Part 24 (2/2)

Caleb started to object, but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand. ”Go and work on my will. Let me be.”

He hesitated in the doorway, and for once I thought he might refuse to do as she directed.

She spoke to him sharply. ”No more plotting, no more schemes. I'll do what I must do.”

He bowed slightly and went out of the room, his shoulders held stiffly, the tension inside him almost visible.

”What do you mean by plotting and schemes?” I asked when he was gone.

”Oh, don't think I haven't guessed how much he's counted on my will to free him from the bondage he's lived under most of his life. I know he has schemed to influence me.”

Her words made me uneasy. ”Yet you put your temporary will right into his hands? You trusted him with it?”

”In his own way he's loyal to me. His scheming won't carry him far enough to destroy what I've trusted to him. He might cut himself out entirely that way. But enough about Caleb. Go and get me that box, Laurie.”

I stood uncertainly beside her bed. The thought of doing what she asked filled me with dismay. I had no wish ever to touch that fateful box again.

”Better get it for her,” Belle said. ”I'll stay right here with your grandmother.”

Moved by a will that was stronger than any of ours, I went downstairs. At the door of the back parlor I paused with my hand on the k.n.o.b. I had never wanted to step into this room again, yet now I must.

When I pushed open the door and walked in, I found that nothing had been changed or touched. No one had closed the heavy draperies that I'd flung open. This afternoon no sun poured in the windows, and the lights were still burning as I had left them. As I looked about the room thunder went re erberating along the peaks and a spate of rain streaked the gla.s.s.

This room must be cleaned now, I thought. Perhaps refurnished. Its ghosts must be laid and old tragedy thrown off. But old tragedy was still new to me, and I felt a little sick as I followed my own footsteps through the dust to the rosewood table. When I touched the lid of the flat mahogany box, my skin seemed to shrink. Yet no reverberations ran through rne. All that was over. My dread was different now-it grew out of knowledge of my own act. I was able to pick up the box and take it out of the room.

Gail was coming down the stairs, with Jon behind her, carrying her bags. She had packed her belongings in haste, and as ready to leave.

Jon went to the door. ”Wait here,” he told her, ”and I'll bring the jeep around. It's started to rain.” He looked at the box in my hands. ”You'll be fine, Laurie,” he said, and went outside. Strangely, I knew I would be.

Gail sat down on one of her bags and regarded me mockingly. ”I wish you luck. I'll be glad to move on to another patient.”

”Are you going back to Denver?”

”I don't know yet.”

There seemed nothing more to say, and I didn't want to go on making idle conversation. I started past her up the stairs.

”You've been terribly foolish, you know,” she said, looking up at rne. ”You had a lot when you carne here. Now what do you have? Only the knowledge of what you've done, of what 2J2.

you really are. How are you going to live with that for the rest of your life?”

”I've already begun to live with it,” I said, and hurried away from the tormenting sound of her voice.

At my grandmother's door I braced myself before entering the room.

She was still sitting up against her pillows, with only a bedside lamp holding away the gray afternoon. Draperies had been left open upon rain-swept mountains, and Persis was staring out through streaming panes. Belle watched as I carried the box to a table, and as I set it down Persis glanced at it briefly, then looked away. She, too, must find it hard to face what this box held, but she permitted herself no weakness.

”We will open it together,” she said. And then, irrelevantly, perhaps postponing the moment, she asked, ”Do you like the rain, Laurie?”

”Mostly I'm used to city rain,” I told her. ”Suburban rain. A storm seems more threatening here.”

She went on, musing almost absently, ”I've always loved storms in the mountains. They're much too tame down below. Rain can drive and blow with real fury up here, and it takes st.u.r.dy building to stand against the storms year after year. And st.u.r.dy men and women.”

The first spate had turned into slanting sheets of water flung against the gla.s.s of every window, so that the closed room whispered with rain and wind sounds. Lightning flashed and a clap of thunder followed quickly, reverberating. I could imagine every gully, every canyon running with water, sweeping down in its sudden, dangerous course.

