He jammed the shovel into the earth near the privy and began digging, his anger and frustration giving him more strength and energy and determination than normal. “Goddamn antelope,” he grumbled. If he hadn’t spotted the damn thing, he never would have noticed that cave entrance. No. It was the rain that did it. If it hadn’t rained so hard, the rocks and dirt piled around the entrance wouldn’t have washed away.
He stopped digging for a minute, looking up at the sky. “You did it, didn’t you?” he said quietly, speaking to God Himself. “Why? You know I can’t tell her about it.”
His only reply was a gentle breeze. He returned to his digging, feeling like an ass. Yes, he would have to tell her, but not yet. Just a little longer. He wanted to be with her this way just a little longer, because once she knew, he was going to lose her. He was as sure of that as he was that there was a sun in the eastern sky this morning.
Allyson awoke to a chill, feeling nauseated. September had given way to October, and already there was snow on the ground outside. “Ethan, I’m freezing,” she spoke up. “Can you build up the fire?”
The sun was not quite risen yet, and the deep cold of a long, dark night had set in. Ethan stirred, kissing Allyson’s hair and rubbing a big hand over her belly. It seemed to him she’d gotten a little thicker in the waist, and he considered teasing her about it but decided against it. Women were so easily offended by such things. He grinned as he got out of bed, then hurriedly pulled on his denim pants and buttoned them. “Damn, it’s cold!” He rubbed at his arms as he moved to the stove to throw in more wood.
Allyson studied his dark skin, the way his muscles rippled when he worked, the dark hair that hung down his back. She remembered the first time she had met Ethan Temple, running right into his horse back in Arkansas City. That seemed a lifetime ago, and the Allyson she was then was a stranger to her now. Back then a man was the last thing she had wanted in her life. She’d had such big plans for wealth and independence. When she ran into Ethan, she had seen only an Indian—handsome, yes—but an Indian, something to be afraid of, maybe even ashamed to call a friend. Now she saw only the man, the father of her child. Suddenly the words came easily, perhaps because now she was certain.
“Ethan, I’m going to have a baby.”
He’d been standing bent over the stove and had just thrown on another piece of wood, about to close the door. Allyson noticed he seemed to just freeze right there. Finally he closed and latched the stove door, then turned, his smile gone. He didn’t even seem aware of the cold any longer. He walked a little closer. “You sure?”
“As sure as any woman can be. If I’m not pregnant, then there is something terribly wrong, because I haven’t had…” She blushed. “It’s been over two months.”
Two months. Ethan turned and reached for the top half of his longjohns. He pulled it on, then pulled on a flannel shirt and began buttoning it. He came over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Two months. That meant she’d gotten pregnant before he found the vein of gold…the bonanza he still hadn’t told her about. This could be his out. The baby was an excuse to give all this up, sell out and just leave, but that meant letting Roy Holliday get away with murder. He still hadn’t figured out what he could do about that. Now there was a baby to consider. He met her eyes. Did she love him enough to marry him just for himself, or would she only be marrying him now because of the baby? If she did, she would always resent him, blaming him and the baby for taking away her dream. Still, she had certainly very willingly shared her bed with him.
He braced his arms on each side of her and leaned closer. “Ally, you know what this means to me. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to get remarried, but within days after coming up here with you, I knew that was what I wanted. You didn’t seem to want that. You’re still bent on getting rich—”
“No! Not anymore, Ethan. You have to believe that I had decided before I even knew I was with child that no matter what we found up here, I’d sell out and go to Wyoming with you come spring. I swear it. I love you, Ethan. I just want to be with you.”
He closed his eyes and breathed in a deep sigh. “I wish I could believe that’s true, that you aren’t just saying it because of the baby.” He looked at her pleadingly. “I don’t want you that way, Ally. I want a wife and family more than anything in the world, but I don’t want a woman who feels she’s been forced into it. You’ve always wanted things I can’t give you. You want to live in a world I can never be a part of.”
