A Wanted Man (30 page)

She could not watch him die. Watch them shoot him in front of her and leave him to bleed. Whatever they did to her from that point on, that alone would destroy her.

His gaze swung around to meet hers. And she saw it all there, terror and remorse and grief. And love? She did not know if she dared name it that. But he felt something for her, something strong and deep.

Don’t die
, she begged silently. He’d always been able to read her. Surely he knew this, too, could see it,
feel
it.
Don’t die.

And he nodded and drew a breath, long and shuddery, as if he knew he might not draw many more.

“Show me the hole,” he said.

H
e’d bought her a few hours. Maybe a few days. Himself, too, hours in hell, but hours nonetheless. Laura was determined to put them to good use.

The shed they’d shoved her in, slamming the door behind her, was eight-by-ten at the most, uninsulated, cluttered with chairs and boxes, a lone desk, and a small, unlit stove with a kettle plunked on top. It had two windows, both glassless, and when she rushed to one she was met with a guard’s grinning face before he banged the shutters inches from her nose.

She stumbled around, collecting anything that might serve as a weapon, before pressing her face to a thin crack in the sloppily built shutters of the window that faced the main yard.

They’d stationed a guard right outside each window, too, she noticed immediately. Okay, no obvious way out, she decided. But that was three guards assigned to her, three guards who weren’t watching the mines, and that couldn’t hurt.

One could worry only so long, Laura discovered. It was impossible to remain on the razor edge of fear and alertness, particularly when nothing was happening immediately.

The night crawled by, so slowly that the passage of time was imperceptible, as if this night was now to be endless.

Little happened in the yard. Guards strode back and forth, their rifles held loosely in the crooks of their arms, rarely even bothering to greet each other because they’d obviously done this a thousand times before. The noise from the mines was constant, metallic and grinding, until her ears became accustomed to the assault and the drone faded into the background.

Finally, when she would have said they’d gone through two nights instead of merely half of one, the shifts changed, torrents of men flooding through the yards, heads down, silent. She searched desperately for Sam. Taller than any of the other miners, he should have been easy to locate.

He wasn’t there. Had they killed him in the mines? Or was he still down there, huddled against a wall, thrown back into his own hell?

Her guard apparently found all the waiting hopelessly boring. He finally slumped against the side of the shed and slid down, firing up a thin cigarette, the smoke drifting lazily in the still air.

The clouds blotted out the moon, the stars, giving her no way to judge the incremental passage of time. Days of this, months of this…it would drive her mad, the constant, grinding wear of not knowing, waiting, helpless. Understanding nothing but death awaited you, trying to remain on guard for any sliver of hope, finding none.

She did not know how Sam had survived Anderson
ville. She tried briefly to sleep. Hopeless, but she had to try. Fatigue sapped at her and made the worry sink its claws in deep.

At last she thought the sky might be lightening a bit, a gray sheen thinning above the dark, opaque clouds, and dread congealed in her stomach. Was it morning already? Would she see another?

The guard dozed against the side of the shack. But he roused the instant she nudged open the shutters, no matter how quiet she tried to be.

Finally, Haw Crocker had arrived. A small group clustered a few hundred yards away, three men on horseback talking to two on the ground. The broad man gesturing widely, his back to her, had to be Jonce. Trying to explain what had happened without the blame falling on him, no doubt. He pointed in the direction of the office shed, and she tensed, muscles tightening all the way down her spine. But no one came her way.

Sound exploded, a blast that had Laura ducking automatically, her hands flying to cover her ears from the painful percussion.

When no more came she stood slowly, peering over the edge of the window. All hell had broken loose in the yard—men, guards and workers, running toward the listing building that guarded the main shaft head, all shouting, screaming, their rapid outbursts unintelligible whether in English or Chinese. The earth trembled beneath her feet, groaning as if in pain.

She shoved open the shutters and swung one leg over the sill.

“Oh, no you don’t, missy,” her guard said.

Shoot.
She had to get the guard conscientious enough to hold his place when the rest went running. “What happened?”

