CHAPTER 15
“I KIND OF HOPED this Porter fella would show up for his own birthday party,” Gideon confided to Lark, as the afternoon wore on toward evening. He’d just enjoyed his third slice of cake, and the honor of blowing out the candles had gone to Lydia.
Mai Lee and Hon Sing had left the table, Mai Lee to begin cleaning up after their early supper, Hon Sing to return to Jolene Bell’s saloon. Mrs. Porter had gone down to the root cellar, after murmuring about some errand there, and Lydia, full of cake, had already been carried to bed.
“I believe Mr. Porter is dead,” Lark whispered back to Gideon.
Gideon frowned. “Why would anybody throw a shindig for a dead man?”
“I have no idea,” Lark said.
“Maybe he’s not,” Gideon mused quietly. Like his older brother, he apparently enjoyed a puzzle. “Dead, I mean. Maybe he’s just away someplace, and Mrs. Porter figures he might come back anytime, and expect a cake for his birthday.”
Mai Lee turned then, and cast an uncomfortable glance over one shoulder, but if she knew anything about Mr. Porter’s whereabouts, be they above- or belowground, she revealed nothing.
It was cold, musty and dark in the root cellar—Lark had been there earlier in the afternoon herself, to fetch a jar of pickled beets for supper—and she couldn’t imagine what her landlady might be doing down there. She’d been gone at least fifteen minutes, and Lark was getting worried.
“Perhaps I’d better check on her,” she said, starting to rise. Only her dread of the place, she realized with some chagrin, had kept her from going earlier.
Gideon got up. “I’ll do it,” he said.
“I’m going, too,” Lark said.
“Take candle,” Mai Lee contributed, with a little shudder. “Dark like grave.”
Lark found a candle in the pantry, along with a small box of matches, and she and Gideon made for the cellar, reached by way of a trapdoor in the far corner of the kitchen, opposite the cookstove. Dank air rose from what was essentially a hole in the ground, like the cold breath of some subterranean creature.
Lark shivered, handed the candle and matches to Gideon, and let him descend the steps first.
“Mrs. Porter?” she called tremulously, over Gideon’s shoulder. Lark couldn’t recall if her landlady had taken a lantern or a candle when she’d gone down into the dirt chamber earlier, but if she had, the flame had gone out.
There was no answer.
Gideon reached the bottom of the steps and stopped so suddenly that Lark nearly collided with him. The light from the candle he was holding wavered eerily against the damp, root-laced walls. A mouse skittered, somewhere out of sight.
“Mrs. Porter?” he said. “Ma’am? Are you—”
Lark strained to see around his broad shoulder—and spotted Mrs. Porter standing pressed into a corner, under a frieze of cobwebs, her eyes huge. She had brought a lantern—she clutched it in both hands—but the flame had guttered out.
Mrs. Porter blinked several times, as though coming back to herself from some great distance and arriving with a visibly jolting impact. In the next instant, though, she offered a fitful, distracted little smile.
“I was right,” she said cheerfully. “There were no more walnuts. We used them up at Christmas.”
Gideon handed the candle back to Lark, who hovered on the third step from the bottom, and went to Mrs. Porter. Took her gently by the arm.
Again Lark was reminded of Rowdy.
And for some new reason she couldn’t have defined—she knew only that it had nothing to do with missing the dance, or the tear in her bloomers—she wished him back from Flagstaff with such an intensity that it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d materialized before her eyes.
Well, it wouldn’t have surprised her immediately, anyway.
“You feeling all right, ma’am?” Gideon asked respectfully, at the same time steering Mrs. Porter toward the cellar steps.
“I could do with a dose of my medicine,” Mrs. Porter admitted, sweetly confused again. “And perhaps a little rest.”
Lark stepped back out of the way, glad to be above the kitchen floor again, away from the spiders and the cold and the inevitable mice. Waited as Gideon ushered Mrs. Porter up the steps, with the easy competence of those who are used to being strong.
Mai Lee and Lark escorted the landlady to her room on the second floor, each supporting her by an arm.
“My medicine,” Mrs. Porter murmured, upon entering.
Mai Lee nodded and took a brown bottle from the bedside stand, which was illuminated by a beam of moonlight, while Lark helped Mrs. Porter to lie down on the bed.
