Free Early Dawn by Catherine Anderson Page A

difficulty focusing. So she jerked her mind back to Ace’s children again.
    Eventually the torture stopped. The younger Sebastian brothers grew so intoxicated that they staggered away to their pallets, leaving Wallace to drag Eden over to a patch of cold earth beside his bedroll. Before falling asleep, he drew a noose over her head and knotted the loose end of the rope around his wrist.
    “You move while I’m asleep, and I’ll wake up. You hear?”
    Eden rolled onto her side with her back to him and brought her knees up to her bare breasts in a feeble attempt to stay warm. Wallace didn’t even give her a blanket. Eden could scarcely conceive how anyone could be so uncaring of another human being. But there it was. He’d cut away much of her clothing, and now he meant to cozy down for the night under two layers of wool while she lay exposed to the elements on damp ground.
    As the chill of the night air seeped into her bones, Eden stared blankly across the clearing. The small fire had burned down to a mere glow of embers now, providing little light, and the waning moon was hidden behind a layer of clouds that promised more rain. For an instant, tears gathered at the backs of her eyes, but her determination to be strong burned them away. Yes, she had endured the unthinkable tonight, but crying wouldn’t undo it or make her feel better. She thought of the wildflowers she and her mother had seen from the train—delicate blossoms surviving in a harsh, unforgiving terrain. She needed to be like those wildflowers. So what if life had brought a storm that threatened to flatten her? Eventually the sun would shine again. She just had to survive until then.
    In the meantime, rescue was on its way. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name. Ace had recently gotten a telephone. Their mother could call him as soon as she reached Denver. Eden’s brothers would waste no time in riding out to find her. God help the Sebastian brothers. Eden hadn’t been lying when she’d told them they would come to regret the day they’d been born. Before this was over, they would be the ones who sniveled and begged for mercy. Her brothers weren’t cruel men by nature, but if someone dared to harm one of their own, not even the wrath of hell would hold a candle to their anger.
    That was Eden’s last thought as she slipped into a troubled, restless sleep.

Chapter Three
    For Eden, the next three days passed in a nightmarish blur of brushland. In times past she would have marveled over the way spring had touched the rolling landscape with such vivid color. In the rocky gulches, Apache plume shared space with chokeberry, both blooming in abundance. The white blossoms of the plumes salted the wispy backdrops of dusty pink, the rosy chokeberry bushes bending under the weight of conical clusters of petals, which drooped from the branches like fronds of snowy grapes. Along the streams, false indigo lay like a fluffy purple carpet beneath brilliant green caps of bushy foliage. Wild plum blossoms filled the air with fragrance as exquisite as any French perfume.
    With her pelvis rocking against the saddle horn mile after bruising mile, Eden tried to block out the discomfort by imagining herself on a walk with her mother to collect flowers for Caitlin’s table, but exhaustion had her thoughts circling in on themselves in fits and starts. In some distant part of her mind, she recognized the beauty of her surroundings, but it was like the touch of a feather against one’s skin, a whisper of sensation that she almost felt but couldn’t stay focused on.
    Every joint in her repeatedly abused body ached. The cold, rainy weather had given way to bright sun, and by the end of the second day her face, hands, and exposed breasts were badly sunburned. At night, the cold returned. After the first evening the men built no fire when they made camp, giving her cause to hope that a posse might be close on their heels, but the lack of heat also left her suffering