“I’m going to talk to other people in town. If I hear anything different, I’m coming back.”
The door to her office opened, and Logan walked in.
“You’re going to leave this office right now,” he said. “And if you come back without making an apology for the way you’ve spoken to Mrs. Spencer, the army is going to think it has another deserter on its hands.”
The major stood, rising to his full height, which was several inches shorter than Logan’s. “Are you threatening me?”
“Not at all. I’m merely stating a fact.”
“The army wouldn’t stop until they found out what happened to me. A major is a person of importance.”
“That wouldn’t help you if you were dead.”
The major looked as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “I can report this.”
“Do as you please. I can also report you—or we can both deny the threat. Whichever appears to be most to our advantage.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Logan didn’t answer, merely drew a pistol and put a hole in the major’s hat, which he’d been rude enough to leave on his head.
The hat having been blown off his head, the major clamped his hand down on his baldpate. His look of astonishment was comical. Recovering himself, he crossed the room, picked up his hat, and stared at the hole in it. He looked up at Logan, his expression a mixture of cold fury and shock. “You could have killed me.”
“Could have, but didn’t,” Logan said.
Cassie burst into the office. “Did that army man shoot either one of you?”
“Me, shoot!” the major shouted, goggle-eyed. “That man tried to kill me.”
“If he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” Cassie told him. “He can put three bullets into a hole so small it looks like just one. Ask anybody in town. They’ll tell you.”
“The major is leaving,” Logan told Cassie. “See that he doesn’t get lost on his way out.”
“Be glad to.” Cassie turned to the major. “I don’t know what you’re doing in this town, but you’re not the first person to be shot at in this bank. All the others are dead. I suggest you don’t come back.”
The major stared at his hat before putting it back on his head. “You haven’t heard the last of this.”
“I hadn’t expected to be that lucky,” Logan said. “Next time, I suggest you talk to the marshal before you go around threatening people.”
“There’s an army post just up the river. I’m sure they won’t look favorably on a fellow officer being shot at.”
“Jared Smith used to be the commander there. He can tell you all about it. He has a ranch between here and the fort. It’ll be on your way. By the way, he’s married to Mrs. Spencer’s cousin. It’s a very close family.”
The major looked about ready to say something else. Instead, he turned and marched toward the door. Horace practically fell into the room when he opened it. The major was momentarily stymied by the crowd gathered outside the office door. Then, with a look of determination, he charged through and out of the bank.
“I wasn’t trying to listen,” Horace hastened to explain. “I was trying to keep everybody out. A couple of men raced off to get their guns.”
“All the excitement’s over,” Cassie announced, “so everybody can go home.” With that, she firmly closed the door on all the curious glances.
Sibyl remained standing for a moment then slowly sank into her chair. “You’re crazy,” she said when she managed to find her voice. “You do realize you just shot at a major in the United States Army.”
“I merely tried to teach a lesson to a brute who thinks a uniform gives him the right to mistreat a lady.”
“What if Jared can’t get you out of this?”
“I’m not depending on Jared to do anything. I can defend myself.”
“You shot at an army officer!”
“I know, but he was a very poor example of one.”
Sibyl gripped the edge of her desk. “Are you trying to give Bridgette proof that your illness has made you act crazy?”
Logan lost a little of his imperturbability. “I won’t allow anyone to treat you like that. I don’t care who he is.”
“He wasn’t going to hurt me. He was just annoyed I didn’t give him the answers he wanted.”
Logan came closer, took Sibyl’s hands in his. “I don’t care whether he was annoyed or mad as hell. I won’t let him treat you like that.” He pulled her closer. “I mean to protect you.”
Sibyl looked up at him. “I wasn’t in any danger, and I’m not now.”
“That isn’t the point. I won’t let—”
“I understand,” Sibyl said, “but please don’t do it again. I nearly had heart failure.” A slow smile appeared. “You really are a remarkable man. How did you ever manage to be tame enough to live in Chicago?”
Some of the tension left Logan, and he smiled. “I traveled the Santa Fe Trail until I was twenty-five. After that, I took up target shooting. Maybe that explains it. I don’t know, but I intend to see you don’t have to defend yourself.”
He didn’t know what he was getting into, and she couldn’t tell him. It was her past, and she had no right to draw him into it. “Thank you. Now you’d better spend the rest of the day in your office well out of sight. I don’t know what I’m going to tell people when they ask why they heard a pistol shot in my office.”
“Why not tell them the truth? That major was being rude, and I thought a hole in his hat was the best way to make the point.”
She might as well. After the things he’d done, no one would question it. She hoped he was truly better. The world couldn’t afford to lose a man like Logan Holstock.
* * *
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Cassie announced to no one in particular, “but everybody’s acting really weird. Anytime someone mentions that major’s name, people act like they’ve seen a ghost. When he tries to talk to people, they turn into gobbling idiots. What’s wrong with them?”
