He took off his shirt, then his pants. Strapping his gun belt over his longjohns, he was glad the thong had been secured over one Colt. The other gun had likely fallen from his hand up there on the cliff when he was shot.
Kale struck out for the creek in his boots and longjohns; if anyone didn’t like it, they could turn the other way.
Actually, the only person to see him wouldn’t have mattered, except she wasn’t here, and damned if that fact didn’t hurt almost as bad as his shot-up head.
The walk cleared his brain, and with clarity came a new fear, one that worried him more than Ellie’s absence—which he intended to remedy as soon as he pulled enough thorns out of his behind to be able to sit a horse. What bedeviled him now was that damned gambler.
Since the man obviously believed him dead, what did it mean for Ellie? What the hell was the man up to?
By the time Kale reached the creek, his head wound had opened and started to bleed again, and he was becoming nauseated and weak from loss of blood.
He picked from his body all the thorns he could see or feel, then settled himself in the icy waters. The pain in his head had eased somewhat, and he gingerly washed dried blood away from the wound. With his fingers he traced where the bullet had plowed a furrow along the outside of his skull from near his left eye backward. It didn’t seem to have done a great deal of damage, though, beyond the loss of blood.
Even a slight wound to the head bled mighty bad, which was probably what had saved his life. Costello’s men had likely taken the splattering of so much blood to mean he was hit bad. Crawling out of the water, he sat on the slab in the light of the rising sun and forced himself to think about Armando Costello instead of Ellie.
Not much in the way of substance formed in his brain, however, so at length he made his way to the house, stopping by the springhouse to collect a jar of buttermilk and then by the corral fence to dress in the clean pair of pants and shirt which he found hanging over the top rail. They smelled of Ellie and her clean homemade soap and left him weak with more than loss of blood.
He wanted her home, he wanted their problems solved. Inside, the house felt empty, lonely. He wondered how Ellie had ever lived alone; he knew she never could again. Like he could never live alone again. He couldn’t live anyplace now without Ellie beside him.
Taking a hunk of her bread from the larder, he ate it and drank the buttermilk, feeling his loneliness for her grow by leaps and bounds, until at last he chastised himself. Damn it, Jarrett, quit your bellyaching, catch up a horse, and go after her. If he started chasing down every rabbit hole he came across, he would never get the fox.
And now he had no doubt…Armando Costello was the fox.
Nagged by something he couldn’t name, Kale wandered from room to room. Something was amiss…but what?
Stopping in front of the fireplace he studied her photograph—held it a moment, smiled at it. Replacing it, he noticed the plat was missing, the one Ellie kept above the mantel. He shrugged…she’d probably taken it down herself.
Taking another hunk of bread from the kitchen, he paced the main room of the small house, his eyes alert, or as alert as his condition would allow. At every step he was pricked by another needle in another place.
And his head throbbed to beat the band. But through it all, Armando Costello’s menacing face glowered at him. What did he know about the man?
He had been Benjamin’s friend. They had hunted treasure and traveled to the painted cliffs together.
Benjamin was likely murdered at those same cliffs.
What did that prove?
Costello was, if not in love with Ellie, certainly infatuated with her. He paid her a great deal of attention; he was determined that she move to town.
Even though Kale didn’t like the way the man talked about her, like she was one of Lavender’s “flowers,” that didn’t mean anything.
Or did it? Would a man in love with a woman declare her a whore for all the world to hear? But hadn’t Costello claimed that very thing—to Ellie’s face, no less—just last night?
And he lied about the drawing. He’d made up a bald-faced lie. No one in Kale’s family would ever have told such a tale, certainly not that Kale had won her by drawing straws when in fact he’d prevented the drawing. It didn’t add up.
And Costello’s man had been riding the puddin’-foot last night. Now that damned sure added up to something—but what?
What was he missing? Wandering out to the porch, Kale sat on the step, held his head in his hands, and tried to picture Costello in the house, tried to hear his voice, his words.