With the older woman settled, Lark lit a lamp, watched as Mai Lee administered a dose of what was surely laudanum, which Mrs. Porter raised herself half off the mattress to receive.
Across the bed Mai Lee’s and Lark’s gazes caught, held, broke apart.
Lark unlaced Mrs. Porter’s shoes and removed them, then covered her with a blanket, found folded at the foot of the bed.
Having never been in the room before, Lark stole surreptitious glances, here and there, taking in the heavy velvet drapes, the massive furniture, the cold stone fireplace. She saw an exquisite mantel clock, its case of painted china, and numerous knickknacks. But there were no photographs or paintings and no visible evidence that Mr. Porter, or any other man, had ever shared these quarters.
Still, Lark felt strangely anxious, as though the master of the house might step out of one of the shadowy corners and demand an explanation for their presence, hers and Mai Lee’s.
“I’ll just close my eyes for a few moments,” Mrs. Porter said, with a benign little sigh. Perhaps she was used to the heavy, almost ominous atmosphere of that room—and it was equally possible, of course, that Lark was merely imagining these disturbing aspects.
Mrs. Porter was soon snoring.
Leaving the lamp burning, Mai Lee and Lark slipped out of the room, moving as quietly as they could, Mai Lee pulling the door shut behind them.
“How long has Mrs. Porter been taking laudanum?” Lark asked, when they were alone in the corridor.
Mai Lee sighed. “Long time,” she said. “Not take Hon Sing’s medicine. It better. Have herbs, brought all way from China.”
They moved toward the rear stairway, leading down into the kitchen.
Lark thought of Hon Sing’s glistening needles, and the way he’d used them so skillfully to help Lydia. Mrs. Porter probably wouldn’t have submitted to that treatment, any more than she would have taken the herbs, and it seemed a shame to Lark.
“Mai Lee,” she said, suddenly able to keep the question back any longer, “what happened to Mr. Porter?”
Mai Lee’s eyes widened. “He gone,” she whispered.
“Dead?”
Mai Lee shrugged. “Not know. One day, here when Mai Lee make breakfast. Put on hat and go to bank. Not see again.”
“You must have heard something,” Lark insisted, but carefully, thinking of Mai Lee’s celebrated ability to gather all the local news and bring it straight home to Mrs. Porter. “Surely people talked, and if there was a funeral—”
“No funeral,” Mai Lee said. “No talk. Just gone.”
“But surely—”
“Just gone,” Mai Lee repeated firmly.
Downstairs they found Gideon standing by the door, wearing his hat and coat, Pardner waiting patiently at his side.
“If you don’t need me to go for someone,” Gideon said, “Pardner and I had better be on our way.” His chest swelled slightly. “With Rowdy gone, I figure I ought to make his rounds for him.”
Lark’s heartbeat quickened slightly at the prospect of Gideon patrolling the streets of Stone Creek, alone and unarmed. It was, after all, Saturday night, and there was a dance at the Cattleman’s Hall. Even though she’d only lived in the community a short while, she knew cowboys came from outlying ranches to attend these soirees, and they sometimes visited one or more of the town’s saloons beforehand.
She scrambled for an excuse, some words to persuade him to stay, but nothing came to her, beyond asking him to fetch Hon Sing back from Jolene Bell’s place to look in on Mrs. Porter and Lydia.
He’d guess what she was doing and, besides, Hon Sing might get into trouble if he was called away from his work.
“Be careful, Gideon,” Lark said.
He smiled. Nodded. “Obliged for the fine supper and the cake,” he said. And then he opened the door and went out, Pardner hesitating to look back at Lark, then turning to follow.
Lark immediately grabbed her everyday cloak from its place on the row of pegs near the door, swung it around her shoulders.
“Where you go?” Mai Lee asked, right away, and with a note of alarmed suspicion in her voice. “It dark. Dance tonight. Maybe trouble.”
Lark was already tying the cloak’s ribbon laces under her chin. “I need a little fresh air,” she said, and hastened out, taking care not to slip on the icy back steps.
Gideon and Pardner were just ahead, on the sidewalk, visible in the glow of a streetlamp.
Lark was careful to move quietly, hoping not to attract Gideon’s attention. Pardner turned once, though, and started toward her at a trot.
