Part 19 (1/2)

That brought me up from the bed at once, and I went to open the door. ”What have you heard?”

”A man from town telephoned to report that when he as out on a ch.o.r.e for Mark Ingram, he heard a dog barking over near the mine. He didn't investigate, but when he got back to the hotel and mentioned it, Belle Durant said it might be your dog. So he called to tell us.”

I made up my mind quickly. ”I'll ride over there and look for him. I need to get out anyway. I need something to do.”

Caleb seemed uneasy with me, as though bringing everything out in the open had made him even more uncomfortable about me than before. Until now he had veiled his dislike a little. Now it looked hotly out of his eyes, and he made no attempt to dissuade me.

”As you please,” he said, and went away.

I changed quickly into jeans, s.h.i.+rt, and jacket, and started for the barn. As I followed the path, I looked off toward Old Desolate and saw-consciously this time-the gate that led away from the ranch. Now I remembered. Those men who had ridden off yesterday after the attack on Jon had gone through that gate without stopping on their gallop up the valley. The gate had been left open behind them, and no one had gone to close it for some time. I had been thinking only of Jon's injuries and the need to get help for him. Red could easily have dashed through that opening. The dog that had been heard near the mine must be Red. He was a town dog, and not used to free s.p.a.ces. He might not know how to get back to the ranch.

I was glad to have a strong purpose in this hour when I needed something important to do. It never occurred to me to question Caleb's message.

XIV.

Sam was in the barn, and he helped me saddle Baby Doe. In answer to my question he said that Jon was feeling better, but was still sore from the beating and was taking it a bit easy today. I thought of stopping in to see him, but if Jon knew what I meant to do he might insist on coming with me, no matter how he felt. I didn't want that. Let him rest.

”Somebody heard a dog barking over near the mine,” I told the boy. ”So I'm going to ride up there to see if I can find Red.”

”Want me to go with you?” Sam asked.

I shook my head. I still needed to be alone. I had to figure out, among other things, what I was going to say before I saw Jon. I wanted very much to talk with him, but first I must try to find my direction.

”Better take this with you,” Sam said when I was in the saddle, and he handed up a flashlight. I thrust it into a pocket and turned Baby Doe's head up the valley.

The high cone of Old Desolate beckoned me, as it had since I was a child, and I found the mountain stillness comforting.

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Human problems grew small in the face of all this vastness, and I needed that sort of perspective now.

How unreal were the lives we had been leading, I thought as I rode along. If only I could recapture the essence of that little girl who had once ridden up this valley on a pony beside her father. But that had disappeared forever. It had vanished in the sound of a single shot that had gone echoing through Morgan House.

That was when all the lies had begun that changed our lives. My grandmother's first of all, in the deceptive trail she had built to fool the world. Caleb had gone along, doing her bidding. But not, I thought, quite as willingly as she supposed. My mother's whole life from that time on had been a lie. She had given herself to concealing the truth, even from me, and if she had suffered over my father's death, or longed for the return of her lover, she had never let anyone know.

I had a strong feeling that Noah must never have returned. Surely if he had, if only to get in touch with her, I would have been aware of some change in Marybeth Morgan. But for as long as I could remember, she had been the same-a sad woman, gentle and loving, but somehow hopeless. It was difficult to imagine her with the sort of spirit it must have taken to be willing to leave her husband and her child and run away with Noah Armand.

Why had he never turned up again? If he had cared enough to come back to the house for her, if they had planned to run off together, leaving my grandmother's fortune behind, why had he never been heard from since? There was a strange mystery here that troubled me. Was there more to what had occurred than Caleb had told me?

Could something have happened to Noah in that house? Could there really have been some quick vengeance? But at whose hands? Caleb's? Persis Morgan's, as I'd thought earlier?

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Persis was her father's daughter. And there was a missing deringer that might have been fired and had to be concealed.

I didn't care for these thoughts that had begun to haunt me, and I tried to give myself to an awareness of the beauty of mountains and valley all around me, and that vault of blue overhead. I had enough horrors to make my peace with now without dreaming up new and terrifying problems.

Baby Doe carried me along at a moderate pace, and from time to time I gazed off toward the high shoulder of the mountain, where the trail led toward Domino. Suddenly a tiny movement up there caught my eye. As my sight adjusted from sunny meadow to darker spruce, I made out a figure almost lost in the shadow of the trees. A man on a horse. His face showed as a white patch, watching my progress up the valley. He was too far off for me to identify, and he could have been anyone at all -man or woman.

The watching presence worried me after what had happened to Jon, but I didn't want to turn back. Riding on, I whistled now and then and called Red's name, but there was no sign of my dog anywhere. When I next looked up at the stand of spruce trees, the rider was gone. I was not particularly afraid. Perhaps my mind was too full of all that I had learned, all the puzzles that still faced me, for there to be any room for fear. I had lived through too much today to be able to fear anything more.

Baby Doe's pace slowed as she started up the slope. She picked her way over stony ground, her hooves clattering on rock, the sound echoing from the peaks. Once as we followed the trail, I seemed to hear a faint, distant whining, and I reined in at once to listen. But when the horse was still, I could hear only the wind in the trees and the noise of a dislodged stone rolling down the path. Again I called Red's name, but there was no response, so I rode on. I didn't know until later how 221.

close to him I was, and that the mountain itself and his own thras.h.i.+ng must have kept him from hearing me.