She touched his face. “Not anymore. I’m tired of it all, Ethan, tired of running, tired of being afraid to love. Yes, maybe it is partly the baby that has changed my mind about things, but I don’t feel forced into anything. All the baby has done is show me even more vividly how much I love and need you, how much I want the same things you want, want to be a mother. The baby hasn’t forced me to love you. It has only made me see more clearly how much I love you. You’re my baby’s father, and all of a sudden I want to give you lots of babies. I want a big, sprawling house on that ranch in Wyoming so there will be room for all the children. You have to believe me, Ethan, when I say that this baby is a joy to me because it’s yours. You have to believe that I truly want to go with you to Wyoming, no strings attached, except that I’d be your wife. We’ve gotten enough gold out of here to buy all the land we want, build a nice home—”
Ethan rose, feeling sick at not telling her about the bonanza. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” If she found out now, she’d still have to marry him because of the baby, and she’d never be able to use her fortune in the way she’d always planned. She’d hate him for that. They would be miserable together, pretending for others and for the sake of the child, but living a life she would hate because she’d know she could have had something much better.
“What are you talking about, Ethan? Why won’t you believe me?”
“I do believe you, but you might not be saying these things if—” He hesitated, sure he heard a voice somewhere far off. He put up his hand for her to be quiet as he listened with a trained ear to things few men would ever notice. Quickly he pulled on his knee-high winter moccasins.
“Ethan, what is it?”
“I’m not sure. I heard something.” An explosion rocked the cabin then, and caused Allyson to scream in surprise. A loud rumbling followed the explosion, and the cabin continued to shake, the noise growing to almost deafening proportions in a fraction of a second. In one swift movement, Ethan grabbed Allyson from the bed, dragging a blanket along as he hurried her out the back and into the tunnel. They had barely made it when it seemed half the mountain came down around them.
Allyson screamed again, and Ethan pushed her toward the outer end of the tunnel, then fell to the ground with her, covering her with his body as dirt and debris sifted over them. Ethan prayed the shoring inside the tunnel would hold back what he knew must be dirt and snow and boulders showering them from above. One thing was certain—the landslide was not a natural one. Someone had started it…someone who knew how to use explosives. Did Trevor Gale still have it in for him? He had thought it would be Holliday or one of his men who tried something like this. He had nearly forgotten about the confrontation with Trevor, but then he wasn’t the only man who knew how to use explosives. Holliday could have hired anyone to do this, then decided to make it look like an accident.
“Ethan! My God, what’s happening?” Allyson screamed, staying bent over with her arms wrapped around her head.
“I’m not sure yet,” he yelled, trying to keep his voice above the continued noise of an avalanche that seemed to go on forever. “Maybe it’s from one of the mine explosions,” he lied, hating to have to tell her someone might be out to kill them.
“That was right here by us!” she screamed back.
“Just hang on!”
Allyson had never been so terrified, yet the feel of Ethan’s strong arms around her, the closeness of his face, his voice, calmed her. They both hovered there for several minutes, until finally the nois
e stopped. Ethan finally pulled away from her and felt behind him.
“The tunnel to the house is blocked. We’ve got to try to get out by the privy. I think we’re in luck. I can see some light on the other end.”
“Oh, Ethan, get me out of here! I feel like I’m buried alive!”
Ethan bent back over her for a moment. “Maybe somebody wants us to be buried alive.”
“Why? Ethan, what’s happening?”
“I know you hate it in here, but for safety’s sake, stay put for a few minutes. I’ll go out first. And keep your voice down. If someone was trying to kill us, it’s better to let them think that’s just what they’ve done.”
“Who, Ethan? And why? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Not now, Ally. And keep your voice down.”
“Who’s going to hear us when we’re practically buried alive?”
“Do you still have the blanket I grabbed?”
Allyson felt around in the dark. “Yes.”
“Let’s get to the end of the tunnel. Wrap the blanket around you if and when we get outside, then stay out of sight if you can. Are you all right?”
