Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (4 page)

Luke
knew everyone in the small town, at least by sight. The moment the man stepped
into the torchlight, Luke understood immediately he was not a Paskagankee
resident. The stranger was on foot—if he had ridden into town he had tied
his horse to a tree some distance away in order to ensure a stealthy
approach—and Luke’s first thought was to wonder how in the Lord’s name
the elderly slave had heard the man coming when
he
hadn’t heard a thing.

Then he
forgot all about the slave, all about how the old black man had ridden ten long
hours crushed into the false bottom of the delivery wagon. He forgot about
everything. Because being dragged along behind the stranger, the man’s left ham
fist wrapped securely around the collar of her nightdress, was Luke’s wife.

Sarah.

Her
eyes were wide and terrified and a heavy layer of dust caked the bottom of her
dress, and after a moment’s shocked hesitation, Luke took two steps toward her.
He would attack the man if necessary to rescue his wife, he would die to save
her if he must, he would do whatever it took, and—

—and
the man calmly lifted a big Colt revolver and placed the barrel against Sarah’s
temple. “Stop right there,” he said, and Luke stopped right there.

“Well,
well, well,” the stranger said thoughtfully, glancing from Luke to the slave
and back. “Whatta we have here?” He caressed the side of Sarah’s beautiful head
with his gun and Luke prayed he wouldn’t pull the trigger. Luke could see Sarah
trembling, but she stood quietly and said nothing.

The
slave was positioned behind Luke. He didn’t move or speak. Luke could feel his
presence although he could not see him. It was obvious the old man was waiting
to see what would happen next, something Luke was more than a little curious
about, himself. He calculated how long Fulton had been gone and what he might
be doing. The deliveryman should long since have returned from inside the
tavern for another armload of flour or case of beer or sack of clean linen.

“What’s
your business here, friend?” Luke asked.

“We all
friends now, are we?” the man countered without any trace of a smile.

“Well,
we ain’t enemies. Least not yet. I certainly mean you no harm, although it’d sure
be easier to
stay
friends if you
release my wife. What brings you to Paskagankee at this time of night?”

The
stranger chuckled. He was relatively young, maybe thirty-five, and relatively
handsome, if you discounted the small pair of scars running in thin parallel
lines along his right cheek. His face was flushed and his hair mussed and his
manner abrupt. “So, this little filly wasn’t lying, after all. She told me I
could find you here. Ya see, I need a place to hole up for a bit. They’s some
people chasin’ me and they ain’t exactly what you’d call the highest of high
society fellas.”

“What
does that have to do with me, and what does it have to do with my wife?” Luke
longed to lunge at the stranger; the urge was almost overwhelming. He wanted to
punch the man into submission, six-shooter or no six-shooter, then sweep Sarah
into his arms and hold her until she stopped trembling, to convince her
everything would be all right.

But
Luke was very afraid everything was not going to be all right.

“What’s
it got to do with you? Nuthin’ really, ‘cept you happen to own the house I
busted into a few minutes ago lookin’ for shelter. Once I showed her my gun,
your very kind—and might I add, very beautiful—wife volunteered
that they wasn’t much of anyplace to hide in that house, and if it was the
first shelter
I
considered it would
probably be the first one the folks chasin’ me would consider, too.” He spit on
the ground. “Smart lady.”

Matt
Fulton poked his head around the corner of the building. The stranger couldn’t
see him, but Luke had a clear view of the deliveryman. Matt had apparently
heard the commotion back here and exited through the front door of the tavern,
circling around to approach the stranger from behind.

Luke
knew Matt was always armed—it would have been suicide driving a wagon
full of liquor and bar supplies all over northern Maine without some way to
protect himself, and a weapon was even more critical given the illegal human
cargo Matt carried—but he knew also that the deliveryman had left his gun
on the seat of the wagon in order to lug the supplies into the building. He
knew because that was how Matt always did it.