Near the tall spruce trees I found the area empty of human presence. The only movement was among mountain jays, and the chipmunks that played among the rocks below the trail. Only a few hoof marks in the earth betrayed the presence of the rider who had sat in this spot watching my journe) up the valley.

^Vhen I came out along the far side, I paused again and ave myself to the impact of the view. E^ en with all this new desolation inside me- a desolation that matched that of the mountain itself- I felt the same surge of emotion that I had experienced the last time I saw Domino.

Those few broken houses, the single dusty street far below, caught at my heart. It was as if I were being pulled back into my childhood, back into lives I had never known that still affected me. Back, perhaps, to a safer time, before I, too, had begun to live a lie, deceiving myself most of all.

In the gulch below me straggled the timbers of what had once been the thriving mining camp, and I found again the one house that had been preserved and that still belonged to Persis Morgan. As I sat my horse, studying it, something seemed to move down there- as it had before. Had m mysterious horseman gone down into Dornino, and was he perhaps watching me from amid the wreckage? No matter if he was. Undoubtedly there were riders up the valley from time to time, doing Ingram's bidding, but they needn't threaten me. What had happened to Jon had been deliberate, planned, and no one except Caleb and Sam knew I was here.

In any case it was not down into Domino that I would ride today. The mine ruins lay over on my right, with the remnants of the trail leading toward them. I followed the curve of the hill past ugly tailing mounds, still calling for my dog.

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I had no answer, and I was afraid my search was hopeless. But before I turned back, I would ride a little closer to the entrance and try shouting for Red again. I knew that if he could hear me he would respond with an ecstasy of barking.

Baby Doe picked her way gingerly along the slope. Now, as I neared the entrance, I saw something surprising. The door to the mine stood open. The entry was a gaping black hole in the side of the mountain, with the wooden door standing open on its hinges, the padlock hanging loose. I felt hair stir at the nape of my neck, and I knew that an eerie fear of this place was part of my childhood. A fear that reason could not quiet.

Here in this high spot the sun was hot on my face, reflecting from the tailings, where nothing grew, yet at the same time a wind moaned around the shoulder of Old Desolate, cold at the back of my neck. As cold as the valley wind had been yesterday in the cemetery. I wanted nothing more than to wheel my horse about and escape from this haunted place as quickly as I could.

But reason held me there. With the mine open Red could have wandered inside. He could be helplessly trapped, and the least I could do was to go to the entrance and call to him.

Near the square black opening, framed in supporting timbers, I dismounted and peered in. Past the doorway there was nothing to be seen but blackness. A cold musty odor seemed to flow out from the depths of the mountain.

Again I shouted for Red, and this time, faintly and from a distance, but more distinctly than before, I heard the high whining of a dog. I called out loudly, and there was a wild barking and yelping in response. I knew a cry for help when I heard it. Red was in the mine and trapped in some way so that he couldn't get out.

kl checked myself from rus.h.i.+ng headlong through that open door, remembering the things Jon had told me about old mines. I would take no chances. Perhaps I could ride down 223.

into Domino and get old Tully, the watchman, to help me find my dog.

The barking grew more frantic. I looped Baby Doe's reins through the rusty iron handle of the open door and took out my flashlight. Before I went for help I would see if I could locate the direction of Red's barking. The slim pencil of light helped very little in cutting the black wall of darkness, but at least it showed a flat expanse of earth that hadn't been choked with debris. I went in a few steps, listening to the explosions of sound Red was making. Because of the echoing inside the mine it was difficult to find the exact direction, but it seemed to come from a tunnel that branched off on my right. I moved a few cautious steps more toward the sound, shouting again to keep him barking. My voice roused further echoes that seemed to crash through the rocky tunnels of the mine.

I tried speaking more quietly, telling him to ”Stay,” asiuring him that I would be back for him soon. Then I turned toward the welcome square of sunlight that marked the opening. If Tully was of no use to me, then I must ride back to the ranch and get Sam.

I had gone inside farther than I'd intended, and as I moved toward the door, something terrifying happened. Without warning the sunlit square of the opening was no longer square. A wedge of blackness had cut across it, and the yellow band was swiftly narrowing. Even as I flung myself toward the opening, the wooden door slammed shut and I heard the click of the padlock that secured it. Outside, Baby Doe whinnied and stamped.

I called out frantically. ”Wait, wait! Don't go away! I'm in here-don't shut me in!”

But whoever had closed that door had seen my horse and must know where I was. So the closing of the door had been deliberate.

Outside I heard Baby Doe whinny again, heard another 224.

horse answer, followed by the sound of hooves moving away. I shouted again in desperation so that the echoes crashed and Red began to yelp piteously-at some distance away.

The noise was awful, and I made myself be still, listening. Beyond the door there was only silence. The horses were gone. It was not by any mistake that I had been shut in here and my horse led away.

Panic surfaced and I threw myself against the wooden door, hoping the hinges might give, or the wood splinter. But though the boards shuddered, my only reward was a bruised shoulder. I stopped my a.s.sault quickly.