The man glanced around disinterestedly, as if falling out of invisible compartments and into deserted, out-of-the-way courtyards in the middle of the night was nothing noteworthy. Probably it wasn’t, having ridden the Underground Railroad hundreds, if not thousands, of miles over many days and weeks.
Luke smiled gently, again extending his hand. “Welcome,” he said quietly. “You’ll be safe here tonight, if not quite comfortable. My name is Lucas.”
“Jedediah,” the stranger answered, finally breaking down and shaking Luke’s hand. His eyes, though, never met Luke’s. He continued to scan for potential danger, his head swiveling in all directions.
Luke’s smile widened. “You needn’t worry,” he insisted. “Nobody lives within shouting distance of this place, and everyone in town ‘cept for me and Matt has long since gone to bed.”
“Not everyone,” the old black man muttered. “Someone’s coming.”
Luke withdrew his hand and stared into the dark night, listening hard. If someone was indeed approaching the Paskagankee Tavern during a nighttime delivery, it would be a first. The tiny village was a workingman’s town. Folks liked to drink hard, but they also worked hard, and getting a good night’s sleep was important.
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” he said. “I don’t hear a thing. But just to be on the safe side, let’s get you inside and bunked down for the night.” Luke bent down and retrieved a tiny valise that had slid off the wagon’s false bottom at the same time the slave did. The bag was dusty and torn, and it depressed Luke to think it contained every last item the old man owned.
“Too late,” Jedediah said, and at that moment a man rounded the corner at the side of the inn, emerging out of the darkness into the half-light of the flickering torches. The man approached along the path the wagon had taken just minutes before, confidently following the ruts worn into the grass from hundreds of deliveries on hundreds of nights just like this one.
Luke knew everyone in the small town, at least by sight. The moment the man stepped into the torchlight, Luke understood immediately he was not a Paskagankee resident. The stranger was on foot—if he had ridden into town he had tied his horse to a tree some distance away in order to ensure a stealthy approach—and Luke’s first thought was to wonder how in the Lord’s name the elderly slave had heard the man coming when he hadn’t heard a thing.
Then he forgot all about the slave, all about how the old black man had ridden ten long hours crushed into the false bottom of the delivery wagon. He forgot about everything. Because being dragged along behind the stranger, the man’s left ham fist wrapped securely around the collar of her nightdress, was Luke’s wife.
Sarah.
Her eyes were wide and terrified and a heavy layer of dust caked the bottom of her dress, and after a moment’s shocked hesitation, Luke took two steps toward her. He would attack the man if necessary to rescue his wife, he would die to save her if he must, he would do whatever it took, and—
—and the man calmly lifted a big Colt revolver and placed the barrel against Sarah’s temple. “Stop right there,” he said, and Luke stopped right there.
“Well, well, well,” the stranger said thoughtfully, glancing from Luke to the slave and back. “Whatta we have here?” He caressed the side of Sarah’s beautiful head with his gun and Luke prayed he wouldn’t pull the trigger. Luke could see Sarah trembling, but she stood quietly and said nothing.
The slave was positioned behind Luke. He didn’t move or speak. Luke could feel his presence although he could not see him. It was obvious the old man was waiting to see what would happen next, something Luke was more than a little curious about, himself. He calculated how long Fulton had been gone and what he might be doing. The deliveryman should long since have returned from inside the tavern for another armload of flour or case of beer or sack of clean linen.
“What’s your business here, friend?” Luke asked.
“We all friends now, are we?” the man countered without any trace of a smile.
“Well, we ain’t enemies. Least not yet. I certainly mean you no harm, although it’d sure be easier to stay friends if you release my wife. What brings you to Paskagankee at this time of night?”
The stranger chuckled. He was relatively young, maybe thirty-five, and relatively handsome, if you discounted the small pair of scars running in thin parallel lines along his right cheek. His face was flushed and his hair mussed and his manner abrupt. “So, this little filly wasn’t lying, after all. She told me I could find you here. Ya see, I need a place to hole up for a bit. They’s some people chasin’ me and they ain’t exactly what you’d call the highest of high society fellas.”
