Page 41 of The Enchanted Land

“John … John, are you all right?” Her voice was full of fear.

When she made out her husband’s form in the moonlight, and then Seth’s much larger form holding him, she screamed and began crying hysterically, incoherently.

“Let me go to her. I’ll answer your questions, but just let me go to her.”

Seth released the man, and he went to comfort his wife. As he held her in his arms, he looked up at Seth, his face sad.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” Seth said quietly. “I’m just trying to find my wife.”

John nodded his head. “The little blond woman?”

“Have you seen her?” Seth’s voice was jubilant.

“Meg, it’s all right.” John’s hand stroked his wife’s hair. “He’s not here to hurt us. Why don’t you go inside, and I’ll be in in a minute?”

Sobbing, Meg went back into the house, and John shut the door behind her.

“Yesterday, about sundown, three men rode up. They had the woman with them.” His hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

“Did they give you any idea where they were going?”

“No.” Seth could not help but wonder at the hatred in the man’s voice.

“Had they hurt her?”

John remembered Morgan standing nude, but he also remembered that Cat Man had not touched her, and that he had forbidden the others to bother her.

“No, they hadn’t hurt her, but that Cat Man is evil.”

“Did they do that to your leg?” Seth motioned to a wound that still seeped blood onto John’s pants.

“This is the least of what they did to us.” Seth’s eyes followed John’s to the cabin, and understanding passed between the two men. “If you catch them, mister, I hope you kill them.”

“I plan to.”

Seth returned to his horse and mounted to leave.

“They dressed her in boy’s clothes,” John said. “But she’ll still be easy to find when it’s known that she’s riding with that Cat Man.” Quickly, he described the men and their horses.

As Seth prepared to leave, they shook hands and exchanged names. “I hope you get ’em,” John called after Seth.

“I sure as hell do too,” he whispered into the darkness.

Days later, as they came over a ridge and looked down at the little town, Morgan knew it was a mistake to even call the place a town. There were only five or six buildings, each looking as if it might fall down at any minute. A little apart from the other buildings stood a large white house. They started down the hill before she could see any more.

“Cat Man! Good to see you again.”

“Joe, honey, where you been so long?”

Morgan looked around. The woman who had called to Joe was lounging in the doorway of a derelict, faded building. Her reddish hair was matted and filthy. Her dress revealed most of her sagging breasts. Morgan guessed that at one time the dress had been red and gold, but now stains and several unmended rips obscured the material. The woman returned Morgan’s stare boldly.

“What you got here, Cat Man? Pretty little thing. Can I have her when you’re done?”

Morgan felt a rubbery palm on her leg, and looked down to see a short, fat man, with a large nose and thick, protruding lips, staring at her. His greasy hand was caressing her thigh. Quickly she jerked her leg up and out to kick him hard in the chest, just at the base of the neck.

Unprepared for the blow, he landed sitting in the dust and refuse of the street. In front of her she heard Cat Man’s low chuckling.

“That serves you right, Luke. Keep your hands off from now on. She’s the Boss’s woman.”

---