Holding her breath, pulse pounding, Petra’s gaze shifted from Gabriel, still asleep, back down to the stranger in the yard. Drawing away from the window, instinct told her to grab Gabriel and run. Stopping herself, she put her wild impulse in check, reasoning Kurt wouldn’t arrive in an old wagon pulled by a couple of broken down nags. No, Kurt and Beau would charge into the yard, hootin’ and hollerin’ like a pair of wild Huns, blood in their eyes, intent on death and destruction. The knowledge she would never hear them coming sent the shattering hammer-blow of fear into the core of her heart.
If she could keep still, keep Gabriel quiet, they wouldn’t be discovered. Gabriel squirmed in his bed, his little mouth scrunching up, about to voice his demand for more breakfast. Staying low Petra scooped him up, then, feeling lightheaded and shaky, sat on the floor with him. Her back to the bed, as the walls around her swirled in her peripheral vision, giving her the illusion they were made of fabric, she concentrated on the door. With Gabriel at her breast, she swallowed down the nausea. Willing herself to breathe, relax, she closed her eyes, and the dizzy feeling subsided.
Her thoughts splintered off in a thousand different directions, none of them pleasant. She settled her mind on the question she’d asked herself a dozen times since Mr. Hoyt had come to her rescue. Where was she? She’d run, but she didn’t know how far. She’d deliberately stayed off the main trails and roads, so this place had to be off the beaten track, far from town.
Something told her she’d stumbled on a hideout. She wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Buck Hoyt, if that truly was his name, had a price on his head. He hid his face behind a big thatch of hair. He didn’t want anyone around.
Thinking back, the sky had been overcast, and she navigated by keeping the Wallowas on her left and the Blue Mountains behind her, heading east toward the Snake River.
Her luck had held right after the explosion. Jumping into the back of a freight wagon and hiding beneath a tarpaulin, she made it clear down the mountain without being discovered. At the end of the second day, after walking all day, going up and down one barren hill after another, she remembered thinking she wouldn’t live to see another day. Exhausted, a dilapidated, abandoned barn provided her with shelter. Finding an old well out back of the barn in working condition had saved her life. She’d feasted on a mix of oats and corn mash in an attempt to fool her stomach into believing it had gotten a meal, then fell asleep on a bed of straw. Upon awakening before sunrise, disoriented, confused, and the weather affording her poor visibility, keeping her directions straight became the least of her problems.
On the third day, as the sun had set, she hunkered down behind a fallen tree to get out of the chilling cold. By gouging a groove in a thick, dried sage brush limb with her knife, rubbing a twig in the groove to get it to smoke, like Aunt Jean had shown her, and feeding it with dried twigs, she made a campfire. Next morning, with no fire, no food and no water, barely able to think straight, she staggered down into the canyon, looking for a place to die.
Now, gazing down at the baby in her arms, it all seemed like it had happened in another life, or maybe it hadn’t happened at all; maybe she’d dreamt it.
Gabriel, alive, healthy, came awake with a little jerk and began to suckle again as she rubbed her thumb against his velvety soft cheek.
When she laid her head back to rest on the mattress behind her and closed her eyes, Petra let her mind wander. With a smile tugging her lips up at the corners, she wondered what Mr. Hoyt would look like without his beard. She thought of him as a giant, tall and broad of chest. Without his beard, she wondered, would he become more god-like? Maybe transform into a Hercules, or a Thor? She shook her head at the nonsensical turn her mind had taken, although her imagination took her mind off her fears.
When Gabriel stopped eating again, she changed his diaper, then quietly got to her feet and stood back and to the side of the window, her son in her arms. The team and wagon stood in the yard—the stranger nowhere in sight. The stranger could be in the house, or he might be in the barn.
Afraid to move, her pulse jumped when the stranger appeared directly below her window and headed around the house toward the outhouse. Mr. Hoyt appeared next, going to the wagon. Letting the curtain fall when the stranger reappeared, she stood back as Mr. Hoyt waved the man and his wagon out of the yard.
Unable to resist, she pulled the curtain aside, willing Mr. Hoyt to look up at her window, but he marched over to the barn, his arms stiff at his side, taking long angry strides. She stood at the window to wait for him to reappear. When he came out to stand at the head of the ramp to the barn, he tipped his head up, his gaze going to her window. She wanted to cry out to him. He had to know trouble would soon find her. If she stayed, Kurt would kill him.
“No,” she whispered down to him, “This is not your curse, it’s mine.”
Rooted at her window, she watched him close the barn doors. With his back to the house, he shook the snow from his head and brushed it off his shoulders. He bowed his head against the blowing snow and headed toward the house. One step before stepping up onto the porch and going out of her view, he glanced up at her window. She knew the visitor, whoever he was, had raised more questions in Mr. Hoyt’s mind.
Settling Gabriel in his bed, she started for the stairs, meeting Mr. Hoyt before he reached the second step. He stopped and backed down, moving aside as she passed by to face him over the rough-hewn bar.
