A Claim of Her Own (39 page)
Staring down at the string of rabbits lying on the ground, Mattie frowned. She glanced toward her tent at the thread of smoke ascending from the stovepipe. The rabbits were frozen stiff. Freddie would never just drop game like that. . . . Not unless . . . Her heart racing, she ran toward the tent, slipped, and almost fell.
“Freddie! Freddie, are you all right?”
A moan . . .
Oh, Lord . . . he’s sick. He hurt his leg again . . . he—
In her panic, she forgot to unbutton her buffalo robe. Her Colt was there, tucked in her pocket and of no use at all as she stepped inside to find Freddie lying bound and gagged on her cot. Her heart in her throat, she stared at the drifter who was seated atop her supply box with a shotgun aimed at her. Tattered clothes, scraggly, greasy hair, a face that was one mass of scabs and healed-over pox, hideous scars and . . . oh . . . no . . .
God, please . . . no.
“Hello, Mattie,” Jonas Flynn said as he brandished his hook. And smiled.
Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.
Psalm 142:6
Y
ou must be hot, dressed in that,” Jonas said as he pointed the shotgun at her coat. “Take it off. Slowly. I assume you still keep the Colt tucked in your pocket?” He swung the shotgun barrel toward Freddie. “He’s not dead. But that could change, should you choose to be foolish right now.”
Trembling, Mattie pulled off the coat. “It’s here,” she croaked, and turned so he could see her pocket. “I’ll just pull it out and—”
“Hold it!” Jonas barked, and turned the gun back on her. Mattie froze. He smiled. “All right, dear. Now suppose you take it out, very carefully, and just toss it outside. Toward the edge of the claim, where the snow’s the deepest.”
When she’d done it, he nodded. “Good. Good girl.” He saw Mattie glance to where Freddie lay. “Ah . . . I see. You’re worried about your new brother. How sweet. Where is Dillon, by the way? That’s the one thing I don’t know yet. It’d be a shame for him to turn up while we’re having our little chat.”
“Dillon’s gone,” Mattie said. “He died before I even got here.” Weakness would only encourage the worst in him. She’d learned that long ago. And so she forced herself to look him in the eye when she answered. “I never saw him alive after you ran him out of Abilene. Happy?”
“Tsk, tsk, Mattie”—he shook his hook at her, a teacher scolding a student with an iron finger—“bitterness isn’t a very attractive quality.” He pointed his hook at his own face. “See what it’s done to me?” He laughed. A hideous sound. “But I digress. Tie the tent flap open before you sit down beside your young friend, my dear. Your neighbors won’t be a bother, and we’re going to be a while.”
Neighbors . . . what had he done to the McKays? Her hands trembled as Mattie obeyed him.
Please. God. Please help. Send someone.
Once she was seated beside Freddie’s still form, Jonas chuckled. With the morning light streaming into the tent, his ravaged face and tattered condition were even more shocking. He would have been pathetic were it not for the searing hatred in those pale blue eyes.
“Dear, sweet Mattie. You forget how easily I can read your face. After all, I’m the one who taught you all about faces. Ironic, don’t you think, in light of what you’ve done to mine?” When she frowned, he explained. “If it weren’t for you, I would still be in Abilene. If it weren’t for you . . .” He ground out the words at first, but as he moved along the litany of things Mattie had done to him, his tone intensified until Jonas was dancing just at the edge of self-control.
Let him scream at me,
Mattie prayed.
If he screams someone might
hear . . . someone might come.
But Jonas broke off abruptly, and when he spoke next, his voice was quiet. Sinister. Deadly. He shook his head. “Poor Mattie, I’m afraid no one’s coming to help her.” He nodded toward the McKays’ claim. “As to your concerns for your neighbors, I’ve dispatched them with a special concoction. Drinks around the fire with a nice old codger who remembered the homeland was just the thing.” He affected a brogue. “Yous never saw the like of it, sweet lass.” He sighed. “I dragged them off to bed, where they’ll stay for . . . oh, long enough for you and me to finish our business.”
