Mari had never been so frightened. When the collapse came, she’d thought for sure she was a dead woman. But the scaffolding fell around her in a way that kept most of the rocks away from her. Some of the smaller ones had battered against her, but she was relatively unscathed except for some scrapes and scratches. One of her ankles hurt like the devil, but other than that, she didn’t think she was injured.
On the other hand, the dust had all but smothered her before it had settled. Only then did she pause to think about air. There wasn’t any coming in from outdoors any longer. Unless the men working to free her did their job in a hurry, she wasn’t sure how long she’d last.
When she’d heard Tony’s voice calling to her, she’d experienced a moment of elation. She couldn’t be buried that deeply if she could still communicate with the outside world. She’d called back to him and was moderately reassured for a few minutes. Then the reality of her situation began to creep over her, and her spirits started to flag.
She couldn’t recall ever being so uncomfortable. The heat was insufferable, the air smelled close and stuffy, her ankle throbbed, her scratches hurt—those that didn’t itch—and she couldn’t see anything for the stifling blackness. She wondered if hell was like this. It was something to ponder. If this was a foretaste of hell, Mari’d be more diligent about attending church. Provided she got out of this latest predicament alive.
Who in the name of all that was holy could be doing these terrible things? It was bad enough when whoever it was had crushed the cameras, but now the person was getting perilously close to murder. Mari couldn’t imagine why anyone would wish to interfere with a motion picture in such a catastrophic way.
Of course, there were those religious zealots who considered all forms of entertainment sinful. Mari had read letters to the editor of the San Bernardino newspaper from some of them. But moving pictures were so popular nowadays, Mari didn’t believe the fanatics were awfully numerous.
Then again, sometimes when people felt their positions to be especially weak, they resorted to desperate measures. As she squinted into the blackness of what might yet become her tomb, she decided this act had been pretty darned desperate. So had shooting Tiny. In fact, those two acts were criminal; and if they ever found out who was behind them, Mari hoped the perpetrators would rot in prison.
She sat back against the smoothest boulder she could find and tried to get comfortable. When this proved impossible, she began singing to herself. Realizing singing would only use up what air she had left even more quickly than merely breathing, she ceased singing aloud and commenced humming in her head.
After a minute or two of that, Mari realized the humming wasn’t being created by her brain, but by some physical phenomenon, probably lack of oxygen. A surge of panic swept through her, but she held her breathing steady by an effort of willpower. A moment or two later she understood the humming that had so alarmed her was coming from outside. She would have collapsed from relief if she hadn’t already been as collapsed as she could get.
A drill. They were using a drill. Of course. She ought to have anticipated it.
Although she’d never have believed it possible, she drifted off to sleep a few minutes later, her senses dulled by the darkness and her muscles numb from inaction.
Mari was rudely awakened to reality when a rock fell on her. She sat bolt upright, banging her head against a piece of broken scaffolding and dislodging miniature avalanche of pebbles and dust. For a second, she feared she’d damaged the fragile structure keeping the tons of rock over her head from crushing her, but she hadn’t. Not even her head was hard enough to move a ton of rock, she decided, dryly.
Another rock fell on her. Good heavens, what was happening? Was the structural damage such that the fragile wooden scaffolding protecting her was going to give way after so many minutes or hours of stress? Mari strove to stave off a mounting sense of horror.
The sound of scraping stone almost caused her heart to give out. Oh, Lord above, this was it. She was goner. In a second, the entire structure would cave in, and there would be nothing left of her but a squished heap of human refuse.
Tears stung her eyes. For several moments, she tried to hold them back. Then she decided she might as well spend her last few seconds on earth not holding anything back, so she let them flow, wringing her hands and sobbing like the heroine in a melodrama. Martin would have been proud of her.
A tremendous crash made her scream. Rocks and rubble seemed to rush in upon her. A ray of sunlight nearly blinded her, and she covered her eyes with her hands.
Great God in heaven, was life extinguished whilst accompanied by a flash of light? Is this how it all ended?
Two hard hands seized her by the wrists, and she screamed again. She’d never read anywhere that one was transported out of this world and into the other one by being hauled there manually.
