The Northern Devil

by Diane Whiteside

  Lucas frowned, tracing the railroad track to the south. Had he seen embers floating into the sky there, near the Gold Drop? Perhaps light coming from a window?

  Yes! A train was waiting there, hidden on the Gold Drop’s southern side and out of sight from the Bluebird. Only Lucas’s position high on the mountain had let him spot it. That must be how Collins and Humphreys planned to escape after killing Donovan, since he had numerous friends in this town.

  A frigid gust blasted him, swirling snow over him and Little. He wiped it away and caught a flicker of movement, of red and black checks against dark boulders. The man shifted again, revealing a rifle trained on the railroad tracks leading up the Bluebird.

  Lucas’s eyes met Little’s. Humphreys had at least one sharpshooter.

  Another man stretched briefly, pushing his arm out to one side. Humphreys’s second sharpshooter.

  Were there any others? They’d need to take them out within another minute or so, even if that brought down a hornet’s nest on their heads.

  Lucas glanced around. Lowell was in place, prepared to shoot down anyone who came out of the Bluebird after them. Mitchell had disappeared into his spot, higher on the mountain and ready to cover them all.

  He looked back down at the Bluebird, ready to start the attack.

  But a tall, slender man slipped out of a door on the south side, where Lucas could clearly see him. He was superbly dressed, in a fur coat that a Russian nobleman would have been proud of.

  Maitland Collins? What the hell was that devil up to now?

  He glanced around secretively, as if making sure no one was watching, and vanished into a snow tunnel. He must have locked up Rachel at the Gold Drop, the next mine south, damn him.

  Lucas’s hands tightened, desperate to rend the smiling bastard into a thousand pieces. He ground his teeth and fought himself. He could not run after Maitland now. If he did so, Humphreys’s sharpshooters would be alerted and dive for cover, no doubt emerging in time to kill Donovan. He had to stay here long enough to do his duty and fulfill his mission, no matter what his heart screamed at him.

  The train’s headlight flashed again.

  The first sharpshooter was in position, ready to fire at the small depot in front of the Bluebird. The second one had an even better line on Donovan’s arrival.

  Lucas took aim. Little did the same at his side.

  The train’s whistle blew, the sound echoing around the mountain.

  The wind dropped away in the same instant, as though blessing Lucas’s choice.

  Lucas immediately fired and Little did the same, the shots blending into the whistle’s notes.

  The would-be assassins slumped forward onto their rocks, crimson trickling onto the snow.

  Donovan’s train chugged into sight, bell clanging and wheels screeching.

  Lucas waited tensely, desperate to see how soon he could go after Maitland.

  William stepped down from his private car, the whistle’s last echoes dying around the high valley. He kept his head high, waiting for any more shots than the two he’d counted, his pulse steady.

  Time stretched and snapped back to normal when the Bluebird office door opened.

  Grainger had taken out two sharpshooters. Would there be treachery inside? His lip curled. Very likely.

  Best to get this affair over with quickly. He’d promised to return to Viola this evening. This was the first time—and the last, if he’d anything to say about it—that he’d ever leave her for a fight.

  He strolled forward, smiling, as dapper as could be in his finest London tailoring, fresh bought on his honeymoon less than a year ago.

  Humphreys offered him a hand, beaming across his face. Sweet singing Jesus, where had the man gotten the money for a sable coat? The Bluebird on her best days had never paid that much, especially not to her manager.

  William shook the traitor’s hand. “A pleasure to see you again, Humphreys.”

  He deliberately didn’t introduce the two men with him, treating them as secretaries not worthy of names. And he certainly wouldn’t mention the others hidden aboard his private car and its baggage car.

  “It’s been far too long,” Humphreys agreed. “Donovan, this is Albert Collins, principal trustee for the Davis Trust.”

  William kept his gaze polite and his greeting cordial. If he had to choose whether to turn his back on Collins or Humphreys, he’d probably pick Humphreys—a choice he wouldn’t have made five minutes ago. But Collins was deadly, both in intelligence and physical presence. Even more troubling, something angry and dark paced behind his eyes which seemed to have nothing to do with William. He was quiet after the initial exchange, allowing Humphreys to take the conversational lead—and William would have wagered a month’s income that Collins deferred to no man. His eyes strayed south occasionally, ignoring Humphreys’s smooth offerings of liquid refreshments once inside his office.

  The hairs on the nape of William’s neck stirred. Grainger was free to leave his post on the mountainside, once all of Humphreys’s sharpshooters had been dispatched.

  But what the devil else was going on out there?

  If she ever built her own house, every room would be as large as possible. At least every room that she entered.

  Rachel took another step and another, careful to do so as quietly as possible. The air here was cool with a crisp bite to it whenever she came close to a tunnel wall. She guessed that there were several feet of snow above, all shimmering and reflecting light into the tunnel.

  The inside was uncommonly still, as though time itself had stopped. Every sound was magnified, until even her skirts brushing against the wall had sounded like an army. She’d finally chosen to walk down the center, where she could move almost silently. She suspected that men’s boots would sound uncommonly loud. Heaven knows they’d left tracks.

