Chicago, early spring, 1886
Dale Hunter sat in the office of US Marshal William J. Arnold and met the older man’s scrutiny without a flinch.
“Sure I can’t change your mind, Hunter?”
“No.”
“I could transfer you back to the Eastern Louisiana District.”
Dale shook his head. He didn’t belong anywhere anymore. Not in the South of his mother’s birth. Not in the North of his father’s. The only place he belonged was some remote piece of land where he could live alone, bothered by no one.
“I’m sorry, sir.” His tone was calm but implacable. “I’m tired of chasing moonshiners for the whiskey tax they haven’t paid, and I’m tired of arguing with local officials who resent federal intervention. In my three years as a deputy US Marshal I’ve saved most of the fees I’ve been paid. By now, I have enough for a down payment on a ranch where I can retire and live out my days in peace.”
Marshal Arnold’s broad face clouded. “Don’t give me that garbage. It sticks in my craw to hear a rich man talk about scraping together a few dollars.”
Dale spoke sharply. “My mother’s money is not mine.” He gritted his teeth, controlling the flare of guilt. He knew his mother had suffered more than any woman should. The War Between the States had destroyed her family—husband dead, daughter murdered, son’s quest for vengeance turning him into an outlaw at eighteen.
After eleven years outside the law, Dale had gained a pardon. His mother had expected him to take over the family business and find a suitable young woman to marry. Only he couldn’t do it. The nightmares stamped on his scarred face, the horrors that kept him awake at night made it impossible for him to fit into such a genteel lifestyle, and his refusal to follow his mother’s wishes had come between them.
“My mother’s money is not mine,” Dale said again, quietly this time.
Marshal Arnold cleared his throat. “Perhaps so. And I am grateful for the contribution you have made to the Marshals Service. Before I accept your resignation, I have one more assignment for you.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’m done.” Dale got to his feet, unpinned the tin star within a circle from the lapel of his suit coat and placed it on the desk between them.
Marshal Arnold gestured for him to sit down again. “Hold on a mite, Hunter. Where is this ranch you plan to buy?”
Dale shuffled on his feet. “California.”
At his reply, Marshal Arnold gave a satisfied smirk. “California? That is very convenient. The assignment is in the Arizona Territory, only a stone’s throw away. You could travel at the government’s expense and continue to your ranch after you have finished the job.”
Dale considered the suggestion. Train fares were expensive, and his savings were barely enough to cover the down payment on the property he wished to buy.
“What is the assignment?” he asked.
“It’s about a woman called Rowena McKenzie.” Marshal Arnold leaned forward in his seat. “A lady, I’m told. She’s been indicted for murder and refuses to speak up in her own defense. The local sheriff is reluctant to hang a woman, and the federal marshal for the territory is newly appointed, not yet confirmed by the senate. He is wary of stringing up a lady and making a mistake. I’d like you to go over and figure it out.”
“That’s it?” Dale frowned. “I’ll review the evidence, make sure they haven’t overlooked anything, and if the judge decides she’s guilty, the local law will take care of the hanging?”
Marshal Arnold nodded.
Dale reached down, picked up the badge from the desk and pinned it on again. “I’ll wire my report to you.”
When he was halfway toward the door, Marshal Arnold called out after him. “The appointment of the United States Marshal for the Arizona Territory is pending confirmation and it wouldn’t be the first time the senate has rejected a candidate. If a promotion would persuade you to remain with the Marshals Service, the position could be yours.”
Dale pretended not to hear. In the three years since his pardon, he had avoided going back to the western territories. He’d lived in the steamy South, in the cold and damp North, but he had never had the courage to face the dusty desert landscape where coyotes barked at night and buzzards feasted on carcasses. And he doubted the wisdom of doing so now.
There was no mistaking the look of relief on the face of Sheriff Macklin in Pinares when Dale walked into the ramshackle office and introduced himself. A big, burly man in his fifties, with graying hair in a military cut, the sheriff barely glanced at the official papers Dale held out to him.