The
stranger continued speaking, unaware of Fulton’s presence behind him. “Your
beautiful wife told me you was down here takin’ a delivery at the waterin’ hole
and that this would be a much better place than your house to lie low. Turns
out it was a slightly different kind of delivery than I woulda expected, though,
wasn’t it? It was the kind of delivery that tells me you must truly have some
good places for me to hide out for a while.”

The man
grinned, and even in the uneven light of the flickering torches Luke could see
his teeth were yellowed and stained; some of them were missing entirely. “So
whaddaya say,” he said, smiling wickedly. “Is there any room at the inn?”

As the
stranger talked Fulton approached stealthily from behind, taking his time,
moving with care. Sarah stood resolutely, trembling and clearly afraid but
trusting in Luke to handle the situation. Fulton had nearly reached the
stranger when Luke realized he had just made a critical mistake. He had been so
caught up in tracking the deliveryman’s progress and trying not to give
anything away that he had fallen silent for much too long. He had completely
lost track of the stranger’s words.

The gunman’s
eyes widened and he threw Sarah to the ground as he spun left and ducked.
Fulton launched a roundhouse right at the stranger’s jaw, a dangerous punch
from a dangerous man which, had it been thrown one second earlier, would have
ended the fight before it began.

But by
the time the punch reached the stranger’s jaw he was no longer there. Fulton’s roundhouse
whistled harmlessly through the air, leaving Matt off-balance and vulnerable to
a counterattack. The stranger’s foot shot out and connected solidly with
Fulton’s knee. Luke rushed forward as the sound of Matt’s kneecap shattering
filled the air. It was loud and unmistakable and horrifying.

Fulton
gasped in shock and pain and the stranger lifted his six-shooter, pointing it
directly at Luke’s face. “That’s far enough,” he said coldly.

Luke
stopped short. “No,” he said. “No, no!”

The gun
barrel looked enormous and deadly. From somewhere in his panicked brain Luke
could hear Sarah sobbing quietly. The stranger swiveled his arm, holding the
big pistol one-handed, aiming it at Matt Fulton’s head.

And then
the stranger fired, and instantly Matt Fulton’s head caved in, pulverized by
the .38 slug. Blood and bone and brain tissue exploded into the night air and
the elderly slave—in his panic Luke had forgotten all about the old black
man standing behind him—screamed and Sarah screamed and Luke realized he
was screaming, too.

Matt
wasn’t screaming, though, he was too busy dying, and his body slumped to the
ground, his head a pulpy mush, bludgeoned by the mass of the bullet fired
almost point-blank into his skull.

The
stranger was panting and jittery and his eyes were wild. He turned the gun on
Sarah next, and Luke sank to his knees in the dirt and the weedy grass. “Please
stop,” he said. “Please. We’ll do whatever you want. We can hide you. We can
hide you for as long as you want to be hidden. Just, please, stop.”

For a
long moment nothing happened, and then the stranger lowered his gun. “Show me
where I can hide or everyone dies,” he said.

5

The Paskagankee Tavern had been
constructed on a foundation of rough-hewn, sound-deadening granite blocks, each
several feet thick. From the moment Lucas Crosby had first set eyes on the
basement, he had known exactly how he was going to modify the structure to
allow Underground Railroad travelers to remain safe and secure during the final
stopover in their long journey to freedom.

The day
he finalized the purchase, Luke had begun modifications on the property. He did
most of the backbreaking work alone, contracting out what few jobs he could not
handle himself to Railroad sympathizers who rode up from Connecticut and Rhode
Island. They completed their tasks, one or two at a time to avoid raising
suspicion among Paskagankee’s residents, and then disappeared, returning to
their hometowns and states.

Within
a few months the illicit basement modifications had been completed, along with
improvements to the rest of the building, allowing Lucas Crosby to open the
Paskagankee Tavern. The community knew nothing of the structure’s dual purpose.

