For the Love of Suzanne (10 page)

“Don’t get hurt. Give me a few more
days to convince Major Richards that I don’t know anything.”

“I can’t. You’ve already been in
there way too long.”

“Two days, Cody,” she whispered.
“Please.”

“No. This isn’t right. I cannot let
you suffer for me.”

She tugged on his hand. “Please.”

He hesitated, not wanting to do this. He had to
get her out of there as soon as he could. “Are you sure you’re
all right?”

“I am,” she assured him. “Two
days is all I’m asking.”

He didn’t know if she could take it, but
finally gave in. “I’ll be back in two days. You’re
going to have to meet me outside the fort by the gate. Wait until
dark.”

“Okay,” she sniffed.

“Suzanne?”

“What?”

“If you don’t come to me, I’m
coming for you,” he said seriously.

“Okay,” she whispered and impulsively
kissed his hand. “You’d better go.”

“I’ll be back,” he said in a
soft voice and squeezed her hand tenderly, hardly believing she’d
kissed his hand and wished it had been his lips. “Two days.”

Before he could leave, she pulled him back. “Can
I ask you one thing?”

He caressed the top of her hand and looked over
his shoulders to make sure he still hadn’t been seen. “Ask.”

“Are you a bad man?” she asked
uncertainly.

“Some say so.”

“I don’t care what other people think.
I want to know what
you
think.”

He sighed, not sure how to answer that question.
He tried not to be a bad man and was doing the best he could with the
Indians and the white people and was getting burned by both sides.
Major Richards accused him of trying to start a rebellion and Chief
Tall Deer ignored him for the most part; when he did acknowledge him,
it was never friendly and often a crude remark about being a
half-breed or a traitor. He honestly didn’t know the answer to
her question.

“I’ll be back in two days,” he
promised, giving her hand another squeeze.

She let him go this time.

Cody made it back to Addison without incident and
hid in the shadows, trying not to be seen. “What’s going
to happen to her?” he demanded lowly of his friend.

“I don’t know, Cody,” he said
lamely. “She’s been lucky so far, but if you don’t
turn yourself in or get her out of there soon, she’s going to
end up either hanging or in front of a firing squad. Richards is
determined to get something out of her.”

“But she doesn’t know anything.
Everything is calm right now and nothing is on the horizon that I
know of. Can’t you reason with him?”

“Why do you think I’m on sentry duty?”
he huffed. “I’ve tried and he threw me out of his office.
The man is crazy, I tell you.”

He nodded. “Would he really execute a
woman?” he asked with disbelief in his voice.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he
said frankly.

“Even a woman who is in the family way?”

He looked at him in shock. “Is Miss Suzanne
in a family way?”

He nodded. “She is. I need to get her back
to her husband as soon as I can.”

“The child isn’t yours?” he
asked innocently.

He shook his head. “No. She’s a
married woman.”

“Who’s her husband?” he asked
curiously.

“I don’t know. She’s never
talked about him. I didn’t know she was pregnant until the day
I brought her here.”

He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face
distressfully. “That certainly puts a whole new light on
things, doesn’t it?” he said thoughtfully.

He nodded.

“Okay. I’ll talk to him again
tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Addison. You’re a good
friend.”

“Aw hell, Cody,” he said humbly. “Get
out of here before you get caught and we both hang.”

He pulled his hat off and gave him a lazy salute.
“Until next time.”

He gave him a casual wave and watched him jump on
his horse and ride into the darkness. “I don’t know who’s
crazier. You or Richards.”

The next morning, Suzanne was roughly hauled out
of the stockade by two big men and dragged her to her feet before she
was even awake. She stumbled and fell, only to be yanked back to her
feet while they called her names and dragged her up the uneven stone
steps into a room she had never been in before.

It was small with no windows, illuminated only by
a single oil lamp sitting in the middle of a big wooden table. Major
Richards was sitting in a hard chair with his beefy hands folded in
front of him and a smug look on his wicked face. The room was dirty
and had a familiar, acrid smell to it, but she couldn’t
remember what it was or where she’d smelled it before.
Regardless, it wasn’t good, and she knew she was in trouble.

