Authors: Lydia
“In this town?” Sarah shook her head disparagingly. Miner’s Gulch, with its scattered cabins and indifferent citizens, would be a frustrating place to try to raise a posse. She did not envy the deputy his job.
She turned and walked toward the window, the sensuous green silk rustling with each swing of her legs. “Let’s just hope the robbers are headed someplace else,” she said, fighting the temptation to part the curtains, peer outside and run the risk of being seen. “Where’s the deputy now?”
“Still downstairs havin’ a drink, I reckon. He come a long way, an’ he’s got a mighty big thirst. Sent Pete Ainsworth off to spread the word. Ainsworth!” Faye gave a derisive snort. “Little wart’ll prob’ly stumble over a whiskey bottle an’ that’ll be the end of it! He shoulda—”
“Faye, be still a minute!” Sarah hissed. “I think I hear something!”
She pressed toward the window, ear to the curtain. From the hitching rail out front, the nervous whinny of a single horse—the deputy’s, she calculated—quivered on the afternoon air.
Faye stirred restlessly. “That’s just—”
“Shh!” Sarah strained harder against the glass. Her breath caught as she heard, faintly, a chorus of answering nickers from the direction of the overgrown trail that had once been the only road to Central City.
“Horses,” she whispered. “It could be them. Get Greta and Zoe.”
Faye lumbered to her feet. “I can wake Greta, all right. But Zoe’s busy. Got a customer what won’t take kindly to bein’ interrupted.”
“Interrupted for what?” Greta stood in the doorway, rubbing her kohl-smeared eyes.
“Donnerwetter,
can’t a hardworking woman get any sleep?
Was ist denn
los?”
“Shut up and get over here,” Faye snapped. “You can help Miss Sarah keep a lookout whilst I hightail it downstairs and warn that purty young deputy feller!” She strode toward the door, yanking Greta inside as she passed.
“Come on, Greta!” Sarah beckoned urgently. “Hurry! I need you to look outside and tell me what you see!”
Greta ambled across the carpet, muttering under her breath. Her eyebrows shot upward as she noticed Sarah’s appearance.
“Ach—” she began, but Sarah’s finger, pressing her lips, warned her into silence. While Sarah flattened herself against the side of the window, Greta obligingly parted the curtains and assumed a casual posture on the edge of the wide sill.
“I see three men on horseback, coming up the far end of the street,” she said in a low voice. “Riding slow. Wearing guns.
Ach,
I don’t like this. They look like bad men, ‘specially the big one in front.”
“Let me see—” Risking the chance, Sarah edged closer to the window, and carefully pushed aside the outer edge of the drape. Through the narrow crack of light, she could see the three riders, moving grimly closer. People in the street were edging quietly out of their way. Either Pete Ainsworth had already done his job, or they knew trouble when they saw it.
Faye had slipped back into the room. “Deputy says he’ll be ready for the sons of bitches,” she reported. “But ‘less’n he can take ‘em by surprise, the boy ain’t got no chance a’tall. I tried to git him to light out the back an leave ‘em be, but the young’un’s got more pride than sense.” She tugged at Greta’s elbow. “You git outa that window, now, gal, and keep low! There’s liable to be shootin’!”
Greta rolled inward, closing the drapes behind her as she sank to the floor. Sarah, however, remained where she was, peering intently out through the side of the curtain as the three riders grew larger in her vision. They were moving at a cautious pace now, but it was plain to see they’d been
riding hard. Their horses were lathered and heaving. Their hats were jammed hard on their heads. The big man in the lead had a rifle slung across his saddle.
Fear formed a cold ball in Sarah’s stomach as she watched them come. Why hadn’t they kept to the road? she wondered. What would they want in this run-down little backwater of a town? Supplies? Shelter? A chance to do more devilry?
She thought of the callow young deputy who waited below, his courage braced with Smitty’s rotgut whiskey. She could only pray that he’d rethought Faye’s advice and crept out the back. No lone man would have a chance against these three. They looked to be seasoned fighters, ruthless, hard and desperate. The one big man alone would be too much for-Sarah stifled a gasp as the realization struck her. The man in the lead—she knew him!
Her hand clutched the curtain as her mind leafed back through the years. Richmond—yes, she remembered now. He’d been an enlisted man, serving in the same Virginia regiment as Virgil and Donovan. A surly fellow, from the little she’d known of him. A drinker and a brawler who’d seemed at odds with the the whole world.
