Up ahead, Patterson moved slowly. Dietz assumed Patterson worried about being seen. Dietz sure did. Some of the cracks in the boardwalk overhead were as wide as an inch. He cursed the shoddy workmanship and weathered, shrunken boards as he ate dust and moved along. His mouth went dry—too dry to make spit, or mud of the dirt he breathed in. He cursed again. He must be more scared than he thought.

  When Dietz cared to look up, soles of shoes swarmed over the walks as thickly as space permitted. Once in a while Dietz caught sight of someone's eyes or face and his heart stopped. But no one returned his look. Likely they didn't expect someone to be under the boardwalks. Fools.

  The talk he heard as he inched along related to the explosion at the Frisco Mill and number of scabs who had been killed when the union blew it up with giant powder. The voices were angry and agitated and laced with bloodlust. Dietz had no desire to be their next victim.

  Patterson stopped ahead of him. Dietz heard an Irish brogue speak out. "Faith and why don't they send that spalpeen out? I'm wanting to spit in his face, the dirty traitor."

  Dietz restrained himself from laughing. Go ahead. Spit in his face, fellow. He's right beneath you.

  Patterson started crawling again. Dietz moved with him. He figured they'd covered about two store lengths since leaving Patterson's. The crowd on the boardwalk had thinned considerably. Suddenly, Dietz recognized Gaffney's voice above him. Patterson kept moving, but Dietz heard Keely's voice and froze.

  He looked up to see Gaffney hanging onto Keely's arm, a gun in his free hand. "I'm going to kill him, Keely. I promise you. And then I'm going to take care of you, don't you worry. It doesn't matter to me about him. It wasn't your fault."

  Dietz had come to a halt at Keely's feet, just at the tip of her skirt. Another few inches and he'd have a fine view of all he used to own. Keely didn't answer Gaffney. Instead, she looked down, right into Dietz's eyes. Her cheeks were dusty and streaked with tears. When she saw him her eyes flew open and her mouth made a nice round oh.

  It's all over now, Dietz thought as he waited for her to turn him in.

  They stared at each other for an instant that seemed severely long and far too short. His heart thudded in his ears as he lay there waiting for her to get it over with, willing Patterson far away as he did.

  Gaffney reached for Keely, tucked his hand under her chin and drew her face up to his. Jealousy thundered through Dietz as Gaffney kissed her. Keely stepped into Gaffney's embrace, covering Dietz with her skirts. Suddenly he had an eyeful of her, petticoats and all. Just as quickly, Keely deliberately scraped her boots on the sidewalk above, showering him with dust.

  He blinked too late and cursed silently. His vision blurred, obscured with debris. His eyes watered and teared up. He blinked trying to clear his eyes, and cursed some more. The saying Here's mud in your eye had never seemed more appropriate. The cursed woman, what did she mean to do?

  "I've got to go, Lunn." She broke away from Gaffney's kiss. "Go join the men. I'm going to take a walk over to Lacy's and make sure she and the children are all right."

  "Are you sure, Keely?" Gaffney asked.

  "I need another woman's comfort right now. That's all. And she could use my help."

  "Sure." Lunn sounded unconvinced, almost hurt. "Take care now, Keely."

  "You, too, Lunn. I need you." She stomped again on the boardwalk over Dietz's head. "Horrible, nasty bugs," she said as she ground her heel into the wood above him. Then she began walking very slowly.

  Damn. She was helping him escape? He crawled along beneath her skirts, keeping pace with her. She didn't look down again, and he gave up looking up. Suddenly, it didn't seem respectful. He couldn't figure her out. She certainly hated him. Maybe she just didn't want any more bloodshed. He crawled another twenty-five feet or so to the opening beneath the saloon. Where the hell was Patterson?

  Dietz came to an opening large enough to crawl through and get under the saloon. Here was his escape route. Keely had saved him. He glanced up once and tried to signal his thanks, but she ignored him and kept walking. Right out of his life.

  Patterson waited for him beneath the saloon as Dietz rolled out from the boardwalk. Built on piles, the saloon stood four feet off the ground, which felt suddenly spacious. Dietz had never been so grateful to be able to get up on all fours. He was damned tired of playing snake.

