Toward the Sea of Freedom (65 page)

Ian Coltrane was nowhere to be found, however, and that made Michael suspicious. Those in the neighboring claims were less surprised.

“Probably off horse trading,” one of the diggers said. “Coltrane splits his time doing that. He’s only here half the week at most—and I’m sure he earns more with the jades than with this gold. He’s got no hand for gold mining; not a hard worker either—at least not for long. If he uses his spade two hours a day, that’s enough for him. Check by his tent. Maybe he’s there transforming another old jade into a young stallion.”

The men laughed in chorus. Here, too, Ian had already earned a reputation.

“And the boy?” asked Michael. “Is he at school?”

The men shrugged. “Mostly he follows his dad around. But he could be, of course. The boy’s like his old man: if he catches the scent of easy money, like a horse trade, he’s there in a flash. But he’d rather learn to read than spend hours panning for gold.”

Michael had to find out if Colin Coltrane had been in the reverend’s school. But for the time being, he went looking for Mr. Ruland’s other customers. It was exhausting and did not amount to anything. Though all had noted Chris’s sudden riches, they said they had believed his claim that it was the result of several weeks’ work with Michael.

So Michael rode back to the hospital, where Chris lay like a dead man on the bed. According to the reverend, nothing had changed. Michael had meant to take his place at his friend’s side, but then tiredness overtook him. He simply had no more strength to talk to Chris. He needed sleep himself. Without anywhere else he could think of to go, Michael staggered over to Janey’s.

“As an exception, could I rent one of your beds for more than an hour?”

The girls laughed. Michael’s desperate vigil over his partner was already the talk of the town, like everything surrounding Chris’s assault. Janey’s staff found his efforts touching. The girls fell over themselves, first to make him lunch and then to prepare the “royal suite,” as Janey wryly called it: a tent, but swept clean and with spotless white linens. Michael was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

Reverend Burton kept watch over Chris Timlock and tried not to give up hope. He had helped the doctor change the bandages, but aside from a weak groan, the man had not made a sound.

The doctor was now firmly convinced he lay in a coma. “I hope it won’t last too long,” he said unhappily. “Please understand, Reverend. I’d be happy if the man survived. But blind, unconscious, motionless—one has to wonder what would be better.”

The reverend shrugged. “We’ll have to leave it in God’s hands,” he said. “And hope He knows what He’s burdening us with.”

Peter Burton took a brief break to tend to some other business, but around noon, one of the hospital volunteers ran excitedly into his office next to the church.

“Reverend,” wheezed the chandler’s pudgy wife. She must have run all the way from the hospital. “Reverend, you should come to the hospital. We think the boy’s waking up. He’s moving and moaning. Dr. Wilmers thinks you should take a look, and maybe give him last rites.”

Peter Burton leaped up and rushed outside. “Is Michael with him?” he asked while hurrying beside the panting chandler’s wife.

She shook her head. “No, don’t know where he’s hiding. Probably sleeping somewhere, the poor boy. They say he spent all morning riding around asking people questions.”

“See if you can track him down, Mrs. Jordan. If Chris does really wake up, he’ll want to talk to him.”

The doctor stood next to Chris’s bed, feeling his pulse. “Something’s definitely happening. He seems to be clinging to consciousness. He wants to wake up.”

Chris tried to move and opened his remaining eye. But he stared, unfocused, into the room.

The reverend took his left hand. “Chris, Chris, do you hear me?”

Chris gently returned the pressure. “Michael?”

It was but a whisper. Peter and the doctor held their breaths.

“Reverend Burton, Chris. Peter Burton. Can you talk?”

Chris pressed the reverend’s hand once again, then let it go. “Lizzie, gold, warn, fern.”

“Ferns, Chris? What do you mean? What about Lizzie?”

“Warn, gold, Lizzie, Mike, triangle, Maori village, cabin, cabin west,” Chris sputtered out the words between his battered lips with the last of his strength.

