Part 23 (1/2)

”Because I mean to let Miss Cullen go,” I told him. ”I want Belle Durant to stay with my grandmother, if she will.”

”You have no authority-” Caleb began.

I didn't let him finish. ”I'm her granddaughter. I have the authority of blood. I don't think you are going to put me out, are you?” I walked past Gail to Belle. ”What do you think?”

Belle shrugged. ”Doc Burton's probably right Nothing to be done till she wakes up. Wish I'd caught her sooner, got some coffee down her, stopped this from happening.”

”Will you stay?” I said. ”Not for me, Belle. For her.”

Gail stepped forward. ”I won't have this interference with a patient. I don't know how she came to take those extra capsules, and I can't be held responsible-” She threw a helpless look at Caleb, who said nothing at all.

”I'm taking the responsibility out of your hands,” I said. ”You've already failed at your post, and it's best if you leave as soon as possible. I'll see that arrangements are made to take you where you want to go.”

Her mouth dropped open and her stare was one of astonishment. A small, warm feeling of triumph spread through me, I hadn't known I could sound like this. I hadn't ever tried to take charge of anything before. Yet now neither Caleb nor Gail was standing up to me. With Belle's help perhaps I could do the right thing for Persis Morgan. With Belle's help and Jon's. I still had to talk to Jon.

”Belle,” I said, ”you'll stay?”

She gave in. ”All right. I'll stay. For a while, anyway. I'll J.

need to go over to the hotel and talk to Mark, pick up a few things. That can wait until she begins to come out of this. But you don't have much of an army to stand against what Mark Ingram wants.”

”Jon Maddocks will help,” I said. ”If you'll stay with my grandmother until I get back, I'll go and talk to him now.”

I knew by her look that I had her promise. She drew a chair near the bed and sat down. When I went out the door I found Gail and Caleb talking in the hall, and I pa.s.sed them without speaking.

The scratch on my leg was superficial, and so were my cuts and bruises from the mine. I could walk well enough, and once outdoors, I found the clear air bracing. For a long while it was as if I had been swimming under water, moving in some element that was strange to me, in which I couldn't think clearly, or be entirely sure of who I was. Now, at least, I was making a stand. I had taken hold of something.

Red came to meet me with his usual uninhibited joy, and I bent to fondle him before I went to the open door of Jon's cabin and looked in. At a wide table near the galley kitchen Jon sat with a loaf of dark bread on a board and a piece of cheese before him.

”I'm hungry,” I said. ”I seem to have skipped lunch. May I come in?”

XVI.

Jon's smile held nothing back. He was my friend and I could trust him. He looked more jaunty than ever with a clean patch of bandage on his head-like a wounded hero. Which he was. Red came in with me and lay down on the hearth. He felt at home here too.

”Help yourself,” Jon said, pus.h.i.+ng the loaf of bread toward me, I wanted a lot more than food. I wanted to talk openly and honestly-about even thing. No-not quite everything. But at least about what had happened since I'd seen him.

I brought a plate and mug from the cupboard near the sink and sat across from him. The bread was home-baked-his mother's recipe, he said-and I covered a slice with a chunk of longhorn.

He was waiting. ”Go ahead,” he invited. ”Tell me.”

”Grandmother Persis is unconscious because of too mam sleeping pills, but she'll be all right. Burton thinks she ma^ have taken them absentmindedly. I don't. I think she was gien them on purpose. I've brought Belle Durant over from the hotel to stay with her, and I think I've fired Gail Cullen.”

Jon's eyes were bright with approval. ”Good for you! I always thought there was something fishy about that woman coming here.”

”Now she can go back to her employer-Mark Ingram-if that's what he is. He seems to be getting stronger and more sure of himself all the time, and he wants to come over and talk to my grandmother when it's possible. If she doesn't want to see him, I'll try to keep him away. Jon, have you done anything about what happened to you yesterday, and about the mine this morning?”

”After the attack on me I listened to Caleb's advice and didn't report it.”

”Why didn't he want it reported?”

”He said it was pointless and nothing could be done. He said it would only upset Mrs. Morgan to have the police coming around again, and unless I had some means of identifying the attackers I'd better let it go.”

”I wonder what Caleb is up to.”

”Anyway, after you were shut in the mine, I phoned and a couple of officers from the highway patrol were reached by radio and came over right away. As Caleb said, there's not much they can do. They'll want to talk to you, and they'll keep an eye open, but there's no one to arrest, no proof I can give them, except that I was beaten up. At least they've been put on notice. They borrowed horses and rode over to the mine to have a look.”

”Where I suppose they found the padlock hanging open and the door firmly jammed?”

”Who suggested that?”

”Mr. Ingram didn't think I'd really been locked in the mine. I expect the door was taken care of right away.”

”Too bad we didn't go back and have a look.”

”I checked for the key to the mine, and Caleb said it was in 259.

the drawer where it's always kept. But Gail could have put it back if she was in on this.”

”What else has been happening?”

I chewed for a while on bread and cheese, and then I told lim everything at once.

”I nearly fell through the high gallery above the stage at the )pera House. Hillary rescued me. Ingram tried to get him to take me back to Denver, but I said I wouldn't go.” I hesitated.

”And . . . ?”

”And I've had a proposal of marriage.”

*'A busy day. Have you accepted?”

I shook my head, and Jon grinned at me. ”Well, don't. Not for a while.”

”Not ever from Hillary,” I said. ”I know that now.”

”That's good. Because you're Laurie Morgan and } ou belong here. And because you're not in love with him.”

”I thought I was. I always seem to be thinking that. And then it goes away.”

”Fevers pa.s.s.”

”But I don't like that. I don't like to feel that I can't trust m own emotions. I really thought I was in love with Hillary.”

”So? We've all been there a few times-falling in love with something that isn't there, something we only want to believe is real. Then finding out that it isn't.”

His words were not entirely comforting, because what if the wa I felt about Jon was only another mirage?

I ate my bread and cheese, finished ever)- crumb. And then even thing seemed to hit me at once. I did something that astonished me. I put my head down on the table and began to en . So much had been happening that I hadn't been allowed a quiet time to sit down and think about it, yet the moment when I'd opened a box and picked up a silver-mounted deringer was always with me at the back of my mind. The 260.

knowledge of what I had done was like an undertow in the ocean, ready to suck me down. Now, quite suddenly, it had.