by Ava Winters
Sheriff Roach asked her to remain at the jail station until he could check out what was going on. She nodded and kept a nervously prancing Brandywine away from the crowd. The horse nickered and tossed her head, prancing in a wide circle, wanting to get away from the noise of the shouting people. Millie leaned over and shushed her, patting her neck and rubbing her head. She cooed to the horse, but never took her eyes off the crowd.
Unable to keep the feeling of impending doom from enveloping her, Millie came close to tears again. She couldn’t make out any words from the crowd, but deep down, she already knew that somehow, her father had caused the scene in front of The Saloon. She was certain that Isaac had at least played a part in it, if not the key role.
She could hear Sheriff Roach hollering at someone and then addressing the crowd but still could not make out actual words. Even when the crowd quieted, it wasn’t enough. The constant movement and the constant murmur of many voices kept her from hearing him very well. His tone was one of authority, though and she had no doubt that he would get to the bottom of it and settle them down. He always did. Not completely breaking her promise to the sheriff, but unable to keep so far away, she walked her horse a little closer to the scene.
As the sheriff disappeared into the saloon, Millie saw that a man had her father pinned to the ground in front of the thickening crowd. Jumping from her horse, she shouted at the man to let go of her father, but he couldn’t hear her over the tumultuous people thronging and vying for a view. The crowd strangled any progress she tried to make toward her father.
After what seemed an eternity, Sheriff Roach reappeared and argued with the man holding her father down. She elbowed and pushed, but each person in the crowd seemed determined to keep her from her goal.
On tiptoe, she watched as the sheriff made his way to the other man and made him step away from her father. The man yelled that there should be a hanging and Millie’s body went numb. Her father had done something so terrible this time that it had incited the people to agree with that man loudly. He was one of Deacon’s men. There were several of them around and they were all intent on serving justice by way of hanging.
The injustice! Savages, all of them, savages! She elbowed harder, anger rising in her and replacing the tears. She had to get to her father before they could do more harm. Moving slowly through the tight throng, she recognized faces and marked them in her memory. Her view of the Haven Ridge residents was altered as they raised their fists toward heaven and shouted out that Isaac should be hanged.
Sheriff Roach cuffed her father and then shouted over the crowd. They began to settle and then to leave. Obviously roused and unhappy about being told to leave, they mumbled together as they walked away broken into smaller groups. Millie ran through the dispersing crowd, finally able to reach her father. Falling on her knees, she sobbed to see the state of his face. Those lousy men of Deacon’s had beaten him badly and she harbored more than a little hate for them.
“Papa, it’s Millie, please tell me you’re okay.” She dusted some of the dirt from his forehead and cheek, causing him to flinch back in pain and she was immediately sorry.
“I’ll be fine. Just gotta sleep it off. You’re a good daughter.” His eyes rolled alarmingly in their sockets as Millie and Sheriff Roach helped him to his feet and Millie feared he would go unconscious before they could get him on a horse.
Inside the jail, Harvey removed Isaac’s cuffs and helped him to the cot in the single cell. He had been too drunk to walk straight and after the beating he received at the hands of Deacon’s men, he could barely talk.
Drying her tears, Millie sniffled as she looked at her father through the bars of the cell. It was unbelievable that he had fallen so far from the man he was before. Mama used to say that he was the salt of the earth except for the occasional fisticuff with some of the boys. She also used to say ‘boys will be boys no matter their age’. Millie smiled at the memory and gripped her elbows tightly. What she would give for her mother to be with her still. She was clueless as to what she should do with him, how she should help him all on her own.
Harvey opened a drawer at his desk and dropped Samuel’s gun into it. “Miss Thomas?”
Without turning, she said, “Millie, please.”
Clearing his throat, Harvey removed his hat and sat on the edge of his desk a few feet from where she stood with her back to him. “Millie,” he said, with some effort. She noticed. “I’m afraid this is quite a bit worse than the usual dust-ups Isaac gets into. This is serious. Murder.” His voice dropped on the last word, and Millie heard an uneasiness in his tone.
Still watching her father’s fitful, drunken sleep, she shook her head. “He didn’t do it.” The tears trickled silently down her cheeks and she swiped at them absently.
Sighing, Harvey continued. “There were witnesses, Miss—um, Millie.”
Spinning to face him, eyes flaring, she pointed back toward The Saloon. “You call Deacon’s men reliable witnesses? They’re no more than hired guns, the goons that do Deacon’s dirty work and you know it, Sheriff.” The sheriff was wrong, and Millie knew it. There was no way her father could have committed murder. Not even in the depths of his despair at her mother’s passing could he have fallen so far as to shoot Samuel. She would never believe it.
“Not just Deacon’s men, Millie. Jacob Conley was there. He was a witness and his statement matches Carson Morgan’s story perfectly.”
Something inside Millie deflated. It shriveled like a prune and died, leaving an empty pit of despair in her stomach. After a moment, she realized it was hope. If Samuel’s friend Jacob had witnessed the shooting, and he corroborated Carson’s story, it left little doubt. But a little doubt is all Millie needed to still believe in her father’s innocence.