“What do you mean, ‘warn,’ Mr. Timlock?” asked the doctor. “Do you mean we need to warn Lizzie?”

Chris nodded violently. “West, cabin, stream, upstre . . .”

Peter Burton looked at the young man desperately. “I don’t understand, Chris. Once more, slowly. Lizzie is looking for gold in a triangle, and we need to warn her? Why, Chris? About what? Chris, who did this to you? Whom do we need to warn Lizzie and Michael about?”

Chris groaned. He seized the reverend’s hand, seeming to want to pull himself up. Then he summoned all his strength. “Ride westwa, westward from cabin to stream, upst, upstream, quick!”

Chris fell back into his cushions. His eyes were closed again. The doctor felt his pulse. Then he shook his head.

“That was it, Reverend. He won’t tell us more. But at least he managed that, and it was obviously very important to him. We need to find out what he meant.”

Peter Burton gently stroked back Chris’s sand-colored hair, which had fallen over his bandaged face. “We need to wait for Michael to come back. Maybe he can make some sense of it. Chris must have thought he was with Lizzie and both were in danger. But now . . . Michael can’t have gone too far. His horse is out front.”

Peter Burton stood up and looked around at his possible helpers. The men who had come for the charity meals could take the dead man to the church later and prepare his body.

“I’ll hold a service early tomorrow. And it would be nice if a good many people came. Doctor, would you inform the officer? This is no longer an assault. This is murder.”

News of Chris’s death spread quickly through the town—only Michael slept through it in Janey’s Dollhouse. The girls had agreed not to wake him.

“He can’t bring him back to life, after all,” said Janey.

Peter was just helping the sexton erect a dais for Chris Timlock’s coffin when an older boy rushed into the church tent. Peter recognized him as a courier for the bank.

“Reverend, Reverend, Barbara, from the tearoom, sent me. You, you need to come right away. Some . . . someone wants to kill himself there.”

Peter furrowed his brow. “One more time, Robbie: one of Barbara’s customers wants to shoot himself?”

“Not shoot, Reverend. Stab. He has a knife, but he wants to talk to you before. Please, come quickly!”

For the second time that day, the reverend left his church at a sprint. He did not have far to go. Barbara’s tearoom was near the hospital. As he ran past, he noticed that Michael’s gray was still in front, but without any trace of its owner.

Barbara and a few of her lunch customers stood at the door of the wooden hut, highly agitated. “In there, Reverend. It’s Thomas Winslow. He keeps screaming about guilt and murder and hell! The doctor’s there, but Winslow only wants to talk to you.”

Peter Burton peered in the door to assess the scene. Winslow had planted himself in a corner of the eatery. He had torn his shirt open and was pressing the tip of his hunting knife against his chest. If he were to thrust, he would hit his heart.

Dr. Wilmers stood a safe distance away and talked to him soothingly. “Whatever you’ve done, Thomas, you have to confess and take your punishment. Sticking a knife into your heart now is no solution. You should . . .”

Peter Burton walked into the tearoom.

“Reverend,” Thomas Winslow whimpered. “Reverend Burton, you, you must, my sins, I didn’t want to . . . I’m a murderer, Reverend. Dear Lord, Reverend, dear Lord Jesus, forgive me my sins; forgive me my guilt. I, even if I didn’t want to, I . . .”

Peter Burton tried to get closer to Winslow, but the man cut his skin with the knife as soon as he moved. Dr. Wilmers gave Peter a helpless look.

“Thomas, first you should calmly tell me what happened,” said Peter, trying to put strength and serenity into his voice. “Maybe it’s not all that bad. God forgives—especially if you did not intentionally commit the sin.”

“But it was intentional.” Now he was crying. The man was obviously drunk. “We, we wanted to know where he got the gold.”

Peter straightened up, alarmed. “Where he got the gold? Are you talking about Chris Timlock, Thomas? Were you part of the assault?”