“What does that have to do with me, and what does it have to do with my wife?” Luke longed to lunge at the stranger; the urge was almost overwhelming. He wanted to punch the man into submission, six-shooter or no six-shooter, then sweep Sarah into his arms and hold her until she stopped trembling, to convince her everything would be all right.
But Luke was very afraid everything was not going to be all right.
“What’s it got to do with you? Nuthin’ really, ‘cept you happen to own the house I busted into a few minutes ago lookin’ for shelter. Once I showed her my gun, your very kind—and might I add, very beautiful—wife volunteered that they wasn’t much of anyplace to hide in that house, and if it was the first shelter I considered it would probably be the first one the folks chasin’ me would consider, too.” He spit on the ground. “Smart lady.”
Matt Fulton poked his head around the corner of the building. The stranger couldn’t see him, but Luke had a clear view of the deliveryman. Matt had apparently heard the commotion back here and exited through the front door of the tavern, circling around to approach the stranger from behind.
Luke knew Matt was always armed—it would have been suicide driving a wagon full of liquor and bar supplies all over northern Maine without some way to protect himself, and a weapon was even more critical given the illegal human cargo Matt carried—but he knew also that the deliveryman had left his gun on the seat of the wagon in order to lug the supplies into the building. He knew because that was how Matt always did it.
The stranger continued speaking, unaware of Fulton’s presence behind him. “Your beautiful wife told me you was down here takin’ a delivery at the waterin’ hole and that this would be a much better place than your house to lie low. Turns out it was a slightly different kind of delivery than I woulda expected, though, wasn’t it? It was the kind of delivery that tells me you must truly have some good places for me to hide out for a while.”
The man grinned, and even in the uneven light of the flickering torches Luke could see his teeth were yellowed and stained; some of them were missing entirely. “So whaddaya say,” he said, smiling wickedly. “Is there any room at the inn?”
As the stranger talked Fulton approached stealthily from behind, taking his time, moving with care. Sarah stood resolutely, trembling and clearly afraid but trusting in Luke to handle the situation. Fulton had nearly reached the stranger when Luke realized he had just made a critical mistake. He had been so caught up in tracking the deliveryman’s progress and trying not to give anything away that he had fallen silent for much too long. He had completely lost track of the stranger’s words.
The gunman’s eyes widened and he threw Sarah to the ground as he spun left and ducked. Fulton launched a roundhouse right at the stranger’s jaw, a dangerous punch from a dangerous man which, had it been thrown one second earlier, would have ended the fight before it began.
But by the time the punch reached the stranger’s jaw he was no longer there. Fulton’s roundhouse whistled harmlessly through the air, leaving Matt off-balance and vulnerable to a counterattack. The stranger’s foot shot out and connected solidly with Fulton’s knee. Luke rushed forward as the sound of Matt’s kneecap shattering filled the air. It was loud and unmistakable and horrifying.
Fulton gasped in shock and pain and the stranger lifted his six-shooter,
pointing it directly at Luke’s face. “That’s far enough,” he said coldly.
Luke stopped short. “No,” he said. “No, no!”
The gun barrel looked enormous and deadly. From somewhere in his panicked brain Luke could hear Sarah sobbing quietly. The stranger swiveled his arm, holding the big pistol one-handed, aiming it at Matt Fulton’s head.
And then the stranger fired, and instantly Matt Fulton’s head caved in, pulverized by the .38 slug. Blood and bone and brain tissue exploded into the night air and the elderly slave—in his panic Luke had forgotten all about the old black man standing behind him—screamed and Sarah screamed and Luke realized he was screaming, too.
Matt wasn’t screaming, though, he was too busy dying, and his body slumped to the ground, his head a pulpy mush, bludgeoned by the mass of the bullet fired almost point-blank into his skull.
