Every Mother's Son by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2021-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Outside the adobe fortress in the canyons of the Big Bend country, birds took flight from the trees. Coyotes and javelinas looked on with curiosity and alarm before disappearing in the brush. The Apaches scouting for Chief Rojo forgot about looking for a weakness that no Apache had yet found and began nodding with appreciation that their enemy, and sometimes ally, would be a worthy white man to kill one of these days, for he was as savage, strong, and ruthless as the Apaches themselves. This Harry Holland would make even a Comanche flinch.

Inside, that impregnable flat-roofed bastion of blood, horses, and mules began circling and neighing nervously in the sprawling corrals. Cattle lost interest in eating stolen grain or drinking tepid water. And the men, white, black, brown, red—renegades all—stopped cleaning their guns, mending their clothes or tack, drinking, eating, gambling, cursing, laughing, dozing, or answering to the call of nature. The men gazed at the sounds coming from the upstairs quarters of Harry Holland. The worst of the lot grinned. The rest stared in silence, some with disgust, others with disappointment. They listened. A few flinched. None spoke. Some of them barely breathed.

The whip popped from inside the sprawling room where few men, or women, were allowed to enter. It sang out relentlessly, a savagery uncommon even for this vicious land. And after each sound of the blacksnake tearing into its target, the woman screamed.

Screams like those would break even the blackest of hearts.

Pop!

“Pu-lleeezzeeee.”

Pop!

“Nooo. Ohhhhh. Don’t.”

Pop!

“For . . . merc-”

Pop!

Silence. A brief respite. Then, the voice of Harry Holland: “Turn over, you shameless hussy.”

“No, no, no, no, no. . . .” The woman’s voice started out as a scream, but quickly lessened so sobs.

That followed with another damning sound of the whip in Harry Holland’s hand.

The woman no longer shouted. She did not beg. She cried out in pain, and then blubbered words neither man nor beast could understand.

From then on, came just six more savage, furious, unforgivable pops.

“I told your father I’d return you if he pays us the ransom!” Holland yelled. “I never told him what condition you would be in, you damned harlot!”

The whip cracked with furious finality.

The woman sobbed, which at least let the men in the compound below know that she was, at least, alive. For now.

“And now,” Holland yelled from inside his room. “Now I don’t have to worry about you using your feminine charm and your harlot’s wiles to coax one of my men into saving your soul and your life and helping you escape.” Holland laughed like a mad wolf. “No one will dare even look at you again, you hussy. No one. Not even the great Colonel Newton S. Bainbridge.” The laugh rang out again. “Hell, woman, I doubt if you’ll ever leave without a scarf to hide your face. I’ve turned you into a leper.”

Sobbing. The men did not hear Virginia Bainbridge’s weeping, not through those thick walls, but they to a man imagined her agony and her tears.

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