  Patterson signaled for Dietz to follow him and they took off for the far side of the saloon and the daylight that peeked through. Slash, brush, mud, treetops and stumps covered the ground, making the going hard. At the far end of the saloon Patterson paused. They both checked their weapons.

  "I lost my gold watch chain," Patterson said, almost incredulously. As if that was the worst thing that had happened all day.

  Dietz cocked a brow. "Want to go back and look for it?"

  "Hell, no!" Patterson sputtered and made like he was trying to spit, but nothing came out. "Always heard a man can't spit when he's scared. My mouth is dry as cotton. Guess I'm scared with a capital S."

  Dietz laughed. "You're just now getting scared?" Dietz shook his head. "I lost my spit back there at your store."

  Patterson gave a returning laugh and slapped Dietz on the shoulder. "Let's move out."

  "I'm with you."

  Three union men stood at the corner of the saloon, looking back up Main Street at the crowd. Dietz stared at their backs. Killing them would be easy. But he held back. It felt too much like cold-blooded murder. Only cowards fired from behind.

  Dietz glanced due south. Fifty yards in the distance the high railroad grade blocked the view of the Gem Mine and relative safety. But scaling the high grade would place them between two fires. Chances were that the scabs would mistake them for the enemy and open fire on them. A little to the left of them a stream flowed through a culvert under the railroad grade.

  Patterson must have been thinking the same thing. Dietz watched his trigger finger twitch.

  Finally Patterson spoke. "We don't want our friends up at the mine shooting us. The creek's our best bet." Patterson pointed to the union guards. "If we have to, I think we can fool them into thinking we're out to take a few potshots at scabs," Patterson said. "You lead."

  Dietz nodded. They started out at a slow run, stooped like hunters going after game. Though they were literally open-backed targets, they couldn't look back for fear the three guards would recognize their faces and shoot. Dietz hoped the guards weren't suspicious types, because he and Patterson looked as suspicious as hell. Dietz held his Colt over his head to keep it dry and plunged into the culvert, Patterson right behind him swearing. Dietz heard the crack of a rifle shot behind him.

  Keely knew the instant he left the boardwalk, but she kept walking to the end of the saloon in case anyone had noticed him or her own odd, slow walk. Did he mean to escape out back of the saloon to the Gem Mine into the hills above? Her heart pounded in her ears trying to drown out her traitorous thoughts. Run!

  She took a deep breath and dabbed at her moist eyes with the back of her hand, blinking to hold back tears. Why should she cry for him? Why would he want her to? Blast her weak self, but she couldn't stop herself, not completely. Part of her hated him, but part of her couldn't forget him, or stop wanting him, or believe his perfidy was real.

  When she'd looked down and seen him staring at her from beneath the boardwalk, she'd been so surprised she'd nearly given him away. Yet when she'd looked into his impregnable eyes, so calm, no pleading, just staring, waiting for her to act, she couldn't, and that ate at her conscience. He had betrayed her; used her to work against everything she believed in. By turning him in she could have proven her loyalty to the union. But she kept picturing him as he'd looked such a short time ago in his room at the boardinghouse, begging her to escape with him. Just conscientious? But the expression in his eyes, his pleading tone—

  Why did she still hold onto that slim thread of hope that he loved her? What perversity made her ache for him? Whatever his motives, she reasoned he had some honor. He had risked his life for hers.

  Her thoughts returned to the boardwalk. Lunn making promises to avenge her honor, and the traitor looking up her skirts. She couldn't bear it. Anger had overwhelmed her. The intimacy of the detective's position infuriated her, reminding her of past liberties he'd taken. She'd kicked dust in his face so he could not look, to handicap him and assuage her own guilt over helping him. She'd even let Lunn kiss her. The sour taste of his kiss still sat on her lips.

  A shot thundered out from behind the saloon. Keely screamed and began shaking so uncontrollably that she could barely stand. The union men are shooting at him. She heard their shouts and curses. Oh, John Dietz, run.

  She lifted her skirts and ran across the street toward home. If they've killed him, I don't want to see it.