In the
dank basement, Luke had chipped away a small handhold in one of the seams
between the massive granite blocks. The handhold was virtually invisible, indecipherable
to anyone unaware of its existence, and until memorizing its location even Luke
occasionally had to search for it by running his fingers along the block.

Inside
the handhold, a spring-loaded latch had been inserted. A heavy pull on the
latch would allow one entire block of granite to swing ponderously outward on a
thick iron hinge, revealing a tunnel dug into the earth. The primitive six-foot
wide corridor sloped gradually downward and appeared to terminate at an earthen
wall fifteen feet away.

That
wall, however, was just an illusion. What appeared to be a tree-root thrusting
several inches out of the wall was in reality another spring-loaded latch. A
tug on the “root” would result in a second door, this one smaller and constructed
of dark-brown wood almost perfectly matching the wall, opening on its own hinge
to reveal a small room hacked even farther into the earth.

The
room had been outfitted with three pairs of bunk beds, a rudimentary table, and
six chairs. Shelving lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stocked with food
and water and various other supplies an Underground Railroad traveler might
need to stay alive—and safe—for weeks, if necessary. Luke had even
provided a makeshift lavatory, erecting a wooden wall across one small corner
of the room and outfitting the space behind it with a chamber pot.

Luke’s
purpose in tunneling into the earth had been to provide for temperature
moderation. Thus, even on the coldest of the northern New England village’s
bitter winter nights, the secret room stayed at a reasonable temperature. It
wasn’t warm, exactly, but with the proper clothing and plenty of blankets,
would prevent a traveler from freezing to death.

Providing
ventilation had presented the biggest challenge, and Lucas had been forced to
bring an engineer all the way from Boston to solve the problem. Eventually,
they constructed a series of small tunnels running from the ceiling to ground
level, terminating at different locations around the tavern’s property. Each of
the ventilation tunnels was integrated into the landscape and was as
indecipherable to the unknowing observer as the door built into the basement’s
granite blocks.

The product
of Lucas Crosby’s backbreaking labor was a hidden room of the highest quality;
one that allowed Luke to serve the needs of freedom-seeking slaves without
putting his safety or the safety of his beloved Sarah at unnecessary risk. As
many as a half-dozen Underground Railroad riders at once could remain safely concealed
inside the room for as long as necessary if suspicious strangers – or
even locals – seemed to be asking the wrong kinds of questions around the
Paskagankee Tavern.

The thick
granite blocks, long tunneled entrance and deep-in-the-earth construction
deadened all sound, so once sealed inside the hidden room, escaping slaves were
free to talk as loudly as they wished without fear of being discovered.

Luke
had placed several crates of supplies inside the access tunnel behind the
granite blocks in the event his basement doorway were ever discovered, planning
to explain away the tunnel as simply an extra, if unusual, storage area. In
five years, though, the secret construction had not come close to being
discovered. Even Sarah had never actually seen the room.

She was
about to see it now, though.

Luke
led the way down the rickety stairs leading from the tavern’s small first-floor
storage room into the basement. Following silently behind him was the slave.
Sarah and the stranger brought up the rear, the stranger’s assumption seeming
to be that Luke would not dare try anything stupid with a gun barrel caressing
the side of his wife’s head.

The stranger’s
assumption was right.

Luke had
no idea what, or who, this man might be running from, but at the moment he
didn’t care. Seeing Matt Fulton’s head blown almost completely off his
shoulders was enough to convince Luke to do as he was told. He knew he could
not live with himself were he to be responsible for the same fate befalling his
beloved bride.

The
sound of the footfalls on the wooden stairs seemed to drop into the basement
and disappear. It was as if the building simply swallowed up the noise, leaving
behind an eerie and somehow alien silence. Luke stepped off the final tread and
felt his way in the darkness to the side wall, lighting a series of candles
mounted on sconces, and waited in the resulting insubstantial illumination for
the rest of the strange little party to join him.