Sary's Gold

by Sharon Shipley

  Pellets penetrated a few holes in the thick damp wood, the sound lost in the melee, which included a few cowboys letting loose, shooting at the moon. Her shot must be weak from being underground. Far better the newer rifles with their one shot. Still, it would take longer for the water to deplete, and by that time, the stable—okay, she amended, the stable and the blacksmith’s—fire would be doused. Not that she wished the town’s burning, at least not until Jude was safe. Then it could stoke Hell’s fire for all she cared.

  A diversion. Only!

  Sary dashed out into a town turning red, as water needled down from the tower’s underside, and was immediately besieged by a gaggle of doves dancing from the saloon, flowing past, giggling and oblivious. They didn’t stop.

  Neither did she, hearing them shriek as they cavorted under the spray, screeching at the coldness of it.

  Sary rammed into a hefty woman waddling like a duck trailing chicks. The woman squawked. A cinder fell on her hair. Shrieking, she patted it out and yanked her brood along, spinning Sary into a pack of boys.

  Ratchet’s tall figure thrust people aside. Until now, so focused on her plan, Sary had been blind to the chaos, babble, shouts, and imprecations. The town’s atmosphere was part holiday, part a fop to boredom, and she had been buffeted by the mass whose attentions were now snared by fresh explosions—the dry goods store caught fire, and Sary was whipped out on the other side of the mob by this new surge, in full view of those guarding the saloon porch.

  She judged this last barrier, only two feet away, from below her cap. Brutal men. Gap-toothed, leathered from mountain winters and scorching summers, they ringed the porch, gripping weapons, intent as coyotes, undistracted by anarchy as their narrowed eyes, dead beneath their hat brims, hungrily roved the streets and the bluff.

  They were the worst.

  Ratchet’s friends. Julian’s henchmen, certainly. And where was Ratchet? Hands jerked and flexed on gun butts. These were the ones thirsting for death, who wouldn’t quit until she was riddled with shot or dragged through the streets and hung. She little resembled how she once was, though. Perhaps that alone made her invisible. A grizzled miner raked her face with his gaze, veering back and nailing her.

  Sary lowered her head and nodded jerkily. The miner was bumped from behind and turned in anger to confront whoever had jostled him, away from Sary.

  Almost there. Only steps now to the weedy gap between Handi’s derelict hotel and Delacorte’s saloon. Sary darted a glance—Pearl and Cooley still leaned out the window, half-dressed, gawking at the circus. Jude was nowhere in sight. Where is he? She was almost run into by a woman pelting past carrying a quilt, one boot, and a baby, but the little episode effectively concealed Sary as the miner searched for her. He spat tobacco, and the man behind him complained, wiping his shirt—and Sary was safe in the gap. Hastening down the shadowy way, she raced to the open back stairs and up them, heart pounding with her feet. Sary stopped and listened, opened the door, hastened down a passage to where faint light bled from the main hallway to the gallery from which she had sensed Delacorte’s morbid presence a lifetime ago, when she was still young and relatively innocent.

  Jude was in front, somewhere. She must get down that main hall. Rows of doors. A few of them open.

  Chapter 41

  Julian gun-butted Cooley off Pearl with his walrus revolver. His precious Jude was on the floor playing with Pearl’s pistol. He nodded, apoplectic—he’d take care of her later—and scooped the toddler up.

  Pearl, straightening her clothes, pleaded, “I’ll keep ’im, Julian! I will!”

  Cooley hesitated. “Mister Delacorte, sir?”

  “What?!”

  “What if I tole you it were just that measly old female? Warn’t no guns. No—no others. Just like a jest, like?”

  Julian glared, snarling, “Looks like you been buck-shot,” and careened out with Jude in his grip, heading down a side gallery just as Sary entered the upstairs hall leading to it.

  ****

  She backtracked, fingering fully open a door that had been slightly ajar. With a sense of wonder Sary entered an overweening nursery, touching things as Handi had done but with distaste in place of reverence. She started to stroke the hobbyhorse with gaudy feathers and gilded reins but spun awkwardly at the sound of boots stumbling down the hall—a body banged against the wall.

  Then Julian blocked the door. He seemed bigger, like a gaunt giant.

  Both he and Sary gaped, stunned, yet Sary was riveted on the round-faced, sturdy, curly-headed boy Julian gripped in long gray-veined hands. The child’s chubby bottom stuck out past the crook of Julian’s arm.

