Domino

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Yes. I’d seen that in her—the ironclad pride.

  “She has protected you, Laurie.”

  “But now it’s all escaped, hasn’t it? It’s all gotten out of hand!”

  “Nothing is out of hand yet.”

  “Perhaps it is if Mark Ingram knows. Do you think this is what he’s holding over my grandmother’s head?”

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said dully. “But I do know that he’s dangerous and vindictive. He’s carrying some sort of grudge. That’s why I’ve wanted your grandmother to move out and not try to fight him. Your coming here hasn’t helped.”

  My brief suspicion that Persis Morgan might have done the shooting had been exploded. Guilt was in the open now—where it belonged. A child’s guilt, but guilt nevertheless.

  What was I to say to my grandmother when next I saw her? What could I say, now that I knew everything? It no longer seemed strange or cruel that she had never written letters, never claimed me as her granddaughter. Until she needed me badly. I felt increasingly devastated by all the ramifications that were still coming clear. There was too much for me to grasp all at once, yet somehow I must find the courage to face what had happened.

  For one thing, I must face the memory of my mother. If she had blamed me—as she must often have done through the years—I, too, could blame her. I could still remember occasions when she had looked at me strangely, waiting perhaps to see what I could recall. No wonder she had wept, no wonder she had been sad. Had she waited, hoping for Noah’s return? It might have been better for us both if she had tried to make a new life for herself, leaving Jasper behind. Instead Jasper and its terrible events must always have been with her, and most of all her own guilt, her betrayal of my father, which had precipitated the tragedy. I was the product of those years.

  With an effort I stood up and found that I was steady enough on my feet. All I wanted now was to escape from this house for a little while—escape them all. I needed to get away where I could lick my new wounds and try to recover my bearings, find my way.

  Caleb had apparently endured enough, and he had quietly left the room. Gail was still there, and she had listened almost avidly. Now that I stood up, she started toward the door.

  “If I’m not needed, I’ll get back upstairs to Mrs. Morgan. She’s not feeling well this morning, and she shouldn’t be left alone.”

  I remembered vaguely that something should be done about Gail, but this was not the time. Now I must ask her something else.

  “Wait,” I said, and she turned. “Please don’t tell her what has happened. I’d like to tell her myself when she’s able to see me.”

  Gail shrugged and went off. Only Hillary was left.

  He came quickly to put his arms about me. “I’ll stay with you until you’re feeling better.”

  I didn’t want him here with me now, and I couldn’t help that.

  “I need to be by myself for a little while,” I told him.

  He touched my cheek lightly. “You must forgive yourself. Others who were older brought this about. They are the ones who should be punished. Not you.”

  I could only remember that my hand had held the gun, my finger had pulled the trigger.

  “Laurie,” he said, and there was a slightly grim note in his voice, “I do understand what you’re feeling—a little. Remember, I lost my father too.”

  But I had no pity in me now for anyone else’s loss.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said.

  He walked with me to the foot of the stairs and let me go when I started up. I had the feeling that in spite of his protestations he wanted to get away. When his high moods evaporated, I knew he could become extremely depressed. Just now we both needed to be apart.

  In my room I lay on the bed with my eyes closed and tried to let everything slip away. What had happened couldn’t be easily assimilated and accepted in all its terrible reality. The word Gail had flung at me on my first day in this house was still ringing through my mind. Too large a word for me to face and understand: Murder. Murder directed at my father. By me.

  I don’t know how long I lay there trying only to empty my mind. When the knock came on my door, it startled me. Before I could answer, Caleb called to me.

  “Laurie, I have word of your dog.”

  That brought me up from the bed at once, and I went to open the door. “What have you heard?”

  “A man from town telephoned to report that when he was out on a chore for Mark Ingram, he heard a dog barking over near the mine. He didn’t investigate, but when he got back to the hotel and mentioned it, Belle Durant said it might be your dog. So he called to tell us.”

