Chapter Thirteen

Lon Matthews stood on the step of the sheriff's office and looked up. They hadn't removed the sign bearing Mort Cory's name yet, but he also wasn't going to storm to the mayor's office and demand its removal just because he was wearing the badge now. He hoped that the man that had made Laramie his home would return, although right now, that seemed rather bleak.

Both stars had been gone three weeks.

Why Laramie wasn't a mess, he didn't know. Maybe it was out of respect for the missing lawmen, the solemnity that went with the possibility that the men in charge of the town were dead that was keeping the locals in line. Yet even the strangers passing through were obeying the law.

While too many men seemed to be tiptoeing to keep the peace, the atmosphere didn't have the feeling of green pastures and still waters. Suffering among the opposite, Laramie felt cold and dark. Lon desperately wanted to turn it back around, and it seemed the only way to do it was sitting in the middle of Mort's desk. He shook his head. Maybe he should have said his desk. After all, it was the same desk Lon had used when he held the keys to the office door before moving to Denver.

He had already read over the Sherman and Harper case three times since pinning the badge back on his chest. Lon knew both men well enough to not believe a single word was true. Well, maybe the part where Jess had Mort stuck on the wrong side of his gun point. That Lon could believe. But the rest? Likely the sheets of paper would have been better off lining a hog's pen.

Back inside the office, Lon took another look at the last page and shook his head. It ended with Yuma, but that was only in writing. The real end had to be somewhere else, beyond this town, hidden in a nook somewhere, because he knew Slim and Jess were innocent. So did Mort Cory.

Shifting through more pages, Lon gave a thump of discouragement with his palm over the stack. While every angle seemed to be covered, there was one vital part missing. There was nothing written about Mort's point of view in the case. While it was easy to guess that Mort would have never gone along with the guilty verdict, Lon couldn't know what made Mort and his deputy ride away from Laramie. Did he have a suspect, or were they merely hoping to find the tiniest piece of evidence to bring those two boys home?

Suddenly tapping his fingers along the desk's top, Lon missed the sound of shoes tapping a steady rhythm to his front door. He wouldn't have been much of a sheriff if he didn't turn his head when the handle was turned and those very steps came in. He wouldn't have been much of a husband if he didn't offer a smile to the woman that entered. Although that would have come easily no matter what kind of mood he was in. Like always, Fran was dressed in one of the finest frocks a western gal had ever seen.

"Ready?"

He tipped his head. "For?"

Fran didn't need anymore reason to practice rolling her eyes, but she still inserted the gesture toward her husband. "It's lunchtime."

"Oh, right. I'm sorry, Dear. Mimi's or Maude's place?"

"Mimi's. Maude just might bat her lashes at you."

"Who me?" Lon said, putting his finger into his chest. "Why would any woman look at me?"

"Why, indeed. At least I can flash my diamond to show that you're taken." Her wedding ring given a polish, Fran wiggled her hand to get the desired sparkle from the gem's center. "Well? Aren't you ready?"

"All right, Hon. Let me get my hat."

"You're right here but you seem to be miles away. What're you thinking?" asked Fran as she hooked her arm around her husband's waist.

Heading out the door, Lon's eyes naturally went upward to read Mort's name. "That I wish I'd left you back in Denver."

"Well, I never!"

Her foot in a hard pound, Lon didn't know if it was intentional to miss his toe or not. By the way it dropped, likely he would be hobbling for a week if she had hit it square. "Now, Fran, I didn't mean it that way."

"Then what did you mean?"

"Honey, look. While I know I was sent here to fill in for Sheriff Cory awhile, I can't just forget the fact that he's missing. Something serious must have happened to him. That very something could come on me now that I'm here, because I'm not just going to sit here at this desk. I've got to go out there and find him."

"I know you have to, but how will you know where to look? Sheriff Cory's trail will be cold by now."

"I don't have to look for a trail, all I have to do is look."

"Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime, go cross-eyed looking at the wallpaper in the hotel room? It's uglier than I remember. Doesn't the hotel clerk know that floral prints are no longer in, but golden hues and lovely gilt edges are all the rage?"

"I'd imagine the only rages the hotel clerk thinks about are what a drunk might do to his lobby."

"Why worry about that, when the best sheriff in all the territory has come back to town? Oh, wait. I know. Because the best sheriff in all the territory is going to ride right back out. Without me."

