Behind her, Johnny yelped in alarm. Glancing over her shoulder, Verity saw him struggling with a large figure who’d appeared from the woods behind the cemetery. She didn’t need a good look to recognize this new arrival.
Across the street, Reverend White’s house remained closed up tight. The Whites were not home and, Verity realized, had probably not sent any letter to the Thomas house.
Nate and her uncle were gone to Tamaqua, summoned by telegram.
Realizing just how gullible they all had been, Verity cast the tree branch to the ground in defeat.
Twenty-Nine
ONCE THEY reached the woods behind the cemetery, the scar-faced man released Verity and Johnny with a shove. Johnny stumbled to his knees, but Verity steadied herself against a tree. She turned to face her assailant, rubbing her wrist where he’d gripped her.
Tall and broad-shouldered, he was just as formidable here as he’d been in the alley on the Fourth of July. Even more so: the darkness that night had concealed the vicious sneer on his face and the leering way his eyes wandered over her figure. Verity shuddered, and he laughed as though reading her mind.
“We’ve got an extra one, Harwood,” he said. “You weren’t expecting her, were you?”
“Oh, I had a feeling Miss Boone would involve herself eventually.” The younger man pushed Liza toward her brother and cousin. “Tie this little hellcat’s hands.” He felt gingerly at his face where Liza had scratched him.
Verity looked around for anybody or anything that could help them. There was nothing, of course, nothing but trees and rocks and the long incline down to the Shades of Death.
The man with the scars drew a length of twine and a pocketknife from inside his coat. With casual cruelty he wrapped the twine around Liza’s wrists, twisting it tight enough to make her wince. He tied it off and cut it, then bound Johnny and Verity the same way.
“You going back for the woman?” Harwood asked.
“I’ll need one of her children as a shield against her damned buckshot.”
“Take the boy. He’s a sniveler.”
Johnny made an attempt to scramble away, but the scarred man grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back. “Can you handle both girls?”
Harwood threw his lank hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head and eyed his companion angrily. Verity saw he didn’t appreciate having his weakness pointed out to their captives. “Tie the Thomas girl to my belt,” he ordered.
The other man took a section of his remaining twine and tethered an unhappy Liza to the one-armed man.
“We’re going to take a walk, Miss Boone,” Harwood said in a mockingly pleasant voice. “Your cousin is coming with me, and you’ll walk in front of us. If you move more than ten feet away from me, I’ll shoot her. Then I’ll cut her corpse loose and come after you. Do you understand me?”
Johnny bawled, and Liza trembled from head to foot, but Verity eyed him steadily. “I won’t cause you any trouble,” she said with a calmness that surprised her. “You don’t need to frighten the children.”
The man with the scar pushed Johnny ahead of him and started back through the woods. Harwood waved the gun at Verity. She looked into his eyes, suppressed a shudder, and then picked her way downhill between rocks and fallen tree limbs.
There was something strangely familiar about this man. She’d seen him briefly at Dr. Robbins’s office, and on the Fourth of July she’d heard his voice. But now that they’d come face-to-face, Verity felt as if she knew him from somewhere else as well.
With their hands tied, Verity and Liza were unable to steady themselves against tree trunks or boulders as the ground grew steeper. Their captor tucked the gun into his belt so that he, at least, had his one hand free, but his infirmity left him off balance, especially with Liza tethered to his body. When she lost her footing and fell on her bottom, she nearly took him down with her. Verity turned around, hoping he would fall, but the young man grabbed a sturdy tree branch, bracing himself and stopping Liza’s slide. Verity trudged back uphill to help Liza. The girls linked hands, and Verity pulled her cousin to her feet.
When Liza was steady, Harwood ordered Verity to back away, reaching for his gun. She stepped back obediently and felt him watching her as she preceded him down the hill.
Eventually they reached the lowlands by the river, where the ground was wet and slippery. Harwood called out, “Over there—that cabin.”
