Of Gold & Blood Series 2 Books 1 & 4

by Jenny Wheeler

  A red-haired dog rushed at them from the cabin’s left corner, teeth bared. After a moment’s shock at the noise, Martens put back his head and laughed. It was a contemptible sight, this lap-warmer going frantic, defending his patch. Billy raised his revolver and fired. The dog screamed in a chorus of squeals which faded to whimpering and then silence, rusty canine blood mixing with the red of its coat as it fell at Antonio’s feet.

  Martens stamped on the front porch and waved his rifle at shadows to swamp the nervous tingling at the back of his neck. What to do next? Where was Fat Jack? There were two—maybe three—of them against how many? The only advantage was, they had the kid.

  Martens thrust the boy back to Billy and sidled along the front of the cabin, back to the wall. He peered around the corner where the dog had sprung from. A few feet away, Fat Jack lay sprawled on his back, bleeding from a chest wound. He couldn’t tell if the man was dead or alive. He stepped past Jack’s body and continued his circuit of the cabin, back pressed to the log wall, rifle vertical. As he reached the next corner and paused to catch his breath he felt cold steel pressed hard against the side of his neck.

  A quiet voice said, “Drop the gun.”

  He hesitated, and the barrel pressed in harder. He let the rifle fall.

  A bearded man stepped away from the back wall of the cabin and leveled the rifle straight at his heart.

  “Turn around.” The gun was in the middle of his back. “Now walk.”

  Step by careful step they continued on a circuit of the cabin. They would be coming up behind Billy on his right-hand side. As they stepped out of the shadows, Billy whirled to face them, and then a contemptuous smirk lifted one side of his mouth. He held the boy wrestled against his crotch, his arm across his throat, a pistol to the boy’s temple.

  “Uh-huh. No closer or the boy’s brains are spaghetti. Drop the gun and let Fart Face go.”

  His captor halted, the gun in Martens’s back pressed even harder against his spine.

  “Let the boy go first.”

  Billy gurgled menacingly. “And throw away the ace? I don’t think so cowboy.”

  “Let the boy go.” The voice was raised a notch but still steady; Martens could feel the man’s determination vibrating down the rifle barrel.

  “And what? You’ll invite us in for a drink?” Billy sneered.

  “Let him go, and I’ll let you go. No questions asked.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m sure.” Billy tightened his grip on the boy’s throat and frog marched him a couple of feet closer towards Martens and his captor. The kid’s face was drained of all color, his glazed eyes staring into the trees behind them as if he’d already flown to some place far away.

  The gap between them had closed to a few feet. Billy’s eyes skittered from Martens to the man holding him, to the broader area in front of the cabin. Martens was hit by a sour unwashed smell as they all faced off, and he saw the moment when doubt shadowed Billy’s squinted-up eyes.

  Then he was being propelled forward, slamming into Billy’s belly; the gun that had been at his back suddenly leveled at Billy’s throat. They both sprawled on the ground in front of the cabin. In the melee, Antonio broke free and scuttled into the yard.

  “Get out of here, Antonio. Go for it. Quick, fast.”

  Antonio whirled one way, then the other. He came to an abrupt stop and gaped at his rescuer. “Mr. Watson! I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean…” He broke into intense sobbing. Watson’s attention momentarily flicked to the boy, and Martens saw his chance.

  From a grovelling position on the ground, he launched himself at Watson’s legs. The man was tall and strong but toppled like a sack of potatoes when caught off guard. Billy was there with a gun at Watson’s temples before Martens could get to his feet.

  The boy stood for a moment staring.

  Willie Watson gave a defiant roar. “Go, Antonio. Go!”

  Antonio whirled and sprinted out of the clearing and into the forest.

  Then Billy fired.

  Twenty Six

  “Look, Sissy! I can ride by myself!”