“You’ve come to take the prisoner away?”
“No,” Dale replied. “I’m here to help you decide if she should hang or not.”
He took off his long canvas duster and shook away the droplets from the drizzle outside. To his relief, Pinares was on high ground, surrounded by pine-covered hills instead of the red, dusty desert of his nightmares.
He’d taken the train as far as Holbrook, a lawless Arizona ranching town, where he’d bought a horse from the livery stable and ridden the remaining thirty miles south. Preferring to arrive in the morning, he’d camped overnight outside town.
Like always, his legs ached after a day on horseback. He didn’t walk with a limp, for after he’d been injured in the gunfight to break away from the outlaw gang, the best surgeons in the country had pieced together the broken bones. Even more important, his arms had healed well enough for him to draw a gun or throw a punch with the same skill and accuracy as before. When fully clothed, the only visible legacy of his lawless past was the crescent-shaped scar on his left cheek and the slightly uneven sound of his footsteps.
Sheriff Macklin scrambled to his feet behind his battered desk. “No time like the present.”
Dale hesitated. Although he no longer wore his jet-black hair down to his shoulders, it could do with a cut. He ran the palm of one hand along his jaw and felt the roughness of stubble. A lady, Marshal Arnold had told him. He brushed aside his scruples. A disreputable look might be helpful in persuading a gently bred female to provide answers.
“Is there a medical report on the victim?” Dale asked.
The sheriff extracted a bunch of iron keys from his desk, shut the drawer with a bang and halted, eyebrows raised, keys dangling in his hand. “You don’t know the details?”
“Only that you have a female prisoner who goes by the name Rowena McKenzie indicted for murder.”
The burly sheriff nodded. “That’s the gist of it. There is no medical report on the victim, for the body can’t be retrieved. Miss Rowena shot a conman who was trying to flee after being caught selling shares in a phony mining claim. The conman, Elroy Revery, was whipping his wagon horse into speed when Miss Rowena fired a pistol at him. The horse bolted and the wagon took off with the body.”
“Didn’t anyone give chase?”
“Not right away. One of the men who’d lost money in the swindle suffered a mental fit, screaming and yelling, scaring the women. By the time we’d dealt with him and rode after Revery, we found his wagon tracks leading to the edge of Dead Man’s Gully. It’s a ravine a mile outside town, too steep to climb down. With a pair of field glasses you can see the smashed-up wagon and the dead horse at the bottom.”
“And the body?”
“Can’t pinpoint the location. Must be beneath the wagon, or thrown off and fallen between the boulders at the bottom of the gully. But there’s no doubt Miss Rowena killed him. She snatched Kurt Lonergan’s pistol from the holster and fired. Elroy Revery clutched his chest and toppled into the wagon. Before he fell, a dozen people saw blood spurting out between his fingers, staining the front of his shirt.”
With each word, Dale’s skepticism grew. He’d seen it before, a staged killing to facilitate a getaway after a swindle. He expected the ladylike qualities of the prisoner to be as phony as the mining claim her partners had been peddling.
“Is this Miss Rowena new in town?” he asked.
Sheriff Macklin shook his head, looking troubled. “I know what you’re thinking, but it can’t be. Miss Rowena came into Pinares two years ago and she’s been working in Alice Meek’s café ever since. Whatever her reasons, she shot Revery. I had to arrest her.” The sheriff jangled the bunch of keys in his hand and jerked his head toward the jail. “I’m counting on you to straighten this out. No one wants to see Miss Rowena hang.”
Dale’s first glimpse of the prisoner was her back. She was seated on the narrow cot in the nearest of the three jail cells, gazing up at the patch of overcast sky visible between the iron bars that covered the small window high up on the far wall. Dale halted midstep, nearly stumbled. Memories of his sister, Laurel, flooded his mind.