  The floor was covered by a soft layer of snow, which showed every step that anyone had ever taken. Humphreys’s men had apparently been carrying heavy goods out of the Gold Drop for months. Was that mine still capable of producing? At this moment, did she care? Not in the least, especially when she was still close to the Gold Drop.

  Footsteps echoed through the snow tunnel, moving hard and fast from the Bluebird. Their owner was whistling. Maitland.

  Rachel stiffened, goosebumps running up and down her skin.

  Two more sets were walking toward her—from the other end.

  Oh dear Lord, she was trapped.

  Maitland came around a curve in the snow tunnel and stopped. He smiled silkily and the raw red line clawed his cheek. His eyes glittered in the eerie blue light above the Colt in his hand, pointed so steadily at her. “Good evening, Mrs. Davis.”

  Rachel straightened her spine. “Mrs. Grainger,” she corrected him, looking down her nose.

  He sneered, which did the most appalling things to his face. “Mrs. Collins-to-be.”

  No matter what he looked like, it was only justice for how he’d behaved to her, to her sister, and to all the maids. To say nothing of murdering the Hawkins brothers…

  He strolled toward her, still holding the gun. The other men were running now.

  She brought the shotgun up to her shoulder. “It’s loaded and cocked.”

  He laughed, its evil confidence echoing through the tunnel. “You’ll never be able to look a man in the eyes and kill him.”

  Her hand trembled. Oh dear heavens, was he right?

  “I saw you murder Peter Hawkins and leave him to drown in his own blood.” She’d have nightmares about that for years.

  He waved off her accusation with his free hand. “You owed me that for this face. Do you know how many women this scar will cost me?”

  Was that all murder meant to him? The saving grace of anger steadied her. Time slowed until she could hear each individual beat of her heart, feel every compression of her lungs.

  “Murderer,” she whispered.

  He rolled his eyes. “What do I care? But if you grovel well, I may allow you to live
six months after the child is born.”

  Quick as thought, she raised her shotgun and blasted both barrels into the tunnel’s roof over Maitland’s head. It shattered into a thousand pieces, raining ice shards over him in a crystalline dance. The deep boom echoed up and down the long, dark stretch. It rang through her head and shook her bones, staggering her.

  Light flooded in for an instant. In the center, Maitland stared at her, his mouth open and his eyes wide with shock and horror.

  She backed away instinctively.

  Before he could move, an ocean of snow flooded over him, burying him to his knees, then his shoulders and his head. His shot went wild, into the sky, its report outweighed by the thunderous avalanche of snow. Drowning him, as he’d drowned Peter and Paul Hawkins.

  Now he could answer to Divine Providence for his crimes.

  The footsteps slammed to a halt behind her.

  She spun around, frantically fumbling in her pocket for shells. Heaven help her, she needed to reload…

  Two men glared at her, both of them aiming Colts at her. One of them spat a stream of tobacco juice at the pristine wall. “Should we kill her now or take her to the boss?”

  “Now. She’s obviously a threat.”

  The color drained from her face, but she kept her head up.

  A rifle spat twice in quick succession from somewhere over her head. The two guards fell forward, neat holes drilled in their foreheads.

  Rachel choked and spun around, finally getting the shells into her shotgun. Surely if she stayed calm, her stomach would relax. This was the West, not Boston. She had to be strong, if she was to live here with Lucas. Somehow.

  As if her thoughts had created him, his beloved voice spoke. “Rachel! My God, I died a thousand deaths when the ground collapsed before me and I saw you.”

  He dropped into the tunnel and wrapped his arms around her, holding her as tightly as in an iron vise.

  She clung to him, allowing herself to shake for the first time. Even the damp buffalo fur of his coat was precious. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “I have to take you to safety.”

  “Yes, of course.” She gripped her shotgun, ready to go with him.

  He raised an eyebrow. “No arguments?”

  Tears touched her eyes. “None. You were right to have always been so protective.”

  His mouth twisted. “You’re generous—but we can speak more later. Come along; I’m putting you on the train.”

  William strode out into the stamp mill. If he had to choose one place to cause trouble anywhere in a silver mine, it would be here. The immense building was a single large room, with a forty-foot ceiling and floored as superbly as any ballroom. A half-dozen square openings in the floor allowed great columns of steam to rise to the ceiling, like Aladdin’s genie.

  The great crushers stood on the highest platform. Taller than a man, they were able to reduce the hardest rock into fist-sized chunks. The next platform contained a row of halfton stamps, which smashed the chunks into a fine paste using water. Finally the vanners, amalgamating pans with their deadly liquid mercury and other chemicals, settling tanks, and boilers each had their separate platforms and played their own roles in chemically separating the ore from worthless rock.

  The Bluebird’s second greatest resource, after her silver ore, was the spring which allowed her to perform all these steps on her own premises—unlike the other mines which had to haul their ore down to the Carson River.

  None of the platforms, nor the steps between them, had railings, of course. Like the tunnels and shafts inside the mountain, a stamp mill was a place where the devil took the hindmost.

  The day shift had ended just after William’s arrival and no later shift had started, making the big room an eerily quiet place for someone used to the typical earsplitting din. Only a few men were present, who looked chosen as much for fighting ability as for mining.

