The Man from Stone Creek (22 page)

Grudgingly, Terran turned and walked away, presumably to do as he was told. Maddie watched him go, full of regret. In the morning, in the bright light of day, they'd talk, she promised herself. They'd come to an understanding and she would apologize for her outburst. He'd be the Terran she knew again, cheerful and mischievous, not this cold, uncaring stranger she didn't even recognize.

Plain as could be, she heard what Sam O'Ballivan had said about Terran, that first day, when they'd butted heads right here in the store.

Guess he's got a devious side, to go along with that mean streak of his.

Maddie put a hand to her stomach.

It wasn't true. It
wasn't.

“I don't believe it,” she whispered, just as if the clock had turned backward and Sam was standing in front of her again.

You don't choose to believe it.
He'd said those words then, and he'd say them now, too, if he hadn't lit out for parts unknown.

Well, to
hell
with Sam O'Ballivan.

He was no help anyhow.

 

T
HEY
'
D RIDDEN HARD
for two days, traveling mostly at night, he and the Ranger, stopping only to rest their horses and let them drink when there was water to be found. Fortunately, Vierra knew every
rancho
where a man could approach a trough or a well without catching a bullet for it, every stream and hidden spring. It was a relief when dawn came, though he usually favored the dark.

“How far to the trestle?” O'Ballivan asked, standing in his stirrups to stretch his legs.

“Maybe two miles,” Vierra answered, doing the same. He nodded toward the peaks of the foothills they'd been climbing for the last few hours. “Most of it straight up.”

“Obviously,” the Ranger replied grimly.

That was when they heard the thin, distant shrill of a steam whistle.

“¡Madre de Dios!”
Vierra gasped, giving his tired horse his heels. “The train!”

The Ranger kept up ably and shouted from alongside, “I thought you said it wouldn't get this far before noon at the earliest!”

Vierra didn't spare the effort to answer. He needed all his stamina to concentrate and to keep the horse moving. The trail was narrow now, and rocky, steeper with every lunging stride. He drove the animal on, and the Ranger stayed with him, though his gelding was puffing, lathered from the long ride, and close to winded.

Still, they'd covered the better part of that scant two miles before they heard the train whistle again, shrieking now. Just as they crested the last rise, the locomotive rounded a bend and came into sight, wheels screeching and throwing sparks as they grabbed at the track.

“What the hell?” the Ranger rasped as both he and Vierra reined in. A lone rider waited at the foot of the trestle, where it spanned a rocky chasm at least a hundred feet deep, facing down that speeding train as though it were a toy in a shop window.

“The engineer must have tried to outrun them, farther back along the line,” Vierra said, every muscle in his body rigid, bracing for what was about to happen. For what he and the Ranger were too late to prevent. He drew his rifle from its scabbard, out of instinct rather than reason, but it was useless. The rider was out of range by at least three hundred yards, and as they watched, as the engineer at the controls of that locomotive laid on the brakes, he lit a fuse to what looked like enough dynamite to bring down the whole mountain, let alone a spindly trestle like that one. He tossed it onto the rails, waved his hat in triumph, and spurred his horse up a skinny trail alongside, as if the devil himself was after him.

Vierra wanted to close his eyes, but he didn't. Instead, he took off his sweat-soaked hat and pressed it to his chest, murmuring a prayer under his breath. Beside him, the Ranger struggled to control his horse, keep the terrified creature from whirling around and flat-bellying it in the other direction.

Smart horse, Vierra thought.

The blast came then, shaking the ground. Vierra felt the impact of the explosion, assaulting his eardrums, shuddering in the very air around him, saw the bright orange flash of flame and then the smoke. The trestle folded just as the locomotive cleared the edge of the slope, and he and O'Ballivan watched, helpless, as the engine plunged into space, pulling the other cars right along behind it.

Both horses went loco then, in the deafening aftermath, screaming with fright, tossing their heads, spinning on their hind legs. For all that it was a battle to stay in the saddle, Vierra never looked away from that wreck, and he didn't think O'Ballivan did, either. It wouldn't have been right to do that, even though it required a lot of grit to hold on to the sight.

“Sweet Jesus God,” O'Ballivan gasped, when it was over. When the crashing stopped and the awful silence boiled up out of that ravine.

“Amen,” Vierra said into the dreadful, trembling calm. They'd seen one man toss that bundle of dynamite onto the trestle, but he wasn't working alone. Any second now, the
banditos
would swarm out of the rocks on the other side, like tarantulas, and make their way down to collect the spoils.

“There might be somebody alive down there,” O'Ballivan said, and started for the descending trail, snaking along that side of the ravine toward the river far below. Vierra reached out and caught hold of the gelding's bridle strap.

“Not a chance,” Vierra told him. “Wait.”

The two men glared at each other.

“No one could have survived that fall,” Vierra insisted, easing his horse backward, behind an outcropping of rock.

Reluctantly, O'Ballivan joined him. “Where the hell are they?” he mused, and Vierra knew he meant the outlaws who'd caused the cataclysm they'd just witnessed.

“Could be they spotted us,” Vierra said, and spat. Bile kept rising in his throat.
Too late,
he thought, and fathomless despair yawned inside him like an abyss. He had to stay way back from the edge.
We were too late.

“That won't keep the murdering sons of bitches from going after the gold shipment,” O'Ballivan replied. “Maybe they're planning to bide their time until nightfall. Or ride around behind and get the jump on us.”

Vierra swung down off his still-fitful horse, reached for his canteen and poured the contents into his hat so the gelding could drink. After a moment of deliberation, the Ranger did the same.

