My mother rubbed her scratched arms. “I don’t think we can leave footprints in flint rock and that’s what most of this is.”
She sat up and put her finger to her lips. “Darcy! Listen! Do you hear that?”
I froze. Something moved through the trees above us. A deer ambled out of a thicket and I started breathing again.
“Whew! Scared me to death. Mom, do you have any idea where we are? Should we go right or left here? I’m guessing this was once a creek on its way to the river. I’m surprised there’s not water in it after all the rain we’ve had.”
She pushed a wet strand of hair from her eyes, stood up, and looked around. “Oh, I’m so upset, I can’t think straight,” she said.
“Hurry, Mom. Where would Ben’s house be from here?”
She looked down at me, “Well now, Darcy, if I knew that, I’d know where we are, wouldn’t I?”
With my head on my knees, I mumbled, “I’m sorry. We don’t have any time to waste. Those two are probably still after us. If we could get to Ben’s house, we’d be close to the road and civilization. And help!”
My mother grabbed a low-hanging limb for support and stretched up on her tiptoes. With her other hand, she shaded her eyes from the rain and peered into the woods.
“Let me think—I am pretty sure that our old home place and Ben’s, across this creek, would be in that direction.” She pointed to her right. “This little stream would be running into the one that divides our land, I think. It really looks different with no water in it. It must be dry because of the rancher who was damming the creek farther upstream. The law made him stop but he hasn’t removed the dam.”
Standing up from my rock, I gazed in the direction she pointed. In this weather, among identical trees, how could she be sure? One thing was certain: we couldn’t stay where we were. Doubtless, those two men who ran us off the hill would not give up until they found us, and it didn’t sound as if they’d hesitate to shoot us.
Looking down at my ragged outer shirt, I had an idea. Slipping out of it, I tore off a strip at the hem, then another.
“Darcy!” Mom’s voice was sharp. “Have you lost your senses? What are you doing?”
“Creating a false trail,” I muttered. “I saw Captain Kirk do this once to mislead some aliens.”
With the strips in my hand, I ran in the opposite direction from which Mom had pointed. Hanging one strip on a wild rose bush, I trotted a little farther. Wiping that strip across my bloody forehead, I hung it on the low branch of a tree. Below the tree was a patch of mud. I pushed my shoe down in it, the toe pointing opposite our direction.
Mom actually smiled as I rejoined her. “Good job, Captain,” she said.
“This ruse might fool them for a while, but not for long, I’m afraid. We’ve got to get going.”
“Your poor head, Darcy. We need to put something around it. It’s bleeding quite a bit.”
“No time. Let’s go.”
“Let’s stay in this dry creek bed,” Mom said. “They won’t find our trail quite so fast if we don’t leave any more footprints.”
This time, she led the way and I followed. Running was nearly impossible. Stumbling after my determined mother, I tried not to think about my throbbing head. When she stopped abruptly, I bumped into her.
“There!” she said, pointing to an overhanging bluff. “I know where we are now! That is the old river channel. It used to run right against that bluff before the dam went in and changed it. If we can climb that cliff, we can make it to the road. It should be about a mile farther that way, as the crow flies.”
Lucky crows, not to have to bother with sharp rocks and limbs that reached out to grab us. Limping after my mother, I scrambled up a bushy rise toward the outcrop of gray rocks. I could see the old river channel, curving snugly around the bottom of the bluff.
Mom stared at the dry bed. “It always had water in it; now, it’s as dry as a bone. Anyway, it’s easier to cross now that it’s dry. I hope that hill isn’t as steep as it looks from here.”
We hurried to the foot of the bluff and began to climb. “I’d prefer Mt. Everest to a bullet from that ugly-looking gun,” I said between gritted teeth.
Finding an overhang on the bluff, we stopped to catch our breath, if only for a moment. The rock that jutted out gave us a brief respite from the rain but we’d soon have to leave its shelter. We couldn’t rest long.
Something brushed past me and an eddy of wind fanned my face. I jumped and clapped my hand over my mouth to muffle my yell.
