The Awakening Read online

  “A g-gun?” Reva asked.

  “A pistol, maybe. Better yet, a shotgun. Two big round barrels should get his attention.”

  Reva moved away. “Then again, Amanda, you can have Taylor. You can have both men. I think I better get home now, so goodnight, Mrs. Caulden. Goodnight, Amanda.”

  Amanda caught Reva before she’d gone ten steps and put her arm firmly through Reva’s. “Don’t turn coward on me now. We have to find Hank. Maybe he can prevent the war that’s about to erupt at our ranch, but, more important, Hank might be hurt.”

  “Not to mention us being hurt,” Reva muttered.

  “Sometimes, Reva, a person has to do things one doesn’t want to do. Isn’t that right, Mother? Mother?”

  The two young women turned back to see Grace Caulden still standing in front of the Kingman Arms. Her oval face was as pale as the moon.

  “Reva, does your father have any w-whiskey?” she whispered hoarsely.

  “I can guarantee he has whiskey,” Reva said, and fear sounded in her voice.

  “Come on, we’re wasting time,” Amanda said. “We have to find Hank.” She walked off into the night, the two women following her hesitantly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Are you sure you know how to drive this?” Reva asked. “Or even start it?” Her voice was very quiet and there was a quality in it that could only be classified as respect. Yesterday she would have said that proper, always-use-the-correct-fork Miss Amanda Caulden wasn’t capable of any of the things she had done in the last two hours.

  The three women had “borrowed” a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun from Mr. Eiler (he had drunkenly snored through the entire event and only turned over when Grace took his half-empty whiskey bottle from the crook of his arm). Then Amanda had got them a ride in the back of a smelly old pickup to the Caulden Ranch.

  In the back of the pickup, over the rattling and jostling, a pale-faced Grace had taken her daughter’s hand. “If I don’t get out of this alive, dear, I have a confession to make. I am the Countess de la Glace.”

  Amanda blinked at her mother. “You wrote the book about Ariadne and that man?”

  “I needed something to occupy myself while stuck away in that room. There are royalties from the sale of the books, and you and your young doctor could live quite well on them.” Grace leaned forward. “And see that Reva is taken care of, would you, please?”

  Amanda squeezed her mother’s hand. “When this is over may I read all your novels? I need to make up for lost time.”

  Grace smiled at her daughter and they were quiet the rest of the way to the fields.

  It had been easy to find Whitey Graham; he was on the little dance platform at the south edge of the field, giving one of his speeches about the evilness of the employers. There were bonfires all about and the people’s angry, tired eyes reflected the fiery heat. As Whitey led the crowd into one of the inflammatory ULW songs, Amanda stepped to the edge of the crowd, got Whitey’s attention and motioned for him to follow her.

  Reva and Grace had stood by silently, too scared, too astonished to speak, and watched while Amanda pointed the gun at Whitey’s head and demanded to know where Hank Montgomery was.

  Whitey was a cool one, Reva had to give him that. He said he didn’t mind telling Amanda where Hank was as it would take her too long to get to him to do any good. “It’s going to happen tomorrow. Caulden’s refusal to listen to us was the final straw. This place is going to explode within the next twenty-four hours.”

  Amanda shoved the shotgun closer to his nose. “You are going to explode within the next two minutes if you don’t tell me where Hank is.”

  He looked at Amanda with a bit of respect and told her that his partner, Andrei, had taken Hank away, up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to a shack where Whitey and Andrei had hidden for a few days before entering Kingman. At Amanda’s urging, he gave her complete directions. He seemed to think her concern was amusing.

  “You rich people stick together, don’t you?”

  “Rich?” Amanda said. “Hank spends all he makes on the union.”

  Whitey laughed at her. “The professor’s family is so rich they make you Cauldens look like paupers. We tried to get the workers to strike his father’s company, Warbrooke Shipping, two years ago but…”

  “You weren’t successful,” she finished.

  “Amanda,” Grace said, “you could stop this whole thing now. We’ll take Mr. Graham away from here.”

  Amanda hesitated and weighed the possibilities. “People have a right to protest, and only my father could stop it now—and only Hank could persuade my father.”

  Whitey laughed again. He knew Amanda wouldn’t shoot him, and it didn’t matter if she went after Montgomery—she’d never get him back in time. They’d had to get rid of the doc or he could have ruined everything. He turned his back on Amanda and her shotgun and went back to the crowd.

  “That man really doesn’t care if he lives or dies,” Reva whispered.

  Amanda didn’t waste time thinking about Whitey Graham. “I have to go get Hank,” she said and started moving quickly toward where the Mercer had been hidden.

  So now the women had removed the torn hop vines that covered the car and stood staring at it. “Can you start it?” Reva repeated.

  “I hope so,” Amanda said. “No, I will start the thing.” She went over every movement she’d seen Hank make when he started the car. She pulled out the spark and the choke, then ran to the front and turned the crank. It took her four tries before the engine came to life, then she had to deal with the gears. The shifting was hard, the steering was so difficult her arms felt as if they were coming out of their sockets, and when she put on the brakes the car didn’t stop. She mowed down six feet of hop vines before she halted.

  “Amanda, I don’t think—” Grace said fearfully.

  “I’ve got it now,” Amanda said, putting the car in reverse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She hadn’t counted on the steering being a mirror image when in reverse and took out more hop vines before she got onto the road. She waved to Reva and her mother, then headed east, her foot mashing the accelerator to the floor.

  Both Hank and Taylor had said she was an apt pupil, but she’d never learned anything as quickly as she learned to drive that car. After fifteen minutes she began to feel that she was born to be behind a steering wheel. She had studied Hank’s driving so intently that she knew from the sound of the engine when to shift gears.

  It was the middle of the night and there was no traffic on the wide dirt road leading up into the mountains, and she let the car go, the wind blowing in her hair. The speed of the car, being able to control such a machine, made her feel powerful.

  She had only one bad moment on the trip and that was when two farmers with wagons decided to stop in the middle of the road for a chat. Amanda kept her head, tried to calculate the width of the road, the distance it would take her to stop, knew she’d plow into a wagon if she did try to stop, so she did a neat left turn that sent her skidding sideways toward the wagons.

  The farmers stopped talking long enough to turn and look at a pretty girl in a little yellow car come toward them, the nose of the car pointed toward the roadside fence, rocks and gravel spitting everywhere. One pair of horses started acting up, but the farmer controlled them.

  When the car stopped sliding, Amanda was just under the body of two horses, one animal’s eyes rolling wildly, the other one too frightened to move. The three people on the road were speechless. Amanda recovered first. Her heart was pounding but she was awfully proud of having avoided a crash.

  “Good morning,” she said to the farmers. There was a wilted hop vine on the passenger seat and she offered it to the horse’s head hanging over hers. The animal began crunching and calmed down.

  The two farmers helped her get the car turned back around and wished her luck wherever she was going. She waved as she drove away again.

  She had to get gasoline once, then she was off again