Sanctuary (17 page)

Some came because the Reverend Eli told them to come, to sit in judgment on this evil man posing as a believer. Others were curious, spilling out of watering holes and kitchens because entertainment was dear in Sanctuary.

The prospective jurors were easy to pick out of the crowd. They stood stiffly in starched shirts and Sunday-go-to-meeting suits, nodding ceremoniously at others, speaking in hushed tones. They stood on the courthouse steps, waiting for Melvin Jacobs, the clerk of court, to open the door.

Jacobs, punctual and punctilious, opened county business promptly at eight, and closed promptly at five—crowds and county business not so important as the minute hand on his gold hunter's watch.

Inside, Jacobs appeared at one minute to eight and stood clearly visible through the windows in the courthouse doors. The clerk ignored the waiting throng, focusing his attention on his watch, instead. At exactly eight, the latch on the door clicked open and the crowd filed past the clerk's slightly disapproving gaze.

Heels clicked across marble flooring a Great Falls architect had sold the commissioners after a long night of buying drinks at the Silver Dollar, spinning alcoholic fantasies of Sanctuary's future. The clicks echoed through the cool, cavernous hall, changing to thumps as the crowd filed up dark-stained oak stairs to the second floor.

The door to the courtroom was locked, and the crowd stood milling in the hall. The door clicked open and Jacobs, having entered the courtroom through the judge's chambers, stood in the entrance.

“Prospective jurors first,” he said. As the crowd shuffled into order, Jacobs continued. “All jurors will be paid, chosen or not, for appearing this morning. Simply present yourself to my office, and my assistant will provide the three dollars daily stipend due you. Those of you who have come from out of town to answer the summons will receive an additional ten cents per mile for travel to and from Sanctuary.

“After the trial ends, the jury will be sequestered. Does anyone here not understand ‘sequestered'?”

The jurors fidgeted, but no one spoke.

Jacobs's lip curled. “Let me put that another way. Does anyone here know what sequestered means?”

Silence.

Jacobs's eyes rolled heavenward. “I thought not. Sequestered means that you will retire for deliberation until you have reached a decision.”

“That means you won't be able to go home for dinner unless you decide the case in a hurry. Do you understand that?”

The jurors nodded.

“Good. Take the first two pews at the front on the right. You must be sitting in alphabetical order. I'll help you with that. The front pew on the left is reserved for witnesses and Mr. Topple of the
Sanctuary Bugle.
Do you understand?”

The jurors nodded again. The trial of the preacher Mordecai was about to begin.

Judd rose before the sun cracked the eastern horizon. He stepped outside the shack, careful as he opened the door not to awaken his grandmother. He stretched in the cool morning air kissed by snowfields still covering the Rockies to the west.

He stretched again, picked up a bent, galvanized bucket and walked up the hill toward the slaughterhouse, the rusty bail creaking in cadence with his steps.

The slaughterhouse pump screeched in protest as Judd pulled on the handle with both arms, and the boy hoped the sound would not awaken anyone in the village.

When the bucket was full, Judd leaned into it, bracing it against his leg as he hobbled down the hill, the bucket's bail cutting into his fingers, water splashing on his leg whenever he stumbled.

He set the bucket on the step while he opened the door, rubbing his hands to take some of the ache from the red line that cut across his fingers. Then he lifted the bucket to the rickety table beside the stove, muttering as the table sagged under the weight and water sloshed over the edge. The washbasin, rusted where the enamel had chipped off, clattered as he set it on the stove, and Judd grimaced, hoping the sound would not poke into Grandmother's sleep.

He stripped off his clothes and washed himself from head to foot, scrubbing with a clean rag and shivering a little as the water touched him. Then he pulled on the shirt and trousers Doc had bought him for the trial.

The shirt and trousers—the first new clothing Judd had worn in his twelve years—felt stiff and scratchy. The shoes, shiny, black, and laced to his ankles, rubbed against his feet, the leather hard and unyielding.

He had taken the packages from Doc with wonder in his eyes, and the old man turned to hide his face when Judd tried to thank him.