He started to speak. His lips moved, then he slapped his arms to his sides in frustration and walked away. Bracing herself, she wanted to be ready for his questions. Screwing up her courage, she meant to ask a few of her own.
He returned from his room with a pad of paper and a pencil. Before he could start writing, she opened her mouth to speak, forgetting she couldn’t hear her own voice, forgetting how much it hurt to talk. “Where am I? How far away from Baker City am I?”
Glaring at her, his lips moved, and again he slapped his sides in frustration. Petra thought it just as well she didn’t know what he’d said—it probably wasn’t fit for a lady’s ears, anyway.
He set pencil to paper and wrote furiously, My place is almost twenty miles due east and slightly north of Baker City. The main road is north of here about two miles. On foot, you must’ve headed straight east. You would’ve had to turn north to get to the Oxbow crossing.
Leaning over his forearm as he wrote, Petra pulled back to take a good look at him. He had nice handwriting. She found it odd, and surprising. Everything about Mr. Hoyt confused her. He’d shown her and Gabriel kindness, generously shared with them, but grudgingly. He looked like a grizzly bear, and yet he had a library. And he growled a lot. Or at least, she thought he did; the scowl he wore on his face most of the time made him appear as if he were growling.
I had a lot of teachers, he wrote.
Startled, Petra shook her head, causing the sloshing noise in her head to slap against the wall of her skull like a breaker wave against a rock cliff.
He couldn’t have known what she’d been thinking. Had she said he had nice handwriting aloud? She suspected Mr. Hoyt of taking advantage of her infirmity, teasing her, using her deafness to have a bit of sport at her expense. But she couldn’t think about it now. Unable to sleep, she had all night long to worry about her deafness.
He kept writing, They taught me to read, write, and do sums in my head before I was six.
Confused, Petra asked the question that formed in her mind, “You had teachers…more than one?”
Yep, six lovely, big-hearted teachers, and my mother.
Surely, he was teasing her; his eyes, they twinkled. Forgetting, she shook her head again, and this time a sharp stab of pain jabbed her above her right eyebrow. “Six? I don’t understand.”
She couldn’t waste any more of her energy on trying to unravel Mr. Hoyt’s riddles. “You wanted to speak to me, why?”
He shrugged his big shoulders, looking slightly disappointed she didn’t want to play his game. After giving her a long, hard look he wrote, Seems something exciting happened up at one of the Sumpter mines.
“The man in the wagon, he told you?”
Writing quickly, Smiley Cummings, he delivers mail between Baker City and Halfway. I’m out of his way, but he brings it out if he’s got something for me.
Petra nodded her head very carefully, relieved the motion had little effect on her senses. She hated to ask and dreaded the answer, but she had to know, “And this excitement was…?”
He gave her a cold smile. One that didn’t touch his silver eyes, his teeth barely visible behind his mustache. Seems the Lucky Laski Brothers mine had an explosion, he wrote.
Feeling lightheaded, Petra gripped the edge of the bar. “Are they alive?”
He nodded, then wrote, They’re in bad shape. It took several days to dig them out. Word is they struck a rich vein. Smiley said they might live to enjoy it. By the look on your face, my guess is you know the Laski boys. What I don’t know is, if you were in that mine when it exploded, how the hell did you escape and they didn’t?
With the walls closing in on her, and the air in the room growing thin, Petra fought to remember to breathe. Feeling sick to her stomach, she gathered up her courage. Right at the base of her skull she could feel a searing heat like a branding iron pressing into her flesh, forcing her to confess. “They had me caged out of sight, just inside the opening. I would’ve been crushed if I hadn’t been inside the cage. Debris slammed into the cage…tipped it over…left the bottom open. I crawled out through a lot of dust…smoke. I hid in the back of a freight wagon. All the people ran, but no one saw me. No one looked for me. Everyone must’ve thought I’d gone home to Missoula. Doubt anyone knew, or even cared, what had happened to me.”
Eyes narrowed, looking down at her over his nose, he glared at her and she worried he didn’t believe her. She could hardly believe it had happened herself. She’d lived through a nightmare, her life turned upside down.
Out of breath and drenched in sweat, a wave of guilt washed over her. She couldn’t tell him everything; much better, safer, if he didn’t know the full truth.
Moving her lips, she intentionally formed her thoughts aloud. “It would be ironic if the explosion revealed a rich vein of gold after all the horrible things they’ve done to make everyone believe they’d already struck the mother-lode.”
She brought her gaze up to lock with Mr. Hoyt’s penetrating stare and felt a surge of hope sweep through her. “They’ve been salting the mine for months. That’s why they had to keep me hidden. I knew what they were doing, but if they’ve really found gold, then they won’t care about me anymore. They might forget all about me.” Trembling, feeling giddy and lightheaded, Petra wanted to weep.
You think they won’t try to find you if they have their gold? Mr. Hoyt wrote the question with a sneer on his lips, the steely glint in his eyes telling her she was a fool.