Major Richards looked up at her with cold, dark
eyes and a sneer under his heavy mustache. “Ah, there you are,”
he said with mock pleasantness.

The two guards slammed her into a hard wooden
chair. Then each shackled her ankles to the legs and her wrists to
the arms. Neither said a word as they went about their work nor as
they left, pulling the door closed quietly.

Suzanne was close to panicking, but knew she
couldn’t show it. She had to be brave and strong so she could
get back home. She wondered if Richards had found out that Cody had
been to visit her last night and what the major was going to do to
her. Why had they put the heavy chains on her? This was getting more
frightening with each passing moment.

Major Richards leaned over the table and glared at
her. “I’ll bet you will cooperate now,” he said
with a twinge of victory in his voice.

She looked away, unable to meet the soulless eyes
of the man. “I don’t know anything,” she said
shakily for the hundredth time since she’d first been
interrogated.

“I don’t believe you, Miss Dillon, and
that is unfortunate,” he said with quiet calmness which
frightened her even more. She knew a quiet man like this could be
very dangerous.

She still avoided his eyes. “I don’t
know anything, Major Richards,” she insisted in a trembling
voice.

“Lieutenant Taylor has told me that Cody
Black Fox came to see you last night,” he said casually and
leaned back in his chair. “You aren’t entitled to
visitors, Miss Dillon. You broke the rules.”

“I am a civilian,” she said coldly,
finally looking at him.

“You are on a military post and that makes
you my responsibility,” he shot back.

“I am no one’s responsibility, Major,”
she said defiantly, trying to move her hands, succeeding only in
chafing her wrists. “I can assure you that I can take care of
myself.”

“Ohh,” he drawled slowly and struck a
match on the table top and lit a cheroot. “You can think that
all you want. We’re going to be here until you tell me what I
want to know. This doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience,
Miss Dillon. But it will be unless you tell me what I want to know.”

She was appalled that Addison Taylor had told
Major Richards that Cody had been there.

“Where is Lieutenant Taylor?” she
asked bravely.

“Oh, he’s been taken care of,”
he assured her. “Treason is no light charge, you understand.”

She gaped at him. “Treason? Lieutenant
Taylor?”

“Traitors are executed, Miss Dillon,
er-shall I say, Suzanne?” he said smugly and tapped the ash on
the dirty floor.

“Call me what you like,” she snapped.
“It doesn’t matter.”

“Fine,” he said smoothly. “Lieutenant
Taylor was hanged at dawn. Fraternizing with the enemy is never taken
lightly, Miss Dillon. It’s considered treason and that, my
dear, is punishable by death.”

She sat back with shock and some guilt. She never
wanted anybody to lose their life, especially over her. She wanted to
go home worse than ever. This was a huge nightmare and it seemed as
if she would never wake up, and now Addison Taylor was dead. It was
her fault and she choked back tears of sorrow. Addison had turned her
over to Major Richards, but he’d also been instrumental in
getting Cody into the fort last night and with Cody came hope. The
man had paid the ultimate price which she thought was totally unfair.

“So you see,” Richards continued
casually, looking at the hot tip of his cheroot. “It doesn’t
pay to keep secrets. I can have you hanged just as easily as I had
him hanged. Then I can round up that half-breed buck lover of yours
and he can swing in the wind with rest of the likes of your kind.”

She knew she was in more trouble now than she’d
ever been in her life. If this man would kill one of his own men,
then he wouldn’t hesitate to kill a woman who meant nothing to
him.

She cleared her throat uneasily. “I don’t
know anything, Major. Cody came just to check on me. That’s
all.”

“Just to check on you, huh?” he said
with disbelief, still staring at the red tip of the cheroot, then
took a drag from it and held it for a moment before exhaling. “I
think he came to pass out more secrets. Is he going to try to break
you out of here?” he asked her suspiciously.

