The Sheriff's Sweetheart (21 page)

Because he'd lied, his testimony was no longer believable, and the murderer in the cell next to him would probably walk free. There was nothing he could do to change
that now, and after realizing he'd lost Prissy forever, he could hardly bring himself to care. Even if Tolliver could be convicted of Waters's killing, Waters would still be dead.

He'd listened silently when Prissy's father had come to tell him that he would forbid Prissy ever to see him again. Gilmore didn't have to do that, he'd thought. He'd seen the hurt in her eyes when Hantz had announced what he'd found in the mattress, and he knew she'd never want to see him again anyway.

He'd thought loving Prissy, taking on an honorable job, and learning to believe in and trust the Lord Prissy served was the answer to putting his past behind him. But it wasn't true. His past had risen up and defeated him, all because of one good thing he'd done—saving the dog Raney would have killed—and one wrong thing—taking Raney's ring. God didn't care about him, just as he'd always thought.

I am with you always,
a voice whispered inside him.
I have forgiven your sins, and I will save you.

He uttered a short, mirthless bark of laughter. What a time to be hearing voices again. No doubt he'd be good and loco by the time he was sentenced to prison.

“What are you laughin' about, Bishop? Seems t'me you ain't got nothing t' laugh about,” Tolliver jeered. “You're in a cell, same as me, an' that purty lil' girl you been sparkin' don't want nothin' t' do with you no more. Even if she did, her rich papa told you she can't see you agin. Soon as that fellow gets here from Houston, you're goin' t' prison for swindlin', so I figger you ain't got nothin' t' laugh about.”

Luis Menendez still believed in him, wonder of wonders. Sam couldn't imagine why. Or perhaps it was just that
Sam had been decent to him, so he wouldn't let Tolliver torment him.

It went some ways to make up for the cold contempt Nick Brookfield had favored him with ever since he'd led him away from the saloon. Brookfield now thought his first instincts about Sam had been correct, and he wasn't a man who liked being made a fool of.

Sam heard the door, but he didn't bother to open his eyes and see who'd come to gawk at him or tell him off for trying to pretend he was what he wasn't. Then he heard a voice he never thought he'd hear again, and it took all his self-control to keep his eyes closed and pretend to go on sleeping.

“Nick, I need to see Sam,” Prissy said, her voice anxious and strained. He knew she had spotted him in his cell. “Sam, wake up,” she called. “I'm here. I have to talk to you!”

He heard the scrape of Nick's chair—which had been
his
chair only this morning, Sam thought bitterly—as it was scooted back. “Sorry, Miss Prissy, but your father left strict instructions that you were not to see Bishop. I need you to leave.”

“But you can't do that! I have to see him, Nick! I have to tell him—to find out—”

“I'm sorry, but I really must insist, Miss Prissy.”

Sam heard her start to cry and it broke his heart. He rolled over on the narrow cot and stood.

“Go home, Prissy. I don't want to see you,” he said, keeping his eyes on the worn wooden floor so he wouldn't see her eyes shining like flooded blue jewels in the heart-shaped face he loved. “There's no point. It's over. Forget about me.” Then he turned back to his cot and lay down, his face to the wall.

P
rissy heard voices in her father's study when she returned to the house. “But, James, if you forbid her to see Sam now, you'll break her heart,” said Mariah Fairchild. “If that nice young man is convicted, he'll go to prison for years. She may never see him again.”

“Mariah, no daughter of mine is going to be allowed to breathe the same air as a liar and a thief,” her father snapped. “She's upset, and I'm sorry about that, but I have to be thankful we found out now and not after she married him. Sam Bishop saw her as an easy way off the outlaw trail, nothing more.”

“James, surely that's too harsh,” Mariah protested.

“Mariah, he was caught with the money and that big, gaudy ring right in his mattress!” her father thundered. “The guilt was written all over his face—didn't you see it?”

“But we haven't heard his side of it,” Mariah argued. “Isn't a man innocent until proven guilty in this country? He hasn't even been tried yet, and you've already convicted him, James.”

She had to give the widow credit for spirit, Prissy thought, appreciating the woman's attempt to defend Sam. If only Sam had this much spirit left to defend himself.

Now if she could just avoid the step that creaked, she could ascend the stairs and get into her room without her father ever knowing she'd sneaked out and gone to see Sam against his express orders.

However, Houston, who'd been dozing on her bed when she'd left, scampered pell-mell down the stairs, yapping happily to see her.

The door to her father's study was thrown open.

“Prissy! I thought you were upstairs,” her father said, then looked at her more closely. “Where have you been, young lady?”

“At Sarah's,” she began. It was the truth, she told herself. She
had
just come from Sarah's, for she had been too upset by Sam's refusal to see her and his dispirited manner to go straight home. Sarah had done her best to console her friend, but once Prissy stopped crying, she'd realized all the tea and sugar cookies Sarah could serve wouldn't change anything.

Prissy suddenly decided there was no reason to lie to her father. She was a grown woman, and the man she loved was in trouble. She'd done what she had to do.

