Derby Seward did not count his drinks that night after he murdered Lucien Bourget. But as he waited in the Diamond for Parrish Adams to find the time to see him, he perfected his plan to fulfill his commission for Avery Knox.
When Adams sent for him he knew exactly how it would all play out. “Sir,” he said. “I have a proposition for you.”
***
Five narrow shadows interspersed with bright sunlight fell across Rhys’s face and brought him to. His head quaked when he opened his eyes. He thought maybe he was in the midst of a nightmare. He wasn’t in Mae’s feather bed, wasn’t in his room at her boarding house. He was looking at bare adobe walls and bars. Iron bars. He sat up fast. He was in Len Blalock’s jail.
“He’s the same man.” The sheriff’s face was haggard and his shoulders were weary from a long night of riding. He sat at his desk. Parrish Adams had sent for him and demanded he be in Wishbone before sunup. And here he was. Across his desk sat a red-haired man wearing a tweed suit and holding a bundle of newspaper clippings in his large hands.
“Don’t know why I held on to these,” Derby Seward said, spreading out an article from London papers which showed a likeness of Rhys and told of the crime he was accused of committing there. “Took an interest in the case though. My profession, you know. Thought I recognized him when I saw him at the Brass Bell last night. Happened to go up the stairs a few minutes after he did. Saw him push his way into the room where that fellow was killed. You have my statement and if it’s necessary I’ll stay until the trial. Provided it’s not long in coming.”
“That’s good of you, Mr. Seward,” Len Blalock said. “Should be a short trial. It’s gettin’ the territorial judge in that’s gonna take some time. We’ll try to schedule an early date if the judge is willin’. Otherwise it’s gonna be better than a month before his case comes up on the docket.”
Seward pushed for the early trial. Sheriff Blalock had assured him there was no chance of Delmar being turned over to London authorities before he was dealt with in Wishbone. Seward wanted Rhys Delmar hanged before he left. When the man was dead he could take copies of the Wishbone Gazette back to Knox and show him the pictures and story. Then Knox would have his fortune and Seward would have his share. This was better than killing Delmar with his own hand, and safer. Delmar, he’d learned, was a fine shot and the sort of man who watched his back and would put up a fight at the first hint of danger. Seward might not be lucky in a contest with the Frenchman. And should Seward succeed in outwitting the man in a deadly contest, there was ever the chance Seward himself might come under suspicion should he kill a second man in Wishbone.
Getting the sheriff’s word that he would write to the judge, Seward looked back at the holding area where a bewildered Rhys sat on a wooden bunk rubbing his pounding head and trying hard to understand what he was hearing. “I say, the chap’s come to,” Seward said.
***
Teddy wasn’t long in learning what had happened to Rhys, not with every tongue in Wishbone wagging about the murder of Lucien Bourget and the news that his killer had also stabbed to death a woman in London.
She didn’t know what made her madder, that Rhys was locked up or that Len Blalock threatened to put her in the cage with him if she didn’t stop making accusations about Parrish Adams.
“I’ve had about enough of your sass, Teddy,” the sheriff warned. “Unless you’ve got proof, hard proof that Adams had anything to do with what you say happened—”
“What I say?” Contempt flared in Teddy’s eyes. “Porter Landau is dead.”
“I’m sorry about that but—”
“But not sorry enough to lock up the man who’s behind his death.”
Blalock stood firm. “Not unless you have proof.”
Teddy pointed stiffly at Rhys in the jail cell. “He was there. He heard that bandito say Adams hired them.”
The sheriff sat up straighter and ran his fingers through his hair. “His word don’t count for much.”
“I don’t believe he killed anybody,” Teddy said.
Rhys came to his feet. The sheriff had not allowed Teddy to come back to the cell and speak to him. So he had not been sure just what her opinion of him was. He’d pleaded his innocence and demanded to be released until his throat ached from the shouting. Finally he’d resigned himself to waiting for a trial and to trusting there was someone who believed he had not killed Lucien. Or Jenny.
