Page 37 of Passion's Wicked Torment

“Call to him,” Ambrewster ordered.

“What?” Her voice was weak.

“Call to him. Tell him I’ll kill you if he doesn’t show himself and throw down his gun.” He was holding her arm again, and the knife blade was against her neck. He began walking her forward toward the hill, through the woods, keeping her in front of him for protection.

“How do you know it’s . . . him? It might be that other one. Your friend.”

“It’s him,” Ambrewster said, nervously shifting his eyes to the right and left as he walked. “If it was Ray, he’d have yelled out to us by now. Now talk to him! Do as I tell you. I know you know him. You called out his name before when you tried to warn him.”

They were approaching the base of the hill. Ambrewster twisted her arm up behind her, hurting her, making her cry out. “You want to die?” he hissed. “Do as I told you!”

“Sean!” she yelled. “He has a knife to my neck! He says he’ll kill me!”

“If he doesn’t show himself! Tell him that if he doesn’t show himself, I’ll kill you!”

She refused to speak further. When he twisted her arm again, she winced and yelped, unable to help herself. But she would not say the words he wanted. She would not help him kill Sean.

Ambrewster spoke himself, loudly, into the empty area near the base of the hill. “All right, McShane, it’s me. You know about me, and I know about you. Well, I got your woman here, McShane. And I’m going to kill her if you don’t come out into the open, your hands over your head.”

There was no answer.

“McShane!” he called out, his voice becoming desperate. “I’m not bluffing, McShane!” To prove this, he pressed the tip of the knnfe against Kristin’s neck, breaking the skin slightly and drawing a drop of blood. Kristin was terrified, but still she did not scream. She knew he wanted her to scream; that was why he did this. His face loomed up in her vision. “Scream, damn you,” he growled with rasping venom.

Still she remained silent. There was no sign of McShane. Ambrewster continued walking her slowly up the path of tall grass. He held her close in front of him, his arm inserted behind her arms, which were tied behind her so that when he saw McShane, Kristin would be between the two of them. He held her so tightly that she would not be able to leap off to the side or to duck down. His strategy was to keep moving forward up the path until he encountered the Mountie. McShane could only be somewhere along the path or at the top of the hill now, for the sides of the path were raised, slick boulders before a steep drop off.

The rise became steeper. As they continued up, they came to a slight turn in the path. They advanced past it cautiously, Kristin still directly in front of Ambrewster. There on the trail they saw a sickening sight: Kristin drew in her breath sharply. It was Johnny-boy lying sprawled unconscious or dead on the trail, his leg in a giant bear trap that came clear up to his knee, locking his leg in its metal jaws. The leg was bloody.

So that was why Sean had not left the top when Johnny-boy was sneaking up on him, Kristin realized. He’d wanted him to sneak up on him! He’d set his trap and was waiting for him to walk into it. She remembered seeing a metal contraption on the back of Sean’s horse when he had left the cabin. She had not realized then that it was a bear trap.

“You bastard!” Ambrewster yelled up to the unseen McShane. “You son-of-a-bitch bastard!"

Kristin could tell he was furious, not because he gave a damn whether his hired killer lived or died. No, he was upset because McShane had outwitted him. Ambrewster had come with two professional killers to slay McShane, but through cunning and ingenuity the Mountie had managed to even up the odds.

Ambrewster was certain he had a winning hand now though. He had a shield that he was sure McShane would not try to shoot through. He even felt confident enough now to make a perverse joke. “I’m glad it’s you walking in front, instead of me,” he said to Kristin, nodding down at the bear trap and its victim as they passed it. And in fact, Kristin was sufficiently unnerved so that she was looking very carefully before she took each step.

Not long thereafter, they saw what had happened to Ray Torry. His pinstr?pe Chicago suit coat had a splotch of blood soaking through the back as it covered the sprawled form that lay across the trail, the legs at sharp angles. His gun was still in his immobile hand, and his black Chicago hat was still on his head.

