The Man from Stone Creek (36 page)

She was drifting down, like a feather caught up in a whirlwind, when suddenly he stiffened, with a gruff moan, and spilled his seed into her.

Afterward they lay entwined and silent, with no breath to speak, as the world slowly awakened around them.

A rooster crowed.

Voices murmured in quiet Spanish.

Maddie's head rested on Sam's shoulder as daylight crept into their small hiding place.

“Was it Debney?” Sam asked very quietly.

Maddie had known the question was coming, and she was prepared to answer with the full truth. He'd leave her once he knew, of course, but she'd had him for a part of one night, and she'd be the rest of her life marveling at all she'd felt, all she hadn't dreamed it was possible to feel.

She shook her head. “His name was Jimmy,” she said.

Sam waited. There was no tension in him, as far as Maddie could tell, but that didn't mean he'd understand.

Maddie's throat was dry and she swallowed. It didn't help. “He came to one of Papa and Mama's revivals. He was older—I was just fourteen and he was seventeen—and I thought I loved him. He followed us the whole of that summer, from town to town, and one day, in a haystack, in the middle of a field—”

“He was Terran's father,” Sam guessed.

Maddie nodded. “He promised we'd get married, and I was to meet him at the train station in Kansas City. We'd go live with his folks, he said. They had a farm, outside of Independence. So I waited, and the train came and went, but Jimmy never showed up. Finally, around sunset, Papa came and got me in the wagon and took me home.” She paused. “If you can call another camp, beside another river, ‘home.'”

Sam shifted, and for a moment Maddie thought he was going to put her from him, but he didn't. He slipped his arm around her and held her loosely against his side. “Go on,” he urged when she struggled to find more words.

“I stayed out of sight whenever we had a revival, until Terran was born. After that, Mama and Papa claimed him as their own. They never judged or condemned me—they were such good people—but it was clear I wasn't to tell another living soul what happened, and I didn't, until Warren.”

“How did he take it?”

“He was angry at first. Claimed I'd misled him. But Warren was a good man, and he loved me. He said what was past was past, and we'd just go on from there. A few days later, he was shot to death.”

Sam was silent for a long time, pondering. “Does Terran know the truth?” he asked finally.

Tears came to Maddie's eyes. “I can't imagine how I'll tell him,” she said. “I've always been his sister.”

“Maybe he'd rather have a mother than a sister,” Sam suggested.

Maddie raised herself onto one elbow, so she could look down into Sam's face. He was awfully calm about this. Maybe, she thought, with a stab of despair, because he didn't care, one way or the other. About any of it.

About her.

Sam caressed the side of her cheek with one index finger. Then, with the pad of his thumb, the same thumb he'd used to drive her to sweet distraction only a little while before, he brushed away her tears. “Terran knows you're not a virgin,” he said. “He heard you and Debney arguing about it. If I were you, Maddie, I'd tell the boy as much of the story as would be fitting.”

Maddie didn't answer.

Sam sat up, began straightening her clothes, methodically, matter-of-factly, like a man putting the table to rights after supper. Maddie permitted it, but her face burned, because now that the passion had ebbed, she knew he'd used her, just the way Jimmy had.

She kept her head turned away and wouldn't look at him when he spoke again.

“I've got to go, Maddie,” he said.

No surprise there.

“Look at me.”

She shut her eyes tight, kept her face averted, but she couldn't help ask the question that swelled up in her heart and tumbled over her tongue. “Where are you going?”

He'd say back to Stone Creek, she decided.

There was nothing left of Haven, and Abigail was dead, and whatever he'd come to do, he'd done it.

“I want to find Vierra,” he said with resignation, “before he does something stupid.”

Maddie's eyes flew open and she stared mutely at Sam.

Sam smiled down at her. He looked weary and filthy and damnably satisfied. Easy in his skin. “What did you think I was going to say?”

She was almost too proud to tell him. “That you were leaving these parts for good,” she said, her voice small.
Leaving me,
she added silently.

