Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (6 page)

The two
men struggled under the dead weight of Matt Fulton’s body, climbing over downed
trees, around boulders and through scrub brush. After maybe ten minutes, during
which time they made little progress, the stranger grunted, “Far enough,” and
dropped Fulton’s upper body to the forest floor. It landed with a thud.

Luke
eased the distributor’s ankles to the ground and stood hunched over, hands on
his knees, breathing heavily. He knew Matt was beyond caring what happened to
him, but still Luke hated the desecration of the man’s corpse. He hoped it
would be found soon so he could receive a proper burial, in front of family and
friends.

The
stranger had bent over to catch his breath at the same time Luke did, and now
he straightened and said, “Let’s go,” still breathing heavily. “We’ve got a bit
of a walk ahead of us, and it won’t be long before the boys hunting me stumble
on to your place. If you want to live – and more importantly, if you want
your wife to live – you’ll make damned sure I’m tucked away inside that
secret room with your new black friend before that happens.”

Luke
nodded and they began retracing their steps. They reached the wagon much more
quickly now that they were not burdened by the weight of the body, and almost
without breaking stride Luke took Sarah by the hand and continued toward the
road. He believed without question the man’s threat to kill he and Sarah if
they were intercepted, and there was no way of knowing how close the stranger’s
pursuers were. For all he knew, they might be in town already.

Minutes
later the strange trio reached the road and turned left, walking quickly toward
the tavern. They encountered no other travelers, an unsurprising development given
the location and time of night.

For the
first time since this horrifying saga had begun more than two hours ago, Luke found
himself with a few minutes to think, and something occurred to him that was so
obvious he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it until now: all they had to
do was make it back to the Paskagankee Tavern undetected and seal the stranger
in the secret room! The man would then be trapped and Luke could alert Sheriff
Cowles to the situation. Cowles could round up as many men as he thought
necessary – the more, the better as far as Luke was concerned –
then come out to the tavern, open the room, and subdue the stranger.

This
plan, of course, if successful, would result in the discovery of the secret
room. Such a discovery would shut down the Paskagankee stop along the
Underground Railroad forever, and quite possibly result in jail time for Luke.
But under the circumstances, incarceration was the least of his worries.

He
glanced over at Sarah, her face blurred and indistinct in the inky northern
Maine nighttime blackness. He flashed her what he hoped was a reassuring smile
and kept walking.

***

Several hundred yards south of
the Paskagankee Tavern, the stranger growled, “Stop right here.” He flicked his
wrist, indicating they should enter the forest on the side of the trail, and
after a moment’s hesitation, Luke plunged off the road and into the underbrush.
Sarah followed right behind him. The stranger brought up the rear.

A sense
of disquiet, not quite panic but damned close, gripped Luke’s heart. What was
happening? Why would the stranger herd them into the forest when they were now so
close to the hiding place he claimed to need so badly?

In his
head Luke knew the man was not going to kill them; not both of them, anyway.
Not yet. He still needed at least one of them, because although the stranger
now knew the secret room’s location and how to enter it—assuming he had
been paying attention—no one else in the world would know he was in
there. He would be trapped forever if he killed both of them.

Of
course, it was entirely possible he intended to put a bullet in
Luke’s
head. He needed one of them, but
he didn’t need both, and from the stranger’s point of view, it would make sense
to eliminate the one who could cause him the most trouble.

Luke thought
desperately, trying to decide what to do if the stranger leveled his Colt at
him. There weren’t many good options. He supposed he would lunge at the man and
try to wrestle the gun away from him. Of course, as the stranger was walking
behind him, he might never see the kill shot coming.

All of
this went through Luke’s head in a matter of seconds, and then, no more than
ten feet into the woods he struggled through the underbrush and nearly ran
right into a horse. The animal was secured to a tree, standing motionless,
staring through the near-complete darkness at Luke with accusing eyes.

The
stranger brushed past Sarah and then Luke. He reached into a saddlebag and rummaged
through it quickly before pulling out a large disk, roughly the size of a chef’s
serving platter, only much thicker, and apparently, much heavier. The stranger
hefted it with his left hand and reached back into the saddlebag. He pulled out
a second item, this one smaller and lighter. It was a long, clear tube, filled
with what looked in the darkness like a thick liquid.

The
gunman spoke quietly, his voice hard and gravelly. “These things stay with me.
Now, let’s get to that secret room so I can snuggle up with an old black man.”
He gestured again with his gun, indicating that Sarah and Luke should return to
the road. They began working their way back through the brush, Luke wondering
what in the hell was going on.

7

Luke had been getting increasingly
nervous the closer they came to the Paskagankee Tavern. Push was coming to
shove, and he began to wonder whether he had been fooling himself to think the
homicidal stranger would really allow himself to be locked in the slave’s
hiding place, leaving himself completely at Luke’s mercy.

The man
was vicious and brutal, that much had become obvious the moment he pulled the
trigger on the defenseless Matt Fulton, but for all that, he didn’t strike Luke
as dumb. Just the opposite, in fact. He seemed intelligent and, even worse,
cunning and clever.

Luke
decided he would find out soon, because the hulking structure of the
Paskagankee Tavern suddenly materialized out of the predawn darkness as if by
magic and now loomed before the exhausted trio like some haunted house straight
out of a two-penny serial novel. They trudged through the front entrance,
trooped past the bar and into the kitchen, then descended the stairs to the
basement.

No one
spoke. Luke felt as though the supper he had eaten nearly ten hours ago might come
back up at any moment. It was now or never. Would the stranger suddenly recognize
the flaw in his hastily devised plan and simply shoot Luke and Sarah before
high-tailing it out of Paskagankee on his hidden horse, hoping to outrun his
pursuers? Or would he slip inside the secret room, leaving himself at the mercy
of Luke and Paskagankee’s only lawman, Sheriff Stanley Cowles?

