Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (9 page)

“I’ll be darned. I’ve passed this spot a
hundred times and never guessed there was anything in here.”

Callie made no answer to this, which Jim,
thinking again of the other hidden passage, thought was just as
well.

“In here,” she said, ducking through into
the mine.

Jim had shut his eyes at their approach, and
gave his best imitation of unconsciousness. His only impression of
what was happening came through hearing. Callie seemed to have
stopped a few feet away, watching her companion from behind as he
advanced to bend over the injured man. Jim heard the clink of a
spur and the sound of Nolan’s crouching down beside him. He tried
to keep his face loose and expressionless, breathing slowly and
heavily. Sweat was sticking the palm of his hand to the grip of the
Colt under the blanket.

“Why, it’s Jim Reid—one of the Sorrel Creek
boys,” said Dave Nolan’s voice. “How bad’s he hurt—d’you know?”

“Well, the gunshot wound didn’t look bad,”
said Callie. “But his leg’s broken, I think.” She seemed to swallow
and moisten her lips as though her mouth was too dry for
speech.

“Where’d you say you found him again?” Jim
could tell by the sound of his voice that he was speaking to her
over his shoulder.

“About—a mile and a half north of here—in
the woods, close to the divide. Just on this side of the
creek.”

“Hmm,” said Nolan thoughtfully, but
lightly.

He stood up. “I guess I’d better ride down
to Sorrel Creek and get help. Better not try to move him with just
the two of us, not with his leg like that. Will you be all right
staying with him while I go?”

He received no answer. Callie, at the close
of this speech, had turned abruptly away from him—almost
unsteadily, as if she were faint, with one hand over her mouth.

He looked back at her. “Something
wrong?”

Jim Reid blew out a long, slow breath, and
opened his eyes. “Kinda glad you came through, Nolan.”

Dave Nolan looked down at him, his hat
pushed back on his head, his brown eyes honest but puzzled. “Hey,
Jim,” he said. “How do you feel?”

He glanced at Callie, who still stood with
her back to him, some strong emotion evident from her bowed head
and tense shoulders. “What’s going on here, anyway?”

Jim let his own eyes travel meaningly to
Callie, and back to meet the young rancher’s quizzical look. “Why
don’t you figure it out.”

Nolan looked at the girl again. “Callie?
What’s the matter?”

She half turned toward him, hugging herself
as if trying to hold back something that could have been laughter
or tears. “I thought it was you,” she cried. “I thought—it was
you!”

Dave Nolan stared at her for a minute—and
then slowly a light came up in his face, a light that was more than
just comprehension. He moved over close to Callie, who had turned
her back on him again and was weeping muffled sobs into the palm of
her hand.

He put his hands on her arms. “Why’d that
bother you so much?” he said gently, but with a half-tender,
half-exultant smile trying to show on his face, and creeping a
little into his voice. The only answer was another sob. He leaned a
little closer. “You don’t have to be shy about telling me…You see,
I don’t mind at all…”

Hesitantly, Callie lifted her head—slowly
turned it to look over her shoulder, into his eyes—and then spun to
face him and hid her face against his shoulder, and he put his arms
around her.

Jim Reid directed his eyes up toward the
roof of the mine and pursed his lips into a soundless whistle,
which he maintained for several verses of an imaginary tune.

Presently a few broken fragments of
sentences became audible from Callie: “I thought that—because of
the cattle—I was just sick over it. I didn’t want to believe it,
but—”

“You poor kid,” said Dave Nolan, who showed
no inclination to let her out of his arms anytime soon. “Why didn’t
you just ask me?”

“I was too scared. I—oh, I can’t tell you
all about it now.”

“That’s all right,” he said affectionately,
permitting her to emerge, her hair somewhat crushed and disordered
but her wet eyes shining. “Leave it till whenever you want—we’ll
have lots of time to talk. Anyway, we’ve got to get Jim looked
after.”

“Got to agree with you,” said Jim, and they
both started and looked toward him a little guiltily as though they
had forgotten his presence. “I didn’t like to mention it, but this
leg of mine is gnawing at me like a guilty conscience.”

“We’ll have you out of here in no time,”
said Nolan. “Callie, you want to stay with him while I ride down
and find Thorsden and his boys?”