“I surely plan to do that,” he answered.

“Oh,” Maddie responded. Most of the time, she liked being right, but on this occasion, she wished she hadn't been.

“You might as well wait for me,” Sam reasoned. He nodded then, as if to approve his own decision. Got to his feet, reached down to help Maddie to hers.

She stood shakily, unsure of her balance.

Sam laid a finger to the tip of her nose. “You'd best scout up something to eat,” he said. “I'll be back as soon as I can.”

S
AM FELT SHAME
,
when he left Maddie behind, at the door of that springhouse, along with a curious, desolate exhilaration, but he couldn't afford to dwell on it.

God knew, it would catch up with him soon enough, but in the meantime he had things to do.

He'd turned Mungo Donagher over to the marshal from Tucson during the night, so that was one matter resolved. Most of the outlaw gang was dead, lying blackened and twisted in front of whatever might be left of the jailhouse, but he couldn't be sure of that, so he'd go across the river and have a look at them.

Maybe they'd be recognizable and maybe they wouldn't. Their number would tell him something.

He mounted the only horse he had—Charlie Wilcox's old nag—and headed for the far shore.

He rode past the ruins of the schoolhouse, the pyre where his cherished books had been consumed, and between the smoldering stumps and skeletons of cottonwood trees. Coming up behind the jail, which was nothing but a blackened pile of boards, he was relieved to see that the gelding wasn't there. He rarely prayed, but in those moments, Sam hoped a benevolent God had taken mercy on that horse.

Going on past, to the road, he took a few moments to comprehend the destruction all around him. The whole town had been wiped out, reduced to rubble. The mercantile. The Rattlesnake Saloon. The telegraph office.

Sam dismounted, shaking his head, and went to look at the bodies.

He counted twelve, and most were barely recognizable as men, let alone individuals. But when he saw a thatch of red hair atop one charred head, he crouched.

Tom Singleton. The former teacher, the man he'd come to Haven to replace and hauled up out of the schoolyard well. He'd been the leader of the outfit, Sam realized. The one whose voice and countenance had been so familiar, back there in Mexico, beneath that broken trestle.

He'd been clever, Singleton had. He'd been ruthless in pursuit of that
federale
gold.

And it had all come down to this.

Sam lingered a moment, then got to his feet.

He didn't give two hoots in hell about the gold, but he knew Vierra did. Knew, too, that his traveling companion had never crossed the river last night with the others fleeing the ravages of the fire. That meant he was either dead or looking for the gold.

Vierra was too quick to have burned, Sam concluded, so it must be the latter.

He patted the bedraggled old horse and was about to mount up when two things happened.

The gelding appeared at the far end of the street, trotting right down the middle. He was covered in soot, but none the worse for any trials of the night just past, as far as Sam could tell. At the same moment Ben Donagher came riding in from the opposite direction. He, too, was blackened, his eyes wild in his face as he took in the wreckage.

“Where is everybody?” Ben asked, reining in.

Between finding his lost horse and seeing the boy alive and well, Sam's throat was thick with jubilation. His eyes burned, along with the space behind his nose, and for a few moments he couldn't say a word.

“Other side of the river,” he finally managed to say. “As far as I know, everybody's safe.”

“Maddie?” Ben demanded. “And Terran?”

Maddie. Sam recalled her, sweet and vibrant and fierce beneath him, and ached. She'd be regretting what she'd done with him, once she came to her senses. She'd been in shock over the fire, that was all. “They're fine. Neptune, too.”

Ben let out a sigh that seemed to come from the soles of his boots. “Rex done it,” he said. “He set this fire. I found him up on top of the hill, burned to death.”

“I'm sorry,” Sam said, and laid a hand on the boy's leg. “You get on across to the Mexican side. There are folks over there to look after you.”

Ben didn't move. “What about you? What do you mean to do?”