“Sheriff Roach, my father might be a lot of things, but he’s not violent. He doesn’t even carry a gun. He’d never kill anyone.” She stepped toward him and placed a hand on his arm, ensuring she had his full attention. “You have to believe that.”
She believed it. No matter what they said happened, she knew that her father could never murder another man, even if the argument was a terrible one. And especially not Samuel Preston. Everyone liked Samuel and his wife, Mary. They had been family friends as long as Millie could remember.
Isaac mumbled in his sleep and then went back to the heavy snoring he had been doing since first hitting the cot.
“Honestly, I feel the same way. I’ve never seen him carry a gun except for a rifle for hunting. I would have never guessed Isaac to be a vicious person even when he was too drunk to walk straight. The occasional brawl was just that, a fist fight that usually lasted a few seconds at best.” He stood and paced the small room, watching Isaac.
Millie thought he must have been debating her father’s innocence.
“My gut tells me there’s something wrong here, but I can’t put my finger on it just yet.” He continued pacing and watching Isaac.
“What are you going to do, Sheriff? Those people out there want to hang Papa. You have to protect him.”
She stood in the center of the room as Sheriff Roach paced. It made her feel like the eye of a tornado as he circled her, his brow furrowed in concentration. Sheriff Roach was a good man, a fair man, and she wished he could see that her father was no murderer. If the gathered mob had their way, they would see Papa hanged by the next day.
“He needs to stay here until he can get a fair trial. That means keeping him safe for several weeks until the circuit judge comes back through.” He shook his head and rubbed his chin. “Deacon’s men will have that crowd riled again by morning and sometime tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll come for him. No way I can fend off all of them.” He stopped pacing and looked to Millie. “And they know that; at least Deacon’s men know that. I need time to think this through and figure out what really happened.”
Harvey took Millie’s elbow and guided her to the bars of the cell. She allowed this without a fuss. “I usually play by the book. Black and white. No gray areas in
my world.” He pointed to Isaac. “But this is a huge gray area right now.”
Millie nodded, feeling that dead thing in her reanimate a tiny bit. ‘Hope blooms eternal’ was another of her mother’s sayings. She nodded at the sheriff again, understanding that he had finally decided to help her prove his innocence.
He pointed to the rear wall planks. “Do you see those planks there with the big gaps between them?”
“Yes.” Her voice came out breathy and barely above a whisper. There were, indeed, large gaps between a few planks at the bottom. She could have easily slid her hand between them.
“With the right tool, they could be pried loose. It would be easy, even for a woman.” He turned her back toward the desk and walked with her, looking out the windows for any eavesdroppers. Seeing none, he continued in a stage-whisper. “Now, I take my morning walkabout in town around four every morning.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “That means I won’t be in here.” He pointed to the boards of the floor, and her gaze followed.
“Right. Four in the morning.” Her heart beat faster in her chest and the air was suddenly thick and hard to pull into her lungs. The implications of the sheriff’s words were enormous. She did not know what she had been expecting, but that was not it.
He let go of her arm sat on the edge of the desk, crossing his arms over his midsection. “Now, what you do with that information is your business, Miss Thomas. Completely up to you.”
She would be breaking the law. “I understand, Sheriff Roach.” But breaking the law to save her father from an unjust hanging was permissible in her mind. “Could I go in and check his wounds before I leave off for home?”
She wrung her hands nervously, unsure about her decision to break her father out of jail. She had only ever committed one crime in her life. At the age of eight, she had taken an apple from the stall at the market without telling anyone. Not that she had meant to steal it. She saw the apples and was hungry, so she took it and ate it. When her mother found out, she made Millie go back and apologize and pay for it.
Millie had never done anything like it again. Her lesson had been learned about breaking the law and breaking the trust of her fellow townspeople. But this was different. If she did not break the law, her father would surely die at the hands of the mob—Deacon’s mob. She could never allow that. Even if he had been guilty, she would never allow them to get their hands on him, if she could prevent it.
“I really shouldn’t let you in there, but seeing as how he is fast asleep, I don’t see what it will hurt. Just be quick. I don’t want somebody busting in here and seeing you in there. I normally don’t allow anyone in the cell with the accused.”
He unlocked the door and stood holding it while she bent by the cot, checked the lacerations on his face, and dusted off more dirt. Her father’s face looked terrible with the dirt and blood mixed and drying to his skin. His eye was swollen, and his bottom lip was split in two places. She gingerly dusted loose dirt from his cheek and eyebrow. Using the hem of her apron, she wiped away as much of the muck as she could. Some of the larger cuts began oozing blood again and a sob caught in her throat.
Poor Papa! If only Mama were here, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be hurting all the time. You’d stop drinking and you’d be at home, safe, warm, with us. Fighting to control her emotions in front of the sheriff, Millie wiped a stray tear from her cheek before it could fall. She kissed her father’s grizzled cheek and whispered, “I love you, Papa.”