Jim, noticing Callie’s slight hesitation,
grinned and said, “That’s all right. Go along with him; I’ll be
fine by myself. I’m getting so’s this old place feels just like
home.”

“I really should be getting home,” said
Callie regretfully. “Pa’ll be wondering what’s happened to me, late
getting meals two days running.”

“Sure, I understand,” said Dave Nolan before
Jim had a chance to speak. “Go ahead. And then—can I come over and
see you later?” Their eyes met for a second, and Callie nodded
yes.

He grinned suddenly and shyly at her, as if
he could not help it, and said—more to Callie than to Jim—”I won’t
be long.”

* * *

The fire had died down, leaving it chillier
in the mine, though there was just enough light left from the coals
to see by. Jim dozed feverishly from time to time, though the pain
in his leg kept him from dropping off to sleep completely. He was
more relaxed, though, now that the sense of uncertainty was gone;
he was on the last leg of his wait.

An echoing step dragged his eyes open from
another half-sleep. He rolled his head to the side and looked
around, but there was no one in the mine. For a moment he thought
the sound must have come from his own tired brain.

Then he heard it again—the grinding of loose
stone under a foot in the tunnel; a sound he had come to know well
by this time. It was a slow step, a cautious one, and a man’s.

Jim lifted his head and called out, somewhat
confusedly, “Nolan? That you?”

There was no reply, save a pause in the
footsteps, and then with the same slow tread the figure of a man
moved out from the tunnel, and Jim saw that it was not Dave Nolan.
The man was older, heavier. He stood for a second with his face in
shadow. Then he moved forward, and with a sudden unexplainable
relief Jim recognized the rancher Lupin—Callie’s father.

“Well,” said Jim with a faint laugh. “I
wasn’t expecting to see you here. Anybody else, for that matter.
Your girl told me nobody else knew about this place.”

“Yeah, that’s what she told me, too,” said
Lupin, slowly. “Told me all about it when she got home. I’d been
wondering what she was up to.”

He was a thick-shouldered man, balding on
top of his head and at the temples, and wore an old once-green coat
with frayed cuffs. His face had a slow, meditative look about it,
rather like that worn by a bull, which makes you wonder if the
animal is really unconcerned or pondering his next move.

He moved forward a slow, measured step or
two, and surveyed Jim’s prostrate form. He gestured toward him with
one hand. “Busted your leg, eh?”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “Horse fell on it.”

Lupin was next to him now, and bent to
crouch down on one knee the same as Dave Nolan had done. The
movement was casual and unhurried. Jim had a sudden instinctive
feeling of alarm and moved his hand, but it was already too late.
With a rapidity belied by his heavy appearance Lupin flipped back
the blanket to expose the gun lying by Jim’s side and his hand
closed over it before Jim had time to grip and lift it.

He straightened up, gun in hand, and checked
it to see if it was loaded. Jim’s eyes followed him warily, but
with full understanding. He knew now.

“You won’t get away with it,” he said.

Lupin shook his head with a faint pitying
flicker of a smile, and held out the gun. “Your gun,” he said, “and
nothing to link me with it. Or anybody else, even. But Dave Nolan
will have a hard time proving that you were alive when he left you
here.”

A little surge of anger like a hot needle
ran through Jim Reid from his broken leg up through his spine. His
jaw tightened. This was the man who had tried to kill him from
behind. Things fit in now. He’d disliked young Nolan, didn’t like
his hanging around and talking to Callie, because he was afraid
that Nolan might eventually stumble on his secret. He’d have no
compunction about killing them both with one shot.

But the additional knowledge that Jim
possessed almost made him want to laugh aloud. “Nolan’s not the
only one. Callie knows everything; I told her all about it, even
the hole in the rocks. She’ll know.”

“She’ll do as she’s told,” said Lupin
shortly. “She’s my daughter, and she’ll keep quiet about what she
needs to.”

Jim shook his head slowly, side to side.
“She won’t stand for your putting a rope around Nolan’s neck,” he
said softly. “You’re making a big mistake if you’re counting on
that.”

“I told you,” said Lupin, “she’s my
daughter. She’ll keep her mouth shut about what I tell her to.”