Frowning, he shot a glance at the mouth of the mine, where several dozen men had gathered. “Shouldn’ta been blastin’ right then. One of the charges must have gone off unexpectedly.” He shrugged. “Probably caused a cave-in somewhere.”

“A cave-in?”

“Yeah. They’ll be pulling out bodies for weeks.”

Fear speared into her throat.
Bodies
.
Sam
. She closed her eyes, curled her hands around the sill until the wood bit into her palms.

No.
No
. He was fine. He had to be. Fate could not be so cruel as to send him into his worst nightmare, the one he’d barely escaped, and crush him there.

And this bastard sounded more worried about the work involved in cleaning the mess than about the men who might have been lost in it. “Shouldn’t you go help? See if some of them can be rescued?”

“You kiddin’? It’s dangerous down there. I’m not risking my life for the likes of them. There’s only a few guards down there, anyway.” Anger raged through her like wildfire, a violent burn. If he’d just come close enough, if she could just get her hands on his gun, he’d be in far more danger from her.

“Of course.”

“The other Chinamen’ll go down there, see what they can dig out.”

She ended up pacing. It was too hard to sit and stare out the window, waiting, wondering.

The sky lightened, casting a sickly pall over the ground where it mixed with the harsh light of the lanterns.

“How long has it been?” Laura asked, for at least the sixth time.

Her guard sighed and once again checked the watch
that swung from his waist. “Forty-five minutes or so. Should be…there!”

A half dozen men emerged from the building. Two limped painfully along, dragging a man with a bandaged head who sagged between them. One, bent over, his arm lashed to his side, shuffled out with a lifeless body draped over his shoulders.

And none of them was Sam.

They came out in spurts then. Sometimes only one, sometimes a few at a time. On stretchers, bodies draped in tarps. Men, hobbling, their clothes and faces coated with grime. Bandaged men dragging others, barely conscious, behind them.

Bodies soon littered the yard. So many men in that mine. Dozens of them. Hundreds? She couldn’t even begin to guess. How many were still down there, trapped, dead or dying?

And nobody seemed to be doing a damned thing.

“Where are the doctors?”

“Ain’t got no doctors,” he said. “Them Chinese, they got their own kind of medicine, anyway. And if they’re hurt that bad, no point in working too hard to save ’em. They ain’t gonna be of much use to us anytime soon.”

She’d been angry before. Furious, even, when she’d discovered what Haw Crocker was doing. But the rage that tore through her at the unfeeling guard’s response was something entirely new, a murderous fury of the sort she would have thought herself incapable.

She’d wondered, more than once, how a human being could deliberately kill another. Now she knew.

The heaviest thing in the place was the coffeepot on the stove. She snatched it up, curling her hand around the handle until her fingers went numb.

A shot cracked through the air.

She flew back to the window.

Throughout the yard injured men were springing to their feet, throwing off slings. Dead bodies rose from beneath their tarps. Men who moments ago could barely stand ran. Streams of workers carrying pickaxes and shovels burst from the door and headed straight for the guards.

Crocker’s men were vastly outnumbered. But they had guns, and the crack of shots punctuated the war cries of the miners and the screams of the wounded.

Two of her guards sprinted into the fray. This one backed away, shrinking into the camouflage offered by the dark bulk of the office.

Clang
.

The kettle rang when Laura brought it down on top of his head as hard as she could, the handle vibrating painfully in her palm.

He wavered before sinking slowly to the ground. She wiggled out the window and hopped over his prone body.

It was impossible to tell who was winning, who was losing. More men poured from the tent village, most without weapons of any kind, throwing themselves into the conflict armed only with their fists. Somebody had shattered all the lamps, and gloom settled into the narrow valley. The pace of the shots slowed down…time to reload? Running out of ammunition? The battle was close, a chaotic churn of desperate men.

And Sam was in there somewhere. He had to be. Because someone had set this off.

Her brain spun frantically, trying to think of something,
anything
, she could do to help.

Nothing. She’d no weapon, no power.

The only thing she could do was run.

She hated the very idea. Leaving Sam behind while he fought for his life…it felt as wrong as watching that poor man be lassoed and being able to do nothing to stop it.

Sam would never leave her. But he would have been of more use.

