And I’m about to show you just how much I love you.” He smoothed down her wild hair and she forced her head back down on the mattress.

She was going to cry again…oh how hard she was going to cry. “Alexander! Please…let me go! You don’t ever have to see me again. Just let me go!”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple!” she fought against her tears as she watched him bend over and pick up a candle. “Please…don’t do this!”

Alexander ran a hand through his loose brown hair, free from his cowboy hat, and took a deep breath. “I have no choice, Natalie. And that’s the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yes, because I can’t live knowing you’re out there alone and surviving without me. I can’t know that. You were my life, my son was my life and he’s dead now because me, because of you.”

“Alex, I forgave you for what you did. Isn’t that speaking enough for the both of us? I forgive you.” Natalie said through clenched teeth, through burning tears and she failed them as they ran down her cheeks. “Please, don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“Don’t beg, Natalie, because you’re a better woman than that.” Alex said then leaned down and kissed his wife on the lips for a long sensual lock. But the kiss didn’t last as she cried too hard to keep hold of that kiss and her bottom jaw trembled with fear knowing what he was going to do to her. Knowing there was no one around to help in her time of most need.

The bedroom door flung open and Andy Scout stood in the doorway along with Maxton. Alexander turned around and waited for Andy’s sudden intrusion to have reason.

“We have a problem,” Andy said sternly.

“What’s the matter?” Alexander asked, leaning back up, candle still in his hand.

“We’ve searched all over the land, a good twenty yards before the forest and dead corn stock, and…”

“Come on with it!”

“We can’t find Kenneth or Ronald.”

“What?” Alexander stood up from the bed, taller than both Andy and Maxton, and walked up to them, still holding that candle.

“Like he said, Alexander, can’t find neither one of ‘em.” Maxton said.

Alexander turned around and stared right at Natalie on the bed. “You befriended anyone in that town, Natalie?”

Natalie went still, but her body managed to tremble anyway. No, of course she didn’t befriend anyone back in Four Corners. She hardly spoke a word to a few of the locals. How would anyone know of her whereabouts?...but she knew exactly who could have taken Alexander’s men, and yet she answered nothing to his question.

“Natalie!” he raised his voice but quickly grew tired of this play around junk. He walked up to her again, helplessly laying on the mattress, and bent down and gave her another demanding kiss. He tried to slip his tongue through her teeth, but she dared not let him for she may just bit the tip off. She sunk her head further down in the mattress so he’d stop giving into what his body craved.

Alexander pulled away, and gazed at her shut eyelids. “I love you, my wife.” And before she had time to open her eyes and react, he dropped the candle he held for so long on the mattress and it fell on its side, rolled off the bed and flames instantly flared. In a fit of uncontrollable anger, Andy and Maxton stepped out of the room to allow their leader to take force and knock down all the candles as flames roared, the tiny flames enlarging to high, burning blazes. And Natalie screamed for dear life…