He gestured toward Freddie. “Now, Freddie was a bit of a challenge. I knew he wouldn’t drink with me. So I had to knock him out. Happily, I was still able to pour enough of my special brew down his throat to ensure he won’t be a problem, either.” He smiled. “So you see, Mattie, we’ve plenty of time to get reacquainted.” He tilted his head. “To reestablish the boundaries. To, shall we say, negotiate.”
“Negotiate?”
“Yes. My terms for releasing your friend. Maybe even for letting you live.” He cackled. “Who knows? Anything could happen up on Mattie’s Claim.” Spittle flew from his lips as he talked.
He might not kill Freddie. God, he said he might let him go. Tell me
what to do. Tell me what to say. How can I save Freddie?
She reminded herself again that emotion would only fuel Jonas’s propensity for diabolical creativity. She touched the place on her arm where a hookshaped scar remained as a souvenir of the night she’d learned that begging Jonas never earned mercy. And so she begged heaven.
Help
me. Help me. Help me.
Calm washed over her. Lifting her chin, she spoke. She sounded calm. Free from fear. “I’ll do whatever you want. But Freddie has nothing to do with you and me. He’s never hurt anyone. He shouldn’t have to suffer for my sins.”
Jonas licked his lips. “I see you’ve acquired a new vocabulary— no doubt from that preacher you’ve been spending time with.” He echoed her words. “ ‘He shouldn’t have to suffer for my sins.’ Hmmm. That’s very sweet.” The slit in his face curled up in a hideous smile. “Mattie has a soft spot for the village idiot.” He winked. “You shouldn’t play your hand so soon. You’ve shown a weakness I can exploit. I taught you better than that. Didn’t I?”
He leaned forward and once again his voice dropped and the words ground. “Didn’t I teach you well? Didn’t I take you in and feed and clothe you? Delectable food. Silk and velvet. The finest gowns. And for that”—he touched his hook to the cheekbone she’d cut with her ring—“you gave me this.”
The scar was no longer evident amongst the furrows clawed by smallpox, but Mattie knew what he was talking about. “I didn’t mean to cut you,” she said. “I only wanted you to keep your promises to Mam. To give me my money and let me go.”
“Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of it,” Jonas spat out. “The
money
.” He swiped at his mouth with his sleeve.
“Three hundred dollars was a pittance compared to what you said I’d earned.” A plan was forming in her mind. “But if this is about money, I can give you as much as you want.”
“Really?” He leaned back and rested his hook atop the shotgun. “Tell me, Mattie, exactly how much money do you think it will take to give me a life back . . . to restore this?” He turned his face from side to side, jutted out his mottled chin, mugged as if he were posing for a photograph. When she was silent, he nodded. “Yes. You’re right. There isn’t enough money in the world. And as for the money you took, three thousand was considerably more than you’d earned, even if I was going to agree to what the ledger said.”
Mattie frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I took three
hundred
dollars. And that’s all. I even left the ring behind.”
He shook his head. “Now, now . . . lying’s a sin. You’re making me very angry.”
Her mind racing, Mattie thought back to that night. She replayed it aloud. “I was afraid you were going to kill me for—” she pointed to his cheek—“for that. And so while you were gone getting it stitched up, I grabbed a wad of bills out of your dresser drawer and ran. There was no plot to rob you. I didn’t even know how much it was until I got to the train station and counted it. Three hundred and forty-two dollars.” She remembered it clearly. “Think about it, Jonas. Why would I lie to you now?” Suddenly she knew. She gasped, “I think I know what happened.”
“This is proving to be even more entertaining than I’d anticipated. Please continue.”
“I ran into Flo when I was leaving. Literally ran into her. I was in such a hurry I didn’t see her on the stairs. We almost tumbled down them, but she grabbed the railing and I-I just kept going. But she had to know I was running.” She swallowed. “Think about it, Jonas. Flo had every opportunity, and you know how she hated me.” She paused. “She’d stolen from you before. I remember the night you caught her rummaging in your room.” Even now that memory made her shudder because of what Jonas had done next.