  Jude peered at Sary over his shoulder with long-lashed, wondering eyes. Green eyes—her eyes.

  Julian, in turn, wavered the hefty revolver, trying to steady it, to hold it up, his gargoyle mouth twisting at Sary’s grimy face and hacked hair, visible as it poked from under the cap she wore. Sary had eyes only for Jude, who was a dead weight in Julian’s suddenly frail-looking arm.

  “Ya come down in the world, Swinford,” Julian snarled. There was something about Julian’s eyes. In the dim light reflected from a nursery lamp, his rheumy eyes were black, jittery, and quite mad.

  “Give me my baby. I want him now, Julian. Please. I came back. He’s not yours. He’s not—”

  It all happened at once. Sary, alarmed, saw the smoke coiling through the nursery just as little Jude sneezed like a kitten and Julian hacked a cough. With the cough he lurched sideways, wildly waving his revolver as it exploded, spitting fire.

  Little Jude jumped, wide-eyed, as the cradle behind Sary blew feathers and a fist-sized hole opened in the wall.

  “Julian!” Sary screamed.

  Julian’s hand sagged, weighted by the gun. He gazed at her and waved his hand feebly.

  “Julian…” he grated slowly and dropped the gun hand. “Speak it again,” he murmured, vague.

  “Yes.” Sary faltered. “Julian.” Another step. “Julian,” she whispered. “Julian.”

  “See? Not difficult.” His eyes glittered with wetness. His voice was a wraith, filled with longing.

  Sary glided closer. Then the eyes were lost to her as he jerked his head up and backed to the hall, haunted and mad. “Julian!” Sary chased after him. His coattails whipped around the corner, his boots clattered down, and a door echoed while Sary bounded down three steps at a time. She saw him struggling up the rocky slope behind the saloon to the half-finished monster of a house.

  ****

  As Sary clawed the slight rise to head him off, Julian abruptly changed course, skidding back down past her with Jude bouncing in his arms. Too late, Sary spied the rickety plank spanning from the saloon to the slope on which the enormous house loomed. She veered as Julian hitched sideways on the flimsy plank. It wobbled as he balanced his weight with Jude’s.

  A wheelbarrow squatted like a sentry at the far end, and the ravine below was littered with bent nails, kegs, and bits of lumber. He can’t make it! But, somehow, he was over, hitched up to an unfinished veranda, pounded across hollow boards, and vanished like smoke in among a forest of studs.

  Sary looked up. This close to the towering hodgepodge, Sary couldn’t see the sky.

  Chapter 42

  Raw pine perfume wrapped Sary’s face as she pelted into a space of shadowy bars and moonlight where broad, half-finished stairs dwindled to an ebony void and steps ended abruptly halfway.

  To one side, a hall melted, deep in gloom. To either side, vast spaces meant to be salons and reception rooms were demarcated by a confusing jungle of uprights and ghostly studs. Other rooms were barely hinted at, while above them a crazy quilt of joists, beams, rafters, whatever they called them, and random spans of unfinished floors ascended, layer after jumbled layer, to the stars.

  She paced farther in, straining to hear where Julian and Jude had gone.

  A hammer sailed end over end, skipping off rafters, skimming past her head, and thudding, after long seconds, somewh
ere below. She squinted down. The moon bounced off boulders, raw earth, and workers’ detritus in a rough, dimly seen cellar.

  Sary peered up past the joists. Nothing. Listened. No sound. She poked her head through a raw frame, scrutinizing a stud-jungle of cross braces and unfinished lathing. A nail keg whizzed past with a whushhh, and she heard a grunt of laughter. The keg too bounced, splintering with a metallic crash somewhere below.

  Sary rotated. “Where? Where’s the, as Tommy’d say, ‘the bloody stairs’?” Backtracking through more raw openings, she wandered deeper in confusing warrens of half-rooms with a welter of open and floored-over joists, hallways opening to the woods, and stairs to the sky, with always the rock-strewn cellar crouching in wait for her mis-step. And what about Jude?

  The whole crazy-patch seemed as if each time workers returned—from lunch, or on another day—carpenters who probably couldn’t read anyway—they began anew on differing levels, at their own whimsy.

