The Man from Stone Creek (27 page)

“I reckon you'd have done that already, if you were fixing to,” Sam said. He wasn't going out hunting, so they'd have to make a supper of hard tack and jerky, scrounged from the bottom of their saddlebags. Sam wished heartily for a cup of coffee, hot enough to sear his tongue and strong enough to float a horseshoe. Could have done with a creek bath and a book, too, but except for the cistern, there probably wasn't a watering hole within twenty miles.

Vierra looked aggrieved, then lodged another complaint. “We're out of whiskey, too.”

Sam pulled a second flask from inside his shirt, half full of cantina rotgut, almost guaranteed to make a man go blind. It was the only thing he'd found on Landry Donagher before he buried him. If Donagher had held on to his share of that gold, the others had relieved him of it, along with his horse and gun.

He wondered if Rex had tried to defend his brother, or if he'd turned on him, in the end, like a slat-ribbed wolf. Wondered if Mungo would grieve for a second dead son, once word got back to him.

Vierra's gaze tracked the whiskey. “Give me that,” he said. “I'm in pain.”

Sam sniffed the contents of the flask, reminded himself that he might have need of his eyesight for some time to come, and carried it over to Vierra, who snatched it from his hand, took a gulp and practically choked to death. Sputtering and spitting, he looked up at Sam as if he'd given him kerosene, and done it on purpose, too.

“Bad stuff,” Sam said. “Don't pour it out, though. We'll need it to disinfect that wound of yours.”

“I'd sooner let you cauterize it with a hot poker,” Vierra countered, his eyes red with fury and rotgut.

“I could do that,” Sam offered mildly.

The hard tack and the jerky, served up a few minutes later, didn't fill him up, but he consoled himself with the negligible belief that it was better than nothing.

 

M
ADDIE SPENT
the rest of the day dusting and rearranging stock. She was untying her apron when Terran spoke from just behind her, nearly startling her out of her skin.

“You planning to make supper?” he asked.

Maddie moved to touch his shoulder, but he stepped back, out of reach.

“Are you?” he persisted.

“There's bread and cheese in the pantry,” Maddie said. “You and Ben can help yourselves. I'm going over to the Perkinses' place to look in on Violet and her mother.”

“That schoolmarm's there,” Terran argued. “Miss Blackstone.”

Maddie stifled a sigh and hung her store apron on the peg next to the curtained doorway behind the counter. “Yes,” she said as moderately as she could, “and she must be ready to go over to the schoolhouse and get some rest. Besides, I promised Violet I'd come back.”

“Violet,” Terran scoffed. “What about me?”

Ben watched the exchange from a few feet away, his eyes large and troubled.

“What
about
you, Terran?” Maddie countered, impatient.

“I'm your
brother,
” he said.

“I'm well aware of that,” Maddie answered. She moved past him to enter the pantry, came out with the bread tin and the cheese and slammed them both down on the tabletop. “There's your supper,” she said. “Eat.”

With that, she stormed out the rear door, and she hadn't traveled two steps before she hated herself. Terran was a child. He was scared. And he
was
her kin.

She stopped, torn between going back and keeping on.

The door sprang open and Maddie's heart leaped, but it wasn't Terran coming after her to say he was sorry, to say he understood that she had to go to the Perkinses and do what she could. It was Ben, barreling earnestly toward her, clutching a cloth napkin in one hand, thrusting it at her.

“It's my supper,” he said.

Maddie accepted the bundle with a trembling hand. “Ben—”

“I'm not hungry anyhow,” Ben said stalwartly.

“There's more food in the pantry,” Maddie said, at once touched by Ben's sacrifice and heartsick that the gesture hadn't come from Terran. “You help yourself.”

“I'd rather go with you,” the boy replied, and fell into step beside Maddie as she started for the shack at the edge of town. It would be dark soon, she thought with a shiver, and those tree branches would claw at the roof again, if a breeze came up.

“Ben, Mrs. Perkins is very sick,” Maddie protested. “Suppose it's catching?”

“I reckon if it is,” Ben reasoned, keeping pace, “it's already too late.”

Maddie shivered again. She'd been worrying about that very thing all day, busy as she'd kept herself, but she'd shoved the thought away whenever it surfaced. She couldn't simply abandon Violet and Hittie, whatever the risks.

“Just the same,” she said as the Perkinses' shack came into sight, “don't you go near that house.” Violet and Abigail were squeezed together on the high threshold in the doorway, their heads bent over a book. Even from a distance, Maddie recognized it as the one Sam had bought in her store.

“Did she come here to take Mr. O'Ballivan away someplace?” Ben asked when Maddie paused to try to find a smile within her weary self. Failing, she looked down at the boy and saw with a vague sense of relief that his gaze was fixed on Abigail.