“Try, Mari, try!” a well-known and well-beloved voice urged her. Tony must have died, too. How strange.
It took another couple of seconds for her to realize she was being rescued. A wave of joy was quickly subsumed by one of foolishness for how far her fancy had carried her. She scrambled to help in her own salvation. “I’m trying,” she said testily. “I think my ankle is sprained.”
“Sprained? Good God, I hope it’s nothing worse than that.”
“Easy for you to say. It hurts like the dickens.”
“I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Here, then, be careful?”
She couldn’t tell for sure because she was too rattled, but she thought he sounded as if he might be worried about her poor sore ankle. Which made sense, she guessed, since he undoubtedly didn’t want a piece of property in which his father had invested to be damaged. That might cost money.
When had she become so unpleasantly cynical? she wondered. Although she had to admit being buried underground and in imminent peril of being squashed like a bug did tend to make one reassess one’s prior notions about things.
Tony was dragging her by her wrists now. Mari wondered if he was deliberately hauling her over every jagged rock he could find, or if it was only happenstance. She tried to scramble after him, but her ankle wouldn’t cooperate. Every time she even tried to put weight on it, it gave out and a wash of violent pain went through her. Blast it, this wasn’t fair.
“We’re almost there, Mari,” Tony panted.
She could hear the strain in his voice and instantly forgave him for dragging her over a couple of sharp rocks. “It was good of you to come after me, Tony. I’m sure Martin would have been glad to send someone else.”
“He tried to,” Tony said grimly. “I wouldn’t let him “
“Oh.” Good grief, he really was worried about his father’s money, wasn’t he? “That was nice of you.”
“Nice?” He paused for only a second and looked back at her. Mari couldn’t decipher the expression on his face, except to note that it was very intense. “Nice?” he repeated. “Good God.”
She didn’t have time to ask him anything else because he started tugging at her wrists again. She wanted to know how the accident had happened, and if they thought it had been natural—unlikely, since Martin and his crew had spent days shoring up the infrastructure of the mine—or if it had been another act of vandalism. Mari’s money was on vandalism. Or it would be, if she had any.
“Only a few more feet to go,” Tony told her after several minutes. “It won’t be long now, Mari, and you’ll be free again.”
Free again. That sounded so pleasant. She hoped her blasted ankle wouldn’t interfere with her job in the picture, because she really, really needed that money.
“The doctor’s waiting to check you over.”
“That’s nice.”
“I had him look at Tiny while George and his men were digging you out.”
“That’s very nice.” For the first time since her father’s life’s work had fallen down around her, Mari smiled. “Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
He sounded grumpy again. Mari didn’t know why. All at once, Tony, who had been faintly outlined by the one ray of sunlight streaming into the mine’s shaft, vanished from her sight. She cried out, “Tony!” and feared the last few minutes had been the product of her fevered imagination.
Then light poured down upon her, and she realized Tony had merely climbed out of the pit. He still held on to her hands, and he was tugging her out, too. She had a feeling she wouldn’t have an inch of skin left after she got through this ordeal, but at least she was still alive.
That being the case, she ought to be much happier than this, oughtn’t she? Of course, she should.
Worry. That’s what it was. She was too worried about the consequences that might befall her after this latest catastrophe. Surely Martin wouldn’t want to use her mine any longer. Would he still pay her?
A deafening noise greeted her when Tony finally hauled her out into the light of day. The noise puzzled Mari until she realized the cast and crew of Peerless, plus most of her friends and neighbors from Mojave Wells, were standing around the collapsed entrance to the mine and cheering her rescue. She glanced up, smiling, and was taken completely by surprise when Tony wrapped his big, strong arms around her and lifted her right up off the ground.
Then he kissed her. Her feet dangled in air, and the crowd’s cheers became even more raucous. Mari experienced one fleeting moment of abject embarrassment before she chucked her cares to the wind, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him back.
Tony was panting and she was brick red when he finally lowered her slowly to the ground. “Thank God you’re all right,” he whispered fervently.
“Thank you.” She brushed dirt from her face, forgetting about her ankle until her left foot hit the ground. With a sharp cry of anguish, she crumpled and started to fall. Tony caught her. She thanked him again.
