Part 30 (2/2)

334.

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.”

337.

”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.”

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