It wasn’t so much the slender body, or the glossy dark brown hair, the color of polished mahogany, although they were the same. It was the elegant line of her neck, exposed by the simple upsweep. It was the way she wore the faded blue cotton dress, as if it had been made for a queen. Instantly, Dale recognized the stamp of an expensive academy for young ladies, the kind that put emphasis on deportment and etiquette instead of practical skills.
Sheriff Macklin unlocked the iron grille and rattled it aside. “Miss Rowena, you have a visitor.”
The girl—she looked barely over twenty—rose to her feet and whirled around, every motion graceful. Dale felt his breath catch. He had to clench his hands into fists to hide the impact she had on him. He wanted to ignore her beauty, wanted to treat her just like any other prisoner, but he couldn’t help the way his eyes swept over her features, taking in every detail.
Her face was not dainty, like Laurel’s had been. Her features were fuller, with a square chin and a bold line of dark, almost straight eyebrows. From this distance, Dale guessed her eyes were a deep blue, an unusual combination with the dark hair.
As he stared at the girl, he could see a blush fan across her cheeks. If possible, her posture grew even straighter. He wondered if she could feel the pull of attraction, the way he did, and was reacting to him as a man, or if her discomfort was due to a guilty conscience and the fear of consequences of her criminal acts, or if she was merely embarrassed by the boldness of his inspection.
Dale stepped into the cell, oddly reluctant to get anywhere near her, to expose himself to the power of that beauty. “How are you, Miss McKenzie?”
She inclined her head to acknowledge his greeting.
Dale turned to the sheriff. “I’ll take it from here.”
He waited for the man to lumber down the corridor. When Dale was alone with the lady, he turned toward her and sought refuge in his experience, relying on a hundred similar situations. And yet no other situation of stepping into a prisoner’s cell had ever been the same as this.
“My name is Dale Hunter, and I’m a deputy US Marshal. I’ve been tasked with...helping you to prepare for your defense.” He’d been planning to say tasked with finding out if you’re guilty or not, but somehow the words came out different.
Again, she gave him that regal nod. Dale felt irritation join the mix of his confused emotions. As foolish as it might sound, he wanted Rowena McKenzie to seek help from him. But it was clear that instead of seeing him as a white knight, she regarded him as the enemy.
“Why did you shoot Elroy Revery?” he asked.
“I have nothing to say.”
Dale nodded, as if to accept the challenge. “Why don’t we sit down?”
Miss McKenzie’s eyes flickered to the cot covered with a rumpled blanket.
“Well?” Dale gestured. “Please, be seated.”
Her mouth flattened into a line before easing back to its plump fullness again. “If you want both of us to sit down, you’ll have to get a chair.”
A lady. No doubt about it. Even while locked up in a jail cell, she clung to the constraints of her upbringing and she would refuse to sit on a bed beside a man, for it had been drilled into her that such behavior might taint her reputation beyond repair.
Dale retreated into the corridor. When out of sight, he closed his eyes for a few seconds. The past, Laurel, and all the guilt and shame that went with her memory washed over him. He knew it wasn’t just Rowena McKenzie’s beauty that had affected him so. It was the echoes of the past, of how he had failed to save Laurel, and those echoes made him want to save Rowena McKenzie, as if preserving one woman’s life might balance out the loss of another.
But the past could never be changed. Only accepted. Perhaps even forgiven, although never forgotten.
With a tired shake of his head, Dale pushed aside the grim thoughts. He picked up a rickety wooden chair from the corridor, carried it into Miss McKenzie’s cell and propped it against the wall. Cautiously, he lowered himself onto the seat. The chair creaked but held his weight. Only when he was safely seated did the lady perch on the edge of the cot, wriggling her backside to find a comfortable position on the lumpy mattress.
“So,” Dale said, closing his mind to everything but the facts of the case. “Why did you shoot Elroy Revery?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Did you know him from before?”
“I have nothing to say.”
Oh, but you’re saying plenty, ma cherie, Dale thought. The flicker in your eyes just revealed that you knew him in the past.
“So, why would you want to kill an old acquaintance?”
