The Escort - By Gina Robinson Page 0,89

think the General is so stupid as to allow the trains to run, happily loaded with fugitives headed for Montana or Canada?"

"Perhaps not. What about the horses we use at the Hole?"

"We'd have to get to Burke. And I lost the only one that could run worth a damn at the Bunker. Angelina, by now I guarantee you, the hills are blue with troops. I've been in the military. I can guess the way the General is thinking. This is a battle to him. He'll have fortified the area. There is no escape."

"Then we'll hide."

"Where? Under the bed? In the root cellar? You don't think they'll search those places? Tell me, Angel, why are you so concerned? They won't arrest the innocent. You said so yourself, or do you doubt?"

She didn't understand his hard look. "They're arresting everyone who was seen at the mine that day. Everyone! We were there!"

"Are you so worried about yourself?"

"I'm worried about you." She couldn't tell him how much.

He leaned back against his pillow. "Sit back and relax. Destiny will be. We can't change it now."

The day passed in a slow, nervous tedium. Try as hard as she might, Angelina could not think up a plan of either escape or alibi. Tonio spent the morning quietly thinking or playing solitaire. She hoped he was concocting a plan, but his face was a mask, unreadable. Whatever he was thinking he refused to comment on. Late in the afternoon the troops stormed Wallace like an enemy attacker. She couldn't believe this was their own government.

The blue coated troopers marched up Pine Street in precise military formation. She watched in silent horror from the upstairs bedroom as they forcibly entered the house across the street. Then their neighbor to the right. She counted a contingency of nearly thirty troops guarding as many local men in the street as they stormed home after home. She winced every time one walked past their gate. At last it was over. They marched the men towards the rail depot, inexplicably ignoring 221 Pine.

"Tonio, they've gone! We're safe! All this worry over nothing!" She clapped her hands in a girlish expression of glee and then danced to the bed singing. "We're free! We're safe! We're free!" The look on Tonio's face as she bent to hug him froze her in place.

"Pack our things, Angel. We're leaving tonight as soon as it's dark."

"Why? We're not suspect."

"We've been given a reprieve. They didn't stop here because they already have Al. They expect to find me in Burke. When they don't find me there, they'll come back here."

"Where will we go?"

"To Harrison and the shack you own."

"How will we get there?" He had said that they couldn't take the train and they had no horse.

"We'll walk."

"In the dark? The whole way! Oh, Tonio! I can't. I don't know the way. We'd have to follow the tracks."

"They'll be watching the tracks for trains, not people. We can do it if we're careful. The problem will be getting out of town."

May came home nearly an hour before dusk, fuming and stewing over the treatment Al had received at the army's hands. "Jackasses, all of them! They're claiming Al is a part of all this, that he willingly participated. Al was taken hostage at gunpoint! That constitutes willingness? I suppose he should've let the holdup men shoot him. Jackasses!"

She briefly outlined the condition at the bullpen. "And the men don't have any food or blankets. And the guards give you the worst kind of abuse when you try to take some in."

"May, calm down. We need your help." Tonio told her his plan.

"They've imposed a curfew at dark, Tonio," she said when he'd finished.

"I expected as much. Just before dark Angelina and I will head to the Lux. I'm going to pretend to be escorting her home after treating a working lady to dinner. Once we're inside the Lux, we'll wait until nightfall and sneak out the back. The Lux is the last building in town before the depot. The tracks are no more than forty feet from the back of the building."

"This is craziness, Tonio. Those woods out back of there are as dense as they come. You lose your way and you're sunk."

"I won't, May. Now help us out. We don't have much time. I don't suppose you have anything racy for Angelina to wear?"

They set out at promptly at eight o'clock. The days were long in early May in North Idaho. There was still daylight. Angelina