The Union (31 page)

Why did she still hold onto that slim thread of hope that he loved her? What perversity made her ache for him? Whatever his motives, she reasoned he had some honor. He
had
risked his life for hers.
 

Her thoughts returned to the boardwalk. Lunn making promises to avenge her honor, and the traitor looking up her skirts. She couldn't bear it. Anger had overwhelmed her. The intimacy of the detective's position infuriated her, reminding her of past liberties he'd taken. She'd kicked dust in his face so he could not look, to handicap him and assuage her own guilt over helping him. She'd even let Lunn kiss her. The sour taste of his kiss still sat on her lips.

A shot thundered out from behind the saloon. Keely screamed and began shaking so uncontrollably that she could barely stand.
The union men are shooting at him
. She heard their shouts and curses.
Oh, John Dietz, run.
 

She lifted her skirts and ran across the street toward home.
If they've killed him, I don't want to see it.

"Buzzed just past my head," Patterson said.

Dietz looked back to see the three guards, all Swedes and obviously drunk, taking aim at them. He and Patterson plunged ahead into the boxed culvert. Water edged up to his armpits, cold and angry. The force of the current nearly knocked him over. He cursed again as he reached for a timber to brace himself and moved ahead, grabbing from one upright timber to the next to steady himself against the raging water. They moved through the culvert, a distance of close to fifty feet, fighting the current the entire way. At last, panting, they came out beneath a house on the other side only to be greeted by a large Swedish woman who, looking surprised and confused to see them emerge, called out to Patterson.

"Mr. Allison what were you doing under my house with your friend there?"

"Prowling around for a little exercise, ma'am, and hunting for scabs. You be careful now. You got yourself a perfect hiding place under there. Wouldn't want you jumped."

"No, sir." She retreated back inside.

Dietz eyed the distance from the house to the mine. Another two hundred yards in the open separated them from the scab fort—high ricks of cordwood with portholes. They could still get shot full of holes. Patterson looked at him. Dietz shrugged and the two took off running. The guards at the fort stopped them about twenty feet away.

"Drop your guns and come with your hands up."

"We're friends," Dietz replied evenly.

"Don't make a damned bit of difference. If you don't drop those guns, your heads go off."

Dietz tossed his Colt onto the ground and Patterson his Winchester. When they got a little closer, one of the guards apparently recognized them. "Say, aren't you those detectives who come here the other night?"

"We are indeed," Patterson said tiredly.

"Well come on in, men, before the union bastards fill you with lead."

Keely huddled on her bed, knees pulled close to her chest, trying to ball herself up tightly enough to stop the shaking. They hadn't killed him. She'd heard angry men shouting in the streets for backups to stop the traitors. Somehow he'd escaped, at least for the time being. But how was he going to get out of the Valley with every road, every path blockaded? If they caught him—

She shuddered.

Even if he made it to the mine he wouldn't be safe. She'd heard Lunn talking about the union plans to storm it, killing anyone who stood in their way. And traitors, she added silently. She shut her eyes, trying to block out the hideous images of the day. The shootings, the blood, the hatred.

A knock at the door startled her. "Mrs. McCullough?" Big Frank called out.

So not everyone had heard. Had she ever really been Mrs. McCullough? Was she a widow now?

She forced herself to reply. "Yes, what do you want?"

"The doc sent me to fetch you. We've got us a lot of wounded men and the doc's needing a nurse."

She straightened and sat up slowly. "Tell him I'll be right over."

"I'll wait here and escort you over, ma'am. It isn't safe in the streets."

No, indeed, and it wasn't safe in her troubled mind, either. "I appreciate it, Big Frank. Just give me a moment to wash up and I'll be right out."

"I'll wait in the kitchen."
 

He shuffled away as she walked to the washbasin and rinsed her mouth out with soap, trying vainly to wash away Lunn's kiss. She didn't want any man's caresses, not ever again. No one's but
the traitor's.
 

Such a pity, because she wouldn't be getting them.
McCullough is dead.

Shortly after Dietz and Patterson arrived, a union man came up the hill waving a white rag as a flag of truce. He demanded that Monihan surrender the mine.

Monihan refused. Good man. Dietz had no desire to be turned over to the cutthroats who wanted his hide.

"Then we'll blow you to bloody hell!" the union man shouted back. "We'll give you another hour or so to think it over." He departed.

Dietz sat across from Monihan in his office.
 

Monihan stood at the window, looking out back up the hill. "They're sending squads of men up the mountain to the main tunnel." He sounded defeated.
 

Dietz feared he would give up.
 

Patterson sat next to Dietz and a fellow named Fred Carter. Fred sat with his leg propped up on a stool, his foot heavily bandaged where his heel had been shot off. He was the only scab to escape from the Frisco Mill and damned lucky at that. He'd run the distance of the railroad grade right out in the open with lead showering him.
 

"Looks like they're using the same plan they originally tried at the Frisco—capture the main tunnel and then send a tram down loaded with dynamite and a long fuse. It would have worked at the Frisco, but they made the fuse too short." Carter shook his head. "I still don't know how they finally managed to blow the thing up."

"Seems like the only thing to do is go up the mountain and tie a post across the tram tracks so that it will derail any tram they send down," Dietz said. "I'll go."
 

What did he have to lose? He'd already lost everything important to him. He pushed thoughts of Keely away. Alone again, with no one to give a hoot about his hide, wasn't that life?

"I'm going with you," Patterson said. "It'll take two men to lift the post and cover each other."

