Elizabeth Lane (20 page)

In the kitchen, Varina huddled with Annie and Samuel and the baby, holding them so tightly against her that her fingers furrowed into their flesh. Only her eyes spoke.

“Take care of each other,” Donovan said, reaching for the door. “I’ll be back with Katy. That’s a promise.”

He strode across the clearing, breaking into an uneven run at the edge of the trees. His mind churned over what he’d been told as he pounded down the zigzag trail. Bad men with guns, Annie had said. Probably on the run from the law. Probably holding the children hostage. He could only pray they would stay put in the saloon for a while. That would afford the best chance of getting the youngsters back safely.

The saloon.

Sarah.

Donovan’s heart lurched into his throat as the realization sank home. Unless Sarah had left early, she would be there, at the mercy of the three desperadoes. And from what he knew of Sarah Parker, she would be a tigress defending her cubs. She would give her life, if need be, to protect the children.

He could see down the gulch now, where the moldering town sprawled in the hollows along the creeks that had once washed gold into pans and sluice boxes. The slanting afternoon sunlight glittered on people swarming to the main street, clustering in frightened knots before the saloon. No one would know what to do, he realized. There was no law
in Miner’s Gulch, no one with the skill to take on three desperate armed men and their precious little hostages.

No one but himself.

Donovan plunged down the trail, praying for time, praying that no one would get excited and start shooting. Praying for the children, and for Sarah.

Sarah’s shaking knees would no longer support her weight. She had sunk casually onto the edge of a chair, where she sat with crossed legs, smiling across the table at Simeon Dooley.

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked with a toss of her cropped head. “Who’s going to clean up this god-awful mess in my saloon? And what are these damned kids doing in here? I don’t like kids. They make me nervous.”

Her narrowed eyes slid sideways to the huddled children. Any one of them could call out to her, she realized. Any one of them could give her identity away, forcing her to scramble for a new, less believable story. But the children only clung to each other and stared. Either they did not recognize her or they were too frightened to speak up. The piano player, too, lay still, eyes closed, one hand pressing the kerchief to his bloodied shoulder.

“And what about old George over there?” she snapped, gesturing toward the wounded musician. “I can hire a new bartender anytime, but good piano players don’t grow on trees! I want him taken care of!”

Dooley’s finger toyed with the trigger of the rifle. Little by little, his puzzled smirk relaxed into an ugly grin. “Miss Lydia Taggart! Ain’t you the uppity one! Hell, you was always uppity! A man what wasn’t an officer could scarce get the time of day from you! But that didn’t stop me from lookin’!”

“Look all you want, Corporal.” Sarah recrossed her legs with an enticing swish of dark green silk. “But while you’re looking, those two bodies will start smelling up the place.
My piano player will bleed to death, and those blasted kids will start yammering for their mamas. Is that what you want?”

Dooley did not answer. He was leaning back in his chair, his eyes measuring Sarah from head to toe. “You’re skinnier than I remember,” he growled. “And what the devil happened to your hair?”

“I got sick over the winter. You didn’t answer my question.”

Dooley made a sudden, snarling lunge toward her, like a bulldog on the end of a chain. “I don’t reckon I got to answer nobody’s questions,
Miss
Lydia! I just shot two men dead here, and another one back in Central City! There could be a posse on my tail, and I’m gonna need them kids
for—damn!”

The big man had gone rigid, his eyes riveted on the stairs. Turning to follow his gaze, Sarah saw MacIntyre’s bearish form lumbering down the steps. He was fastening his belt awkwardly with his single hand, swaying drunkenly from side to side as he walked.

Zoe’s customer.

Looking down on the chaos below him, MacIntyre seemed to see only Sarah, where she sat at the table with Dooley, nerves screaming beneath her glassy mask. At the sight of her, his small, bloodshot eyes narrowed with hatred.

He took a stumbling step toward her. “So you finally found where you belong, you lyin’ little Yank—”

A gunshot rang out from the shadows. MacIntyre reeled, spun and pitched forward on his face. As a sickening red stain blossomed over the back of his shirt, the third gunman, a dark, thin, nervous man holding a pistol, stepped calmly out from behind the bar.

“Who else you got up there, the whole damned U.S. Cavalry?” Dooley snarled.