Unbidden, his name slipped into place. Dooley, it was. Corporal Simeon Dooley.
“Come on back and git down!” Faye tugged insistently at Sarah’s skirt. “I seen gunfights in this place afore. Walls is so thin, the bullets whiz right through ‘em! We’d best crawl behind the bed, afore things really git hot out there!”
“But there’s got to be something we can do!” Sarah clung to her place, watching helplessly as the grim trio approached the saloon.
“Child, there ain’t nothin’ none of us can do ‘cept git out of the way! Come on, now!”
“Wait—” Sarah froze, transfixed with sudden horror as the familiar sound reached her ears—the laughing, teasing
babble of young voices, coming up the alley from the back of Satterlee’s store.
“No,” she whispered. “Please, God, no! The children!”
S
arah could see her students now. They had come out of the alley and were fanning into the street, ignoring the three men on horseback who had pulled up even with the saloon and begun to dismount.
There was no time to think, only to act.
Pivoting like a whirlwind, Sarah seized the low wooden bench from its place in front of the dresser. Before Faye or Greta could stop her, she lunged for the window and, with all her strength, drove the bench’s four legs into the panes. Glass shattered, exploding outward as the sash splintered loose from the frame.
“Children! Run!” she screamed into the cold, spring air. “Run for cover!”
Then all pandemonium broke loose.
The first shots exploded from inside the saloon as the green young deputy began firing wildly into the street. Scrambling for cover, the bank robbers returned a few cautious gunshots. The panic-stricken youngsters scattered like chickens, some racing back down the alley, some diving for the shelter of an abandoned wagon, some—a few of the younger ones—frozen in place, too terrified to move. Sarah gripped the frame of the broken window, her heart convulsing with each shot as she silently prayed that none of them would be hit.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the gunfire from the saloon stopped. Either the deputy had become aware of the children, or he had simply run out of bullets.
Simeon Dooley had wheeled out of range and dismounted at the first shot. He crouched behind his horse, taking no more than an instant to size up the situation as he shouted to his cohorts to hold their fire.
“Grab them damned kids!” he bellowed. “Move it! We’re goin’ in!”
The handful of smaller children who’d huddled together on the boardwalk were the most vulnerable. Saucereyed with fear, they submitted mutely as the gunmen rounded them up and marched them in a cluster toward the Crimson Belle’s front entrance. Dooley, limping, had moved in close and stood flattened against the wall outside the open double doors, the cocked rifle clasped in one massive hand. The saddlebags from his horse were flung over one shoulder, and there was a dirty rag crudely knotted around his left thigh.
“Listen good in there!” he shouted. “We’ve collected a bunch of young’uns out here, and we’re bringin’ ‘em inside! ‘Less’n you want to see these kids hurt bad, you’d better throw your shootin’ irons in the middle of the floor! All of ‘em!”
A silence like the slow tick of death hung over the street. Then, from inside the saloon came the heavy, metallic clatter of guns hitting the worn plank floor.
“That all of ‘em?” Dooley shouted into the stillness that followed.
“That’s all, mister!” The answering voice was youthful and scared. “Let them young’uns go, now, and you can ride out of here in peace.”
“Can we, now?” Dooley’s laughter boomed up and down the street. “Looks to me like we got some talkin’ to do first!”
“Come on inside, then,” the shaky young voice called out. “Nobody’s armed in here. Just please, mister, don’t hurt them kids!”
Sarah clung to the open window, heedless of outside eyes, as the outlaws funneled the little band of children into the saloon. Dooley walked in their midst, the cocked rifle balanced loosely between his hands. As he disappeared into the doorway, the long gun barked once, then two times more.
The silenced that followed was as black as the grave.
Sarah turned away from the window, choking on her own horror. Greta was sobbing openly. Faye’s complexion was putty gray beneath her rouge.
“We got to do somethin’,” she gasped.
Sarah nodded, racking her shock-befuddled brain for some kind of logical plan. See to the children, that was the most urgent priority. After that-But she could not think beyond the children. She could not carry out any kind of intelligent scheme until she knew whether they were safe, or even alive.
Crouching low in the clinging emerald silk gown, she drew the two women close. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “I’ve got to be the one to go down there first. I know the big man, the leader, and I might be able to talk with him—”
“Ach, nein!”
Greta interrupted. “He’ll shoot you! He’ll shoot us all!”
“Hush, now.” Sarah gripped Greta’s plump arm. “We can’t think of our own safety. Not at a time like this, with those children downstairs! But I’m going to need your help.”
