Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories by Elisabeth Grace Foley Page A

was gone;
he was on the last leg of his wait.
    An echoing step dragged his eyes open from
another half-sleep. He rolled his head to the side and looked
around, but there was no one in the mine. For a moment he thought
the sound must have come from his own tired brain.
    Then he heard it again—the grinding of loose
stone under a foot in the tunnel; a sound he had come to know well
by this time. It was a slow step, a cautious one, and a man’s.
    Jim lifted his head and called out, somewhat
confusedly, “Nolan? That you?”
    There was no reply, save a pause in the
footsteps, and then with the same slow tread the figure of a man
moved out from the tunnel, and Jim saw that it was not Dave Nolan.
The man was older, heavier. He stood for a second with his face in
shadow. Then he moved forward, and with a sudden unexplainable
relief Jim recognized the rancher Lupin—Callie’s father.
    “Well,” said Jim with a faint laugh. “I
wasn’t expecting to see you here. Anybody else, for that matter.
Your girl told me nobody else knew about this place.”
    “Yeah, that’s what she told me, too,” said
Lupin, slowly. “Told me all about it when she got home. I’d been
wondering what she was up to.”
    He was a thick-shouldered man, balding on
top of his head and at the temples, and wore an old once-green coat
with frayed cuffs. His face had a slow, meditative look about it,
rather like that worn by a bull, which makes you wonder if the
animal is really unconcerned or pondering his next move.
    He moved forward a slow, measured step or
two, and surveyed Jim’s prostrate form. He gestured toward him with
one hand. “Busted your leg, eh?”
    “Yeah,” said Jim. “Horse fell on it.”
    Lupin was next to him now, and bent to
crouch down on one knee the same as Dave Nolan had done. The
movement was casual and unhurried. Jim had a sudden instinctive
feeling of alarm and moved his hand, but it was already too late.
With a rapidity belied by his heavy appearance Lupin flipped back
the blanket to expose the gun lying by Jim’s side and his hand
closed over it before Jim had time to grip and lift it.
    He straightened up, gun in hand, and checked
it to see if it was loaded. Jim’s eyes followed him warily, but
with full understanding. He knew now.
    “You won’t get away with it,” he said.
    Lupin shook his head with a faint pitying
flicker of a smile, and held out the gun. “Your gun,” he said, “and
nothing to link me with it. Or anybody else, even. But Dave Nolan
will have a hard time proving that you were alive when he left you
here.”
    A little surge of anger like a hot needle
ran through Jim Reid from his broken leg up through his spine. His
jaw tightened. This was the man who had tried to kill him from
behind. Things fit in now. He’d disliked young Nolan, didn’t like
his hanging around and talking to Callie, because he was afraid
that Nolan might eventually stumble on his secret. He’d have no
compunction about killing them both with one shot.
    But the additional knowledge that Jim
possessed almost made him want to laugh aloud. “Nolan’s not the
only one. Callie knows everything; I told her all about it, even
the hole in the rocks. She’ll know.”
    “She’ll do as she’s told,” said Lupin
shortly. “She’s my daughter, and she’ll keep quiet about what she
needs to.”
    Jim shook his head slowly, side to side.
“She won’t stand for your putting a rope around Nolan’s neck,” he
said softly. “You’re making a big mistake if you’re counting on
that.”
    “I told you,” said Lupin, “she’s my
daughter. She’ll keep her mouth shut about what I tell her to.”
    A slight sound over by the tunnel made them
both turn. Callie was standing there, leaning forward slightly from
having just ducked through the end of the tunnel; one hand touching
the rock wall, looking at her father.
    Jim Reid would never forget how she looked
at that moment. It was not grief, nor anger in her face as she
looked at