The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(106)

Flames licked up from the ground to the wagon wheels and climbed toward the edge of the bed. Quillan twisted beneath the pile of wreckage that pinned him down. Smoke choked and swirled up. The horses screamed.

“Please!” Quillan hollered. “Cut my horses free!”

Flavio stared. Quillan begged for his horses, though he writhed in pain and couldn’t stop the moans? Suddenly Flavio saw his papa writhing just so, his moans torturing Flavio’s tender ears, tearing open his heart. His papa had been crushed and broken as Quillan was now. Violent men had cut him down in his strength and youth, and no one had saved him.

Flavio pressed his hands to the sides of his head. The near horse gained its feet and jerked against the toppled wagon. Quillan screamed in pain. Without thinking, Flavio rushed forward, pulling a knife from his pocket. Amid the spreading flames, he slashed the leather reins until the animals tore themselves loose and ran.

Quillan’s chest heaved. He closed his eyes, gasped for breath, and moaned again. “Oh, God . . .”

Hating himself for what he had done, Flavio gripped the massive undercarriage that trapped Quillan. With all his strength, he strained against the weight. Through tight jaws Quillan hollered his pain as the wreckage shifted on him. The undercarriage raised up only inches.

“Pull!” Flavio shouted.

Quillan twisted, trying to get free. Flavio pressed his shoulder lower and lurched with a strength beyond his own. The undercarriage lifted. Quillan slid himself out and rolled, choking on the blood that gagged him. Flavio gagged, too, staring down at the man he had mangled. What should he do? The workers below must have seen the smoke, heard an explosion greater than it should have been. Flavio heard them coming up. Waves of horror washed over him. He ran for his horse and galloped down the back side of the hill.

Quillan pressed his face into the dirt, gasping with pain and choking as the smoke engulfed him. He would burn. He would burn! Mrs.

Shepard’s voice in his ear. “You’ll burn like your demon parents burned. Burn in hell!” He tried to drag himself from the fire spreading over the ground. God! Help me! But though he was free of the wreckage he couldn’t rise, couldn’t crawl.

Smoke stung his eyes, and he smacked the flaming grass with one hand. He sucked an acrid breath and choked. Nightmare visions of his parents’ charred bodies filled his eyes as the grass crackled with flame. Suddenly hands grabbed him, and he hollered in pain. Leg. Hip. One arm bent wrong and pain shooting from his shoulder to his neck until a hot numbness replaced it.

His cheek scraped across the rough wood of a hand wagon as someone slid him in. He was moving, rolling and bumping in the cart. He gritted his teeth against the jarring. The caustic smell of burnt grass stung his nostrils. He gagged on more blood, spit it out, and tried to think.

Something he had to do . . .

He tried to raise himself up in the wobbling cart. Men scattered about beating and stamping the burning grass, arms across their faces. And there, in the midst of it, his wagon was turning to charcoal.

Quillan collapsed, groaning. He couldn’t move one leg. His whole right side was awash in pain. He fought to stay conscious. He had to.

Where were they taking him? To finish him off? The fire could have done that. Suffocate or burn. Like his wagon. Like his money in the safely concealed box above the front axle. First flood, now fire. Quillan stopped struggling. What was the use?





Shaking with fear, Carina nudged Ti’Giuseppe aside. “Let me do it, Tio. I have to hurry.” She cinched the saddle and flipped the stirrup down.

“Carina.” Giuseppe caught her hand. “Be careful.”

“It’s not me, Tio, it’s Quillan. Flavio has lost his mind.” She swung onto the horse.

“Go.” He nodded his head. “Warn your Quillan.”

“Pray, Tio.” She grabbed the reins.

“Yes.” He moved aside as she urged the horse out of the barn.

Carina rode hard to Schocken’s quarry. She didn’t know what Flavio would do, but she had to warn Quillan. Yes, even if it took deadly force to defend himself. She should never have said no. Flavio was too unpredictable, too unstable. Her cheek burned with his slap. Though the pain had died, for him to strike her . . .

She kicked her heels. Papa’s horses were fine stock, but this one felt like a plodder to her now. “Per piacere, Signore! Make this horse fly.”

Her hair was a mass of tangles, her face flushed with the wind and her own anxiety when she reached the quarry. There was confusion already in the yard, and she looked up at the men fighting a fire on the hill. Fire was bad, but Quillan was her only concern.

She swung down, searching for his wagon and team. Maybe it was too early; he was still abed or in town on some errand. The quarry was large; he could be . . . Then she saw a horse running panicked among the stone piles. Its bulk and huge shaggy hooves . . . Her breath caught. Socrates? Or Homer?

Again she searched the yard, then the hillside with her eyes, frantic now to make sense of the scene. Something burned on the hill, some large charred mass. And what was that being wheeled down by two men in a long handcart? She looked again at the burning shape and made out wheels. A wagon? Quillan’s?

With a cry, she rushed toward the men hurtling down the hill into the yard. Workers just arriving huddled around the cart, and Carina couldn’t see. They spoke altogether, asking the same questions as hers.