Still, the question pierced Maddie's middle like a dart and quivered there, and she had to take several deep breaths before she dared answer. “I don't know, Ben,” she said, and wished Sam would come back from wherever he was and, well, just be Sam. He might be aggravating, and even insufferable, but there was something about his sturdy presence that made hard things easier to bear.

“I hate her,” Ben said just as Abigail looked up and smiled.

“No, Ben,” Maddie protested.

“I do,” he insisted. “Terran does, too. She's come to fetch Mr. O'Ballivan home!”

“Shh,” Maddie said, and reached for Ben's shoulder, the way she'd done with Terran, and with the same disheartening results. He dodged her touch and ran off, hurtling through the tall grass, away from her, away from Violet and her mother, away from the woman who'd come to lay claim to Sam O'Ballivan. For one disturbing moment, Maddie felt like running, too.

If Violet had noticed the exchange, she didn't show it. She seemed to have just spotted Maddie, standing there on the road, with Ben's donated supper in her hand, squashed inside a blue-and-white-checkered napkin. Her whole face alight, the child dashed out to meet her.

“Miss Oralee sent some of her fancy women over, and they're in there right now, feeding Ma soup out of a silver spoon!” The words spilled from Violet's mouth like a litter of puppies tipped out of a wheelbarrow.

Abigail approached, wearing a tired smile and holding the book she and Violet had been poring over under one arm. Sure enough, it was Sam's. “I waited here so I could give you the news myself,” she said to Maddie. “Hittie seems to be on the mend, and Oralee's ‘fancy women' have the situation in hand.”

Maddie nodded, stricken mute with relief.

“They mean to keep coming
all night,
” Violet marveled. “Two at a time, taking their turns.”

Abigail smiled again at the child's delight, but she looked pale and a little fragile. “It's not every day you get such interesting visitors as these,” she said.

Maddie smiled back. It was a spindly smile, but it was all she had to offer. “You go see to your mother,” she told Violet, who immediately scampered off toward the house. Ben had vanished from his perch on the chopping block, and a slight breeze rustled the branches of the hanging tree.

Maddie met Abigail's steady gaze. “Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Blackstone?” she asked. She decided to throw in supper, which would be an odd repast, cobbled together from this and that, whatever might be found on the pantry shelves. Abigail's eyes danced at the offer.

“I would be delighted,” she said.

“H
OW FAR AWAY
is that village you mentioned?” Sam asked. He hadn't planned on traveling by night, but Vierra, intermittently conscious, was clearly in a bad way.

His traveling companion, still leaning against the adobe wall and watching the dying fire, clenched his jaw while he worked up an answer. Sam reckoned Vierra's pain would be enough to make a lesser man scream, and he felt a cautious respect, mingled with an abiding mistrust.

“Probably ten miles,” Vierra finally said. “Rough country, too. Dangerous for the horses.”

“No doctor, I suppose,” Sam observed, rubbing his chin. He'd grown a stubble of beard since setting out on this journey, and suddenly he wanted a shave as much as he wanted strong coffee and a meal cooked on a stove, in some woman's lamp-lit kitchen.

That the woman who came to mind was Maddie, not Abigail, did not escape his notice.

“No doctor,” Vierra confirmed. “There's a medicine man, though.”

“I guess we'd better go there anyhow,” Sam decided. Vierra needed a decent bed to lie on and more tending than could be had on the trail.

“I guess so,” Vierra agreed.

Sam saddled the horses, gathered the bedrolls and other gear, and helped Vierra mount up. The Mexican bent low over the pommel, gripping the horn with white-knuckled hands and breathing hard from the exertion of mounting, something he usually did without using a stirrup.

“You reckon you can stay on that horse?” Sam asked.

Vierra considered the question grimly, then shook his head. “Not likely,” he answered, and Sam knew the answer had cost the other man a substantial hunk of his pride.

Without further comment, Sam took his rope from the leather catch on his saddle, unfurled it and bound Vierra to horse and saddle, like a deer carcass to be brought home from the hunt. Vierra endured the humiliation, his pain-darkened eyes daring Sam to make a remark.

Sam said nothing, since he knew it might as easily have been him wounded and trussed up like that. He mounted and turned his gelding in the direction the Mexican had indicated, leading the other horse by the reins.

