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They made fairly good time, stopping each night and bedding down in the open. It was cold, but it felt more like home. Over the course of his twenty-five years, Jed figured he had slept out more than he’d slept in. At least sleeping out in the open, away from towns, he didn’t have to worry about any miscreant—now, there was a fine word for you—creeping in and robbing him blind.
Three days later he stopped to buy cheese and soda biscuits and drink himself a real cup of coffee. He was in an unfamiliar area, but as the crow flies, it looked to be the most direct route to Foggy Valley. “What are the roads like to the southwest of here?” he asked the man behind the counter, who appeared to be roughly a hundred and fifty years old.
The old man shifted a wad of tobacco and spat through the open door, splashing the red clay a foot away from McGee’s big, splayed hoof. “Tol’able,” he said. “Old wagon road’s growed up some. Most folks takes the new road now.”
Jed would as soon avoid “most folks.” Surprise was his ace in the hole. One of them. If Stanfield knew money was on the way to pay off George’s loan, he would think of some way to stop it.
“Where will I find this wagon road? You say it heads generally southwest?”
“West-by-sou’west. Switchbacks aplenty once it gits into Miller territory. Wouldn’t go there if I was you. Rough country.”
Switchbacks didn’t bother him. Neither did rough country. “How much I owe you?”
The old man named a figure that was several times what the goods were worth, and Jed paid without comment. From the looks of the place, he might be the only customer all week. So far, his traveling expenses had amounted to a dish of chicken pie in Salem and the cigar he’d bought to take to George, to celebrate paying off the loan.
This time the nightmare was slightly different. This time Eleanor was buried under tons of earth, unable to claw her way free, unable to scream for help. She waited for the dream to fade, and then she whispered, “I am not helpless! I am intelligent, resourceful and…”
Trapped. Still trapped, despite her determination to escape, in a world that lagged a hundred years behind the times, held captive by a people who were obsessed by gold fever. A people who wrote their own laws and lived by them. A soft-spoken people who were distrustful of outsiders, even those who came into the valley by marriage, as Eleanor had.
They were her late husband’s family. Cousins to the nth degree, inbred, uneducated, a few of them even vicious, especially after sampling the product of their own illicit distillery.
Once her breathing settled down, she slid out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of cool buttermilk. Back home in Charlotte—in her other life—it would have been warm cocoa. Turning the glass slowly in her hands, she studied the pattern etched into the sides. It was one of only three left of the set of tumblers she’d brought with her. The matched set of china had suffered even more. Two days spent jouncing in the back of a freight wagon, no matter how carefully packed, was lethal on fine china and crystal.
The silver that had belonged to two generations of her family hadn’t even begun the trip. Instead it had been sold by her bridegroom to finance yet another piece of equipment for his damn-blasted gold mine.
His mythical gold mine. No matter how they might carve up the earth in search of a new vein, the Millers were deluding themselves, Eleanor was convinced of it. Just because sixty years ago, Devin’s grandfather had found a lump of pure gold and a vein that looked promising, staked a claim and brought in his entire family to dig it out, that didn’t mean there were more riches still waiting to be uncovered. It meant only that the Millers, her late husband among them, were seriously deranged when it came to the subject of gold.
And just as deranged if they thought they could hold her prisoner here until she married one of them, who would then control what they called “Dev’s shares.” His grandfather’s shares—the major portion of their elusive wealth.
A hundred shares of nothing was still nothing, but try and convince the Millers of that. She’d been trapped in this wild, forsaken place ever since Devin had been killed, and she still hadn’t managed to convince anyone that letting her go back to Charlotte would not bring the world rushing in to steal their precious gold.
Tomorrow night she would try again. After last night’s fiasco, they might not be expecting her to try again so soon.
Later that morning Eleanor looked around the cramped log cabin, taking inventory of what she would be forced to leave behind. There was little left now, certainly nothing she could carry away with her. Devin had sold practically everything of value she possessed, most of it before they’d left Charlotte. He had obviously thought that because she owned her own home and dressed nicely, she must be well-to-do.
Nothing could be further from the truth. She had inherited the house from the elderly cousin who had taken her in after her parents had died, and could barely make ends meet on her meager salary.
But then, Devin hadn’t asked, and she certainly hadn’t told him how little a schoolteacher earned. The irony was that they had both been taken in. Devin’s charm had been no more genuine than her imagined wealth. Not that he hadn’t played his role well. Surprisingly well, considering his background. It would never have passed muster if she’d been more experienced. The proverbial old-maid schoolteacher, she’d been naive enough and flattered enough to swallow his line, bait, hook and sinker.