“I've got some business to attend to,” Sam said. “I'd count it as a favor if you'd see that old Dobbin here gets across. Otherwise, he's likely to stand in front of the Rattlesnake, what's left of it, till somebody comes to fetch him.”

“I got things to tell you,” Ben said, but he took Dobbin's reins when Sam offered them. “Undine was part of the gang.” He sat up a little straighter in the saddle. “I had to hit her in the back of the head with a rock to get away, but I don't reckon it was hard enough that she's kilt. She and Mr. Singleton were in it together. He said she was his half sister.”

Sam nodded. “Where is she, Ben?”

Ben told him where the camp was, and mentioned the gold, too. Had some of it right in his saddlebags. He finished with, “You don't need to go after her. Mr. Vierra's on his way out there right now. I told him what I just told you, not five minutes ago.”

Sam checked the gelding over, found him sound if singed, and mounted up. “Go on, now,” he told the boy, cocking a thumb toward the river. “Marshal Rhodes is on the other side. You give that gold to him for safekeeping.”

Rhodes could have ridden out during the night, but he and the yellow dog had stayed on to help. In Sam's mind, that meant he could be trusted.

Ben nudged his horse into motion, then paused again. His eyes were haunted as he ran them over what remained of the jailhouse. “Did my pa burn up in there?”

Sam shook his head. “He's on his way to Tucson, with a U.S. Marshal. Like as not, he'll be going to the federal prison at Yuma from there.”

Ben merely nodded, but his relief was plain, along with the kind of bearing up a boy his age shouldn't have been faced with. After a long while, he asked, “You reckon that old man who come for Miss Blackstone would take me on as a ranch hand?”

Sam smiled. “I reckon he would for certain,” he said.

“Guess I'll go and see to Neptune, then,” Ben decided.

“Look after Miss Maddie, too,” Sam urged. “She'll be in a state once she realizes the store is gone. Right now, she's probably telling herself there's some hope it was spared.”

Once again Ben nodded, and they parted.

 

U
NDINE
D
ONAGHER SAT ALONE
in the middle of the camp, watching as Vierra rode in. She held a rifle across her knees, but made no move to take aim. The gold lay around her, like stones circling a fire pit, in a score of grimy bags.

“I guess something must have burned,” she said in an odd, disjointed voice. “The sky looked red, to the south.”

Vierra kept an eye on the rifle, even as he dismounted. He'd tossed his sling aside, sometime during the night, which he'd spent in a hayloft with Pilar, and his wounded shoulder pained him severely. “The whole town of Haven went up,” he told her. “There's nothing left.”

Her purple eyes widened. Approaching cautiously, Vierra noted the blood on her shirt. “The bank?” she asked. “All Mungo's money was in that bank!”

Vierra spread his hands, suppressed a wince at the protest in his shoulder. “Gone,” he said.

She absorbed the word like a blow. Sighed philosophically. “There's still the gold. When Tom comes back, we'll make for California.”

Ben had told him about Tom, and the others, and he'd passed Rex Donagher's dead body on the way to the hidden arroyo. “They're gone, too,” he said quietly. “All of them.”

“Not my brother, Tom!”

“Dead in front of the jailhouse. We were waiting for them when they rode in, and there was a shoot-out. They might have gotten away with it, but for the posses from Tucson and Tombstone showing up when they did.”

Undine blinked rapidly. Her eyes were at once blank and alert, like those of a predator. Her throat moved visibly as she swallowed. “That's a lie.”

Vierra didn't move or speak. He knew she was thinking about shooting him, and he wondered if he'd let her do it. He'd never shot a woman, and he wanted to keep it that way.

He heard the horse approaching from behind, and knew it was Sam O'Ballivan without turning around to look. Undine raised the rifle, and Vierra drew, as quick as if his gun had been greased.

“Throw it down,” he told her.

Undine hesitated, probably figuring the odds, and tossed the rifle aside just as the Ranger rode in and dismounted beside him.

“You're under arrest, Mrs. Donagher,” O'Ballivan said.

