by Maren Smith
“Has he killed anyone?” the judge continued.
No one said a word.
Beginning to lose his patience, Judge Johnson swiveled in his seat. “Sheriff Justice, how many times has Stone Norwood been a resident of your jail?”
“Never,” Justice answered, calmly and for all to hear.
“How many times have you been called to answer a complaint charged against him?”
“Never.”
“How many times has this boy been out rabble-rousing, whoopin’ and hollerin’, riding rough through the streets of town and stirrin’ unrest among the Natives on the Reservations?”
“He’s riled the chickens a time or two,” his father answered wryly. “Mostly though, I do try to have him in bed by eight. Between that, his schooling and his chores, he doesn’t have a lot of time for rabble-rousing.”
Swiveling the other way now, Judge Johnson pinned Captain Everson with the same half-irritated, half-exasperated look. “Does the government have anything to add before I close this hearing?”
Ankle crossed over his knee, arms folded across his chest, the captain stared fixed upon his boot. He shook his head.
“I find the warrant against Stone Norwood to be without merit, based on prejudice and, therefore, unprosecutable. All charges are to be dropped. Let the defendant be returned to his father, let the witness be returned to jail, and let the judge be excused to the nearest bar because he damn well needs a drink!” More than a few men laughed as Judge Johnson slammed his gavel on the table. “We’ll deal with the second hearing first thing tomorrow morning.” He started to turn from his table, but just as quickly snapped back around and pointed at Myron. “You, sir!” he announced over Millicent’s squawk of outrage, the squeal of chairs being jostled and shoved back and the shuffle of many, many feet filing back out of the meeting hall.
Myron glanced up, but by the look on his face, he already knew what censure was coming.
For a moment, the judge only shook his head. “Son, I don’t know how you can live with it.”
Still seated where he’d been throughout the hearing, Myron wilted. He bent, running his hands through his short hair before looking up. “Don’t see where I’ve got a whole lot of choice at this point.”
In the act of ripping her arm out of Sheriff Justice’s arresting grasp, Millicent turned on him with an open-mouthed gasp. She might have scolded, but the sheriff distracted her by catching an even firmer hold on her arm. “I will not be manhandled! Myron, what’s wrong with you? Put a stop to this!”
“Yes, son,” Judge Johnson agreed. “Put a stop to this. I’ve got a whole grove of hickories growing out behind my rental house. Feel free to help yourself anytime, day or night.”
“Oh!” Millicent scowled, but Sheriff Justice had her firmly and he was already dragging her toward the door. Almost everyone had filed out by then, all except Lydia who would have loved to have left but for the weight of the firm hand on her shoulder. Without looking up, she already knew whose it was. She shifted in her seat, fighting desperately not to leap up just as Millicent was dragged past. She wanted to hit her so badly her whole body shook with the need. She shook harder still when Millicent spotted her.
Millicent’s eyes narrowed. “Whore!” she hissed.
Bitch. Lydia grit her teeth, rolling her lips as tightly as she could to keep from hissing back. She swallowed the word, but the effort left her mouth filled with a bitterness that tasted suspiciously like cowardice and defeat.
On her shoulder, Garrett’s hand tightened just a little more. “Enjoy your night in jail,” he told Millicent with a grin. As the sheriff dragged her from the hall, his grip on her shoulder became a commiserating pat. “Good girl,” he congratulated. “Well handled.”
Lydia almost laughed at him. She really was going to throw up now.
The only lady left in the room now, she jumped up from her chair, ducking out of his reach and shoving past Deputy Slade to get ahead of the military officers. Her temper got the best of her. She turned on them, her back so stiff and her fists clenched so tightly that they hurt. Oh, the things she would have loved to say to them! But already Garrett was climbing over the row of chairs that stood between them, and she just didn’t have the time. Not if she wanted to get out of here without his laying hands on her again.