Looking back, she couldn’t believe how blind she had been. Not only had she invited a stranger into her home, she had practically begged him to make a fool of her. Loneliness was no excuse, nor was the fact that the day they’d met had been her twenty-fifth birthday and there’d been no one to help her celebrate. Cousin Annie had been dead several months by then. Her friends were all married, some with growing families.
The truth was, she’d been feeling like the last cold biscuit in the basket. Then along came Devin Miller, stepping out of the haberdashery just as she walked by with an armload of books. She had dropped the books; he had helped her pick them up, and almost before she realized what was happening he was courting her with flowers, candy and blatant flattery. And fool that she was, she’d lapped it up like a starving puppy.
Oh, yes, she’d been ripe for the plucking, her only excuse being that no one had ever tried to pluck her before. Which was how she came to be in a situation that nothing in her quiet, uneventful life could have prepared her for. Held captive by a bunch of gold-obsessed men—the women were almost as bad—who were convinced that any day now, they would all be rich as kings and never have to work another day in their misbegotten lives.
A place where women were considered chattels; education was the devil’s handiwork, and flatlanders—people from “away”—were looked on with suspicion bordering on paranoia.
Her first attempt to escape after Devin had been killed had failed simply because she hadn’t realized at the time that she was a prisoner. Couldn’t conceive of such a thing. She’d walked boldly down the crooked path to the settlement at the base of Devin’s Hill one morning a few weeks after his death, and asked if anyone was planning a trip to town, and if so, could she please ride with them as she needed to make arrangements to return to her home.
Her polite request had been met with blank stares or averted glances. Finally an old woman everyone called Miss Lucy had explained that as Devin’s widow—she’d called it widder-woomern—her home was up on Devin’s Hill.
For her second attempt, she’d waited until after dark and left a lamp burning in case anyone was watching. Sparing only a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she had hurried across the small clearing, her goal being to reach one of the outlying farms she’d seen only from a distance. Devin had once told her that they were not his kin, but they’d been allowed to stay anyway, as their families had been there for generations.
Allowed to stay?
At the time, she hadn’t understood the ramifications.
Now she did.
Like a thief in the night, she’d moved swiftly, slipping between gardens and outhouses, thankful for the moon that allowed her to avoid knocking over woodpiles or stepping in any unmentionables.
She’d made it past the first three houses, past two leaning sheds and an overgrown cornfield. Only a few miles to go and she would have been safe. Exhilarated to have gotten so far, she’d tried to plan—or as much as a woman could when she had no home, no relatives and no money.
As it turned out, all the planning in the world would have done her no good. Before she’d passed the last house, the one belonging to the Hooters, Varnelle and Alaska, whose mother had been a Miller, Alaska had stepped out from behind the outhouse, a jug of what Devin had called popskull in each hand and a grin on his long, bony face.
“Where you goin’, Elly Nora?”
She could hardly say she was going for a stroll, not when she was carrying all her worldly possessions except for her books, her china and crystal and the sofa that Dev had been planning to trade for a Cornish pump when he’d died.
“I’m going home,” she’d told him, knowing she wouldn’t be. Not this time, at least.
“Now, you don’t want to go nowhere. Poor old Dev, he’d be heart-broke, and him not hardly cold in the ground yet.”
By then her husband had been dead nearly two months. After the long, hard winter they’d just gone through, he was as cold as he was ever likely to get. “I just want to go home, Alaska. Back to Charlotte.”
“We can’t let you do that, Elly Nora.”
She’d been so crushed with disappointment she hadn’t bothered to argue, knowing it would do no good. Alaska had escorted her back to the cabin. Neither of them had said another word.
And then, shortly after her second attempt at escape, what she’d come to think of as the courting parade had begun. Even now, she could hardly believe it, but the bachelors of Dexter’s Cut, practically every one of them between the ages of eighteen and fifty, had waited three months to the day after Devin had blown himself up to try their luck with his widow.
She hadn’t laughed—it wasn’t in her to hurt a man’s feelings, not even a Miller. Instead, she had listened to their awkward proposals and then gently declined every one of them, praying she would never reach a point when she would regret it.
Chapter Two
A hand-lettered sign warned against trespassing. Traveling cross-country as he often did, that was one big word Jed had learned to recognize. But roadways were roadways, and while this one was overgrown, the rutted tracks were still visible.
