CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER

by Linda Lael Miller

  Miss Ethel’s wrinkled face fell. “But he is, dear,” she said. “Don’t you remember? One of the stagecoach passengers identified him.”

  Caroline continued up the walk toward the front steps, though her gait wasn’t so springy now and her spirits were drooping just a little. “It was a mistake,” she insisted. “The real robber is someone who resembles Seaton, that’s all.” She didn’t look back, because she knew if she did, she’d see Miss Ethel shaking her head.

  In the front parlor, Miss Phoebe was perched on the settee, sipping tea and gossiping with a neighbor. She inclined her head and waggled her fingers slightly as Caroline passed by in the hallway.

  Miss Phoebe had planned to marry a Mr. Gunderson immediately after she and Caroline and Miss Ethel arrived in Bolton thirteen years ago, but a Shoshone brave had shot the prospective bridegroom dead before she’d even finished unpacking. Despite hordes of eager suitors—like all the western territories, Wyoming suffered a drastic shortage of marriageable women—neither Miss Phoebe nor Miss Ethel had ever expressed interest in matrimony again.

  Reaching the spacious kitchen, Caroline hung her sensible navy blue cloak from a peg beside the back door and snatched a piece of fresh bread from the box on the counter. The scent of a mutton roast simmering in the oven made her stomach grumble.

  She buttered the bread and went to the stove for the teakettle. Soon, she was seated in one of the sturdy oak chairs, her lesson book open on the red-and-white checked oilcloth covering the table, her feet up on another chair. While she ate and drank her tea, she was planning assignments for the next day’s classes.

  Presently, Miss Phoebe came in to open the door of the oven and peek at the aromatic mutton. There were carrots, potatoes, and onions stewing in the pot along with the meat.

  “Is Mrs. Cribben gone?” Caroline asked. That lady was the head of the Bolton Community Literary Club and the author of reams of truly wretched poetry, and in Caroline’s opinion she was a terrible bore.

  “Yes,” Miss Phoebe replied, with exasperated goodwill. Her hair had turned gray, like her sister’s, but she was still an attractive woman. “It wouldn’t have hurt you to stop and greet her, you know. She was instrumental in persuading the mayor to levy a special saloon tax so that we could buy new textbooks last spring.”

  Caroline sighed and nodded. She was a dedicated teacher, and the concerns of the school were her concerns, but her mind had fastened onto Mr. Guthrie Hayes and she couldn’t seem to pry it loose. What had that saloon woman whispered in his ear, to make him grin like that? Had the two of them gone upstairs together to do scandalous things?

  Caroline clenched her fist.

  What was Guthrie Hayes doing in Bolton, anyway?

  “Caroline,” Miss Phoebe scolded.

  Caroline jumped. “I’m sorry,” she said, flushing. “You were saying—?”

  “I was saying that Mrs. Cribben told me that Hypatia Furvis told her that you walked right into the He—that awful saloon—” She paused to shudder. “In the broad light of day!”

  Caroline swallowed and stared at her kindly guardian, heat climbing her neck to pulse in her cheeks. She saw no anger in the fragile, well-bred face, but Miss Phoebe did look disconcerted. “There was a gentleman there I needed to see,” she explained lamely.

  “Why?” Miss Phoebe wanted to know.

  Only with the severest difficulty did Caroline lie to the woman who had been a mother to her. “H-he’s the father of one of my students,” she said, looking down at her lap and smoothing her crumpled sateen skirt with nervous fingers. “Calvin has been missing school, and I wanted to know why.”

  “Couldn’t you have gone to the family home and inquired?” Miss Phoebe pressed.

  Caroline forced herself to meet the other woman’s gaze. A lie was a lie, but this was an extenuating circumstance. After all, Seaton’s life hung in the balance. “Calvin told me his mother was very ill,” she prevaricated, her eyes wanting to dodge away from Miss Phoebe’s. “I didn’t wish to disturb the poor woman.”

  Miss Phoebe sighed. “I don’t think I need to remind you, Caroline, that a teacher cannot afford so much as a speck on her reputation. If word of what you did gets back to the school board—and it most certainly will—you could lose your job.”