If she could get away, maybe she could summon help. Probably not in time. But if…oh, she could barely think it. But if the worst happened, someone needed to be able to tell the truth of what had happened here. Someone needed to make sure that Haw Crocker was punished.

And nobody was paying any attention to her.

The horses Haw and his men rode in on were standing no more than three hundred yards away. She slipped along the edge of the camp, sprinting between buildings, pausing in the shelter their shadows offered.

Yes.
She grabbed the reins of the nearest horse. He snorted and tossed his head, backing away from her.

“Easy, handsome,” she murmured softly. “It’s scary down there, isn’t it? Let’s get you away from here, shall we?”

She led him up the slope, leaving the chaos behind. She couldn’t resist looking back. She needed to see him, just once, to assure herself that he was alive and fighting.

Though she searched until her eyes burned, she couldn’t find him. A fire had sparked somewhere, and smoke drifted through the low line of the valley, blurring the individuals into one seething mob, a twisting mass of violence.

Take care, Sam. I…take care.

Time to go.

She dragged herself into the saddle, grimacing as
her rear quarters, still sore from the previous days of riding, hit unforgiving leather. She aimed her mount away from camp, back toward the main house. She’d swing around when she got close, then find her way into town.

A troop of riders thundered over the hill, heading directly for her. Panic flared. Run? Which way? Back into the thick of the fighting?

And then, as the morning sun finally burned through the thick, low clouds, she recognized the man on the lead horse.

“Daddy!”

It had been years since Sam had been in battle. Gunfights, yes; small skirmishes that he’d purposely chosen and controlled. They didn’t count, and there were fewer of those than most people believed.

Battles were something else entirely. Frenzied, disjointed, the air thick with the scent of confusion and fear. But it all rolled back to him immediately, the instincts that drove him forward, the ability to concentrate on one small thing and block out the rest, the only thing that allowed one to function in the face of such danger.

And at that moment his focus was Haw Crocker.

Haw had found himself a good spot behind a pile of barrels, popping up to fire off a shot before ducking back to safety.

Sam cut to the left, leaving the heat of the fight behind, crouching behind the line of buildings. He taken a rifle off a scared, disoriented kid by the office—the kid had wasted all the bullets, firing madly into the crowd, but the heavy stock had proved damned effective when brought down on the top of a head.

He figured Haw would be turning tail soon enough. He’d been leaving the rough stuff to the hired help for a long time. And a man tended to grow more jealous of his life the nearer he got to the end of it.

The sounds of the fight covered Sam’s approach. Crocker didn’t glance away from the yard until the rifle prodded square in the middle of his back.

“I do admire a man who fights by the side of his men,” Sam said.

Crocker stiffened. “I’ve done my share.”

“Let’s join the fun, hmm?” He jabbed Crocker’s back. “Get up. Easy now. Wouldn’t want me to mistake an innocent twitch for somethin’ more aggressive, would you?”

Haw rose at a glacial pace. “I’ll give you five thousand dollars.”

“Is that all your life’s worth?” Sam
tsked
. “Not nearly as much as I figured.”

“Twenty.
Thirty
.”

“How much silver you figure you take out of that mountain in a day, Haw?” He nudged him with the rifle to get him moving. “Enough to pay for all the lives you stole?”

“Just tell me, then.” Desperation thinned his voice. “You’ve sold your soul so many times over, there can’t be any left. Don’t try and tell me that you’re trying to do the right thing here. Just name your price, and we’ll both get what we want.”

What I want? No,
Sam thought, with the wrenching ache in his heart that he suspected would be his constant companion from now on.
I’m not going to be getting what I want.

“Move along,” he said. “Let’s see if we can calm things down out there before anybody else gets hurt,
shall we? Anybody else but you, that is. Wouldn’t mind that.”

He walked him into a clear spot near the platform where the railhead ended. Two cars sat empty, awaiting a load. “Get up.”

“I—”

“Get up.”

He lumbered onto the platform, Sam right behind him, the gun never wavering.

“Okay, listen up,” Sam shouted. “All you guards, drop your guns, or I’m shooting.”