Mom caught her breath. “It was only an owl,” she said. “We must have disturbed his resting place.”
“Only an owl? What is it with these owls? I cannot believe they were once my favorite bird. Remember all those owls I’ve seen lately? Something always happens right after I see one.”
I was babbling, I realized, and not making a lot of sense.
Mom patted my arm. “I know, but an owl is only a bird, not an omen. There have always been lots of owls in these woods. Oh, I wish I knew if we are actually close to Ben’s farm and our own land. I think we are, but I can’t be sure.”
I gripped my mother’s arm as a sudden thought struck me. “Remember what Emma said, Mom? She said that map of Ben’s had the Cherokee word for owl on it. Do you think that owl might mean we are close to Ben’s treasure?”
She shook her head. “Darcy, your hand is as hot as fire. You’re burning up with fever.”
“I’ll be fine, but we’ve rested long enough. Come on, we’ve got to climb the rest of the way up this hill.”
As we moved from under the protection of our limestone ledge, rain and wind battered us. The storm seemed to be in league with our pursuers, making our escape as difficult as possible. The only good thing was that those two men were battling the same storm. Of course, they didn’t have to contend with a scalp wound and cuts and bruises.
Wind-driven rain rushed at us with such force that we could not see where we were going. Groping blinding from one rock to the next, I crawled over rotting logs and sharp rocks, Mom right behind me. I prayed that we would not disturb a cottonmouth or rattlesnake. Probably, our hands and knees were a bloody mess, but there was no time to worry about abrasions.
We must have been halfway up the bluff when I realized that I no longer was being rained on. “What—what is this?” I croaked.
My mother crawled up beside me. “It another ledge, Darcy. I think it’s a small roof over an opening in this cliff. It looks like we’ve found another shelter.”
“A shelter?” I stuck my arm into the indentation under the rock. “How far back does that hole go?”
Pushing matted tendrils of hair from her face, Mom squinted into the dark space. “I can’t tell. Can’t see very far with no flashlight.”
“Unfortunately, the flashlight and our purses are probably strewn somewhere between the top and bottom of Deertrack Hill,” I said.
Sinking to her knees, Mom sighed. “Oh, it feels so good just to get out of that rain and rest a minute. I’m bone tired.”
“I know,” I muttered. “So am I. We’ve got to keep going, though. If those two thugs catch up with us, they’ll think nothing of adding us to their list of victims. Surely, we are almost at the top of this bluff. Maybe from there, we can see some familiar landmarks.”
Taking the hem of her shirt, Mom dabbed at the blood trickling down my head. “This overhang juts out so far, Darcy, we’re going to have to backtrack to find a way around it. We’re kind of blocked from climbing up this way.”
The thought of leaving our small protection and going back into the rain did not fill me with anticipation. Going down would only put us closer to those men stalking us. Waiting here, though, we would be like fish in a barrel, just hoping that Drake and his friend would not find us.
Mom’s face began to look hazy and a strange blackness crept around the edge of my vision. Leaning back against the rock, I felt the pain in my forehead begin to engulf me.
As if from
a great distance, Mom said, “Darcy! Don’t pass out. Hang on.”
Forcing my eyes open a slit, I saw her bending over me. Once again, she was wiping my face with her shirt. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked.
“I think so,” I whispered. But, I felt cold and very, very weary. I had no strength left to continue and I had no idea what we should do next.
Chapter 23
Shaking her head, my mother said, “It’s no wonder you felt faint, Darcy. You’ve lost quite a bit of blood. Maybe, just maybe, those men won’t see us here. At least, we’re out of the rain and wind. If we scrunch down as small as we can . . . .”
Drawing my knees up to my chest, I said, “It’s a risk, but we may not have a choice. What if they were to come in this direction while we’re out in plain sight, trying to find a way up the hill? It looks like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner.”
Mom nodded. “I think we’ve about gone as far as we can go,” she said.
