It was hard to admit, but the killing rage he’d nursed so long against Flannery was really directed at himself, for not being there for Nellie when she needed him. Maybe in some small way, being there for Angus and Jeannie made up for it.
He was well pleased with the work he and Angus had done today. They'd felled trees and laid the foundation for the simple two-room cabin.
Whether or not Jeannie and Angus would ever grow rich from their claim remained to be seen, but at least they were taking enough gold out of it to live comfortably.
Jeannie had the sizable nest egg Chalmers had hoarded away, and little Sophie was thriving.
Logan had to smile whenever he thought of the baby. She was a funny-looking, good-natured little creature, with her shock of bright red hair and her round, shoe-button eyes.
From the cradle he and Angus had made her, she’d grinned at him repeatedly, a face-splitting, goofy grin that made her eyes cross and her plump cheeks bunch up.
Logan had looked at her and remembered Nellie, but today the bitterness and anger he usually felt when he thought of his little sister was missing.
Tiny Sophie was proof that life went on, that goodness could result from evil; after all, hadn't Oscar Chalmers fathered Sophie?
Logan looked around—at the peaceful landscape, the blue sky, the pine and spruce covered mountains—and he knew that life was good, despite the bad things that happened, to individuals, to entire countries and even the world, if the wars Hannah described were inevitable.
She’d made him think about things he'd never considered before. Was the future already writ- ten in some massive heavenly book, for instance, waiting for man to enact it? Or could the course of history be changed, if enough people knew what was probable and warned those few who could make a difference?
Probably not. Folks didn’t like warnings much. Take the Barkerville fire, for example.
He’d tried to convince his fellow townspeople that there was danger, and he’d been ignored. He’d taken precautions himself, because he knew that if Hannah and Daisy and Elvira said fire was coming, it likely was.
He’d filled barrels of water and placed them at strategic places around the Nugget, but if the town went up like tinder, he didn't hold much hope that the Nugget would survive.
The only thing in it of real value was his likeness of Nellie and the sizable stash of gold he'd hidden away over these past months. So he’d taken the daguerrotype and the canvas sacks over to Jeannie’s this morning and hidden them in an unused mine shaft. Before the fire arrived, he’d take the womenfolk there as well, out of harm’s way.
He shook the reins and urged the horse to hurry, eager to share with Hannah the changes this single day had brought about. He knew he'd caused her heartache and terrible concern, and he wanted to apologize.
When he got to the Nugget, Sam was busy with the early evening crowd at the bar. Logan waved to him and strode past the saloon and into the kitchen. It was empty, the stove cold, dishes washed and stacked ready for the next meal.
Through the window, Logan spied Zeb sitting in the yard smoking his pipe.
Sticking his head out the kitchen door, Logan called, "Zeb, you seen Hannah?"
“Nope.” Zeb shook his head. “Ain’t seen hide nor hair of Daisy, either. Her and that Elvira took off with Doc Carroll’s buggy just past noontime. Ain’t come back yet that I know of. They was lookin’ fer Hannah, wanted her to go with them.”
Logan frowned. "Where were they going?"
"On a picnic, far as I could figger. Daisy said down the Cariboo Road a piece, mebbe ten mile.” The old man took a long drag on his pipe. "You missed the big doin's in town here today. The new gals for Frenchie’s got here this afternoon. I reckon there won’t be much trade in the saloon tonight. All the men’ll be over there wantin’ to dip their wicks." He guffawed. “’Cept fer old geezers like me who cain't remember what it’s all about."
So Flannery was back. For a moment, Logan felt the old bitterness sweep though him, but by the time he climbed the stairs to his room, it was gone. Everything had changed.
He wanted happiness instead of vengeance.
He wanted Hannah.
Where the hell was she? He'd planned to drag her up here, apologize for his stubbornness, get down on his knees and ask her to marry him, kiss her senseless, promise to stop gambling if she wanted him to and take up…..what?