More than a dozen adults had gathered in Sibyl’s parlor to discuss an event that had turned the whole town on its ear. The U.S. Army major had kept his promise and had started asking questions of everyone about the disappearance of Raymond Sinclair. Most of the people barely knew Raymond or his family, which had sided with the North during the war. Being on the dividing line between the two armies, the people of Spencer’s Clearing had remained neutral. Both armies had claimed the surrounding territory from time to time, but no one had been killed.
“Before the war, Raymond Sinclair was sweet on Sibyl,” Dr. Kessling told Cassie. “He wanted to marry her, but her parents insisted she was too young. When he tried to convince her to run away with him, her father told him never to come back.”
Logan’s gaze hadn’t left Sibyl from the moment he joined the meeting. Sibyl had said there was no reason for him to be here, that he ought to rest, but he could tell from the change in her after the major’s visit that something very important had taken place, or was about to. He was spending more time out of the bed than in it and was determined to protect her no matter what he had to do.
“In 1863, Raymond and another soldier disappeared about the same time an army payroll went missing,” the doctor continued. “The army investigated at the time, but they were never able to find either man or the money. However, Raymond’s father was convinced he had gone to Spencer’s Clearing, and that somebody there knew what had happened to him and the money.”
“What did happen?” Cassie asked.
“Nobody’s sure,” the doctor said, “but we’re sure something did happen. The problem is that only Norman Spencer and Vernon Edwards knew if Raymond Sinclair was involved and what might have happened to him. Everybody was sworn to secrecy and told never to divulge what they knew. Since they’re both dead, we’ll never know what really happe
ned.”
“I think it’s time everybody told what they do know,” Colby said. “I’m sure nobody here is guilty of a crime, but we need to come up with some answers. The major told me Raymond’s father has become one of the richest men in Kentucky. He has enough influence to keep this going for years.” He turned to his wife. “You might as well start.”
Naomi didn’t look happy, but she spoke with a firm voice. “I don’t know anything about Raymond, but I know something about the other man. When my Grandfather Brown caught that man trying to steal from him, the soldier killed my grandfather. I came in at that moment. I barely remember what happened, but I know I shot the soldier. I don’t know what happened to him or the money.”
Frank Oliver spoke up. “I know nothing about the money, but I know what happened to the body. We were afraid the Union Army would never believe we knew nothing about the stolen payroll or why the soldier had died, so we buried him in the bottom of the grave we used for Grandpa Brown.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Laurie spoke up. “I know nothing about either man, but I know what happened to some of the money. I took it.”
There was an audible gasp.
“I didn’t know it was part of an army payroll, or I’d never have touched it. I found it in the soldier’s saddlebags when I was helping clean up Grandpa Brown’s house. I was desperate to get out of my marriage to Noah. I hid it in case I could use it someday.”
“Do you still have it?” Dr. Kessling asked.
“When I found out Norman intended to exercise even more control over me than Noah, I used it to buy a partnership in Jared’s ranch. I can pay it back if it would help.”
“From what the major says, the payroll isn’t the issue,” Colby said. “He’s only interested in what happened to Raymond Sinclair because his father is putting a lot of pressure on the army to find out.”
One after another, everyone present said they knew nothing about Raymond.
“There was nobody out and about that night,” Virgil Johnson said. “All the men were off hunting, the women were at a sewing bee, and the children were with Flora Hill and Pearl Sumner. If Naomi hadn’t gone home for some scraps she wanted to put in the quilt, nobody would have known about the other soldier.”
“Are you saying that if Raymond Sinclair was in Spencer’s Clearing that night, nobody saw him?” Logan asked.
There were nods from all around the room, but Logan noticed Sibyl didn’t respond with the others. Worse than that, she’d looked like she was about to faint all evening. She knew something, but she was too afraid to tell it. He didn’t believe she had done anything wrong, but he was convinced she knew someone who had. She was a strong, sensible woman who didn’t let herself panic when things went wrong. Now she looked as though she’d like nothing better than to run from the room and stay hidden until this whole thing blew over.
“So what do you think we ought to do?” Frank Oliver asked Colby.
“Do you think Naomi ought to tell him about the other soldier?” his wife asked.
“I don’t like the idea of hiding things,” Colby said. “In my opinion, you should have told the army what happened to the other soldier. If he deserted after stealing a payroll, the army would have hanged him. I think they would have commended Naomi for shooting a deserter who’d robbed and killed her grandfather. But it’s too late to bring it up now. Besides, the major isn’t asking about him. He’s only interested in Raymond. As long as no one knows anything about him, there’s nothing we can say.”
“So we just say we don’t know anything?” Mae Oliver asked.
“You don’t know anything, do you?” Colby asked.
“No.”
“Then you can’t say anything else.”
“But he doesn’t believe you. Don’t look at me like that,” she said as several heads turned in her direction. “I’ve told the man I never saw anybody from Spencer’s Clearing until we left Missouri, but I haven’t said a word against anyone here. You’ve been like a family to me after my husband was killed. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Logan marveled that Cassie could tear up without losing a jot of her beauty.
“What has he said to you?” Colby asked.