Her bottom stung in phantom remembrance of the spanking he’d given her just before this ridiculous hearing had been called. She didn’t want another one, and another was just what she would earn if she said any of the things eating her up from within. Maybe Garrett would only have caught her by the arm again and perhaps pulled her off to one side while the room emptied of its last remaining gawkers. He’d likely have caught her chin then and tilted her face to his, forcing her to meet the steady grey of his eyes in that way that had haunted her during all the long hours of this morning’s pre-dawn, when her loneliness was at its zenith.
Good girl, he’d probably say, but she didn’t feel good. She felt awful. Sullied, defiled. And now instead of it being over, she was going to have to come back and endure it all over again tomorrow. Oh God, and with Paquah at her side! Because of this man—her accusing stare locked on Captain Everson—and his cronies. Because of Millicent. Because she’d once dared to love a redskin, heart, body and soul, and because she’d had the nerve to bear his child before the whole of her world came crashing down like the charred remains of a prairie cabin on fire.
She couldn’t breathe.
Lydia fought to draw air into her too tight chest. Don’t react. Don’t let them see you react. She knew better. They really would know her weaknesses then, but she’d already been pushed so far and all she could feel was the force of all the pushing yet to come.
Garrett was coming for her. He was over the back of the chairs that brought him into the same aisle as herself, and his hand was even now reaching out to nudge between Deputy Tey and Slade when Lydia lost control of herself. She’d be ashamed about it later. For now, nothing felt as good as seeing Captain Everson flinch back in surprise when she stepped right up to him, cleared her throat, and spat. Her spittle hit him square on the cheek.
“Go to hell,” she said as evenly as she could for all the rage that shook her.
“Emerald, Jesus!” Tey snapped. He started to pull her back, but quickly switched targets when Lieutenant Davies started around Captain Everson to interfere. He hit shoulders with Deputy Slade as the two lawmen blocked the soldiers from getting at her. Just as quickly, Garrett planted himself directly in front of Captain Everson.
“Don’t do it,” he warned with a smile. It wasn’t necessary. Captain Everson’s staying hand was already raised, ending the advance before either of his subordinates could make one. Only when he was sure they would obey did he lower his hand to wipe the spit from his cheek.
“Spirited,” he commented, cleaning his hand on the handkerchief he pulled from within his uniform jacket. “Yours?”
Lydia backed away, feeling no disloyalty at all for leaving Garrett to stare them down. For some reason, he looked very much like Doctor Norwood had during that moment in the hearing when he’d put himself like a wall between Millicent and his own family. He’d been frowning, but Garrett wouldn’t be. She couldn’t see his face, but she already knew he would be smiling. She wondered if Captain Everson knew just how dangerous Garrett could be when he did that.
“Does that scare you?” Garrett asked, as if he truly were curious.
“Not even a little,” Captain Everson replied.
It was hard to tell judging from the back of his head, but she had a feeling Garrett’s smile was growing, widening. Becoming all teeth. “It should. Men like you and me, we always protect what’s ours. Don’t we?”
Lydia didn’t stay to hear the rest of it. She turned, fleeing the meeting hall with the most dreadful prickle crawling up her back.
Men like you and me… we always protect what’s ours.
Except she wasn’t his. She wasn’t! She wasn’t anybody’s; she
hadn’t been for a very long time and never wanted to be again. It was just too painful.
The heat outside the meeting hall seemed so much more stifling when she shoved through the heavy double doors and stumbled out into the full of the failing afternoon sun. Men were clustered on the steps, staring out into the street. It took Lydia a few seconds before the high-pitched female shouts and jeering registered.
“Enough!” Sheriff Justice bellowed. “I mean it! Jewel, damn it! Ruby! Enough, I said!”
Lydia pushed to get through this crowd now too, shoving past view-blocking shoulders until, stumbling down the steps, she stood, stunned at the battle taking place in the middle of the street.
That Sheriff Justice and Millicent had been ambushed was as plain as the dung splatters all over Millicent’s face, protectively thrown up arms and even her dress. She was screeching, twisting this way and that as she sought refuge behind Sheriff Justice. The only problem was that her assailants—every Red Petticoat gem that had attended the trial, including Citrine, Silver and even Ruby (who would no doubt get an earful from her sheriff husband later on)—were lined up on both sides of the street, pelting Millicent with some of the freshest horse apples Lydia had ever seen hold together in mid-flight like that.