“I held him still,” sobbed Winslow. “And at first I thought, all right, I thought a few slaps. Nobody’d die of that. And he could just have told us.”

“But he didn’t?” asked Peter. “He didn’t want to say?”

“He wanted to, all right,” Winslow said, whining. “The way he thrashed him, he would have told us anything. But, I guess, he didn’t know. You have to believe me, Reverend. When I realized he didn’t know anything, I told Coltrane he should stop but—”

“Coltrane? Ian Coltrane? The horse trader?”

Winslow nodded. “But he didn’t stop, he said Timlock had to know, but Timlock, in the end he said the woman knew. The woman had found the gold.”

“Lizzie.” Peter exchanged a look with the doctor. Chris’s last words were slowly making sense. “And had she told him where she found it? Did he know where she is?”

Winslow shook his head. “No, I think he, he had no idea. But Coltrane, he wants to go up where Drury is and follow them when they go to the place. And then stake a claim there.”

Peter felt cold rise up within him. Michael had said Lizzie was panning for gold. She must have gone out alone. And Coltrane . . .

“Listen, Thomas. Now you need to tell that to the officer. I’m sure they’ll grant you extenuating circumstances, I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t want extenuating circumstances.” Winslow shook his head wildly. “Don’t want to go to prison. Not again. Just forgive me, Reverend. Make it so the Lord forgives me.”

Thomas Winslow inhaled deeply. Then he stabbed himself, falling forward at the same time onto the knife. Dr. Wilmers went to work, but there was nothing he could do. Reverend Burton said a prayer. The doctor closed the dead man’s eyes, but then quickly turned to the reverend.

“Another one,” he said. “Let’s go through it once more. What did Chris Timlock say about where this woman is? He did know it, just didn’t tell the devils.”

“A triangle,” said Peter, “from their cabin to a stream and a Maori village.”

The doctor shook his head. “That doesn’t get us anywhere. But westward, he said, west from the cabin.”

Peter nodded. “And then upstream. That’s right. Where is Michael? Where the hell is Michael Drury? Take care of this here, doctor. I need to find Michael, and Lizzie.”

Peter ran out into the street. His thoughts raced. Coltrane was dangerous—and he had known that before Chris Timlock’s murder. Kathleen’s reaction at seeing her husband again had told him enough. And now this devil was after Lizzie—who apparently wanted to keep a spectacular gold find secret. Maybe she was the only one who had ever seen the site. If Coltrane did away with her, there would be no evidence against him. Winslow’s confession could pass for the ramblings of a drunk—and maybe Coltrane had no plans of returning to Tuapeka anyway. Colin had appeared at school in the morning, though. At least he was not following Lizzie’s tracks into the mountains.

Peter saw Michael’s gray in front of the hospital—a beautiful, doubtless very fast horse that he had often admired. But without its rider, it was useless. Unless . . .

Peter rushed into the hospital. “Mrs. Jordan, has Michael Drury reappeared?”

She shook her head.

“Mrs. Jordan, when he comes back, tell him I took his horse. I need to find Lizzie Portland. It’s a matter of life and death. He’s to saddle my horse and come after me. Do you understand?”

Mrs. Jordan’s eyes widened, but she nodded. She was not stupid; she understood. And if not, there was also Dr. Wilmers. Peter couldn’t think about it anymore. He untied the horse and mounted it, and they took off.

Chapter 10

Ian Coltrane could hardly believe his luck the morning after the assault. He had found their cabin easily enough, and he spied as Michael and Lizzie parted—Michael toward town to find his partner, and Lizzie off alone into the mountains to the west. It was easy to follow her—downright boring after a while. Lizzie was in no hurry, and she walked beside her horse, talking to the animal and letting it graze from time to time. Around midday, she began to peer behind her, which made Ian nervous at first. Then he realized Lizzie was waiting for Michael Drury to catch up to her.