Miner's Daughter (39 page)

Tony was panting and she was brick red when
he finally lowered her slowly to the ground. “Thank God you’re all
right,” he whispered fervently.

“Thank you.” She brushed dirt from her face,
forgetting about her ankle until her left foot hit the ground. With
a sharp cry of anguish, she crumpled and started to fall. Tony
caught her. She thanked him again.

He didn’t seem to hear her. Sweeping her up
into his arms, he called out, “Where’s the doctor? I think she’s
broken here ankle. It needs to be looked at right away.”

“I’m right here, son.”

Mari glanced toward Dr. Crabtree’s voice and
saw the kindly old man grinning at the two of them. Knowing he was
doing so because she and Tony had kissed, she lifted her chin and
smiled, trying for a dignified expression. “Thank you, Doc.”

She heard Martin’s voice say, “Lord, Mari, I
was afraid you were done for. I’m so glad you’re out of that
pit.”

Martin, Mari realized, was there at Tony’s
side. She wondered if he’d been there all the time. Might have
been. She’d had eyes for no one but Tony. “Thanks, Martin. I’m kind
of glad about it, too.”

She’d expected a little, bit of laughter to
honor her attempt at humor, but none greeted her. She guessed they
were all too rattled about the accident. Giving up on humor, she
asked, “Does anyone know how it happened?”

“Yes.” This, from Tony, who sounded even
grimmer than he usually did when he was annoyed about something
having to do with Mari.

He carried her into the cabin and set her on
her bed. Gazing up at him, she said, “What was it? Was it . . .”
For some reason, her mouth refused to form the word
sabotage
. Perhaps because she’d almost been killed, she
didn’t want to think about someone deliberately doing these
things.

“Yes. Someone cut the cables holding the
scaffolding together and hacked through several of the
supports.”

“Merciful heaven.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Tony agreed
wryly.

Dr. Crabtree plunked his black bag on a
chair. “You might well say so. It was some kind of merciful heaven
that saved your life, Miss Mari. I’ve never seen anything like
it.”

“No,” said Tony. “Me, neither.”

He sat on another chair with a plunk, and
Mari was astonished to see how terribly pale and shaken he looked.
He buried his face in his hands. “My God, I thought I’d lost
you.”

She gaped at him. He sounded as if losing her
would be a bad thing. Before she could ask, the doctor started
working on her left foot, untying her shoe and cutting away at her
stocking. It was all she could do to keep from screaming in agony.
She succeeded, but it took all of her concentration.

A whole bunch of people crowded into the
cabin. Tony made them stand back in order to give Doc Crabtree
plenty of room to maneuver. Martin smiled encouragingly at her, as
did George and Ben and Gordon Shay. Mari was surprised to see Judy
Nelson, a corner of her apron stuffed into her mouth and her eyes
as wide as pie plates, staring at her. She waved her fingers. “Hi,
Judy.”

Judy said, “Hi, Mari,” and burst into tears.
How strange.

“We’re going to have to get you a bath, young
lady, before we doctor the rest of your wounds. As soon as I check
out this ankle of yours, Mr. Ewing is driving you to the Mojave
Inn. You’ll be staying there for a few days until this matter is
sorted out.”

“I will?” She stared at Doc Crabtree’s old
gray head as it bent over her foot.

The doctor nodded. Sensing she’d get no more
information from that source, Mari glanced up and caught Tony
glowering at her. She blinked, not having anticipated anger from
him and feeling rather put out about it.

“No arguments,” Tony announced in a stony
voice. “You’re going to the Mojave Inn, and that’s it. Peerless
can’t afford to post guards for you and your dog now that we know
there’s evil intent behind all of these goings-on.”

“An evil intent?” That sounded almost
romantic. Mari didn’t find any of these blasted accidents romantic.
Especially not this one, because it had cost her the use of her
left foot, and she resented it.

The doctor moved her foot, and she forgot
everything but pain. “Ack! Oh, my, that hurts, Doc.” She tried to
smile, but a smile wouldn’t come. Tears did, though, and they
embarrassed her.

Tony bolted up from his chair and went to the
bed. “What are you doing to her?” he asked angrily.

Dr. Crabtree glanced up, grinned, and shook
his grizzled head. “No need to beat me up, son. I’m trying to
figure out if it’s broken or sprained. She’d be better off if it’s
broken, because it’ll heal faster.”