“Tell us what to do.” Faye’s hands trembled, but her deep voice was resolute.
“Just this,” Sarah hissed. “Whatever I say down there, whatever I tell those men, you back me up and go along with it as if it were true. Understand?”
“Ja.”
Greta wiped her eyes. “And we tell Zoe to do the same.”
Sarah had forgotten Zoe and her customer, but this was no time to worry about them. “I’m going downstairs now,” she said. “Stay out of sight until I tell you it’s safe. If you hear more shooting…” She paused, battling for composure. “I can’t tell you what to do. But if anything happens to me, somebody’s got to save those children!”
Grim-faced, Faye and Greta nodded in unison. Swiftly then, before her courage could fade, Sarah scrambled to her feet and hurried from the room.
The open stairway into the saloon descended from a secluded landing at the end of the upstairs hall. From the landing, it was possible to stand and look down on the main floor, hidden from eyes below.
Sarah held her breath as she stepped out of the upper hallway and paused at the top of the stairs. For the first few heartbeats, she stared straight ahead, steeling herself against what she was about to see. Slowly, by degrees, she forced her eyes to look down, down into the jaws of the nightmare.
The young deputy—at least Sarah assumed it was he-sprawled facedown on the floorboards a half-dozen paces from the front door, drilled point-blank through the chest.
Back of the bar, Smitty lay dead in a pool of his own blood. From behind wire-rimmed spectacles that were still in place, his lifeless eyes stared up at the crystal chandelier on the ceiling. In one open hand lay the tiny derringer he’d always kept hidden in his boot.
George, the black piano player, was still alive but bleeding badly from the shoulder. He lay curled against the foot of his instrument, grimacing as he tried to stop the wound with his handkerchief.
The children—Sarah’s frantic gaze found them in a far corner, guarded by one of the desperadoes. She counted five of them, including Mattie Ormes’s boy, Isaac, and-Sarah’s heart contracted—Varina’s little redheaded Katy.
None of them appeared to be hurt, thank heaven, but all of them were white with shock. They huddled together like driven lambs, some sniffling, but none daring to cry out loud.
Simeon Dooley sat alone at a poker table, facing the bar and sucking morosely at a bottle of whiskey. His rifle and saddlebags lay flat on the table in front of him. The third man was nowhere in sight.
For a long, awful moment, Sarah gazed out over the horror, willing herself to blot the dead bodies from her vision and see only the children. Closing her eyes, she took three long, deep breaths, an exercise she had always done before walking onstage. When she made her move, there could be no hesitation. There could be not a flicker of fear or she and the little ones would be lost.
Opening her eyes again, she fixed her face in a jaded smile and glided down the stairs. Sarah Parker was about to give the most dangerous performance of her life.
As she came into full view, Dooley glanced up and saw her. His hand darted to the rifle as his upper lip curled in an ugly snarl. “What the devil—?”
Sarah forced her smile to broaden. “Why, as I live and breathe!” she exclaimed gaily. “If it isn’t Corporal Simeon Dooley!”
Dooley’s jaw sagged. His eyes rounded in puzzled surprise as he found his voice again.
“Listen, lady, I don’t—”
“You don’t remember me?” Sarah’s laughter jangled like Gypsy brass. “Why, Corporal, I’m disappointed—no, crushed that you could possibly forget!” She reached the bottom of the stairs and swaggered over to his table, where she stood with one outthrust hip, leering into Dooley’s nervous face.
“It’s Lydia, you big, bucking stallion! Lydia Taggart, and by the way, you owe me a bartender!”
Donovan balanced himself on the slope of the roof, one hand bracing the nail, the other swinging the hammer. He
was finally becoming a fair carpenter. It had taken some mistakes and a few crushed fingers, but by now he could drive nails and miter corners with the best of them. Another couple of days, and the spare room on Varina’s cabin would be finished.
Lanny Hanks, the young builder he’d hired, had taken another job in Central City last week. Thanks to what he’d learned, however, Donovan was managing fine on his own. His only aid had come from Jamie Trenoweth, who had spent half a day hammering shingles and helping cut a connecting doorway into the main part of the cabin.
Jamie’s overnight visit had been a rousing success, Donovan reflected as he snubbed another shingle into line. Not only had Jamie looked over the claim and pronounced it “a promisin’ sweet piece o’ ground,” but his presence had been like a spring tonic for the whole family.