“I have...” She was halfway through her stock answer before the question fully registered. Her lips pressed together, as if to trap any unwise words inside. She quickly regained her composure and finished in a mutter, “...nothing to say.”
Dale found himself staring at her full, wide mouth. Heat rose beneath his collar. He’d succeeded in blocking out the tragic memories of Laurel, but he didn’t have the same success in steeling himself against Rowena McKenzie. She’d ruined his concentration. A twist of shame at the lack of professional discipline tightened in his gut. Never before had inappropriate thoughts about a female prisoner taken hold of his mind.
Bristling, he scowled at her. “This is a hanging town, and Judge Williams is a hanging judge. With a Democrat taking over the White House, the judge has been tied up with administration, but he is riding circuit again and will be here within a week. Do you really want to be strung up? A rope round your neck, a trapdoor beneath your feet and a hangman to pull the lever and let you drop?”
“I have nothing to say.”
Angry at himself, angry at her, Dale pushed up to his feet. The flimsy wooden chair gave an ominous creak. On an impulse, he curled his hand over the top of the backrest, lifted the chair a few inches from the floor and slammed it down again, breaking it into pieces.
“It’s that quick,” he warned her. “Once you are standing on the gallows, it will be too late to change your mind and decide that you would rather live, after all.”
From the way her nostrils flared and her breathing quickened, Dale knew she wanted to talk, had to fight to hold back the words that might save her life, but her willpower was greater than her fear.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Are you afraid of someone? Afraid to talk?”
She pressed her fingertips together in a gesture Dale recognized from his mother, from Laurel—a means by which a lady stopped herself from fiddling with her clothing or her jewelry.
“I am waiting for a telegram.”
“A telegram? Will that prove your innocence?”
She considered a moment, and then she spoke very carefully, weighing up each word. “It will allow me to prove my innocence.”
Dale frowned. “It will not prove your innocence, but it will allow you to do so. How will you be able to do that? What information will the telegram bring?”
“I have nothing to say.” The firm tone of her voice made Dale suspect she feared she had already said too much, so he chose another line of attack.
“Is Rowena McKenzie your real name?”
“It is the name I was born with and expect to die with.”
Despite the tension in the air, a smile tugged at the corners of Dale’s mouth. “Not if you marry. Then you’ll die with your husband’s name.”
Miss McKenzie’s expression grew pinched, hinting at some past hurt. “Some women never marry but live out their days as spinsters.”
His smile deepened. “I doubt you’ll be one of those.”
But as soon as he had spoken Dale realized it might be difficult for a lady fallen on hard times to find a suitable husband. Affluent, educated men sought wives who could boost their fortunes and increase their social status. A café waitress could expect to be courted by ranch hands and storekeepers, and a gently bred female might consider such men too rough, too lacking in culture. It occurred to him that he and Rowena McKenzie had something in common. Both of them were caught between the world they grew up in and their present circumstances, not fully fitting in either world.
The rain had ceased and a cold, clear night was falling outside. Rowena huddled on the cot in her jail cell, her attention focused on the small square of starlit sky she could see through the iron-barred window.
Was she afraid? No, she was not. At least not afraid of the noose.
But she had once been afraid. Alone and afraid. And she had taken the route of a coward and fled from her father’s house, from her father’s grave, unwilling to take over the fight that had killed him, unwilling to stay on the land that had killed both her parents.
Only four years old when her mother died, Rowena could barely remember her. All she could remember was the distant chanting of the Shoshone by the stream where her mother had gone to do the laundry. They had killed her with a blow to the head and taken her scalp. Flaming red hair, it would now be a prized possession in some brave’s lodge.
And her father—she didn’t know who had killed him. Just over two years ago, she’d returned home from school in Boston, to see her father’s coffin lowered into a grave. He’d been gunned down, but no one could—or would—tell her who had fired the bullet.
Reese, the man in charge of the ranch, Twin Springs, had been a stranger to her. He’d claimed that her father had employed him and his band of gunfighters to defend the property. But Reese had been living openly in the house, as if he owned the place. Unable to tell enemy from friend, Rowena had fled into the night, leaving Twin Springs for others to fight over, like a pack of hungry dogs might fight over a bone.
