Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) by Allan Leverone Read Free Book Online Page B

road. They began working their way back through the brush, Luke wondering
what in the hell was going on.

 
 
 
 
    7
    Luke had been getting increasingly
nervous the closer they came to the Paskagankee Tavern. Push was coming to
shove, and he began to wonder whether he had been fooling himself to think the
homicidal stranger would really allow himself to be locked in the slave’s
hiding place, leaving himself completely at Luke’s mercy.
    The man
was vicious and brutal, that much had become obvious the moment he pulled the
trigger on the defenseless Matt Fulton, but for all that, he didn’t strike Luke
as dumb. Just the opposite, in fact. He seemed intelligent and, even worse,
cunning and clever.
    Luke
decided he would find out soon, because the hulking structure of the
Paskagankee Tavern suddenly materialized out of the predawn darkness as if by
magic and now loomed before the exhausted trio like some haunted house straight
out of a two-penny serial novel. They trudged through the front entrance,
trooped past the bar and into the kitchen, then descended the stairs to the
basement.
    No one
spoke. Luke felt as though the supper he had eaten nearly ten hours ago might come
back up at any moment. It was now or never. Would the stranger suddenly recognize
the flaw in his hastily devised plan and simply shoot Luke and Sarah before
high-tailing it out of Paskagankee on his hidden horse, hoping to outrun his
pursuers? Or would he slip inside the secret room, leaving himself at the mercy
of Luke and Paskagankee’s only lawman, Sheriff Stanley Cowles?
    Luke
strode to the wall and felt around for the latch hidden in the seam between the
granite blocks. With one tug, the massive block rolled outward on its hinge and
stopped. Luke breathed deeply and said a silent prayer, then turned and lifted
his hand to the opening and waited to see what would happen.
    The
stranger eyed him critically and walked into the hidden entryway. Luke’s plan
was going to work! Another step or two and the man would be inside the
passageway to the secret room and Luke could pull the lever, effectively
trapping him inside, ending this nightmare.
    Then
the man turned, his body half in and half out of the entryway. He fixed Luke
with a baleful stare and then, ever so slowly, a smile crept across his face.
The smile was hard and devoid of any good humor, and it told Luke the man knew
exactly what he had been thinking. He had known all along.
    “Well?”
the stranger said.
    “Well,
what?” Luke said.
    “Please.
You can’t believe I’m stupid enough to allow you to lock me in here with only a
hundred year old slave for company. Why, the minute the door closed, you’d be
running as fast as your little legs would carry you to the local sheriff’s
house. Hell, you’d probably steal my horse just because you could.”
    “I…no,
I…of course not.” Denials were pointless, yet Luke couldn’t stop himself from
issuing them.
    “It
don’t matter,” the stranger said, waving his revolver like he was shooing away
a pesky mosquito. “I’ve got the perfect solution to our little problem.”
    Luke
felt all hope slipping away. He closed his eyes, wishing this whole cursed
night was just a bad dream, wishing he would wake up and be in his bed and it
would be seven-thirty in the morning, but when he opened his eyes the stranger
was still standing there, waiting. “What?” he finally whispered.
    “Your
beautiful bride will join me inside this impressive little hidey-hole. Consider
it my personal insurance policy, because if anyone besides you, and you alone,
is standing there tomorrow morning when you open that door, pretty little Sarah
here will be the first to die. She’ll catch a bullet in the head before she
knows what hit her. But you’ll know, though.” He gave a sly, hideous wink,
“because I’ll make sure you’re watching when I pull the trigger.”
    Luke
stared in open-mouthed horror. Sarah? Trapped in that underground room with