He didn’t seem to hear her. Sweeping her up into his arms, he called out, “Where’s the doctor? I think she’s broken here ankle. It needs to be looked at right away.”
“I’m right here, son.”
Mari glanced toward Dr. Crabtree’s voice and saw the kindly old man grinning at the two of them. Knowing he was doing so because she and Tony had kissed, she lifted her chin and smiled, trying for a dignified expression. “Thank you, Doc.”
She heard Martin’s voice say, “Lord, Mari, I was afraid you were done for. I’m so glad you’re out of that pit.”
Martin, Mari realized, was there at Tony’s side. She wondered if he’d been there all the time. Might have been. She’d had eyes for no one but Tony. “Thanks, Martin. I’m kind of glad about it, too.”
She’d expected a little, bit of laughter to honor her attempt at humor, but none greeted her. She guessed they were all too rattled about the accident. Giving up on humor, she asked, “Does anyone know how it happened?”
“Yes.” This, from Tony, who sounded even grimmer than he usually did when he was annoyed about something having to do with Mari.
He carried her into the cabin and set her on her bed. Gazing up at him, she said, “What was it? Was it . . .” For some reason, her mouth refused to form the word sabotage. Perhaps because she’d almost been killed, she didn’t want to think about someone deliberately doing these things.
“Yes. Someone cut the cables holding the scaffolding together and hacked through several of the supports.”
“Merciful heaven.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Tony agreed wryly.
Dr. Crabtree plunked his black bag on a chair. “You might well say so. It was some kind of merciful heaven that saved your life, Miss Mari. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“No,” said Tony. “Me, neither.”
He sat on another chair with a plunk, and Mari was astonished to see how terribly pale and shaken he looked. He buried his face in his hands. “My God, I thought I’d lost you.”
She gaped at him. He sounded as if losing her would be a bad thing. Before she could ask, the doctor started working on her left foot, untying her shoe and cutting away at her stocking. It was all she could do to keep from screaming in agony. She succeeded, but it took all of her concentration.
A whole bunch of people crowded into the cabin. Tony made them stand back in order to give Doc Crabtree plenty of room to maneuver. Martin smiled encouragingly at her, as did George and Ben and Gordon Shay. Mari was surprised to see Judy Nelson, a corner of her apron stuffed into her mouth and her eyes as wide as pie plates, staring at her. She waved her fingers. “Hi, Judy.”
Judy said, “Hi, Mari,” and burst into tears. How strange.
“We’re going to have to get you a bath, young lady, before we doctor the rest of your wounds. As soon as I check out this ankle of yours, Mr. Ewing is driving you to the Mojave Inn. You’ll be staying there for a few days until this matter is sorted out.”
“I will?” She stared at Doc Crabtree’s old gray head as it bent over her foot.
The doctor nodded. Sensing she’d get no more information from that source, Mari glanced up and caught Tony glowering at her. She blinked, not having anticipated anger from him and feeling rather put out about it.
“No arguments,” Tony announced in a stony voice. “You’re going to the Mojave Inn, and that’s it. Peerless can’t afford to post guards for you and your dog now that we know there’s evil intent behind all of these goings-on.”
“An evil intent?” That sounded almost romantic. Mari didn’t find any of these blasted accidents romantic. Especially not this one, because it had cost her the use of her left foot, and she resented it.
The doctor moved her foot, and she forgot everything but pain. “Ack! Oh, my, that hurts, Doc.” She tried to smile, but a smile wouldn’t come. Tears did, though, and they embarrassed her.
Tony bolted up from his chair and went to the bed. “What are you doing to her?” he asked angrily.
Dr. Crabtree glanced up, grinned, and shook his grizzled head. “No need to beat me up, son. I’m trying to figure out if it’s broken or sprained. She’d be better off if it’s broken, because it’ll heal faster.”
Mari passed a shaky hand across her cheek to wipe away tears. “Really? I didn’t know that.”
The doctor nodded. “Sure. When you get a sprain, the ligament gets torn, there’s lots of internal bleeding, and it can take months for everything to go right again, if it ever does. If you break it, it’s a bone, and bones knit faster than torn ligaments.”