  "Buzzed just past my head," Patterson said.

  Dietz looked back to see the three guards, all Swedes and obviously drunk, taking aim at them. He and Patterson plunged ahead into the boxed culvert. Water edged up to his armpits, cold and angry. The force of the current nearly knocked him over. He cursed again as he reached for a timber to brace himself and moved ahead, grabbing from one upright timber to the next to steady himself against the raging water. They moved through the culvert, a distance of close to fifty feet, fighting the current the entire way. At last, panting, they came out beneath a house on the other side only to be greeted by a large Swedish woman who, looking surprised and confused to see them emerge, called out to Patterson.

  "Mr. Allison what were you doing under my house with your friend there?"

  "Prowling around for a little exercise, ma'am, and hunting for scabs. You be careful now. You got yourself a perfect hiding place under there. Wouldn't want you jumped."

  "No, sir." She retreated back inside.

  Dietz eyed the distance from the house to the mine. Another two hundred yards in the open separated them from the scab fort—high ricks of cordwood with portholes. They could still get shot full of holes. Patterson looked at him. Dietz shrugged and the two took off running. The guards at the fort stopped them about twenty feet away.

  "Drop your guns and come with your hands up."

  "We're friends," Dietz replied evenly.

  "Don't make a damned bit of difference. If you don't drop those guns, your heads go off."

  Dietz tossed his Colt onto the ground and Patterson his Winchester. When they got a little closer, one of the guards apparently recognized them. "Say, aren't you those detectives who come here the other night?"

  "We are indeed," Patterson said tiredly.

  "Well come on in, men, before the union bastards fill you with lead."

  Keely huddled on her bed, knees pulled close to her chest, trying to ball herself up tightly enough to stop the shaking. They hadn't killed him. She'd heard angry men shouting in the streets for backups to stop the traitors. Somehow he'd escaped, at least for the time being. But how was he going to get out of the Valley with every road, every path blockaded? If they caught him—

  She shuddered.

  Even if he made it to the mine he wouldn't be safe. She'd heard Lunn talking about the union plans to storm it, killing anyone who stood in their way. And traitors, she added silently. She shut her eyes, trying to block out the hideous images of the day. The shootings, the blood, the hatred.

  A knock at the door startled her. "Mrs. McCullough?" Big Frank called out.

  So not everyone had heard. Had she ever really been Mrs. McCullough? Was she a widow now?

  She forced herself to reply. "Yes, what do you want?"

  "The doc sent me to fetch you. We've got us a lot of wounded men and the doc's needing a nurse."

  She straightened and sat up slowly. "Tell him I'll be right over."

  "I'll wait here and escort you over, ma'am. It isn't safe in the streets."

  No, indeed, and it wasn't safe in her troubled mind, either. "I appreciate it, Big Frank. Just give me a moment to wash up and I'll be right out."

  "I'll wait in the kitchen."

  He shuffled away as she walked to the washbasin and rinsed her mouth out with soap, trying vainly to wash away Lunn's kiss. She didn't want any man's caresses, not ever again. No one's but the traitor's.

  Such a pity, because she wouldn't be getting them. McCullough is dead.

  Shortly after Dietz and Patterson arrived, a union man came up the hill waving a white rag as a flag of truce. He demanded that Monihan surrender the mine.

  Monihan refused. Good man. Dietz had no desire to be turned over to the cutthroats who wanted his hide.

  "Then we'll blow you to bloody hell!" the union man shouted back. "We'll give you another hour or so to think it over." He departed.

  Dietz sat across from Monihan in his office.

  Monihan stood at the window, looking out back up the hill. "They're sending squads of men up the mountain to the main tunnel." He sounded defeated.

  Dietz feared he would give up.

  Patterson sat next to Dietz and a fellow named Fred Carter. Fred sat with his leg propped up on a stool, his foot heavily bandaged where his heel had been shot off. He was the only scab to escape from the Frisco Mill and damned lucky at that. He'd run the distance of the railroad grade right out in the open with lead showering him.