Damn it all, he’d think of something. He unfastened his leather vest and slung it over a chair. He was done wearing it. Old Begbie was right, the derringer was an invitation to violence.
Outside, the long summer dusk was thickening, turning into night, and a feeling of anxiety came over him. Something must have happened to the women. They ought to be back from their picnic by now. He’d head over to the livery stable, saddle a horse, and go look for them.
He was almost out the door when he wheeled around and picked up his vest again. He was outside, striding down the street, when a young miner hurried up and shoved an envelope into his hand.
"What’s this?’’
The man shrugged. "I was told to give it to you, Mr. McGraw.”
"Private” was scrawled across the envelope in spidery feminine handwriting, along with his name. For an instant, Logan thought it was from Hannah, and he tore it open, his eyes searching for the signature.
He frowned.
Carmen Hall? What the hell did Carmen Hall want with him?
“Flannery wants to talk about your sister Nellie, ” the cryptic message read.
Stunned, Logan read it, once and then again. His stomach roiled. How had Flannery found out he was Nellie’s brother?
The only person in Barkerville besides himself who knew that was Hannah, and she’d never…..
A tiny maggot of doubt twisted inside his chest, and for a moment he could hardly breathe.
Hannah had threatened that she’d find a way to stop him, but to go to the enemy…..she wouldn’t do that. She couldn't do that. Could she?
But Hannah wasn’t there to ask, and he had to know.
He turned and started back down the street, towards Frenchie’s.
In the hours since Flannery’s arrival, Carmen had pampered him, feeding him, bathing him, pleasuring him in all the ways she knew he liked, and through it all she made certain he drank, first wine, then the expensive whiskey from their private stock.
In their bedroom, she pointed out the new wallpaper and he admired it.
The carpenter had done an excellent job of repairing the wall, and Carmen had carefully replaced the gold.
She knew exactly when Flannery slipped into the storage room to check on it, and the cold fury in her gut threatened to consume her, but she damped it down.
When the moment was right, she told him about McGraw. She was careful how she did it, with just the right amount of bravado and alarm.
She told the story of McGraw murdering Chalmers, subtly letting Flannery know that the other man was considered a hero by most of the town, a man no one wanted to challenge.
“His woman told me McGraw considers you a coward,” she goaded, knowing that was Flannery’s greatest fear, because it was so.
"He bragged to her that you wouldn’t spend a single night alive when you got back.”
When Flannery was just drunk enough to be both mean and careless, she sent the message to McGraw.
Logan shouldered his way through the crowd of half-drunken men and half-dressed women in the parlor at Frenchie’s. He recognized most of the men, but some of the women were strangers, part of the new shipment Flannery had imported that day.
Several of them were hardened and blowsy, but one was very young, her dazed eyes ringed with kohl and her tender mouth drawn into a grotesque facsimile of a smile. She was perched on the lap of a bearded miner, and he was running his hands up and down her black-stockinged legs.
Sickened, Logan scanned the room, squinting through the haze of cigar smoke.
"Hi, sugar." Rosie stroked a hand down his ves
t, smiling up at him. "You lookin' for a good time, Logan? You’ve finally come to the right place. Want a drink first?"
"I’m here to see Flannery."
“Oh, he ain’t seein’ anybody tonight, sugar."
“It’s okay, Rosie.” Carmen had materialized beside them. She looked up at Logan, and there was a gleam of excitement in her dead gray gaze.
“Hello, McGraw. I was hoping you’d come by."
"What the hell is the meaning of this?" Logan opened his palm, revealing the crumpled note.
"We need to talk private. This way.” She led him down a narrow hallway, opened a door to an office, and stood aside.
A man was lolling behind a desk, a cigar between his teeth, a glass of whiskey close at hand. His feet were propped on the desk top. He looked up when the door opened.
“Bart Flannery, meet Logan McGraw."
Carmen’s voice was silky and sly.