  Minette’s face was glowing with pride as she sat atop the pony’s sturdy back, little hands relaxed at the front of her saddle as she grasped the reins. Graysie was riding abreast of her at an easy pace. She’d started by walking alongside her with a trainer lead, but as the trail widened to a flat and easy path where they could ride two abreast, she’d relinquished the lead and let the child assume control.

  Normally she would not go riding in the afternoon, when the sun was its hottest, but today she’d made an exception. After she had picked up Minette from Lisette’s and come back home to Gold House, she’d felt restless and jumpy. She needed to get out of the house and get some air while she turned over in her mind everything that had happened in the last few days. Minette was delighted with the suggestion that they take a short ride.

  As their horses paced quietly along, the brown lizards Minette loved to try and catch were out basking; the only noise in the still afternoon was their soft scuttling from rock to brown grass, set off by the horses.

  Thoughts of Nathan Russell and the debacle of the previous night had been supplanted by uneasiness at Willie’s comments and getting hold of Vance’s report. She had not yet had a chance to look at it, but she felt like she’d inherited someone else’s diary. Was it even right for her to have it, she wondered.

  She felt as taut as a stretched wire, but her midnight-till-dawn heart-searching had led her to two conclusions. She couldn’t desert Lisette, who needed a good pay-out from her mine shares even more than Graysie did. And she needed to put Nathan Russell well out of her mind.

  Whatever he’d been hinting at when he’d talked to her at the pond, he was clearly still grieving for his wife and in no position to form any new relationship. She’d be better off quietly finding out as much as she could about Weavers and his conspirator. Lost in thought, she maintained an easy pace alongside Minette’s pony.

  Without being able to control them, her thoughts veered to Nathan’s wife. She was curious. Was she pretty? Were they happy together? She felt a pang of sympathy for Nathan. It must be awful to lose a life partner, especially as they probably hadn’t been married long.

  She’d seen his kindness to the Chinese hotel workers, so she found it hard to believe he would be unsympathetic to his wife. The more she turned it over in her mind, the more she doubted that Martens’s slant on the thing was likely to be credible. But Nathan had been so passive. He hadn’t attempted to explain or defend himself at all.

  They were nearing the bottom of the big meadow, where the ground fell away into a forested gully, and Minette’s head was bobbing heavily with the pony’s stride.

  “Poppet, why don’t we turn around now and go back to the house for a cool drink? Then we could take a visit to town and go to the Good Fortune Bakery for moon cakes?”

  They were nearing the stables when she saw Nelson and Nathan hitching up Sir John’s wagon in great haste, Vulcan looping them in big circles excitedly.

  “What’s happening? Is something wrong?” Graysie jumped down and moved to help Minette off her pony. “You look as if there’s an emergency.”

  Nathan paused briefly. “More than an emergency. A disaster. Willie Watson’s place is on fire. No idea if he’s safe or not. But we’re on our way up there right now.”

  “Willie’s? No! It can’t be.”

  “’Fraid so. The fire brigade boys called in to ask us to come out. They’re ahead of us on the road.”

  “Please. Let me see if Mrs. Snively can look after Minette for a couple of hours. I want to come with you.

  *****

  “Willie can’t die! He just can’t!” Graysie held her head in both hands and shook it hard, as if trying to jolt herself out of a bad dream. She didn’t want to believe her eyes. Willie’s homely cabin was gutted, smoke rising in a sinuous column from a blackened center.

  Willie lay stretched out on one of the Grass Valley Fire Brigade’s stre
tchers, unconscious and bleeding from the top of his head, his face deathly white. As she leaned over him, his breathing was whispery thin, barely audible.

  Around the cabin, young men in blue firefighter shirts and curved safety helmets directed a modest trickle of water onto blackened debris. The hand-operated pump they’d pulled up behind a two-horse team was connected into an underground aquifer that surfaced on the edge of the forest, but it was producing little more than a dribble.

  Graysie crouched down on the ground beside Willie’s stretcher and gently took his hand. “Willie,” she whispered, “you’ve got to come through. You’ve just got to. We’re counting on you.”

