Background
Luke lived a solitary homestead life until a mail order bride came to be, not to mention an Indian maiden found wandering about. Will doing the honorable thing sacrifice love?
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Under the cover of darkness, Luke listened to the hypnotic sound of water lapping over rocks and rills. He trusted his horse to find a delicate balance across the river, as the pair slipped from the bank. He hoped to cut off the bounty hunter before making it to town with Ruth. He hugged the backside of his horse while scrapping through brush on the other side.
On a plateau, he paused and looked upward at the blanket of stars in the sky. Then he looked down at where he could see the faint light of oil lamps burning in town. It made the town look more inviting and closer than it was. He wondered if the bounty hunter would risk taking a trail through the ravine at night.
Over a precipice he looked down into the darkness to see if there was a lantern flickering, a sign the pair attempted to make haste through the tight quarters below. Luke reckoned he couldn't have made it very far before daybreak.
While Luke's horse fed on tufts of grass, he sat against a knotted tree and pulled his hat down. Hugging his rifle, he nodded off to sleep until the sun broke like yoke over the horizon.
Luke brushed himself off and stepped over to the precipice and into the jigsaw ravine where he hoped to catch a speck or two moving along on a perilous path.
Luke squatted and squinted, using his rifle to steady himself over the edge. Coming out from a shadow he saw what looked like Ruth in her dress, but he couldn't see the bounty hunter. She appeared to be crawling. It looked to Luke's naked eye that they must have taken a wrong turn in the night.
Luke took his horse by the harness and led his mare in the direction where he hoped to have an advantage and get a clean shot at the filthy scum who took Ruth. He looked into the brown marble eyes of the horse. "Now, Sugar, you are one fine mare, and I wouldn't blame you a bit. This isn't the trail we often take. You might call it the Devil's Den. I'm going to need you to be brave, okay?"
Sugar shook her head, but Luke held the bridle in one hand and his rifle in the other. Gravel slipped beneath them until they settled on an opening between boulders where the path hardened. The pair treaded along a steep face where Luke tried not to look out over the valley. As he rounded the cliff edge he spotted her.
Ruth looked at Luke, as if she'd seen a ghost. She coughed the words. "It's really you? You came."
Luke took notice of her parched mouth, bloody knees, and tattered dress. He slipped his revolver from the holster and combed the opening between boulders. He spoke above a whisper. "Where is he?"
Ruth's own hands were still bound, but he could see she'd been trying to free herself with a sharp rock. She turned her head and pointed toward the edge from the flat rock she was on. Luke stepped over beside her and looked down where from his shadow he saw the bounty hunter's body bloodied and twisted on the rocks. He stepped back and looked at Ruth. "Let me get you some water. But first..."
Luke slipped his knife from the sheath, as Ruth held her hands up to him. He sliced into the rope until the last strands popped.
Ruth took a wobbly stance, fear in her glassy brown eyes. "I pushed him in the dark."
"I bet you did." He stepped over to his saddlebag and pulled out a pouch of water. She ambled toward him, attempting to get more distance from the ledge.
She drank from the mouth of the skin until it trickled down her chin and on her dirty blouse. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Is he...he dead?"
Luke studied her eyes of fear. "I'd say he's as dead as a man can get."
She collapsed into his arms. Her body shook against him. Luke rubbed her back. She dug for more words. "I didn't know what else to do. I thought for sure I could die."
Luke stepped back, placing a hand on the bridle of the horse. "What happened to his horse?"
"It spooked him. Somehow the horse managed the trail in the dark."
"Best we find our way back up. Good chance a riderless horse in town won't go unnoticed."
Ruth took another swig from the skin, then handed it back to Luke. As Luke led the way with his horse, he turned to Ruth. "Don't look down."
After Luke coaxed his horse up the ridge, he looked back and saw two riders on their way toward the common trail up the mountain. He gave Ruth a hand as she made the plateau. "I'd say most men don't stand much of a chance against you."
Ruth looked him in the eye. "He found the knife Ayanna gave me."
"You got some grit with that sand. I'll give you that much."
Looking past her, he could see one of the men was the town marshal, John Wade. Ruth was right. They'd stop at nothing to get to her. There must have been some powerful people back east she'd married into.
"Don't look now, but I need to put you somewhere fast, until I figure out what to do about the marshal and his deputy who are coming over that ridge."
