Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (16 page)

“Hanging!”
Matilda gasped. “You can’t be thinking of hanging him! He’s just an innocent boy!”

The sheriff glared at her. “Those are two things he most definitely is not! He isn’t a boy. He’s thirty years old, and if he’s old enough to crush a man’s head with the butt of his pistol and leave him for dead on a barroom floor, he’s definitely not innocent. You know that yourself, ma’am. He hasn’t been innocent in many a long year. He’s wreaked havoc around this town with his drunken brawls and his wild ways. He’s attacked women in the street and cheated other ranchers at the sale yards. Oh, so you didn’t know about that, did you? Well, he’s one of the dirtiest dealers around, and nearly every merchant in town has been burned by him at least once. It’s as much my fault as yours or anyone else’s that I haven’t taken him to task before now. And in any case, whether he hangs for murder isn’t up to me. It’s up to the judge. I’ve done everything I can to give him a chance up to
now, and with Cooper Alderidge howling for blood, I have no choice but to execute my duty and bring him in. I’m here, as a friend, to let you know what’s goin’ on and to ask you to cooperate in every possible way. That’s all I have to say about it.”

“I appreciate your coming here and being honest with us, Sheriff,” George sighed. “We will cooperate with you in every possible way.”

“Thank you,” the sheriff returned. “I may have to come back out and question Bill Olsen about this other attack on the young fella. Either of them could be called to give evidence against Anders.”

“You can’t be thinking of using that against him, too, are you?” Matilda moaned. “Oh, Sheriff, have mercy!”

“The time for mercy is over, ma’am,” the sheriff growled. “I could call dozens of people around town to testify to Anders’s temper and his drinking and his violent outbursts. And then there’s his fraudulent business practices. I think, Mr. West, that if you will investigate your bank account, you will find that Anders has squandered the better part of your fortune, and you will be hard pressed to get it back. I hear from Mr. Doyle at the bank that Anders has even inquired about mortgaging the ranch. I would look into it, if I was you. Anyway, I’ll be back to talk to Bill and the young fella in a few days, after I bring Anders in. Until then, I wish you all a good day. Thanks again for the hospitality.”

He departed, leaving the family stunned. Matilda sobbed uncontrollably, and George sniffed away his own tears before retiring to his study. Penelope stared into space, her own emotions a tumult of apprehension and divided loyalty. Could Anders really hang? It didn’t seem possible. She couldn’t bring herself to wish for that eventuality, not with her swollen lip and battered head plaguing her even now. The possibilities of Anders returning to the house and of giving him the necessary warning and resources to escape the law battled in her mind with the hunger for the righteous justice of seeing him pay for his deeds. She was, after all, his wife, and she felt a compulsion to aid him, even if it meant contravening the law. On the other hand, her fury at his attack on Caleb, let alone herself, incited her to vindictive revenge, and her revulsion at her own feelings made her drive them out of her mind. If he returned, she would help him. She didn’t know how she would help him, either by convincing him to turn himself in to the law, or by assisting him to escape, but she would help him. That was the only honorable decision to make. He deserved at least that much.

Just before supper, Penelope looked in on Caleb and found him still asleep, so she left him alone and ate with George and Matilda, happy to have Mrs. Wallace serve them a hot, delicious meal without the encumbrance of tidying up afterward. When George and Matilda repaired to the parlor, she excused herself and went directly to bed, where she slept more soundly than she had since her return from the Indian camp, secure in the knowledge that Anders would almost certainly not return to the house that night.

The cold silence of the following day muffled all the activity around the ranch. After the ranch hands departed for their work, Penelope slipped out of the house and snuck over to the bunkhouse, where she found Caleb lying in his bunk, blinking up at the ceiling.

“Did you get breakfast?” she asked, taking her seat on the edge of his bed.

He nodded, his eyes sparkling with their usual clarity as he scrutinized her. “Charlie brought the food down from the kitchen, like he usually does, and I had some eggs and bacon with the boys.”

