Miner's Daughter (30 page)

Again, no answer came forth. His whole being
cried out in agony. “Mari! Dammit, answer me!”

Tiny emerged first, dusty but unbowed,
grinning and wagging his tail. Tony blinked, sure he was imagining
that grin.

His heart leaped almost out of his chest when
a bedraggled Mari crawled out from under the wall. “There’s no need
to swear at me, Tony,” she said tartly. “I’ve just been through an
ordeal. I don’t need people swearing at me, too.”

As soon as she was free, from the wall, Tony
let go, wheeled around, and grabbed her to his chest. “Mari! Thank
God! I thought you’d been crushed.”

Tiny jumped on them both in an ecstasy of
doggy delight. Tony scarcely noticed. He figured Mari’s dog had as
much right to be happy as he did.

She wriggled in his grasp, and he realized
they were in a very public place. From all over town people were
rushing toward the scene of the big crash. The huge noise made by
the wall when it fell had been heard throughout Mojave Wells.

“I’m all right, Tony,” she said. “Please
don’t make a big scene. It’s embarrassing.”

“A big scene? Good God, Mari, that wall fell
on you. I was afraid you’d be crushed.” It went against the grain,
but he let her go.

Dust covered her from head to foot. It clung
to her white makeup like frosting on a cake. She tried to brush it
away from her eyes. “I must look awful.”

“What you look like doesn’t matter. How in
the name of glory did you manage to come away from that, wreck
unscathed?”

Martin, George, Ben, and at least three dozen
other people had run up to the two of them and were now hovering
around. They didn’t completely invade their space, but left a
smallish circle of empty ground around them. Tony wondered if his
inner ferocity was helping to hold them at bay, but he didn’t dwell
on the notion.

Peering down at herself and beginning to test
her limbs, Mari said, “I’m not sure I’m unscathed, but at least I’m
alive.”

George broke out of the circle, almost
jumping at Mari, and grabbed her hands. “God, Mari, I don’t know
what happened. I’m so sorry. If it’s anything that I designed
wrong, I . . .I . . .” Again, he ran out of words.

Following George’s precedent, Martin also
came up to the couple. Glumly, Tony decided his aura must not be
all that powerful. If he had his way, the crowd would disperse,
leaving the two of them all alone in Mojave Wells. Then he and Mari
would discuss the matter, dress her wounds, if any, rest up, and
come to some kind of conclusion about the cause of the accident. No
such luck.

“I can’t believe the wall didn’t crush you,
Mari,” Martin told her. Tony could tell how shaken he was because
he’d gone white as a sheet and his hands were trembling when he
wiped his brow with his handkerchief. As soon as he’d stuffed it
back into his pocket, he started pulling on a tuft of hair.

Taking a clean handkerchief from Tony, who’d
finally thought to hand her one, Mari pondered the near
catastrophic accident. “I didn’t know what was going on at first. I
heard someone holler at me—”

“That was me,” Tony said gruffly,
unaccountably miffed that she didn’t already know.

She shot him a small smile. “Oh, yes, I
remember now I remember it was your voice, and I wondered what I’d
done wrong this time.”

How embarrassing. Did she really think of him
as some kind of mean-tempered disciplinarian? Tony guessed he’d
better work on that aspect of their relationship.

What relationship? Good God, he was so
confused at the moment, he didn’t know whether he was coming or
going.

“When you yelled again—I don’t remember what
you said—I realized the set was collapsing and dived under the
table.”

“The table,” Tony whispered. “Of course.”

“The table,” said Martin, sounding
relieved.

“The table,” George muttered. “Thank God we
used that old metal thing. If we’d used a wooden one, chances are
it would have been crushed under the weight of the wall, and you
with it.

Mari shuddered, and Tony decided he didn’t
give a rap if people started talking. He put an arm around her. In
order to give the impression of a brother rather than a lover, he
said, “Here, Mari, let me help you back to the inn. You ought to
wash up and see if you need medical care.”

“Right.” Martin snapped to attention. “I’ll
call that doctor who came when Gilman was taken sick.”

Gilman? Oh, yeah, the first director. Tony
frowned. Something was definitely wrong with this production.
“Thanks, Martin. I’ll get her inside.”