“Beasts!” Millicent screeched, trying to shield her face. “I’ll see you all arrested for—” She stopped with a hacking cough when Amy grabbed a clump out of the bucket Opal was carrying, reared back her arm and let fly with unerring accuracy. She hit Millicent’s open mouth, stopping the other’s tirade mid-bellow. “Ugh!”
The Petticoat ladies threw up their arms, whooping in victory.
“You get what you give, ain’t that right?” Amy hollered with a gleeful clap of her filthy hands. “God, I wish Coral were here to see this!”
Wearing almost as much as she was throwing, Sunny let fly with a wad that missed Millicent and hit the sheriff instead. He cursed, but she laughed anyway, calling, “That’s what you get for being an evil, mean-spirited, cantankerous, old bitch!”
Laughing, Jewel bellowed across the road, “This’ll be the last time you mess with my gems!”
“And if you think this is bad, missy, then you’re going to love what we do to you tomorrow!” Nettie cried from the opposite side of the street where she and four other gems had delighted in catching Millicent in the cross-fire. She shook a dung-covered finger at their weeping, spitting target. “Ain’t nobody hurts my babies!”
Lydia could have cried. The gems had done this for Citrine, for Stone and for Paquah… and for her. They were riled, tempers rising high in all their cheeks and manure on their hands, skirts and halfway up their arms, and they had done this for her. Just like any real family would have.
Only maybe without quite so much shit.
It was everywhere—not just on the Petticoat gems, but on Millicent, the sheriff and the street. From start to finish, the assault likely hadn’t lasted more than a minute, but still… it must have been glorious. And she had missed all but the end.
She felt so… so touched and so robbed all at once.
Spitting to clear his own mouth, slapping manure off the front of his coat, Sheriff Justice leveled all of them—his pregnant wife and Jewel, included—a warning glare. “Get your girls, and you get them back home. Now, Jewel!”
He was distracted and Lydia’s feet were moving before she quite knew she was going to do anything at all. The heat of the sun, the day’s humiliation and the injustice burning at her shoulders and back, Lydia stalked out into the street. Had the sheriff not had his back to her, she never would have got as close to Millicent as she did. But his back was turned and his attention was scattered, and the next thing Lydia knew, her hand had clamped onto Millicent’s shoulder every bit as heavy as Garrett’s had been on her own. She spun the other woman and the two stood face to dung-splattered face.
Funny, how quickly Millicent’s tears stopped flowing and she underwent that rapid shift from piteous weeping to vicious sneers. “Get away from me, you filthy whore!”
Lydia said nothing at all. Snapping back her fist, she slugged Millicent as hard as she could. It was clumsy, but her knuckles connected with Millicent’s shit-stained mouth and chin. At least two popped, sending shocks of pain up her thumb, through her hand and well up into her arm. It almost doubled her over, but it knocked Millicent flat on her back in the filth on the ground.
She rolled, clutching her mouth with both hands and wailing. At least those tears, Lydia was certain, were genuine. She shook her wounded hand, the satisfaction she felt as every one of the Petticoat gems (and a few spectators) erupted into cheers worth every bit of the pain.
Sheriff Justice wasn’t quite as happy about it. He’d also had enough. He grabbed her arm even as he spun about, pointing at those men closest to him. “I deputize you, you, you and you. Round ‘em up. Jewel, you and all your gems are under arrest!”
Chapter Nine
“I’ve got to be the first damned sheriff of anywhere to arrest his own wife,” Jeb Justice grumbled as he stuffed the last of the gems, Dottie, into the second cell and locked the door. Millicent was in the first, closest to the door, lying on her back and groaning loudly while Dr. Norwood tended her rather minor injuries; Lydia, Jewel and all her gems, both past and present—Opal, Dottie, Amy, Ruby, Rose, Lapis, Citrine, Amber, Sapphire, Sunny, and Silver—were crowded together in the other. It was standing room only, something they would no doubt all be grateful for once Gabe realized where they were or worse, got them out of jail.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Slade grumbled back. “I’m just a deputy. I don’t get half the respect you do in this town. How in hell am I supposed to keep the rowdies, cowboys and miners in line when, by morning, everybody’ll know my wife got arrested for brawling in the streets?”