She shook her head somberly, knowing it was a lie
of sorts. He’d given her two days and if she wasn’t at
the gate at the end of those two days, he was coming to get her. That
thought terrified her. He was her ticket home and if anything
happened to him, she’d be stuck here forever.

It wasn’t just about that. In the short time
that she’d known him, she’d become very fond of him and
cared about him as a person. She didn’t see him as a half-breed
but as a man. She didn’t care what he was. She saw that he was
kind, compassionate, and very intelligent.

“The man is a savage, Miss Dillon,” he
said with wonder and leaned in toward her. “Why would you give
yourself to a man of his persuasion?”

“I haven’t given myself to him,
Major,” she said coldly. “He just helped me out when I
was lost in the desert. He found me and brought me here.”

“Was that before or after he had his way
with you?” he asked with distaste.

“I can assure you that he has never done
anything even remotely out of line,” she said with anger in her
voice and rattled the chains on her wrists again, holding back a
wince as the manacle chafed painfully. “Why do you have me
chained up like this?”

“You aren’t leaving until I get my
answers,” he said venomously. “I will get them from you
one way or the other, and they will be to my satisfaction. So, you
just as well start talking. When is the uprising going to happen?”

~~~

Cody was pacing restlessly at the back of the
fort, knowing he had to get Suzanne out of there as soon as he could.
He’d seen Addison Taylor swinging by his neck from a tree near
the fort and knew that she was in a lot of trouble. He’d
offered a prayer to the Creator for his friend to have a safe journey
to the spirit world as his heart broke. He knew Addison had been
hanged because of him and that really bothered him.

Major Richards had a record of brutality that
rivaled Chief Tall Deer’s. He was known for being exceedingly
hard on his men when he found fault with them. He demanded their
loyalty at all costs and incarcerated them when they disobeyed his
orders or were found to be derelict in their duties. He’d often
disciplined them with whips, hard labor or, in the case of Addison
Taylor, by execution. He knew that Suzanne would not be exempt from
such cruelties, woman or not. She was being held prisoner and treated
as such. He’d seen how men had come out of the stockade, if
they were lucky enough to come out alive. They were underfed,
deprived of water, beaten, and sometimes mentally broken. He expected
Suzanne to get better treatment because she was a woman, but with the
apparent mindset of Richards, he was fairly certain that the opposite
had happened.

The worst of it was she knew nothing. He had made
sure not to tell her anything because it didn’t concern her.
The threat of attack by the Chiricahua was decreasing with each
passing day, but he knew he could get a war party together with just
a few words. The threat would always be there as long as the white
man wanted to shove the Indians onto reservations and Chief Tall Deer
would believe whatever he told him.

He looked back at his friend who was swinging in
the wind with his hands tied behind his back and his feet dangling.
He was dismayed to see that someone had stolen his boots and all the
buttons off his pants. He felt bad that Addison was dead. He knew
that his friend had told Richards that Cody had been at the fort last
night and hadn’t arrested him, which was probably the reason
the man had been hanged.

By mid-afternoon, Suzanne was delirious from the
oppressive heat in the closed-up room and in desperate need for
water. Her head was spinning and she felt sick to her stomach. Sweat
poured off her body, saturating the already filthy dress, and her
lack of movement was making her arms and legs tingle as the shackles
scraped her bare skin raw.

Richards drank water in front of her, tormenting
her with obnoxious slurping sounds and even poured it onto the table
as he demanded answers from her that she didn’t have. “Where
is Cody Black Fox?”

Her head lolled to her shoulder. “I-I don’t
know,” she said hoarsely.

“Don’t you dare go to sleep on me!”
he raged and hit her across the face hard enough to send the heavy
chair toppling backward.

She groaned in pain as the fall jarred her back
and she hit her head on the hard dirt. She felt blood running down
the side of her face and tasted blood in her mouth, but she still had
no answer.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her
and the chair back into an upright position again, getting a cry of
pain from her. He put his nose to hers. “You will talk,”
he growled, his big face red with anger and heat. “Now.”

“I don’t know anything,” she
sobbed. “I’ve told you that a hundred times so please let
me go,” she begged weakly.