“Oh.” She thought for a minute. “Never thought I’d ever say anything like this, Doc, but I hope it’s broken.”
He chuckled. Tony let out a hiss through his teeth. When Mari glanced up at him, she got the impression he wanted to lift the doctor up from the ground and throw him out a window. On impulse, she held out her hand to him “Maybe if you sat beside me, you could help me be strong.”
Oh, ick. Had she really said that? She feared she had. What’s worse, she feared she meant it.
However, her ploy gave Tony something to do besides stand there and seethe. He sat down next to her on the bed, took her hands in one of his, put his other arm around her shoulder, and held her tight She tried to hide her sigh of pleasure with a cough.
After another couple of minutes of poking, prodding, and feeling, all of which hurt like the very devil, Dr. Crabtree looked up at Mari. “It’s a sprain, young lady, and a bad one. I’ll get it wrapped up now. After you get your bath at the hotel, I’ll rebandage it and put carbolic and bandages on the worst of your scrapes. You’ll have to elevate the foot and won’t be able to walk on it for a week or so, and then you’ll have to be careful with it. It’s going to hurt for months, so prepare yourself.”
“But—” Mari was appalled. “But what about the picture? I’ve still got scenes to do.”
The doctor rose from squatting on the floor, using the bed to help himself stand, and huffed. As he threw his stethoscope into his black bag, grabbed a role of bandages, and snapped the bag shut, he grumbled, “You’re more important than that silly picture, Mari Pottersby. You’ve got to take care of that ankle if you ever want it to get better.”
“Don’t worry about the picture, Mari,” Martin said, capturing her attention because she’d forgotten he was the mastermind behind this endeavor. “We can work around you. Change scenes so you can do them sitting down and hide bandages with furniture, and stuff like that.” He made a careless gesture with his hand. “We do that sort of thing all the time”
“You do?” She began to feel better.
“Well,” Martin amended, smiling, “perhaps not all the time, but you’re not the first actor who’s been hurt on the job, and you probably won’t be the last, more’s the pity.”
Tony had carried Mari out to his car and had driven carefully back to town. They’d put Tiny in the backseat, after giving him a sleep-inducing dose of laudanum. Tony had made Mari sit next to him in the front seat and prop her swollen foot on his coat, which he’d removed and rolled up to make a pillow and placed next to the passenger’s door. This, of course, meant that Mari had to lean against him in order to take advantage of the prop. She hadn’t objected, which was a damned good thing, because he was spoiling for a fight.
He’d been appalled when the doctor had removed her footwear and revealed the ankle. It was as big as a tree trunk and purple to the knee. Her whole foot was bruised and swollen, even the bottom of it.
Dr. Crabtree had explained that the bruising had been caused by blood leaking under the skin and would probably hurt more than the torn ligament when she started walking again.
When they got to the hotel, he carried Mari inside first and would have fussed over her indefinitely if she hadn’t all but shouted at him to take care of her dog. He did so rather huffily, but pleased that at least she hadn’t called him Tiny.
She wouldn’t let him enter the bathroom and help her undress to take a bath, either. “For heaven’s sake, Tony! I want some privacy. Do you mind?”
“Yes,” he growled, but he let her have her way, staying in the parlor with Tiny. Tiny appreciated him, if nobody else did. He did make himself useful by fetching Mari a robe to put on after her bath.
Because he thought he should, he had Mrs. Nelson place a long-distance telephone call to his father in New York. The old man ought to know what was happening, even if Tony didn’t particularly want to be the bearer of the evil tidings. Although he knew none of these disastrous happenings were his fault, and even though he hadn’t wanted the old bastard to invest in a motion picture in the first place, he felt responsible for his father’s investment.
Mari was finished with her bath and had just settled herself into a big, overstuffed armchair in the parlor with her foot propped on a pillow Tony’d set on an ottoman, when a commotion from outdoors captured their attention. With a frown, Mari murmured, “What’s that, I wonder.”
“I hope to hell it’s the doctor come to put another bandage on that ankle and check your scratches.” Every time he looked at her, his heart cramped. She was so bruised and battered. If he hadn’t feared he’d hurt her, he’d have gathered her in his arms and held her close.
