A Dream of Daring (38 page)

Chapter
31

“You heard me. Drop it!”
Duran ordered.

Tom dropped his gun.

“The knife too.”

Tom complied.

“Get up here, Jeff,
fast!” The sheriff called to his deputy, who was just coming into view up the
switchback. “Get the girl! She jumped into the bushes behind him.”

“Don’t shoot her!” Tom
yelled. “She’s unarmed!”

In a flash, the deputy
dismounted from his horse.

“Sheriff, please!” Tom
pressed.

“Jeff,
restraint . . . if possible,” said the sheriff as the
deputy disappeared into the brush on the hillside.

Duran rode up to Tom,
dismounted, and picked up the weapons, all the while aiming his gun at the
inventor. The two men faced each other on the road while the shrubs on the
hillside swayed helter-skelter in the deputy’s search. The sheriff waited
hopefully—and Tom waited grimly—for the result.

“When the Barnwell women
told me you were helping the girl escape, I reckoned you’d head south to your
bank. So when they told me you let it slip that you’re going north, even if it
came from the girl, I’m not buying it. I figured you wouldn’t be that careless.
I didn’t underestimate you, as you apparently did me.”

“It seems I’ve been
outwitted,” Tom conceded. “But how’d you know I’d take this road?”

“I didn’t. You see, I
didn’t want to take the
wrong
road and miss you, and I didn’t want to
take the
right
road and risk you seeing me and slipping away. So instead
I took a flatboat.”

“I see.” Tom nodded in
acknowledgment of the man’s keen intelligence. Like other plantations with
water access, Ruby Manor had flatboats on hand to float cotton downstream to
the steamship docks. These boats were ample for carrying horses as well.

“The current was brisk,
so I reckoned I’d get down the creek to Redbird before you did, then wait for
you to arrive.” The distance by boat was shorter than by land. “But then you
surprised me when I spotted you and the girl on this ridge.”

Tom filled in the rest.
“So you kept your boat close to the shore, out of our view, then you docked at
the factory and came up the switchback.”

“Too bad you didn’t work
that out sooner.”

“You’re good at your job,
Sheriff. I assume that job is to serve the cause of justice. That’s why I have
things to tell you that I’m sure the Barnwell women left out, since they serve
a different cause.”

“After you attacked them
and imprisoned them in their closets, I’m sure they weren’t feeling up to par.”

“Did the women tell you
that Rachel and Ladybug are sisters?”

“Haven’t we all figured
out that the girl traces back to the senator?”

“But she doesn’t. Rachel
and Ladybug have the same
mother
, Charlotte Barnwell.”

“Are you
serious
?”

“Did the women leave that
out of their report to you? Charlotte, Rachel, and Ladybug
all
have the
same birthmark over their hearts.”

Tom knew that the
revelation about Greenbriar’s grande dame, the one woman beyond reproach,
stunned the sheriff—as it would everyone else in town.

“After I fired Bret
Markham, he set a torch to my house.”

“The Barnwell women told
me.”

“I sent a note to you
reporting it, but you had already left for Baton Rouge and were on your way
back by then, weren’t you?”

“Like you said, I’m good
at my job.”

“The possibility that Markham
could retaliate against the Barnwells, along with our injuries from the fire,
brought me to Ruby Manor with a slave I bought three months ago. After I got
there, I found out her real identity. The birthmarks on her and the Barnwell
women—and the truth about their relationship—came out this morning at Ruby
Manor, and I was a witness.”

Tom proceeded to tell him
about Charlotte’s lover who built Ruby Manor, Leanna’s birth, the empty casket,
the enraged Wiley Barnwell drowning Leanna’s father despite Charlotte’s
admission that it was she who started the affair. The inventor described how
Charlotte’s child was reared in slavery by Polly and renamed Ladybug, and how
he came to buy her from Fowler without knowing the seller’s or slave’s identity
until a few hours ago. He related how Ladybug was whipped by Markham, chased by
Nash, sold by Barnwell, and raped by Fowler.