The stranger was panting and jittery and his eyes were wild. He turned the gun on Sarah next, and Luke sank to his knees in the dirt and the weedy grass. “Please stop,” he said. “Please. We’ll do whatever you want. We can hide you. We can hide you for as long as you want to be hidden. Just, please, stop.”
For a long moment nothing happened, and then the stranger lowered his gun. “Show me where I can hide or everyone dies,” he said.
5
The Paskagankee Tavern had been constructed on a foundation of rough-hewn, sound-deadening granite blocks, each several feet thick. From the moment Lucas Crosby had first set eyes on the basement, he had known exactly how he was going to modify the structure to allow Underground Railroad travelers to remain safe and secure during the final stopover in their long journey to freedom.
The day he finalized the purchase, Luke had begun modifications on the property. He did most of the backbreaking work alone, contracting out what few jobs he could not handle himself to Railroad sympathizers who rode up from Connecticut and Rhode Island. They completed their tasks, one or two at a time to avoid raising suspicion among Paskagankee’s residents, and then disappeared, returning to their hometowns and states.
Within a few months the illicit basement modifications had been completed, along with improvements to the rest of the building, allowing Lucas Crosby to open the Paskagankee Tavern. The community knew nothing of the structure’s dual purpose.
In the dank basement, Luke had chipped away a small handhold in one of the seams between the massive granite blocks. The handhold was virtually invisible, indecipherable to anyone unaware of its existence, and until memorizing its location even Luke occasionally had to search for it by running his fingers along the block.
Inside the handhold, a spring-loaded latch had been inserted. A heavy pull on the latch would allow one entire block of granite to swing ponderously outward on a thick iron hinge, revealing a tunnel dug into the earth. The primitive six-foot wide corridor sloped gradually downward and appeared to terminate at an earthen wall fifteen feet away.
That wall, however, was just an illusion. What appeared to be a tree-root thrusting several inches out of the wall was in reality another spring-loaded latch. A tug on the “root” would result in a second door, this one smaller and constructed of dark-brown wood almost perfectly matching the wall, opening on its own hinge to reveal a small room hacked even farther into the earth.
The room had been outfitted with three pairs of bunk beds, a rudimentary table, and six chairs. Shelving lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stocked with food and water and various other supplies an Underground Railroad traveler might need to stay alive—and safe—for weeks, if necessary. Luke had even provided a makeshift lavatory, erecting a wooden wall across one small corner of the room and outfitting the space behind it with a chamber pot.
Luke’s purpose in tunneling into the earth had been to provide for temperature moderation. Thus, even on the coldest of the northern New England village’s bitter winter nights, the secret room stayed at a reasonable temperature. It wasn’t warm, exactly, but with the proper clothing and plenty of blankets, would prevent a traveler from freezing to death.
Providing ventilation had presented the biggest challenge, and Lucas had been forced to bring an engineer all the way from Boston to solve the problem. Eventually, they constructed a series of small tunnels running from the ceiling to ground level, terminating at different locations around the tavern’s property. Each of the ventilation tunnels was integrated into the landscape and was as indecipherable to the unknowing observer as the door built into the basement’s granite blocks.
The product of Lucas Crosby’s backbreaking labor was a hidden room of the highest quality; one that allowed Luke to serve the needs of freedom-seeking slaves without putting his safety or the safety of his beloved Sarah at unnecessary risk. As many as a half-dozen Underground Railroad riders at once could remain safely concealed inside the room for as long as necessary if suspicious strangers – or even locals – seemed to be asking the wrong kinds of questions around the Paskagankee Tavern.
The thick granite blocks, long tunneled entrance and deep-in-the-earth construction deadened all sound, so once sealed inside the hidden room, escaping slaves were free to talk as loudly as they wished without fear of being discovered.
Luke had placed several crates of supplies inside the access tunnel behind the granite blocks in the event his basement doorway were ever discovered, planning to explain away the tunnel as simply an extra, if unusual, storage area. In five years, though, the secret construction had not come close to being discovered. Even Sarah had never actually seen the room.