But the only vision that would come to mind was of the man standing at the mantel, holding that plat in his hands.
And of Kale, eaten up with jealousy and not even knowing it.
Jealous and thinking Costello a rival, when in fact…
Costello’s words came slowly to mind. First, last night at the Lady Bug. Gradually, then, Kale recalled words Costello had spoken at other times, in other places. But always the vision was the same: Costello standing there looking so damned smug, holding that plat in his lily-white hands.
Holding that plat and talking about treasure.
Treasure.
Under Ellie’s house?
Kale jumped to his feet, then immediately regretted it; the blood rushed to his wound, leaving him dizzy and in pain. The pain came from all directions at once, from the thousand and one prickly pear needles riddling his skin.
But it was physical, the pain, and it did nothing to deter his mind from functioning, now that it had begun to work.
Suddenly he knew all the answers—all the sickening answers. And he felt like retching right here on Ellie’s porch.
Costello didn’t want Ellie to move to town, he wanted her away from the ranch. He didn’t want Ellie, he wanted the treasure that was under her house—or that he believed was under her house. And he had used everyone and everything to help him. The puddin’-foot had been used in attempts to harass Ellie in order to draw attention to the Raineys and away from himself; Costello’s man was riding it last night.
And the lie about the drawing. Costello sent Lavender out here to tell it—unwittingly, of course. Lavender loved Ellie like a daughter, so much so that she would not stand by and let her marry a man who was deceiving her.
It all fit. Costello had known Ellie would leave when she heard the tale, he had known Kale would follow her, and he had set his men on Kale, intending to kill him.
Kale’s blood raced. What was the man’s next move? Was he on his way here even now?
Kale reached for his Colt, unsnapped the thong, and checked the loads. Reholstering it, he entered the house. Thinking…thinking.
Ellie had talked about a tunnel beneath the house, a tunnel where settlers had hidden during Indian raids. Benjamin had told her never to leave her house, that she would be safe here.
Kale froze in mid-step: Benjamin had known.
He found the trapdoor exactly where Ellie had said it was—under the spare room bed—their bed, the bed on which they had loved.
And would love again, he swore, hauling aside the iron bedstead. As fast as his aching head would allow, he tugged at a tarp that covered the floor beneath the bed. A nagging feeling told him he was right. He had to be.
Ellie had said this was a tunnel to the creek. Otto Wiginton and later Costello had scoffed at the idea of there being a gold mine under Benjamin’s house. The plat itself had a yellow half-moon in a place Ellie said was near here. A yellow moon, as any old prospector could tell a man, meant treasure—gold.
Uncovered, the trapdoor was about three feet square. Kale pried up one corner with the blade of his Bowie knife, then set the door aside.
The tunnel had obviously not been used in some time. He tore away cobwebs which formed a screen over the entrance and peered into the dark hole. Nothing but blackness. Even after he lighted a lantern and held it down into the tunnel, he could see only a few feet ahead. Slight indentations in
the packed earth indicated footholds along one side. A musty odor rose up and threatened to choke him.
He prepared to enter the tunnel by tying one end of his rope around a trunkful of books which he wedged behind the iron bedstead; he then tied the other end of the rope around his waist. All the while he recalled having told Ellie on more than one occasion that he wasn’t a goat. Well, he wasn’t a mole, either, but he was damned sure going down in this black hole to find out what in hell a gambler named Armando Costello was up to—a gambler who, as things now stood, was very likely involved in Benjamin’s death. There was no guessing about the man’s role in his own difficulty last night.
Taking up the lantern, he lowered his throbbing body into the tunnel. The passageway led toward the creek, all right, but about ten yards from the house it forked, with one path leading out at a right angle from the other.
Kale examined the area carefully. The passage that led away from the creek had been completely filled with large rocks which were then covered with a thick layer of mud, evidently to create a natural-looking wall. Through the years, however, the mud had dried and shrunk away in places, crumbling from the rocks.