Our trap was so efficient, it might have been designed by those diabolical killers who were chasing us. The rocky indentation where we sat was small and bottle-shaped, with the entrance being the neck of the bottle. It was no more than three feet high and four feet wide, barely room enough for two muddy, battered, and bloody women to crouch. Although it was tiny, cramped, musty, and dank, compared with what we had been through during this unbelievable day, it wasn’t bad. The old saying, “Between a rock and a hard place” came to mind, an apt description of our predicament.
“Please, God,” I whispered aloud, “don’t let this tiny closet of Yours become our tomb.”
Mom nodded. “I believe that God will get us out of this mess, Darcy. I don’t think He has brought us through everything just so we could end our lives out here in the woods.”
“If you believe that, I’ll try very hard to believe too,” I said. “Remember that plaque on Jackson Conner’s wall?”
Together, we repeated, “If God brought you to it, He will take you through it.”
Mom squeezed my hand.
I was freezing and my mother must have been just as miserable as I was. We were wet, tired, and, I realized, hungry. The time of day had no meaning. Was it still morning, or afternoon, or nearing night? This cloudy twilight had been with us since we left home this morning, and I felt like I had been running for a year. Already, my mother’s warm kitchen seemed light years in the past.
Rubbing my stomach, I said, “What I wouldn’t give for a cup of your hot, strong coffee.”
“Same here,” she answered.
The bone deep chill that caused my teeth to chatter seemed to come from inside. Perhaps this is how people felt when they were looking death in the face. True, we were in a physical trap but a snare had been tightening around us since we walked out of Jackson Conner’s office. The killer, or killers, had likely been watching us then, a surveillance that continued through the night.
For a few seconds, I wondered why those men, the ones who had three murders to their credit, had not broken into my mother’s house and attacked us while we slept, but then, I answered my own question. Yesterday we thought there was only one man after us. He must have decided he needed help and called in his buddy to finish the job. Who were they? Drake and Hammer? Drake and Clendon? Drake and an unknown person? Where had they gotten the heavy car that tried to force us off Deertrack Hill?
I voiced my thoughts aloud. “Those crooks planned to run us off the road and make it look like an accident. That’s why they had an armored car; they wanted to be sure to get the job done. I wonder where they found such a vehicle. Not in Levi.”
“Nobody would have questioned our deaths, Darcy. People would have said we were driving too fast on a rain-slick highway. That’s why they didn’t shoot us. They wanted our deaths to look like an accident,” Mom said.
A new thought surfaced in my foggy mind. “It almost looks like two killers with different methods. The two men and Skye might have been killed by someone who was angry—enraged because they wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. But, if our deaths were to look accidental, it would have taken some planning.”
“And that poison bomb, Darcy,” Mom said. “That took some knowledge of such things.
I bent forward, hugging my knees and trying to stop shaking. Why had Ben gotten us into this? Why was it so important to keep the hiding place of that gold a secret that he would risk my mother’s life by making her its protector?
One way or another, the killers were determined to get that gold, and it didn’t seem to make much difference which method they used. Did they really think my mother knew the location of the treasure? Did they want only the map? Was the map the reason those three people were killed? To my mind, that ancient map would not help anybody. The area had changed and the scribbled lines were dim, without any sort of recognizable landmark.
Turning my head to look at my mother, I asked, “If we offer those guys the map, do you think they’ll leave us alone?”
Mom patted my shoulder. “I don’t think so, Darcy.”
We had played right into the hands of the killers by being out alone early this morning. Why had I forgotten to leave a message for Grant telling him where we were going? Why had I been so arrogant as to get involved in this brutal case in the first place? At least Aunt Bet knew we were coming. She would surely alert the authorities when we didn’t show up. When Grant couldn’t find our bodies in my wrecked Passport, he would search for us, wouldn’t he?
Then I brought myself up short. Mom had insisted that nobody was going to drive her out of her home. She hadn’t changed her mind until after that bomb. Perhaps, a niggling voice in my head insisted, this was meant to be. The owl that flew up was a warning to us. Maybe our deaths were imminent and we could no more have avoided this situation than we could have avoided the rain-filled clouds that were steadily darkening the entrance to our little rabbit hole.