“Why would they? They only kept me around because I knew…I knew what they were doing.” There were so many words in her head. Carefully she picked through them, hoping she could make herself understood. “They were afraid I would talk. I kept their mine in operation with my inheritance. With me locked up in the cage, they took over my home. They don’t need me now, they have everything. I don’t have any more to give.”
Stopping to breathe, she realized she was quaking like a sapling in a gale. Pulling her shoulders back, she willed herself to stop. “I told them months ago I wouldn’t tell anyone what I knew. I wanted out. I wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I wanted to get my child away from them. If I were to show up now, with Gabriel, we’d be in the way.”
To herself she reasoned, Surely, now the Laski brothers won’t care if I’m alive or dead. It doesn’t matter anymore what I’ve witnessed, what I know. Does it?
Mr. Hoyt put his big head to one side and wrote, You might get in their way, all right, but what about your son? Do you think Kurt will forget about his child?
Again, without giving it a second thought she opened her mouth to speak aloud and hoped it would come out in words, not guttural ramblings, “Kurt doesn’t know I’ve had the baby. He doesn’t know if either of us is alive, does he? No, the gold would be more important.” In her head, her words sounded more like a question, rather than a statement of fact. What Mr. Hoyt wrote next took her completely off guard.
I’ve met Beau Laski. I had a run-in with him. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d let little details slide, if you get my meaning. I don’t think gold would make him forget.
And if his brother Kurt is anything like him, and if somebody had something he wanted, or something on him that might eventually turn back on him and bite him in the ass, he’d have to go after what he thought belonged to him and make damn certain someone couldn’t talk ever again.
Petra’s temper flared, her fear providing fuel, and she fought against her urge to scream. “They don’t want me. Kurt doesn’t want me. He can keep his gold. Gabriel is my son. I’ll never let him take Gabriel…never. I’m no threat to the Laski brothers. I’ve told them over and over all I want is to forget I ever knew either of them. I want to forget everything. I don’t want to have anything more to do with them…ever.”
Petra began to tremble so fiercely, she thought she might shatter into a thousand pieces and pass out. Mr. Hoyt scribbled on the paper and held it up before her nose, bringing her heart to a full stop.
Kurt, the other twin? He’s the father?
With him looking at her over the top edge of the writing tablet, his eyes narrowed and his lips curled in disgust, Petra’s cheeks grew hot with shame. Unable to look away, she replied, “Yes.”
The brothers, they’re a lot alike?
She nodded, “Like peas in a pod as far as looks. Kurt is…he’s boyish, charming, and a little shorter. Beau is the businessman…the thinker, the conniver.”
Just then, Petra realized something wasn’t right. Mr. Hoyt knew Beau, how? “When did you meet Beau?”
He hesitated, his eyes shifting, she suspected he had to deliberate on how to answer. His pencil hovered for a second over the paper before he wrote.
Peering over his arm, she read, He came here a few months back. I had to kick him out. He was drunk.
Petra looked around her, and it finally came to her what this place was. “Is this a saloon?”
He grinned and shrugged his big shoulders before he scribbled out, You could say that.
She asked herself, Why anyone would build a saloon way out here? “You never have any customers.” Forgetting the consequences, she shook her head, and the room tilted, then righted itself. She squeezed her eyes shut. This man didn’t make sense. Everything about Mr. Hoyt seemed at odds: his tidiness, his bushy, hairy aspect, his solitude.
It didn’t matter, not really. He wasn’t telling her the whole truth. Petra sensed it. But it didn’t matter; she wasn’t being completely honest either. “Beau might come back?”
Mr. Hoyt became excited, angry, his lips moved, he was talking, probably yelling. He closed his eyes, she watched him pull in a big breath through his nose, his shoulders going up, his chest expanding, when he opened his eyes, he let his breath out, his shoulders relaxing. His warm breath brushed her cheek before he wrote down what he’d said, You damn right he’ll be back. He’ll be back to even the score. I don’t know exactly when he’ll be back, maybe not ‘till spring, but I know he’s coming back. He didn’t like being bested. He won’t forget. When he comes, I expect him to go for my throat. Hell, he’ll probably just shoot me and be done with it.
Now Mr. Hoyt started writing so fast his penmanship deteriorated into a scrawl. Petra read it through, then blinked a few times before reading it again, this time reading between the lines. “So you think he’ll come back here. But he won’t be looking for me here. He’ll be here because of you.” She stopped to let the ramifications of the situation sink in and took a steadying breath.
“Neither of the brothers will be looking for me here, in a…a saloon out in the wilderness. If they suspect I’m still breathing, they’ll look for me on the main road. They’ll look for me in Missoula. My Aunt Jean is in Missoula. They’ll think I tried to get home to my aunt.”
Mr. Hoyt nodded. That’s how I figure it. I’d say you’d be safer right here, at least until spring. By then, you and the boy will be good and strong and rested up, and the weather will sure as hell be better. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, come spring.