“If it’s all right with you,” George said,
speaking to Martin and Tony, “I’ll take a look and try to see what
happened to that set. It shouldn’t have collapsed like that.”

“Good idea,” Martin said.

A suspicion touched Tony, and he asked
Martin, “Say, are those insurance fellows still here?”

Martin and Tony shared a glance, and Tony saw
that Martin understood his unasked question. To George, he added,
“You might want to get the sheriff to look at it with you.”

George, too, caught on. “My God, you don’t
think it was sabotage, do you?”

Mari gasped. As well she might, thought Tony
grimly. She might have been killed. “I don’t know,” Tony said. “But
I really want to. If the insurance fellows have gone, at least make
sure the sheriff inspects the wall thoroughly. If it is sabotage,
whoever did it almost committed murder today.”

This time the entire crowd, which included
everyone who lived in Mojave Wells, unless Tony was completely
deluded, gasped. George looked stricken.

“Right,” he said. “Sure. I’ll get the sheriff
first. He might want to post men at the scene of the accident so
nothing is disturbed.”

“Good.” Although Tony wasn’t ready to give
George a pardon yet, he did give him a smile. “That’s a good
thought, George.” In his heart of hearts, Tony didn’t think George
was at fault here. But the lad was young, and he might have been
careless. Tony wasn’t sure if he’d rather they find the accident
had been caused by George’s mistake or by a saboteur. If it was
George, they could probably consider the episode ended, and it was
a certainty that George would never make the same mistake
again.

If it turned out to be vandals or saboteurs,
the good Lord alone knew when or where they’d strike next.

Too shaken by her recent brush with injury or
death to protest, Mari allowed herself to be led upstairs by Tony
to his room. There were too many people around for such a maneuver
to be improper anyway. Darn it.

Mari shook herself, knowing that if she
allowed her present state of agitation to dictate her actions,
she’d be in Tony’s bed in no time at all. That would be a worse
calamity than having a wall fall on her, albeit not as
unpleasant.

“Really,” she said, “I’m all right. I don’t
need to lie down.”

Tony, with help from Judy Nelson, had led her
into the hotel, where she’d had brandy forced upon her and been
made to sit still while Judy and Mrs. Nelson palpated every exposed
surface on her body as Tony watched, eagle-eyed. It had been very
embarrassing.

“Don’t be silly” Mrs. Nelson had snapped when
she’d said as much. “You might have been killed out there, Mari
Pottersby, and I don’t take it kindly when people are injured on my
property.”

“I’m not injured,” Mari had muttered to no
avail.

It didn’t seem fair to her that she, the one
upon whom the wall had almost fallen, should be ignored while
everyone else ordered her about. If her wits hadn’t been so
rattled, she’d not have permitted it. Her wits were rattled,
though, and she couldn’t drum up a coherent protest to save her
life.

At least Tiny wasn’t bullying her. He’d
trotted along with her wherever people led her, sat next to her
wherever she sat, and laid his huge head on her lap whenever
possible. She’d petted him at every opportunity and would have told
him how much she appreciated his unequivocal and undemanding, love
except that she didn’t want to hurt anybody else’s feelings.

“I wish this place had an elevator,” Tony
grumbled as they walked, with excruciating deliberation, up the
staircase.

“Your room’s only on the second floor, for
Pete’s sake.” Mari hadn’t meant to sound peeved, but she was
getting sick of people treating her like an invalid. The blasted
wall had fallen at least an hour ago, and thanks to George’s metal
table, she was totally unscathed. Almost totally. She admitted to a
few bumps, bruises, and scrapes, but they were nothing. She was
fine now. “If you’d only let go of me, I could get there in a
couple of seconds.”

Not that she wanted him to let go, but the
circumstances aggravated her. She’d be happy to have him hold her
if he were, say, wildly in love with her or something, not because
she’d had an accident.

As if. Mari told herself to stop dreaming
immediately, because, she reminded herself as she’d been doing
forever, daydreams only led to disappointment, as she already knew
too well.

“Quit complaining,” Tony grumped. “You’ve
endured a bad accident, and it’s time you left off moaning and
groaning just because we want to make sure you’re not seriously
injured.”

