by Martha Hix
How could she possibly retrieve Priscilla before the witching hour?
Damn, damn, double damn!
Of course, she didn’t want to beg anything from this sheriff fellow. Her Pepaw used to say she was too much like Granny Fan. Too proud for her own good. Granny Fan raised her up to do for herself and family, and never to accept charity. But Lisa-Ann had run out of pride. And time.
It was glaringly apparent—she needed the Sheriff of Lubbock County’s help.
He might agree. Could happen. He did loan her his very own coat, which was soft and warm, over and above smelling quite good. He might not be as bad as she imagined. “It would have been cruel to leave Priscilla tied to a hitching post. She would probably be dead by now, if I had. Poor thing.”
“She’ll be fine. Now get some sleep.”
How much begging would it take to get her way? “Is it always this cold in Lubbock?”
“No.”
“Is it always this cold in this prison?”
“This is a jail, not a prison.”
Lisa-Ann elevated her voice a bit. “I don’t know a soul in this town. With the exception of you, I guess. And that Jenny lady, I might say. I need a friend.”
He approached her cell. “What caused Bellingham to kill your dog?”
“He got the wrong impression. All I wanted was to hear his war stories and to listen as he played piano in Mrs. Schneider’s parlor. My grandmother did all the baking for the XO Ranch, and I helped her from an early age. Instead of having Orville fetch the baked goods, I made deliveries to the XO, just so I could hear him. He took it that I wanted him to court me. I said no. The third time I said no, he got nasty.”
“What did your family have to say about that?”
“I have no family. None to speak of, anyway. My father is dead.” Batting at a tear, she added, “My grandfather passed on soon after we lost Vater. Vater’s German for father.”
She swallowed. “Pepaw’s death left me and Granny Fan to fend for ourselves. Then she...drowned, a year ago in September. Right after her funeral, Orville robbed me. Chuck charged after him, so he...killed my precious pet.” She bowed her head. “That’s was the last I saw of Orville. And the money.”
“You have had bad luck. I’ll bet you’ll feel better about it tomorrow, once you get some sleep. It’s past time for it, so go to sleep.”
After her heartfelt recount of her personal hell, that was the best he could do?
“Sheriff, do you not understand what I’m trying to say? I’ve got to pay Priscilla’s way out of that livery stable. Like I said.”
“Get some sleep.”
“I-I can’t leave her there,” she admitted, blood rushing to her face. “I am financially embarrassed. I don’t have the money to board her past midnight. Not tonight, not ‘til Saturday, waiting for that judge person. Will you go get her?”
Rolling to his side and lifting himself up on a crooked elbow, he asked, “And then what?”
“Put her wherever you keep your own horse.”
“There is some room in my stables.”
Smiling, she exhaled in relief. “Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you.”
“Hold up. If you don’t have money to spring your horse, how—”
“Priscilla. Her name is Priscilla.”
“How are you going to pay for her feed?”
“Pay?” The tiny hairs at the back of Lisa-Ann’s neck rose up. “You expect me to pay for her keep at your place?”
“Absolutely.”
She ached to chew up and spit out the pieces of this ornery so-and-so.
Her grandmother used to say, “You catch more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar.” Lisa-Ann wanted to try it. But then again, she had tried to be kind to Orville Bellingham, at the start and look where that got her.
“Pay for a handful of hay and a roof over her head? Pay, while you have me confined against my will, and have thwarted my hunt for Orville Bellingham?”
“That money will buy coal to heat these cells. I’d hate to ask you to pull convict duty out in the fields, collecting cow dung for fuel. You smell bad enough already.”
“Of all the gall! Ebenezer Scrooge could take lessons from you. I am from good German stock. We are people who are careful with money. We don’t squander a penny. But you, sir, you take the cake!”
He yawned. Yawned!
“Cake? Did you say cake? Ma’am, do you have a nice cake?” All that from the inmate on her left, the Pickett’s charge man. “I like cake. Sheriff Alington, you like cake. I know you do. You never say no to my dear Beulah’s pound cake, when you drop by our residence.”
