Miner's Daughter (33 page)

Shaking her head in bewilderment, Mari asked,
“But why go through my house? I don’t have anything worth taking.”
Pathetic, but true.

“I don’t know. Can you lock the door?”

“I can bolt myself in at night, but there’s
never been any need to have a lock on the door. Heck, sometimes
prospectors pass by, and it’s customary to leave the latch ring
outside the door so they can come in and grab some water and bread
and butter if they’re hungry and no one’s home.”

Lifting his eyebrow in a faintly ironic
gesture, Tony murmured, “Magnanimous.”

Miffed, Mari snapped, “We share what we have.
It may not be much by your standards, but it’s what we can do.”

He held up his hands, as if surrendering to
superior forces. “I didn’t mean anything by my comment, Mari,
honest.”

She didn’t believe him, but she let it pass.
“But this doesn’t look like a miner’s doing. This
looks-strange.”

“Is anything missing?”

She shook her head, since her one walk around
the cabin had been sufficient for her to know the answer to that
one “Nope. Like I said, I don’t have anything to steal.”

“Maybe they were looking for money.”

“Don’t have any of that, either,” she said
sourly.

“What about your Peerless pay?”

She gaped at him. “I don’t keep, money lying
around my house, for heaven’s sake. That first check I got from
Martin, I put in the bank as soon as I could.”

He eyed her curiously. “You didn’t spend any
of it? None?”

She shrugged. “On what?”

“I don’t know. Food? Clothing?” He glanced
around her pathetic home. “Curtains? Rugs?”

Her heart gave a painful spasm. “For this
place? Be serious, Tony. Why would I waste money on luxuries for
this dump?” She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter. Bitterness was an
unbecoming and unpleasant characteristic, and Mari tried never to
give in to it.

He stared at her for several seconds, fully
long enough for her to get itchy. At last he said, “Mari.” But his
voice petered out, and he didn’t continue.

Irked with herself and annoyed with him for
making her nervous, she said curtly, “Yes?”

“Mari, there’s something I want to ask
you.”

“Oh?” Figuring there was nothing to do about
a long-departed intruder but pick up after him, Mari refolded her
clothes as Tony thought and shoved the box back into the corner
where it belonged. Then she got the checked tablecloth she used for
company from the shelf where she stored it, flapped it open, and
laid it on her rickety table. She might not be able to create
elegance, but she could at least use a tablecloth for company.

Tony didn’t speak again for several moments,
and she glanced up at him, curious. He seemed remarkably ill at
ease for such a man of the world. She raised her eyebrows in a
question. He licked his lips.

Strange. Mari’d never seen him disconcerted
before. Well, except when he’d been mad at her. But that was only
natural. She’d probably be pretty peeved if somebody’d hit her with
a rock, too. She grinned as she went to the kitchen area of her
cabin and found two forks, two knives, and two spoons. None of them
matched, but a body didn’t need matched flatware to eat a basket
lunch. No matter what the Tony Ewings of this precious world might
think

He started speaking again when her back was
turned. “You see, Mari, it’s like this. I . . . well, I’ve been
doing a lot of thinking lately and . . .”

Tony didn’t finish that sentence either, but
only because both he and Mari had their ears assaulted by the
report of a gun, followed instantly by a hideous howl from Tiny.
Mari, whose heart stopped at the sound of her dog in distress,
dropped her silverware and bolted toward the door. Tony caught her
before she could race outside and rescue Tiny.

“Wait!” he shouted.

“Tiny’s hurt!” She started crying, in spite
of telling herself she wouldn’t. “I have to get to him!”

“Dammit, wait a minute. Somebody’s out there
with a gun, for God’s sake, and he might be just as happy to shoot
you as your dog.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care! Tiny’s all I
have!” If she’d been in possession of her senses, she’d have been
embarrassed by her pitiful wail, but she wasn’t. All she could
think about was the possibility of losing Tiny, and she couldn’t
bear it:

“Stop it, Mari. Here, I’ll help you look for
him But don’t run out until I find out if it’s safe.”