A slight sound over by the tunnel made them
both turn. Callie was standing there, leaning forward slightly from
having just ducked through the end of the tunnel; one hand touching
the rock wall, looking at her father.

Jim Reid would never forget how she looked
at that moment. It was not grief, nor anger in her face as she
looked at Lupin in the firelight—a face at once that of a child and
a woman, with brows bent over her dark eyes in an expression of
perplexed, hurt wonder, as though she could not quite believe what
she had heard could be true.

Lupin said abruptly, but not as if he were
at all affected by the look or her presence, “Callie, what are you
doing here?”

She moved forward, slowly, her eyes still on
him. “I saw you leave,” she said. “I looked out the window, while I
was getting dinner, and I had a funny feeling—I didn’t know where
you could be going—after what I’d told you…”

Her father made a short gesture with the
hand that held Jim’s gun. “Go on back home now. There’s no need for
you to be here. I’ll be along directly.”

Instead she came a step nearer. “Pa, what
are you doing?”

“Can’t you guess?” said Jim. He hated the
brutal tone of his own voice, but his nerves were raw, and what he
was seeing happen to the girl increased his own sense of
helplessness.

She not only guessed, she knew; the same as
he had done. He saw urgency take the place of disbelief in her
face. “You can’t kill him, Pa. You wouldn’t
do
a thing like
that!”

Lupin let out a rasping breath of
impatience. “You’re a grown girl, Callie, and you know what stolen
cattle means. You ought to know I can’t let this boy talk. What do
you suppose we’ve been living on this past year? Or more like two
years?”

He moved as he spoke as if to take a step
forward, and Callie, pale but determined, slipped rapidly between
him and the corner where Jim lay, her hands spread out a little at
her sides as if shielding him. “No!” she said. “I won’t let you do
it! I won’t keep quiet. I’d tell everything sooner than let you
kill someone!”

Lupin’s face darkened, as he seemed to
recognize for the first time that she was not behaving as he
expected. “You’d sooner turn over your own father?” he said. “Is
that all the feeling you’ve got? He’s nothing to you; nothing to
either of us, except he’s going to ruin us, that’s what!”

“I don’t care! You don’t understand. It’s
not just because of him; it’s for you! Whatever else you’ve done,
don’t do
murder
, Pa! You can’t have something as black as
that on your soul. I don’t want you to, any more than I wanted it
for—oh, Pa, don’t!”

Lupin’s heavy face was set in expressionless
anger. His thumb shifted over the hammer of the Colt, and he
motioned with it again. “For the last time, Callie, I’m telling you
to go home. Are you going to do as I say, or not?”

“No,” she said, and her voice quivered not
with fear but with resolve.

With a harsh muttered oath Lupin stepped
toward her and grasped her arm. The hand that held the Colt swung
around and Jim saw that he meant to twist the girl aside and fire
down around her. But with a cry Callie wrenched free and clutched
at his arm with both hands. The gun went off with a deafening
explosion in the closeness of the mine. Jim, who had instinctively
stiffened himself against the expected shock of the bullet, saw
Callie stumble and fall to her knees just beside him, jolting
against him and sending an agonizing throb of pain through his bad
leg, and at the same time heard the scream of the ricochet off the
rock wall just inches above his body. Lupin stood as if turned to
stone, staring down at his daughter, the smoking gun held out as if
he had stopped in the very middle of the act of firing it. Callie
was holding her left wrist tightly with her other hand, and as she
rocked back a little, sitting back on her heels, Jim saw a thin
dark line of blood trickling down the palm of her left hand.

She lifted her head to look at her father,
again with that perplexed, pleading look in her eyes. “You don’t
understand,” she said. “I was only doing it…for you…”

Then she broke down and began to cry, small
helpless sobs like a child. Lupin did not move, or take his eyes
from her—it seemed that now, he was the one staring at something he
did not understand.

A shout echoed down the tunnel. There was a
confused noise outside, and a moment later Dave Nolan burst into
the mine. He swung to a stop for just a second to look and then
made straight for the crumpled form of the girl on her knees,
without a glance for the two men. At his heels came Virgil
Thorsden, and two more Sorrel Creek riders pushed in behind
him.