For a man like the farmer with the plates, traveling all the way to San Antonio or Austin with only five wares to sell wasn’t worth the trip.
“You cheat me out of a trade deal again, and I’ll lodge a complaint with the Commissioners Court, say you’re using your power as sheriff to swindle me.” Rutherford turned and stalked toward the door.
The Commissioners Court? Daniel swallowed. Surely the commissioners wouldn’t believe Rutherford’s complaint, not when the man was known for taking advantage of Mexicans. But Mattherson was already upset about his stolen cattle, and Rutherford was powerful enough the commissioners wouldn’t be able to completely ignore the complaint.
“The woman outside.” Daniel blurted before Rutherford stalked away. “What do you know about her?”
Rutherford paused in the doorway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Daniel moved closer. “You’re lying.”
“This is a large trading post.” Rutherford turned and spread his hands, his wiry body tense with coiled muscles. The man might be thin, but he carried himself with a lethal sort of danger that caused most men to think twice before confronting him. “I host many travelers. Sometimes I run out of rooms to let, sometimes people don’t want to pay the cost of lodging at my establishment. Either way, they camp outside.”
Traders, yes, but not women and children, and not in the middle of the day. “Where is her husband?”
“How should I know?”
Rutherford’s words were too quick, too short. He kept track of every person who came onto his property, regardless of whether they rented a room and ate in his dining hall.
“Do I need to start questioning your workers? I’m sure some of them know what’s going on.” No need to tell him the first person he’d asked had refused to talk.
A muscle worked on the side of Rutherford’s jaw. “Leave it be, Sheriff. This is none of your concern.”
“It’s only none of my concern if everything regarding that woman is legal. If she committed a crime, or more likely, if someone else here committed a crime against her or her husband, then it is every bit my business. And to start, I want to know where her husband is and what happened to him.”
Rutherford turned away from the window to face him. The man might be twenty-five years older than him and a half foot shorter, but the taut lines of Rutherford’s body and hard set to his jaw nearly made Daniel take a step back.
A sickening thought crept into his mind. “Are you holding someone in the prison room?”
“Harvey!” Mr. Rutherford needed only to call, and one of the guards pulled open the massive wooden door and stepped inside the parlor. “Show Sheriff Harding here outside the gate.”
Daniel studied the large man with tanned skin and brown hair who stood an inch or two taller than he did. “Actually, Harvey, I need you to open the prison.”
The guard glanced between the two of them, then the man’s gaze returned to land on the tin star pinned to Daniel’s chest.
“You can’t come into my home and search whatever room you please,” Rutherford spat.
“Want me to ride back into town and get a warrant first?” Daniel stalked toward the large guard. “Harvey, if you don’t open the prison and I come back with a warrant and find someone unlawfully detained inside that room, I’ll charge you with accessory to kidnapping. If the individual is hurt or has been injured and is being denied a visit from the doc, then the charge goes up to accessory to attempted murder.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Rutherford’s voice held a deadly sort of calm.
“Try me.” Daniel stopped in front of the guard and stared up into brown eyes that were too compassionate to allow him to work for Rutherford for any length of time. “Show me the prison.”
Harvey’s Adam’s apple bobbed, then he turned and stepped through the door. “This way, Sheriff.”
“You’re fired!” Rutherford tromped after them.
The guard remained silent, his lips clamped firmly together as they strode across the courtyard and into the corral. Rutherford trailed behind them, an unending string of curses and threats shooting from his mouth.
The traders didn’t often see the town sheriff, fort owner, and a guard storming across the fort in the middle of the day. By the time Harvey stopped in front of the prison door, two more guards had joined their group, and a crowd of a dozen or so onlookers had gathered behind them.
“Open it up.” Daniel’s command invited no argument.
“You do this, and you won’t be the only one fired.” Rutherford jabbed his finger at Harvey again. “I’ll fire every employee in here if you open that door. You’ll be putting forty people out of work.”
“You fire everyone here, and you’ll need to close the trading post and inn.” Daniel stepped directly between Rutherford and Harvey. “Unless you plan on cooking meals for a hundred people a day on your own?”
Rutherford’s lips twisted into a sneer, but before he could speak, Harvey pulled the heavy door open.
A wall of heat and fetid air exploded from the dark, windowless room. In the narrow crack of light, Daniel could just make out a man huddled against the wall. He sat with his arms wrapped about his bent knees and his face tucked down, his lips moving silently in a jumble of words.
“Señor?” Daniel spoke from the opening.
The man looked up, then clasped the rosary in his hand against his chest and shrank farther back into the darkness. “No, I didn’t do it,” he mumbled in Spanish. “I didn’t steal his horse.”
So that’s why Rutherford had imprisoned the man. Daniel squinted into the darkness, bringing the rest of the stinking, airless room into view. Part of him could understand the reason Ben Ashton had originally included a prison-type room in his fort. When the structure had first been built, Twin Rivers hadn’t been much of a town, and it surely hadn’t been part of a county. With no law patrolling this section of the Chihuahuan Trail, the men who didn’t take a strong stand toward thieves and bandits had ended up robbed and killed. But Rutherford had no place using the room as his own type of prison now.