“No!” It was no use. She knew he was right.
With her heart breaking and her life crumbling around her, Mari
crumpled up onto a chair and buried her face in her hands. “Go
ahead,” she sobbed. “Go ahead and see if it’s safe. If Tiny’s been
hurt, I-I’ll—”

But she had no idea what she’d do. Kill
herself? Already she wanted to. Life was hard enough. If she had to
face it without Tiny, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t survive.

Tony watched Mari for a minute to be sure she
wasn’t going to dash out the door when he opened it. Damn, she
looked awful. He wished he could hold her and pet her and tell her
he’d take care of everything. But he had no right to do that.
Anyhow, that might be a lie, and he discovered within himself a
distinct reluctance to lie to her. The poor kid had it hard enough
already. She didn’t need to contend with lies, too.

If he ever caught the person who was doing
these things, he’d kill him with his bare hands. Thinking quickly,
he got Mari’s battered old hat from its peg by the door, grabbed
the broom from a corner, and stuck the hat on the broomstick.
Carefully, he opened the door and showed the hat-on-a-stick in a
way that he hoped resembled a person cautiously peering
outside.

Nothing happened. A faint, faraway whine came
through the open door, and Tony turned his head to see if Mari’d
heard it. She had. She lifted a tear-stained face, eloquent with
longing, and stared at the open doorway.

“Tiny?” she asked in a small voice.

“I’ll get him,” Tony promised. “As soon as I
know it’s safe.”

She nodded. He hadn’t known she could be so
reasonable. He had a strong hunch this was an aberration brought
about by too much excitement, too many bad things happening, and
sheer terror over the fate of her dog. He understood, even though
he’d never been in a similar position himself. It was astonishing
how having sufficient money could shield one from the rough side of
life.

Taking a chance and hoping he’d survive it,
Tony sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the doorway. Nobody
shot him, so he ventured a step away from the cabin. Tony’s whine
became louder, as if he were begging for help.

The chair scraped behind him, and Tony turned
in time to catch Mari before she could rush past him and out to her
dog. “We’ll go together,” he said calmly. He didn’t feel calm. He
felt like hell. As a precaution, he took his revolver out of his
jacket pocket.

Mari eyed the gun with astonishment. “I
didn’t know you carried a gun.”

“It’s a concession to the Wild West,” he said
ironically. The truth was, he hadn’t known what to expect when he’d
agreed to come to. California. For all he’d known, there were
desperadoes on every corner, and life was as cheap as depicted in
those torrid yellowback novels. He hadn’t expected to discover
California to be almost as civilized as the eastern seaboard.

Mari didn’t question his assumptions about
her home state. He had to hold her back from running out onto the
desert. “Stick by my side, Mari,” he said in a hard voice. “If we
separate—well, I don’t know.”

For all he knew, someone wanted to kidnap
Mari and hold her for ransom. What with all the other kinds of
vandalism going on, that didn’t sound as fantastic to him as it
might have a couple of weeks ago.

“Oh, please, Tony!” she begged. “I’ve got to
get to Tiny.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” Tears still
rolled down her face, and his heart swelled with compassion.

Daylight was fading fast out there in the
desert, where light didn’t linger long after the sun went down.
Tony snagged the lantern Mari kept on a hook beside the door and
handed it to Mari. As they warily walked farther away from the
cabin, he patted his pockets until he found a box of matches. Then,
not daring to stop to be efficient, for fear Mari would get away
from him, he fumbled around until he’d got the wick lighted. The
lantern didn’t help much now, but if they had to search very long
for Tiny, it would come in handy. “You’d better call him,
Mari.”

She obliged in a voice trembling with
emotion. “Tiny? Tiny! Where are you, boy?”

If her dog had been killed, Tony wasn’t sure
what he’d do, but he’d never stop looking for the perpetrator. Mari
loved that nonsensical horse of a dog and, therefore, so did Tony.
The realization came upon him suddenly and didn’t surprise him He’d
almost given up pretending he didn’t care about Mari. Hell, he’d
been on the verge of proposing marriage when Tiny’d been shot.

He shivered in the cooling evening air,
wondering if that had been a propitious escape or the other kind.
As he’d never even considered marriage before he’d bumped into
Mari, he wasn’t sure. However, although he deplored the reason for
it, he couldn’t help feeling somewhat relieved that his proposal
had been thwarted. He really ought to think good and hard about
what marriage entailed before popping the question.