He could hear the sound of rushing water close by. Evidently McGee heard it, too, from the way he picked up his pace. Jed gave the gelding his head and held on to his own hat as the horse broke through a dense laurel slick to emerge on the banks of a shallow creek some ten feet wide.
He could use a break, and this was as good a place as any. He had saved some of the cheese and soda crackers he’d bought earlier that morning—but first a drink. The sight of all that water made him realize how thirsty he was. Dismounting, he slapped McGee on the hindquarters, knowing the horse was going nowhere until he’d drunk his fill. Founder at the trough, if he let him. Damned horse didn’t have a grain of sense.
He was on his knees lowering his face to the rippling surface when a sound and a scent made him glance over his shoulder. One look was all it took.
Ah, Jesus, not now.
Guns and whiskey spelled trouble in any language, but in the hands of a mob of dirty, grinning polecats like the five lining up behind him, the odds weren’t all that favorable. His best bet was to get to the other side of the creek, but something told him he wasn’t going to have a chance. “You fellows want to talk about it?” he asked, his mind reeling out possible excuses for being here.
One man held an old Sharps bear rifle; another one carried a newer Winchester and the tallest carried a spade over his shoulder. That left two men unarmed, which helped even the odds.
But not a whole lot.
“Have at ’em, McGee,” Jed whispered, his hands closing over a river rock.
“We wanna talk about it, boys? ’Pears to me we got us a traipser.” Winchester grinned, revealing a total of three long, yellow teeth.
A traipser? Would that be a trespasser? Jed wondered.
“I might have got lost and—” That was as far as he got before the shovel caught him on the side of the head. From that point on, things went rapidly downhill. Later, he would dimly recall hearing a lot of hooting and hollering, rifles being fired and a gleeful suggestion that they tan his hide and nail it to the side of the barn as a warning to “traipsers.”
His head ringing with pain, he fought back, the fear of death lending him strength. He even managed to get in a few good licks, mostly with his feet, but five against one pretty much settled the outcome. At least they didn’t shoot him outright, but that damned spade was almost as lethal. All he could do was roll with the punches, try to protect his vitals and hope the sumbitches would fall down dead drunk before they managed to finish him off.
His boots… “Ah, Jesus, no!” he yelped, feeling his ankle twist in a way it was never meant to twist.
The smell of whiskey was everywhere. If they doused him with the stuff and set him on fire—
He tried to roll toward the creek. Someone kicked him in the ribs, and then the others joined in, cackling and shouting suggestions. On his hands and knees, Jed tried to crawl toward the bushes, but they followed him, kicking and jabbing him with the butt of a rifle.
“Git that there hoss ’fore he gits away!” one of them shouted.
“Hit ’im wi’ the shovel ag’in, it won’t kill ’im!”
“You git the hoss, them boots is mine!” The voices came from all sides, like buzzards circling over a dying animal.
“I got ’is hat. Gimme yer jug, ’Laska,” someone yelled.
“Go git yer own jug, mine’s empty.”
They seemed to come from a distance now, the voices…but then everything came from a distance. Either they were leaving or his head wasn’t working properly. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, but God, he hurt!
For what could have been minutes, could have been days, he lay facedown in the dirt, hurting too much to move even if he could have found the strength. He could still hear the bastards, but the voices came from much farther away now. Unless his ears were playing tricks on him.
He was afraid to lift his head to look around, afraid that damned spade would connect with the side of his head again. Better to play possum until he felt like taking them on.
Oh, yeah…that would be right after Sam Stanfield apologized for any discomfort he’d caused him eight years ago and invited him to take dinner with him and his family at the Bar Double S ranch.
“McGee?” he rasped. God, even his voice hurt.
No answering whinny. If the damned horse would just move in close enough, he might be able to reach a stirrup and haul himself up. In the bottom of one of his saddlebags he had a Colt .45, but it wasn’t going to do him much good unless he could get to it before they came back.
“Git that hoss.” Had he heard them correctly? McGee would eat them alive if they laid a hand on him. Wouldn’t he?
Jed listened some more. Had little choice, lacking the strength to move. From time to time, hearing the sounds of drunken revelry from farther and farther away, he called to McGee, but either the horse had taken off or he was ignoring him.
Or he’d been stolen.
“Hellfire,” he muttered. Groaning, he rolled over onto his back and blinked up at the treetops.