Luke
strode to the wall and felt around for the latch hidden in the seam between the
granite blocks. With one tug, the massive block rolled outward on its hinge and
stopped. Luke breathed deeply and said a silent prayer, then turned and lifted
his hand to the opening and waited to see what would happen.

The
stranger eyed him critically and walked into the hidden entryway. Luke’s plan
was going to work! Another step or two and the man would be inside the
passageway to the secret room and Luke could pull the lever, effectively
trapping him inside, ending this nightmare.

Then
the man turned, his body half in and half out of the entryway. He fixed Luke
with a baleful stare and then, ever so slowly, a smile crept across his face.
The smile was hard and devoid of any good humor, and it told Luke the man knew
exactly what he had been thinking. He had known all along.

“Well?”
the stranger said.

“Well,
what?” Luke said.

“Please.
You can’t believe I’m stupid enough to allow you to lock me in here with only a
hundred year old slave for company. Why, the minute the door closed, you’d be
running as fast as your little legs would carry you to the local sheriff’s
house. Hell, you’d probably steal my horse just because you could.”

“I…no,
I…of course not.” Denials were pointless, yet Luke couldn’t stop himself from
issuing them.

“It
don’t matter,” the stranger said, waving his revolver like he was shooing away
a pesky mosquito. “I’ve got the perfect solution to our little problem.”

Luke
felt all hope slipping away. He closed his eyes, wishing this whole cursed
night was just a bad dream, wishing he would wake up and be in his bed and it
would be seven-thirty in the morning, but when he opened his eyes the stranger
was still standing there, waiting. “What?” he finally whispered.

“Your
beautiful bride will join me inside this impressive little hidey-hole. Consider
it my personal insurance policy, because if anyone besides you, and you alone,
is standing there tomorrow morning when you open that door, pretty little Sarah
here will be the first to die. She’ll catch a bullet in the head before she
knows what hit her. But you’ll know, though.” He gave a sly, hideous wink,
“because I’ll make sure you’re watching when I pull the trigger.”

Luke
stared in open-mouthed horror. Sarah? Trapped in that underground room with a
cold-blooded killer? This was worse than anything he had imagined since seeing
Matt Fulton gunned down. How could he be expected to function over the next few
hours, knowing Sarah was trapped in there with this…this…amoral madman?
Wondering what he was doing to her, how he was hurting her, what liberties he
might be taking with her?

Again
the stranger grinned. It was as if he could see straight into Luke’s head. “Who
knows?” he said. “Maybe we’ll have us a little party, you know, just to pass
the time.”

The
urge to rush the man was almost overwhelming. Luke wanted to hit him, strangle
him, to send him to hell where he belonged. Luke was willing to risk taking a
bullet to the brain just to bring an end to this madness. He even took a step
forward, his hands clenched into fists.

But
then the stranger lifted his Colt and pointed it, not at Luke but at Sarah.

The
gunman’s cold eyes locked onto Luke’s and he said, “Not one more step, friend,
or your last memory of your wife will be of seeing her brains splattered all
over the walls of this basement.”

Luke
froze, his hands still balled at his sides.

“That’s
better,” the stranger said. “Now, you listen to me. Don’t say or do nothin’ out
of line, and both you and your little woman will walk out of this place
tomorrow with nothin’ worse than a few unpleasant memories. But if you go to
the sheriff, if you tell my old friends where I’m hiding, or if you say
anything to anyone about that dead body you helped dump in the woods, the next
time you see pretty little Sarah, you ain’t gonna be pleased with the changes
in her appearance. Got it?”

Luke
nodded, swallowing hard. A black despair unlike anything he had ever
experienced washed over him.

“But
there is a bright side. I was just funnin’ ya about getting close to your wife.
She ain’t my type. Hell, I’ll bet she ain’t ever even had more’n one man at a
time.”

“What? I never!”
Sarah said
angrily, her face flushed.

The
stranger smiled, cruel and hard. “See?” he said. “Not my type, so as long as
you do exactly as you’re told and don’t step outta line, you got nothin’ to
worry about on that front. Take too long, though, and that could change,” he
added with a sly grin. “My type or not, a man’s got needs, and like the sailors
say, ‘any port in a storm,’ ain’t that right?”

The
man’s mocking, teasing tone disappeared in an instant, and his voice turned
icy. “So, do we understand each other, friend?”

Luke
nodded, unable to find the strength to form words.

“Good.
Now, come with me, little lady.” The stranger half-turned and indicated the
earthen passageway with a flourish.

Sarah
looked stricken. She stared at Luke with horror in her eyes. Then she trudged
forward, head down, like a condemned prisoner walking to the gallows. As she
passed, Luke reached out and gave her forearm a quick squeeze. She eased past
the stranger without meeting the man’s eyes and then disappeared down the
gloomy passageway.

The
stranger winked at Luke and then said, “All you have to do now is close this
here magic door, and you’ll be on your way to saving your little woman.”

Luke
moved slowly forward. He was confused. There was no need for him to pull the
lever to close the granite slab. The whole point of the design was to eliminate
the need for a second person to be in the basement if a slave was forced to
hide quickly. There was plenty of time for the stranger to pull on the lever
and then get out of the way of the slow-moving granite block as it swung
closed.

He
reached the basement wall and stopped directly in front of the stranger,
sliding his hand into the seam between the massive chunks of granite to locate
the lever. As he did, the stranger said, “I ain’t convinced you won’t run to
the law the minute this here door closes, even if I do have your beautiful
bride with me.”