“Bastard,” cursed Ambrewster, seething, as he and Kristin came up to the body. They were so near the top now that every one of Ambrewster’s senses was keenly alert, and his eyes were sharply focused up the trail. McShane had to be at the very top now. There seemed to be no other possibility. And they were almost upon him. Ambrewster barely glanced at Ray’s sprawled body on the trail as Kristin and he stepped over it and continued up the last few paces to the crest of the hill. Kristin could sense his alertness from the way he held her and from the way his breathing had become steady and very quiet. She was distraught with worry. There seemed to be nothing Sean could do. His situation was almost hopeless.

“Here we come, McShane!” Ambrewster shouted as he prepared to push Kristin ahead of him up the last few feet, past the crest where he was sure McShane now stood. “Here we come!” he yelled again.

“Good,” said a low voice directly behind him. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time.”

Ambrewster turned around abruptly to face McShane, releasing Kristin. He did not have time to turn her in an arc with him. Kristin dove down to the ground. A shot rang out. She turned and saw Ambrewster staggering about, holding his right arm. His gun had dropped as the bullet from McShane’s pistol shattered the bone.

Kristin saw now how McShane had gotten behind them. It was not Ray Torry who had lain sprawled on the trail. It was McShane, who had put on Torry’s jacket and hat. Torry had undoubtedly been dragged up to the top of the knoll after Sean had killed him. Kristin saw the cold, murderous look in Sean’s face now. She thought about his dead partner, Ned, who had been shot in both arms and both knees. She looked at Ambrewster, who was staggering around in shock, a bullet in one arm.

“No, Sean,” she pleaded. “Don’t do it. It’s too savage.”

He said nothing. His face was set in stone. He seemed almost not to have heard.

“Don’t,” she pleaded, still on the ground. “It’ll reduce you to their level. It’ll make you no better than them.”

He glanced at her. Her words had gotten through. She was not surprised then when he fired off a single bullet into Ambrewster’s chest, killing him instantly. This was the best she could have expected. She knew he would kill the man. But this was more merciful than the way he had planned on doing it.

Ambrewster dropped to the grassy path like a sack of rocks. Sean glanced at him only a moment longer, satisfying himself that he had at last fulfilled his promise to his dead partner. Then he rushed to Kristin and untied her hands. He raised her up in his arms. ?

??My love,” he said with concern. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. She could not trust herself to speak. This ordeal had been more intense than any she had ever experienced. She moved her lips close to him and kissed him, just a peck. He, in turn, kissed her passionately, hugging her to him.

Then, reluctantly, he set her down. It was time to attend to the finishing-up details now. He took off Ray Torry’s blood soaked coat and hat and threw them down on the trail. Then he hiked up the last few feet to the crest of the knoll and picked up his own scarlet jacket, Sam Browne belt, and hat, which lay near the corpse. Kristin turned her eyes away from the corpse. Torry had been shot in the chest as he ran up the path to Sean, blinded by emotion after seeing his younger brother in the bear trap. The bullet had gone clear through him, accounting for the blood splotch in the back of the jacket.

McShane picked up his rifle and started down the hill toward Johnny-boy. “Hold this,” he said to Kristin, giving her the weapon. Then he bent all his strength to the task of prying open the bear trap and locking the jaw apart with a latch. He removed Johnny-boy, who was still alive but unconscious, and slung him over his shoulder. Then he started down the path.

“I told you not to come,” he said to Kristin, who was behind him.

“I saw his horse in the town stables. The black stallion with the tawny left flank. I thought he was in town and would sneak up on you from behind. I had to warn you.” She saw no point in mentioning that she intended to disobey his orders and join him even before she had seen the stallion.

“How could this horse have been in the stable?” McShane asked, slinging Johnny-boy over the back of his own mount as they reached the base of the hill. “He came from Tarryton, just as I expected. Along the road from Tarryton, not from Yukon.”

Kristin’s face showed her perplexity. “Who could that have been in town, then, the man who was asking questions about me? The stranger who rode in on the stallion?”

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