“I’m just a part time deputy,” Deputy Tey said, shooting his wife, Sunny, a look that had her face heating yet her eyes snapping. “I simply cannot understand how it got so damned out of hand.”
“Seems we have the same problem,” Pastor Lawrence Black said dryly. Sitting on the corner of Sheriff Justice’s desk, he had his wallet in his hand, his arms folded across his chest, a look that said clearly he had a few things he was going to say about this just as soon as he got Amber home. His meaning was not lost on Amber, either. She was surreptitiously slinking back through the other gems as if she thought there were some magic corner in the rear of the cell capable of hiding her. Lydia would have sympathized more if only she didn’t already know she and the other gems, and most likely Jewel herself, would find themselves lining up for a dance with Gabe and his disciplinary belt sometime before bed. Hugging her sore and throbbing wrist to her chest, she tried not to think about it or to feel that awful creeping once more prickling its insidious fingers across her bottom and thighs. She couldn’t remember another time in all her life that she’d felt it so many times in a single day.
She blamed Garrett.
That almost cheered her up… almost. She might be getting the belt tonight, but at least Garrett wouldn’t be delivering it.
“Oh, knock it off already!” Jewel snapped, throwing up both hands in “get out of here” shooing motion before scrubbing one worriedly across her forehead. Something about the way the madam began to pace left Lydia wondering if she might not be the only one suffering the prickling fingers of dread moving across her nethers.
“I beg your pardon,” the sheriff intoned, unamused.
But then, neither was Jewel. She rounded on him. “We’ve measured your little Man Johnsons, all right. They’re all very impressive. Can we not just let it go now, please? We made a mistake.”
“Most satisfying mistake of my life,” Opal interjected.
Standing in the corner near the door of the first small cell, John chuckled darkly. “You are not helping yourself, sweetheart.”
Opal blushed, folded her arms defensively, but dropped her gaze to the floor when John shot his own authoritative stare through
the bars of her cage.
What was it about the gems that made all of them congenitally incapable of finding a mate who didn’t spank?
“We have horrible taste in men,” Lydia told Jewel, who huffed and rolled her eyes, but didn’t quite go so far as to agree.
The door banged open, accidentally hitting Charlie in the shoulder and bumping him into John, who fell against Deputy Tey, who collapsed against the first cell door just as Doctor Norwood was trying to exit it. The door slammed shut back on him.
“Hey, now,” he exclaimed, but there wasn’t much for it. There were eight men now clustered in a room built only for the sheriff. It was cozy enough as it was when occupied only by Jeb and both deputies. It was now every bit as crowded outside the cells as it was in them, and the appearance of an irate Mayor Rockwell with his frowning brother, Thomas, following at his heels, only added to the closeness of the increasing confines.
“You arrested my wife?” the mayor demanded. Tall enough to see over the top of just about everyone there, he spotted Lapis sneaking unsuccessfully into the rear of the gems to join Amber in her hiding place. “Louise!” She cringed, but already Rockwell was shoving through the crowd toward the sheriff. “You put her in jail!”
“I gave them every opportunity to disperse—” Justice replied, face flushing as his own temper sparked and began to burn.
“Disperse,” the mayor scoffed. “Disperse from what?”
“The assault they were willfully committing against me and the prisoner under my charge!”
Rockwell scoffed even louder. “Assault my ass.”
“They can’t assault anyone.” Thomas added his own hard bark of disbelief. “What harm could they possibly do? They’re women!”
The room got silent as every man in it (including his brother) turned to stare at him.
“They’re not women,” Sheriff Justice told him, disbelief temporarily winning out over his new-budding anger. “They’re gems!”