His lips shifted back and forth in thought. "Why don't you go out to the Sherman ranch awhile? I'd imagine the two hands out there could use a woman's touch."

"Oh!" Her fists landed on each hip. "So I can get handled by a pair of hands, right?"

"Fran. Ben's in his seventies and Jud's so shy he probably won't even look your way. Besides, they're good, law abiding citizens. Come on, Honey. I'll know where you are, that you're safe, and then I can ride around and see if I can come up with some answers. All right?"

Responding to the snuggle behind her ear, Fran nodded. "All right. But don't go getting yourself killed. Your son will want to know his father someday."

"My son! Fran! Do you mean to tell me you're…you're…?"

She smiled. "No. I'm not with child. But I hope to be before summer's through. So hurry back, will you?"

Lashes lowering, Lon took his wife's breath away with a kiss. "That's a promise."

"Come on. Take me to lunch or I just might insist we head over to the hotel instead."

.:.

Stopping by the Sherman ranch put more than Fran's security inside of Lon's pocket. He was able to ride out on a trail that he would have never known about without talking to Ben.

"Have some more coffee, Mr. Matthews," Ben said with a shake of his head. "Sorry. Can't quite get used to calling somebody else sheriff around here."

"Don't worry about it," Lon answered, adding a spoonful of sugar to his cup.

"It's sure a sorry mess having Sheriff Cory and his deputy up and missing. I bet I know who's responsible, too."

"Who?"

"Why, whoever's really guilty of that robbery! It's certainly not Slim and Jess!"

While the scent was urging him to drink it, Lon couldn't put the coffee cup to his lips just yet. "Did Mort tell you if he was following any leads?"

"No. But I reckon he was, and found it."

"If only I knew where."

Ben wagged his head back and forth. "It's anyone's guess, and believe me, everyone's got his own version of one. The chatter in the saloon's enough to make a man sit behind his booze glass all day and have a listen."

"What are some of the stories?"

"Now this isn't straight from my ears, mind you. I don't wallow around a whiskey barrel, but Jud goes in from time to time."

Lon turned his head toward the window, making sure Jud was still outside with the horses. He was. "That surprises me."

"Oh, you know the quiet types. Anyhow, they're saying anything from Mort and his deputy took part in the robbery themselves, got in a fight over the money and killed each other. There's the other part about them both running off to California, something else about them being caught in a buffalo stampede, and this takes every slice of cake a body could eat, that they both married into royalty and are on their way across the Atlantic as we speak to set up housekeep among the crowned jewels. Can you beat that?"

"Those are rather colorful conclusions."

"Whiskey does do that, especially the more that gets downed. Want more coffee?"

"No, thanks. Are there any stories closer to reality, or better yet, closer to home?"

"I kinda liked the one about Mort tossing out his badge after finding a vein of gold in the Grayline mine."

Lon's senses were given a tickle. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

"Oh, it's on the Denver route south of here. Curly Gray's place. Slim's stagecoach upended near there, so naturally folks gotta thinking that while Mort was out digging in the area, he found gold instead."

It was as good of place as any to start. Although Lon would have never believed any part of the whiskey-painted picture of Mort finding gold there, especially to claim it as his own, he would have to forget about everything being a lawman taught him and turn into a no-good claim jumper. Or worse, kill Curly Gray and then claim everything he found as his own.

That thought was still sitting near the forefront of Lon's mind when he rode up to the Grayline mine's opening. He would have been the first to scoff at its truth, but Lon would have been lying if he said every word that had been relayed from Ben didn't come and smack him across the chest. There was an old man's body lying across the stone threshold.

Off his horse with gun drawn, Lon quickly tucked it back to his side. This wasn't any fresh kill. If his overturning stomach was any good at guessing, the old man had been there three weeks. Exactly how long Mort and his deputy had been missing.

"There's no way," he said, giving his head a hard shake. "Someone else did this. But why?"

Walking around the mine and into its belly until darkness began to swallow him up didn't provide any answers. Not even his boots were leaving a print in all of this rock, so it was impossible to find something that had been made all that time before. But there would be something to see. Surprised to find a dot of blood, Lon returned to daylight and followed the trail. The red was darkened now, blending into the ground, but for every drop that he could find, it did lead him to someplace important. The old man hadn't been shot where he had been found.

"Someone purposely left a trail," Lon said, bending low enough to the ground to put his finger on the faded line. "I wonder if it was for Mort."