“Go back to sleep,” the sheriff replied. “Now.”
Sheriff Alington. At least now Lisa-Ann knew his name. She spoke to the cake conversationalist. “Is Alington his first or last name?”
“He’s Wes Alington,” her neighbor answered.
Wes, was it? She refused to think of him by his formal name. Wes, it is.
Just then, a woman with a high, shrill voice spoke up from the man’s cell. “Francis Marion O’Dell, you know good and well his legal name is Westford Alington. Westford is some kind of family name. His sister told me so, when she was up from San Angelo.”
The object of conversation scowled. “F.M., that’s enough.”
Lisa-Ann shifted from one foot to the other, wondering what was happening. What was a woman doing in that cell? I would have sworn there was a man talking about Pickett’s Charge.
“Husband, tell that young lady that if she’s not spoken for, our sheriff is a bachelor.”
“Now, Beulah sweetums, you hush,” said the mealy-mouthed husband. “Sheriff Wes can do his own hunting for ladies. I hear there’s a dozen hankering to take the ‘bachelor’ off him.”
“F.M.,” the sheriff warned. “I’m not going to tell you again. Fasten your lips.”
“That’s right. You just hush, Francis Marion. Let me, Beulah O’Dell, do the talking.”
Good heavens, Lisa-Ann thought. That’s the same man talking. They are one and the same. This had to be the oddest thing Lisa-Ann had ever been party to.
The sheriff turned to her, obviously wanting a change of subject. “You’re going to need fresh clothes after your bath. And another set for court. I assume you have some in your saddlebags.”
“I travel light.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“I do have some clean britches. And I have a shirt that used to belong to Pepaw. Corpses don’t need fresh shirts.”
He groaned. “Go to sleep, please. Just go to sleep, so we all can!”
This fellow just burned her up. “Wes, I hope you don’t mind me calling you by your given name. It fits you. Kind of Western, kind of common, kind of religious. You know, John Wesley the Methodist. Okay, I’m dithering. I have no money to pay the stableman. Not for past midnight. Please get her out of there. You don’t have time to waste. Make sure she has water, please. Priscilla is partial to fresh water. She’s accustomed to spring water. Add a little sugar and she’ll give you some sugar, right on your cheek.”
“I do not kiss horses. Go to sleep.”
Go to sleep? That’s all Sheriff Westford Alington had to say? This jackass was not going to bend. Not tonight. Not ever, she suspected. Lisa-Ann gritted her teeth, trying to control her tongue, but her temper wouldn’t let her. “Too good for Priscilla’s kisses? You could do worse. You probably have. Oh, yes. If you could get anything at all, you’ve probably kissed worse than a horse.”
“Hell’s bells,” the now-roused sleeper in the third cell exclaimed. “Look at what you’ve done now, fool.”
“That’s giving him what-for,” Beulah said and chuckled.
“Woman, hush for once, and stay outta the sheriff’s business,” F.M. commanded.
Even before F.M. said that to the other side of himself and the hell’s bells fellow began to snore anew, the sheriff had tossed his blanket aside
and shot up from the divan. Raking fingers through his hair, he marched over to Lisa-Ann’s cell. She didn’t need to wear her glasses to see that those eyes of his were dark, really dark. “What’s the matter with you, suggesting I’d let worse than a horse kiss me?”
“Don’t be so touchy.” If there ever were a time to change the subject, this was it. “What keeps you from heating your jail in wintertime? I’m freezing half to death and I bet F.M. and Beulah are, too. And there’s that guy with the snore. He’s probably snoring from being half-frozen. While you’re up, will you please shove more coal in that stove?”
As he stepped closer, his image blurred in her eyes. She got another whiff of his enticing scent, making her forget her low opinion of him momentarily. He really is attractive. He then said something that took a minute to comprehend. Her cozy thoughts vanished.
Wes Alington glared at Lisa-Ann, his jaw ticking as he said, “You could turn a saint to sinning.”
Chapter 2
By eight o’clock the morning after Lisa-Ann’s arrest for attempted murder, a church bell rang and the drunk tank began to empty, but the sheriff was nowhere to be found. Deputy A.J. Hawkins had finished Deputy Dub’s shift and had started his own.
