Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (5 page)

When
everyone had gathered in the basement, the stranger looked around critically
and said, “This is it? This is your wonderful hiding place? I ain’t gonna be
safe here. The sons of bitches looking for me will sniff me out in seconds!”

The
stranger cocked the big .38 and Luke panicked. He had a vision of Sarah lying
facedown on the dirt floor, blood leaking out of her body as her life ebbed
away. “No, no, this isn’t it! Settle down, please, and I’ll show you the real
hiding place.”

The
man’s eyes narrowed. Quietly, he said, “You do understand what’s going to
happen here if I don’t see some results, and soon, correct?”

Luke
nodded, breathing heavily, and walked quickly to the rear of the basement. He
reached into an unassuming-looking gap between two of the huge granite blocks
and the stranger instantly lifted his Colt to eye level, suspicious, training
it on Luke. Luke winced—the gun looked massive with the business end
pointed between his eyes—but continued. He tugged sharply and the
stranger’s eyes widened as the block swiveled outward. A smile crossed the
man’s face. “Now, this is more like it,” he said approvingly.

Luke
gestured everyone forward and the stranger walked to the entryway, clutching
Sarah tightly by the arm, his gun again aimed at her head. He waved Luke away and
then peered inside the tunnel, his vision limited to the first few feet by the
flickering candlelight. “Looks like a storage area,” he said.

“That’s
what it’s meant to look like,” Luke said. “But there’s a hidden doorway at the
other end and an actual room behind it. Might not be as comfy as a four-star
hotel in Boston, but you’ll be safe and warm for as long as you’d like to stay
hidden.”

Luke
walked past the stranger, careful not to make any sudden movements that could
be interpreted as threatening. “Follow me,” he said. “I’ll show you inside.”

“Stop
right there,” the stranger snarled. He spit on the floor. “Just how goddamned
stupid do you think I am?”

“What
do you mean?”

“There’s
a corpse lying in your back yard, remember? Shot with this here gun, remember?
I gotta get that body out of there before the guys chasin’ me stumble over it.
If they see the dead man, they’ll know I’m here. And I’m runnin’ out of time.
So you’re going to help me.” He pointed the gun at Luke, and Luke felt a surge
of hope. He would help the stranger dispose of poor Matt Fulton’s body, and
while the gunman was occupied, Sarah could make her escape. She would alert the
authorities, and Luke might or might not survive the ensuing confrontation, but
at least Sarah would be safe.

Luke’s tiny
flame of hope was extinguished immediately, however, when the man said, “This
pretty little thing is going to come with us, just to be sure you don’t get the
bright idea to try something you’ll regret later.

“And as
for you,” he continued, turning the gun on the old black slave. “Seems you
ain’t no use to me at all. No reason for you to come with us, and if I leave
you here, I figure you’ll just go runnin’ straight to the law, won’t cha?”

The old
man stared at the stranger, saying nothing, exhibiting no fear, betraying no
emotion at all. The stranger cocked his .38 and the black man seemed to stand a
little taller, straightening his bent spine and glaring at the killer with baleful
eyes. It was almost as if he was daring the stranger to shoot.

Luke’s
blood chilled. “No!” he interrupted. “There’s no need to kill this man. He
can’t go to the authorities, because if he does, he’ll get shipped right back
to . . . to . . . where are you from?” he asked the slave desperately.

“Plantation
just outside N’Awlins.” The old slave’s words were the first and only ones he
had spoken since giving Luke his name just after tumbling out of Matt Fulton’s
delivery wagon.
 
He seemed to part
with his words reluctantly, like a Vanderbilt paying his taxes.

“New
Orleans,” Luke said, nodding. “See? He can’t go to the law any more than you
can, because if he does, he’ll find himself on his way back to New Orleans
before the day is out.”

“I
can’t take that chance,” the stranger said coldly. “How do I know he don’t want
to go back?” His grip tensed and his eyes narrowed and Luke knew there was
about to be a second murder if he didn’t take action right now. But what could
he do?