If that was true, then there should be another grisly discovery close by.

Back upright, Lon suddenly began searching behind every rock and clump of fern. There wasn't another body. Even going down to where a stream tumbled down the slope he couldn't find another sign of death.

His hand went up to rest on the back of his neck. "Maybe I was wrong. I hope I was, anyway. If they did that to a miner, what would they do to a lawman?"

As his own badge sat shiny and new on his vest, Lon couldn't help but tremble as he returned to the mine's opening and the body that was discarded there. He could convince himself from now until the first snowfall that there was no threat here. He had done more than look around to know that he was alone. Yet still, Lon couldn't shake off the eerie feeling. He looked in the mine. So dark, its appearance was more like a grave than an actual six-foot square. The source of his tremble must be coming from there. No. It was coming from all around him. The dead man depicted that much.

Shovel taken from his pack, Lon stuck his foot in the ground, surprised that the moving of the dirt made somewhere deep inside the mine groan. Lon shook his head. He needed to get a grip on himself. The wind was blowing, making the inner shafts creak and tremble, not the ground, and definitely not a ghost.

His irritation at his own nerves making him punch his foot harder on the shovel, Lon chucked the entire scoop of dirt behind him. "That's the last I'm gonna think of that!"

.:.

A sprinkle of dust falling over his head, the tickle of powder along his nose pulled a sneeze out. He might have merely tucked his face closer to the fold of his arm if another, more burning kind of tickle wasn't going to make him sneeze a second time. So much for going back to sleep.

The yawn going away with a pat to his mouth, Mort moved over a few feet and put his hand under the drip. The sound had turned his mind into mush long ago, but he could live with his crazed nerves. Where it came from, it didn't matter. Why it hadn't stopped yet, he didn't care. That irritating thrum was the only thing keeping him alive. Palm full, he put the water up to his lips and drank.

"Hmm," he said softly, as Mort found out in the earliest hours of living in a dungeon that the sound of his own voice could make him tremble. "Tastes dirtier today."

Or maybe it was still yesterday. It could have even been tomorrow. That was another thing that Mort didn't know or care about. The date, the time, it was all the same in eternal darkness. It felt like he had been separated from light and the life that went with it for a hundred years. Mort hated to guess how long it actually had been. It would only depress him further. A week sounded much too short. A month sounded too long. Was there really some date in between?

"Dear God, have you really abandoned me to the grave?"

If Mort had known how many times he had repeated that prayer, he would have known the exact number of days he had been locked in the belly of the Grayline mine. Looking up to the heavens, not that he could see any form of pearly gates, golden staircases or angel wings beyond the pitch black that was his canopy, Mort had begged for an answer for twenty-one days. For twenty-one days there was nothing but silence.

Until today. Or maybe it was still yesterday. Land, he really could be inside tomorrow's hours and never know it.

But now that Mort's mind had registered the water's taste having more grit in it than the last sip he had taken, he began to notice another difference to his seclusion. There was a noise that he didn't recognize. Besides his breaths and the water droplets hitting the bottom of the shaft, there really wasn't constant silence in this hateful hole. Wind played with every shaft that Curly Gray had ever dug. Sometimes it whined, other times it moaned, sometimes it sounded like a scream.

Now, it had been reduced to a tap. No, make that a thump. Actually, it was closer to a pound.

Standing, Mort wiped his damp palm along his pants and then took the few steps that the tight space allowed him. Likely it was nothing. He had shrugged everything else away, so this should be no exception. Mort almost chuckled. He remembered the first time he had fallen for an outside noise being his rescue. Shouting until his throat turned raw, Mort began to bang on the earthen wall. All he had done was stir up some more of the mysterious noise. Bats. It wasn't a man's whistle, wasn't a hopeful call. Just bats.

"You'd think I'd done turned loco when I finally recognized what fluttering wings sounds like." He tilted his head as the newest noise died down. "Maybe I really am."

Walking through the trail of water until he met with the wall it crept under, Mort felt around for the gunnysack. It had to be about flat by now. He hadn't touched it in several hours, afraid that his hand would come up empty when he dipped it inside. While the drips of water had given Mort much cause to get on his knees, there was another opportunity to give thanks right here.

He would give his nose all the credit for that one.

While he had been having such a realistic dream of eating a steak with all the trimmings that he woke up salivating for the entire plate, Mort's nose couldn't be convinced that he wasn't merely breathing the memory of the dream. It smelled so much like beef that his stomach was somersaulting for a taste.

