Betina Krahn (41 page)

Bear hit the ground running, shouting orders to find both the family and the well. The men found the wooden structure above the well damaged by the blasts, and worked frantically to clear it and rig a bucket line. Meanwhile, all they had were the shovels they brought with them and a few hammers left on the floor of the wagon. They could hear frantic animals trapped somewhere inside the smoke, and in desperation took those huge spike mauls to the still-standing walls of the barn. Wherever they broke through, heat and smoke from the smoldering hay and bedding came boiling out, and they were forced to retreat.

In the heat and confusion, Bear and Halt searched for Danvers and his family. On the porch of the burning shell of the house, they found the farmer pinned under a smoldering beam. He wasn’t conscious, but that was just as well; his leg looked badly damaged. They found boards, pried him out of the wreckage, and carried him off to a safe distance. Then, desperate to find Luanna Danvers and her children and fearing the worst, Bear covered his
face with his kerchief and went charging into the burning shell of the house.

Heat seared his lungs and drove him back outside, but not before he managed to collect the impression that there weren’t any bodies inside. Starved for air and racked with coughing, Bear staggered out to collapse on the ground near Danvers.

Diamond sat by the senseless form of Jim Danvers, wiping his face with a piece of cloth ripped from her petticoat, watching the chaos, feeling helpless in a way she had never experienced before. The Danverses’ home had been utterly destroyed. Blown to bits. The unthinkable violence of it shook her to the very core. For the second time that day, she was feeling the wrath of evil unleashed and scrambling to make sense of it.

How could anyone do this to a young family whose only offense was struggling to make a living? No, they had committed one more crime: they had listened to and believed her when she said that leasing the land to Bear wouldn’t be “selling it” and wouldn’t get them in trouble. How could she have known the finer points of her clever solution would be lost on a man like Beecher?

Then she looked up and saw Bear charging into the burning house and her heart stopped. He was risking life and limb to rescue these people, to make right
her
mistake. Terror gripped her and she abandoned her post by Danvers to pace desperately around the burning house.

There had to be
something
she could do—there had to be!

Frantically she looked around and spotted the men bringing up their first bucket of water. Buckets—blankets—anything they could wet and use for cover. She ran this way and that, spotting a soddy shed and realizing that behind it—protected from the blast—hung Luanna Danvers’s wash line. The farm wife had obviously just done her
wash—sundry clothes, sheets, and blankets were still pinned to the rope that had collapsed partway into the dirt.

Racing for them, she ripped the linens from the line and headed for the well. The men took them gratefully, ripped several of them in half, and wetted them down. She saved one of the cotton quilts, wetted it as best she could, then headed for the house … and Bear.

He was stumbling out of the house as she arrived. When he fell onto the ground near Danvers, she rushed to him and fell to her knees, wiping his reddened face with the wet blanket. He looked up and her heart turned over. If she had lost him to this senseless fire … Swallowing down that thought, she looked over at the unconscious Danvers. He had a family, too … a wife and children … who now were missing.

“I’ll be back,” she said, scrambling to her feet.

Bear had seen the tumult in her face and felt the anxiety in her touch. She wiped his face with the cool corner of a wet blanket, gave him a look that spoke what would take volumes to explain, then glanced at Danvers and bounded up.

“Diamond!” He tried to call to her, but the smoke had robbed him of all but a rasping whisper of a voice. He watched in horror as she wrapped herself in that wet quilt and ran for the rear of the house. “Damn-fool woman.” He gritted his teeth as he struggled up. “Just gotta
help
.”

He staggered over to Halt and grabbed his arm. “Find Diamond …”

Together they lumbered around the house, searching through the flickering light and smoke for some sign of her. They finally heard her calling for Luanna Danvers and followed her voice. She materialized out of the choking gray haze and he grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Wait!” she said, fighting his hold on her. “I heard something!”

