Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

curses and vain threats of his now-dying former partners. He ignored
them and walked on into the night.

 
 
 
 
    4
    June
18, 1858
    Paskagankee,
Maine
    Lucas Crosby had just finished
wiping down the bar at the Paskagankee Tavern when the horse-drawn carriage
arrived. The evening’s last drinker had departed over an hour ago, and Luke
would normally have been asleep in bed by now, but not on delivery night.
Delivery night was different.
    The
clop-clop-clop of horse hooves on hard-packed dirt became stronger as the wagon
approached from the south, then faded away again as it drove straight past the
tavern’s front entrance. Luke knew the routine. It was always the same. The
driver would turn his horse into the small delivery area hacked into the dense
forest just past the building, then guide the wagon along the side of the
tavern until reaching the rear service entrance.
    Luke
waited a couple of minutes for the driver to navigate the narrow, rutted
pathway, then walked through the kitchen and out the back door to begin
unloading supplies.
    Receiving
deliveries in the middle of the night was unusual, Luke knew that. And in fact
the strange nocturnal schedule had raised a few influential eyebrows five years
ago, when Luke had purchased the Paskagankee Tavern with his wife, Sarah. But
he explained to the Town Council that arranging for supply deliveries to a
location as far out in the wilderness as Paskagankee was no easy task, and when
the distributor—located all the way down in Portland—offered Luke a
discount if he would agree to the unorthodox schedule, he had jumped at the
offer.
    “It’s
all in the name of giving the people of Pakagankee a place to wet their
whistles,” Luke had explained, and while the town fathers were none too happy
about the deal, they didn’t interfere, either, especially when Luke told them
it was either that or he would not be able to open the tavern.
    He
walked out the back door into the uncertain light provided by two flickering
gas lamps mounted on the exterior wall, one on either side of the door.
Delivery man Matt Fulton grunted a greeting, his heavily muscled arms straining
under the weight of three cases of liquor as he stumbled by, moving in the
opposite direction. “Hotter’n the hinges of hell, ain’t it?” Matt mumbled after
placing the cases just inside the door and returning to the wagon for more.
    Luke nodded
and said nothing. All of his concentration was focused on unlatching a small
iron hook fastened unobtrusively onto the rear of the wagon. He struggled with
the latch—it was intentionally difficult to loosen for their protection,
a fact Luke could appreciate but which was, nonetheless, extremely frustrating
at two o’clock in the morning. Finally the offending latch popped free with a
heavy clank, and Luke pulled the wagon’s
false bottom straight backward, as if opening a gigantic dresser drawer.
    The
contraption rolled straight out about four feet, then swiveled on an iron bar
mounted under the wagon as a hinge. Luke lowered the free end of the false
bottom to the ground and a man tumbled out. It was a black man. The man was
sweating profusely, having been trapped inside the tiny space for virtually the
entire ten-hour trip north from Portland.
    The hidden
traveler rolled onto the dusty ground and pushed himself onto all fours. He
struggled to his feet with difficulty, his limbs clearly stiff and sore. It was
painful to watch. Luke extended a hand to help the man but was ignored. The man
was old, wizened, with receding gray hair and rheumy brown eyes.
    Most
slaves willing to risk everything for a shot at freedom were younger, often
with families; men and women with more of their lives ahead of them than behind
them. This man seemed to be the opposite. He walked with a slight bend to his
frame, as if unable to fully straighten his spine. He was short and
frail-looking, and it looked as though a strong wind might reduce him to smoke
and blow him