Part 17 (1/2)

He was inside a stable.

The logical conclusion was that he was inside Silas Grant's livery stable in Pine City. However, he couldn't be sure of that. He wasn't sure about much of anything except that he never should have trusted Marshal Gideon Kent or Dave Harmon.

Unfortunately, he hadn't had any reason to think the two men were anything other than what they appeared to be-a small-town star-packer and an honest rancher. He still wasn't sure exactly what had happened out there by the river, but his aching head confirmed the important thing.

They had double-crossed him, knocked him out, and were after that gold for themselves.

Luke opened his eyes and flinched at the brightness that struck painfully against them. It was actually pretty dim and shadowy inside the little room where he lay on a hard-packed dirt floor, but enough light came through cracks around the door to half blind him for a moment.

When his eyes had adjusted, he looked around. He was in a small, windowless room, eight feet by eight feet square. A number of bridles, harnesses, and other pieces of tack hung from nails driven into the walls.

He was convinced that he was in Silas's stable. Biting back a groan in case a guard stood right outside the door, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself into a sitting position.

The pounding inside his skull made him sick and dizzy for a moment. When that subsided, he lifted a hand to his head and gingerly explored his scalp, finding the tender lump behind his ear where he'd been hit. It was sticky with dried blood, and touching it sent fresh waves of pain through his brain.

That died down to a dull ache. Ignoring it, Luke climbed carefully to his feet, bracing a hand against the rough planks of the wall.

Another wave of nausea and vertigo hit him once he was upright, but that soon pa.s.sed, too. When he felt steady on his feet, he moved over to the door and put an eye to one of the cracks.

His field of view was pretty limited, of course, but he could see enough to confirm that he was in Silas Grant's tack room. In fact, he could see Silas himself, forking some hay into a stall on the other side of the barn's broad middle aisle.

The liveryman was a little the worse for wear, with a sc.r.a.pe on his cheek and a left eye swollen partially closed. Luke wondered who had been knocking him around.

He didn't see or hear anybody else, didn't smell any tobacco smoke to indicate that someone was nearby puffing on a quirly. It seemed he could risk trying to get the liveryman's attention, so he put his mouth next to the crack and hissed, ”Silas! Silas, can you hear me?”

Silas paused in what he was doing and leaned on the pitchfork for a moment as he looked around with a frown on his face. Then hurried over to the tack room door. ”Mr. Jensen, you're awake in there!”

That seemed pretty obvious to Luke, but he didn't say anything about it. He could tell that Silas was upset and asked, ”Is there a guard out there?”

”Not right now.” Silas kept his voice low as he replied. ”One of Mr. Harmon's men was here until a few minutes ago, but he went over to Herndon's store to buy some tobacco.” Silas grunted. ”And when I say buy, I mean take it without payin' for it. None of the Leanin' H men ever pay for anything around here. Not with Dave Harmon havin' this whole town right smack-dab under the heel o' his boot.”

”It was Harmon's men who beat you up?”

”Yeah,” Silas admitted. ”Reckon I didn't cooperate quite well enough to suit 'em when they dragged you in here and said they was gonna lock you in my back room. They're used to folks jumpin' whenever they say so, same as Mr. Harmon is.”

”You didn't say anything about that earlier.”

”Didn't know you was gonna get mixed up with the man. Mr. Harmon, he generally don't hurt n.o.body unless they get in his way . . . or unless they got somethin' he wants.”

Like a small fortune in stolen gold bars, Luke thought with a sigh.

”What about the marshal? He's crooked, too, I take it?”

Silas grimaced. ”Not crooked so much as he won't cross Mr. Harmon. That man owns the bank, so that means he pretty much owns the whole town. Ain't n.o.body here in Pine City who don't owe him money, me included. Like I said, he lets things go along peaceful-like most of the time.”

Luke had run into men like that before-men who considered themselves the monarchs of their own private little domain. Harmon's hearty, friendly, helpful demeanor had been just an act.

And he had fallen for it, leaving him in an even worse position than before.

”All right, let me out of here,” he said harshly.

Silas shook his head solemnly. ”I can't do that.”

”Look, I know you're afraid of Harmon and his men-”

”d.a.m.n right I'm afraid of'em,” Silas broke in. ”Bad things got a habit of happenin' to men who stand up to Mr. Harmon. That might put my wife Tillie in danger, too, and I ain't gonna do that. But I mean what I say, Mr. Jensen-I can't let you outta that tack room. There's a padlock on the door, and I ain't got the key.”

”Use that pitchfork,” Luke suggested. ”You can pry the hasp loose-”

Silas's head jerked toward the barn door. He grimaced again. ”Somebody's comin'!”

Before Luke could say anything else, Silas scurried away. He went back to pitching hay into the stalls, trying to make it look like he hadn't been anywhere near the tack room.

Luke heard footsteps and figured the guard was back.

Moments later, a man's voice drawled, ”You hear anything from inside there, Silas?”

”No, sir,” Silas answered without hesitation. ”Quiet as the grave in there, it is.”

Luke heard a match sc.r.a.pe and then smelled tobacco burning, along with the sulfur stink of the lucifer.

”Could be Jensen's dead,” the guard said. ”Kent really walloped him. Might've stove in his skull.”

”If . . . if he's dead, you can't leave him there. This ain't no undertakin' parlor.”

”He'll stay in there until the boss says otherwise,” the man snapped. ”Don't forget who's runnin' things around here.”

”No, sir,” Silas said, hanging his head. ”I sure won't.”

A second later, he lifted his head and glared, which made Luke think the guard must have turned away. The hatred on the man's face made Luke realize just how much Silas resented the heavy-handed treatment he got at the hands of Harmon and his men. Many of the other citizens of Pine City probably felt the same way.

That resentment might come in handy, Luke thought-but only if he could get out of there.

McCluskey sat with his back against the wall and his arms around Delia, who was still trembling violently and whimpering now and then. They were in the back room of the marshal's office, which was used for storage and also had a cot in it that looked like it hadn't been slept in for quite some time.

Both of them were still damp from being dunked in the river, but Delia wasn't trembling because of that. She was still on the verge of hysteria.

From everything McCluskey had seen of her so far, Delia Bradley was the most coolheaded woman he had ever known. She had gunned down those guards in the caboose without batting an eyelash, and she had blasted Derek Burroughs.

Yet she had almost lost her mind at the prospect of jumping in the river. He knew that if he hadn't dragged her kicking and screaming off the riverboat, she would have stayed on it until the boilers exploded.

Of course, they had wound up in a pretty precarious position anyway. McCluskey had seen the lawman's badge pinned to the vest of the Pine City marshal and figured they were being arrested. It was worse than that.

They had landed in the hands of another ruthless bunch of outlaws-only those men worked for the cattle baron called Harmon.

The surviving members of Burroughs' gang were locked up in the cells. Marshal Kent would have put McCluskey in with them, but when the time came, Delia refused to let go of him. Still frantic with fear, she clutched him like a lifeline.