“I think I am.”
“We’ll have to find something for your feet. I wonder if there is anything left of the cabin.”
“Ethan, I don’t understand any of this.”
“I think somebody tried to stage an accident, get us killed, and call it a landslide.”
Allyson gasped, then realized who it had to be. “Roy Holliday?”
“Most likely. Follow me. You’ll have to crawl over some dirt.”
Ethan headed toward the light at the end of the tunnel, and Allyson prayed the earth remaining above them would not cave in before they could get out. She struggled not to cough or let terror overcome her at being confined in what seemed like a tomb. She made her way through the debris, crawling over a fallen support log, all the while trying to grasp what Ethan had told her. In a sense, it almost seemed as though he had expected this to happen. She thought about the fact that he had worked for Roy Holliday. Did he still? Had all this been a ploy to get up here and see what was really going on so he could report back to Holliday on her progress? Was that why he had looked at her so strangely rather than with joy when she told him she was pregnant? Was that why he hadn’t remarried her yet? Maybe that whole thing back in Cripple Creek with Wayne Trapp had been staged. Maybe Holliday knew Ethan had been married to her once, so he figured she would trust him.
No! There had to be some other reason why he had acted so strangely the last month or so. Ethan wouldn’t do such a thing. He was too good, too honest. Not her Ethan! Besides, he had just saved her, when he could have left her in the cabin to die. But what if…
A terrible grief overwhelmed her, unlike anything she had ever experienced. Not Ethan! Not Ethan! Did he hate her that much? Was this his form of revenge, to win her trust like she had won his, then turn around and throw it in her face? They were almost to the end of the tunnel when she reached out and grasped at his foot. “Ethan!” she groaned.
He reached a spot where he could stand up, then grasped her arms and pulled her against him. “What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”
She looked up at him, able to see him a little in the closer light. She gasped in a sob. “Tell me I haven’t been set up,” she whimpered. “Tell me you don’t still work for Roy Holliday.”
Ethan was both astonished and disappointed. “My God, Ally, when will you ever learn to trust? How could you even begin to think such a thing?”
She sniffed, pulling away. “You knew! Somehow you knew something was going to happen. You’ve been acting strangely for nearly a month.”
Ethan sighed deeply. He shook dirt from his hair, brushing at his shirt and pants. “Not for the reasons you think. My God, Ally, after all we’ve been through together, how could you even begin to think I would betray you?”
“Because that’s how it’s always been for me. But you…you were different. You made me feel loved, and I loved you in return.”
“That’s right. We do love each other. I love you so goddamn much that I did betray you, but not because I wanted to hurt you. I did it because I love you and I’m scared to death of losing you again!”
“What do you mean? How have you betrayed me?”
Ethan moved to the end of the tunnel, peering over a huge boulder that had landed at the entrance but left enough room for a man to crawl out. “I found out why Roy Holliday would be willing to kill for this claim, Ally. When I realized what I had found, I knew Holliday would never let us last the winter up here. It was just a matter of him figuring out how he could get rid of us without his being implicated.”
Allyson’s heart rushed with confusion and excitement. “What did you find?”
Ethan looked at her. “The bonanza, Ally. I found a vein of gold that would make you faint. It might be worth millions, for all I know.”
Her eyes grew wide, and Ethan was sure he had lost her forever at the look of excitement as well as anger in them. “Where?”
He turned to watch what was going on beyond where they were hiding. “Higher up on the mountain,” he answered, keeping his voice low. “John Sebastian must have found it. He’d dug a small cave into the mountain. Maybe he reported his find, I don’t know. The assayer down in town might be on Roy Holliday’s payroll. He probably told Holliday, and Holliday had Sebastian killed, then covered the entrance to the find, figuring you being a woman, you’d never bother coming here to work the claim. He’d just buy it from you and that would be that. At any rate, the day I went hunting for that antelope, it had rained a lot and must have caused a washout that pulled the rocks and mud away from the hidden entrance. I spotted it. When I went inside and saw what was in there—” He hesitated, then turned to face her. “I knew it meant losing you. Your dream is up there on the mountain, Ally, not with me.”