Tom paused for a response
from the man whose eyes drilled through him like two intense beacons. The
sheriff simply waited to hear the rest, so Tom continued.

“If you see the
birthmarks of the three women, as I have, their relationship will be obvious.
If you dig up the casket of Leanna Barnwell, you’ll find it empty. And if you
read Polly’s note in her plantation journal nineteen years ago about the
funeral for Ruby Manor’s carpenter-slave, Daniel, I think you’ll find that it
occurred immediately after the birth date marked on Leanna’s fake tombstone. If
you can speak to Charlotte before Rachel manages to dominate her completely,
you might get her to admit all of this, as she did to me and Ladybug. She’s
terrified of a public scandal, but if you talk to her in private, you might be
able to capture these facts from what’s left of her sanity.”

The sheriff remained
stone-faced.

“So you see, Sheriff, Ladybug
was born
free
as the child of a white woman. But she was abandoned to
slavery by her mother. She was sold to a brute by Wiley Barnwell, the finest,
most upstanding citizen of your town, who also murdered her father. What
happened to her has everything to do with servitude, abuse, and cruelty and
nothing at all to do with murder. You know, self-defense isn’t a crime.”

The sheriff continued to
stare at Tom without blinking.

“Now, if you’re good at
your work, Sheriff, which you are, and if your job is to serve justice, which I
think you pride yourself on, then tell me this: Will Charlotte ever be tried
for abandoning her daughter to slavery? Will Fowler ever be tried for raping
her? Was Wiley Barnwell ever tried for drowning Ladybug’s father, Daniel? Where
has justice been for Ladybug’s whole life?”

“What happened the night
of the murder?” The sheriff proceeded on his own track. “Fowler says she took
his horse and went missing. That gives her the opportunity. Barnwell’s
mistreatment of her provides the motive.”

“Duran, I swear to you,
that can all be explained. She’s not a murderer. But her mother and sister will
never
let the truth be made public about her birth and status as a free
woman, so she can’t step forward to tell her story and ever hope to be treated
fairly. You
must
know that Barnwell’s political friends will come to
Charlotte and Rachel’s aid. All the power Barnwell had amassed will come to
bear to dispose of this defenseless girl, just as he disposed of her father.”

Tom closed his eyes
painfully at the thought of Ladybug in the town’s grip.

“In the name of justice,
Duran, you can’t deliver her to an angry mob, or to a mock slave tribunal where
Barnwell’s friends will sentence her to hang.”

“I’d have to be
dead
before any mob would get her from my custody. As for a trial, far as I’m
concerned, everything will be done to get her one. That would hold with me
whether she was free or not.”

Tom believed him. He
wondered how many others felt as he and Duran did but were silenced by a small
elite trying desperately to prop up an empire built on a fault line and ready
to split wide open under their feet.

“Even if she got a trial,
tell me, Duran, when the jury is put together from a population outnumbered
eight to one by a people it’s enslaving, and when it lives in constant fear of
a rebellion, and when the defendant is accused of doing the very thing they
dread the most—
how
can they be impartial? I believe
you
would be,
but you’re not one of them.”

The adversaries looked at
each other with a grudging respect.

“In the name of justice,
you
must
let her go and let me help her!”

“Tom, it’s not for me—or
you—to decide her guilt or innocence. That’s for the court. And it’s not for me
to justify myself to you, so you should know what an exception I’m making to try
to give you . . . hope.”

Tom felt certain that
Duran knew the matter was deeply personal to him.

“I intend to ferret out
the evidence you claim exists, like the birthmarks and the empty casket, to
establish the suspect’s status at birth; then I’ll get her all the legal
protections I can. I want justice, and I’ll get justice,” Duran said earnestly.

“You’ll get her
killed
with your well-intentioned—but doomed—quest for justice in this case.”