She lifted her head and faced him. “But before that I went to see Sam, Papa. You needn't worry,” she added, when his eyes narrowed at her. “Nick told me to leave, and even if he hadn't, Sam wouldn't speak to me.”

Her father studied her a moment. “Very well, then. I-I'm sorry you're so upset, Pris.” He opened his arms to her, and with Mariah looking on, she went into his embrace and wept all the tears she had left.

 

Tolliver had finally ceased taunting him and subsided into a snoring slumber, but Sam couldn't sleep. He couldn't banish the vision of Prissy stumbling with tear-blinded eyes out of the jail, shrugging off any attempt by Nick to comfort her.

She can learn to love again,
he told himself. There were bachelors coming into town all the time, thanks to the efforts of the Spinsters' Club. The mistake of loving him need not haunt her for a lifetime. He loved her enough to make a clean break of it so she could start over.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, promising rain before morning. That might delay the Houston bank president's arrival, which only meant more time to spend in this miserable cell before he was convicted and sent off to prison for the crime he hadn't committed as well as the one he had.

“Do you mind taking the first watch?” Sam heard Nick ask Luis.

“No, Señor Brookfield. Good night.”

Luis didn't call the Englishman “Sheriff,” Sam noted, though he was unfailingly respectful.

Nick favored Sam with a last frosty glare before stalking between the cells to the living quarters and shutting the door. Sam figured he had to be missing his wife and resenting Sam for making it necessary for him to take on the sheriff's job again.

“Do you need a blanket, Sheriff?” Luis asked Sam. “Or a glass of water, or water to wash with? And there is chocolate cake left that Señora Walker brought if you want some.”

“Thanks, but I don't need anything, Luis.”

“We will find a way out of this
problema,
you'll see,” Luis assured him.

Sam wished he had Luis's faith. Nothing would ever make him worthy of Prissy again or bring back the town's respect. He pretended to sleep, so Luis would stop trying to cheer him. Soon Luis's eyes grew heavy and he nodded off in his chair.

At first Sam thought he heard an animal rustling about outside. The window that Tolliver coveted faced the narrow alley between the jail and the mercantile, and cats frequently hunted there at night.

Then he heard the whisper. “Hssst! Bishop, you awake?”

Sam had to stand on his bed to look out the narrow window, and as he did so, the cot creaked so loudly he turned to see if the sound had awakened the deputy. But Luis only stirred and shifted his position before settling into sleep again. He really ought to warn the youth about falling asleep on the job, Sam thought, even if he wasn't the sheriff any more.

“Who's there?” he called softly, and then a figure separated itself from the shadows.

“I come from th' boss.” The man's hat was pulled low over his head, but even so, Sam thought he recognized the scarred jaw of one of the Alliance henchmen, one who had ridden with Tolliver before Tolliver had been arrested. “Which boss?”

“Raney. He says if you change yer testimony when th' trial begins again, and say you saw Waters give Tolliver that watch—”

“Why would Waters have done that?” Sam interrupted, disdain in his voice. “It was engraved with his name.”

“Mebbe he owed him money or somethin', how should I know?” the other man snarled. “Anyway, he says he kin get that bank president that's comin' to say you ain't guilty a' what yore accused of.”

“Are you saying the bank president's part of the plot?” Sam demanded, furious at the idea that a bank official could be bought off in these circumstances.

“Sssh! Keep yer voice down!” the man hissed. “I ain't sayin' that, I'm sayin' Mr. Raney could make the whole thing jes' go away—mebbe he'd give the money back or somethin'.”

It might keep him out of prison, but even if Raney paid off the missing amount, the damage had been done. Sam's reputation lay in ruins and Mayor Gilmore had forbidden him any further relationship with his daughter. Once Prissy thought about it hard enough, she wouldn't want anything to do with him, either, for he would have no job, no way to provide for her. He couldn't afford to buy the humble house on Travis Street, let alone fix it up.

“Tell Raney to go to blazes!” he whispered to the shadow by his window.

“That yer final answer, Bishop? You'll be sorry.”

“Bishop, who are you talking to?” said a voice behind him, startling Sam so completely that he nearly fell off the cot.

Sam turned to see Nick standing in the passageway between the two cells that led to his quarters. His blond hair was rumpled, as if he'd just gotten out of bed, but there was nothing sleepy about the suspicious gleam in his eyes.

Luis had awakened, too, and looked sheepish.

Sam looked back out, but of course the Alliance man
had disappeared. Thunder cracked again, and then the heavens opened and rain descended in a solid sheet that would erase any trace the man had been there—if his boots had even left any impression in the dry, hard ground.

“Raney sent one of his men to try to bribe me,” Sam said, raising his voice over the rain drumming on the tin roof. “He said if I'd say I knew Waters had given Tolliver that watch, he'd make the swindling accusation go away.”

Nick snorted. “A likely story.”

“Why else would I be standing on the cot?”

Tolliver woke then, his ugly face twisted with irritation. “Cain't a man git some sleep around here? Whatever you two're shoutin' about, cain't it wait till morning?”

“It certainly can,” Nick snapped. “And since Bishop's claiming a midnight visitor, you can sleep in the cell with the window. Luis, help me switch the prisoners.”