Her thoughts drifted to the marshal who had come to interrogate her. Even now, in the privacy of her jail cell, Rowena could feel her pulse accelerating. She didn’t know what it was about him that disturbed her so. He wasn’t the most attractive man she’d met, but there was power about him, and determination and intelligence.
The marshal’s comments about a husband had stirred up unwelcome memories. Only two men had ever proposed to her. Freddy Livingston was rich and handsome, and she had imagined herself in love with him. He had courted her, believing her to be an heiress to a ranching empire, but the moment he had discovered the modest nature of her father’s holdings he had cast her aside. Had he broken her heart? No, Rowena decided. The shame of a public rejection had hurt more than the loss of Freddy as a future mate.
And the other proposal had hardly been a proposal at all. It had been Reese pointing at a young man in the crowd of men at her father’s graveside. “We’ll hold the ranch for you. It would make things easier if you married Luke here. My son, and as good a man as any.”
She’d barely caught a glimpse of this Luke Reese, a shadow among shadows in the twilight of a winter evening. She’d had some idea of a lithe man of medium height, with high cheekbones and jet-black hair. Part Shoshone, if she wasn’t mistaken, and the grief of growing up without a mother had caused her to speak up too sharply.
“How dare you talk to me about marriage?”
That night, she had walked off into the frozen darkness. Maybe one day she would find the courage to go back and claim Twin Springs, the ranch that was hers by law. However, she might have to fight for the property, and a woman could not win such a fight alone.
To claim Twin Springs, she needed help from a man, a fighting man. She would have to employ a man as unyielding and capable as the marshal with cold green eyes and a crescent-shaped scar on his face. The imprint of fangs was clear to see, as if some wild beast had taken a bite out of him and found him too tough to chew. What was it her father used to say?
“Make a deal with the devil and you might end up in hell.”
With a sigh, Rowena burrowed deeper into the blanket, trying to ward off the night chill. Of course, it was just an empty dream. She had no money to employ a gunman of any stature, not even the cheapest whiskey-soaked old-timer, and she was not brave enough to simply ride up to Twin Springs and claim ownership.
She directed her attention to the more pressing problems. What had happened to the two conmen who had rescued her from a snowdrift after she’d walked away from her father’s funeral? Eugene Richards and Claude Desmond—or Elroy Revery and Robert Smith, as they were calling themselves for this particular caper. Had they become stranded after their circus-trained horse, the faithful Scrooge, met his end at the bottom of the gully? Were they trying to make their escape on foot, lost in the desert?
Doubt and worry dulled her vision, dimming the stars visible between the iron bars. She had made her choices, but guilt ate away at her. Why did it have to be so hard to do the right thing? Why did it have to be so hard to know what was the right thing to do?
Claude and Eugene had found her nearly frozen to death, and had put their business activities on hold while they nursed her through the fever that followed. She’d known that they earned their living by dishonest means, but she had never seen it done. They had laughed about it, making it sound like an amusing escapade, a gambling game.
When she was well again, the pair had dropped her off at a stagecoach depot with enough money to last until she found a place to settle down. And now, two years later, fate had brought them to Pinares, and the cruelty and selfishness of their actions had become evident, leaving her with an impossible choice.
The people in Pinares were her friends. And by not exposing the scam she had failed to protect them. But what could she do? While she’d been close to death, Claude and Eugene had confided in her, shared their traumatic past. Claude, a slender man with delicate features, had been abused as a boy, hired out to men who gained pleasure from hurting children. And Eugene, a giant of a man, had been locked into a broom cupboard by his father, to stop the teenage boy from sneaking into the pantry and stealing food to nourish his growing body.
The history of incarceration in a closet barely big enough to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders had left Eugene terrified of enclosed spaces. And Claude would rather die than relive his childhood torment. Prison would be the end of them.