“Would you like me to leave you alone to sleep, then?” she inquired.

He shook his head. “You can stay a while. I won’t run you off.”

She grinned and patted his hand. “Are you feeling better?”

“It’s not as bad as it was,” he assured her. “As long as I don’t try to sit up, I’m okay. Bill is taking good care of me, when you’re not here.”

“I think you’ll be in bed for a while,” she mused.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Come here,” he gestured to her with his hand to come closer, and when she did, he pulled her down by the shoulder so that her head rested on his chest. “There. That’s better. Now I can relax.”

“Did Bill tell you about the sheriff coming, looking for Anders?” she offered.

“He told me,” he confirmed. “He told me the whole story.”

“I guess that will be the end of Anders, if he’s found guilty,” she considered.

“He will be found guilty,” Caleb asserted. “The only question is, will he get life without parole or will he get hanging? There are too many people around town who are willing to testify against him, and Bill said there are witnesses to Anders attacking that man. If he puts up a fight when they try to arrest him, the sheriff might have to gun him down. Who knows? Any number of things could happen. But one thing’s for sure. He won’t get away with it any more. He won’t be able to do what he did to me, and to you, again. He’ll probably never see the outside of a jail again as long as he lives.”

“I feel sorry for him,” she observed. “I suppose I should be delighted that he’s getting his just desserts, but I can only feel sad. And I feel sad for George and Matilda. Even though they created this situation by giving Anders everything, I still can’t help but feel sorry for them. Matilda hasn’t stopped crying even once since Janet left.”

“I feel sorry for them, too,” he confessed. “I especially feel sorry for George, watching his only son go to ruin before his eyes, and the whole time telling
himself there’s nothing he can do about it. It must be terrible.”

“What do you think will happen to you and me?” she whispered. “Do you think there’s any chance for us, now that Anders is gone?”

“Anders isn’t gone,” he countered. “Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to think about it, anyway. I can’t even get out of this bunk. You’re better off where you are, with the Wests, rather than with me. We’re both better off as things are. I can’t think about you right now.” He removed his arm from around her neck and she sat up.

She pressed the corner of her sleeve into the wrinkle at the edge of her eye. “I understand,” she mumbled. “I won’t press you. I’ll bring you something to eat at lunchtime. Get some rest until then.”

“Okay, thanks,” he smiled at her. “You take care of yourself, too. You look terrible, now that your bruises have started to change color.”

Her hand instinctively touched her cheek. “I don’t dare look at myself in the glass.”

“You’re as beautiful as ever,” he breathed. “Just, you know, a little banged up around the edges.”

She laughed and returned to the oppressive stillness of the house, where everyone lurked in hidden corners, waiting for the ominous sound of anything that broke the spell of waiting. Nothing broke it and the longer they waited, the more stifling and depressing the atmosphere became. Penelope found herself staying more and more isolated in her own bedroom, and she astonished herself by reacting resentfully when Mrs. Wallace came to change her bed linens and clean out the room. When the elderly lady threw back the curtains and opened the windows to air the room, Penelope almost flew into a rage. Only the memory of the room during Anders’s occupation stopped her. She sequestered herself in another room until Mrs. Wallace finished her work.

Three days passed in the same way, by the end of which, Penelope, Matilda, and George no longer interacted with each other at all. Each kept strictly to his own remote territory of the house. They only entered the same room for meals, during which they never spoke to each other and the elder parents-in-law kept their eyes fixed firmly on their plates. Penelope only deviated from this routine when she visited Caleb in the bunkhouse but as he recovered and sat up, these visits diminished, until the inevitable day when he got out of bed and limped tentatively across the yard to the barn, where he completed a few light chores before confining himself to bed again. Penelope didn’t visit him again, primarily because she couldn’t stand Mrs. Wallace’s continuous mocking remarks about her attendance on the invalid. Although Penelope decided early on that she hated the new housekeeper with a passion, she reluctantly appreciated her presence and respectfully stayed out of her way.