  Sary stopped, surrounded by creaks and rustles that pecked like blind birds from overhead, beside her, everywhere. She waited. Maddening silence. Not a footstep or cough.

  She entered yet another raw opening to the right rear of the monster house, into a darker labyrinth of angles, shadows, and dead dreams, stopping at the tinkling snap of bullets dropping somewhere above, rolling with musical clatter, but nothing thudded past her head.

  Then, the sound of sweet high childish prattle.

  “But, Grampa, where we go-ing?”

  “Shhhh, shhhhhh… Shush up!”

  ****

  Ratchet cast a moon shadow through the raw front entrance. Sary and Ratchet both heard the clang of a gun reloaded, and Julian’s voice, “Stay there, my little man. Don’t move!”

  Ratchet grinned in the dark and edged in swiftly. The real two-headed snake was there.

  ****

  Don’t move?! “Delacorte!” Sary shouted. “Don’t leave him!” Flicking her gaze through the open spaces and empty rafters destined to become twelve-foot ceilings above her—“Don’t put Jude down!”—she pinpointed their location. But how was she to get there? Swiveling, disoriented, Sary backtracked, she thought, to find only the unfinished stairway.

  “Grampa be right back,” she heard above her. Twirling, she raked through the tortuous angles of bright moon and dark latitudes for the way up. Veering left, she skidded to a stop and hung onto a doorframe in shock. The room beyond was ceiling-ed with stars and floored with space, and she could see, in her mind’s eye, Jude toddling off, crawling to that black hole, and somersaulting below.

  “Jude! Stay where you are!” she yelled as she tripped over a keg of nails and skidded on her hands and knees.

  Gruff laughter came from above. “Careful, Swinford.”

  Sary pulled splinters, frantically eyeing the dizzying well of ebony nothingness linking endless stars and sky to the night abyss below, where unseen monsters of rock lay in wait to mangle anyone who dared fall amongst them, ready to leave shattered bone and heads bloodied like gourds.

  Jude, crushed…broken…

  She whirled, dizzy. Jude whimpered. Above her? No. Jude was farther off now. Left again, going in circles, fixed on the ceiling, following voices.

  “Grampa? Canny, Grampa. Jude want canny.”

  She laughed weakly. Over there now. This time the voices were drowned by something exploding, and Sary was aware of a background cacophony of yells, rushing feet, and iron wheels clattering amid a hubbub of thudding horses.

  There’s life out there…

  “Delacorte? Stop. I won’t come farther. Please, show yourself. Jude isn’t safe!” Her throat felt cut from yelling. “You’ll do Jude—and yourself—an injury.”

  Above her there was more laughter, ending in coughs, curses, and Jude’s trebly protests. “Grampa. Want down! Put me down! Now!”

  She leapt over dimly seen planks and tools toward what seemed to be a slanted board floating in air.

  A banister.

  No steps! Damn! Skidding to within an inch of the dropoff, she peered up at open risers waiting for treads. Planting a boot on each side, Sary straddled the gap on sawtooth risers and, hanging onto the makeshift banister, hitched up, peering between her boot toes. Don’t look down! Nothing but air. Cold, dead, black air. At last, fingering a ceiling beam, she hung on for dear life, ducking as a thin blur swished past her head—a raw beam somersaulted to crash in the cellar. Delacorte’s gray ghost peered down, gleeful, and ducked back.

  “Delacorte! I’m still here, and I am coming after you!” Her challenge was answered by phlegmy laughter and the creak of a board. Sary hitched faster. Never mind the nothingness beneath. She vaulted up and over rafters stretching out like train tracks, and like a tightrope dancer she wobbled across the mostly open space, leaping joists as quickly as a circus performer in order to not lose balance, until she came to a rough square opening.

  Her boot slid, fanning air, and she rammed a heel onto the two-by-four behind her and wavered outstretched arms, overbalancing. Both feet slid off. Sary plunged through, scraping her shoulders, and an up-flung hand, her rifle hitting rock below with a muffled clang while her outflung hand caught rough wood. More angry than scared, Sary hauled herself up, biceps and shoulders quivering. One leg went over the beam. She flipped prone on the thin edge, rested, inched along the strip, groping ahead with hands, using thighs, knees, feet. She kept tipping one way and then the other, swinging upside down, holding on like a monkey. She threw herself onto a half-floor, scanning a welter of studs.