Sometime in the past someone had closed off this section of the tunnel. But why? Care had been taken to conceal their efforts. What lay behind that wall of rock and mud?
Things were beginning to shape up: the plat could be genuine. But no matter what treasure was back there, it couldn’t be worth the price that had already been paid for it—Benjamin’s life and no telling how many lives before his. If treasure was there, it would have to keep a while longer, Kale vowed. First, he was going after Ellie.
Upstairs he replaced the trap door, pulled the tarp, then put the bed back in place.
Benjamin had known, all right. He’d known, and that knowledge could well have been what got him killed.
Kale found the bay horse waiting patiently at the barn. After giving him a quick rubdown and an extra bait of corn, he resaddled him and started for town. First things first. And first in his mind and heart was Ellie. First he would see to her safety, then he would discover what role Armando Costello played in all this.
He no longer worried over the Raineys’ false claims of ownership. The telegram from the State proving Benjamin had filed on the ranch rode with him in his saddlebags. When everything else settled down, he figured to ride over to the Circle R and confront the Rainey brothers with proof of their own lies.
Anxious to be shut of their surveillance duty, Ira and Till were up early the following morning. Taking their breakfast of coffee and bacon wrapped in stale bread to the ledge, they squatted side by side and peered out over the valley. During the night they had been aroused by gunshots, but nothing ever came of them.
“Was that two shots you heard last night or three?” Ira quizzed.
“I heard three.”
“Same here.”
“Nothin’s stirring down below.”
Ira nodded. “Peaceful as a sleepin’ baby.”
Till refilled their coffee cups; they sat staring at the quiet valley and a short time later were rewarded by the sight of a saddled, riderless horse wandering up to the corral.
“Ain’t that Jarrett’s horse?”
“Same bay he rode away from here last night.” Ira built a smoke. Till bit a chew off the plug of tobacco he carried in his shirt pocket.
The sun was rising rapidly now, bathing the valley in clear, golden daylight.
Suddenly Till let out a low whistle. “Lookee yonder what I see!” He pointed to the hillside east of them. “Ain’t that Jarrett hisself wearing nothin’ but his Sunday suit and boots?”
Ira studied the hillside. “And his Colt,” he added. “Looks like the feller run into a mite of trouble on the way home.”
Till glanced at his Winchester. “I could take him from here. The woman’s gone, and with him out of the way we’d be free to get back to cowboyin’.”
Ira responded in a matter-of-fact tone. “No, you couldn’t. Newt or Saint could and would. But not you. And not me, neither. We don’t draw wages to shoot a man in the back.”
Later that morning the sight Ira and Till saw sent them hoofing it back to headquarters.
Their news was what Matt Rainey had been waiting to hear. Combined with Newt’s and Saint’s report from Summer Valley, he could be sure everyone had left the Jarrett place. The last to go was Kale Jarrett, who’d left this morning with his head bandaged.
Rainey wasn’t surprised. He’d known that sooner or later Costello would get Ellie Jarrett. He didn’t let himself think about the gambler’s motives or what might happen to the woman. Those things didn’t concern him. The means to an end had been set in motion, and he didn’t question it.
Kale Jarrett would have to be taken care of before he could return and cause them any more trouble, of course; Rainey would see to that. The important thing now was that his plan had worked. He never doubted it would.
“Head ’em up, boys,” he bellowed. “We’re movin’ to our new range.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ellie followed behind Armando Costello down the trail where she had once followed Kale. As the day wore on, this trip began to resemble that other one, at least in the disposition of her traveling companion.
Armando hadn’t spoken a word since they left Summer Valley, not that she felt like talking. Kale’s fate consumed all her emotions and as much of her attention as riding down this winding, rocky trail allowed.