Mari passed a shaky hand across her cheek to
wipe away tears. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

The doctor nodded. “Sure. When you get a
sprain, the ligament gets torn, there’s lots of internal bleeding,
and it can take months for everything to go right again, if it ever
does. If you break it, it’s a bone, and bones knit faster than torn
ligaments.”

“Oh.” She thought for a minute. “Never
thought I’d ever say anything like this, Doc, but I hope it’s
broken.”

He chuckled. Tony let out a hiss through his
teeth. When Mari glanced up at him, she got the impression he
wanted to lift the doctor up from the ground and throw him out a
window. On impulse, she held out her hand to him “Maybe if you sat
beside me, you could help me be strong.”

Oh, ick. Had she really said that? She feared
she had. What’s worse, she feared she meant it.

However, her ploy gave Tony something to do
besides stand there and seethe. He sat down next to her on the bed,
took her hands in one of his, put his other arm around her
shoulder, and held her tight She tried to hide her sigh of pleasure
with a cough.

After another couple of minutes of poking,
prodding, and feeling, all of which hurt like the very devil, Dr.
Crabtree looked up at Mari. “It’s a sprain, young lady, and a bad
one. I’ll get it wrapped up now. After you get your bath at the
hotel, I’ll rebandage it and put carbolic and bandages on the worst
of your scrapes. You’ll have to elevate the foot and won’t be able
to walk on it for a week or so, and then you’ll have to be careful
with it. It’s going to hurt for months, so prepare yourself.”

“But—” Mari was appalled. “But what about the
picture? I’ve still got scenes to do.”

The doctor rose from squatting on the floor,
using the bed to help himself stand, and huffed. As he threw his
stethoscope into his black bag, grabbed a role of bandages, and
snapped the bag shut, he grumbled, “You’re more important than that
silly picture, Mari Pottersby. You’ve got to take care of that
ankle if you ever want it to get better.”

“Don’t worry about the picture, Mari,” Martin
said, capturing her attention because she’d forgotten he was the
mastermind behind this endeavor. “We can work around you. Change
scenes so you can do them sitting down and hide bandages with
furniture, and stuff like that.” He made a careless gesture with
his hand. “We do that sort of thing all the time”

“You do?” She began to feel better.

“Well,” Martin amended, smiling, “perhaps not
all the time, but you’re not the first actor who’s been hurt on the
job, and you probably won’t be the last, more’s the pity.”

Tony had carried Mari out to his car and had
driven carefully back to town. They’d put Tiny in the backseat,
after giving him a sleep-inducing dose of laudanum. Tony had made
Mari sit next to him in the front seat and prop her swollen foot on
his coat, which he’d removed and rolled up to make a pillow and
placed next to the passenger’s door. This, of course, meant that
Mari had to lean against him in order to take advantage of the
prop. She hadn’t objected, which was a damned good thing, because
he was spoiling for a fight.

He’d been appalled when the doctor had
removed her footwear and revealed the ankle. It was as big as a
tree trunk and purple to the knee. Her whole foot was bruised and
swollen, even the bottom of it.

Dr. Crabtree had explained that the bruising
had been caused by blood leaking under the skin and would probably
hurt more than the torn ligament when she started walking
again.

When they got to the hotel, he carried Mari
inside first and would have fussed over her indefinitely if she
hadn’t all but shouted at him to take care of her dog. He did so
rather huffily, but pleased that at least she hadn’t called him
Tiny.

She wouldn’t let him enter the bathroom and
help her undress to take a bath, either. “For heaven’s sake, Tony!
I want some privacy. Do you mind?”

“Yes,” he growled, but he let her have her
way, staying in the parlor with Tiny. Tiny appreciated him, if
nobody else did. He did make himself useful by fetching Mari a robe
to put on after her bath.

Because he thought he should, he had Mrs.
Nelson place a long-distance telephone call to his father in New
York. The old man ought to know what was happening, even if Tony
didn’t particularly want to be the bearer of the evil tidings.
Although he knew none of these disastrous happenings were his
fault, and even though he hadn’t wanted the old bastard to invest
in a motion picture in the first place, he felt responsible for his
father’s investment.