After all, he and Mari were about as far
apart socially as a bird was from a mole. Which wasn’t an
altogether inapt comparison if he did say so himself.

Deciding to help out on the calling front,
Tony called softly, “Tiny, where are you, boy?”

“Do you think we need to be so quiet, Tony?
Do you think whoever shot him is still lurking?”

Lurking. Good word. Made Tony’s skin crawl.
Before he could answer her, they both heard the distant rumble of a
motorcar starting up. Mari gripped his arm convulsively. Tony’s
lips tightened.

“I guess that answers your question,” he
muttered. “Whoever did the deed is evidently escaping.”

A strangled sob greeted this piece of
conjecture. Tony put his arm around her waist. “Buck up, Mari. I’m
sure we can save him.”

“Oh, Lord!” For only seconds, Mari seemed in
danger of total collapse. Then, as Tony might have expected, she
pulled herself up straight, wiped the back of her hand across her
eyes, and shouted, “Tiny! Tiny, where are you!”

A pathetic whimper, totally unlike anything
else Tony’d heard issue from the Great Dane’s throat, responded to
her. Mari cried out and broke away from Tony.

“Damnation.” He pelted after her,
disconcerted because she was only a couple of yards away and
already fading into the twilight gloom. Having longer legs than
she, he caught up at once.

They both stopped dead at the sight of Tiny
huddled on the ground, a large black heap, looking as though he’d
been cut down in full stride. Mari clapped her hands over her
mouth, and Tony heard another sob break from her lips. He felt like
crying, too.

He’d never have imagined Tiny in such a
pitiful condition. The dog lay on his side, evidently unable to
lift his head but staring at them as if they were his salvation. As
incongruous as it seemed, his tail began to wag. Tony thought what
a great pair this girl and her dog were. They both had more spirit
than brains, and he couldn’t think of any two beings on this earth
that he honored more.

Snapping out of his stupor almost
immediately, he barked at Mari, “Stay with him and give him what
comfort you can. I don’t want to try to lift him and carry him back
to the cabin. He might not make it

Another strangled sob from Mari.

“So I’ll get the motorcar.”

“But the tires . . .”

“To hell with the tires. Tiny’s more
important than a dozen Pierce Arrows.”

As he loped back to the cabin, Tony couldn’t
believe he’d actually said that. Even more, he couldn’t believe
he’d meant it. But he had. Still did, for that matter.

Cursing the minutes as they passed, he
cranked the car’s motor to life, leaped behind the wheel, and as
carefully as could be, drove to Tiny. Mari’d been right to worry
about the tires, he thought grimly as something spiky pierced one
of them and he heard air whooshing out of it.

But to hell with the tires. To hell with the
whole car if it came to that. Mari’s dog was in peril, and Tony was
going to rescue it or die trying.

Perhaps not anything that dramatic. But he
was going to do his very best to see that Tiny survived this
ordeal.

For one thing, he felt responsible, even
though he knew intellectually that he wasn’t. It wasn’t his fault
someone was trying to disrupt production of Lucky Strike. Still,
his father’s money was backing the picture, and Tony was presently
in charge of his father’s movie money. Ergo, he did feel
responsible, logical or not.

He was grateful he’d thought about a lantern
when he came upon the tableau created by Mari and her pooch. The
lantern light directed Tony to a perfect spot. Mari, huddled beside
her huge dog and smiling pathetically, waved at him. As if he could
ever misplace her. Still, the lantern helped.

Driving as close as he could get to the pair,
he let the engine idle while he scrambled out of his jacket, rolled
his shirtsleeves up, and snatched a blanket out of the car’s rumble
seat. “Let me look at him before we do anything.”

“He-he’s got a hole in his side, and it’s
bleeding. I think the bullet’s still in him.”

The brokenhearted comment almost broke Tony’s
own heart, but he swore at himself to be strong. “I’m sorry,
sweetheart. But lots of folks survive bullet wounds. And so do lots
of animals.” As if he knew anything about bullet wounds. Still, it
was probably true.

“Oh, I hope so.”

Her tone of voice was so fervent that Tony
very nearly dropped the blanket and kissed her. She wouldn’t have
thanked him for that however, so he didn’t.