They went still and an agonizing moment later heard what might have been voices … muffled and indistinct. Batting smoke from their faces and trying to breathe only through the wet quilt, they huddled close and listened intently. The sound came again. Even through the roar and crackle of flame and the shouts of the men, they managed to hear it.

“Help! Help us!”

High-pitched voices. Children. They looked at one another, then when Diamond pointed, indicating a direction, they nodded and followed.

As they exited the swirling haze, still half-blinded by the smoke, they could see nothing promising. It wasn’t until Halt stumbled and went down on one knee that they realized that they were practically standing on the wooden door of a root cellar. Beams from the exploded barn roof had landed across one end of the doors, sealing the entrance. But when Diamond called out, she was answered by a chorus of voices.

Bear and Halt fell on those beams and debris, scrambling and straining to shove them off the doors. Minutes later, they were pulling Luanna Danvers and three of her children from the root cellar.

“Jim—where’s Jim?” she asked frantically as they hurried her around the devastation of her home. When she spotted him lying on the ground in the front yard, she let out a cry and raced to his side. Danvers roused as she cradled him and called his name. When he had roused fully, she fell across his chest, sobbing, and her husband weakly patted her head. Moments later she sat up and looked around. “We saw em comin’,” she told Bear and Diamond. “Jim told me an’ the kids t’ head fer th’ root
cellar. Him an’ Daniel—where’s Daniel?” She looked first to her husband. “He was with you.”

Danvers coughed. “Sent ’im to open th’ barn door an’ let the horses out.”

Luanna Danvers turned in horror to the flaming remains of their barn. “My God. Daniel!”

Barely a second passed before Bear was in motion and calling to ask the men beating at the flames and throwing dirt on smoldering embers if they’d seen a little boy. None had. He ran around the barn and corral, and stopped dead when he spotted the closed barn door. The boy hadn’t made it to let the horses out. He must have been caught in the blast.

Daniel Danvers was nowhere to be found. Bear, Halt, and Diamond searched while the men battled the flames. As the fires came under control, some of the men turned to rounding up the animals that had survived the blast. A cow, a few pigs, several chickens that smelled of burned feathers appeared. Then Bear spotted a fellow leading in a plow horse.

“Where did you find him?” Bear asked the fellow.

“Over that rise … just wandering.” The man pointed.

Daniel must have let the horses out then reclosed the door! They redoubled their efforts. After a time Diamond went back to the distraught Luanna Danvers and her heart ached for the woman. What if it were Robbie who was missing? Thoughts of Robbie and his bag of tricks caused her to straighten and focus on a whole new range of possibilities.

“Does Daniel have special places to hide?” she asked Luanna, grabbing the woman’s hands. “Like when it’s time for the chores he doesn’t’ like to do?”

Luanna, still somewhat dazed, recalled: “I caught ’im a few times … lollygaggin’ in one of th’ sheds … over near the barn.”

Diamond ran to Bear and together they headed for what was left of the sheds and searched them, finding nothing until they reached the one closest to the barn. The wood had collapsed over the sod foundation. They had to pull boards away to get to what once had been pegs and shelves filled with half-tanned skins, chains for pulling stumps, carpentry tools, and spare wood. They called the boy’s name and after a while Diamond caught sight of a child’s worn shoe. Digging frantically through the debris, they located and pulled him out. He was dazed but otherwise unharmed.

Luanna Danvers threw her arms around the boy and sobbed with gratitude, thanking Bear, Halt, and Diamond for all they had done to save her family.

The fires were gradually extinguished, and the breeze cleared enough of the smoke for them to assess the damage. It was nothing short of devastation. Bear’s countenance darkened and his shoulders sagged as he surveyed the wreckage. Gravely, he turned to Luanna Danvers.

“I’m sorry for all of this. I promise you, Mrs. Danvers … I’ll personally see that your farm is rebuilt … better than ever.”