There was a cabin perched precariously on rocky ground near the edge of the bog, although shed might have been a more accurate term. It didn’t seem large enough for anyone to make it a home, but when they entered, Verity could see that people had been living in it. There were two bedrolls on the floor, a couple of haversacks, and the smell of a recent fire in the tiny stove. Drying animal skins hung from nails on the wall, and fishing poles stood in a corner. A long table made of roughly hewn wood, heavily pockmarked and bloodstained, filled most of the space. Angrily, Verity thought the Catawissa search parties had been frustratingly incompetent if Harwood and his ugly companion had been hiding here all along.
The young man released Liza’s tether and made them sit on the floor, in separate corners. Then he set the gun down on the table, turned his back to them, and began to untie the knotted sleeve over his stump. Verity kept her head down in an attitude of submission, watching through her lashes. Harwood was sweating from the effort of the walk, and when he eased back the sleeve from the stump, she could see he was in great discomfort. The amputated limb had been raw and swollen when she’d seen him in the doctor’s office last week. Now it was inflamed even worse, with red lines radiating up from the stump.
Harwood cursed under his breath and rolled the sleeve back down, looking over his shoulder at his captives. Liza was staring at the floor, lost in her own misery, and when he turned his gaze on Verity, she had already cast her eyes down innocently as well.
But her mind was churning restlessly. If she wasn’t mistaken, this man was ill, weakened by blood poisoning. If they were alone with him long enough, perhaps he would make a mistake.
The other man had gone for Aunt Clara. She supposed they were after the Revolutionary War treasure but hadn’t gotten any satisfaction out of beating her uncle. Now they’d sent him on a wild goose chase while they kidnapped other members of his family. Nate was gone—too far away to help her—and Verity felt a pang remembering how she’d promised him she’d be careful. Instead, she’d left the house without telling anyone. Her father would be at work in the fields until dusk, and Beulah would assume she’d gone visiting.
She glanced up at the mysterious Mr. Harwood, who was now lighting a pipe with his one shaking hand. He’d probably been the person in the graveyard the night she’d walked down from her house. He’d been smoking a pipe and contemplating the deserter’s grave, wondering where Silas Clayton had hidden his stolen treasure. She wondered if she dared ask him questions—What are you going to do to us? If there is no gold or we can’t tell you where to find it, will you let us go?—but she decided there was no point. She feared she knew what answers he would give.
They’d been sitting on the floor of the cabin for half an hour when Liza began to sob quietly. Harwood, who’d been leaning against the opposite wall, smoking his pipe and looking pale, sighed. He laid down the pipe and bent over to remove a war-issue canteen from one of the bedrolls. “Do you want water?” he asked roughly.
Liza shook her head. She cast him a frightened look, then cut her eyes desperately at Verity. “I have to . . . I have to . . .”
“She has to go outside,” Verity translated.
“Girls,” he muttered, as if it were a uniquely female problem. He dropped the canteen and hauled Liza to her feet by her bound hands. Pushing her toward the door, he retrieved his weapon off the table.
“Same deal as before, Miss Thomas,” he said. “You can go outside and around the corner of this cabin, no farther than ten feet. I’ll count to sixty. If you’re not back by the time I finish, I’ll shoot Miss Boone
in the head and come find you.”
Liza looked at Verity with wild, frightened eyes and dashed from the cabin.
Harwood watched her go, then turned around and grinned at Verity. “Do you trust her, Miss Boone?”
Verity did not trust her, though she would never have told him so. However, thoughts of Liza and possible betrayal were erased by the sight of the young man’s grin, which sent a cold shiver through her body.
Harwood leaned out the door to check on Liza’s progress. Frightening young women apparently revived him, for he seemed in good humor. Barking a short laugh, he stepped back into the cabin and called out loudly, “Fifty-eight, fifty-nine . . .”
“I’m coming!” Liza screamed from outside. “Don’t shoot her!” The girl burst into the cabin with her skirt tangled and her petticoats hanging out, her face red and streaked with tears. When she saw her tormentor laughing and his hostage unharmed, Liza flung herself across the room. She nearly fell upon Verity, looping her arms over her cousin’s head, her wrists still bound. They were in danger and dependent on each other for survival. Even so, Verity was surprised by this show of affection.