Flannery's dark, handsome face registered first shock and then alarm. His boots hit the floor hard, and his hand dropped to an open drawer. He fumbled and withdrew a pistol, waving it in Logan's direction as he staggered to his feet. He was more than a trifle unsteady. He gripped the edge of the desk with his free hand.
Behind Logan, the door closed with a snick.
"So you’re the son of a bitch who thinks he's going to shoot me," Flannery snarled. "Where’s your gun, hero?”
"Who told you that?" Logan stood, seemingly relaxed but watching Flannery's eyes.
"Why, honey, your fancy lady did," Carmen sneered from behind Logan. "Just this morning, told me all about Nellie, nearly had me crying. She seemed to think that between us we could make you gentlemen sign a peace treaty."
"I've changed my mind, Flannery.” Logan’s voice was dead calm. "You'll come to a bad end without any help from me. Scum like you always do.”
He turned to walk out.
With both hands, Carmen lifted the poker she’d held hidden in her skirts and brought it down hard on his skull.
Logan grunted. His eyes rolled back in his head. He swayed, then crashed to the floor.
"Dammit, Carmen, what the hell you doing—” Flannery dropped his gun to the desk and started around it, but Carmen had already located Logan’s double-barreled derringer, tucked in the special pocket of his leather vest.
She knew about derringers, she had one herself.
She cocked it, stood up, and turned towards Flannery.
She smiled at him and fired at pointblank range, aiming at a spot right between his ebony eyes.
The bullet left a neat dark hole in his forehead, but the back of his head exploded, sending blood and brains flying.
His arms flew out to the sides and his body tumbled backward, smashing into the safe and sliding down to the floor.
The air smelled of cordite, hot blood, and urine.
Carmen knelt and curled Logan’s fingers around the butt of the small gun.
Then she stood up and coolly assessed the scene. She drew in a deep breath and let out a blood- curdling scream.
Yesterday’s Gold: Chapter Twenty-Five
With trembling fingers, Hannah slid another microfiche into the machine in the Victoria Provincial Archives and scanned the old newspaper headlines, searching for the record of a hanging in long-ago Barkerville, praying desperately she wouldn’t find it.
BARKERVILLE BURNS, read the headlines in the Cariboo Sentinel of September 21, 1868. FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF CONFLAGRATION.
Last week, on the 16 September, Barkerville was leveled by a fire that destroyed almost every building in this mining town. Those few structures to elude the deadly flames included Scott’s Saloon as well as a large portion of the celestial community. The Demers Printing Press at the Sentinel was fortuitously recovered after the fire, making it possible to present this first-hand account penned by local photographer Frederick Dally.
So the Nugget burned.
Hannah thought of the work Logan had done on the building, of the bedroom where they’d lain in each other’s arms, of the workshop where Logan and Angus had fashioned a cradle for Sophie, and sorrow filled her.
She studied the wordy article, searching again for any mention of Logan, but there was none.
A half hour ago, she’d found the account of his arrest for the murder of Bart Flannery.
She didn’t need to look at the microfiche record again, because the words were indelibly im- printed on her brain and in her aching heart. GRISLY SHOOTING DEATH AT FRENCHIE's GAMING HOUSE: PROPRIETOR OF NUGGET SALOON AND ROOMS CHARGED WITH MURDER, the September 14th headline had screamed, going on to detail the shooting which the article claimed was witnessed by Miss Carmen Hall, who, fearing for her own life, had hit Logan McGraw on the head with a poker, rendering him senseless immediately after he’d murdered her partner and paramour. Constable Bowran had been called to the scene by an unnamed gentleman.
The Sentinel stated that no immediate motive for the murder was apparent.
Mr. McGraw was presently in jail, scheduled to appear in front of Judge Begbie when he returned from Quesnellemouth on September 18th.
Eyes burning from her hours of intense research, heartsick at what she’d learned, Hannah looked up from the machine, staring out the window at the dark, rain-washed street shining in the glow of Victoria’s ornate streetlamps.