“If I were seriously injured,” Mari ground
out between her teeth, “I’d hurt somewhere.”

“Not necessarily.” Tony sounded as if he were
trying to convince himself. “You might have . . . internal
injuries. Or something.”

“Right.” The truth of the matter was that
Mari was exhausted. There was something about stark terror, even if
it only lasted five minutes or so, that wore a body out. What she
really wanted was to take a bath and get all the makeup and dust
off her, wrap herself in something clean, loose, and comfortable,
and sit on Tony’s lap while he petted her. After a few hours—or
years—of that, she might feel good enough to finish the picture.
Maybe not.

She didn’t tell Tony any of that.

“Here we are,” Tony said, fumbling for his
key. “As soon as the doctor arrives, we’ll know better what’s going
on.”

“Fiddle.” This was insane.

Insane or not, Mari couldn’t help but have an
unsettled feeling about the wall incident, and it wasn’t only
because it had nearly flattened her. All these episodes weren’t
natural. Oh, sure, accidents happened. But not so many, so often,
and every one having to do with one subject. It seemed to her that
a malign force was at work here. Somebody had it in for the
Peerless Studio, or at least for this production of
Lucky
Strike
.

But she was too tired and wobbly to think
about evil beings at the moment. Meekly, she allowed Tony to help
her into his room, and she didn’t even balk when he told her to sit
on the bed.

“I’ll take off your shoes and stockings,” he
told her, clearly making his voice tough to forestall any argument
from her.

She was too bushed to argue. When he knelt in
front of her and reached for her foot, she lifted it obligingly. He
set it on his bent knee and unlaced her shoe, and Mari’s eyes
filled with tears. She brushed them away, angry with herself for
succumbing yet again to a fit of emotion.

What in the world was wrong with her? She’d
lived a tough life; she ought to be tough, too. But she wasn’t, and
when she saw Tony there in front of her, in a pose now considered a
classical one for proposals of a romantic nature, she gave up
pretending.

It was all too much for her. The tears
continued to fall, and she kept wiping them away, all the time
hoping Tony wouldn’t look up and notice. Blast it, this wasn’t
fair.

“Other foot.” He didn’t glance at her face,
thank heaven, and Mari lifted her other foot.

He unlaced the shoe on that one, too. Mari
saw him lick his lips.

“All right. Now for the stockings.”

It was too much. Tears be damned. Mari
snapped, “I’ll do them.” She wasn’t going to allow any man, and
particularly not this one, to whom she felt an almost violent
physical attraction, roll her stockings down. She might be poor,
and she might have no knowledge of how society snobs acted, but she
knew proper behavior from improper. “Turn around.”

“For God’s sake.” He was peeved now.

Too bad. “Darn it, Tony, turn around.”

He did. Mari lifted her skirt, untied her
garter, and rolled down first one stocking and then the other. Her
legs, she noticed, sported a variety of colorful bruises. Swell.
Just what she needed. It wasn’t bad enough that she had to slave
away in a worthless mine eleven months out of the year. Now, during
the one month when she might expect at least some respite from her
toils, she got battered by the scenery.

“All right,” she growled when she was
through. “Now what?” She plumped herself back on the bed and
scowled. She expected she now bore muddy tracks down her face from
tears slogging through dust and makeup, and she didn’t even care.
Much.

Tony turned around—at least when he’d
complied with her command, he’d not cheated and peeked—and scowled
down at her. She saw his frown vanish and an expression of concern
replace it. “Why are you crying? Where do you hurt?”

She lifted her chin and glowered up at him.
“I don’t hurt anywhere.” Except her feelings. They hurt like fire.
“I’m just tired of everything.”

Comprehensive. But comparatively true. At the
moment, Mari longed for peace. Tranquility. Respite. All of those
delicious things she, being who she was, couldn’t expect from life.
Ever.

Tony surprised her by sitting next to her on
the bed and encircling her shoulders with a strong arm. “Here,
Mari, I know you’ve been through it today. If you need to cry, go
ahead. It’s all right. Hell, women cry all the time.”

Oh, they did, did they? Mari Pottersby
didn’t. Mari was tough. She was rugged. She was strong and
independent and steadfast. She was . . .