When Love's Gone Country - By Merri Hiatt Page 0,39
have any manners?”
Two men appeared on either side of the first man. “We’s lookin’ for the healin’ well.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Save it. We know ya been there. All’s you got to do is show us the way, then we let you go. Simple.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know three men who were shoved into a well today, would you?” Purity asked.
“This ain’t a question and answer period. Tie ‘em up.”
Meg and Purity struggled, but the men were strong.
“We’s gonna give you one more chance to be straight with us.”
“Or what?” Meg asked.
The man removed a knife from its sheath. The blade was at least a foot long and wide as a horse’s hoof. “Ya ever heard of bleedin’? I’m not talkin’ about scrapin’ your knee. There’s a way to cut a person, just so.” He made a motion with the blade. “You slice ‘em just right, they bleed on the surface, not all the way deep down.
Ya see, there’s layers in the skin. We go layer by layer. You tell us what we wanna know, you don’t get bled. You play us, we go deeper.”
“If you kill us, you’ll never find the healing well,” Meg said.
The man laughed. “All I got to do is find your men and tell ‘em we got you. They’ll start singin’ like a pretty little yellow canary.”
“So go find ‘em,” Purity said. “Why are you wasting your time with us?”
“We start with the weak ones first.”
We’ll see who’s weak, Purity thought. She glanced at Meg. “Should we tell ‘em?”
“I think we’d better. I don’t want anything to happen to you or the baby.”
“Now this little lady is makin’ good sense. You should listen to her. Where’s the well?”
“I’ve only been there once, and it was dark. It’s where the river makes a double y. That’s how the ranch got its name.”
“I been to the river, there ain’t no well there.”
“It’s underground. It’s not exactly a well. It’s more like a spring. The water flows through a secret cave in the river up into a cavern. You have to swim down into it and then you swim up through the hole. It’s beautiful there.”
“Meg! Don’t tell him all this. You’re playing right into his hand?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Keep your mouth shut!”
“Hey now, don’t you talk to her like that.”
“I’ll talk to her any damn way I want.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s so. You got a problem with that?”
The man standing closest to Purity grabbed her tied up hands and shoved her against the side of the gazebo.
Pure gasped with the sudden pain.
“You need to learn some manners.”
“Not from the likes of you!” Purity spun around, catching the man off guard. Her hands found the handle of his knife and she pulled it from its leather holder.
He was about to holler when she kicked him hard in the knee and he went down. She quickly headed toward Meg, turned around and cut the rope binding her hands. Meg took the knife from her and sliced through Pure’s bonds.
“Hooey! We got ourselves a couple a fire crackers,” the man said, then ran toward them.
“Go to the barn,” Pure yelled, shoving Meg forward.
She took off running. “I’ll be back with help!”
“Go after that one,” the man said. “This one’s all mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I hate to tell you, but you’re not man enough for me,” Pure said, stepping to the side as he tried to ram her through with the blade.
As he whizzed past her, she headed up the gazebo steps, then shimmied up the lattice until she was on the roof of the gazebo, lying flat.
The man had fallen to the ground. When he was upright again, he looked around. “Where are you? I know you’re here.”
Pure thought her furious heartbeat would give away her whereabouts.
The other man came running back. “Lost her.”
“Dammit, Jay, can’t you even keep track of one woman?”
“Where’s yours?”
“She’s right here somewhere.”
“Looks like you can’t keep track, either.”
“Shut up and start lookin’. We got to find ‘em quick. Red ain’t gonna be happy if he hears we failed, too. C’mon.”
Purity wasn’t sure she heard the man correctly. Had he said Red? She thought he was a trusted ranch hand. Why in the world would he be searching for the healing well? He should already know where it is. He’d worked the ranch long enough. Surely he’d have found it by now.
The sound of running feet caught Pure’s attention, along with lanterns swinging light into the darkness.
“Purity!” Alex yelled.
“Over here! I’m okay. On top of the gazebo.”
It