The history of incarceration in a closet barely big enough to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders had left Eugene terrified of enclosed spaces. And Claude would rather die than relive his childhood torment. Prison would be the end of them.
So, she had chosen to protect those two. But soon she’d have to tell the truth, even if no telegram arrived to let her know that Eugene and Claude had escaped to where the law couldn’t reach them. The pair of fraudsters might have once saved her life, but her loyalty didn’t extend as far as dying at the end of a rope to keep them out of prison. However, until the circuit judge arrived, she would have to remain silent, waiting for the right moment to reveal that she could not be guilty of murder, because there had been no murder at all.
* * *
The hotel room was quiet, the mattress firm, the sheets clean, but none of it improved Dale’s mood. He’d made a dog’s dinner of it. He’d barged into the jail, expecting to coax the facts out of the accused and be done with his assignment within a day.
Restless, he rolled over, the sheets tangling around him. He could always tell when a nightmare hovered at the gates of his mind. Sometimes he preferred to stay awake all night instead of letting the past horrors intrude. But tonight the long ride from the railroad took its toll. As Dale slipped into the shadowed world of slumber, Rowena McKenzie seemed to accompany him, her elegant beauty like a ghost of a life he had once expected to lead—the life of a gentleman, with a gentleman’s manners, a gentleman’s house, and a gentleman’s wife.
When the nightmare came, it was not the rancid breath of a coyote in his nostrils and the fangs tearing into his cheek. Neither was it bullets slamming into his flesh and the ground rising up to meet him as he tumbled down to the canyon floor. Those restless dreams were a legacy of the gunfight to break out of the lawless life.
This nightmare was from deeper into his past. He was twelve years old, the summer hot, Spanish moss hanging from the trees, the river low and sluggish as he and Laurel—already a young woman at sixteen—sat fishing on the bank. He could hear the sound of heavy boots crashing through the undergrowth. Coarse voices. Laurel’s whisper.
“Hide. Hide. Let me take care of them. Whatever happens, don’t come out. Promise me… Promise…promise.”
The images jumbled, flashed before his eyes. Soldiers holding Laurel down. One of them had his trousers pulled down all the way to his ankles. Bare buttocks rising and falling, rising and falling. Throughout the assault, Laurel made no sound at all but the soldiers joshed each other.
“Hey, Krieger, hurry up, it’s my turn.”
“Shut up, Ives, you idiot.”
Dale watched from his hiding place behind a tree, fraught with despair. He’d promised to Laurel not to come out. But the guilt, the sense of helplessness felt like a rock crushing his chest. Tears of shame stung his eyes. At twelve years old he regarded himself a man, and now he was behaving like a little boy, too frightened to intervene while the soldiers did those terrible things to his sister.
Craning forward so he could study the men waiting for their turn, Dale memorized the name of each man, and their features. Fisting his hands, he gave himself over to the hatred, his little boy’s mind striving for that grown-up feeling again.
When it was over, when all four men had sated their lust, they buttoned up their trousers and shared a smoke. Laurel lay on the ground, her dress torn, blood on her thighs, one arm slung across her face to keep her suffering private. But she was alive.
Not daring to move for the fear that the snap of a twig or the rustle of leaves might alert the men to his presence, Dale blinked away the tears of pity and shame and waited for the soldiers to be off on their way again.
“The little bitch, we have to do something.”
“No, leave her be.”
The one wearing a sergeant’s stripes dug out a few coins, tossed them down.
“Buy yourself a new dress, sweetheart.”
Heavy boots crashed past Dale’s hiding place. He counted the men passing. One. Two. Three. Only one more, and they’d be gone. He could go to Laurel. Help her. Comfort her.
A gunshot.
“Hey, Krieger, what did you do that for?”
“Couldn’t leave the little bitch telling tales.”
Dale woke up, the sheets soaked with perspiration, his body trembling, the nightmare still holding him in its grip. Two sets of patrician beauty, one merely a promise at sixteen, the other fully blossomed in her early twenties, merged in his mind. And it became clear to him that whatever the outcome of his investigation—whether Rowena McKenzie was guilty of murder or not—he could not let her die at the end of a rope.
Tired and bleary-eyed, Dale ate breakfast in the hotel dining room. Sitting alone at a corner table, he fished a pencil stub from his pocket, tore a piece of paper from an old copy of the Arizona Weekly Citizen, and jotted down a list of questions:
1. Who was the man who caused a commotion when Revery was shot?
2. When did that man come into town and where was he now?
3. Had anyone seen Rowena McKenzie talking with Revery?
4. Who owned the wagon Revery crashed into the gully?
5. Who owned the wagon horse that ended the same way?
6. Had Rowena McKenzie lost any money in the swindle?
7. Who else had lost money and how much?
Not wasting any time, Dale tossed down his napkin, finished his coffee and set off to conduct his interviews. Outside, the street was quiet. Clouds had gathered in the sky again, and yesterday’s drizzle was turning into a few flakes of snow, the final gasp of winter. Good, Dale thought. The bad weather would keep people indoors and the storekeepers would have more time to talk.
He started with the barbershop. The small, dapper man with an oiled mustache gave him an assessing glance. “A haircut, sir?”
Dale nodded, took down his hat and settled in the reclining leather chair. Might as well use the time productively while he went about his business.
By early afternoon, he’d had his boots polished, his coat pressed, the fraying cartridge loops on his gun belt restored. He’d tasted three different kinds of angel cake, sipped whiskey and beer and tea and coffee. He’d listened to voices that ranged from shrilly female to the croak of an adolescent boy to the raspy cough of a man who smoked too much.
Everyone had good things to say about Rowena McKenzie. Pinares had been founded by Quakers, and although no one used thou or thee anymore, the abhorrence of violence that went with the religion was deeply ingrained in the community. In some other town, Rowena McKenzie might not even have been arrested for what she had done, but instead the citizens might have taken up a collection to reward her for so efficiently dispatching the conman who had taken advantage of their trust.
Dale’s best source of information was Alice Meek, the sturdy proprietor of the café where Rowena McKenzie worked. Needing little prompting, the woman talked in a breezy monologue while she chopped meat and vegetables for a stew, the only item on the lunch menu chalked to the blackboard by the entrance.
“The man that caused the commotion were a feller by the name of Robert Smith. New to town, he was. A small man, quiet and well spoken. A good customer at lunchtime. The first one to lay his money down for this