The ride was necessarily slow, partly because of Vierra's deteriorating condition and partly because the moonlight was thin and the trail, winding up into the hills, was perilous. As Sam rode, he kept one ear open for any sound other than the plodding footsteps and occasional puffing exhalations of their two horses. Those outlaws were out here somewhere, and though they were probably more interested in putting as much ground between themselves and that blown railroad trestle as possible now that they had their gold, they knew they were being pursued, knew one of those pursuers was badly hurt and therefore easy pickings. In some men's minds, that would add up to unfinished business, and they might well decide to double back and deal with the situation, once and for all.

In their place, Sam figured he would have tied up that loose end. No witnesses that way. Nobody to catch up, by some miracle, and make trouble.

They rode doggedly on.

Vierra drifted in and out, now prattling on about Pilar, now bent almost full-out over his horse's neck, held to the saddle only by the net Sam had made with his rope.

It was almost sunrise when they reached the village, a dusty little collection of hovels, fashioned of mud and stone. A good rain would wash the whole place down the hillside, but the smoke from those chimney holes was a welcome sight to Sam.

A few skinny dogs barked to announce their arrival and Vierra stirred then, sat up in the saddle. An old man, hardly taller than a rooster, came out of one of the huts, ducking to pass through the low doorway. Sam watched as he sized up the visitors and felt relief when the fellow didn't slip back inside for a rifle. Instead, he approached.

His eyes were on Vierra, but he put his question to Sam, in Spanish. What had happened?

Sam answered in kind, making the explanation brief. After all, it would have been obvious to anybody that Vierra had taken a bullet.

The old man inquired if Vierra was a prisoner, given the rope binding him to his horse.

Sam shook his head.

Vierra spoke to the villager in a wheedling, shallow-breathed voice. His face gleamed with sweat, though it was still cool, with the last of the night just passing. “Don't you remember me, Pablo? It is Esteban.”

Suddenly a broad grin of recognition spread over Pablo's dark, suspicious face, but it was quickly replaced by concern. He shouted over one shoulder, calling a stream of heretofore hesitant villagers out of the huts and causing another uproar among the dogs. Before Sam could dismount, Pablo was untying Vierra, easing him down from his perch with the help of several other men.

Sam got to the ground, spotted a spring at the edge of the tiny village and led the horses toward it. Here, then, was one reason for the location of the settlement—water. Another was clear visibility, in all directions. If he and Vierra had been traveling by day, Pablo and the others would have seen them coming long before they'd even begun the climb.

Leaving the horses to drink thirstily, directly from the spring, Sam walked the perimeter of the hilltop, one hand shading his gritty eyes from the fierce light of the new sun, scanning the surrounding countryside for the band of outlaws.

If they were still in the area, they'd gone to ground and doused any campfire at first light so the smoke wouldn't rise and give them away to an observer. They might be holed up someplace, but they could just as well have ridden deeper into Mexico—or back toward Haven.

Sam stiffened, vexed that the latter possibility hadn't occurred to him, at least consciously, until now.

Haven.
Rex Donagher was still alive, as far as Sam knew. He'd learned of his elder brother's murder and his father's imprisonment. He might well have gone back, to mourn Garrett, break the bad news about Landry, even try to spring his pa from the jailhouse. This last possibility was a concern to Sam, but there was a greater one.

Maddie was in Haven.

Terran and Ben and Violet and all the other kids in the school were there.

And so was Abigail.

Sam shifted his hat, eyed his horse. He couldn't ask that gelding to travel another mile without rest, and he wasn't in much better shape himself. If he rode for the border now, as he was sorely tempted to do, he'd be lucky to get there at all, and he'd be of little use even if he did.

As much as he hated the idea, he'd have to stay in this hilltop village, at least until nightfall, and give both himself and the horse time to recover.

A boy came, barefoot and skinny as the dogs, and offered to put the horses to graze. Sam nodded in agreement, pulled some change from his pocket, and picked the pesos from among the nickels, dimes and quarters, giving them to the kid. A smile white as a high-country snowfall slashed across the lad's dark, dirt-smudged face and he went to tend the animals.

Sam made his way back to the center of the village, where a great fuss was being made over Vierra. A rough-hewn bowl, filled with a mixture of beans and what passed for rabbit meat, was thrust into Sam's hands. He ate numbly, tasting nothing, interested only in filling his empty stomach.

Vierra was taken in hand by the village women—in spite of his pain, he clearly relished all that female attention—and Sam left him to it. He found his canteen with his other tack, where the boy had left it in a pile, filled the canteen from the spring, drank it dry and filled it again. Then, at the invitation of a woman old enough to be God's first cousin, he made his way into one of the huts, stretched out on a pallet and slept like a dead man.

The low, steady beat of a drum finally awakened him many hours later. He'd been vaguely aware of the sound all day, steady and rhythmic as his own heartbeat, but he'd been too tired to rise to the surface of thought, far above his head. Instead he'd settled into the silt in the depths of his mind and given himself over to exhaustion.