The sun had moved. He was maybe twenty-five feet from the creek now, and there was no sign of McGee and his saddlebags. Or of his boots.
Sunovabitch. They’d stolen his boots, Jed thought, fighting the urge to rid his sore gut of the only meal he’d had since yesterday.
Now what? Lie here like a lump of buzzard bait until they came back and finished him off? It wasn’t his nature to run from a fight, but five against one, even when the five were drunk as coots, that was just asking for trouble.
Downhill would be easiest. Trouble was, downhill was where the sound of all that hooting and hollering was coming from. The storekeeper had said it was rough country. Like a fool, Jed had thought he meant the condition of the road.
Varnelle set the basket of supplies on the edge of the porch and turned to go without a single word, despite the fact that Eleanor was standing in the open doorway.
“Varnelle? Do you have to leave? I could make us some tea.”
No answer, unless the toss of a mop of red hair could be construed as a reply. Of the entire clan, the shy, peppery Varnelle had always been her favorite. Any sign of friendship had ended when the bachelor parade had begun. “Is it because you’re jealous?” she called after the retreating figure, not expecting an answer, not getting one.
Why on earth would such a pretty girl be jealous of a plain woman nearly ten years her senior? It could only be because they considered her an heiress, the sole beneficiary of Devin’s unwritten will. Unwritten only because the Millers didn’t bother to write their laws, but obeyed some primitive slate of laws all their own.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is beyond absurd,” she muttered. “If I don’t soon get away, I might do something desperate.”
Like shoot her way out. She didn’t even have that option any longer since the men had gone through the house and shed, claiming everything of Dev’s except for his tooth powder. They had taken his guns, his clothes and every bit of mining equipment he owned, most of it bought with the proceeds from the sale of her house and furniture.
She hadn’t argued at the time because—well, because one didn’t argue at such a time, one simply went through the rituals, a few of them rather bizarre, and quietly made plans for the future.
For all the good her plans had done her.
“Help me, Varnelle,” she whispered to the glossy dark rhododendrons. “Come back and tell me what to do. Help me to get away and you can have anything of mine you want, including this cabin.”
Her clothes? Varnelle was short and nicely rounded, while Eleanor was tall and skinny as a walking stick. If anything could be made over to fit her, Eleanor would gladly hand over every stitch she possessed, even the rose-colored silk she’d been married in.
Oh, yes—especially that.
Her books? Varnelle could read and write—just barely. But she had never expressed the least interest in borrowing any of the books Eleanor had brought with her.
They could have found something to talk about, though, Eleanor was sure of it. “You could tell me how you manage to make your red hair so shiny and smooth,” she whispered, touching her own hair, which she managed to tame only by ruthless brushing, braiding and pinning it up before the braids could unravel.
“I’m no threat to you, Varnelle,” she said plaintively, seeing a glimpse of faded pink some five hundred feet below as the younger woman left the laurel slick and hurried past Alaska’s cove. “In my best day, which was too long ago to recall, I was never anywhere near as pretty as you are. Why do you resent me so?”
Dropping down to sit on the edge of the porch, she nibbled a cold biscuit from the basket and wondered idly how close the kinship was between Varnelle and Hector. Hector was easily the best looking of all the Millers now that Devin was dead. He’d been guardedly friendly to her whenever he’d been the one to bring her supplies.
Miss Lucy had explained when Devin had first taken her down the hill to introduce her to his family, that for years she’d been responsible for keeping track of such things in order to prevent inbreeding amongst the clan. The old woman had seemed pleased at the time that Devin had married an outsider, saying that new blood in the clan would make arranging marriages easier in the future.
Come to think of it, she had mentioned Varnelle and Hector at the time. Eleanor remembered thinking that Varnelle was still a child. She was definitely no child now, not the way she had filled out her faded gowns. As for Hector, Devin had once told her that his cousin had gone all the way through the third grade.
My God, Eleanor thought—she had taught the third grade.
“One day, when Heck makes his strike,” Varnelle had confided back in those early days when she hadn’t been quite so resentful, “he’s a-gonna marry me and move to Charlotte or maybe even New York, and we’re not niver comin’ back here n’more.”
“Then who would work Heck’s share?” Eleanor had asked. The gold shares were vitally important to everyone in Dexter’s Cut, whether or not any more gold was ever found.
“They’s plenty that would for a cut.”
Share and share alike, that was the Millers. Hound dogs and chickens, moonshine and occasionally even women, but not the gold. At least not with outsiders.