“Just—my girls. Three of them.” Sarah had strangled a scream when MacIntyre fell. Now she fought to keep her
terror locked up inside her. “That was one of our customers your man just gunned down,” she said. “Not exactly what I’d call good business, Mr. Dooley.”

“How many back doors to this place?”

“Two.” Sarah knew better than to lie when she could so easily be caught. “One off the kitchen. The other off the stairway going down the back.”

Dooley nodded at the ferretlike gunman who slithered into the darkness to check out what she’d said. Sarah tried not to look at MacIntyre, who lay sprawled just a scant pace from her chair, alive, still, his breath wheezing in low, anguished gasps. She tried not to look at the children, who might recognize her if she paid them too much attention.

Instead, she focused her gaze on Simeon Dooley, who sat leaning back in his chair, studying her through pain-glazed eyes. One hand balanced the rifle on the edge of the table. The other rested on the saddlebags, which bulged suspiciously with what Sarah guessed to be loot from the robbery.

“What do you want, Simeon Dooley?” she asked. “If you came to this two-bit town looking for a little fun, you’ve gotten yourself off to one hell of a start.”

Dooley neither moved nor answered. His attention seemed to be focused on some inner point of irritation, as if he had a burr in his soul.

“Look,” Sarah persisted recklessly. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll see that you get it. Just roll these bleeding bodies outside and send these pesky kids home. Then I’ll be at your disposal. For a price, of course.”

Dooley blanched at her audacity but did not argue the point. “I need a doc,” he grunted. “Got hit in Central City. Bullet’s deep. I don’t aim to get blood poisoning, lose my leg.”

“There’s no doctor in Miner’s Gulch. But I’ve pulled my share of bullets out of the customers here. You won’t get any better help in these parts.”

“I’ll need vittles and three fresh horses.”

“My girls and I can arrange that, as long as you’ve got the money to pay.”

“And can you and your girls hold off a posse if it shows up?” Dooley pulled at the bottle, closing his eyes as the cheap whiskey burned down his throat. “Sorry,
Miss
Lydia Taggart, no dice on the young’uns. When it comes to bargaining, kids is worth a hell of a lot more’n whores.”

He grimaced, twisting in his chair to ease the pressure on his wounded leg. “So bring ‘em down here! Let’s see what you got hidin’ upstairs!”

“My girls won’t do you any harm. Leave them be.”

Dooley tilted back his head and gave a long, loud whistle. “Come on, you little bitches! I know you been up there listenin’ to everything that’s goin’ on. Get down here, now!”

There was a stirring overhead. Sarah’s throat clenched as Faye, Greta and Zoe filed meekly down the stairs. She could only hope they’d been listening closely and would back up what she’d told Dooley. If not, anything could happen now.

At the sight of them, Dooley threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Hells bells, how long you ladies been up here, anyway? Since the ‘59 boom? They got sixteenyear-old whores in Central City now!”

“Leave them alone, Corporal,” Sarah said in a low voice. “They’re loyal to me, and they do their jobs.” She glanced at Zoe, who was hastily knotting her robe, then gave MacIntyre’s ribs a contemptuous nudge with the toe of her green silk slipper.

“Why didn’t you send that fool out the back way?” she snapped. “How could you let him come blundering down into this mess? Now look what’s happened!”

Zoe’s dark head drooped contritely. “I’m right sorry, Miz Lydia. We heard the shots, but we thought somebody was just funnin’ around. He wanted to see what was goin’ on, that’s all.”

A small weight lifted from the black center of Sarah’s fear. It was all right. The girls had heard enough. They would play their parts.

She gave MacIntyre another poke with her shoe. “The big hulk’s still alive,” she said. “See what you can do for him, Zoe. Greta, you take care of George, over there. Faye, what’ve we got in the kitchen?”

“Cook’s gone home. But there’s a big pot o’ beans on the stove. Maybe a couple loaves o’ bread from yesterday.”

Sarah nodded. Riding the wave of her fear, she turned back to Simeon Dooley and forced herself to meet his contemptuous gaze head-on. “Those brats’ll start squalling if they don’t get some supper,” she said. “Your man can guard them just as well in the kitchen as in here.”

She was half-afraid Dooley would resist, but she saw that his eyes were glazed with shock from the wound. She could push him a little, Sarah calculated, as long as she didn’t push too hard.

“What can it hurt?” she wheedled artfully. “I don’t want their empty little bellies on my conscience! If there’s anything worse than kids, it’s hungry kids!”