“Doc Crabtree will be here as soon as he can be,” she told him “He’s a busy man.”
“Right.” Irate about the conditions prevailing in this backwater, and wishing he could send for a doctor from New York City—which would be ridiculous, since Mari would doubtlessly have healed by the time a New York doctor could make his way out west—Tony stamped to the door and yanked it open. “Oh,” he said. “Hi, Martin.”
Martin entered the parlor, followed by a phalanx of Peerless men. He smiled at Mari. “You look a little more the thing now, Mari. I’m awfully sorry about your ankle.”
She waved her hand in the air. “It’ll be okay. It’s only a sprain.”
“Only a sprain?” Tony bellowed. “The doctor said a sprain was worse than a break!” He resented it when Mari rolled her eyes.
Martin didn’t seem to notice the interplay between the two. He was distracted, although Tony didn’t realize it until Mari asked, “What’s the matter, Martin? What’s going on? Good heavens, there hasn’t been another accident, has there?”
“No, thank God.”
Tony stopped being angry and worried about Mari, and focused his attention on Martin. The poor guy did appear rather rattled. “What happened, Martin?”
Martin flopped onto a sofa near Mari’s chair. Removing his sporty tweed cap and holding it on his knee, he looked up at Tony, a troubled frown on his face. “The sheriff caught two men trying to leave town. In their possession was a twenty-two caliber rifle with a spent cartridge, and several tools that could easily have been used to cause the problems with the mine and with the set”
Tony, who had been pacing nervously, his mind cursing the doctor who seemed determined not to come to Mari’s aid, stopped pacing and stared. “You mean Jones caught the perpetrators?”
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Mari. “This is wonderful!”
Martin grimaced. “It might not be quite as wonderful as all that.”
Tony and Mari exchanged a glance. Tony asked, “What do you mean?”
After heaving a dispirited sigh, Martin said, “It’s kind of complicated.”
This time it was Tony who rolled his eyes. “Out with it, Martin. Who was it?” He hoped to hell it wasn’t George or Ben or another of the Peerless men Martin had trusted for years.
Martin stood again and started twirling his hat nervously. “Maybe you’d better come out to the main lobby with me, Tony. I don’t want to upset Mari.”
Mari sat up and fairly shrieked at the two men, “Don’t you dare leave me to wonder what’s going on! If you don’t do whatever you need to do in here, I’ll hobble out there if it kills me!”
The two men gazed at her, Martin with concern, Tony with fury. “Damn it, Mari, you’re not supposed to move.” He hurried to the door and looked out, scanning the hallway in both directions. “Where the hell’s the doctor?”
“He’s coming,” Martin said. “He had to, ah, care of an emergency first.”
“What’s more of an emergency than Mari?” Tony demanded.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mari pushed herself away from the chair back, preparatory to standing.
Seeing this maneuver on her part, Tony, bellowed, “No! You stay right where you are, damn it!”
Through a barely opened mouth and seriously clenched teeth, Mari snapped, “I intend to know who did this to me, Tony, and you can’t stop me.”
“Hold on, you two.” Martin held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ll bring everyone in here, so you can hear the news firsthand, Mari. Will that be all right with both of you?”
Tony still looked like a bull about to charge, but he said, “Yes. That will be fine.”
Mari gave Martin one of her more glorious smiles. Tony begrudged him that smile. He wanted all of Mari’s smiles for himself. “Thanks, Martin,” she said. “You’re a real pal.”
As Martin left the room, Tony grumbled, “ ‘You’re a real pal.’ I can’t stand it.”
“Quit whining,” Mari snapped. “And where’s my dog?”
“Last I looked, he was sleeping it off in the hotel lobby.”
“Oh.” She settled back against the chair cushions. “Is he all right?”
She looked so unhappy, Tony’s heart flipped. Relenting slightly, he said, “I’ll see if he’s fit to come in here. I’m sure he’d like to be with you as much as you’d like him to be.” There. If she wouldn’t marry him after that magnanimous speech, Tony didn’t know her.
That reminded him, he still hadn’t proposed. What the hell! A man could only do so many things at once. He hurried out to the front lobby, not wanting to miss Martin and the perpetrators.