AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This made Lauralee come quickly out of her stunned state. She slapped and kicked at Clint. She tried to scream, but he quickly clamped one of his hands over her mouth.
With his one arm anchoring her to him, her back against his left hip, Clint dragged Lauralee down the steps. The shadows of evening gave him the cover he needed to get her to his horse and make his escape.
“I hope to find out why you looked as though you saw a ghost when you saw me,” Clint grumbled as his eyes watched around him. “I’d say that was strange behavior for someone you’ve never laid eyes on before.”
Her eyes wide over his hand, Lauralee yanked and tugged at his arm, and then the hand that was held across her mouth.
But nothing could budge either his hand or his arm.
They seemed glued to her.
There was one thing in her favor. The man had a wooden leg. She could see that his movements down the steps were hampered by it. As he struggled to get her down the steps, the wooden leg dragged heavily behind him.
Lauralee’s eyes widened even more as she suddenly recalled Dancing Cloud saying that his assailant had a wooden leg.
Could this man be the one and the same?
Clint McCloud.
She remembered Dancing Cloud saying that his assailant’s name was Clint McCloud!
She was then aware of something else. Of the feel of a pistol grinding into her back as Clint walked her toward his horse.
The pistol.
It was in a holster.
It was so very, very temptingly close.
If she could just reach behind her . . .
When he finally got to his horse and began untying his reins, Lauralee gave his good leg a swift, backward kick.
Clint yelped with pain and loosened his grip on her enough for her to get a solid hold on the handle of his pistol.
As he reached for her, to force her onto his horse, she swung the pistol from his holster and aimed it at him. “You no good damn Yankee,” she hissed, holding a steady aim on him. “Now you’re going to pay for all of the evil you have done in your lifetime.”
Clint went pale. Not so much over Lauralee having for the moment got the best of him. He remembered another lady of his past and how she had drawn a pistol on him, her exact words—“You no good damn Yankee”—having haunted him through the years. It had been only moments later when one of his soldiers had disarmed her.
Clint had enjoyed raping and killing her for having humiliated him in front of his regiment of soldiers that day.
This woman standing before him today was an exact replica of that lady those many years ago, as though she had come back to life to haunt him.
His heart pounding, he fitted his good foot in the stirrup, and as he had been forced to learn long ago, he swung his wooden leg over the horse.
Quickly in the saddle, and taking the chance that this lady’s aim would not be accurate enough, he gave her one last stare, then snapped his reins and rode away.
“Stop!” Lauralee cried. Her hand trembled as she held her aim on him, yet knew the chances were good that he would escape.
She knew nothi
ng about firearms.
She even feared them.
When he did not stop, she closed her eyes, held her face sideways back from the pistol, and pulled the trigger. . . .
Chapter 16