  William, Humphreys, and Collins had first inspected one of the hoisting shafts. They were still standing near the steam vent which marked it, just as a vent marked every shaft. Collins was with Humphreys and William but he was lagging well behind, away from the steam vent. He looked around and turned back, quickly disappearing outside. A sturdy man who’d had an earlobe torn off in a fight followed him a few minutes later.

  Blessed Mary preserve him, may Grainger have eyes in the back of his head for that devil’s doings.

  “Here’s a sample of that new ore I was talking about,” Humphreys remarked. He handed William a chunk of rock, which one of his men brought down from the stampers. “What do you think of that rich strip of blue muck running through it?”

  William lifted a quizzical eyebrow and looked at the rock more closely. Unlike gold which was much easier for amateurs to test, neither the color nor the thickness of the muck told everything about the amount of raw silver in a chunk of ore.

  Silver ore varied a great deal in color and its color usually matched its origin. Comstock silver ore was usually blue and softer than most region’s ore.

  But this chunk wasn’t. It had more gold running through it and the silver streaks were narrower and harder. It looked like a rich grade of Arizona silver ore, not Nevada.

  “Hmm, very interesting,” he said noncommittally.

  His two men came alert. One of them edged toward the door. The other moved upstairs.

  Humphreys tilted his head, never having heard him use that expression before. “Do you like it?”

  “I haven’t seen anything exactly like it here before,” William said truthfully. The Donovan & Sons’ man closest to the door mimed needing to relieve himself and slipped outside. The other one had his back against the wall, in an excellent location to cover the room. “What did you want to do with it?”

  “Send it to hell.”

  He grabbed William by the waist and shoved, striving to throw him through the five-foot opening and down the two thousand-foot drop. Quick as lightning, William hooked his foot around the other’s ankle and heaved, catching him off balance and throwing him. They both rolled away from the vent and the fight was on, going at each other like the skilled wrestlers they both were.

  From the corner of his eye, William could see several of Humphreys’s men, who’d been peacefully handling equipment and mildly displaying pieces of rock, charge the Donovan & Sons’ man by the wall. Another fight started, while others of Humphreys’s men laid bets on the outcome.

  Then the door opened and a wedge of Donovan & Sons’ men charged in, shouting, “Donovan! Donovan!”

  The melee was on, fought amid the great vats, between the platforms, and up and down the stairs with men taking advantage of every bit of cover, every difference in elevation to use blades or fists or feet against another. Few bullets were fired, not with so many allies nearby and so many vats full of mercury.

  William had little time to watch, for he was in one of the best fights of his life, with every dirty trick completely acceptable. He was panting and bloody by the end, circling the steam vent with his father’s dirk in one hand.

  Humphreys feinted but William countered, not allowing himself to be tricked into taking that great plunge.

  The bastard was tiring now, his reflexes slower. William parried and twisted the other man’s wrist, then released and stepped back away from the opening.

  His enemy staggered backward. One foot found nothing and his hands went up, searching for something to hang onto.

  William watched, unmoved. It would take time and a considerable sum to restore safety to the Bluebird’s operating conditions, given what he’d seen in the hoisting shaft and elsewhere.

  A dread realization flashed into Humphreys’s eyes. He fell screaming, seared even as he plummeted.

  William crossed himself. He’d light a candle and have a Mass said for the man’s soul at the first chance. It was a great pity to see greed destroy such a fine engineer.

  The melee was growing quiet, with Humphreys’s men either
surrendering or dead. The ones beyond caring were laid out in a corner.

  Little, Grainger’s friend, dragged another corpse in and stretched him out with the rest. It was the fellow with the torn earlobe who’d followed Collins out of the room.

  Mitchell carefully washed himself up at the spring. If William knew anything about that Virginian, he’d done twice as much fighting as most and showed it half as much.

  Lowell climbed down from the ceiling, where he’d obviously defeated somebody on the four-foot-wide beam which spanned its length.

  William shook his head and laughed ruefully. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, would the lad ever grow up? Did he really want to see the day when that happened?

  A man screamed outside, like a soul in direst agony.

  Grainger? Collins? William couldn’t put a name to its author. Ice ripped into his veins.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lucas treated the unsettling echoes like ill-advised dinner table conversation—something to be ignored.

  “Gentlemen, please allow me to explain a few matters.” Lucas smiled at the locomotive crew, his rifle held prominently in front of him.

  They stared at him from the engine cab, clearly considering him a dangerous nuisance. “Which are?” the engineer growled.

  “Being men of sense, you heard the gunshots and have decided to make your departure.”

  Two short nods answered him.

  “But I suspect you earlier brought my wife here against her will.” Lucas’s voice was silky soft.

  “We would not!” “Never!” the men shouted back.

  Rachel stepped out from behind the shed and carefully walked to Lucas’s side, trying not to slip and lose her balance on the ice. The wind was blowing almost hard enough to push her over, certainly enough to numb her face if she was outdoors for any amount of time. The storm had finally decided to deliver snow, instead of merely tossing it over the landscape.