  Caroline imagined herself as Seaton’s wife, returning to Bolton in triumph. Cleared of all charges by his own efforts, Mr. Flynn would reopen his law office and Caroline would be busy sewing curtains and having babies. Her job wouldn’t be a concern anymore.

  “I’ll be more careful,” she promised, not daring to tell Miss Phoebe that Guthrie Hayes had virtually agreed to break Seaton out of jail.

  Miss Phoebe reached out and patted her hand. “See that you are, dear.” She sighed as she rose from her chair and went to the sideboard for supper china. “I do hope you’ve put that lawyer fellow out of your mind,” she said. “Heaven knows, there are plenty of other young men in Bolton who would be thrilled to marry you.”

  Caroline hid a smile as she got up from the table. After closing her lesson book and setting it aside, she tossed away her bread crusts and began taking silverware from one of the wavy wooden drawers in the sideboard. In its round mirror, she saw that her color was high and her brown eyes were twinkling. “Don’t worry, Miss Phoebe,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll be married before you know it.”

  Just then, Miss Ethel came through the dining room doorway, carrying her straw gardening hat in one hand. “Who’s getting married?” she inquired eagerly.

  Caroline laughed as she set silverware alongside the plates Miss Phoebe had already laid out. “I am,” she said.

  “Caroline is teasing, Ethel,” Phoebe put in gently.

  Miss Ethel looked downright disappointed, but she brightened after only a moment. “There was a letter for you today, Caroline,” she announced, patting first one skirt pocket and then the other. “Here it is.”

  Caroline rarely received letters and, when she did, her heart always did a cartwheel. She’d never given up the hope, even after all these years, that she’d hear from Lily or Emma.

  But the envelope bore a return address in Laramie, and Caroline instantly recognized Seaton’s elaborate handwriting. Of course it followed, because Mr. Flynn was being held in that town, and had been since his trial.

  Her fingers shook a little as she opened the letter, and there was a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach.

  It wasn’t at all the reaction she would have expected.

  Dear Caroline, he had written, It’s lonely in this place, and I miss you with all my heart … somehow, we must find a way to secure my release … I swear to you, by all that’s holy, I didn ’t kill that man … we’ll go away together, start a new life …

  Caroline refolded the letter carefully and tucked it back into its envelope. In her mind, she stood before Seaton, looking up into his sincere dark eyes, touching his rich ebony-colored hair, being held against his tall, lithe frame.

  And for the very first time since the whole nightmare had begun, she felt a whisper of doubt brush against her spirit. Could Seaton be lying?

  “Excuse me,” she said to Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel, who were watching her with worried puzzlement. And then she hurried up the rear stairs and along the narrow hallway to her room.

  Safely behind her own door, she laid one hand to her heart and breathed deeply until the dreadful suspicion began to pass. Seaton Flynn was innocent of any crime, no matter what the judge, the jury, and Guthrie Hayes happened to think. He was just as much a victim as that poor stagecoach driver.

  Wasn’t he?

  Resolutely, Caroline went to her bureau and picked up the framed sketch she’d done herself, from memory, of Lily and Emma. One by one, she touched their faces, aching to know where they were and whether they were safe and happy.

  “He didn’t do it,” she told her lost sisters, and their large eyes regarded her solemnly from behind the glass.

  Chapter

  Guthrie drew
the buckboard to a halt when he reached his camp in the foothills, pushed the brake lever into place with one heel, and dropped the reins. Tob jumped down from the back of the wagon with a little whine and came around to get underfoot while Guthrie unhitched the liver-colored gelding, and chickens scattered everywhere, squawking.

  Thinking of Caroline Chalmers’s visit to the Hellfire and Spit Saloon, Guthrie grinned and pushed the eye patch up onto his forehead—he wore it in case there turned out to be somebody in Bolton he didn’t want to recognize him—then led the horse into a stand of cottonwoods nearby. Beyond them was a stream flowing from a mountain spring somewhere higher up, and there was plenty of green grass along its banks.

  Using a long leadline, Guthrie tethered the animal to a stake in the ground and left the horse to graze.

  His mind was still on Caroline when he returned to camp, where Tob greeted him with a series of yips. Frowning, he reached down and patted the dog’s grizzled head. If one scrawny schoolteacher had figured out who he was, it wouldn’t be long until word of it was all over the territory.