By the time Lavender had helped them pack provisions and Armando’s men returned with a packhorse, the sun was already midway in the morning sky…time wasted, as far as Ellie was concerned. Only Lavender’s firm intervention kept her from riding ahead alone.
Armando seemed to be in as much a hurry as she. After only a brief pause to water the horses in Celery Creek, he bid his two men farewell and studied the darkening sky.
Although she wondered at the men’s abrupt departure—for points north, was all they said—she wasn’t in the least disappointed to see them go. Even as Costello was assuring Lavender that Abe and Martin would accompany them on the trip, Ellie had found herself wishing the men would stay behind. They considered her one of Lavender’s “flowers,” she was sure of that, and she had dreaded riding with them day and night.
Before the men were out of sight Costello urged her up the trail. There was no time for a noon meal. He didn’t say as much—in fact, he hadn’t spoken directly to her since they left Summer Valley—but she knew he feared getting caught along Celery Creek in a rainstorm. So did she, but more than that, she didn’t want to tarry over a meal when Kale’s life could well depend on their arriving in time to save him.
Now and again she noticed Costello glancing furtively at the surrounding hilltops. When she asked him whether he thought the Circle R men might have taken Kale somewhere besides the painted cliffs, he barked a negative response.
Her fear for Kale’s life grew by the hour, engulfing her at times, shutting out everything else. The fact that she had sent him away in a childish fit of anger, that she mocked his love for her in front of the entire clientele of the Lady Bug haunted her. She loved him…how she loved him.
He must be safe…he must be.
Thinking on the past would serve no purpose, though, she scolded. Whatever had happened was done. With Armando’s help, she would find Kale and bring him home. If he were injured, she would nurse him back to health.
The moon rose to a shroud of clouds. As tired as she was, she hoped Armando would not stop to make camp. But reality overruled emotion, and she knew if they were to save Kale, they must not wear out their horses. Making camp would slow them down, but it could well determine whether they got to Kale at all.
Facing harsh realities was not new to Ellie Langstrom Jarrett. Orphaned when she was barely three years old, she spent the next three years being carted around Galveston from one relative to another, none of whom wanted an extra mouth to feed.
Then, not long after her sixth bi
rthday, the husband of her mother’s cousin took matters into his own hands. On the pretext that his wife was down with the ague, he left little Ellie Langstrom with the proprietress of the Lady Bug, an establishment he frequented so regularly that his business was indispensable.
“A day or two at the most,” he had assured Lavender Sealy, whereupon he moved his entire family—minus little Ellie—away from Galveston, never to be heard from again.
By the time Lavender discovered the ruse, the precocious orphan-child had worked her way into the hardened madam’s heart.
Ellie was sixteen when an official delegation invited Lavender to leave Galveston. She considered the expulsion an opportunity. The location of an establishment such as the Lady Bug, dependent as it was upon the whims of the city fathers as dictated by the city mothers, was never permanent, she explained to her “flowers.” Their ouster from Galveston allowed them to follow the westward call to Austin and thence to Summer Valley.
She was sure of success in Summer Valley, because, she argued, the settlement sat in the middle of the Western Trail to Kansas and was bounded by two frontier forts. It might be a rough, uncut land, but they would find growing room there, same as schools and churches.
Life was rosy inside the pink house Lavender built on the hilltop in Summer Valley—except for one thing, Ellie was to learn later.
Through the years Lavender had valiantly protected her charge from the seamier side of her business, raising her as she would have raised a daughter of her own blood. But the true test of Lavender’s success still lay ahead. The one thing she was determined Ellie would have, a proper husband, proved the most difficult to provide.
Then Benjamin Jarrett had moved to town. And within six months Lavender had all she ever wanted—or so she told Ellie—a proper husband for her baby.
The night wore on. Lost in exhaustion and in her own reveries, Ellie was surprised when Costello suddenly decided to stop. The place he chose, however, did not surprise her: their usual camping ground, the place where Kale had proposed marriage to her in his strange and wonderful way.
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