That was when he followed the scent to the gunnysack. Curly Gray had to be the reason of its existence. The last time Curly had been down in the lower shaft he must have forgotten it. A musty odor among the spice told Mort its age. Dry, hard, but not without taste, the jerky was close enough to the steak of his dreams that he salivated for more. But he couldn't take it. Mort had to let it stretch. How it had carried him this far, he couldn't begin to guess. But it had to be about gone now. The water would sustain him for a little while longer, and then this hole really would become his grave.

Fearing that countdown had already begun, Mort put his hand in the gunnysack. There was one piece left. Inside his mouth, Mort bit down and chewed even after the bite had melted into his stomach. Running his tongue along his teeth to get any leftover taste, Mort finished the bite by giving his fingers a lick. He would swallow the rest of it whenever he figured it was tomorrow.

For now, he would sit down, rest his head against a stone wall and think.

Slim and Jess. He would have been lying if Mort said they were the only two subjects in his mind. With that much time to fill, there were all kinds of musings to occupy him. But it was always Slim and Jess that he turned to first and then again last before he fell asleep.

"Oh, how those boys must be suffering by now. Yuma!"

While there were similarities in being cast into a dungeon as to the walls in a prison, Mort knew he was better off. He was cool here. Slim and Jess likely had turned into Yuma's desolation by now. Some said it never dropped below eighty in those tight corridors. With the outside temperature even worse, there would never be a moment of solace for them. Only torture.

"And I can't get them out, because I can't get out."

He had tried. Again and again Mort had felt for any type of ladder, rope, even divots in the stones that he could climb up and out with. If there had been anything, it had been removed before his body had been cast inside. He felt nothing but stone, and then the water, and then the gunnysack, but he couldn't feel any way out. And he never would. He knew his time was running down.

The guilty prongs were always worse than the talons of hunger. As Mort was expecting the closure of his life, right now the only pain digging into his flesh was that of blame. Maybe he should have fought harder, all the way from the early days when he had to arrest Slim and Jess. Maybe he should have called in more help. Wiley was efficient, but the young man wasn't all that experienced yet. The rebukes went on and on. And then, like it always did, came the worst thought of all.

Mort's eyes could see nothing, yet he could still picture what was around him. The stone walls were his bars. The far corner was his outhouse. The cold slab to his left was his cot. He was in jail himself. A cold, cruel, killing jail.

Was he being punished for sending two innocent men to prison by suffering a similar fate?

Dropping his head into his hands, Mort's shoulders shook with the sobs that could never come. There was a reason they remained locked in, even though Mort's being felt brutally attacked, severely grieved. Something inside his soul couldn't let out a single tear, otherwise that would be his defeat.

The sigh a part of that grief, yet also a part of that defiance, Mort looked directly into his peril. "I can't give up. Dear God, please don't ask me to."

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…"

Mort's body flinched so hard he would have fallen to his backside if he had been standing. He still gave his seat a hard slap when he tried jumping upright, and his quaking legs put him right back to the mine's floor. But maybe what he should do instead was bow. Then again, would the Almighty really say death's mournful tones over him, especially when he was still alive?

"I'm not done yet," Mort said, ducking as if a lightning bolt would come out of the darkness and give him a zap.

"Rest easy, Old man."

His jaw went slack. There was no way that was the Lord. While some people on earth might refer to the Creator as all kinds of names other than the real one, Mort didn't think that would come in return. There really was someone out there.

Picking up a rock, Mort banged against the wall. "Hello!"

Lon's cheeks paling, he looked down to the grave he had just tamped over. "Hello?"

"Help! Get me out of this hole!"

"But I…" Knees shaking, Lon gave his sweaty neck a scratch. "I just put you in there."

"But I've been here forever!"

"Where… where are you?"

"Down here!"

Again Lon looked at the grave. "Curly Gray?"

"No! My name's Mort Cory!"

"Mort!" He spun. Searching, but finding nothing, he ran, and then in desperation, Lon cupped his hands over his mouth. "Mort, is that really you?"

"I'll answer in truth if I know who I'm hollering to."

"It's Lon! Lon Matthews!"

"Well, Lon, don't just stand there. Get me out of here!"

