Domino. Part 30

My hand tightened on Jon's. There was something that Persis still didn't know.

"The second deringer!" I cried. "Someone put that second gun back in the box with the other one. It's there right now."

Persis gasped, and Caleb scowled at me. But he went to the mahogany box and opened it, displaying both pistols, one more 329.

tarnished than the other, which had stayed in its case all these years.

Caleb spoke in apology. "When Laurie told me this second gun had turned up, I thought you'd put it there for some reason of your own, Mrs. Morgan."

"Of course I didn't!"

"I realize that now. But if you didn't put it there, then what does its reappearance mean?"

"I think we all know what it means," Persis said softly. "It means that Noah Armand has come back."

"Maybe," Jon said. "Anyway, I'm not going to wait for morning to ride to Domino and talk to old Tully. There's a full moon, and I'll go there tonight. Mrs. Morgan-those pieces of jewelry that you pretended were stolen-are they in the house in Domino?"

"Yes, they are there. Caleb can tell you where the box is hidden, since he placed it there for me. You may as well retrieve the box and bring it back. You want that bullet, don't you?"

Dully Caleb explained where he had hidden the tin box that contained Persis' jewels, and Jon started for the door.

I stood up, making the quickest decision of my life. "I'll go with you. I want to hear what Tully says."

Caleb said, "That's absurd," and Jon looked at me uncertainly.

"If I were your age, I would go," Persis said, and I dropped a kiss on her cheek.

"I won't try to argue with two Morgans/' Jon said. "Go get out of that fancy dress, Laurie. I'll saddle up and wait for you."

I ran for the stairs, pulling up my long skirts so as not to stumble. In my room I changed quickly to jeans and low boots. My hair was tumbling from its coil on top of my head, and I pulled out the pins and let it hang free. No time to do anything about it now, and I'd cope with tangles later.

Persis had returned to the parlor with Caleb, and she held J.

out a hand to me. "Be careful, Laurie. You're all I've got now. And that man is dangerous."

This time I knew she didn't mean Mark Ingram.

"I'll be with Jon," I told her, and we went outside together.

The ranch seemed quiet, with only the underlying night sounds busy with their whispering. The moon was bright, but it had started to dip down the sky toward the mountains. Over near the Timberline voices still sounded, carrying in the mountain stillness. Lights were ablaze down there, and pain returned as I thought of Belle. Anger as well. Then I turned my back and started for the glow of the barn.

Wind blew cold down the valley, and Old Desolate stood high and black against the sky, with moonlight s.h.i.+ning on its rocky head. I held back my tumbling thoughts. I couldn't wholly accept as yet, or understand. Time enough for all that later. Now I was going to Domino again, and once more I was riding there with Jon.

XX.

The horses stamped and snorted over being disturbed from their sleep, but the cool night made them step out briskly and we rode up the valley at a good pace. My hair blew free in the wind, and it felt good to have it loose from its pins.

Jon wore his revolver this time, and he had thrust a few tools into his jacket pockets. Mostly we rode in silence, with Sundance leading the way. My senses were keed to the night, so that I was aware of the smallest detail, aware most of all of Jon riding ahead of me.

Both valley and r.i.m.m.i.n.g mountains seemed unfamiliar by moonlight, and deep night shadows filled the pine forests and cast patterns that I had never seen before. Down by the stream thickly crowding bushes s.h.i.+mmered like silver in the pale light. Riding with me, as always, was that memory of my terrified gallop up the valley as a child, when I was driven by the mistaken fear that my father had been trapped in the mine and would die there if I didn't reach him.

For the first time that full realization that I had been holding away, not daring to believe, swept through me. Perhaps I had not been responsible for his death, after all. Perhaps I *

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it hadn't been my hand that fired the shot that killed him. Perhaps I could remember him more safely now. With the barriers of pain and fright fading, old and loving memories could come through. Sometime I would talk to Jon about him. Jon would remember him.

As we turned up the shoulder of the mountain, the horses slowed, picking their way on the narrow stony trail. Up ahead, Jon reined Sundance and waited for me to ride up beside him.

"When we come into view of the mine and Domino, we'll tether the horses and go down on foot. The dog will probably announce us, but we can at least be close before he knows we're coming. I don't want to give too much warning, in case the old man doesn't want to see us."

"Will you talk to Tully first or go first to the house?"

"The house first, if we can make it without too much disturbance. I'd like to be sure the box is there before I tackle Tully."

"What could Belle possibly have known concerning him?"

"He was here at the time of the shooting, and he wasn't always Ingram's man. So who knows?"