  I made up my mind quickly. “I’ll ride over there and look for him. I need to get out anyway. I need something to do.”

  Caleb seemed uneasy with me, as though bringing everything out in the open had made him even more uncomfortable about me than before. Until now he had veiled his dislike a little. Now it looked hotly out of his eyes, and he made no attempt to dissuade me.

  “As you please,” he said, and went away.

  I changed quickly into jeans, shirt, and jacket, and started for the barn. As I followed the path, I looked off toward Old Desolate and saw—consciously this time—the gate that led away from the ranch. Now I remembered. Those men who had ridden off yesterday after the attack on Jon had gone through that gate without stopping on their gallop up the valley. The gate had been left open behind them, and no one had gone to close it for some time. I had been thinking only of Jon’s injuries and the need to get help for him. Red could easily have dashed through that opening. The dog that had been heard near the mine must be Red. He was a town dog, and not used to free spaces. He might not know how to get back to the ranch.

  I was glad to have a strong purpose in this hour when I needed something important to do. It never occurred to me to question Caleb’s message.

  XIV

  Sam was in the barn, and he helped me saddle Baby Doe. In answer to my question he said that Jon was feeling better, but was still sore from the beating and was taking it a bit easy today. I thought of stopping in to see him, but if Jon knew what I meant to do he might insist on coming with me, no matter how he felt. I didn’t want that. Let him rest.

  “Somebody heard a dog barking over near the mine,” I told the boy. “So I’m going to ride up there to see if I can find Red.”

  “Want me to go with you?” Sam asked.

  I shook my head. I still needed to be alone. I had to figure out, among other things, what I was going to say before I saw Jon. I wanted very much to talk with him, but first I must try to find my direction.

  “Better take this with you,” Sam said when I was in the saddle, and he handed up a flashlight. I thrust it into a pocket and turned Baby Doe’s head up the valley.

  The high cone of Old Desolate beckoned me, as it had since I was a child, and I found the mountain stillness comforting. Human problems grew small in the face of all this vastness, and I needed that sort of perspective now.

  How unreal were the lives we had been leading, I thought as I rode along. If only I could recapture the essence of that little girl who had once ridden up this valley on a pony beside her father. But that had disappeared forever. It had vanished in the sound of a single shot that had gone echoing through Morgan House.

  That was when all the lies had begun that changed our lives. My grandmother’s first of all, in the deceptive trail she had built to fool the world. Caleb had gone along, doing her bidding. But not, I thought, quite as willingly as she supposed. My mother’s whole life from that time on had been a lie. She had given herself to concealing the truth, even from me, and if she had suffered over my father’s death, or longed for the return of her lover, she had never let anyone know.

  I had a strong feeling that Noah must never have returned. Surely if he had, if only to get in touch with her, I would have been aware of some change in Marybeth Morgan. But for as long as I could remember, she had been the same—a sad woman, gentle and
loving, but somehow hopeless. It was difficult to imagine her with the sort of spirit it must have taken to be willing to leave her husband and her child and run away with Noah Armand.

  Why had he never turned up again? If he had cared enough to come back to the house for her, if they had planned to run off together, leaving my grandmother’s fortune behind, why had he never been heard from since? There was a strange mystery here that troubled me. Was there more to what had occurred than Caleb had told me?

  Could something have happened to Noah in that house? Could there really have been some quick vengeance? But at whose hands? Caleb’s? Persis Morgan’s, as I’d thought earlier? Persis was her father’s daughter. And there was a missing deringer that might have been fired and had to be concealed.

  I didn’t care for these thoughts that had begun to haunt me, and I tried to give myself to an awareness of the beauty of mountains and valley all around me, and that vault of blue overhead. I had enough horrors to make my peace with now without dreaming up new and terrifying problems.