A drop of blood dripped from my nose and I flicked it away. I felt terrible and could not imagine how I looked. If our lifeless bodies were found, would anybody recognize us?
“I’m in no condition to die,” I told Mom. “Just look at my hair. If Minda Stilley could only see me now.” I tried to grin but my teeth must have cut my mouth. It hurt.
Mom scooted closer to me. “Don’t say that. I’m not wanting to go just yet.”
The front of my yellow knit shirt was soaked with blood, mud, and rain, and my jeans wore red splotches.
My mother wasn’t much better off than I was. The only difference was that she didn’t have a head wound that kept bleeding. She had sliced her knee on a sharp rock, and her once-pretty denim pants were ragged and soggy. Although the day was warm enough, rain-cooled but still it was a spring ran, we both shivered as if a frigid January wind blew against us. I felt dizzy and disoriented and Mom probably felt the same; she just wasn’t the complainer that I was.
“I wonder how long it’ll take for them to find us?” I muttered. Maybe fifteen minutes of going in the wrong direction, if they fell for my trick of putting bloody strips to mark a false trail, and then circling around until they found evidence of our flight. We had kept to the rocky creek bed, but sooner or later, they’d find a hair, or a broken limb, or a spot of blood. I had no idea how long we had been running. It felt like forever.
Once again, Mom was the one with coherent thoughts. “We’ve got to find something to stop your head from bleeding,” she said, looking around her.
“Good idea,” I mumbled. “What do you have in mind?”
She leaned back, wriggled out of her canvas shoe, and began peeling off her knee-high hose. “It’s not much,” she admitted, “but maybe it’ll help some. I should have done this a long time ago.”
“We didn’t have time to stop. But thanks, Mom.”
At least the hose soaked up the blood, keeping it from dripping into my eyes.
I looked around us. “Since we are pretty much trapped here, could we camouflage the opening in some way?”
�
��Let’s try,” Mom said, crawling back to the little entrance. “There are some sticks and dead leaves on the ground out here.”
I crawled out from under the ledge too, and grabbed some of the small limbs that had fallen off the trees last fall. The brown leaves should help to hide us. Scooting backward under the outcropping, we pulled the sticks and leaves in with us and arranged them across our little hole. Hopefully, nobody would get close enough to peer in.
On a sunny day, anyone could detect our hiding place but the clouds were in our favor. Our hope lay in trying to blend in with the terrain.
“I feel sure we are on Ben’s land,” Mom said as we dusted off our hands and resumed our cramped positions. “Once we are able to leave this little nook, it can’t be too far to his house. Then, hallelujah, we can flag down a passing car, or at least find a better place to hide. We must be near that little hill behind Ben’s barn.”
Unfortunately for us, the threatening sky lightened at the same time I heard rocks rattling nearby. My blood seemed to turn to ice and my shaking resumed in full force. Rain would have helped to hide us. If the sun came out, our enemies could quite easily see where we crouched.
That familiar, guttural voice came closer, evidently displeased and grumbling. The second voice answered. From the snatches of conversation I could decipher, I gathered those two were displeased and arguing. Then the talking stopped and the sound of feet crunching through sticks and kicking loose rocks grew nearer.
Ray Drake’s partner spoke. “I used to tramp all over these woods. We’ll find those two if we have to check under every rock and behind every tree. They aren’t getting away. That much, I can promise.”
My heart thumping against my ribs, I scooted toward my mother. We put our arms around each other. If we were going to die, at least we would die together. Shrinking against the cold, hard wall of our prison, I felt the rock pressing into my back.
Chapter 24
Perhaps extreme terror sharpened my senses. Maybe desperation whispered that I shouldn’t give up yet; whatever prompted me, with death snarling up the cliff toward us, I made a startling discovery. My mother and I had scuttled as far as we could go under the ledge. We were backed against the wall of this natural grotto and could go no farther. The wall of the cave pressed against the left side of my back, but there was no support behind my right side. Why was that? Was I feeling an uneven place in the rock or was there a hole behind our hiding place?
The Cemetery Club (Darcy & Flora Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 15