Hearing Teddy say she believed him innocent gave him his first hope that he might get out of the situation he was in. He couldn’t quite champion a smile, but he tried to relay his appreciation with a look. He got Teddy’s scowl in return just as Len Blalock was telling her she ought to leave because he had work to do.
“I’ll be back,” she threatened, “when Rope and the boys bring those banditos in. Then we’ll see what kind of song you sing.”
With Rhys shouting to her and the sheriff nudging her out the door, Teddy reluctantly left the office.
The following morning Mae Sprayberry came by. Mae sometimes supplied the prisoners with their meals and did not meet the same resistance from Len Blalock that Teddy had received. With her calico-covered basket over her arm she was allowed access to Rhys’s cell. She had brought biscuits and honey and ham, enough to keep him fed for a day. She had also brought a change of clothes from the garments he’d left in his rented room at her house. Because of his wounds Mae took pity on Rhys and insisted on entering the cell to change his bandages.
None too pleased that the man who had put a twinkle in her eye and set Justine’s heart aflutter had gotten himself in so serious a scrape, she offered him a cool greeting and ordered him to take off his shirt. Not a woman to hold her tongue for long, though, Mae embarked on severely scolding Rhys for his rather serious shortcomings. In the meanwhile she peeled away the bindings he wore on his abdomen and arm and replaced the strips with fresh layers of cloth. “Don’t know what the world is coming to when a woman winds up sheltering a murderer in her house,” she said.
Mae reminded him a little of Jenny and he was saddened to have broken her trust though it was through no fault of his own. “Lucien was my friend,” he said softly. “I didn’t kill him.”
Mae paused at the task of knotting a bandage that crisscrossed his flat, firm belly. “What about that woman in London?”
“I was falsely accused—just as I am here.”
“Hmmm.” Mae tugged the ends of the bandage together. She gave a satisfied look to her work and handed Rhys a clean shirt. “Justine’s been too upset to leave her room,” she said. Her voice was a note softer than it had been before. “You know the girl’s sweet on you.”
“No,” he said, slipping his arms into the sleeves of his shirt. “I never—”
“I know you never did anything to encourage her,” Mae acknowledged as she reached in the basket she had brought and doled out more clean bandages and a bottle of ointment for him to use later. “But it’s hard on her, especially since it’s her father who has you locked up.”
Rhys looked uneasily at Mae. The last thing he needed was having Len Blalock even less kindly disposed toward him because he suspected Rhys had misled his daughter. “Please tell Justine I am grateful for her concern,” he pleaded. “And tell her—I hope she will find someone who makes her very happy.”
***
Three interminable days passed after Mae’s visit. Teddy was turned away at the jail door every time she tried to come in, mainly because she was in a temper and making threats when she came by. On the fifth day that Rhys was in jail, Rope and the search party rode back into Wishbone, empty-handed.
The men, clothes thick with dust, horses worn out, scattered as they rode in. Only Rope headed his horse to the Gamble office where Teddy waited. He was shaking his head when she came flying out hoping against hope he had found Rennie and Juan. He slid off the horse slowly, and handed the reins to one of the stableboys who had come running at first sight of him. Then he went inside the office with Teddy.
“We found Taviz in the cave where you said he would be,” Rope explained. “But the others were gone. Must have left right after you and Rhys did and headed north as best we could tell. We tried trackin’ them but lost their track in the rocks a day after we set out. Never could pick up the trail again and finally figured we weren’t doin’ any good out there ridin’ in circles.” He pushed his hat back off his forehead. The deep creases in his face were filled with dust. “What’s happenin’ here? You holdin’ your own against Adams?”
She felt her throat constrict. “Losing ground,” she said. “Oh, the runs are back on schedule and I’ve sent word to Cabe but I doubt it’s of any use. Nobody’s willing to take my word the banditos worked for Adams.”
Rope cocked a brow. “What about Rhys’s word? He heard them outlaws name Adams, too.”
