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
imself.
She was trying to whip herself into a really good rage, but it didn’t work. She told herself that she’d lived all her life without him and she could be quite happy again without him, but she couldn’t make herself believe that. She’d never before thought of herself as lonely, but now her whole life seemed lonely. She remembered being alone as a child, of being alone as an adult. When those Russian students had kidnapped her and John had left her on her own, at the time it had seemed perfectly natural, but now it made her feel lonely that no one had come after her.
She sniffed and wiped away a tear at the corner of her eye. She was not going to cry over him. He had chosen to do this and it’s what he wanted to do.
She tried to think rationally about what she was going to do. If he hadn’t returned by the following day, she would start the journey to her father and get him and his men to help her find Laurel…and ’Ring. What was left of ’Ring, she amended. If he hadn’t returned by the next day, she would know that he was dead.
Perhaps her father could track him, find him. Maybe ’Ring would only be held prisoner somewhere and the men wouldn’t have killed him as they said they were going to do. Maybe—
She couldn’t think anymore because it seemed that a tight band was about her chest. “Oh ’Ring,” she whispered.