“It don’t matter,” she told him with tears streaming down her face. She gathered the rest of her children into her arms and lap and gave them a collective hug. “These here are the most important things we got. An’ they’re all safe.”

“All the same,” Diamond put in, despite the lump in her throat, “we’ll see you’re repaid and that your home is rebuilt. We’ll find someone to bring in your crops, if your husband isn’t able. You don’t need to worry about a thing.”

Three of the men were assigned to place Danvers in one of the wagons and drive him and his family into town. Jim Danvers needed a doctor for his leg and the family needed a place to stay for a while. One of Silky’s boarding
houses would have room for them. With profuse thanks, Luanna climbed up into the bed of the wagon beside her husband and called to her children. They scrambled in, and the family was carried off into the night and into the promise of a future that would be rebuilt.

Diamond and bear were among the last to leave the farmstead. It was so far into the night that it would be dawn before long. Diamond had long since exhausted her second wind and now barely had the strength to climb into the saddle. Still, she reined up on the ridge overlooking the charred and smoking skeleton of the farmstead and surveyed the destruction.

The smell of the burning wood and the roar of the flames would be with her as long as she lived … as would the guilt she felt for having talked the Danverses into leasing Bear the land. She heard Bear mutter, “Come on. We’ve done all we can for now,” and she turned her horse to follow his.

They rode in silence for a while, each fatigued beyond reason and operating outside their usual defenses. She was hardly aware of the fact that Bear was leading her down into a shallow ravine lined with scrubby growth that nestled around a handful of real trees. When he stopped at the edge of those trees and dismounted, she watched
numbly as he tied his horse and came back to hold his arms up to help her down.

She looked down into his sooty face and his night-luminous eyes … eyes she loved … eyes she hadn’t understood until now … eyes she never wanted to lose. The emotion dammed inside her broke free.

“Oh, Bear …” Tears poured down her face as he pulled her from her horse and into a fierce embrace. He held her tightly as she released the pain she’d held inside. “It was all my fault, all of it. If I hadn’t gone to them … persuaded them to sign the lease … if I hadn’t come into town for you and told Beecher—”

“It wasn’t you, Diamond,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

“But it was.” She clung to him, burying her face in his smoky shirt as she continued to cry. “If only I hadn’t been so sure I was right. I should have listened to you …” Tears filled her throat, choking off the rest.

When her sobs subsided, he pushed her back and smiled down at her with his eyes glistening strangely in the moonlight.

“It wasn’t your fault, Diamond.” He stroked the side of her face. “Don’t you see? It was Beecher. He’s mean and cowardly and unpredictable. Hie damage had already been done. He had no cause to do this to the Danverses. His quarrel was with me. But he decided that by blowing and burning them out he’d—”

“Strike at you,” she said, sniffing and wiping at her wet cheeks. She looked up at him and saw the pain in his face. “If only I had listened to you. All I could see was your pride and how you wouldn’t let me be a part of your life. I thought if I helped … you’d see that I—”

“That you what? Make a pretty damned good railroader yourself?” He shook his head ruefully and stroked her cheek. “If I’d told you without shouting and storming
around like an idiot, you might have listened to me,” he said, wincing visibly. “Maybe if I hadn’t made it so personal with Beecher. Maybe if I hadn’t called him out and shown him up in front of his hired guns. Maybe if
I
had listened to
you
 …”

He released her and turned aside. His shoulders rounded and his big frame seemed heavy and weary as he headed down the slope to the trickle of water running through the rocky bottom of the ravine.

She followed, feeling the defeat evident in his every move. He was taking it just as personally as she was, holding himself responsible for what had happened to the Danverses. He knelt beside the stream and began to move rocks to dam up the flow into a small natural basin. She could see that he was preparing them a place to wash. It seemed like such an ordinary thing to do, under such extraordinary circumstances. On a deeper level, it struck her that even in pain and defeat, he was doing what he did best … taking things in hand, making things happen, making things better.