The fresh-faced deputy made coffee and poured everyone a cup. It tasted like heaven. But no sustenance followed, unfortunately. He then freed the man to Lisa-Ann’s right. Looking a lot worse for the wear, Hell’s Bells left his cell almost without comment, but he did manage to say to Lisa-Ann, “Look what you’ve done now, foolish girl.”
F.M. and Beulah also got on with their life—or was it “lives?” The couple argued about their next stop. She wished to attend services at a house of worship called Heaven’s Gate. F.M. argued for house calls. He persevered after a youth came running into the jail, looking for Doc O’Dell to attend an emergency. Evidently, folks knew where to look for Lubbock’s man of medicine.
Lisa-Ann listened to all of that, which was quite a bit better than the alternative: fixating on the personal aspects to Sheriff Wes Alington. Or on Priscilla. Or on the crimes that brought her here. Try as she might, she could not erase her thoughts of how she had sparred with the sheriff in the dead of night. Oddly, she recalled both the upset and the cheap pleasure of it.
Looking back on the night, in the light of morning, she really couldn’t come to grips with her situation and the whys behind it. And it didn’t help that one of the times she dozed off, she dreamed of kissing that aggravating lawman. Kissing and kissing—and in her dreams, he was wonderful at it!
Oh, stop!
The strapping young officer who appeared early that morning had red hair, along with the sort of skin that freckled from outside work. He carried a large pail. In the other, he held Pepaw’s buffalo rifle, and it looked like her pistols were tucked behind his belt. Thank heavens her property wasn’t lost.
“What’re you doing here, A.J.?” the sheriff asked when he arrived.
“Musta drank too much coffee, just couldn’t sleep, so I took me a walk. When I passed by the Garter, I saw Dub Ogle inside cleaning.”
“He still at it?”
“No, sir. He’d just finished up, but has an ache in the head. Since I done owed Dub a favor, I offered to take his shift, as well as my own. Might as well, can’t sleep no-how. He asked me to tell you he’s headed on home.”
Sheriff Wes nodded. “Good job, Hawkins.”
“I brought more coal,” the deputy said unnecessarily while lifting the container aloft. “Dub said I ought to. He meant to fetch a supply, he said to tell you, but it was his night for clean-ups. That ol’ boy sleeping it off”—he motioned toward the cell with the fool-talking sleeper—“I heard he lost his booze all over the floor just before you brought the lady in.”
Well, at least this hoosegow doesn’t stink, thanks to the mopping up.
Deputy Hawkins was saying, “Dub said he plumb forgot about the coal until he got chilly, sweeping up that mirror and those broken whiskey bottles. Said he got plumb drunk, inhaling the fumes from the floor. That’s why he hankered to get home and pass out.”
It looked like the lack of heat wasn’t Wes’s fault after all.
“Just get this place warmed up and keep it that way,” the sheriff replied.
“You bet, sir.”
While the deputy whistled as he loaded the stove, Wes turned his attention again to Lisa-Ann. He leaned closer, almost touching the bars. His jaw set, he lowered his voice to say, “I know about women like you only too well.”
“I...I didn’t mean—”
“Enough!” Pivoting away, he raised an arm to signal his disinterest in hearing more. “Your kind turns saints to sinners.”
He slammed the door as he left.
His slur rolled over and over within her. In her almost twenty-three years, she’d known insults. Crude, profane, mouthy, creek-bottom, common, four-eyed, too tall, sun-leathered, talks then thinks, and so forth, but...
Makes sinners out of saints?
What a nasty thing to say. Now, with the sun shining through the window, as if it were ninety degrees outside instead of almost freezing, and with her cellmates on their merry way, Lisa-Ann chomped at the bit for Wes to return. Curiosity ate at her to get to the bottom of his unkind cut.
As the morning went on, there was no seeing his face, which gave her the time to mull over what she’d done to provoke such reasoning. Lisa-Ann hadn’t set out to imply anything about kissing. How would she know one way or the other, his experience with kissing?