She was about to see it now, though.
Luke led the way down the rickety stairs leading from the tavern’s small first-floor storage room into the basement. Following silently behind him was the slave. Sarah and the stranger brought up the rear, the stranger’s assumption seeming to be that Luke would not dare try anything stupid with a gun barrel caressing the side of his wife’s head.
The stranger’s assumption was right.
Luke had no idea what, or who, this man might be running from, but at the moment he didn’t care. Seeing Matt Fulton’s head blown almost completely off his shoulders was enough to convince Luke to do as he was told. He knew he could not live with himself were he to be responsible for the same fate befalling his beloved bride.
The sound of the footfalls on the wooden stairs seemed to drop into the basement and disappear. It was as if the building simply swallowed up the noise, leaving behind an eerie and somehow alien silence. Luke stepped off the final tread and felt his way in the darkness to the side wall, lighting a series of candles mounted on sconces, and waited in the resulting insubstantial illumination for the rest of the strange little party to join him.
When everyone had gathered in the basement, the stranger looked around critically and said, “This is it? This is your wonderful hiding place? I ain’t gonna be safe here. The sons of bitches looking for me will sniff me out in seconds!”
The stranger cocked the big .38 and Luke panicked. He had a vision of Sarah lying facedown on the dirt floor, blood leaking out of her body as her life ebbed away. “No, no, this isn’t it! Settle down, please, and I’ll show you the real hiding place.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. Quietly, he said, “You do understand what’s going to happen here if I don’t see some results, and soon, correct?”
Luke nodded, breathing heavily, and walked quickly to the rear of the basement. He reached into an unassuming-looking gap between two of the huge granite blocks and the stranger instantly lifted his Colt to eye level, suspicious, training it on Luke. Luke winced—the gun looked massive with the business end pointed between his eyes—but continued. He tugged sharply and the stranger’s eyes widened as the block swiveled outward. A smile crossed the man’s face. “Now, this is more like it,” he said approvingly.
Luke gestured everyone forward and the stranger walked to the entryway, clutching Sarah tightly by the arm, his gun again aimed at her head. He waved Luke away and then peered inside the tunnel, his vision limited
to the first few feet by the flickering candlelight. “Looks like a storage area,” he said.
“That’s what it’s meant to look like,” Luke said. “But there’s a hidden doorway at the other end and an actual room behind it. Might not be as comfy as a four-star hotel in Boston, but you’ll be safe and warm for as long as you’d like to stay hidden.”
Luke walked past the stranger, careful not to make any sudden movements that could be interpreted as threatening. “Follow me,” he said. “I’ll show you inside.”
“Stop right there,” the stranger snarled. He spit on the floor. “Just how goddamned stupid do you think I am?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a corpse lying in your back yard, remember? Shot with this here gun, remember? I gotta get that body out of there before the guys chasin’ me stumble over it. If they see the dead man, they’ll know I’m here. And I’m runnin’ out of time. So you’re going to help me.” He pointed the gun at Luke, and Luke felt a surge of hope. He would help the stranger dispose of poor Matt Fulton’s body, and while the gunman was occupied, Sarah could make her escape. She would alert the authorities, and Luke might or might not survive the ensuing confrontation, but at least Sarah would be safe.
Luke’s tiny flame of hope was extinguished immediately, however, when the man said, “This pretty little thing is going to come with us, just to be sure you don’t get the bright idea to try something you’ll regret later.
“And as for you,” he continued, turning the gun on the old black slave. “Seems you ain’t no use to me at all. No reason for you to come with us, and if I leave you here, I figure you’ll just go runnin’ straight to the law, won’t cha?”
The old man stared at the stranger, saying nothing, exhibiting no fear, betraying no emotion at all. The stranger cocked his .38 and the black man seemed to stand a little taller, straightening his bent spine and glaring at the killer with baleful eyes. It was almost as if he was daring the stranger to shoot.
Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) Page 3
