The Lawman's Bride (27 page)

“Clay?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not holding out much hope.”

“I’ll hope for the both of us, then.”

Oh, she loved this man. Loved him with all her being. If he was another casualty in her long line of victims, she would never forgive herself. It took a great deal of strength to raise her arm, but she wanted to touch him. She grazed her fingertips over his brow, along his cheek, pressed them against his lips.

He tasted her fingers with a kiss. “I love you, Sophie.”

“You deserve better,” she assured him.

“No. I deserve you.”

“I want to sleep now.”

He took her hand and tucked it under the sheet, then turned to where Caleb Chaney had been waiting. “Give her somethin’ for the pain now.”

The doctor swabbed Sophie’s arm and she felt the prick of the needle. Delicious mind-numbing warmth flooded through her veins and she slept.

Sophie’s identity had been revealed, and Clay’s relationship to her was now common knowledge. He had a responsibility to uphold the law, maybe even more so to make certain there was never any question about his integrity. She wasn’t going anywhere, but he still had to follow procedures. He assigned a deputy to stand watch outside the room.

Two days later, Dr. Chaney couldn’t keep her in bed any longer. She was on her feet and had insisted on using the outhouse and sitting at a table for breakfast. “My side hurts, but I don’t want any more of those shots. Thank you very much, I wanted them when I first got here…but I’m getting better.”

“You have to let that flesh heal,” he told her.

“I’m going to dress, and then I’m leaving,” she told him for the hundredth time.

“All right, Sophie. I can’t tie you up. Ellie went to your hotel room and brought you loose-fitting clothing. It’s in the cabinet right there. If you need help dressing, I’ll send for her.”

“No, I can do it.”

“Don’t do any bending or stretching that pulls on those stitches. Come back tomorrow, so I can look at them. If you see any bleeding, send for me.”

“Yes, Doctor. I promise.”

“I’m ordering a buggy brought around.”

She consented. Walking was too much for her today.

After he left the room, it took her a good fifteen minutes to get into her clothing. Ellie had thoughtfully picked out a loose chemise and shirtwaist. Sophie worked up a sweat bending over to put on her stockings and shoes, and almost quit twice, but resolved to be self-sufficient.

With her clothing in place and her hair in reasonable order, she exited the room.

John Doyle jumped up from the chair where he’d been sitting. “You can’t go anywhere!”

“I’m not escaping, Deputy,” she told him. “No need for handcuffs. I’m heading for the jail right now.”

He fell into step behind her.

Dr. Chaney was sitting at the small desk in the next room.

“How much is my bill?” she asked.

He told her, and she promised to send the money the following day. He ushered her through the waiting room to the door.

Ellie’s brother Benjamin was waiting for her with a buggy at the curb. “Miss.”

He assisted her to the seat, and she sat with her hand protectively over her sore side.

“Where you headin’?” he asked.

“The jailhouse,” she said.

“Which one?”

“Wherever Marshal Connor is.”

“He’s workin’ in the new building,” the deputy said from where he stood beside the rig.

Benjamin guided the shiny black horse to pull the buggy along the streets, and John Doyle followed on horseback.

“Bet you’ve never delivered a prisoner to the jailhouse before,” she said.

“Ellie said some bad stuff happened to you,” he answered. “Me’n Ellie, we know all about takin’ care of yourself. Don’t any of us Chaneys think less of you.”

His compassion touched her deeply. “Thank you, Benjamin.”

“Talk around town is you’re a hero.”

She waved that comment away.

They turned right from Main onto Eighth. The new jail did indeed look finished. “I’ll check an’ make sure he’s here before you bother t’ get down,” Benjamin offered.

He tied the reins, climbed down, and disappeared inside the brick building.

Clay appeared a second later, his dark hair shining in the sun, a frown on his face. He took in Deputy Doyle where he’d tethered his horse and stood watching. Clay turned his face up to where she sat. “What’re you doin’?”

“Help me down.”

He and Benjamin both hurried to assist her from the buggy to the ground.

“Wait here, will ya?” Clay asked Benjamin.

The young man agreed with a nod.