Liza pressed her lips against Verity’s ear and whispered, “This is Hawk Poole’s hunting cabin. He might find us. If he hunts today, he might find us!”
That was it. Now everything made sense, and Verity felt she was sinking, as if the very ground beneath her had turned into quicksand. She could not tell Liza she was wrong—that no rescue would come from Hawk Poole—because Harwood yelled at them to separate. Liza released her, scuttling backward to her former place.
Verity closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall of the cabin. How stupid she’d been. How utterly naïve and stupid.
Hearing voices outside, Verity reluctantly opened her eyes. Harwood took his gun and went to the door, opened it wide, and looked out. Liza stirred, a hopeful expression crossing her face.
Johnny stumbled in first, looking worse for wear with a swollen lip and a ripped shirt. He ducked past Harwood and scrambled over to his sister.
Next, Clara Thomas entered the cabin with a straight back and a raised chin, even though her hands, too, were bound. She surveyed the situation calmly, her eyes passing over Liza and Verity in their corners and turning to appraise Harwood.
“Mama!” Liza gasped, with a choked sob.
“Welcome, Mrs. Thomas,” Harwood said with mock courtesy. “I’m sorry we can’t offer you a chair.”
She turned on him coldly just as the scarred man stepped into the doorway. “You two are the sorriest excuses for criminals I’ve ever seen.”
“And yet here we are, with two of your children plus your niece,” returned the young man. “Your husband is out of town, I understand, but I think it’s better for us to converse without him. The man needs a keeper, and I suspect you’re it. I should have come to you in the first place.”
“Just get on with it,” growled the larger man. “Enough talk. I’m tired of this swamp and this miserable town. Where the hell’s the gold?”
“There is no gold, you fools,” Aunt Clara said in her unemotional voice.
Harwood laughed. “We’ve seen the gold coins, Mrs. Thomas. Your husband produces one every time he has a gambling debt he can’t pay off by other means.”
Verity watched carefully. Her aunt’s eyes did not waver for a second.
“There were only ten coins,” Aunt Clara said finally. “John and his brother-in-law found them years ago. Ransloe wanted no part of them after his wife died, so John kept them, and we used them as we needed them. They’re all gone now—used up and spent. We have no more.”
The men looked at each other. The one with the scarred face moved away from the door to stand at her back, and Harwood took a step toward her as well, so that she was hemmed in by the two of them. “We don’t believe you, Mrs. Thomas,” the younger man said quietly. “Ten coins don’t make a payroll for a regiment of soldiers, not even a hundred years ago.”
“The man who originally stole them spent them or lost them—”
Harwood overrode her. “If you found some, you know where the rest are. You have them in your house, or else they’re hidden in this valley somewhere.”
Aunt Clara shook her head, but Johnny shot Liza a significant look. Verity watched as Liza glared her brother down. They all knew something, every one of them except her, and in that moment she hated them all.
“There are no more,” Aunt Clara repeated.
“Mrs. Thomas,” Harwood said sadly, “I didn’t want to hurt your children, and now you’re forcing me to do so.”
His accomplice grabbed Johnny by a fistful of hair and dragged him to his feet. The boy flung his bound hands over his face and wailed in terror, nearly drowning out the sound of the cabin door being thrust open with a resounding bang.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Johnny whirled, his face lighting with hope. “Doctor!” he cried. “Help us!”
Verity threw her weight against the wall of the cabin and used this support to stand without the help of her bound hands, now numb and useless. “Don’t waste your breath, Johnny,” she said, staring across the cabin at Hadley Jones, whose eyes widened at the sight of her. “He’s with them—and he always has been.”
Thirty
HADLEY JONES didn’t deny his guilt, and the sudden peal of laughter from Harwood confirmed it.
Verity wrenched her gaze away from Jones and nodded toward the laughing man. “They’re cousins or some other kin,” she said, sick at heart. The color of Harwood’s eyes and the shape of his grin had perturbed her, but she hadn’t been forced to acknowledge his resemblance to Hadley Jones until Liza told her whose cabin they were in.