Belle motioned me toward a chair near the bed. ”I'm not all that crazy about storms, so I think I'll stay awhile before I go after my things. Laurie, let me wipe off that box before you open it.”

I was grateful for her solid presence, even though whatever came now must lie between my grandmother and me. At best Belle belonged in the real world. Her very presence made nightmare unreal.

When the smudged dust had been wiped from the lid, Persis reached out to touch one of the bra.s.s clasps, but she didn't release it.

”Open it, Laurie.”

I tried not to hesitate. This time I knew how the clasps worked, and I raised the lid upon the single small gun within. Its silver mounting shone dully in the muted light, and though I no longer feared the flash of silver, I drew my hand back quickly.

”Deringers always came in pairs,” Persis said. ”There were two of these originally, and they had a history.”

In spite of the graceful silver decorations the small gun seemed ugly, blunt-nosed, chopped off. I still couldn't look at it without s.h.i.+vering.

”Hand it to me,” she said.

I had wanted never to touch that bit of murderous metal again, but her tone of voice was not to be disobeyed. I lifted the deringer from the box by its stubby barrel and gave it to her, b.u.t.t first, surprised, now that I was paying attention, to find it so light in my hand.

She took it firmly, clearly familiar with the feel of it in her own hand. Yet I knew this was costing her something too. What she held lay at the heart of all she had tried to close away in that room downstairs. Why she was putting us both through this ordeal, I didn't know, and I could only wait.

”This is a .41,” she said. ”That's a fairly large caliber for so small a gun. It can fire only one shot. That's why there were always two in a set, Malcolm Tremayne bought the real thing, as you can see. Henry Deringer's own markings are on it, and that 274.

pineapple design he used for the finial ornament is his as well. Of course his name is on the plate, too. Look.” I made myself read the lettering.

DERINGER PHILADELPHIa ”Just one )' in his name/' Persis pointed out. ”They didn't add another r until counterfeits and imitations became cornmon. By that time 'derringer' was a generic term for this type of pistol. This one is a muzzle-loader because Henry Deringer was stubborn about switching to the breech-loader for this particular gun.

Such history meant little to me, even though I listened. I only knew that this was the weapon that had killed my father. A weapon that I had fired. I began to feel a little sick, and Belle noticed, going quickly to bring me a gla.s.s of water.

”Drink this,” she said. ”Did you know that deringers were the guns the forty-niners carried? Along with their shorthandled spades and their was.h.i.+ng pans. A gun like that took up so little room, but it could be devastating at close range.”

I knew all about that.

Persis was watching me. ”They were handy for gamblers, as well as prost.i.tutes and bartenders. Southern ladies used to hide them in their bodices for protection when they went riding in lonely places. But better handguns came in and they went out of style. My father was proud of his pair. The original trim was German silver, but he had additional decoration put on over the iron. Silver from the Old Desolate. That's why this one is so extensively silvered. They weren't made of steel, you know. Iron barrels were used. The steel imitations were often better guns, but this was one of those rare early ones. When I was small, Father still carried them both loaded for quick use, because, like the rest of the West, Jasper saw some rough times in the early days.”

Her voice droned on-almost a monotone-and at last I un- derstood what she was doing. She was giving this small gun historic life apart from me. It and its twin had existed and been used before I was born. They had been carried by my greatgrandfather, Malcolm Tremayne. This pistol in itself was no more than a curiosity now-lifeless and harmless. Slowly I began to relax. I could stop shuddering at the sight of it now. I might as well shudder at the sight of my own two handswhich were no longer the hands of a frightened child.

Now I could even remember an old engraving I had seen-a representation of John Wilkes Booth in the box behind Lincoln, firing a strange-looking pistol. I'd always thought the artist must have been faulty in his drawing, but a deringer as just such a tiny gun as that.

”What became of the other one?” I asked.

”I've never known,” Persis said, and I thought again of my suspicion that she might have fired one of those guns herself, killing Noah Armand. I had to know.

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