Undine swallowed. Her gaze darted from Sam to Vierra and back again. “I didn't do anything wrong,” she replied.

“That's for a judge to decide,” O'Ballivan told her. “I'll take you to Tucson, if you're fit to travel. Ought to please you to know you'll be reunited with Mungo.”

“What about the gold?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Vierra said, studying the Ranger. “What about the gold?”

To his surprise, O'Ballivan shrugged. “I've been thinking about that all morning,” he said. “And on the way out here, I concluded that it belongs to the Mexican government. My orders were to see the gang dead or arrested, not recover what they'd stolen.”

Vierra opened his mouth, closed it again.

O'Ballivan slapped him on the back. “If you ride hard,” he said, “you can still get to Pilar before she marries the wrong man.”

“That's it? That's all you have to say?”

“No,” O'Ballivan answered, going around behind Undine to inspect the wound to the back of her head. It must not have been too bad, because in the next instant, he hauled her to her feet by one elbow. “If you do marry up with Pilar, I'd like to know about it. I'll be at Stone Creek ranch, outside of Flagstaff.”

“How am I going to carry all that gold?”

“I reckon that's your problem,” O'Ballivan said.

“What about Maddie?”

O'Ballivan arched an eyebrow. “What about her?”

“She's going to need looking after.”

The Ranger laughed, even as he bound Undine's hands behind her with a bandanna. “Maddie needs a lot of things,” he said. “But looking after isn't one of them.”

Hardly daring to believe his luck, Vierra stooped, picked up a couple of bags of gold, carried them to his horse, tucked them away in his saddlebags. As he went back for more, O'Ballivan lifted Undine onto the horse, then swung up behind her. He gave Vierra a salute.

“Adios,”
he said. “And thanks.”

Vierra merely nodded, watching as O'Ballivan rode away with his prisoner, never once looking back.

 

M
ADDIE TRAVELED BACK
across the river in the middle of the afternoon, astride a burro, leaving a concerned and fitful Terran behind at Refugio. She rode past the schoolhouse, past the jail, past the Rattlesnake Saloon, the hem of her skirt dripping river water.

There were others in town—folks had come from the surrounding countryside, as well as Tucson and Tombstone, to help. They'd brought wagons and food, medicine and blankets and clothing.

But Maddie might as well have been all alone when she came to a stop in front of what had once been the general store.

The roof had caved in and the walls were burned to cinder.

She'd grieved before.

For her parents, for Warren. Even for Jimmy.

But this was something different.

An ending of another sort.

“Maddie?” She looked down, saw Oralee standing alongside the burro, looking up at her, one hand shading her eyes from the sun.

“I don't know how I'll pay the mortgage now,” Maddie said.

Oralee smiled. “Oh, I got my money back,” she answered. “So don't you worry about that part.”

Maddie frowned. The whole town had been destroyed. How could Oralee have recovered the fifteen hundred dollars she'd invested in the mercantile?

Oralee laughed at her expression. “Practically the only thing in Haven that could stand up to a fire like that one was the safe in the Cattleman's Bank. Elias James opened it right up, soon as the dial was cool enough to touch, and handed it over.”

“Why would he do that?” Maddie asked, mystified.

“He owed me,” Oralee said cryptically. “That's all you need to know about it, Maddie Chancelor.”

Maddie sighed. Tried to smile and failed. “I guess your safe must have come through the fire, too,” she mused.

Oralee nodded. “I mean to rebuild,” she said. “First chance I get, I'm going to order me some lumber and hire some workers. I could put up another mercantile, too. Probably not till next year, though. There won't be much of a town here for a long while.”

Maddie said nothing. Nor did she try to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes.

“What are you meaning to do?” Oralee asked kindly.

“I don't know,” Maddie admitted. “It's as if the world came to an end.”

Oralee reached up, patted Maddie's hands where they gripped the reins. “Sometimes,” she said, “an ending is just what a body needs to make a new beginning.”