Lark ducked into the shadows of a neighbor’s lilac bush.
Gideon whistled, and Pardner, after a brief hesitation, obeyed his summons and went on.
The saloons along Center Street were virtually deserted and, after looking that way, Gideon changed directions. Headed for the Cattleman’s Hall, which was behind Stone Creek’s only bank, in the middle of a weedy lot.
Horses surrounded it, in a great, shadowy horde, and the lively strains of a fiddle and a washboard spilled out the open doors of the hall, along with laughter and the stomping of feet.
Gideon proceeded toward the hall.
Lark followed, staying close to the clapboard wall of the bank. She ought to just go home, she told herself. Look after Lydia and Mrs. Porter and perhaps mend her torn bloomers. Instead, she kept going, filled with a mysterious urgency that literally drove her on.
The squeal of a horse made her draw in a sharp breath. At first she thought the animal was hurt, but then she saw it rearing onto its hind legs, its forelegs pawing at the air, monstrously big in the moonlight and the glow of the lanterns inside the hall. The rider on its back was no more than an outline of a human form.
Gideon sprinted toward the hall.
Lark ran after him, no longer caring if he saw her.
The rider ducked his head and rode through the doorway at a gallop.
Pardner began to bark, and streaked after Gideon, who was running full-out now.
Screams and shouts rang from inside the Cattleman’s Hall.
Gideon disappeared through the opening.
Lark ran faster, breathless now. She reached the doorway just in time to see several men trying to catch hold of the horse’s bridle—the animal was terrified, its eyes rolling, its nostrils flared as it kicked and skidded on the dance floor. The rider on its back, obviously drunk, threw back his head and let out a bellowing whoop.
Gideon managed to grasp one of the reins, tried to soothe the horse with his free hand.
The rider swung the horse around, meaning to see Gideon trampled, but he moved swiftly, slipping under the animal’s lathered neck to the other side.
“Willie!” a man yelled. “You get down off that horse before somebody gets killed!”
Lark put a hand to her mouth, frozen in the doorway, trying to see Gideon, but he was behind the horse now, and men were converging cautiously from all sides of the room.
The horse began to kick hard with its hind legs, and everyone jumped back, and in the confusion of all that, the rider called Willie must have drawn his gun. A shot exploded in the breath-hot, fear-heavy room.
Several women shrieked, and Lark would wonder, ever after, if she’d been one of them.
Willie spurred the horse into a run, and Lark barely got out of the way before they shot through the doorway.
And there was Gideon, lying on the floor, with blood pooling through his coat, wounded in the left shoulder. Pardner slinked close and bared his teeth, snarling ferociously at anyone who tried to approach.
Lark hurried toward them.
Pardner whimpered when she landed on her knees beside Gideon, cupping his pale, blood-spattered face in both hands.
“Gideon!” she cried. “Gideon!”
He didn’t open his eyes.
She laid her head to his chest, felt it rise and fall against her cheek, heard the faint, thready beat of his heart.
She looked up. Pardner was pressed up close to Gideon’s side, vicious in his intent to protect the boy from further harm. Lark had no doubt that, mild-mannered as he usually was, that dog could have torn out someone’s throat.
“Get Hon Sing,” Lark ordered, stunned by the calm, reasonable sound of her own voice. On the inside she was screaming hysterically.
“That Chinaman over to Jolene’s?” a man asked, from the blur surrounding the little circle of floor that stayed open around Lark, Gideon and Pardner.
“He’s a doctor!” Lark must have shouted the words, because they left her throat raw. “Get him—tell him what’s happened—”
Several men ran out of the hall.
A woman tried to bring a ladle of drinking water, shaking in her hand, but Pardner, still fierce as a wounded wolf guarding a cub, growled dangerously and poised himself to lunge.
Lark, still on her knees, tears trickling down her cheeks, leaned forward and rested her forehead against Gideon’s.
“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Please, don’t die.”
* * *
Rowdy arrived in Stone Creek at sunup on Sunday morning, riding low over the saddle and pushing Sam O’Ballivan’s spare horse to the limit. Word of Gideon’s shooting had reached him at Ruby’s by telegram, two and a half hours before.
The words of that wire were burned into his mind as surely as if someone had heated an iron until it glowed red orange and branded them there.