  "Looks like they're using the same plan they originally tried at the Frisco—capture the main tunnel and then send a tram down loaded with dynamite and a long fuse. It would have worked at the Frisco, but they made the fuse too short." Carter shook his head. "I still don't know how they finally managed to blow the thing up."

  "Seems like the only thing to do is go up the mountain and tie a post across the tram tracks so that it will derail any tram they send down," Dietz said. "I'll go."

  What did he have to lose? He'd already lost everything important to him. He pushed thoughts of Keely away. Alone again, with no one to give a hoot about his hide, wasn't that life?

  "I'm going with you," Patterson said. "It'll take two men to lift the post and cover each other."

  ###

  The doc had turned the back room at Daxon's Saloon into a hospital. It stank of whiskey, body odor, and blood. The injured men disgusted Keely almost as much as the injuries. Most of the injuries weren't caused by upholding the glorious cause, but by carousing and drunken brawling. Those directly related to the incident repelled Keely nearly as much. The violence, the violence. She'd lost so much to this cause—Michael, and now McCullough, both McCulloughs.

  She steeled herself to washing wounds and applying clean linen bandages. Perspiration pooled in rings under her arms in the hot, sticky room. Flies hummed in the air, buzzing around. Looking for carrion? There was plenty of it here and a goodly dose of hatred, greed, and bloodlust to match.

  The men capable of speaking bragged about killing and maiming scabs. Suddenly the cause meant nothing to her. She wished herself miles away from here, miles away from herself.

  Two union men came in carrying a groaning man by his arms and legs between them. They dumped him on a table and left.

  The doctor examined the new arrival and turned to Keely. "Leave that fellow and come bathe this man. He's got a slug in his shoulder we'll have to get out immediately."

  Keely drew a fresh basin of water and went to the man's side.

  "Let me know when he's ready." The doc walked off to another patient.

  Filth covered the new arrival. Keely doubted he'd ever bathed. When she bent over him, his breath stank of alcohol. Blood plastered his shirt to his body. As she cut away the sleeve, he spoke to her. "I took a direct hit in the action, but I think I got me a scab."

  "Did you now?"

  He disgusted her. She removed his shirt and began sponging his shoulder, taking away the caked blood like she'd once done for McCullough. Oh, McCullough.

  "Name's Riley." He slurred his words.

  "Uh, huh. Hold still, Mr. Riley. This may a hurt a bit as I clean up your shoulder."

  "I'm tough." But he winced when she dabbed at the open wound. He stared at her as she worked, looking like he was trying to place her. "You must be an angel of mercy."

  "Hardly."

  "You got a nice, gentle touch."

  "So I've been told." She kept working.

  "I'd sure like a little more of it, when I'm feeling better." He was staring at her chest and the open collar of her dress as she bent over him. Before she could reply, recognition lit his expression. "Wait a minute. I know who you are—you're the detective's whore. Maybe you'd like to be mine for a time." He reached with his good arm to touch the tip of her bust.

  She took the cloth she was holding and pressed it into his wound with startling force. Riley yelped.

  "Speak to me like that again and I'll make this pain pale in comparison to what I'll do to you. I'm nobody's whore, never have been. The traitor duped me same as everyone else."

  The doc came over to her and, taking her by the shoulders, led her away. "I'll see to him now. You look like you could use a rest. Take a few minutes to compose yourself, then come see me and I'll give you a new assignment."

  So it had begun. They didn't fully trust her. Maybe they never would. Had Dietz been right, had he given her back her life? Was it even possible?

  She hugged herself and stepped out onto the back porch and stared up at the mountain.

  Her anger at the detective hadn't convinced them of her innocence. But how could they suspect her torn feelings about him? She stared at the ground, past her skirt stained with men's blood. What was going to happen to her now?

  Chapter 19

  Dietz lashed his end of the pole to the tram tracks. "You about finished, Patterson?"

  "Been done for hours, Dietz." Patterson stared at a man guarding the station over the mill.

  "Something the matter?" Dietz stood and followed Patterson's line of sight.

  "Can't be sure, but I'm pretty certain that fellow is a union spy. Keep your back covered as we make our way to the tunnel."