Whatever the case, she regretted the way everything turned out, from Orville to the jail to crossing swords with the dark, brooding Wes. Probably, she owed him an apology.
An apology after his insult? I can go only so far!
He also owed her an apology. She doubted that would happen, but the very last thing she needed right now was another adversary.
I could be the better person here. I could apologize, or whatever it takes, to bring Wes Alington to my side. And if not my side, at least to the place where we aren’t firing insults at each other.
Trembling, she tried to swallow the fear that began to seize her throat. Not happening, that better-person nonsense. I don’t know how to behave.
Lisa-Ann’s mother languished in a penitentiary for a crime she didn’t commit. It went without saying that her daughter couldn’t plead anything but guilty in this crime that she damn sure did commit. What would happen? Was Lisa-Ann’s next stop the women’s prison at Huntsville? What a damn fool way to arrange a visit with my mother, the convict.
“Hell’s bells,” she muttered. “I’ve gone and done it now, foolish girl!”
* * *
Scared, hungry, and filthy, Lisa-Ann lay on her cot that afternoon. With her eyes squeezed shut, she would doze off, only to startle herself awake from the sensation of falling. She prayed for the tranquility of a deep sleep, while also wishing for insight into how to get out of this mess. What’s wrong with me that I can’t harness my opinion? No one ever wants it. And I insulted a person who could—and probably will!—testify against me.
She could do her own kissing. She could kiss good-bye to a fair trial. Then an idea startled her to her feet. “Deputy, if you don’t mind my asking something?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You and I are probably about the same age. Call me by my given name, Lisa-Ann. Mind if I do the same for you, A.J.?”
“I’d be honored, ma—Miss Lisa...Lisa-Ann.” The redheaded deputy’s face flushed. “There was a lady who stopped by while you slept.”
Lisa-Ann hadn’t realized she’d slept soundly enough to miss a visitor. But who would visit in a place like this?
“The sheriff told her to bring you food, clean clothes, and soap,” A.J. explained.
“Was it that painted lady from the saloon?”
“It was Mrs. Craig. Mrs. Charlie Craig. Her husband plays dominoes with Sheriff Wes.”
“Do you know about Priscil
la?” Lisa-Ann asked. “My horse. That’s her name. The sheriff might have taken her to his own stables. I’m worried about her.”
“If Sheriff Alington offered to take care, you can bet he done did it.”
A.J. dug into a valise to present a stack of clothes. Lisa-Ann couldn’t help but smile with relief. This change of clothes had been packed in a knapsack and left with Priscilla. The sheriff had indeed gone to the livery stable.
This beneficiary would not look any gift horse in the mouth. “I am indebted to the sheriff and to Mrs. Craig.”
“There’s a lot of that ’round here. I reckon I ought to fuel up the fire, too, where you can have a bath. Mrs. Craig said to. She does like to get her way.” A.J. clicked his tongue. “She said, ‘Deputy Hawkins, build that fire to the brim. Then run outside and fetch water for that tub I left out of doors. After you get back with it, scram. Miss Wilkins won’t wish to see the whites of your eyes until she’s cleaned up and dressed. But when she’s ready, you be ready. So don’t scram too far.’”
“I’d be much obliged, Deputy, if you’ll just do those things.”
“Mrs. Craig was worried I’d peek in at you, and get all googly-eyed.”
“Would you?”
He blushed, a deeper beet red. “I’d be lyin’ if I said I’m not tempted. You’re real purdy, Lisa-Ann. Dirt and all.”
Suddenly uncomfortable with the role she’d fished for, she said, “You certainly have a talent with remembering what people say.”
“There ain’t a lot to do in Lubbock, unless you sing in the church choir or spend a lot of time in Miss Jenny’s saloon. So I work on remembering what people say.”
“How does the sheriff spend his off hours? With his wife?”
“He ain’t married.”
“Really?” A funny little thrill corkscrewed inside her chest. However...Must be something wrong, beyond a bad attitude, when a good-looking fellow with all his own teeth and hair can’t get a wife.