As we sat our horses, speaking softly, a sudden crack of sound came from a distance, echoing and cras.h.i.+ng against the peaks.

"That was a rifle shot!" Jon said. "It came from the direction of Domino. Come along, but quietly."

Again we rode through the darkness of the pines, pus.h.i.+ng our horses a little. My heart was thumping hard, and I didn't dare think of the implications of that shot, or of who might be waiting for us among Domino's ghosts. Always I had been afraid of Noah, even as a child. I had grown up fearing his name, and I was still afraid.

As we pa.s.sed below the place where Jon and I had crawled out the entrance to the old tunnel, he spoke to me over his shoulder.

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"Yesterday I came up here and filled in the opening with cement. Those old mines are a temptation to kids who want to adventure, or for tourists exploring. n.o.body can get in or out of it now."

Nothing would ever make me go into that place again. I v,as through with mines forever.

We rode out along the moonlit hillside above the shadowy bones of the little town. Patches of ruin gleamed like silver in the pale light. More like silver than the ore that had come out of the mine.

"This is far enough/' Jon said, and dismounted.

He tethered Sundance to a sapling, and then secured Baby Doe. Together we started down the steepening trail into the gulch. Domino lay sleeping in its black and silver world, and the night was utterly still. The dog hadn't heard or scented us yet, and to look at the peaceful scene, no one would guess that a shot had rung out a little while before.

"It's too quiet," Jon whispered.

We continued down the path, expecting to hear at any moment the barking of the dog, and to have Tully challenge us. Or someone else? But nothing stirred. As Jon said, it was all too quiet.

The trail ran past the way to the Old Desolate mine, and glancing toward it, I saw that the entrance stood dark and open, with the door still removed, as Ingram's men must have left it when they went in to find a bullet my great-grandfather had fired so long ago. And to fake the finding of that silver buckle.

Jon took my arm as we went down the last steep pitch of rocky path and stepped into the street that cut through Domino's silver bones. Almost at once we had the answer to part of the silence that greeted us. Ahead, in the middle of the road, lay a black shadow that was not a shadow.

Jon bent over the sprawled body of the dog. "This was the I.

'*1 I.

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shot we heard." He caught me by the arm and pulled me to the side of the road. "I don't like this. Where can old Tully be?"

Scattered timbers offered us slight shelter, but we clung to them, avoiding the center of the street, where the moon shone brightly and any movement would be clear to the watchers. If there were watchers-or a watcher. If horses had come in, they'd been left elsewhere, like our own.

Quietly, keeping near the ruins, we walked the short street. The Tremayne house loomed close, and I was grateful for the shadows of its porch as we ran up the steps. Jon went first, gun in hand, watching for trouble. The door of the house stood open, as it should not have, and inside, the stillness was eerie. As though the house watched us and listened. Or as though someone inside watched and listened?

"Stay near the door till I look through the place," Jon said softly. I paused just across the sill.

He took a flashlight from his jacket and cast its beam through the downstairs rooms, then ran up to the floor above. I heard his light footsteps moving to the front, and then into each room in turn, before he came down to join me at the door.

"There's no one in the house. Let's see if we can find what we came for, and then we'll search for Tully."

"Why hasn't he come out to challenge us? Or to investigate the dog?"

"I don't like it. Come on back to the dining room with me."

We went into the empty room beyond the parlor, and Jon went at once to the far corner and shone the flashlight across the floor.

"Someone's had these boards up," he said. "Maybe we're already too late."

He slipped the gun into its holster and gave me the flashlight. Then, with one of the tools he had brought with him, he pried up a loose board, and then another. I moved the light so 335.

that it would s.h.i.+ne into the hollow under the floor. There vi as nothing there.

From behind us there was suddenly a brighter illumination in the room, and as I whirled about, Jon sprang to his feet. Gail Cullen stood in the doorway, holding a lantern high. She wore tan slacks, a brown jacket with the collar turned up, and a scarf tied around her hair. She, too, had made the night ride from Jasper.

"Thank G.o.d you're here!" she cried. "Hillary needs help! He's fallen in the mine, and you've got to rescue him. But first -there's the old man, outside. We need to get him into the house, out of the cold wind."

Hillary in the mine? But there was no time for astonishment or questions. We followed her to the front of the house and found old Tully lying below the porch, where Gail had left him. Blood streaked his face from a gash on his forehead.

"Who did this?" Jon demanded. "And who shot the dog?"

Already he was gathering up the old man's slight body in his arms, carrying him into the house without waiting for her answers. Gail and I followed. She looked pale in the dim lightand desperate.

"Leave him here," she said. "It's Hillary who needs help."