“Señor,” Daniel spoke in the foreign man’s tongue. “It’s safe to come out now. Can you stand?”
The man only pushed himself farther back into the room.
“He… uh…” Harvey shifted at the door. “Mr. Rutherford told him and his wife that if they went for the law, you’d hang him for horse thievery.”
Daniel whirled back to Rutherford. “You said I’d have him hung?” His words echoed through the corral, and heavy silence followed in their wake.
But Rutherford wasn’t looking at him. Instead, the trader looked over Daniel’s shoulder into the prison room beyond. “Is that a canteen inside the prison? Who gave this man drink? I said no food or water!”
“You said what?” A muscle pulsed at the side of Daniel’s jaw, and he grasped Rutherford by the shoulders, hauling the man forward until Rutherford’s fancy, cigar-tinged breath brushed his chin. “You should thank whomever gave him water, otherwise you might be facing a murder charge instead of one for attempted murder.”
“I didn’t murder him!” Rutherford jerked out of his grip.
“No, but keeping him trapped inside this room for a day without food or drink means you tried to.”
“He stole my horse,” the man gritted.
“Then he can ride into town with me and face charges for horse thievery. But you are not the law, Bartholomew Rutherford. I am.” Daniel nearly shouted the words, then he raised his eyes to scan the crowd that had steadily amassed more people. They needed to understand law and order ruled this little section of Texas, not lawlessness and banditry. “And that goes for every one of you. If someone’s committed a crime against you, you march yourselves down the sheriff’s office and report it to me or one of my deputies. Men who take the law into their own hands will be tried right alongside with criminals.”
“You’re no true lawman,” Rutherford hissed, his voice low enough for only th
e two of them to hear. “Just a poor excuse for one. You can’t find anyone’s stolen cattle, and you expect me to turn a horse thief over to you?”
Daniel tried not to flinch, tried to tighten his jaw and harden his gaze as he stared into Rutherford’s cold eyes. But the man’s words pierced a soft place somewhere inside him.
He couldn’t manage to bring fifty head of cattle back to Mattherson. He couldn’t stop a traveler from being held in horrifying conditions. And he’d stood by unknowingly for a year or better while rustlers used a secret trail to move tens of thousands of cattle through his county.
“Get the man out of the prison,” he muttered to Harvey. Then he reached to his gun belt and unfastened the handcuffs latched to his waist. “Bartholomew Rutherford, you’re under arrest for kidnapping and attempted murder.”
6
“Mr. Estrada says he never tried to steal your horse, and I have two others who were at Fort Ashton yesterday morning who back his claim.” Daniel leaned against the wall of the jailhouse and studied Rutherford, who stalked back and forth across his prison cell like the caged lion at the circus in San Antonio. “In fact, one of my witnesses says Mr. Estrada found your horse loose and was bringing it back to the fort when you sent a team of guards to capture him.”
“Your witness is wrong.” Rutherford stopped pacing long enough to look up and scowl. “Estrada was riding away on my horse when he was found, just ask Rooster and Loggins.”
“I asked Rooster about Mrs. Estrada when I first arrived at the fort, and he pretended like he didn’t know who she was or why she was there. If he was willing to lie for you then, I can’t take his word about what happened now. All of this means I don’t have enough evidence to charge Mr. Estrada with horse thievery.” That, plus something with the story didn’t make sense. Why would Rutherford accuse a man of horse thievery if the man had been bringing a horse back to Fort Ashton?
And if Estrada truly had been stealing the horse, why had Rutherford imprisoned Estrada on his own rather than bringing him to the sheriff’s office? Surely Rutherford knew he’d lock Estrada up until the case could be investigated. “You, however, are still being charged with kidnapping and attempted murder, so you’d best make yourself comfortable inside your cell.”
“Those charges will never stick.” Rutherford stomped to the door and grasped the iron bars with his thin, wiry fingers. “I want my lawyer.”
“I’m sure Mr. Adams will be here soon.”
Rutherford had ordered his guards to send for the lawyer before Daniel had even finished clamping the handcuffs around his wrists back at Fort Ashton.
Unfortunately, Rutherford was also right about the charges not sticking. Rutherford had thrown another man into his prison room two years ago, and Daniel had charged him with kidnapping and attempted murder, just like any decent lawman would. But the case had been settled out of court. Rutherford had pleaded guilty to a reduced crime of aggravated assault and agreed to pay an exorbitant fine. The county commissioners certainly didn’t condone when Rutherford took the law into his own hands, but they were very much aware that the money from Rutherford’s fine could finance numerous projects around Twin Rivers County.
Daniel shoved himself away from the wall. He’d been the only one who cared that Rutherford had stayed in a cell one night until his bail hearing had been set, and Rutherford had never done a minute’s worth of mandatory labor to pay for his crime. And that crime should have at least been kidnapping, even if the attempted murder charge had gotten dropped.
The same thing would probably happen this time, but Daniel would draw up charges. “The judge has set your bail hearing for nine o’clock tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s too late.” Rutherford’s grip tightened on the jail bars. “I’m not spending the night here.”