“He’s locked up.” Teddy’s voice cracked but she went on to explain about the murder in Wishbone and that Rhys was accused of committing a similar crime in London, which evidently was true. The Gazette had printed a copy of one of the articles from a London paper. She didn’t believe it. She couldn’t. If she did she was admitting the child she carried had been fathered by a murderer. And that couldn’t be true.
***
Three days dragged by for Rhys, and the territorial judge sent word he would schedule a special trial in ten days’ time. Rhys got the news shortly before an insistent visitor was shown to his cell. She was Carmen Bell.
Still mourning Lucien, she wore a gown of black silk and a small, tilted hat with a veil that covered her ebony hair and powdered face. “I was too mad to think, when I heard you were the one who killed Lucien,” she whispered. “But as time went on and I thought about it I knew it couldn’t be. Luce said you were the only good friend he ever had and that you had once saved his life.” She glanced back at Len Blalock to see if he was watching and listening. Satisfied that he wasn’t, Carmen continued. “I know Luce worked for you but—well—he loved you like a brother.”
“As I did him,” Rhys said.
“I took his belongings over to Mae’s,” Carmen continued. “She said she’d keep them for you until—” she broke off. His future was uncertain and she didn’t want to remind him he stood a good chance of hanging. “I had to come over here and tell you that I’ll do what I can for you,” she said. “I’ll testify how Lucien felt about you. Maybe that will help. I just wish I’d been upstairs that night. Luce had been worried and he’d been hoping you would get back so he could tell you about the Englishman.”
A chill ran through Rhys. “Did he tell you about him?”
Carmen nodded. “Some,” she said. “I don’t know what it meant or why it upset him as it did. What he said was he thought he’d seen the man before and he thought his being in Wishbone wasn’t by chance.”
Rhys reached through the bars of his cell and gripped Carmen’s silk-clad arm. “Did Luce say where he had seen the Englishman?”
Carmen’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember everything Luce had said. At last she nodded. “Yes. He said it had been when he saw—Jenny. It made no sense to me but—” Her hand clamped over her mouth. “She’s the one—”
“Yes,” Rhys said hoarsely as the truth came to him with awful clarity. Lucien had been killed exactly as Jenny had. And Rhys had been accused of both crimes. But someone else had been there both times, too. Derby Seward, the red-bearded Englishman who was the witness against him. He had killed Lucien. And Jenny. It had to be.
But why? He’d never been able to reason out Jenny’s death. Lucien had probably been killed because he recognized Seward, which meant Seward had followed them from London. And not to take him back for trial, but for some foul purpose.
He had to get to Seward. He had to make the Englishman admit what had been done and why. But he could get no farther than the bars of his cell. “Ask Derby Seward what his business was at the Brass Bell!” he demanded. “Ask why Lucien should go in hiding because of him! You’ve accused the wrong man!” He beat his hands against the bars but saw that his shouted demands for justice fell on deaf ears.
“Stop that hammerin’ and bleatin’ or I’ll gag and chain you,” Len Blalock threatened.
Not doubting the sheriff would do as he said, Rhys glumly retreated to his bunk. He had to hope his trial went well and that the truth would come out when he had his day in court. But as yet he had not succeeded in convincing even the attorney appointed him that Derby Seward was the one who should be charged with Lucien’s murder. John Douglas, who had twice counseled Rhys to make a confession and be done with it, was more interested in his next drink than in defending a client.
Somehow Rhys slept the night after Carmen had made her visit, but it was a restless sleep fraught with nightmares in which Jenny and Lucien pleaded for their lives while he, impotent to help, stood by and saw them slain. Well into the night, Teddy’s voice, caustic and sweet as only she could sound, brought him out of his fitful slumber. “Get up, damn you! We’ve got about two minutes to ride out of town.”
He shot up from the bunk, saw the cell door open and Teddy, clad in her snug buckskins and low-slung gun belt, was inside the cubicle gesturing like a wild thing. Out in the office Pavy Tucker lay slumped over the sheriff’s big paper-strewn desk. “Teddy!” Rhys cried. “What have you done? Don’t you know the trouble you’re in for this?”