  “Jude? Sweet baby! Dammit! Where are you?”

  Jude’s babble was louder, then fainter. “Put me down, Grampa…too fast!”

  Sounds of big boots pounding away and boards rattling.

  “Shhhhh, my little man.”

  “Dark, Grampa! Want Han-di! Want Pearl!” Only it came out as, ‘Wan Hani’ and ‘Pull.’

  “Where we go, Grampa?”

  “Hush, Jude!” Then a ringing slap. Jude wailed.

  Sary spun, furious, and addressed the dark. “Stop! Don’t you dare hurt my baby!”

  “What do you know? You didn’t raise him,” Julian snarled.

  A desperate Sary taunted, “Are you scared, Delacorte? Why not show yourself? I’m just a woman.”

  “Woman!” he scorned. Delacorte hesitated. Silence stretched thin as a wisp of smoke coiling in. She thought he was done. Then, quietly, he asked, “Did you murder my boy…my Jules?” It came almost on an intake, as if sucking back words he wished unanswered.

  She heard boots shuffle away. “You wanted me once. I’m here. Delacorte, come back!”

  Sary spied a closed door—an actual framed doorway, with a door and handle. At last. Thudding over loose planks, she yanked it and strode out—into black wind. She grabbed the frame, maneuvering her palm to the inside, and braced, looking down stunned at rocks inviting her with their hard knuckles and cold jagged stone fingers. More shocking, she saw it all by the light of the fire she’d started. Hurling herself back, Sary landed hard on her bottom. “Oooouw!” She rolled onto her back and gritted out, “How the hell did you get up there?”

  ****

  Another maddening stairwell waiting for steps, more unfinished levels. Another banister led to a dark coffin-shaped oblong overhead, and again she wondered how workers got to the upper levels.

  She studied the open stairwell’s dead air, and backed, judging distance across the void to the hodgepodge banister, and leapt, grabbed hold of the banister, her slick palms losing traction, feet dangling. Quick! Hand over hand—cross-over, cross-over, another six inches—latch on! Her shoulders screamed in their sockets, but it was only a foot away, now, to the ceiling. Seize the landing hole. Pull! Pull! Her muscles writhed. Swing a leg up. She missed the edge. Higher. She hooked the landing with a boot heel.

  For a minute Sary viewed the dark, upside down, shutting her eyes at the inky well below. Then, swinging up, she stomached the rim where balustrades should be but weren’t, kneed the lip, and t
umbled across the finished flooring. Blessedly, she lay there, galvanized for action—at last she was closing in.

  Sary checked the closed doors of future bedrooms on all four sides. Then Julian Delacorte’s muffled hack. “You want him, come fetch him, Swinford!” Startlingly close.

  She rammed the nearest door.

  “Sary Swinford? I’m waiting,” Julian sing-songed. “Recall those words? You come to me now!”

  Sary raced around the hole to another door on the far side, sliding up to it. She nudged the door with her gun barrel and entered a room open to the stars and swirls of sparking haze. It’s empty. The rooms must be interconnected, in a square around the landing. Her thought was belied by a hogshead of nails smashing into her face. Jagged light-rings flickered under her lids, faded to bolts, then to orange and yellow stars. She sat hard, aware of nails beneath her backside.

  Blind and deaf, Sary clutched a handful. Flinging the nails low, she rolled sluggishly aside, absently pocketing more nails. Pinpoints of vision expanded too gradually, but, as through a tunnel, Julian’s coat-rack figure manifested, raising a massive revolver—unbelievably aiming it at Jude’s curls instead of at her.

  She rolled as big boots, viewed through a jagged ring, stepped over her. Julian sneered down. “Recollect, Swinford? You bet this once. I’m calling.”

  Sary revolved in a crouch, wavering her own gun. “But I didn’t!”

  She viewed them through a tiny hole in her vision as Julian backed to the landing, holding his walrus revolver steady. Sight returned enough for her to measure the distance to the rail-less drop, and she cried, “Watch out!”

  His face twisted like a gargoyle’s in a slice of moon that highlighted silver stubble, crevices, and sunken eyes raging at her trickery. Still Julian hesitated, uncertain, faltering at the very edge—and regained his footing to lurch right and slip through yet another door and bang it shut. A curtain floated lazily before her. She choked. The smoke was thick and furling up through the open rafters now.