Heartbreak Creek (45 page)

Without breaking stride, he cleared the boardwalk and raced across the street, his lungs burning for air. As he neared the hotel, he saw most of the lights were on and figures were moving in the lobby. Gun drawn, he slammed through the double doors, almost crashing into Yancey and Lucinda, who were bent over Amos, pressing a wad of cloth to his bleeding head. Judging by his groans and his efforts to fend them off, he was very much alive.

“Where is he?” Declan looked wildly around, praying he would see Lone Tree lurking in the shadows. “The Indian! Where is he?”

“Gone.”

He looked at Lucinda, saw a terror in her ashen face that mirrored his own. “What happened?”

“Ask your first wife.” She turned back to Amos. “He beat her. Bad. I sent your oldest for Dr. Boyce. She’s asking for you.”

“Christ.” Holstering the pistol, he raced up the stairs, calling back as he went. “Lucas and Brin?”

“Lucas is fine.”

The way she said it brought him to a stop. He whirled and looked down at her, his hand clasping the railing so tight his fingers went numb. “And Brin?”

“Gone.”

His chest seemed to cave. “He took her?”

“Edwina, too.”

He stood frozen, unable to comprehend it, unable to get his mind to accept what his ears were hearing. Why would he take Ed and Brin when it was him Lone Tree was after?

“Go talk to your first wife,” she said again.

Her tone caught Declan’s attention. What would Sally know? Unless she was in it with Lone Tree. But why?

To hurt me
. The realization knocked the breath from his lungs.
To hurt me in the worst way they could.
Rage exploded like fire in his chest. Whirling, he charged up the stairs.

She was propped in bed in a bloodstained gown, her eyes closed. Every breath was a wheezing rasp. Her skin was so pale he could see the blue vein in her neck pulse with each heartbeat. She had been beaten and by the sound of her breathing, probably wouldn’t survive the night. Yet he had little sympathy—little feeling for her at all, except anger.

Movement caught his eye, and he looked over to see Miriam, the hotel maid, sitting in a chair in the corner, a handkerchief pressed over her nose and mouth.

“Go,” he ordered.

She fled. After the door closed behind her, he approached the bed and glared down at his first wife.

It scared him how badly he wanted to hit her, shake her, throw her bodily out of his life. “What happened?” he demanded.

Her lids fluttered open. Her gaze wandered for a moment, then settled on his. “Bobby . . .” She reached out a skeletal hand.

He ignored it. “What happened?” he demanded again.

Her hand fell back to the bed. “He came for you. Found me . . . instead.” As she spoke, a bloody foam gathered in the corners of her mouth. “Took our baby . . . took . . . Brin.”

Declan leaned closer to hear her. The stink of infection almost turned his stomach. “Where did he take them?”

Tears filled her eyes, overflowed in slow, glistening trails down her sunken cheeks. “P-Promised . . . wouldn’t hurt . . . children.” Her eyes lost focus, stared blankly past his shoulder. “Hit me . . . made me tell . . .”

He could feel her drifting away. In panic, he reached out and shook a bony shoulder. “Tell him what?”

Her gaze swung back to his. “Fear . . . high places.”

Declan pulled back, his heart thudding as the old terrors clutched at his chest. Senseless, dizzying terrors that robbed him of his will, and paralyzed his body, and sent his mind into an endless plummeting spiral.

“Waiting . . . for you.”

Her voice was so weak he had to watch her lips to catch the words. “Where?” But he already knew the answer, and dread was building with every heartbeat.

“The . . . mine.”

A shudder rippled through him. He fisted his hands to stop the tremors, as if somehow that might hold the panic at bay even as images flooded his mind—high platforms, spindly scaffolds, steep, sheer bluffs. Dizziness pressed behind his eyes and the terror spread, clamping like a band around his chest.

It was the perfect revenge.
Goddamn him
.

“Don’t do this,” Edwina cried, jerking against the ropes that bound her to a two-foot diameter upright post on the platform high above the entrance. “She’s just a baby!”

Ignoring her pleas, the Indian dragged the thrashing child toward the big, barrel-sized wooden bucket perched on the edge of the platform. It was apparently used to move tools between the three levels, and he had already emptied it of shovels and picks and sledgehammers. Tied to the handle of the bucket was a stout rope that snaked up through a block and tackle on the scaffold high above them, then back down where the loose end was wrapped around a metal cleat like those used to secure a boat’s mooring lines, which was bolted to the post where Edwina was tied.

Frantically, she dug at the ropes. “Lone Tree. Please. I’ll do anything you ask. Just let her go.”

He shoved Brin into the bucket.

Brin shrieked and tried to scramble out.

“No!” Edwina screamed when she saw the Indian draw back his arm. “Do what he says, Brin. Get in and don’t look out. Do it, Brin. You’ll be safe there until Papa comes.”

Sobbing in terror, the little girl huddled in the bucket.

Lone Tree untied the rope from the cleat beside Edwina and pulled.

Far above, the pulley block squealed, sending pigeons roosting in the overhead beams into fluttering flight. A grating sound as the bucket scraped across the rough boards of the platform. Another heave and it lifted off, swinging wildly out over the seventy-foot drop to the ground.

“Edwina!” Brin screamed, clutching at the wooden rim.

“Hold on!” Edwina’s heart pounded so hard she felt dizzy. “Sit down, Brin! Don’t move!”

Spinning and bobbing, the bucket rose higher. Brin shrieked.

“Stay still, Brin! Don’t look out! Papa is coming!”

Grunting with the effort, Lone Tree heaved on the rope. Brin’s wails grew fainter as the bucket rose ten feet—fifteen—swaying and rocking with every pull.

Jesus, help her,
Edwina prayed, her mind reeling with terror as the bucket continued to rise.
Hurry, Declan.