When Jonas said nothing, Mattie continued. “Is she still working for you?” She saw the answer in his eyes. “When did she leave? Was it right after I did?” He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. “Oh, Jonas . . . you followed the wrong girl.” She could tell he was pondering it. Somewhere in the far reaches of whatever logical mind he had left, he had to know it was true.
And then, as quickly as she’d deduced the truth about Flo, Mattie realized she’d made a mistake. Jonas was already blaming her for everything that had happened to him, and now she’d convinced him that he’d followed the wrong girl. As the truth of what she was saying hit home, a new level of rage flickered in Jonas’s eyes, rage fueled by despair and a sense of hopelessness. She spoke up. “Three thousand dollars doesn’t begin to cover it, does it? I can give you more. Just say how much.”
He snorted. “You’re missing the point. This isn’t about the money anymore. It’s about betrayal. And ruination. It’s about what
you
have done to
me.
”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. Dillon and I just wanted a different kind of life. That’s all. It wasn’t about you. We just wanted to be on our own.” She kept talking, soothing, trying to appeal to any sanity that might still exist inside the wounded brain. “But that’s the past. You said we would negotiate now. Let’s negotiate.”
Jonas swung the barrel of the rifle toward Freddie. “I’m getting bored.” His finger locked on the trigger.
Dear God, he’s mad. . . . What can I do? . . . What can I do?
An answer came, and the instant it dropped into her conscious mind, the calm returned. “You can have it all,” she said.
“All of . . . ?”
“All of Dillon’s gold. All of mine.” Jonas’s finger moved away from the trigger. Her heart pounding, Mattie said, “This claim is rich. It’s been paying out for months. No one knows because I’ve kept it all right here.” She patted the cot. “It’s right here and you can have it
all
in exchange for Freddie’s life.” She forced reason into her voice and prayed she sounded convincing. “You could buy a new place. A
palace
. A man’s face doesn’t matter if he has enough money. You taught me that, and you know it’s true. I can make you richer than you’ve ever dreamed.”
But how will he get away?
The solution came immediately. “You can take the McKays’ mule. I’ll help you load the saddlebags. No one in town will come looking for me, Jonas—not until you’ve gotten away. They all knew I was planning on working the claim today. They knew Freddie was coming with me. You can be far away before anyone even finds us.”
He smiled. Leered. Chuckled. “You’d do that? Just to see old Jonas gone from your life?”
“I would
owe
you my life,” Mattie said. “And Freddie’s.” She shrugged. “It would be a fair trade.”
He was thinking about it. Considering. Finally he said, “Let me see it.”
She nodded. “It’s beneath me. There’s a cache under the bed. We’ll have to move Freddie.”
“Well, aren’t you the clever one.”
“Not me. It was Dillon’s idea. I was here for weeks before I found it. But I’ve added to it. I’ve added a lot.”
“How much?”
“Let me show you.”
He stood up and pressed his back against the canvas wall, gesturing with the shotgun. “So show me.”
“You have to help me move Freddie.”
“Oh, I think you can figure out a way to do that. Just move slowly. It would be a shame to have to kill him now, just when you and I are considering a satisfactory conclusion to our negotiations.” He smirked.
Somehow, Mattie managed to roll Freddie off the cot. His prone body barely fit in the space between the edge of the cot and the little stove. She had to reach over him to lift the bedframe and prop it up. She pointed at the iron plate. “Can you see that? I have to slide that over.”
“Then slide it.”
She did. And waited.
“Surely you don’t think I’m going to be stupid enough to bend over that hole. Bring up whatever’s in it. And if there’s a gun hidden down there, pull it out first, where I can see it.” He pressed the barrel of his gun to Freddie’s temple. “And rest assured that in the time it would take you to take aim, I’d dispatch poor Freddie here into the next life.”
With trembling hands, Mattie lifted the bottles of gold out of the cache. When they were lined up along the earth, Jonas surveyed them with a smile. “Well, now. How about that. Matt the Miner has done well. Very well.”
She pointed to the leather bag around her neck. “You can have this, too. The snow’s melting fast. You can get away without leaving much of a trail. I know you can do that, Jonas. You were a sniper in the war. You know how to do things.”