Vierra settled his sodden hat back on his head, once the horse had emptied it. The dampness was cool and soothing, though it didn't ease the dry ache that had opened up where his belly had been.

“Where are they?” he murmured, not really expecting an answer, watching the cliff on the other side of the river. There was no sign of movement, as far as he could make out, not even a jackrabbit darting out of the sagebrush.

O'Ballivan stared down at the wreckage. The top part of his face was shaded by his hat brim, but Vierra saw the tight, pale line of the Ranger's jaw. Saw the tension in his wide shoulders and in the way he gripped his horse's reins in one gloved fist. “Noon,” he said. “The train wasn't supposed to reach this trestle before noon.”

Vierra sighed. “Must have skipped a couple of stops—no freight or passengers to pick up, maybe. Engineers like to make up time wherever they can.”

All of a sudden, O'Ballivan mounted up. “I've got to go down there,” he said.

There would be no stopping him, Vierra knew. He put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto his horse. “We'll be easy targets,” he pointed out. “They'll see us for sure.”

“We'll be out of range,” the Ranger said, and started down the trail.

It was a path for mountain goats, not men on horseback, and a couple of times O'Ballivan almost pitched over the side, gelding and all. Vierra followed, more slowly, and much more carefully. All the while, he watched the other side of the ravine, his rifle resting across the pommel of his saddle, but nothing stirred over there, nothing at all.

And that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

 

O
RALEE MARCHED RIGHT PAST
Elias James's scrawny little clerk, and didn't so much as knock before she shoved open the door of his office and barreled over the threshold like a hay wagon pulled by a fast team.

“I've come to pay you cash money for that mercantile,” she announced.

The skin under James's chin quivered like a turkey's wattle and his eyes went narrow. “What?” he demanded, standing and gesturing for her to shut the door in one motion.

Oralee smiled and opened her handbag, kicking the door closed with her right foot. She might have been hefty, but she was nimble, too. “How's your wife?” she asked, putting a trill to the words.

Banker James sat right down again and she heard the breath rush out of him. “I offered to sell the property to Maddie Chancelor,” he said, careful, like a man feeling his way over uncertain ground. “Not to you.”

“Maddie'll be the owner, all right,” Oralee said, making a show of catching hold of the wad of hundred dollar notes she'd taken from her private safe, not ten minutes before, and hauling it out for him to see. “I'm just financin' the deal.”

“You can't be serious,” James said, but when he got a look at all that money, he started to salivate. Fixed it with his eyes and didn't turn loose.

“Oh, I'm serious, all right,” Oralee replied. She all but waved the bankroll under his nose before dropping it casually back into her handbag. “Are you plannin' to handle the sale, or do I have to ride all the way out to the Donagher place and make my pitch to Undine?”

James gulped. Reddened around his mutton-chop whiskers. “That won't be necessary. Anyway, it's Mungo who has to agree, not Undine.”

“I reckon you'd better talk to him, then,” Oralee said.

“You shouldn't be carrying around that kind of money, Oralee,” James prattled, after clearing his throat a couple of times. “It's dangerous.”

“There's nobody in this town that's as dangerous as I am,” she countered. “My saloon ain't called the Rattlesnake for nothin'. When I coil and hiss, I mean to sink my fangs in, and that's that.”

He looked longingly at her bulging handbag. It was her favorite, silk, with real pearls stitched on in the shape of a forget-me-not, but she didn't reckon it was the purse that held his interest. No, sir, it was money Elias loved, ill-gained or otherwise. “I'd be glad to put your funds into escrow,” he offered, waxing friendly. “Just until I've spoken with Mungo.”

“I'd just bet you would,” Oralee retorted. She took in her surroundings with naked contempt. “And I'd sooner give it to old Charlie Wilcox for safekeepin' as let you get your fat paws on it.” She smiled. “And you didn't answer my question. How's the missus these days? Still sufferin' from the vapors and those sick headaches of hers?”

James swallowed again. “Lenore,” he said, “is very delicate.”

“I reckon it would half kill her to find out that her fine, upstandin' husband pays double for Lulu's specialty every other Saturday.”

A dull flush climbed the banker's neck. “I will not stoop to reply to that,” he said indignantly.

Oralee smiled again, more broadly this time, and showing her teeth. “You stoop to plenty else,” she replied.

“What do you want, Oralee?”

“Damn fool question,” she said. “I just told you. I want the mercantile.”

“You keep inquiring after my wife. I don't see what Lenore's health has to do with that. Unless, of course, you think you can blackmail me.”

Oralee batted her eyelashes and put one hand to her bosom. Her derringer was tucked between her breasts, just in case she should have need of it.
“Blackmail?”
she repeated, suitably horrified. “I would never do such a thing.” She paused, enjoying the banker's discomfort. To her, he wasn't just
one
banker, he was a whole string of carpetbaggers, going back as far as she could remember, each one a bigger thief than the last. It was folks like him that'd stole her papa's land and left her mama to die of the heartbreak. “On the other hand, I really can't say what my girls might let slip, maybe in the mercantile or some other public place.”

Banker James rallied, but it was all bluster and Oralee knew it. She could read any man, though she had to admit, at least to herself, that that O'Ballivan fella stumped her a little. He was about as male as a feller could get, but he hadn't come near the Rattlesnake Saloon, save to pat Charlie Wilcox's old horse and give it a handful of grain now and then. Something odd there, even if he was taken with Maddie, and darned if Oralee could work out what it was.

“It is highly improper for a lady like Miss Chancelor to do business with the likes of you,” the banker said. “Her reputation will be in tatters by the time this is over. She'll be lucky if folks don't travel all the way to Tucson to do their marketing, just to avoid dealing with her.”