Still, Judd didn't want to be seen in the village dressed in such finery when others had so little, so he pointed his feet toward Sanctuary.

Puffs of dust rose with each step to settle on his new shoes, dulling the shiny black finish. It was time to answer the call of that piece of paper the sheriff had given him last week.

Judd lined up at the door of the courtroom, the other witnesses towering over him and the words of the bailiff a blur in his ears.

“… Called to the chair beside the judge's bench … Oath administered … Collect fee at the clerk of court's office … Don't talk to each other about the case …”

The heavy oak door swung open. All the faces in the court swiveled toward the witnesses, and Judd gasped. He felt immersed in the scrutiny, unable to breathe.

And then the line was moving and Judd moved with it, borne helpless into the courtroom as though a vortex were sucking him down into its depths. He drew a deep breath and plunged.

Judd was first in line, and Jacobs was waiting to direct the witnesses into the correct seats. He pointed Judd toward the far end of the bench.

Judd huddled into the corner, trying vainly to meld himself into the wood. The room was thick with the odor of sweaty wool, mothballs, old varnish, and morbid curiosity. He was sitting directly below one of the windows lining the south wall of the courtroom, and Judd would gladly have risked the two-story jump to the ground below if only he could escape.

He slouched in his seat, trying to hide from the eyes burning into the back of his neck. No longer invisible, he was trapped here in full view of the people of Sanctuary.

He saw the preacher enter, glance around the courtroom, and smile as his eyes met Judd's. But he was no help now, seated with his broad back turned on Judd and on the people of Sanctuary.

Judge William Tecumseh Harding fidgeted in the chair that better fit the bottom of its normal occupant, Judge Harvey Jenkins, than his own. Jenkins had written, asking Harding to hear this case. Trying a preacher for rustling beef from the biggest rancher in the county was fraught with political danger, and Jenkins intended to retire with his job intact.

It wasn't the first time the two judges had traded places, and Harding liked to keep his credit good in case a similar situation arose in his own district. He turned his attention to the trial.

The selection of the jury had gone well. Short questions and no objections. The preacher had elected to represent himself. Harding had tried to talk him out of that foolishness, but Mordecai wouldn't listen.

There was justice in that, Harding thought: he hadn't spent much time listening to preachers, either.

Without a defense attorney, the trial would likely go pretty fast, and that suited the judge just fine.

Biggest crowd he'd seen at a trial in some time. The Reverend Eli had been out stirring up his parishioners. They had the look of vengeance in their eyes, and a tiny shudder ran down Harding's back. Good defense attorney could have gotten a change of venue, but … Harding sighed and raised his gavel. Time to get this circus under way.

“Your Honor, the prosecution calls Jack Ranking.”

The crowd had come to watch justice done, and ordinarily County Attorney Thomas Driscoll would have relished the opportunity to strut his piece before a crowd of electors. But this case rippled the hair on the back of his neck. It seemed too easy. No defense attorney, no question which way the jury was leaning—especially those who were members of the Reverend Eli's congregation—and the case was woven together like a fine wool coat.

But it had been Driscoll's experience that when everything fit together too easily, that was when it was most likely to unravel.

The first witness. Jack Ranking, was called. Judd, head bent and unmoving, followed Ranking to the stand with his eyes.

The Bar Nothing cowboy was dressed in his Saturday night best, boots thumping awkwardly on the floor with the stiff-legged gait of a man more accustomed to riding than walking.

Ranking squirmed in the chair. He clearly didn't like courtrooms—his previous experience limited to drunk-and-disorderly charges. He didn't like being in a room full of people unless the room had liquor and a piano player. Moreover, he didn't like people who wore ties.

Driscoll pried the story from the taciturn cowboy. Ranking had been riding fence when he noticed that the barbed wire had been dropped over a twenty-foot section and then tacked back up. Cattle had been driven through the opening by one man on horseback, Ranking said.

“Did you try to follow those tracks?” Driscoll asked.

