Mountain Laurel Read online

  Toby gave a noisy sniff. “Anyway, he got all the men in a circle in the ground. There weren’t no cover, but there was this hole, like.”

  “A depression?”

  “Yeah, that’s what it was. He made ever’body keep down and he wouldn’t let nobody panic. He said that help was on its way and that they’d be out of it soon.”

  “Was help on its way?”

  “Hell no! Oh, pardon, ma’am. The soldiers at the fort thought we was out gettin’ wood, wasn’t nobody gonna help us do that.”

  “And you knew this at the time?”

  “I did, and the boy did, but them farmers didn’t. They wanted to believe the boy, I guess, so they did. The boy wouldn’t let ’em shoot unless they thought they could kill somebody.”

  Toby grinned. “You shoulda seen him. He was cool as you please, givin’ shootin’ lessons to the men. You woulda thought we was target practicin’ instead of bein’ attacked by a couple hundred Cheyenne. And them Cheyenne, they took their time. I think they was enjoyin’ the sport.”

  “As much as the settlers enjoyed killing the Cheyenne?” Maddie asked.

  “Just about the same, I’d imagine. We stayed there all day and all night. We was about to run out of water, and the men started quarrelin’ over the water.”

  “What did ’Ring do?”

  “Kept it all himself and doled it out a swallow at a time. We didn’t know if we was gonna die from thirst or the Cheyennes was gonna get us.”

  “Why didn’t he send for help?”

  “Who was he gonna send? I was shot too bad, and if the boy left them men, they’d go crazy and they was all too scared and too dumb to know how to get past the Injuns. There wasn’t nothin’ we could do but wait and pray.”

  “So how did you get out?”

  Toby laughed. “If there’s one thing you can count on in the army, it’s confusion. Back at Fort Breck, the CO, that’s army talk for commandin’ officer, was a drunken old sod and the men got sick of him—they always did about ever’ six weeks—and they decided to desert, that is, after they’d taken a couple barrels of his whiskey.”

  Toby closed his eyes in memory. “Here we was, layin’ in this hole, dyin’ of thirst, fightin’ for our lives, and along comes a whole passel of drunken soldiers desertin’ from the army. I don’t think the Injuns knew quite what was goin’ on, so they stopped shootin’ at us for about ten seconds and the boy made his move.”

  “What did ’Ring do?”

  “I was kinda in a daze then, so I don’t really know for sure, but the boy got the men in the hole up and runnin’ and they jumped up on the horses with the drunks and ever’body started yellin’ and kickin’ them poor horses and got the hell out of there.”

  “And you?”

  Toby looked away for a moment. “He carried me all the way. I told him not to, but he’s one hardheaded so-and-so.”

  “That he is. Won’t listen to reason.”

  “No, he don’t.”

  “So, you all got back to the fort safely.”

  “There was a few men that didn’t make it, but not many.” Toby chuckled. “The boy told the army people that the deserters were concerned when we didn’t come back from the wood-choppin’ foray and that they was out lookin’ for us. The CO had been too drunk to notice that we hadn’t come back so he wasn’t gonna call the boy a liar. The CO was smart enough to see the advantages of the whole thing. He made the boy an officer—although he said he didn’t wanta be—and gave him a medal and he got pieces of paper for the rest of the men.”

  “Commendations?”

  “Right, that’s it. We all got us a piece of paper sayin’ we was minor heroes instead of just a bunch of wood-choppin’ drunks.”

  Maddie smiled at him. The whole story sounded like the ’Ring she’d come to know.

  Toby stood up. “I reckon I better leave you now, ma’am,” he said as he walked to the tent entrance, and Maddie nodded.

  Chapter 14

  What followed for Maddie were three days of hell. She wasn’t very good at waiting. She was used to controlling her own life and now, between Laurel’s kidnapping and ’Ring’s disappearance, she’d never felt so out of control.

  If it hadn’t been for the miners, she thought she might have lost her mind. The miners gave her someone to vent her anger on. They were lonely men and they had heard of her singing and they wanted her to entertain them. At first she’d merely told them no, mumbling that she had a sore throat or some such nonsense, but then their pleadings began to annoy her.

  She turned on one group of miners and let them have it. She yelled at them with the full force of all her lung power. She told them that she did not want to sing for them, that she would not sing for them.

  The men stood there and stared at her in awe. She could be very loud when she chose to be. One man, still blinking from the force of Maddie’s voice, said softly, “I guess you got over your sore throat.”

  Maddie turned away from them, but that didn’t stop them from pestering her to sing for them. She couldn’t walk anywhere without a miner following her and asking her to please sing. They gave all kinds of reasons, one man saying that his family would be thrilled to hear that he’d heard LaReina sing. Another said that he’d consider his life having been worth living if he could just hear her sing. Their flattery became outrageous, but it didn’t move Maddie. She spent most of the day in a woody copse near the edge of the camp and watched the road.

  Edith sometimes brought her food, but it was just as likely to be Toby who brought the food to her.

  “No sign of him?” he asked.

  “None. Why couldn’t he have told us where he was going? At least the direction he was taking. How could he have known where to go?”

  “Maybe he went after that man you were meetin’.”

  Maddie took a deep breath. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” She looked around at the trees. “I think he may have had someone with him, though.”

  “That Injun friend of yours?”

  She looked at Toby sharply.

  “The boy didn’t tell me much, didn’t have time ’fore he left, but he said somethin’ about some journals and some Injun that can hear things.”

  “I think Hears Good went with ’Ring. Hears Good will take care of him.” I hope, she added to herself.

  Toby didn’t ask any more questions, but turned to leave, then looked back. “Oh, yeah, them miners that you grubstaked come back. They found these rocks.” He held out his hand and in it were four black rocks.

  “What are they?”

  “Lead mostly.”

  “Worth anything?”

  “Not much.”

  Maddie gave her attention back to the road. It didn’t matter much to her one way or the other whether the men had discovered gold or not. All she wanted was her sister and ’Ring to return.

  By the third day the miners gave up on her and stopped trying to persuade her to sing for them. They no longer tried to entice her with promises of a piano and even a roofed building housing the piano. They walked past her on the road and tipped their hats to her but they said little.

  Maddie didn’t know or much care why the men were at last leaving her alone, but she was glad. She wasn’t aware that both Sam and Toby had placed themselves on the hill above her and looked down on her like a couple of guardian angels—or vultures as the miners saw them. Toby was outfitted with enough weapons to make him look like a pirate, and Sam had his size to intimidate anyone who bothered Maddie.

  By the evening of the third day she was beginning to give up hope. She knew that this time ’Ring’s luck had run out. This time he hadn’t been able to save himself, much less a company of soldiers, from the dangers that he faced. Maddie tried to get angry at him. She’d tried to tell him that the men who had taken Laurel were dangerous, but he wouldn’t listen to her. No, he thought he knew everything. He thought he could do anything, that he was all-powerful. He thought that he didn’t need anyone, that he could do everything by h