Tears began to stream down her face. “How can you say that? I’m carrying your child!”
He looked back out to watch for whoever might come for them. “By accident, not by choice. You came up here for a different reason, and everything you have ever wanted is up there in that cave.”
She choked on a sob. “How can you talk to me about trust, when you think I would so easily throw away what we have together? Everything I have ever wanted is not up there on that mountain! Everything I’ve ever wanted is standing right in front of me, and living inside of me! Nothing else matters anymore.”
He looked back at her again, a strange sadness in his dark eyes. “You haven’t seen what’s up there, Ally.”
“I don’t need to see it!”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “We have a lot to talk about, and now isn’t the time. Come here.”
Allyson wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown, then pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, walking on bare feet to where Ethan stood. She drew in her breath at the sight of the cabin totally collapsed under huge boulders.
“Now do you believe someone wants us dead? If I was working for Holliday, you’d still be inside that cabin.”
Allyson covered her face. “I don’t know what to think about anything anymore.”
Ethan embraced her. “Just hang on to that baby right now, and keep still. Someone is coming. Whoever it is probably wants to make sure we’re dead.”
“Ethan, I’m scared,” she whispered. “We don’t even have a gun with us.”
He gently pushed her aside and strained to see. Two men on horses came around to the front of what used to be the cabin. They dismounted and began inspecting the cabin site.
“They must be dead,” one of them said.
Now Ethan could see them clearly. One of them was Wayne Trapp, just as he had suspected, but he was astonished to realize that the other was Trevor Gale. Holliday had fired the man a long time ago. How had he managed to get him back on his payroll? He must have offered a lot of money. Here was a former union organizer working for the very man he used to hate. Maybe
he had himself been set up. Everyone knew he had it in for Ethan. Maybe this was Holliday’s way of getting rid of him and Ally without looking guilty. He had no doubt who had set the explosives.
“One of them is Wayne Trapp,” he told Ally. “Whatever happens, you stay right here.”
Wayne Trapp! How she hated the man. Now he was out there with a gun, and she and Ethan were trapped in here with no weapons of any kind. They were surely going to die today, and neither one of them would realize their dreams, never hold their baby.
“I won’t feel comfortable about this till we find the bodies,” Trapp was saying. Allyson could hear his words.
“Who’s the other man?” she asked.
“An Irishman I beat on in front of several other men. He never forgave me for it, but I didn’t think he’d stoop to murder.”
“They have to be in there. It’s barely dawn,” Trevor was saying. “They were still asleep. We’ve watched them long enough to know their habits. There’s no way out of that cabin but the front door, and nobody got out that way.”
Ethan looked at Ally, and she knew now why he had dug the tunnel. She loved him for it, but hated him at the same time for not telling her about the bonanza. She thought she had earned his trust.
“Try to find their bodies,” Trapp was telling Trevor Gale.
Ethan watched as Trevor began rummaging through the rubble. Then to Ethan’s horror he saw Wayne Trapp raise his six-gun. “Turn around, Trevor. I don’t like shootin’ a man in the back.”
Trevor hesitated, then slowly turned. “What the—”
“You don’t really think Roy Holliday would leave you alive to get drunk and tell the whole town what happened up here, do you?”
Trevor’s eyes widened, and he backed away. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talkin’ about you bein’ blamed for what happened up here today. I’m talkin’ about me comin’ up here to make Miss Mills an offer on her claim, only to hear an explosion. I seen you runnin’ off and shot you down. Everybody knows you hate Ethan Temple. You came up here to kill him, and I caught you, but too late. Holliday is rid of Temple and the woman, and you, too. You get blamed for what happened up here, and Holliday gets his hands on this claim. It’s a rich one, Trevor. There’s a vein up there that’s probably worth millions, and you just helped Roy Holliday get it.”
Unforgettable Page 39