She’d come here tonight because she knew she had to begin putting what had happened behind her. She had to start getting on with her life, and this had seemed to be a way to begin, to find answers to the questions that plagued her.
Instead, she was more confused than ever. How could she know from these old records what had really happened?
It didn’t sound logical that Logan would walk into Frenchie’s and gun Flannery down that way. It was tantamount to putting his head in a noose. He’d planned to murder Flannery, but he’d also planned to get away afterwards.
Her head was aching, and she had to work tomorrow. It was the end of August, and she’d been home six weeks. She’d gone back to work, she’d tried to pick up the pieces of her existence, but inside her, something vital was missing. Some energy source that had always burned brightly had died down to a bare ember, and most of the time it felt as if it were in danger of going out altogether.
The fact was, she was sick with longing for Logan. Without him, nothing seemed to have meaning. She got through the days, but it took every ounce of energy she could muster.
It had taken this long to even work up the courage to come here and try to find out what had become of the man she loved.
Coming back to her own time had been highly traumatic for Hannah.
If Daisy and Elvira hadn’t been with her that fateful afternoon, she believed she might have gone totally mad.
The police officers had spotted them and come running over, puzzled by their long dresses, asking questions that elicited answers no one would believe.
Hannah had been incapable of even trying to explain; the need to return to Barkerville and Logan overpowered every other emotion, and when it became clear there was no way to go back, she’d become hysterical for the first time in her entire life.
She’d been totally disoriented, emotionally distressed, unable to talk with out bursting into tears. She’d looked into a mirror in some bathroom that afternoon and not recognized the woman who stared back at her, white-faced and blank-eyed.
Elvira and Daisy had told the truth, but of course no one believed them.
Hannah’s distraught condition prompted an interview by an understandably skeptical doctor in Quesnel.
That culminated in all three women spending a terrible night under observation on the medical ward at Quesnel Hospital while the GP who’d treated them conferred by telephone with psychiatric experts in Vancouver.
The media had become involved, and a snide story appeared that night on the television news.
Hannah shuddered, remembering the mob of reporters and TV newspeople who’d surrounded them the next day, shouting questions and shoving mi
crophones in their faces as Brad escorted her and Daisy out of the hospital and into his waiting car.
Gordon, too, had made the trip to Quesnel after he received the news that they were found.
Elvira had phoned him from the R.C.M.P. station, and he’d gotten in their car and driven all night to collect her.
Unlike everyone else, Gordon had listened to and believed Elvira’s account of what happened to them. When the van was found and there was no sign of them, he’d thought she was dead.
He’d hurried into the hospital room that morning and taken Elvira awkwardly in his arms.
"I’m so glad to have you back, old girl." His voice was tearful. “It’s not often folks get a second chance, is it?"
Elvira had wept and wrapped her long arms around his neck as if she never intended to let go.
“My wife doesn’t lie," Gordon had stated in a dignified voice to the reporters who asked him what he made of Elvira's story. "If she says that's what happened, then that’s what happened.”
It had been very different with Brad.
When he arrived in Quesnel after hearing they’d been found, the first thing Hannah blurted out was that she couldn't marry him. She didn't even have his ring to return to him, she sobbed. It was in Barkerville in a drawer in Logan's room, underneath her underwear.
Brad hadn’t even asked who Logan was. Instead, he'd given her the look she was still getting used to, the sort of look that Hannah herself might have given…..before…..to someone who insisted they’d been abducted by aliens and taken aboard a UFO.
To his credit, Brad had been solicitous and very kind that day, insisting that she was obviously in no shape to make decisions, but it was also plain that he was humiliated and upset at being a part of the media circus that surrounded the three women, and also that, after hearing their story, he honestly believed they were all deranged.
Without too much resistance from him, and to the palpable relief of his family, the marriage was canceled a week before it was to occur.
Hannah smiled sadly, remembering the last conversation she’d had with Brad.
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