  The firemen had the disappointed air of rescuers who’ve arrived too late to do their job and instead are left with the clean-up. And yet… Graysie snapped her head up. An electric shock, a sixth sense, propelled her out of her dazed musing.

  She saw Nathan and another man standing in the middle of the smoking charred remains, gazing at a bundle on the floor—the remnant of an overturned armchair perhaps? Then Nathan raised his arm in alarm and called to the other firemen, “Body down! There’s someone else here.”

  *****

  Two hours later they’d pulled the body of a man from the rubble. Sebastian Russell stood in a huddle of men talking in low tones as the doctor pronounced the man dead and arranged for him to be transported back to town. He was so badly burned it was going to be hard—probably impossible—to work out who he was or the cause of death.

  Willie had been found lying unconscious behind one of the two raised salad beds he’d built out front, huddled with his knees tucked to his chest as if he was trying to make himself as small as possible—to hide perhaps? Track marks in the grass nearby indicated he had probably crawled there, in all likelihood semi-concussed from his messy head wound.

  “I don’t know who killed that man or how, but I don’t think Willie was in any state to move this body or light that fire. I think we’re looking for at least one other man, maybe more.”

  Sebastian gazed around him at the devastation.

  “What puzzles me is what Willie could have had here that was of sufficient value to justify all this…” He gestured around the site. “This mayhem.”

  A cry from one of the firemen Sebastian had asked to check the perimeter of the house distracted their attention.

  “Sorry, sir…” He spread his arms in apology. “But I think you’ll want to come and take a look at this.”

  The body of a red and white haired dog lay stretched in a bloody sprawl, flies buzzing around its half-closed eyes.

  “Oh, no! Not Argus too!” The men who had gathered around the dog’s body froze as Graysie Castellanos rushed forward with an anguished cry.

  She half bent over the dog, quietly sobbing, and Sebastian placed a comforting hand on her back as she slowly stood up. “Something wrong?” he asked. “Apart from a poor, wounded dog, I mean.”

  “Oh, no, no sorry. I just got a shock. I saw him earlier today and he was so lively…”

  Sebastian stared. “You saw him earlier today? And that was because…?

  The young woman blushed. “Um, I asked Willie for his opinion on a mine report I got from Willoughby Martens last night. I had a cup of tea with him here at about ten thirty.”

  “And you left when exactly?” Sebastian pinned her down with his eyes, and her face darkened another shade.

  “We talked for maybe half an hour. I left probably around eleven? I couldn’t say exactly.”

  “And you didn’t notice anything unusual? No outlaws? No men with guns?”

  She didn’t take the joke. “Nothing unusual at all. If there had been I would have told someone like Nathan—Mr. Russell here—of course. He very kindly offered me help when Vance Pedersen was killed and—”

  “Vance Pedersen? Oh, of course. You were there when he was killed too, weren’t you? Curious thing, Miss Castellanos, death seems to follow you around. We need to talk more, but now is not the time or place.”

  He turned his attention back to the dog. “Poor thing was shot in the side at close range. Maybe he got between his master and a bullet. Might have helped save Willie from ending up in that fire.” He bent over and stroked down the sleek back. His hand froze on the dog’s rib cage.

  “Woah! He’s not dead yet. Load him up with Willie and we’ll see what we can do.”

  *****

  “Death seems to follow you around.”

  Graysie felt nauseous. Her stomach heaved and she sidled over to the edge of the clearing and squatted on a log, her head drooping in her hands.

  Breathe in… slowly. Breathe out…

  After a few minutes, the fluttering in her gut settled. The deputy was right, though, wasn’t he? Death was following her. And they didn’t even know about the report Willie had given her yet, the report she hadn’t had a chance to even look at. She put her head in her hands and massaged her temples with her thumbs.