Now, with twilight a dull purple at the door of the hut, Sam sat up on the pallet, stretched mightily and reached for his hat. Midway, he realized he wasn't alone, and met the patient gaze of a young Mexican woman, on her knees and resting back on her haunches, a bowl held carefully in both hands.

She smiled at Sam, extended the bowl.

It grieved him to take it. He'd seen enough, on his arrival that morning, to know the village was a poor one, scrabbling out an existence in a hard, inhospitable land. He was ravenously hungry, though, and there was the matter of the girl's pride. God knew how long she'd been waiting, just to give a stranger food she couldn't spare.

Sam took the meal, with muttered thanks. More rabbit, roasted this time, and a little more palatable without the beans.

“How is Señor Vierra?” he asked in Spanish after a few bites, half fearing the answer. He still didn't trust the Mexican, but he'd come to like him, just the same.

The girl's eyes were luminous in the light of the single tallow candle burning on top of a crude crate. “He is too sick to ride,” she said. “There is fever and much pain.”

Sam nodded, grateful for small favors. He wouldn't have been surprised if the drumming had turned out to be part of a mourning ceremony, with Vierra either on a pyre or already buried.

He finished the rabbit, handed back the bowl and wiped the grease from his mouth with one sleeve. “Where is he?”

The girl rose, set the bowl down next to the candle and beckoned for him to follow.

He found his friend in another hut, stretched out on a pallet and stripped to the waist. A poultice of some sort covered the wound, and women of every age hovered like eager servants, the youngest of them holding a gourd-ladle of spring water to Vierra's lips as Sam straightened, just inside the door.

Vierra grinned.

“I've seen livelier tree stumps in my time,” Sam observed, “but you seem content with your fate.”

“You're planning to ride on without me,” Vierra said. The grin faded, but there was a reluctant affability in his manner.

“You'll be all right here until you can mount a horse,” Sam replied after a spare nod of acknowledgment. “I'm heading back to Haven.” He knew he didn't need to explain his reasoning; Vierra was no fool. He'd have worked it out by now, as Sam had, that at least one of the robbers—Rex Donagher—was bound to head for home territory. The others might or might not be with him, but Sam reckoned he could find them, after a little palavering with Donagher.

“Look after Maddie,” Vierra said. So he'd gone beyond Sam's theory, then, and straight to the heart of the matter. “I'll be along when I've got the strength to travel.” He paused. “And, O'Ballivan?”

Sam, in the act of turning to leave, paused. Waited.

“That gold. Part of it belongs to me, so if you happen to recover it, don't go turning it over to the
federales.
”

“No promises,” Sam said.

Fifteen minutes later he was riding a rested horse downhill and due north.

 

M
ADDIE AWAKENED
after a restless night and the first image that came into her mind was Sam O'Ballivan's. She shook that off, yawning, and sat up in bed, deliberately shifting her thoughts to the recent visit with Abigail.

They'd sat in Maddie's kitchen, sipping tea and nibbling at leftover biscuits, and talked about everything
but
what Maddie was most interested in: Miss Blackstone's association with the schoolmaster.

She'd learned that she and Abigail had several things in common. Both loved the piano and collected songs, with ballads preferred. The difference was, Abigail owned a spinet; Maddie had nothing but a few pieces of her mother's tattered sheet music and a handful of poignant memories. Both women loved flowers, and neither attended church regularly, Abigail because it was too far to travel from her father's ranch outside of Flagstaff to town just for a few hours on a Sunday, and Maddie because her parents, so faithful and so devout, giving over their whole lives to spreading the Gospel, had been snatched away. She'd never forgiven God for that. It seemed like a lack of appreciation on His part.

Abigail had a flower garden and Maddie nurtured a few spiny peony bushes out behind the store. They only bloomed for a few weeks in the spring, and she passed the rest of the year yearning for the sight of their lush, fragrant red blossoms.

A rap sounded at Maddie's bedroom door and Terran called her name. She pulled on her wrap, smoothed her hair, anxious at the prospect of another crisis, and said, “Come in.”

Terran stepped cautiously into the room. “Ben's gone again,” he said.

Maddie stared at him. “What?”

“He must have taken off sometime during the night,” Terran told her. “There wasn't any note.”

Maddie closed her eyes for a moment, to get back to her center. Lately she'd been quite literally beside herself. “Land sakes,” she murmured. “Where could he have gone?”

Terran shook his head. “Don't know,” he answered. “I went over to the jailhouse, figuring he might have wanted a word with his pa, but Mr. Rhodes said he hadn't seen him.”