It took several more calls from Mort to point Lon in the right direction, but with a lantern in hand, the glow was able to draw him directly to the hole. And from the bottom, where that glow finally allowed Mort to see, that was when his eyes took on the shimmer of tears.

"Lon. I can't believe this."

"Me too. But at least it's better than what I first believed."

"What's that?"

"Nothing. I've got a rope, Mort. Can you tie it around you?"

"I'll hang onto it with my teeth if I have to. Toss it to me and I'll let you know when it's ready to pull up."

Waiting for the tug, Lon started pulling. There must have been a fair amount of scrambling on Mort's end, for it didn't take much effort to haul Mort's body to the top of the shaft.

Lon's fingers setting the rope free, he grabbed Mort's hand for a shake. "Mort! How are you alive?"

"By grace, I'd imagine."

It had to be. Mort looked awful. Thinned down to where his clothes seemed to be draped over his bones, Mort's eyes were rimmed with shadows, and while his scruffy beard tried to cover the hollows in each cheek, Lon could still see the sunken lines that used to be Mort's face. And then there was the dirt, embedded into those lines so deeply that it would take more than one scrubbing to wash them away. The poor man must have seen all kinds of suffering, although by the way his eyes were watering, maybe Mort had seen nothing at all.

Hurrying to his horse, Lon pulled the canteen away from his pack. "Here, Mort. Drink slowly, though."

He pushed the water away. "No. Just food. And please, make it something other than ancient jerky."

"I'm certainly glad I stopped at the Sherman ranch," Lon said, reaching for his saddlebags. "Biscuits, fresh off Ben's plate this morning."

"Oh, now this is going to be heaven."

Lon grabbed Mort's arm as an entire biscuit jumped into Mort's stomach. "Here, now. Not so fast. Your belly will upend it all if you keep taking it like that."

"I know," Mort said, switching from swallowing to chewing the next one. "It just tastes so good."

He waited until the third biscuit disappeared and then closed the saddlebags. "That's it for now."

"Thank you, Lon. Thank you, Lord."

Hands wide, Lon shook his head. "Mort, what happened? You've been missing for three weeks!"

"So that's how long it's been," Mort said, looking back at the mine's opening with a shudder. "I was afraid to guess, but now that I'm out of there, I'd say it felt just about as long as sixty years."

"Jess' sentence."

Mort nodded. "I can't get those boys out of my head. I guess there was something else I couldn't get out of my mind either. Hope. It must have worked. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."

"Mort, you still haven't told me how you got down there. Or maybe I should've asked if you know what happened at all. I can see that your head was hurt."

"Oh, yeah." Strange that he had completely forgotten about the ache while stuck in the depths. It really was healed, yet Mort couldn't help but finger the old line across his scalp. "The men that really pulled off the robbery did this. And chucked my limp carcass down that hole. There were four of them in on it, but there's only one main man. It was Buck Brooks."

"Brooks! Isn't he supposed to be in prison?"

"Yeah. In Yuma."

Goosebumps sprang across Lon's arms. "I know it's only a coincidence, but it seems like…"

"I know. He didn't plan it that far, but I'd imagine that Brooks planned it far enough so a couple of innocent men would take the blame."

"Do you know where the money is?"

"No. I told Wiley not to…"

Lon stared at the lashes that suddenly lowered and the head took on a solemn bow. "Where's Wiley?"

"He's dead. Brooks' bullet, I think. I've got to go back and bury him. I promised I would."

"I'll do it."

"No. I made a promise and I'll fulfill it. Just like I made another promise to those boys. I've got to get them out of Yuma, Lon. I've just got to!"

"I know. But how can we find Brooks? It's been three weeks since he was here. If I remember correctly, he's an expert at wiping a trail clean."

"He is." Frustration was trying to kick aside Mort's determination. He wouldn't let it, and as his finger rose to point at the mine, strength returned to his voice. "Look, Lon, I should have died down there. But I didn't. And I'm going to use every last breath that I was granted to get Slim and Jess out of Yuma."

"I'm with you, Mort. All the way. But you have to admit, we don't have a solid place to start."

"We have one," Mort said, the memory of the man's face making his eyes take on a forgotten shine.

"What's that?"

"A.J. Spinner."

"Who's Spinner?"

"He works at the Cheyenne stage depot. Let's see if he's on duty tonight." Taking the rifle out of Lon's scabbard, Mort gave the long iron a pat. "I have something for him."

"A bullet?"

"No. But a little taste of Yuma will do."