Sophie walked toward the door and Clay followed. The inside was much larger than their old building; their desks were new, and the whole place smelled like freshly cut wood and varnish.

Hershel Vidlak sat with his feet propped on a desk, reading the
Newton Kansan
. “Afternoon, Miss Hollis,” he said, sliding his feet to the floor.

A deputy she didn’t recognize was screwing a rack of some kind to the back wall. At Marshal Vidlak’s greeting he turned and nodded.

“Why are you out of bed?” Clay asked. He rolled a new chair with a brown leather seat and backrest toward her. “Here.”

She ignored it. “I want to see him.”

He got a crease between his dark brows. “Who?”

“Garrett.”

Clay paused. “He’s dead.”

“I want to see the body.”

“Why? Why put yourself through that? You’ve been through too much.”

“I have to see for myself. I have to know. You’ve told me, and I believe you. My head acknowledges that he died that day. But I can’t shake this feeling hanging over me. It’s like he’s still there, waiting…shadowing everything.” Sophie searched his eyes for understanding. “I can’t go the rest of my life, however long or short that is, without knowing for certain, for once and for all,
proof positive,
that he’s gone.”

Clay stared at her for a long moment. The familiar sound of a train whistle echoed in the distance.

“I’ll be takin’ Miss Hollis to the undertaker’s,” he said finally, speaking to the other men. Clay grabbed his hat and led her to the door.

“Reckon I don’t need to follow,” John Doyle said.

“Got it covered,” Clay told him and led her out. “Mind givin’ us a ride to George Monday’s place on Main?” he said to Benjamin.

“Ain’t he the dentist?”

“Yup.” Clay was careful not to touch Sophie’s side as he helped her back into the buggy, but she gasped and placed her hand over the spot anyway. Her face was too pale.

“You can lock me up after this,” she said.

He climbed up beside her. “You should have stayed at the doc’s.”

“I couldn’t. I had to come here.”

“Cells aren’t ready in the new place yet,” he told her. “We aren’t set up for prisoners. And I won’t put you in the temporary jail. No privacy. You’re gonna hafta stay at your hotel. Your things are all still there.”

She glanced at him with a hopeful expression in her dark eyes.

“I’ll post a guard during the day and take the night shift myself.”

Her smile revealed a mixture of relief and expectation.

“Don’t go thinkin’ I’m gonna risk hurtin’ your wound.”

She simply shrugged as though they’d discuss that subject when they got to it.

Benjamin pulled the rig up in front of a small copper-roofed building. The shingle outside the door read George Monday, Dentist, Undertaker.

“Wait here.” Clay climbed down and entered the building. After a few minutes, he came back and helped her down. “Meet us ’round back in a few minutes.”

“What are you going to do?” Sophie asked.

“He’s in the ice house. We’ll bring ’im out.”

Sophie glanced at the watch around her neck. She fingered the ring on her finger for assurance, smiled nervously up at Benjamin.

“You okay, Miss Hollis?”

She nodded. “I’m fine.”

She checked her watch again.

Finally, she made her way around the side of the building.

Clay and a short heavyset man waited for her in front of a small structure. Before them on the ground was a long form draped in white cloth.

“Keepin’ ’im on ice ’til I hear what I’m supposed to do with ’im,” the man said. “Too hot to leave ’im out.”

Sophie stared at the profile beneath the sheeting.

Clay handed her a handkerchief.

Monday bent and folded the drape down and away from the body.

He’d been washed and groomed and dressed in a three-piece suit with a green sheen. Obviously something they’d found in his hotel room, because it was his flamboyant taste and style.

Sophie had expected to gaze fearfully upon a sleeping man who looked as though he could sit up and reclaim her at any moment. She hadn’t expected this person’s shrunken appearance. His eye sockets and cheeks were sallow, and under his lips and cheeks, it looked as though his teeth were too big for his mouth. His skin was a sickly gray, and the hands folded over his chest didn’t even look real.

It was Garrett, though, his hair and features unmistakable.

Clay seemed to be waiting for her to crumple or fall apart. Sophie walked forward without a second’s hesitation and gave Garrett a solid kick in the side.