“Half brothers, actually,” Harwood declared. “Worthless half brother is probably what Hadley calls me—the kind you’d leave to fester in an army tent after cutting off his arm.”
“Shut up, Geoffrey,” Jones muttered. “Are you all right, Mrs. Thomas?” He pushed past the scarred man to examine her bound hands.
Aunt Clara answered him coldly. “As well as can be expected while in the hands of common criminals.”
“I’m sorry.” Jones spoke with quiet regret, moving to Johnny to take a quick look at the boy’s split lip. Then he bent to examine Liza’s bound hands. “You’ve tied her too tightly,” he complained over his shoulder. “I’m going to cut her loose.”
Harwood lifted the revolver again and cocked the hammer. “No, Hadley, you won’t.”
Hadley Jones stood upright and glared at his brother, but instead of cutting Liza’s bonds, he turned to Verity. “Let me see,” he said, reaching for her.
Verity recoiled, but there was no place for her to go. “Don’t touch me!”
He grabbed her by the arms and forced her into the corner. Then he bent his head and tried to loosen the twine around her wrists. “Can’t you trust me a little longer?” he murmured in a barely audible voice.
“Let him examine you,” Harwood called out, laughing. “My little brother’s sweet on you, Miss Boone. Even hit Barrow here with a shovel to stop him digging up your mother’s grave.”
The scar-faced man growled. “And if it turns out that’s where the gold is hid after all, I’ll do more than blacken his eye!”
Verity gasped, remembering Hadley Jones’s bruised face on the day after the grave desecration. With a surge of fury, she shoved the man she’d once considered a friend—possibly more than a friend—away from her.
Jones caught his balance and turned on Barrow. “The gold’s not in the graves,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a stupid child. “How would John Thomas get it out when he needed it?” He turned back to Aunt Clara. “I didn’t bring them here, Mrs. Thomas. They followed your husband’s trail of gambling debts and the rumors that he paid his way with gold. I don’t control them, and they don’t answer to me.”
Hadley Jones stabbed a finger at the scarred man. “Jasper Barrow killed an officer and escaped from army prison; he’s
got a price on his head.” He jerked his head toward Harwood. “My esteemed brother is a deserter and a convicted felon. Neither one of them has anything to lose. I’ve tried to prevent them from doing any harm here, but now”—he looked around at the bound hostages and drew an anxious breath—“I can’t protect you.”
“That’s right; he can’t.” Harwood sneered. “Never much love lost between us, and I owe him.”
Verity shuddered. Harwood didn’t seem sane—or maybe he was crazed by the sickness in his blood. She couldn’t guess what had happened between the brothers, but she knew that Hadley Jones had lied for Harwood, tending to his arm, giving him money, hiding him in Hawk Poole’s cabin, and probably helping him elude the searchers. Jones’s silence had allowed these two men to conduct their treasure hunting with increasing violence; he’d placed Verity and her uncle’s whole family in danger.
Verity began to shake, frightened now as she should have been from the moment Harwood pulled a gun on her in the graveyard. She’d been misled by his resemblance to someone she cared about; she’d been fooled by his infirmity and ill health. Verity had thought Harwood was bluffing, but now she realized he’d shoot any one of them without a second thought—his brother included.
“Just tell them!” she burst out. Clara Thomas shot her a withering glare that might have quelled her own children but made no impact on her niece. “We all know you’ve been lying, Aunt Clara. Just tell them where they can find the gold, and they’ll let us go.”
The scarred man, Barrow, leaned close to Aunt Clara and whispered in her ear with the intimacy of a lover but loud enough for Verity to hear every word. “I hear Jones has a knack for amputations. If you like, we can shoot your son in the foot and watch him operate.”
Aunt Clara jerked her head away and shoved Barrow defiantly with her shoulder. “Enough,” she snapped. She turned and pinned Johnny with eyes like nails. “You know where to take them, don’t you? Your father showed you what to do.”
The Caged Graves Page 19