  He took an armload of wood from the pile he kept just inside the opening of his mine shaft and carried it back to the ring of stones in the center of camp. If the Yankees were going to throw him into prison for the things he’d done during the war, he reasoned, they would have done it by then. There was no need to run.

  Guthrie’s hands worked independently of his mind, due to long habit, as he laid the fire and picked up his blue enameled coffeepot. He started back through the shimmering cottonwood trees, toward the creek. There was a small deposit of copper not twenty yards from where his tent stood, and Guthrie meant to stay and work the mine. He grinned as he squatted to fill the coffeepot from the stream. He was through rambling from place to place.

  As soon as the mine started producing, he was going to build himself a house at the edge of Bolton—the best one in town. Then he’d go back to Cheyenne and fetch Adabelle Rogers, a woman with particular promise as a wife. If she was still available, of course.

  He smiled as he carried the fresh water back toward his camp. Adabelle had blue eyes and blond hair and a body like a featherbed, and Guthrie looked forward to sinking into her warm softness every night. With luck, there would be four or five kids running around before too much time had passed.

  Squatting by the campfire, he set the pot in the embers and spooned coffee grounds into it. His anticipatory grin faded away as Caroline Chalmers elbowed her way into his mind, pushing Adabelle aside, looking at him with those wide brown eyes.

  Guthrie stood up, tore off his hat, and flung it toward the dusty tent standing a few yards away. He wasn’t going to risk the mine and Adabelle and all the attendant dreams just because some skinny schoolmarm needed his help.

  Was he?

  He shoved splayed fingers through his hair, then jammed his thumbs behind his suspenders. Caroline was nothing like Adabelle, and yet her face and shape and voice filled his brain. When she’d smiled at him unexpected-like, back there at the schoolhouse, he’d actually thought for a moment that the ground was moving under his feet.

  With a ragged sigh, Guthrie threw back his head and gazed up at the spring sky. Although the days were definitely getting longer, there wasn’t much light left. If he was going to hunt down some supper, he’d better get busy.

  He pulled his .45 from its holster on his hip and checked the chamber. Then, with Tob at his heels, he started off into the woods.

  Twenty minutes later, he returned with a couple of grouse. He cleaned and plucked them alongside the stream, then brought them back to camp and put them onto a spit over the campfire. Once the meat had cooked a while, it began to give off an aroma that made his stomach grumble with anticipation.

  He lifted the coffeepot from the coals, using an old piece of rawhide to protect his hand from the hot metal handle, and poured the foamy brew into a mug. While he sipped his coffee, pausing every now and then to spit out a few grounds, he watched the sun set and wondered if Caroline was right.

  She was pesky as a horsefly, that woman, but it seemed to Guthrie that her head was on straight, and the fact that she believed in the lawyer carried weight with him. Maybe Flynn was innocent. Maybe a man was about to die for a crime he hadn’t committed.

  Guthrie set his mug down on a tree stump that served nicely as a table. Then he brought a kerosene lantern from the tent, lit the wick, and hung it from one of the crude poles he’d erected to support the clothesline.

  The lantern light, coupled with the blazing campfire, pushed back a little of the darkness, but Guthrie still yearned to have walls around him again, and a real floor under his feet. When he sat down on an upended apple crate to wait for the grouse to finish roasting, Tob came to him and rested his muzzle on Guthrie’s knee.

  Guthrie stroked the dog with one hand and held his coffee mug in the other, staring into the snapping flames of the fire. Tonight, the loneliness that had been plaguing him for the last few years was keener than ever.

  He called Adabelle to his mind, but once again it was Caroline who answered the summons. Her beautiful eyes pleaded with him and her lower lip trembled slightly.

  Guthrie groaned. “Get out of here and leave me alone,” he muttered. But she stayed. She stayed through supper and hung around while Guthrie was washing up at the stream bank. And she was there when he crawled into the tent and stripped down to his long underwear to sleep.

  Mr. Flynn is innocent, he heard her say. He was wrongly accused. He saw the tears rise in her eyes. They’re going to hang him!

  “He probably deserves it,” Guthrie grumbled, shifting uncomfortably and punching his pillow, remembering the newspaper accounts of the trial, which had taken place miles away in Laramie. Flynn was still in jail there, awaiting his execution.