Lone Tree stopped pulling and looped the rope around the cleat, letting the loose end coil on the deck beside the post. Then, panting and slick with sweat from his exertions, he kicked the scattered picks and shovels aside, pulled the knife from the strap holding his breechcloth to his waist, and turned to Edwina.

 

 

Declan tried to calm his spiraling fears as he raced through the dwindling light. He could do this. He could overcome this senseless terror. The lives of his daughter and Ed depended on it. Yet with every thud of his horse’s hooves on the rocky switchback track that rose up to the mine, his panic built. Despite the chill evening air, sweat trickled down his back. His hands shook. His head swam until his vision blurred.

What if he couldn’t?

“You all right?” Buck called to him.

Declan looked blankly over at him, then forced a nod.

On his other side, R.D. grimly urged his horse faster. He had refused to stay behind, insisting he had truer aim should they get a clear shot. Declan was determined that wouldn’t happen. He couldn’t allow his son to take a life before he had even started his thirteenth year.

The mine loomed darkly ahead, its gangly scaffolds and open platforms perched precariously on the face of the bluff. How could men work in a place like that? How many had slipped off the edge and plummeted to their deaths?

Declan pushed the thought away before terror overwhelmed him. In the distant part of his mind still thinking clearly, he realized the sprawling structure was too dark. There should be a lamp lit. Not that having light would make the ordeal awaiting him any easier. But there should be a watchman on duty. It shouldn’t be so dark.

The last light of day was fading behind the peaks when they rode up to the mine entrance. No one came out of the dark overseer’s shack to meet them. The place felt deserted. Then Declan sensed movement and looked up to see a figure moving on the middle platform seventy feet up.

A wave of dizziness almost toppled him from his horse.

A horse whinnied, and he looked over to see a pinto with war paint on its shoulders and rump tied in the trees. Lone Tree’s.

“Check the shack,” he told Buck as he dismounted. “R.D., find a place behind those rocks.” He pointed to several boulders at the base of the bluff that would offer cover in case anyone started shooting from either of the upper platforms. “Don’t shoot unless I give a signal. Understand?”

His son nodded, quickly tied his horse to the hitching rail outside the overseer’s shack, then ducked behind the rocks with his rifle and a box of ammunition.

“Harvey Ricks is inside.” Buck stood in the doorway of the shack, an anguished look on his face. Declan remembered that he and Harvey had been friends as well as co-workers before the accident that had taken Buck’s hand. “Dead. Knife, looks like.”

Before Declan could respond, a man’s voice called down from the platform above. “Brodie!”

Declan stepped back so he could get a clearer view of the platform and saw a woman standing at the edge, her pale skirts whipping in the evening breeze. Even in the dim light and at a distance of seventy feet, he recognized the slim form and defiant stance.

“I have your woman and your daughter,” Lone Tree yelled. “Do you want them back?”

Suddenly Ed screamed and lurched forward, flailing for balance as if shoved from behind. Then just before her feet slipped off the edge, she was yanked back.

Declan could hear her muffled entreaties and clenched his fists in helpless frustration. “Let them go, Lone Tree! They have nothing to do with this.”

“Come and get them, white man!” Laughter floated down. “Or are you afraid to come so high?”

Declan felt the familiar terror slide into his mind. He tried to fight it, but already his throat was so tight he was gasping for air.

Above him, Ed tottered on the edge again, fighting for balance. “Or do you want me to send them down to you?”

“No!” Declan raised a shaking hand. “I’ll come! I’ll come.”

“Alone. Or she falls.”

“All right. Just don’t hurt them.”

“No guns, white man.”

With trembling hands, Declan unbuckled his gun belt and let it drop. Knowing Lone Tree wouldn’t let him keep his gun, he had tucked Lucinda’s little pepperbox pistol into the inside band of his hat. But he would prefer to get his hands on the bastard. He wanted to feel him struggle as he choked the life out of him. He wanted to look into his eyes and watch him die.

“No coat,” Lone Tree called down.

Declan took off his coat and spread his arms, shivering as the cool breeze cut through his sweat-dampened shirt. “I’m not armed.”

“Then come and die, white man.”

Looking around for away up, Declan saw a rung ladder attached between two narrowly spaced uprights. It seemed to stretch endlessly above him. On shaking legs, he started toward it, speaking softly as he passed Buck, who was hidden in the shadows inside the doorway of the shack. “Is there another way up?” He knew Buck could never climb this ladder with only the one hand. “A ramp? Some way to hoist us up?” With all the ropes and pulleys hanging from the underside of the scaffolds, there had to be something better than a vertical climb up a slick wooden ladder.

“Only ladders.”

“Are you coming, white man?” Lone Tree shouted.

“I’m coming.”

Declan gripped the ladder in sweating hands. With his heart pounding so hard he heard nothing but the thud of it, he began to climb.

It seemed to take forever. He had to stop several times, his arms wrapped around the ladder in a stranglehold, to wipe the dampness from his cramping hands. His jaw ached from the effort of trying to keep his teeth from chattering, and no matter how many breaths he took, he couldn’t seem to fill his lungs. But slowly, surely, he went up the rungs.

Finally he cleared the last rung and collapsed, shaking and nauseated on the floor of the platform. When the spinning slowed, he pushed himself up on wobbly legs and looked around.

The platform was split into two wooden decks—the one closest to the bluff where Declan had climbed up—and a bigger one with no railing that hung over the long drop to the ground. Separating them was a ten-foot-wide gap running parallel to the bluff, which allowed the water cannon—now hanging limply from ropes attached to a system of oversized pulleys on beams overhead—to run back and forth along the rock wall. The decks were littered with tools and lengths of chain, and ropes so tangled they looked like a sail rigger’s nightmare.