“They put me in lockup, charged with murder.”
Paul, watching closely, carefully cleared his throat. “How did your lawman explain the fact that the Hutchins’ goods were missin’, and you didn’t have ’em?”
One shoulder lifted. “Figured somebody else come along after I’d already committed murder, and that’s the one that clonked me over the head and stole from me what I’d stole from them.”
“But you didn’t hear any gunshots first?”
“Nary a one.”
“So the real killers knocked you out initially, killed and robbed their victims, and then left evidence b’hind makin’ you the guilty one.”
The jerky motion of Reese’s throat indicated a hard swallow. “That’s about it.”
“D’joo have any enemies in town? Anybody with a grudge, wantin’ to take off with spoils and leave you swingin’ for it?”
Again the lift of one shoulder. “Not that I know of.”
Paul, writing busily, glanced up. “The marshal find you a lawyer?”
“Yeah.” He snorted. “Fine man. Told me to confess and take my punishment.”
How near a thing, Ben reflected, with a lump in his own throat, that he had almost lost his youngest brother as well, not to the travails of war but to the demands of everyday, ordinary living, complicated by one tragic event. And he hadn’t even been aware of how desperately the boy had needed him.
“Hate to’ve been that poor family, waitin’ up in the hills for their menfolk to come back, and never makin’ it,” said Gabriel thoughtfully. “Anybody let ’em know?”
“The marshal sent one of his men. Said the widow and kids were plannin’ a mass burial at the Queen of Light Cemetery, and asked how I liked bein’ responsible for such a tragedy.”
For a moment, no one spoke, picturing the scene and its implications.
“How’dja get away?” Ben finally managed to ask into the silence.
Reese, squinting a little as if the bright light hurt his eyes, returned to the chair he had vacated so abruptly and collapsed onto its sturdy frame. “Theo sprung me outa the hoosegow. She got a couplea good horses, put our things together in saddlebags, and walked in wavin’ a gun around, bold as brass.”
“Man,” Gabe said in pure admiration. “No flies on that girl. Reckon nobody was expectin’ that some mere female would pull off a jailbreak.”
“We lit outa town,” Reese continued, “and headed south. Got into some little place a hundred miles away, and found wanted posters already waitin’. And the local marshal comin’ t’ord us. So, away we went again, with the law on our tail. Only this time—this time...Theo didn’t make it.”
During their frantic escape to anywhere, the dance hall girl had been shot in the back. With her last breath, she had implored him to go on. When he refused, she commanded him. And died.
Here and now, some four years past the event, Reese’s sea-green eyes misted over and his words clotted up with regret. A few moments of silence paid tribute to the young woman who had given her life in an attempt to right this heinous wrong.
“I didn’t appreciate her, at the time, for all she tried to do for me,” he muttered.
Ben laid a gentle, reassuring hand on his brother’s forearm. “We never do, son.”
After a bit, while some bird sent a shrieking cry from its perch in an oak outside the door, and a loaded buckboard rumbled past, Gabriel asked about his next stay of residence, in Birdsong.
“Yeah. Found out the town was too small, though. ’Cause the poster found me there, too. Even with changin’ my name, I got a face that’s kinda hard to forget, y’ know.” Significantly, with one finger, he traced the line of that bayonet scar. “So I took off again. Figured Denver might be big enough to hide in.”
And so it was, for a short time. Then, serendipity. All the stars colluded—his ongoing desperate flight from wrongful accusation, his choice of a sanctuary city, his perusal of a newspaper’s personal ad, and his musing upon Ben Forrester’s supposed location—to bring him here, to Turnabout.
“I sent a telegram off to the marshal, out in San Francisco. One—” Paul consulted his notes, “—Hiram Westley.”
“Paul...” Ben groaned out a protest.
The sheriff looked up from under his brows, a long steady look. “I know you ain’t gonna tell me not to do my duty.”
A sigh. “No. No, o’ course not. It’s just...”