  Guthrie closed his eyes determinedly, expecting to lie awake for hours, but the moment his lids dropped, he was back in northern Pennsylvania, within the high barbed wire fences of Slaterville, a makeshift Yankee prison camp …

  The bayonet wound in his side alternately burned and ached. In the fetid darkness that surrounded him, he could hear other men, some moaning, some weeping, some screaming in the throes of a nightmare or in the clutch of hot steel fingers of pain.

  “Guthrie.” The ragged whisper came from right beside him and he tensed, tried to raise his head from the straw pallet on which he lay. The effort was too much.

  A hand found his shoulder in the gloom and shook him gently. “Guthrie, that is you, isn’t it?”

  Despite everything, the pain and the helplessness and the fever he felt brewing under his flesh, Guthrie grinned. The voice belonged to Jacob McTavish, the closest thing he had to a brother. He and Jacob had grown up together on the McTavish plantation in Virginia, where Guthrie’s father had worked as a sharecropper.

  Because of Jacob’s mother’s Christian bent, Guthrie had been educated, right along with her own two sons, in the study of the main house.

  “So this is where you’ve been hidin’ out, you yellowlivered Yankee lover,” Guthrie managed, with a raspy laugh. “According to the last letter I had from home, your mama and daddy think you’re dead.” Now, when his eyes had had a chance to adjust, he could see the outline of Jacob’s tall, gawky frame kneeling there beside him.

  “I’m as good as dead if we don’t get out of here,” Jacob whispered. “There’s this guard, Sergeant Pedlow, and he looks for any chance he can get to devil me. He put a brand on a man from Tennessee just last week.”

  Guthrie closed his eyes against the image and murmured a profanity. “Try to stay out of the bastard’s way,” he said, as a beam of moonlight came in through a crack in the wall and gilded his friend’s profile in silver. “Maybe you didn’t notice, Jake, but I’m in no condition to climb over barbed wire with fifty Yankees aiming rifles at my ass.”

  Jacob shoved a hand through his auburn hair. “I saw you were hurt when they brought you in on that meat wagon. I watched to see what barracks they put you in.
You’re just lucky you didn’t end up in one of those field hospitals.”

  A strangled sound erupted from Guthrie’s throat; meant to be an ironic chuckle, it came out as a sob. He could still smell the blood and hear the shrieks. “I did,” he answered, after a long moment. “They poured carbolic acid into my wound and sent me here.”

  “You fell at Gettysburg?”

  Grimly, Guthrie nodded. “Do you think it’s true what the Yankees say—that they routed General Lee and the war’s almost over?”

  Even in the dim light, he saw Jacob’s thin shoulders move in a shrug. “The war’s over for you and me,” he said, “unless we get out of this place. And I’m not going to see home again, if Pediow has his way.”

  Guthrie wanted to rage against the helplessness he felt, but he didn’t have the strength. “Why does he hate you so much?”

  “Why do you think he hates me, Hayes? Because I’m a Rebel.”

  Guthrie sighed. “Lay low, Jacob—try not to attract the sergeant’s attention. I’ll think of something.”

  “I’d better get back,” Jacob said, sounding as dejected as Guthrie felt. After laying a hesitant hand on his friend’s shoulder, he disappeared into the darkness.

  Guthrie lay still in the straw, listening as a man retched somewhere close by. A putrid smell was added to the general stench of sweat and misery and rotting skin.

  He knew now that Mrs. McTavish, Jacob’s religious mother, had been right. There truly was such a place as hell; he was in it.

  By the next morning, the wound in his side was infected and he lapsed into a fever. Everything around him was a heat mirage, shimmering just out of reach, but he heard the scream from outside and, somehow, he knew the cry was Jacob’s.

  Probably because he was so cussed, as his daddy would have said, Guthrie survived and, after a fashion, recovered. As soon as he could walk, he went looking for his friend.

  He found Jacob, cowed and hollow-eyed, shoveling lye into a stinking sewage pit. Flies buzzed around in black clouds. Jacob’s lips didn’t move, but his eyes said, You’re too late. He pushed aside his filthy shirt and revealed an ugly scab on his left shoulder—a brand in the shape of a diamond.