The
slave looked the stranger in the eyes and spit on the floor, hawking up a gob
of saliva that floated gracefully through the air and landed with an audible
splat at the stranger’s feet.

He was going
to die.

“Wait!”
Luke practically shouted. “We can keep him out of the way and I can guarantee
he won’t be able to go anywhere.”

The
basement fell deathly silent and nobody moved. Finally the stranger said,
“How?”

Luke
realized he had been holding his breath and blew it out forcefully. Maybe he
could save the old guy’s life. The slave didn’t seem to care one way or the
other; he continued glaring at the stranger.

“The
hidden room at the end of this hallway was built specifically to hide escaping
slaves. There’s only one way out of it, and the door has no handle on the
inside. We simply stash Jedediah here,” he gestured at the old man, “inside the
room – he would be spending the night in it anyway – and everyone
will be happy.”

“Show
me,” the stranger said, so Luke did.

6

Luke’s stomach was doing flip-flops
as he grabbed Matt Fulton by the ankles. He tried not to look at the
deliveryman’s ruined head. The two hadn’t exactly been friends, but they had
maintained a business relationship for over five years, a relationship
involving tavern supplies and freedom-seeking slaves, and the sense of regret
he felt at being responsible for the man’s death was like a physical weight
hanging from his neck.

He
breathed a sigh of relief that the homicidal stranger had agreed to spare the
slave’s life—at least for now—after being shown the secret room and
accepting that there was no way out once locked inside. They had ushered Jedediah
into the room together and then retreated down the tunnel, with Luke pushing
the earthen door closed behind him.

The
slave had not said another word after his brief, and nearly deadly,
confrontation with the stranger. Luke sensed a rage smoldering inside the old
man that was so strong it was almost as terrifying as the .38 the stranger
waved around so carelessly. He felt certain that were it not for the revolver,
the ancient slave would have been able to whip the outlaw in a fistfight, the
difference in their ages notwithstanding.

Luke
shuddered as he pictured the horrible fate facing the old black man if the
stranger were to shoot him and Sarah after they disposed of Matt Fulton’s body.
No one else in the world knew of the secret room’s location, and no one else in
the world knew the slave had traveled here to Paskagankee, Maine. The man would
slowly starve to death, but only after several long weeks spent alone,
desperately trying to make his food and water last.

Luke
guessed the stranger would not kill him yet, and risk not finding the entrance
to the secret room again, but he had no illusions about the man allowing him
and Sarah to live once he no longer needed them. He had to survive the next few
hours, and stay alert while protecting Sarah. Perhaps an opportunity to
overpower the stranger would present itself.

He
grunted as he lifted Matt’s body, thankful the stranger had elected to carry
the corpse by the armpits, where his grotesquely misshapen head lolled
lifelessly just inches away from the stranger’s trousers.

Matt’s
blood looked as black as tar—even blacker than the old slave—by the
dim light of the torches. It had splattered onto the ground where he fell,
draining from his head wound as he lay dying in the dirt, and Luke prayed death
had been instantaneous, that the deliveryman had not suffered. He realized he
had never had a single conversation of a personal nature with Matt Fulton;
didn’t know whether the man had a family, or if he enjoyed a hobby. Knew
nothing about him at all, when he came right down to it.

A sense
of hopelessness overwhelmed Luke without warning and he shook his head violently.
He would not allow himself to give up. He had to remain focused. Sarah was
counting on him. Luke had dared hope he might grab Matt Fulton’s gun from the
wagon and turn it on the stranger, but of course the man had been a step ahead
of him. He plucked it off the well-worn seat and slid it inside the waistband
of his trousers as they walked past carrying Matt’s body, smiling wickedly at
Luke as if reading his mind.