On the afternoon of the third day, the fateful rhythm of a horse’s shoes crunching through the stones in the yard broke the crushing silence. Once more, the three strangers assembled in the parlor to hear the sheriff’s news but instead of passing the same pleasantries, he read their miserable expressions and launched directly into his tale.

“I told you I would search for Anders and bring him in and lock him up,” he grumbled. “Well, someone must have told him I was out lookin’ for him, because he ran, as I suspected he would, and no one knew where he went. I collected my posse to comb the area, and we found some signs of his direction, but we never caught up to him. Each time we found out where he was, by the time we got there, he had moved on. He headed south, toward the Iona Valley. I sent word to the other sheriffs along the way, and have men out lookin’ for him, too, but no one could catch him. We all reckoned he planned to head into the Iona Wilderness at the other end of the Valley and hide out there, though he had no equipment. He had nothing more than the horse he left on. He had his side arm but he didn’t have a rifle, or even a decent coat. Anyway, we kept following him, and then when we got to the town of Iona, they told us they’d seen him heading down the Valley into the Wilderness. Well, we heard there was a big snow front heading in, so we stayed overnight in the town. We decided to follow him after the storm passed, but we expected to find him dead somewhere. Sure enough, it snowed a blizzard that night, and when we woke up in the morning, we couldn’t travel at all. The drifts stood ten feet thick. We had to wait another day before we could travel at all. Finally, we left town and hit the road, but we hadn’t gone two miles before we met a farmer on horseback comin’ up the Valley. We hailed him, and exchanged news of the weather and whatnot, and when he heard who we were and what our business was, he told us we were just the people he was lookin’ for. He said he was on his way into town to get the sheriff, because the other night, the night of the blizzard, he heard a strange noise out in his barn. He heard his horses braying and his cows thrashin’ around something terrible, and he suspected a wolf or a coyote in the barn, goin’ after the stock. So he took his shotgun and a lantern and went out to investigate. He got inside the door and found his stock in a lather, and he heard something stirring up in the hay loft. He climbed up there with his gun at the ready, with only the light of the lantern to see by, and when he got there, he saw a shape like a wolf hiding in the corner. The creature tried to break and run to get away from him, and he dropped his lantern and fired at it as quickly as he could, although he couldn’t see very well in the shadows. Only after he hit it and it stopped thrashing around on the floor did he dare to pick up his lantern and go over and take a look at it. That was when he realized it was a man. He knew he had to come and get the sheriff, because there was a dead man in his barn, but he couldn’t travel on account of the snow. He had to wait another day before he could get his horse out of the barn. So he was pretty glad to see us, especially when we told him we were lookin’ for a man who we expected to be hiding out in that area. Well, we followed him back to his farm, and sure enough, the dead man in his loft was Anders West. The farmer shot him in the chest with a full spread of buck shot. We found his horse tied up to a tree in the forest just outside the farm. So that’s it. Anders West is dead. He’s still there, in that farmer’s barn, because we can’t get a wagon through the snow to fetch the body down, and the horse is in the farmer’s barn, as well. As soon as the road clears, we’ll bring him down and bring him home.”

The sheriff fixed his hat on his head, his gaze ranging around the faces in the room, and walked to the door. “I’m very sorry for your loss.
My condolences to you all. But if you’ll take my advice, you’ll thank God it worked out this way. It’s the kindest thing that could happen to Anders, under the circumstances.” No one answered him. He let himself out of the house and closed the door behind him. The fading sound of his horse trotting away released the inmates of the house from their enchantment just enough to send them all back to their respective prison cells, and the overpowering torpor of their incarceration fell over them again.

Penelope waited until long after full dark of night before she wrapped herself in a woolen shawl and tiptoed down the stairs and out through the front door. She sailed across the yard to the barn and slipped inside. At the tack room door, she heard a muffled step, and in the blaze of a match lighting the lantern, she came face to face with the person she sought there.