Jon lowered Tully gently to the floor of what had been the parlor. At once he tried to get up. "Don't go with her! Don't go to the mine! He's got a gun. Killed my dog. Shot 'im."

"Lange killed your dog?" Jon said.

Gail burst in a little wildly. "He had to! This crazy old coot sicced his dog on Hillary. He had to shoot. And then Tully tried to attack him. So Hillary hit him. There was nothing else to do. But don't waste time here. You've got to hurry."

"Noah started it- all," Tully mumbled. "Noah and that Ingram feller."

Jon kneeled beside him. "Tell us," he said. "We'll try to help, but first we need to know what's going on."

Gail made a sound of impatience. "Let it wait till later."

"I keep some stuff here when I'm working," Jon said to me. "There's a bottle of water and some cloths in the kitchen. Get them, Laurie."

I felt torn, anguished. Hillary helpless in the mine? I knew what that was like. But Hillary shooting a dog, striking down an old man? I let it all go and ran back to the kitchen, where I found a thermos bottle of water and a pile of cloths in the galvanized iron sink. In a moment I was back in the room.

Jon gestured to Gail, and she stopped her protesting to kneel beside him. Gently she began to wash the blood from Tully's face and forehead, though her hands were shaking.

"Can you talk?" Jon asked the old man.

Again he made an effort. "Noah-down in the mine. Wasn' dead that time. Twenty years or more ago, I reckon. I heard him down the shaft, yellin' and screechin'. But when I went inside, there wam't no way I could git 'im out."

"We can't stay and listen to this," Gail cried, sitting back on her heels.

"Why is Hillary in the mine?" I asked her.

"Oh, I don't know!" Her vagueness made me uneasy. "I suppose because he's got a thing about that awful place. He's been there before. I suppose it's natural that it should haunt him."

"I don't know what you're talking about. What has Hillary x to do with the Old Desolate?"

"Plenty. I suppose I may as well tell you. It doesn't matter now. That time when your dog was lost, Hillary found him over near the mine chasing chipmunks. So he put him inside that end of the tunnel the dog had dug open and phoned Caleb to give him a story for you. You know how Hillary can change his voice when he wants to. You did what he expected and went looking for Red. So then he shut you into the mine too. Just to give you a taste of what it's like. He meant to play the hero later and rescue you. Only Jon beat him to it."

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"But why would he do a thing like that?" I cried in disbelief.

Something was missing-the key to all this.

"Because- Oh, how can I tell? You know how he is! You know how excited he gets. Too excited."

I still didn't know what she was talking about. Of course Hillary got kejed up and excited. That as part of whatever genius droe him. But he couldn't-wouldn't-have shut me into the mine!

"He's an extreme manic-depressive and getting much worse," Gail said. "Do you understand what that is?"

Jon broke in. "Hush a minute, both of you. Tully wants to talk."

The old man was struggling again to put his thoughts into words, and we were quiet, listening. His story went back twenty years, to the day that Noah Armand had fled from Jasper, expecting pursuit because he'd killed a man. He had meant to hide temporarily inside the Old Desolate, Tully said.

"When I couldn't help, he told me to go git somebody. But not from Jasper. So I went off on my own."

"While he was gone, Ingram had come searching for Noah and had heard him shouting from the mine. Noah had fallen down the main shaft in the dark and was badly hurt. When Ingram tried to rescue him, he fell too, and smashed his leg. They were stuck there for a day or more, until Tully brought back a couple of squatters he'd been seeking.

Between them they managed to get Ingram out, though his leg had turned pretty bad by that time. He was taken by muleback to a doctor, and Tully lost track of him after that. Until a year or so ago, when he turned up pretty flashy-rich, and with a new leg. He'd hired Tully as a watchman for Domino, and that had been fine. Even got a dog for him.

I pressed the old man to tell us what had happened to Noah Armand, and he mumbled out what little he knew. They'd all thought Noah dead when Ingram was brought out of the mine.

Couldn't blame Ingram for that-he was mostly out of his head himself. But Tully and his pals went back for the body and found Noah alive and delirious. So they got him out too. By the time he mended a bit-nursed right here in the old Tremayne house-he wasn't altogether right in his head. Though he was strong enough to go off on his own eventually, and Tully never heard a word about him again.

Tully had gotten smart to Ingram right away, he told us. "A big grudge that feller is carrying. Blames everybody for losing his leg-but mostly old Mrs. Morgan, because she drove her husband out and made everything happen. Said he was going to pay her off if it was the last thing he ever did. Maybe he'll think different after what's happened to Belle."