  Baby Doe carried me along at a moderate pace, and from time to time I gazed off toward the high shoulder of the mountain, where the trail led toward Domino. Suddenly a tiny movement up there caught my eye. As my sight adjusted from sunny meadow to darker spruce, I made out a figure almost lost in the shadow of the trees. A man on a horse. His face showed as a white patch, watching my progress up the valley. He was too far off for me to identify, and he could have been anyone at all—man or woman.

  The watching presence worried me after what had happened to Jon, but I didn’t want to turn back. Riding on, I whistled now and then, and called Red’s name, but there was no sign of my dog anywhere. When I next looked up at the stand of spruce trees, the rider was gone. I was not particularly afraid. Perhaps my mind was too full of all that I had learned, all the puzzles that still faced me, for there to be any room for fear. I had lived through too much today to be able to fear anything more.

  Baby Doe’s pace slowed as she started up the slope. She picked her way over stony ground, her hooves clattering on rock, the sound echoing from the peaks. Once as we followed the trail, I seemed to hear a faint, distant whining, and I reined in at once to listen. But when the horse was still, I could hear only the wind in the trees and the noise of a dislodged stone rolling down the path. Again I called Red’s name, but there was no response, so I rode on. I didn’t know until later how close to him I was, and that the mountain itself and his own thrashing must have kept him from hearing me.

  Near the tall spruce trees I found the area empty of human presence. The only movement was among mountain jays, and the chipmunks that played among the rocks below the trail. Only a few hoof marks in the earth betrayed the presence of the rider who had sat in this spot watching my journey up the valley.

  When I came out along the far side, I paused again and gave myself to the impact of the view. Even with all this new desolation inside me—a desolation that matched that of the mountain itself—I felt the same surge of emotion that I had experienced the last time I saw Domino.

  Those few broken houses, the single dusty street far below, caught at my heart. It was as if I were being pulled back into my childhood, back into lives I had never known that still affected me. Back, perhaps, to a safer time, before I, too, had begun to live a lie, deceiving myself most of all.

  In the gulch below me straggled the timbers of what had once been the thriving mining camp, and I found again the one house that had been preserved and that still belonged to Persis Morgan. As I sat my horse, studying it, something seemed to move down there—as it had before. Had my mysterious horseman gone down into Domino, and was he perhaps watching me from amid the wreckage? No matter if he was. Undoubtedly there were riders up the valley from time to time, doing Ingram’s bidding, but they needn’t threaten me. What had happened to Jon had been deliberate, planned, and no one except Caleb and Sam knew I was here.

  In any case it was not down into Domino that I would ride today. The mine ruins lay over on my right, with the remnants of the trail leading toward them. I followed the curve of the hill past ugly tailing mounds, still calling for my dog.

  I had no answer, and I was afraid my search was hopeless. But before I turned back, I would ride a little closer to the entrance and try shouting for Red again. I knew that if he could hear me he would respond with an ecstasy of barking.

  Baby Doe picked her way gingerly along the slope. Now, as I neared the entrance, I saw something surprising. The door to the mine stood open. The entry was a gaping black hole in the side of the mountain, with the wooden door standing open on its hinges, the padlock hanging loose. I felt hair stir at the nape of my neck, and I knew that an eerie fear of this place was part of my childhood. A fear that reason could not quiet.

  Here in this high spot the sun was hot on my face, reflecting from the tailings, where nothing grew, yet at the same time a wind moaned around the shoulder of Old Desolate, cold at the back of my neck. As cold as the valley wind had been yesterday in the cemetery. I wanted nothing more than to wheel my horse about and escape from this haunted place as quickly as I could.

  But reason held me there. With the mine open Red could have wandered inside. He could be helplessly trapped, and the least I could do was to go to the entrance and call to him.

  Near the square black opening, framed in supporting timbers, I dismounted and peered in. Past the doorway there was nothing to be seen but blackness. A cold musty odor seemed to flow out from the depths of the mountain.