A spasm of pain flickered across his face. “That bullet’s got to come out soon. After that, I’ll need some time to rest up afore we pull out of here.”

“I’m not touching you with hungry kids squalling in my ears. It makes me nervous, makes my hands shake. As soon as they’re fed and settled someplace out of my sight, then we’ll lay you out on the kitchen table and do the job.”

“No tricks, Miss
Lydia
Taggart. I got no scruples about shootin’ a woman. Or a young’un, either, for that matter.”

“No tricks, Corporal,” Sarah answered, knowing he meant it. Some men were mostly bluff and bluster. But Simeon Dooley was a mad dog, capable of anything. She might risk her own life, but she could not risk the children.

“Get on with it, then.” He glanced toward Faye. “You, Red! Take them kids in the kitchen an’ get ‘em some vittles. Spade’ll go with to guard the back door and make sure there ain’t no funny business. Get along now!”

Dooley jerked his head toward the gunman, a stocky fellow with his hat pulled low, who was guarding the little clutch of frightened children. Sarah caught a glimpse of his face—young and brutish, the dull eyes reflecting a slowness of wit—as he turned to herd his small charges toward the kitchen. The other man, the dark, shadowy ferret, had not yet returned. Sarah imagined him prowling the rooms, checking the back stairs.

She lowered her face as the children filed silently past on Dooley’s side of the table. It wouldn’t do for one of them to recognize her and cry out. And it wouldn’t do for them to see the terror in her eyes.

“Get me another bottle, Miss Lydia,” Dooley rasped. “You and me’s stayin’ right here for the time bein’, and I ain’t lettin’ you out of my sight!”

“Be my guest.” Sarah forced a brazen smile, forced her unwilling legs to stand and move as she picked her way among shards of broken glass to retrieve more whiskey from the shelf behind the bar. She kept her gaze carefully averted from the grim spectacle of Smitty sprawled on the floor at the other end. One look, and her tenuous grip on self-control would shatter. She would not be able to stop herself from screaming.

The children were trudging single file into the kitchen. Last in line was Katy Sutton, her small, pinched face ghost white below her bright carrot hair. Sarah turned away from the bar and suddenly found herself looking straight into Katy’s round ginger eyes.

The contact was as brief as a heartbeat. But Sarah could not miss the shock of recognition or the frantic questions that flashed in the little girl’s stricken gaze. Katy knew. And soon the other children would know, too.

But would they understand? No, Sarah realized bleakly as the kitchen door closed behind them. They were too young. It would be too much to expect of them.

MacIntyre lay where Zoe had dragged him, moaning insensibly as she struggled to stop his bleeding. Alongside the piano, Greta had torn off George’s shirt and was using strips of it to wrap his shoulder. With luck, Sarah calculated, Greta would be able to whisper a few words in the piano player’s ear—enough, at least, to keep him quiet.

Sick with fear, she strolled back toward the table, lowered herself to the chair and slid the bottle across the varnished surface toward Dooley’s waiting hand. “Drink up,” she said, flashing a bitter smile. “It’s on the house, Corporal!”

By the time Donovan reached the middle of town, a swarm of anxious people had clustered in the early twilight outside the Crimson Belle. A hysterical Eudora Cahill was being calmed by Satterlee, the storekeeper. Mattie Ormes and her husband clung together at the edge of the crowd. Some of the men had brought guns, but for the most part they held the weapons awkwardly, as if they were unsure of what to do with them.

The saloon’s double doors were tightly closed, the barest flicker of lamplight showing through the cracks. There were no windows on the first floor, and those on the second were dark and silent.

“Ain’t heard nothin’ but one shot from in there since they took the kids inside,” Widow Harley told Donovan when he asked her. “Pete Ainsworth’s claimin’ they robbed a bank in Central City. He says the fool posse went the other way, toward Denver. But then, who can hold with what a no-account like Ainsworth says?”

“Where’s Ainsworth now?”

“Passed out in some ditch, I’d wager. Anyway, a posse the size of Tennessee couldn’t guarantee to get them
young’uns out safe. Them three fellers has got us all over a barrel, Mr. Cole.”

Donovan’s gaze sifted through the milling crowd, hoping to spot someone who looked as if they might be in charge. Seeing no one suitable, he turned to the old woman again.