“Put
him in the back,” the stranger muttered through clenched teeth. Together, the
two men swung the body of the dead deliveryman into the wagon, dropping him
onto the floor among the supplies. The stranger withdrew a pocket watch from
his vest and examined it carefully, turning it this way and that to catch the
light from the torches.

“We
gotta hurry,” he said. “They’ll be here soon.” Luke said nothing and the man
continued. “I’m guessing I had maybe two hours on ‘em, and we’ve already wasted
far too much of that time.”

“Why
are they chasing you?” Luke asked.

The man
glanced at Luke, eyes narrowed to slits, and said, “Shut up and get in the
wagon.”

***

The forest felt alive and malevolent
as Luke forced the horse off the road and into a narrow gap between the trees.
They had traveled no more than a quarter-mile from the tavern when the stranger
said, “This is far enough. We’ll hide the wagon here and dump the body in the
woods. With a little luck neither of ‘em will be found until I’m long gone.”

“The
sheriff’s going to know Matt made his delivery the minute the wagon’s
discovered. Supplies are missing. The first thing he’ll do is come to the
Paskagankee Tavern; it’s the only place for thirty miles in any direction Matt
delivers to.”

“I
don’t give a damn about the tin-star lawman in this two-bit village,” the
stranger said. “All I need is one night. The men looking for me will assume I
kept traveling when they can’t find me in your hayseed town. They’ll move on toward
Canada and when they do, I’ll head south. What happens around here after that
ain’t my concern.”

The
wagon lurched to a halt. The forest was ancient, primeval, filled with millions
of massive fir trees broken up by the occasional hardwood, and underbrush so
thick it was nearly impossible to walk, much less drive into with a delivery
wagon. Once they had replaced the branches and brush matted down by the horse
and the big wooden wagon wheels, Luke felt a sense of defeat wash over him. He
was convinced the abandoned wagon would be invisible to passersby, and would
not be discovered until a concerted search had been launched.

“Now,”
the stranger said with a look on his face that was half grimace and half leer,
“let’s us three take a little stroll with a corpse, shall we?”

“Please,”
Luke said, knowing he was wasting his breath but trying anyway, “allow Sarah to
wait here. She doesn’t need to be exposed to the nighttime disposal of a
murdered man.”

The
stranger shook his head and turned a glare Luke’s way. “I swear,” he said, “you
can’t possibly be so stupid as to think we’re going to carry a dead man into
the woods and leave your little woman all alone back here, so she can hike into
town and raise the alarm. Please tell me you ain’t that stupid.”

Sarah
placed a hand on Luke’s arm and shook her head, a tiny smile on her face.
Don’t make this volatile man any more
unstable than he already is,
she was trying to tell him.
I’ll survive.

Luke
hoped she was right. He wasn’t so sure.

The
three clambered off the front of the wagon in the suffocating darkness, one
anxiously, two reluctantly. Luke stepped to the ground and then helped Sarah
down with one hand, steadying himself against the wagon with the other. The
thick brush instantly closed in around them, surrounding them from all sides, filling
Luke with a sense of claustrophobia. The moon, two-thirds full tonight, had
disappeared almost immediately after they left the road, lost somewhere high
above the canopy formed by the ancient forest.

The
silence seemed preternatural, the only sounds being their heavy breathing and
the scratching of branches and brush against clothing. They fought their way to
the rear of the delivery wagon, and the stranger said, “We’re gonna carry the
stiff along the side of the wagon, then deeper into the forest, as deep as we
can manage without wasting too much time. I’m almost out of time.”

Luke
wondered about the men chasing this homicidal stranger. The thought occurred to
him that maybe he could intentionally delay the disposal progress long enough
for the murderer’s pursuers to catch up with him, but he discarded the idea
almost immediately. If this man—with his cold eyes and amoral personality
and the ability to murder an innocent man as easily as if he were lighting a
cigar—was as worried about his pursuers as he appeared to be, it didn’t
seem likely he would be the only one to suffer the consequences were he to be
caught. Luke guessed he and Sarah would as well.