  Think… Think…

  She hadn’t seen anyone while she was visiting Willie earlier that day. She’d passed no one on the road either coming to his house or leaving it, she was sure of it. There was just nothing unusual she could think of that she could tell the sheriff. And anyway, no one but her knew Willie had given her that report. She couldn’t see how she could have led these killers to Willie’s house. It wasn’t possible. Another coincidence. But she knew she had to find a way to make sure it didn’t happen again, whatever it took.

  *****

  The firemen had done all they could to dampen the embers. The unidentified body had been carted back to town for burial. Willie’s still-unconscious form was stretchered onto the Gold House wagon for the trip to the Sisters of Mercy annex, the closest thing Grass Valley had to a small hospital, where nuns would provide around-the-clock nursing care. Argus lay on a dry sack at his feet.

  Nelson, Sir John’s groom, drove while Nathan squatted in the back with Graysie, helping to brace the stretcher and ensure Willie stayed in place as they rumbled down the rough track. She’d insisted on accompanying him to the religious house. He watched her as, and every now and then, she dabbed Willie’s face with a cool damp handkerchief that was streaked black from charcoal flakes.

  She seemed barely conscious of her surroundings, unaware of the black streaks on her own hands and face. Her pale complexion had a clammy sheen, and her breathing was much faster than usual. Her pulse fluttered through the delicate skin at the base of her throat.

  She’s showing all the classic signs of being in shock, he thought.

  The wagon slowed and the wheels growled as they passed from packed earth to the town boardwalk and rolled to the convent gates.

  The wheels had barely stopped turning when Nelson and Nathan were out and had each taken one end of the stretcher and carried Willie into the infirmary, Graysie trailing behind.

  The clinic nurse, a stout, middle-aged woman with a stern but kindly face, received Willie with an air of calm authority. She patted the sheets around his shoulders and turned to face them. “Thank you for bringing him in. There is nothing more you can do for him right now. Get some rest. We’ll take care of him from here.”

  “The nurse is right,” Nathan said. He turned to Nelson. “Can you go on home ahead of us? I think Miss Castellanos needs a cool drink and a moment to catch her breath.” The groom nodded and left.

  “Come on,” he said to Graysie. “I think you’re in mild shock.”

  She started to protest, but he made a silencing gesture, took her hand in his, and drew her across the street to the tea house.

  “Go to the ladies’ room and freshen up,” he said. “You’re covered in soot. I’ll get some iced tea for us.”

  “Thank you.” She stood staring at him, as if momentarily still unsure what she was supposed to do, and then she turned for the ladies’ room.

  Ten minutes later they were settled in a pleasantly cool corner with iced tea in front of them. Graysie took several gulps of her beverage and her face cre
ased in distress.

  “It’s all my fault. It has to be. Just like Sebastian said, death follows me around.”

  Nathan shook his head slowly. “Nonsense, Graysie. You’re upset. You are not to blame.”

  “No, you don’t understand. There’s something I didn’t tell Sebastian. I couldn’t, not in front of all those other men.”

  “Something you didn’t tell Sebastian?” Nathan was aware he was echoing her statement with a hint of disbelief. “Like what?”

  “When I was there this morning, Willie gave me a mining report. Told me Vance had left it with him for safe-keeping last week.”

  She put her hands back up to her face and massaged her temples and forehead, as if easing away a headache.

  “Don’t you see? That could be what they were looking for today. It might be why they broke into Vance’s place. It might be why Vance was killed in the first place.” As she spoke, Graysie’s voice lowered to a desperate whisper. “I’m scared. What am I going to do?”

  As she stared across the table at him, tears slid down her cheeks, but she was so frightened she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Where is it?” Nathan said, more sharply than he intended. “Where’s the report?”

  She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “The report? At Gold House. Under my mattress. I put it there when I got home, and I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. Why?”

  “Finish your drink and let’s go. We need to show it to John, or Sebastian. One of them will know what to do.”

  Twenty Seven

  Minette was in the yard, sprinkling grain for the Gold House hens under Graysie’s loving eye when Sebastian and Nathan dismounted and led their horses towards the stables.

  “What happened? What did you find?”