Making an effort, she turned her face from his and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. He needed her to be clearheaded, strong, sure of her decision. She couldn’t do that if she was sobbing about his pitiful state or mourning her mother and her now-broken family.
When she turned her attention to the wall beyond, she saw from the corner of her eye that the sheriff turned his back to look out over the small room where his desk sat.
Three wide planks at the bottom of the wall were weak. Eyeing them, she pondered the tool she would need to pry them loose quickly. The opening wouldn’t be very large when they were pulled out, but she judged that her father would be able to lie on his belly and scoot through without too much trouble if he didn’t have internal wounds that prevented him.
Turning back to her father, Millie decided a quick check for broken bones or signs of internal injuries was in order. She had not thought of it at first, only seeing the obvious outward signs of his recent abuse. If he had internal injuries though, he might not be able to escape.
Pressing on his side, she felt no broken bones and when she rolled him to his back and pressed on his stomach and then his chest, he barely acknowledged it. That was good. No internal injuries. She pressed against his other side and only snuffled and rolled his head toward the wall. No broken bones, apparently.
Turning to Sheriff Roach, she asked, “Would it be too much to ask for a cloth and some water? The cuts are packed with dirt.”
Hearing movement outside, he turned abruptly and then shook his head at her, motioning for her to come out of the cell. “I hear someone shuffling around out there, Miss Thomas, I think it would be wise to leave the cleanup for another time.” He pushed the cell door shut and locked it as soon as she crossed the threshold.
Hearing boots scuffing the hard dirt of the road, she pressed a hand to her stomach to quiet the butterflies there and pressed the other to her lips. Sheriff Roach put a finger to his lips and eased toward the door.
More scuffing and a thud at the wall. Sheriff Roach threw the door wide, drew his gun, and stepped to the porch. Millie backed toward the cell. If they were coming for her father, she would fight them. She would die to protect him.
Harvey looked around to find the source of the noises. Two of the Fullerton boys, both teenagers, lit out toward Deacon’s place. He didn’t think they had heard anything of his and Millie’s conversation. They were probably just being nosy, vying for any scrap they could take back to Deacon in exchange for coins. All they would have to report would be Isaac in his cell and Millie tending to his wounds—if they had even seen that.
Millie stood with her back to the cell door holding a piece of iron bar in front of her with both hands. It had been a leftover from installing the cell bars and Harvey kept meaning to do something with it other than leave it lying in the corner. He couldn’t stop the grin. He nodded toward the bar. “You can put that back; it was just a couple of nosy teenagers.”
She put the bar aside, glad to have its weight out of her hands. She dusted them on her apron and moved toward the door. “I should get going, then. I’ve a lot of things to get done.” She held out her hand to Sheriff Roach and he took it. “Thank you, Sheriff. I’m not wrong and neither are you.” She smiled and walked out.
Chapter Two
For all its beauty during the daytime, there was an equal amount of terror in the lonesome landscape at night. Riding back home after dark always put Millie on edge. The moon was nearly full and lit the trail nicely, but bandits could hide anywhere in the long, wide swaths of shadow thrown by the landscape. She trusted Brandywine to get her home swiftly; the mare had been a gift from her parents four years ago. A mutual bond had grown between Millie and Brandywine quickly.
Arriving home safely, Millie lit a lantern and carried it to the little room inside the barn where all the tools were stored. She had to find a suitable tool with which to pry those boards loose at the jail. The shovels caught her attention immediately, but she feared they would be awkward to use on such a task. Pitchforks, axes, hammers of all sizes, pick-axes, and scythes all seemed as if they might be able to accomplish the task of prying weak boards. But nothing seemed quite perfect for the job. She circled the little room, peering into corners, checking behind larger tools.
And then she saw it. It was an old tool that her father had acquired from an old Irish man when she was still a child—a loy. The old man said he had used the loy back in Ireland to manually plow fields when he was younger. Its slim, stout design was as close to perfect
as she could find. By putting the thin blade between the planks, she could push up on the handle and pop the lower board out. The handle would have to be shortened from five feet to about two.
She found a saw and placed the handle of the loy over a block of wood. Papa won’t mind. After all, this is going to save his life. It’s a fair trade: I ruin an old spade, he gets to live, she thought as she pulled and pushed the saw over the ash-wood handle.
With the loy’s handle shortened, she smiled and stood up. The tool was much lighter with three feet of the handle gone. Taking the loy to the house, she propped it against the wall by the cookstove. The fresh bread she had baked for supper sat on the warming shelf over the cookstove. She wrapped it in a cheesecloth and set it on the table. She placed her hands on the table and closed her eyes to think.
Papa will need food, water, a horse, his rifle for hunting, and a bedroll, she thought, her mind racing as she tried to think of all the necessities. The meat and vegetables she had cooked earlier went into two of Mama’s Mason jars. They were the kind with the metal ring and lids and Mama had been delighted when Papa had brought them home to her. She had exclaimed over how much easier they made her job of canning vegetables and fruits.