“I get the window?” Tolliver crowed. “About time!”

Sam scowled, for the sheets on Tolliver's bed were sure to be as malodorous as he was. Probably vermin-ridden, too. “Make him take his sheets with him,” he said, and pulled his own off the cot.

Within minutes the two men had switched cells and remade their beds, and Tolliver was snoring in his new cell with the window. Sam didn't want any more late-night visitors anyway, so the new arrangement suited him just fine.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep.

 

The bolt of lightning just before dawn struck inside the jail, so loud it had Sam half falling out of the narrow cot. Only it wasn't lightning, Sam realized as he saw the
haze of gunsmoke and smelled the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder. He leaped to his feet, about to demand to know why Nick or Luis was shooting, only to see Nick take hold of the bars of the other cell, stare into it, then dash out the door into the rain. A second later, Luis stumbled out of the bedroom, still wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“What happened, Sheriff?” Luis asked.

But Sam could only point into the other cell, where Leroy Tolliver lay dead on his cot of a gunshot wound to his chest.

“Someone must have shot him through the window.”

“Dios mio,”
breathed Luis, staring.

“That bullet was meant for me.” Whoever had offered the bribe earlier had come back to kill him, since Sam had refused it. He couldn't have known the prisoners had switched cells.

Nick returned a few minutes later, panting and wet, his pants mud-splattered. “I lost him, whoever he was. But he left the bucket he stood on—how he managed to put that in place, stand on it and take aim, all without my seeing him…”

His voice trailed off and his gaze dipped to the newspaper lying on the floor. Sam guessed the Englishman was wondering if he'd dozed off, too, just for a moment.

Now they wouldn't need two trials, for Tolliver had been their only murder suspect. There was only Sam left to stand trial for Raney's trumped-up swindling charge.

Which would do nothing to rid the town of the problem of the Alliance.

Had the Lord saved his life, just to allow him to be sent to prison and lose Prissy, not to mention his short-lived good name?

 

Prissy learned of Tolliver's assassination over breakfast when a haggard Nick Brookfield came to notify her father.

After he blurted out the news, Prissy bolted out of her chair. “Sam could have been killed! Is he all right?” she cried. “He—he wasn't wounded? Please, tell me the truth, Nick!”

“He's all right, Prissy,” Nick said. “No, he wasn't wounded. Luis is boarding up the window even as we speak.” He turned back to her father. “I'm sorry I wasn't able to catch the b—the blighter, sir,” he amended, after a glance at the Prissy. “I ran out of the office as soon as I realized what had happened, but he had too big of a head start and I lost him in the rain. I heard someone take off on a fast horse at the other end of Travis Street, but of course the rain wiped out his trail.”

Prissy threw down her napkin and dashed to the door as she called over her shoulder, “I'm going to make sure Sam's all right! Disinherit me if you want, Papa, but I have to be sure!” She ran down the hall, threw open the door, and pelted down the steps.

“Wait, Prissy, I'm coming with you!”

Prissy skidded to a halt and turned, astonished to see Mariah throwing on her shawl as she sprinted down the steps after her, moving with amazing speed for a lady of her mature years.

“You don't have to do this,” Prissy assured her, touched by the woman's caring and the anxious expression in her eyes. “It won't change anything—Sam will probably refuse to see me again even if Nick doesn't catch up and keep us from going in—and there's no need for Papa to be angry
at both of us. I just have to see Sam with my own eyes to be sure he's all right.”

“I want to go with you, dear. You shouldn't be alone if…if Sam refuses to see you,” said Mariah. “You've had so much to contend with for a young lady. And if your father's angry at both of us, well…” She snapped her fingers. “He'll just have to be angry with both of us, or get over it. When I left, Nick was calming him down, telling him to let you at least see Sam. Your Papa's just worried about you, Prissy dear. He wants the best for you.”

Impulsively, Prissy hugged her. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

By tacit agreement, they hastened off toward the jail. As they reached it, Prissy spotted Luis Menendez pacing around outside, rifle in hand.

“Luis, has—has something else happened? Is Sam all right?”

“Nothing else,
señorita,
” he assured her. “Señor Brookfield only asked me to guard him from out here, in case that
malvado
Raney and his
hombres
try again. Doctor Walker is on guard inside. It is good you have come.”

“Will he see me?” she asked, her heart in her throat. She couldn't bear it if he turned his back on her as he had yesterday.

Luis shrugged. “I don't know,
señorita,
but he
needs
to see you, whether he admits it or not.”

She entered, with Mariah right behind her, to find Nolan Walker sitting in the sheriff's chair, another rifle lying at the ready on his lap.

“Hello, Nolan. I—I have to see Sam,” she said.

“I figured you'd be here. Sarah said you'd come, once you learned about Tolliver.”

Her gaze flew past the Yankee doctor to where Sam stood behind the bars of his cell, staring at her.

“I'm all right, Prissy,” he said. “Luis has boarded up the window, as you can see. Raney won't try anything again. He doesn't need to, now that Tolliver's dead.”