Chương 11
“Yes.”
“How many?”
She looked through the packet. “All of them.”
Dugan closed his eyes.
Silas said, “Why were they in your safe?”
The sheriff opened a ledger beneath the packet. “Because Justice Shaw delivered them yesterday with a request that I enforce evictions next week.”
“Shaw knew they were false?”
“He witnessed them.”
Nora handed the papers back. “That still does not prove Voss ordered me.”
“The pages in the doll might.”
Silas looked at Mae.
The girl held the doll tighter.
Nora knelt by the bars. “Sweetheart, I need Ruth.”
Mae shook her head.
“It is all right.”
“No.”
“Mae.”
“You put the papers in her because nobody would take her apart. Now everybody keeps taking her.”
Nora’s face crumpled for the first time.
Silas crouched beside Mae. “You do not have to give the doll to me.”
“She is mine.”
“Yes.”
He removed his pocketknife and placed it on the floor between them.
“You can open the seam yourself. Only enough to take out the papers. Then Mrs. Pike can mend it properly.”
Mae looked at the knife.
“Will the papers keep Mama with us?”
Silas had lied to cattle buyers, card players, angry foremen, and himself. He could not lie to her.
“I do not know.”
“Will they put her in jail?”
“They might.”
Mae’s eyes filled.
“Then why give them?”
“Because Voss is counting on everyone being too afraid of what truth costs.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“It may be.”
Nora whispered, “Mae, I am the one who did wrong. You do not have to protect me from it.”
“You protected us.”
“I also helped hurt other families.”
“Because Jonah was sick.”
“That explains it. It does not erase it.”
Mae looked at Silas. “Would you give them?”
He thought of Abilene. Of the train step beneath his boot. Of the relief that came when the town disappeared behind smoke.
“No,” he said. “At your age, I would hide them and hate anyone who asked. At mine, I think hiding them gives Voss another child to use.”
Mae picked up the knife.
Her hands were not strong enough to cut the stitches cleanly, so Nora guided her through the bars. Together they opened the doll’s back. Mae reached inside and drew out six folded ledger pages wrapped around a clump of wool.
Dugan locked them in the safe with Cole’s note and the false contracts.
Then he gave the only key to Mae.
“Why me?” she asked.
“Because everybody else in this room has disappointed someone.”
She considered that and tied the key to the string holding Jonah’s suspender.
By dawn, Gideon Voss had filed a murder accusation against Silas.
He did not need evidence. Rance Cole’s body had been found in an alley near the sheriff’s office, and half the town had seen Silas carrying a gun during the fire. Voss told anyone who listened that Rourke was a fugitive from Kansas, a violent man who had returned to reclaim another man’s wife.
Dugan refused to arrest Silas, citing his own responsibility for the shooting.
That only changed the rumor. By breakfast, the story was that Dugan and Silas had conspired to kill Cole. By noon, Justice Shaw ordered both men detained pending the circuit judge’s arrival.
Mercer obeyed reluctantly.
The jail had two cells. Nora and the children occupied one. Silas and Dugan took the other. Mrs. Pike brought biscuits and said Mercy Crossing had finally arranged its fools in the proper building.
Nora’s fever returned that afternoon.
Doctor Vale came, examined her, and announced that stress was harmful, as if stress were an object they had chosen at the store. He left powders and instructions. Voss sent word that he would pay for Nora’s treatment if she signed a confession.
She tore the message into pieces.
Jonah collected them from the floor and tried to fit them together.
For several hours, nothing happened.
Rain tapped the jail roof. The street turned dark with mud. Mercer sat at the front desk reading the same page of a dime novel. Dugan slept on the cot with his hat over his face. Mae taught Jonah to count the bars.
Silas watched Nora breathe.
There had been a time when he knew the meaning of each expression on her face. The little crease beside her mouth meant she was holding back laughter. A lowered chin meant anger, not submission. Silence at supper meant her father had criticized her. Silence while walking meant she was content.
Now he could not tell whether she slept or merely refused to look at him.
Mae came to the bars between the cells.
“Papa Caleb said you shot a snake in his barn once,” she told Silas.
“I did.”
“He said it was already dead.”
“It was moving.”
“He said chickens were eating it.”
“Chickens lack caution.”
“Did you know him?”
“Not well.”
“He knew you.”
Silas sat on the floor opposite her.
“What did he say?”
“That you were the sort of man who leaves his boots outside but tracks mud in anyway.”
“That sounds accurate.”
“He said Mama loved you before she loved him.”
Silas glanced at Nora. Her eyes remained closed.
“Adults say things they should not say in front of children.”
“He said it to Mama. I was behind the pantry door.”
“That also sounds accurate.”
Mae wrapped her hands around the bars. “Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you now?”
Nora’s breathing changed.
Silas rubbed his thumb over his palm. “Love does not always stop when it becomes useless.”
Mae frowned. “That is not an answer.”
“It is the best one I have.”
“Papa Caleb answered questions.”
“Then he remains ahead of me.”
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The next morning, Circuit Judge Benjamin Cross arrived on the eastbound stage with a swollen ankle and a temper sharpened by travel. He was a broad, bald man in a dusty blue coat. His clerk followed carrying two leather cases and a cage containing a furious hen purchased somewhere along the road.
The hearing was scheduled for two o’clock in the schoolhouse because the town had no courtroom.