He gave her a shake then wound his arms around her, dragged her to him and kissed her savagely. Hissing like an angry feline, she twisted loose from him. “I might have known you’d be randy as all git out. Now move before someone happens by here and we both get to live in that cell.”
They dragged Pavy behind the bars and locked him in then slipped out the back of the jail and down an alley where Teddy had two horses waiting. Soon they were past the last scattered houses in Wishbone and had the horses in a dead run.
Not until Teddy was satisfied that no one was following did they ride off the trail and let the winded animals rest.
They had ridden east, a few miles out of town leaving the road and taking to the hills. Among the rocks they dismounted. Teddy stood holding her horse’s reins. He could see her troubled face in the scant moonlight. She was speaking to him softly, telling him he had to keep moving, telling him to avoid the next town. He noticed then that he had tightly packed saddlebags and a bedroll tied behind his saddle and that Teddy did not.
He looked unhappily at her. “I’m not going on,” he said. “There’s a man in Wishbone I have to see.”
Teddy put her hand on his arm. He could feel the tension in her fingers, see it in her eyes. “You can’t touch Adams,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve tried since you were in jail. His time is coming but it’s not now.”
He gritted his teeth. “Adams isn’t the man I want. It’s Derby Seward.”
“Seward!” she said sharply. “He and Adams are thick as thieves. Adams has put him up at the Diamond and given him the run of the place, all the drinks the man wants, on the house. The same for those ‘sweethearts’ Adams employs. Why, they’ve tried and hung you every day in the Diamond just as you’ll be tried and hung for real. It’s been arranged and the jury’s picked and paid. Even that rattlesnake who’s defending you works for Adams. What’s more, your property, namely your shares of the Gamble Line, will be confiscated by the court and I don’t have to tell you who gets first dibs at them.” She sighed. “Don’t look at me like I’m loco. Justine overheard Adams talking to her father about all of it.”
“Justine?” He gripped her shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Does she know what you’ve done? Teddy, I can’t let you—”
She huffed out a hot breath. “Dammit! There’s nothing you can do about it now. And yes, Justine does know. She helped me.”
“Mon Dieu! Are you both crazy?”
“Probably. But Justine doesn’t think you’re guilty either and when she heard what Adams had engineered she couldn’t stand by. She came to me and we worked it out that she played sick tonight and made her pa sit with her to be sure Pavy was the one at the jail. She figured Pavy would fall asleep on the job and he did. And—shut your mouth—he didn’t see me, so nobody is going to know I broke you out.”
“Then it won’t matter if I slip back into Wishbone later and see Seward.”
“Not if you’d like to get shot. And since I’ve gone to all the trouble of breaking you out to save your fancy hide I wouldn’t like that.”
He smiled ruefully. “If that’s your way of saying you care, I’m touched.”
“The hell it is!” Teddy retorted and broke away from him. The feel of his hands had been playing havoc with her emotions and she had sworn to keep the lid on them tonight. Scowling because restraint was proving extremely hard, she reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. “A thousand dollars is all I could put together right now.” She pushed the bills into his hand. “You take it and keep riding. Ride out of this territory and don’t come back. When things settle down some, you can write where you are and I’ll send what’s due you.”
He put the bills in his pocket. He didn’t want to fight with her. He wanted to hold her and lie her down and make slow, satisfying love to her until the sun rose over the mountain peaks. “I have to see Seward,” he said hoarsely. “You ride back to town now. I’ll come later.”
“No!” She gripped him by the shirt front. “You can’t!”
There was never middle ground with Teddy but he was determined to make her listen. Slowly he slid his hands up her arms and across her back and held her. He could see her eyes clearly at that distance and he read something in them that she didn’t want him to see. He pulled her closer and stared her down. “You wouldn’t run away from a fight, Teddy. Why should I?”
Anger welled up in her and she stiffened in his arms. She hadn’t counted on this mule-headed resistance. Why wouldn’t he do what she told him? He was going to get himself killed. “Because it’s a fight you can’t win,” she said hotly. “If you go back you’ll get caught and you’ll get hung. And I don’t want the father of my child hung!”