“Yes, you are. But rest assured, I’ll give you food and water while you await your hearing. I always thought that was basic human decency, but evidently it’s something for which you should be very grateful.” Daniel turned and strode toward the door that separated the jailhouse from his office.
“I’m going to sue you, Daniel Harding!”
He paused, one hand on the door knob.
“You leave me in this cell overnight, and I’ll sue you for illegally searching my trading post. And that’s just the beginning. I’ll sue you for anything else my lawyer and I can think of.”
“The cases will be thrown out before they ever see trial.”
“Then I’ll file more. I’ll file case after case after case until I bleed the county dry with legal fees. At some point, the commissioners and the rest of the county will tire of having you as sheriff, because I’ll see to it that having you act as sheriff costs them too much money.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” But Daniel’s face had turned cold, because if anyone could come up with an endless stream of silly lawsuits that would drain the county’s resources, it was Bartholomew Rutherford.
Just how many lawsuits would the Commissioners Court put up with before he lost his job?
Probably not many, considering Mattherson was already threatening to oust him over his inability to track down the rustlers.
“Leave me in this cell overnight and see what happens… Sheriff.” Rutherford sneered the last word.
Daniel clenched his jaw and strode through the door, then slammed it behind him and stalked into his office. He wouldn’t let himself be bribed into releasing a man from jail.
“I see the meeting went well.” Abe drawled around the food in his mouth. “Bet Rutherford just started singing when you asked him to fess up. What do you want me to put on this here report? That he kidnapped a Mexican trader for bringing his loose horse back?”
“Sounds about right to me. You can…” Wait. Was that a piece of pie on Abe’s plate? A piece of custard pie?
Daniel turned toward the small table at the back of the room. Sure enough, a pie dish sat beside the coffee kettle his ma had likely brought over around lunch time. Trouble was, only one piece of pie remained.
Just how much had Abe eaten while he’d been questioning Rutherford?
Daniel grabbed the entire pie dish and one of the forks lying beside the coffee pot, then shoveled a bite into his mouth. “Any word from Doc Grubbins?”
Abe bobbed his head. “He stopped by while you were with Rutherford. Said Estrada needs to drink a lot of water but should be fine, and that whoever snuck him food and water last night just might have saved his life.”
At least he had that much to be grateful for. Better to have Rutherford behind bars for attempted murder than to have the undertaker digging a hole, though he still didn’t understand why Rutherford would lie about a man bringing his horse back.
Something was going on with Rutherford, but what? With being down two deputies and rustlers running roughshod over the county, he didn’t have much time or many resources to focus on the trading post owner. Hopefully the man could stay out of trouble until the rest of his deputies returned.
Dear Andrew…
Charlotte stared at the piece of paper situated on her writing desk in front of her, blank except for the two words written at the top. What should she say next? She twirled her pen between her fingers before putting the tip back to the paper.
I can hardly wait for you to return to Twin Rivers in a few more weeks.
A lie. She could definitely wait because it would give her more time to practice her feminine skills. But the line seemed like the type of thing a woman should say to her suitor.
I enjoyed the house party this year…
Another lie.
…And look forward to when I can attend another ball with you.
And another lie.
She crumpled the paper and tossed it into the waste bin beside her desk. Surely she could find something truthful to write. But could she find something truthful that wouldn’t also push him away?
She drew another sheet of paper from her desk drawer and set her pen to it.
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for being so kind and polite when I spilled gravy on you and stepped on your foot. Most men lose interest in me when I make mistakes like that, but you didn’t, which makes me hopeful we can make a marriage between us work.
She sat back and stared at the words. Somehow they didn’t seem much better than the lies.
She wadded the paper into a ball and tossed it into the waste bin atop her other attempt, then sat back and stared out the window above her desk. The south-facing opening gave her a perfect view of the valley that held Twin Rivers and the Rio Grande before coming to an abrupt halt where it met the impressive wall of cliffs that jutted up from the desert on the Mexican side of the border.
No window at the Mortimer’s San Antonio mansion offered such a view. She remembered from an earlier trip to the city that the west side of the Mortimer’s house looked over rather impressively green gardens, but staring at carefully cultivated flowers and pruned trees could never match the wild, open beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert.
A knock sounded on her door, and she turned to find their housekeeper, Consuela, poking her head inside. “Supper is ready.”
Charlotte smiled at the Mexican woman who was more mother than housekeeper. “Thank you. I’ll be there shortly.”
“Are you finished with your tea?” Consuela nodded toward the tray on the bedside table.
“Yes, you can take it. I forgot to bring it down earlier.”
“No need for that, Miss Charlotte. If you marry that rich fellow from San Antonio like your pa wants, you’ll have to get used to letting the staff cart your used dishes about.”
Charlotte stood to wash the ink from her hands at the basin while Consuela headed toward the forgotten tea tray and picked it up.
The woman was beautiful in her own sort of way. She was on the plump side, but she had a smile for everyone and had never met a stranger. Her long black hair was nearly as dark as it had been in her thirties, with only a few streaks of gray to hint at her age.
Charlotte set the pitcher down. With her own ma dying sixteen years ago, Consuela was the closest thing she’d had to a mother since.
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