No sound. No movement.

She glanced up.

Clay was watching as though he saw this kind of thing every day. The undertaker wore an expression of horror, however. Her need to prove to herself Garrett was dead may have been extreme, but she didn’t care.

“This is it then,” she said simply. “Thank you, Mr. Monday.”

Side throbbing, Sophie turned and headed back for the buggy. She needed to lie down.

It only took another week for Judge McNamara to arrive in Newton for the scheduled hearing. A lawman stood watch outside her door during the day. Clay spent every night in her hotel room with her. Each night he held her and told her he loved her, and each night she withheld words of similar sentiment that wouldn’t be fair.

Ellie came to visit her two different mornings. Emma stopped by on her day off, bringing chestnut pudding made fresh that day, and Rosie brought her a sampler the girls had worked on together. The cross stitch held a friendship sentiment.

Sophie prepared for the hearing with a clean conscience and a fresh resignation to handle whatever came her way. She’d made friends, she’d known love. And she was living her life as herself. Still, she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t frightened.

Clay came to escort her to the hearing that had been scheduled as the last appearance of the morning. She was scared to death. All the things she’d kept hidden were about to be public. The most shameful secrets of her past would be revealed. In one way baring that burden would surely be as purging as when she’d told Clay. But Clay had cared about her.

“Just the truth, Sophie,” Clay told her, warming her cold hand between his comforting warm ones as their buggy was drawn toward the courthouse.

It was a square brick building, set back from the street and surrounded by well-tended shade trees and overflowing flowerbeds of red and white petunias. She walked the brick path to the door and waited for Clay to open it.

A bald man ushered them into a room, and Clay told her he’d be sitting with the other lawmen. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and took his place. She took notice to see that there were only one or two people besides the law officers there to observe. She moved to stand before the table where a white-haired man sat. Beside him a younger man waited with pen poised over a tablet.

Judge McNamara cut an impressive figure in his brown pin-striped suit. “You’re the young woman all the fuss is about?” he asked.

“My name is Sophia, sir.”

“Last name is Hollis?”

“I don’t remember my real last name. I’ve been going by Hollis.”

“Well, take a seat right here,” he said, indicating a chair at the side of the table.

She sat gingerly, and the judge took notice of the way she favored her side. “I’ve gone over all the reports,” he began. “Seems we have a bit of a dilemma here. It’s your word against a dead man’s.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“J
udge McNamara.” Clay’s voice.

“Marshal,” the judge acknowledged.

“Her name is Sophia Hollister.”

Sophie turned and stared at Clay. The name resounded in her head, an elusive memory trying to focus.

The judge slid his glasses onto his forehead and studied Clay. “And how do you know this when she doesn’t even recall her own name?”

Clay carried a stack of documents forward and presented them. “She’s wearin’ a ring there that belonged to her ma. I took it off the dead man. Two names are inscribed inside. The same names are on a passenger list from a wagon train that the man and wife traveled with. Records I found at army forts match the family’s travels right up to the time and the area where reports say they were killed.”

The judge shuffled through lists and telegrams, the rustling paper loud in the large room.

Sophie digested the fact that Clay had searched records and hunted until he found her family and her real name. He could have mentioned this before. She gave him a dumbfounded look. He ignored it.

“Ward and Sela Hollister and their five children were reported killed by a Sioux war party,” the judge said after review. “Miss Hollis’s story fits this family’s right up to that point in time. May I see the ring?”

Sophie took off the band and handed it to Clay who walked round the table and gave it to the judge. The judge used his glasses like a magnifying glass to read the tiny inscription Sophie hadn’t remembered. She hadn’t removed the ring since Clay had returned it to her.

The judge handed Clay the ring to give back to Sophie. Clay returned to his seat. “Okay, we know who you are. But you’re accused of quite an extensive list of crimes. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“If you name them off for me sir I’ll tell you to the best of my recollection whether or not I participated.”

The judge raised an eyebrow in surprise, then held his glasses away from his face so he could read a list of names and the crimes associated with them through the lenses.