  Again I shouted for Red, and this time, faintly and from a distance, but more distinctly than before, I heard the high whining of a dog. I called out loudly, and there was a wild barking and yelping in response. I knew a cry for help when I heard it. Red was in the mine and trapped in some way so that he couldn’t get out.

  I checked myself from rushing headlong through that open door, remembering the things Jon had told me about old mines. I would take no chances. Perhaps I could ride down into Domino and get old Tully, the watchman, to help me find my dog.

  The barking grew more frantic. I looped Baby Doe’s reins through the rusty iron handle of the open door and took out my flashlight. Before I went for help I would see if I could locate the direction of Red’s barking. The slim pencil of light helped very little in cutting the black wall of darkness, but at least it showed a flat expanse of earth that hadn’t been choked with debris. I went in a few steps, listening to the explosions of sound Red was making. Because of the echoing inside the mine it was difficult to find the exact direction, but it seemed to come from a tunnel that branched off on my right. I moved a few cautious steps more toward the sound, shouting again to keep him barking. My voice roused further echoes that seemed to crash through the rocky tunnels of the mine.

  I tried speaking more quietly, telling him to “Stay,” assuring him that I would be back for him soon. Then I turned toward the welcome square of sunlight that marked the opening. If Tully was of no use to me, then I must ride back to the ranch and get Sam.

  I had gone inside farther than I’d intended, and as I moved toward the door, something terrifying happened. Without warning the sunlit square of the opening was no longer square. A wedge of blackness had cut across it, and the yellow band was swiftly narrowing. Even as I flung myself toward the opening, the wooden door slammed shut and I heard the click of the padlock that secured it. Outside, Baby Doe whinnied and stamped.

  I called out frantically. “Wait, wait! Don’t go away! I’m in here—don’t shut me in!”

  But whoever had closed that door had seen my horse and must know where I was. So the closing of the door had been deliberate.

  Outside I heard Baby Doe whinny again, heard another horse answer, followed by the sound of hooves moving away. I shouted again in desperation so that the echoes crashed and Red began to yelp piteously—at some distance away.

  The noise was awful, and I made myself be still, listening. Beyond the door there was only silence. The horses were gone. It
was not by any mistake that I had been shut in here and my horse led away.

  Panic surfaced and I threw myself against the wooden door, hoping the hinges might give, or the wood splinter. But though the boards shuddered, my only reward was a bruised shoulder. I stopped my assault quickly.

  Darkness—blackness!—the worst thing of all. The beam of my flashlight was strong enough for only a limited area, and I hoped the batteries were new. I mustn’t lose my head. All I had to do was wait for help to come. Both Caleb and Sam knew where I had ridden. However, it might be a long while before one of them decided that I’d been away an unreasonable length of time.

  Black silence seemed to have a pressure of its own on my eardrums. I moved the beam of light about me cautiously. A false step in any direction might plunge me into some unseen shaft. Yet to sit down and wait in patient surrender was beyond me at that moment. If I moved, if I took some action, perhaps I could hold off a terror that waited for me, just beyond the edge of reason. As a child I knew I’d been horribly afraid of this mine—perhaps only because it was a black pit in the mountain that my father must have shown me. Later it had become the place in which I feared that he had died. But these were thoughts that I must not let in.

  At least I wasn’t in total ignorance of how the mine lay as it tunneled into the mountain. The book on Morgan mines that I’d studied had shown a diagram of the Old Desolate, its upper passages like veins striking out from the top of a main artery that thrust its way deeply into the earth. There had been brief descriptions of mining operations in the pages I read, and the writer had used the terms of miners. Knowledge that I’d never expected to need.

  My flashlight beam picked out the narrow entrance passage where I stood, sloping straight into the mountain. The floor was strewn with debris as I moved farther in, seeking for a way to reach Red. He was quiet now, probably losing hope as I didn’t come to him. There were chunks of fallen rock, rotting timbers, an old pickax and other discarded tools left along the way.