“No, sir,” Ranking replied.

“What did you do?”

“I checked to see that the fence was tight so no cattle would wander away and hightailed it back to the Bar Nothing to tell Mr. Newcombe what I had seen.”

“And what had you seen?”

Ranking looked at Driscoll as though the question were too foolish to answer.

“Rustling,” he said, provocation poking out of his voice. “I saw where somebody had rustled Bar Nothing beef.”

Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

Mordecai rose for the cross-examination, and Judd wondered at the preacher's composure in this sea of rancor.

“Mr. Ranking, how did you know the cattle had been rustled?”

Ranking bristled. “The fence was down and the cattle were gone.”

“Have you ever seen cattle cross a downed fence before without being rustled?”

“Not with a horse behind them.”

“Was somebody on that horse?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“That's the point, Mr. Ranking. That's the point. Your honor, I ask the court to strike Mr. Ranking's statement that the cattle had been rustled. At this point he can establish nothing more than that cattle
appeared
to be missing.”

Driscoll was on his feet. “Your Honor—”

“Motion granted. The court reporter will strike Mr. Ranking's conjecture that the cattle had been rustled. That has not yet been established.”

Judge Harding leaned back in his chair. So the preacher had been in court before, Harding surmised. This case might be interesting after all.

Red was creeping up under Driscoll's collar, but his voice was contained. “The state calls Dirk Newcombe, Your Honor.”

Newcombe stumped to the witness chair, the wildness and injuries of his youth putting a hitch into each step, each swing of his arms. He raised his hand to take the oath and said “I do” at the correct time, but his eyes were poking holes into the preacher.

Driscoll began his questioning.

“Mr. Newcombe, when did you first learn of the rustl—”

Mordecai rose. “Your Honor—”

“Objection sustained. Mr. Driscoll, you will refrain from making any reference to rustling until it has, in fact, been established that there was rustling.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Driscoll took a deep breath and began again. “Mr. Newcombe, when were you first aware that your cattle were missing?”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Mordecai took two steps toward the judge's bench. “We have not yet established that any of Mr. Newcombe's cattle are missing.”

“The hell we haven't!” Newcombe stood so fast the witness chair skittered backward and tipped over. “Those cows were rustled, and you did it”

The judge's gavel hit the stand before Mordecai could voice his objection.

“Mr. Newcombe, you will take your seat and reply only to questions asked you by counsel.”

“Bullshit!” Newcombe's face was livid. “No two-bit judge is going to tell me what I can do and what I can't. You want to keep your plush job,” Newcombe roared, “you'll stop this dillydallying and get the job done. I've got more important things to do.”

Color was rising now under Judge Harding's collar.

“Mr. Newcombe,” Harding growled. “You may be bull goose in Sanctuary, but you are subject to the same law as everyone else. You will sit down and confine your speeches to answering questions, or I will hold you in contempt. I don't think you'd like sitting in a jail cell until I decide you're fit to get out.”

“I've been in jails before.”

“I'm sure you have. Now sit down!”

Newcombe sat down on the edge of the witness chair, back straight as a post, eyes burning in the shadows beneath his heavy brows.

Driscoll avoided looking into Newcombe's eyes.

“Mr. Newcombe, what did you do when Mr. Ranking showed you the downed fence and the tracks of the cattle?”

“Fence wasn't down then, it was back up.”

“But you could see that it had been taken down?”

The muscles knotted in Newcombe's jaw.

“Never saw cows walk through a fence before and leave it standing.”

An uneasy titter ran through the crowd, and Newcombe glared at the bobbing heads.

“Mr. Newcombe, did you have any cattle in that pasture that were not your own?”

Newcombe's fist knotted, and he leaned forward to rise. “You calling me a rustler?”

Driscoll blanched.

“No,” he stuttered. “Certainly not, but sometimes cattlemen lease grazing rights or let their hands run a few head.”

“I don't!” Newcombe growled, one lid crawling down his eye.

“No offense, Mr. Newcombe. I just wanted to establish that those were, in fact, your cattle.”