“There’s nothing like a pretty woman to get a man talking, especially when he’s a thousand miles from his wife. I didn’t like what his being here was doing to everybody, so I decided to find out what I could.”
Every eye was on Cassie, the tension in the room even greater.
“He doesn’t care what happened to Raymond Sinclair,” Cassie said, “but it’s his job to find out, and he wants to look good. He says he doesn’t believe people, but I think he just doesn’t want to go back without being able to tell his boss something.”
“We can’t tell him anything if we don’t know anything,” Mae insisted. “I never left my house that night. I didn’t know Grandpa Brown had died until the next day. I didn’t learn he’d been shot until Naomi’s nightmares caused her to remember.”
“I’m just telling you what I found out,” Cassie said. “I don’t know what to do.” She grinned. “That’s a job for the men. Aren’t they always telling us women to leave everything to them?”
Laughter was able to break some of the tension, but it didn’t last long.
“Does the army have any proof that Raymond and the thief were traveling together?” Colby asked.
“Not that I ever heard,” Dr. Kessling said. “The only connection I know of is that they seemed to have disappeared at the same time.”
“I think they were together.”
Everyone turned to Horace in surprise.
“What do you know?” Colby asked.
“Nothing about two men, but Norman Spencer asked me to take two horses and let them loose in separate places as far away as I could ride to and back from in one night. He wouldn’t tell me why, but he said the safety of the village depended on it. I wasn’t going to do it—I didn’t like Norman—but Sibyl’s papa said I had to do it, that I’d be the same as a traitor if I didn’t.”
“You never told me,” the young man’s father said.
“Or me,” his brother added. “I always wondered where you went that night. I didn’t believe your story about possum hunting. I wasn’t too young to go with you, and you knew it.”
“I was sworn to secrecy,” Horace said.
“So it looks like Raymond was there that night,” Colby said. “Does anybody know anything else?”
“I always thought it was peculiar that Vernon Edwards insisted Grandpa Brown’s grave had to be so deep,” Morely Sumner said, “but I never wasted my time asking why to anything he and Norman Spencer came up with.”
“Anything else?” Colby asked. “Even a small detail might be important.”
No one had any information to offer. Logan doubted they would have spoken up if they had. Horace’s confirmation that there had been two horses had frightened many of them. They might not know anything about that night, but there was a pervasive fear that something terrible had happened.
“If there’s nothing more, I say we all go home,” Colby said. “Be as polite and helpful to the major as you can, but you have nothing to tell him, so stop worrying. If anything did happen, the only two people who know about it are dead. There’s nothing we can do about that.”
Usually people were slow to leave neighborhood gatherings in a small town like Cactus Corner, but the rooms cleared in a matter of minutes.
“I don’t think we helped anybody,” Dr. Kessling said.
“No,” Colby agreed. “Looks like we ended up making them more nervous.”
“Still, I think it was good to clear the air. We’ve been keeping secrets for too long.”
“I know I don’t live here, and I probably have no right to speak,” Logan said, “but there’s more to this than we know.”
Everyone turned to him with an attention that wasn’t entirely friendly.
“Look at this as an outsider would see it,” he said. “Something mysterious happens in a small community. Two years later, the whole community picks up and moves west. That’s bound to arouse suspicion.”
“I asked the same questions,” Colby said, “but Norman said they agreed to move because the countryside had been virtually destroyed by the fighting armies. Most moved because so many families were related. The others came along because they didn’t want to be left behind.”
That did seem like a logical explanation, but Logan couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that there was something more behind it than the shooting of a deserter.
“You,” Dr. Kessling said, turning to Logan, “are to go to bed and go to sleep immediately. I don’t know why Sibyl let you get out of bed.”
“Because I refused to stay upstairs when so much was going on down here. I now have an interest in what happens to this town.”
“Well, if you want to live long enough to find out, you’ve got to take care of yourself so you can get well.”
When Logan started to get to his feet, his brothers were at his side immediately. “I can walk on my own,” he insisted.
“Probably, but we want to help,” Colby said. “It’s the brotherly thing to do.”
Logan couldn’t tell whether Colby was serious or making a joke—it seemed a little of both—but he accepted the offer of assistance. He’d gotten so much stronger that even climbing stairs didn’t wear him out, but it meant to lot to him that they were eager to help.
“Make sure you tuck him into bed,” the doctor joked.
“That’s my job,” Sibyl said with a wink.
She didn’t appear quite so upset now, but she was far from her usual cheerful, confident self.
“I’ll check on you after everyone has gone,” Sibyl told him before she left the room.
Logan didn’t feel tired, but he didn’t object. He had a lot to think about.
He didn’t really care about what might have happened to Raymond Sinclair. He’d never heard of the man before tonight. If he was a thief and a deserter, he deserved whatever fate had in store for him. He was, however, very worried about the effect of all this on Sibyl. Not even the deaths of her husband and father had affected her so dramatically. It wouldn’t do him any good to search for answers when he knew nothing about what had happened, but he couldn’t stop himself.
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