The Cornishman had ridden up by muleback, bringing a bag of precious sugar for Varina and trinkets for each of the children. His stories over dinner had kept the whole family in stitches. By bedtime, the youngsters had been climbing all over his lap, clamoring to hear more.
The next morning, while Jamie mounted the roof to help with the shingles, Varina had baked up a tasty batch of sugar cookies and presented him with a sackful to take home.
Varina had looked pretty that day, Donovan recalled. She’d put on a fresh calico dress and a fresh apron, and tied back her curly hair with a band of thin, black velvet. Her cheeks had bloomed with the first flush of color he’d seen in her face since Charlie’s death.
She would be in mourning for months to come, Donovan reminded himself. All the same, his sister was still a young woman, warm, loving and vibrant. If anyone on earth deserved a second chance at happiness-But he was getting ahead of himself. After the roof was finished and the ore samples back from the assay office, after everything possible had been done to set up a secure
future for Varina and her children, maybe then there’d be time to think about matchmaking.
Donovan paused in his hammering to move the pack of shingles along the roof peak. From the kitchen he could hear, faintly, the sound of Varina humming as she snuggled the baby with one arm and stirred a pot of beans with the other. Something tugged at his heart as he remembered the night Sarah Parker had risked exposure to come and deliver little Charlie. If Varina was singing now, if she stood on the threshold of a happy new life, he had Sarah to thank for it.
But he could not get started on Sarah now. He could not allow himself to sink into the morass of wanting her again. He had put her out of his life when he’d left her at the Crimson Belle. One of these nights—and Donovan did not even want to know when—she would be gone for good.
He was shifting up to the last row of shingles when a flash of bright color caught his eye through the aspens. That would be his nieces coming home from school, he reckoned. Sarah had always conducted class in the mornings. Eudora, however, preferred afternoons, and most days the girls barely got home in time to help with supper.
Resting on his knees, he watched the small red-orange patch bobbing closer. Before he left Miner’s Gulch, he resolved, he would talk Varina into letting him buy new coats for the children. Those sad little piecework creations of hers weren’t fit for-Donovan went cold as the realization slammed into him. Only one of the girls was coming up the path, flying through the aspens like a panic-stricken squirrel.
Brown hair. It was Annie.
He was off the roof by the time she burst out of the trees. She was sobbing, her lungs so spent that she could only gasp as he caught her in his arms.
“What is it?” he said hoarsely, not wanting Varina to hear until he knew. “Where’s your sister?”
Annie’s eyes were almost swollen shut from crying. “They—they got her!”
“Who?” Donovan strained to keep from gripping her thin shoulders too roughly. “Slow down and breathe, Annie. Who’s got her?”
“Men—bad men with guns! They got Katy and Isaac and Molly Sue and—” She broke into hiccuping sobs again.
He caught her close, feeling her small rabbit heart pounding through her ribs. A sick, cold fear had crept over him, paralyzing in its weight. He struggled to throw it off, to freeze his emotions until he could act.
“Speak slowly now,” he said, bracing Annie at arm’s length. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”
Annie snuffed noisily, her bony little frame pushing against his hands. “We came out of the alley after school, and there were these three men. On horses. Then…everything happened so fast, Uncle Donovan. We heard a window breaking and a voice—a lady’s—screaming for us all to run. Somebody started shooting. I ran—” She was shaking now, losing her hard-won control. “I thought Katy was with me. But she wasn’t. And when—when I looked back, the men had her and Isaac and Molly and—”
Annie’s small, spent body sagged in Donovan’s arms as she dissolved in tears. “I should’ve grabbed her hand! I should’ve looked out for her—”
Donovan rubbed the sharp little shoulder blades, biting back his own anguish. He knew exactly what Annie was feeling. He hadn’t looked out for Virgil, either.
“It can’t be helped now, Annie,” he murmured. “Tell me where the man took Katy and the others. I’ll go after them and get them back. I promise.”
“The men—they took them into Smitty’s. There was shooting. I—I’m scared, Uncle Donovan. What if they killed her?”
“Hush!” Donovan gave her a quick, hard hug and let her go. “You’ve got to be a brave girl, now, and take care
of your mother and Samuel and little Charlie while I’m gone, understand?”
Annie nodded mutely, biting her lip.
“Come on, now.” They walked into the house, where Varina waited white-faced and silent, as if she already knew. Donovan climbed to the loft, tugged the hefty Griswold and Gunnison pistol from its hiding place under a pile of quilts, slid six bullets into the revolving cylinder and slapped the gun belt around his hips.