“Gideon shot. Come quickly. Lark.”
Supposing Gideon had been taken to Mrs. Porter’s, Rowdy was headed that way, but Pardner suddenly ran out from beside the jailhouse, barking frantically.
Rowdy reined for home.
There were lights burning in the windows, and three or four horses stood out front. Pardner darted for the door and scrabbled at it with his forepaws, even as Rowdy swung down out of the saddle and sprinted after him.
The door opened just as Rowdy caught up to Pardner, and Lark stood there, her hair all atumble, one cheek and the front of her dress smudged with blood.
“Rowdy,” she said.
Rowdy gripped her shoulders, heard Sam and the major ride in behind him but didn’t look back. “Is he—Is Gideon—”
She shook her head. “But it’s bad,” she whispered raggedly. “Oh, Rowdy, it’s bad—”
He half thrust her aside.
Gideon lay, stripped to the waist, on the long kitchen table. The Chinaman from Jolene’s place stood beside him, with a scalpel gleaming in his right hand. Needles protruded from various parts of Gideon’s still body, shining in the lamplight.
“What the hell—?” Rowdy rasped, about to go for the Chinaman.
But Lark stepped in front of him. Placed her cool hands on either side of his face and made him look into her eyes.
“Rowdy,” she said, very slowly, “listen to me. Hon Sing is a surgeon. And without him, Gideon hasn’t a chance of surviving.”
“The needles—”
“They’ll control the pain and keep Gideon from bleeding too much,” Lark said in the same steady, careful tone of voice.
Rowdy recalled something about Hon Sing and his needles—something Gideon had said—but the gist of it eluded him. “That’s crazy, Gideon needs a doctor—”
“Hon Sing is a doctor,” Lark said, gripping Rowdy’s shoulders now. “Let him work, Rowdy. Please, let him work.”
Rowdy shoved a hand through his hair, pushed gently past Lark to approach the table and stand looking down at his brother. His eyes burned, and his throat felt like a fist, gripping so tight that he wondered if he’d ever breathe again.
Across the table stood Hon Sing, still holding the scalpel. The Chinaman’s gaze met Rowdy’s and held.
Rowdy looked down at Gideon again.
And then, very slowly, he backed away.
Lark was there to meet him when he turned. She took his hand, squeezed. Through a haze he saw Sam and the major standing just inside the door. Heard Sam say, “Everybody out, except for the doctor and Rowdy and Miss Morgan.”
People filed past, all men—Rowdy had seen their horses out front, but not really registered their presence inside the house. But now he just stared down into Lark’s eyes, sure he’d splinter into fragments if he looked away; that outside her notice, he didn’t exist at all.
“What happened?” he ground out. He knew the Chinaman had begun cutting on Gideon, and couldn’t bring himself to look.
Couldn’t leave, either.
Couldn’t move.
Lark was holding him upright, with only the look in her eyes. “We can talk about that later,” she said gently. “Right now we’re just going to wait.”
Sam appeared behind Lark, solemn and trail worn from the hard ride out of Flagstaff. “Rowdy,” he said, his voice quiet, “the major and I will stay and make sure the boy’s looked after. You go with Lark and sit down someplace, let her help you wait this through.”
Rowdy nodded, though what Sam said didn’t make any real sense to him.
He turned and stumbled toward the door, trusting Lark to follow him.
She gripped his hand again and headed him in another direction.
Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, with his head in his hands, while Lark occupied a straight-backed chair nearby.
“I never should have let him come here,” he said, after a long, long time spent groping his way through a thicket of regrets. He looked into Lark’s eyes and gave a gruff, mirthless laugh. “He thought he was a deputy. And I let him believe it—even gave him a badge.”
Lark didn’t speak. Maybe she knew he needed to talk, say what was inside him.
“He’s sixteen years old, Lark,” he went on.
She nodded, looked as though she wanted to close the space between them and take him into her arms, but didn’t.
“He’s supposed to go to college next fall, back in Pennsylvania. It’s all paid for. I gave my word I’d keep him safe. And now he’s lying on a kitchen table, with needles stuck in him everywhere, while a saloon-swabbing Chinaman whacks at him with a knife.”