Mari was finished with her bath and had just
settled herself into a big, overstuffed armchair in the parlor with
her foot propped on a pillow Tony’d set on an ottoman, when a
commotion from outdoors captured their attention. With a frown,
Mari murmured, “What’s that, I wonder.”

“I hope to hell it’s the doctor come to put
another bandage on that ankle and check your scratches.” Every time
he looked at her, his heart cramped. She was so bruised and
battered. If he hadn’t feared he’d hurt her, he’d have gathered her
in his arms and held her close.

“Doc Crabtree will be here as soon as he can
be,” she told him “He’s a busy man.”

“Right.” Irate about the conditions
prevailing in this backwater, and wishing he could send for a
doctor from New York City—which would be ridiculous, since Mari
would doubtlessly have healed by the time a New York doctor could
make his way out west—Tony stamped to the door and yanked it open.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi, Martin.”

Martin entered the parlor, followed by a
phalanx of Peerless men. He smiled at Mari. “You look a little more
the thing now, Mari. I’m awfully sorry about your ankle.”

She waved her hand in the air. “It’ll be
okay. It’s only a sprain.”

“Only a sprain?” Tony bellowed. “The doctor
said a sprain was worse than a break!” He resented it when Mari
rolled her eyes.

Martin didn’t seem to notice the interplay
between the two. He was distracted, although Tony didn’t realize it
until Mari asked, “What’s the matter, Martin? What’s going on? Good
heavens, there hasn’t been another accident, has there?”

“No, thank God.”

Tony stopped being angry and worried about
Mari, and focused his attention on Martin. The poor guy did appear
rather rattled. “What happened, Martin?”

Martin flopped onto a sofa near Mari’s chair.
Removing his sporty tweed cap and holding it on his knee, he looked
up at Tony, a troubled frown on his face. “The sheriff caught two
men trying to leave town. In their possession was a twenty-two
caliber rifle with a spent cartridge, and several tools that could
easily have been used to cause the problems with the mine and with
the set”

Tony, who had been pacing nervously, his mind
cursing the doctor who seemed determined not to come to Mari’s aid,
stopped pacing and stared. “You mean Jones caught the
perpetrators?”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed Mari. “This is
wonderful!”

Martin grimaced. “It might not be quite as
wonderful as all that.”

Tony and Mari exchanged a glance. Tony asked,
“What do you mean?”

After heaving a dispirited sigh, Martin said,
“It’s kind of complicated.”

This time it was Tony who rolled his eyes.
“Out with it, Martin. Who was it?” He hoped to hell it wasn’t
George or Ben or another of the Peerless men Martin had trusted for
years.

Martin stood again and started twirling his
hat nervously. “Maybe you’d better come out to the main lobby with
me, Tony. I don’t want to upset Mari.”

Mari sat up and fairly shrieked at the two
men, “Don’t you dare leave me to wonder what’s going on! If you
don’t do whatever you need to do in here, I’ll hobble out there if
it kills me!”

The two men gazed at her, Martin with
concern, Tony with fury. “Damn it, Mari, you’re not supposed to
move.” He hurried to the door and looked out, scanning the hallway
in both directions. “Where the hell’s the doctor?”

“He’s coming,” Martin said. “He had to, ah,
care of an emergency first.”

“What’s more of an emergency than Mari?” Tony
demanded.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mari pushed herself
away from the chair back, preparatory to standing.

Seeing this maneuver on her part, Tony,
bellowed, “No! You stay right where you are, damn it!”

Through a barely opened mouth and seriously
clenched teeth, Mari snapped, “I intend to know who did this to me,
Tony, and you can’t stop me.”

“Hold on, you two.” Martin held up his hands
in a placating gesture. “I’ll bring everyone in here, so you can
hear the news firsthand, Mari. Will that be all right with both of
you?”

Tony still looked like a bull about to
charge, but he said, “Yes. That will be fine.”

Mari gave Martin one of her more glorious
smiles. Tony begrudged him that smile. He wanted all of Mari’s
smiles for himself. “Thanks, Martin,” she said. “You’re a real
pal.”

As Martin left the room, Tony grumbled, “
‘You’re a real pal.’ I can’t stand it.”

“Quit whining,” Mari snapped. “And where’s my
dog?”

“Last I looked, he was sleeping it off in the
hotel lobby.”