So, she had chosen to protect those two. But soon she’d have to tell the truth, even if no telegram arrived to let her know that Eugene and Claude had escaped to where the law couldn’t reach them. The pair of fraudsters might have once saved her life, but her loyalty didn’t extend as far as dying at the end of a rope to keep them out of prison. However, until the circuit judge arrived, she would have to remain silent, waiting for the right moment to reveal that she could not be guilty of murder, because there had been no murder at all.
The hotel room was quiet, the mattress firm, the sheets clean, but none of it improved Dale’s mood. He’d made a dog’s dinner of it. He’d barged into the jail, expecting to coax the facts out of the accused and be done with his assignment within a day.
Restless, he rolled over, the sheets tangling around him. He could always tell when a nightmare hovered at the gates of his mind. Sometimes he preferred to stay awake all night instead of letting the past horrors intrude. But tonight the long ride from the railroad took its toll. As Dale slipped into the shadowed world of slumber, Rowena McKenzie seemed to accompany him, her elegant beauty like a ghost of a life he had once expected to lead—the life of a gentleman, with a gentleman’s manners, a gentleman’s house, and a gentleman’s wife.
When the nightmare came, it was not the rancid breath of a coyote in his nostrils and the fangs tearing into his cheek. Neither was it bullets slamming into his flesh and the ground rising up to meet him as he tumbled down to the canyon floor. Those restless dreams were a legacy of the gunfight to break out of the lawless life.
This nightmare was from deeper into his past. He was twelve years old, the summer hot, Spanish moss hanging from the trees, the river low and sluggish as he and Laurel—already a young woman at sixteen—sat fishing on the bank. He could hear the sound of heavy boots crashing through the undergrowth. Coarse voices. Laurel’s whisper.
“Hide. Hide. Let me take care of them. Whatever happens, don’t come out. Promise me... Promise...promise.”
The images jumbled, flashed before his eyes. Soldiers holding Laurel down. One of them had his trousers pulled down all the way to his ankles. Bare buttocks rising and falling, rising and falling. Throughout the assault, Laurel made no sound at all but the soldiers joshed each other.
“Hey, Krieger, hurry up, it’s my turn.”
“Shut up, Ives, you idiot.”
Dale watched from his hiding place behind a tree, fraught with despair. He’d promised to Laurel not to come out. But the guilt, the sense of helplessness felt like a rock crushing his chest. Tears of shame stung his eyes. At twelve years old he regarded himself a man, and now he was behaving like a little boy, too frightened to intervene while the soldiers did those terrible things to his sister.
Craning forward so he could study the men waiting for their turn, Dale memorized the name of each man, and their features. Fisting his hands, he gave himself over to the hatred, his little boy’s mind striving for that grown-up feeling again.
When it was over, when all four men had sated their lust, they buttoned up their trousers and shared a smoke. Laurel lay on the ground, her dress torn, blood on her thighs, one arm slung across her face to keep her suffering private. But she was alive.
Not daring to move for the fear that the snap of a twig or the rustle of leaves might alert the men to his presence, Dale blinked away the tears of pity and shame and waited for the soldiers to be off on their way again.
“The little bitch, we have to do something.”
“No, leave her be.”
The one wearing a sergeant’s stripes dug out a few coins, tossed them down.
“Buy yourself a new dress, sweetheart.”
Heavy boots crashed past Dale’s hiding place. He counted the men passing. One. Two. Three. Only one more, and they’d be gone. He could go to Laurel. Help her. Comfort her.
A gunshot.
“Hey, Krieger, what did you do that for?”
“Couldn’t leave the little bitch telling tales.”
Dale woke up, the sheets soaked with perspiration, his body trembling, the nightmare still holding him in its grip. Two sets of patrician beauty, one merely a promise at sixteen, the other fully blossomed in her early twenties, merged in his mind. And it became clear to him that whatever the outcome of his investigation—whether Rowena McKenzie was guilty of murder or not—he could not let her die at the end of a rope.
Copyright © 2018 by Tatiana March