###

The doc had turned the back room at Daxon's Saloon into a hospital. It stank of whiskey, body odor, and blood. The injured men disgusted Keely almost as much as the injuries. Most of the injuries weren't caused by upholding the glorious cause, but by carousing and drunken brawling. Those directly related to the incident repelled Keely nearly as much. The violence, the violence. She'd lost so much to this cause—Michael, and now McCullough, both McCulloughs.
 

She steeled herself to washing wounds and applying clean linen bandages. Perspiration pooled in rings under her arms in the hot, sticky room. Flies hummed in the air, buzzing around. Looking for carrion? There was plenty of it here and a goodly dose of hatred, greed, and bloodlust to match.

The men capable of speaking bragged about killing and maiming scabs. Suddenly the cause meant nothing to her. She wished herself miles away from here, miles away from herself.

Two union men came in carrying a groaning man by his arms and legs between them. They dumped him on a table and left.
 

The doctor examined the new arrival and turned to Keely. "Leave that fellow and come bathe this man. He's got a slug in his shoulder we'll have to get out immediately."

Keely drew a fresh basin of water and went to the man's side.

"Let me know when he's ready." The doc walked off to another patient.

Filth covered the new arrival. Keely doubted he'd ever bathed. When she bent over him, his breath stank of alcohol. Blood plastered his shirt to his body. As she cut away the sleeve, he spoke to her. "I took a direct hit in the action, but I think I got me a scab."

"Did you now?"
 

He disgusted her. She removed his shirt and began sponging his shoulder, taking away the caked blood like she'd once done for McCullough.
Oh, McCullough.

"Name's Riley." He slurred his words.

"Uh, huh. Hold still, Mr. Riley. This may a hurt a bit as I clean up your shoulder."

"I'm tough." But he winced when she dabbed at the open wound. He stared at her as she worked, looking like he was trying to place her. "You must be an angel of mercy."

"Hardly."

"You got a nice, gentle touch."
 

"So I've been told." She kept working.

"I'd sure like a little more of it, when I'm feeling better." He was staring at her chest and the open collar of her dress as she bent over him. Before she could reply, recognition lit his expression. "Wait a minute. I know who you are—you're the detective's whore. Maybe you'd like to be mine for a time." He reached with his good arm to touch the tip of her bust.

She took the cloth she was holding and pressed it into his wound with startling force. Riley yelped.

"Speak to me like that again and I'll make this pain pale in comparison to what I'll do to you. I'm nobody's whore, never have been. The traitor duped me same as everyone else."

The doc came over to her and, taking her by the shoulders, led her away. "I'll see to him now. You look like you could use a rest. Take a few minutes to compose yourself, then come see me and I'll give you a new assignment."

So it had begun. They didn't fully trust her. Maybe they never would. Had Dietz been right, had he given her back her life? Was it even possible?
 

She hugged herself and stepped out onto the back porch and stared up at the mountain.
 

Her anger at the detective hadn't convinced them of her innocence. But how could they suspect her torn feelings about him? She stared at the ground, past her skirt stained with men's blood. What was going to happen to her now?
 

Chapter 19

Dietz lashed his end of the pole to the tram tracks. "You about finished, Patterson?"

"Been done for hours, Dietz." Patterson stared at a man guarding the station over the mill.

"Something the matter?" Dietz stood and followed Patterson's line of sight.

"Can't be sure, but I'm pretty certain that fellow is a union spy. Keep your back covered as we make our way to the tunnel."

"Shit. We're in plain view of town. We'll need to cover more than our backs." All too aware of the town below, Dietz forced himself to keep from looking for the sway of Keely's colorful skirts, the swish of her walk.
 

Stay inside, Keely. Where it's safe.

They slid down the steep hillside to the tunnel. The dry cheatgrass made their path slick. Damn grass stuck in his socks. Everything irritated him, but why shouldn't it?

At the tunnel Patterson pointed out another spy. "We'll report him to Monihan when we get back."
 

"Appears they've got more spies than we do. Makes a fellow feel awfully safe up here."

Patterson laughed. "Course they do. There's but two of us. As for safety, when have we ever been safe, my friend? And when have we ever wanted to be?"

"You got a point."

When they reached Monihan's office again, any optimism Dietz might have felt melted away. Ed Kinney sat in Monihan's chair, holding a message he'd received over the wires.
 

Monihan didn't bother with any formalities. "Post in place?" He didn't wait for an answer. He must have assumed that since they'd come back whole everything went well. "Mr. Kinney brings word from the owners—to prevent any further damage to operations we're to surrender the mine."

"Operations be damned." Dietz pointed to the mine. "What about the lives involved here? You can't turn your men over to those cutthroats."
 

Monihan turned to Patterson. "What do you think, Patterson?"
 

"I agree with Dietz."

Monihan sighed, took a deep breath and blew it out again. Heavy worry lines etched his face. He shook his head. "I agree with you boys, but given the circumstances, what else can I do? I have to surrender and hope for the best."

"I'm sure as hell not surrendering."
 

Damn these men and their greed. Are material goods all that are important?
 

Dietz looked around the room, meeting each man's gaze directly. "I'm not surrendering alive. I'll fight it out alone if I have to."

Patterson stepped forward. "You won't have to. I'm going with you. I'm not turning myself over to them either. Anyone else with us?"

No one moved.
 

Finally Monihan spoke. "Ask the rest of the men. Then I'll give you and whoever else is going with you a fifteen-minute head start before surrendering."