Lark’s mouth tightened briefly, but her eyes were compassionate. “I told you,” she said, very softly. “Hon Sing is a doctor. A surgeon.”
“Then why’s he working for Jolene Bell?” Rowdy demanded, as some of the shock subsided, and he began to think a little more clearly.
“Because he and Mai Lee have to earn a living,” Lark said moderately. “He’d never be allowed to practice medicine here.”
“I should have been here.”
“You weren’t. There’s no point in torturing yourself.”
He thrust out a sigh, rumpled his hair again. Wondered where he’d lost his hat. “If I could be out there on that table, if I could take Gideon’s place, I would,” he said.
“I know,” Lark replied.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it.”
“I’m ready. Tell me, Lark, because I’m going to go crazy if you don’t.”
She told him.
Gideon had come to the rooming house for supper and birthday cake. Afterward, he’d announced that he had rounds to make, because he, Rowdy, was away. Lark had been unsettled by his going and decided to follow him.
In an effort to protect Gideon’s pride—the kind of thing only a woman would do—she’d stayed out of sight.
He’d looked toward the saloons, Gideon had, and, evidently satisfied that all was well there, headed on to the dance at the Cattleman’s Hall.
Rowdy saw the rearing horse in his mind’s eye, and the rider on its back, just as clearly as if he’d been there himself. Saw the man bend low to ride a panicked horse inside the dance hall. Heard the screams from inside.
Closed his eyes.
“Gideon tried to stop him,” Lark finished. “He must have gotten hold of the bridle, on the side where I couldn’t see. And then there was a gunshot, and the man rode out, and Gideon was—Gideon was just lying there….”
“Who was this rider?” Rowdy asked taut with the need to know.
“Someone called him Willie,” Lark said carefully.
“I’ll kill him,” Rowdy said, and he’d never meant a thing he’d said in his life more than he meant that. His brain hitched back to his first day in Stone Creek, when he and Pardner had availed themselves of Jolene’s bathhouse. Two men had come in—one named Harlan, one named Willie.
The second man’s features came clear in Rowdy’s mind.
“No,” Lark replied. “You’ll let Sam handle this.”
“I’m the marshal.”
“You’re also Gideon’s brother. You can’t possibly be objective.”
“I don’t want to be objective,” Rowdy protested. “I want to shove a .44 down the bastard’s throat and blow his stomach out through his—” He stopped, remembering that this was Lark he was talking to, not Sam or his pa.
Her face was pale, her eyes wide. A faint shimmer of gold showed at the roots of her lush brown hair, now falling from its pins.
“Why did they bring him here, and not to Mrs. Porter’s?”
“Because of Lydia,” Lark said. “She’s been through a great deal as it is, and she’s very fond of Gideon. I didn’t want her to see him like this. And, anyhow, since you live here, this is Gideon’s real home.”
Gideon’s “real home” was Ruby’s Saloon and Poker House, but it was miles away and thick with rangers. Ruby might have seen to the boy, but without Pa there to insist, it seemed almost as likely that she wouldn’t have wanted the bother.
He thought of Rose’s small grave outside the cemetery fence, and imagined a new one being dug beside it for Gideon.
His stomach threatened to come up, right along with the contents.
“Why did you have to go back to Flagstaff in such a hurry?” Lark asked. “Gideon said Sam and the major met you on the road, and you rode right out again.”
I don’t reckon I could go along? Rowdy heard his brother say.
God, if only he’d said yes.
If only he’d said yes.
None of this would have happened. Gideon would be safe.
“There was another train robbery this morning,” Rowdy said. “Maybe an hour’s ride outside Flagstaff. And old Autry Whitman himself was a witness—”
Lark’s eyes rounded, and her wan face went white. “Autry Whitman?” she repeated, gripping the sides of her chair with both hands. “He was there?”
Rowdy watched her, ready to spring off the bed and catch her before she tumbled forward in a swoon and hit the floor, if it came to that. “Do you know him, Lark? Autry Whitman?”
She shivered at the name, but shook her head violently. “No!”
She was lying, of course, but Rowdy didn’t call her on it.
She stood up, sat down again.
And then tears brimmed along her lower lashes and spilled over.
Oh, yes. She knew Autry Whitman, all right.
He might even be the man she was running from.
Whatever Whitman was to her, she was scared to death of him.