“I’m afraid you have no
say in the matter, Tom.”

“Look, Duran, Rachel is
consumed with resentment toward her sister, and she’s determined to thwart your
efforts. She’s going to claim her mother is ill and take her for a lengthy trip
abroad to recuperate, so you’ll get nowhere trying to reveal their birthmarks.
Ladybug will be summarily tried as a slave and
hanged
, with the help of
the Barnwells’ attorney, the judges, and the planters on the tribunal—all of
whom are their personal friends. I don’t think you’d want it on your conscience
that you delivered a defenseless young woman to a system rigged against her.”

“I have grounds to arrest
her, and I will. I have grounds to arrest you too, which you’ve foolishly given
me!” A crack seemed to be forming in the sheriff’s marble countenance. He
scolded Tom like a concerned older brother.

“Your face tells me you
don’t want to arrest me, and perhaps not her either. Shouldn’t you examine an
inkling that might be telling you there are extenuating circumstances involved
here?”

The sheriff shook his
head with more vigor than was necessary to deny Tom’s notion, as if he were
trying to shake off his own misgivings. “My only inkling is to enforce the law
and carry out justice.”

“But in this case, the
law
doesn’t
carry out justice. It serves a different master. By
enforcing the law, you’ll be sabotaging justice and delivering an innocent to
the hangman. You’ll never be able to claim you’re a man of justice again.”

The sheriff’s hand
stiffened around his gun. “You have a choice, Tom. You can cooperate and coax
the girl to give herself up—I think she’ll come out if she hears you urge
her—or when we find her, it might not be pretty. Either way, I’m running you
both in. You have no choice about that.”

“
You’re
the one
who has a choice, Duran. If you bring Ladybug in to face the rage, fear, and
prejudice of this town, you’ll need to replace that figure you pin so proudly
over your heart.” Tom pointed to the sheriff’s badge.

Duran involuntarily
glanced down at the emblem of the blindfolded goddess of justice on the silver
badge he kept so carefully shined.

“You’re at a crossroads,
Sheriff. You have to choose between justice and a corrupt law. And Ladybug’s
life hangs in the balance.”

With one hand, the
sheriff kept his gun aimed at Tom; with the other, he reached up for a pair of
handcuffs strapped to his saddle. “I serve justice and enforce the law, which
are one and the same thing.”

“What if they’re
not
the same thing at all? Which one do you choose?”

“Enough! Shut up, Tom!”

“If you take us in,
you’ll have to exchange your badge for one with a figure that took off her
blindfold to wink at power and tip her scales to the politically connected.
Which do you want to serve—a goddess or a whore?”

As the sheriff was
unstrapping the handcuffs, he looked rattled by Tom’s words. He hesitated in
mid-motion. His face looked like a battlefield for his emotions; his brows were
furrowed in doubt and his lips pursed in resolve. Then he breathed deeply and
made his choice. He completed the motion and grabbed the cuffs. The man who had
been ready to hang his own uncle now looked at Tom with the same unflinching
eyes. “Mr. Edmunton, you’re under arrest for aiding and abetting a fugitive
from justice.”

The sheriff raised his
voice and called into the bushes. “Jeff! Jeff, come out here.”

Soon the deputy appeared
from the hillside and walked toward the sheriff. “I can’t find her yet, but I
reckon she didn’t stray far. For one thing
, he’s
here, and he’s her
ticket out.” The deputy pointed to Tom. “And I didn’t hear no rustlin’, so by
the time I got in there, she coulda tucked herself in some good hidin’ spot
close by.”

The sheriff gave him the
handcuffs. “Bind him up and tie him to a tree. Then go back in and look some
more. I’ll search with you. Move fast!”

Tom stood in the road by
the spot where Ladybug had stopped. Her riderless horse next to him was a grim
reminder that she might not be coming back.

“Hands behind your back,”
ordered the sheriff.

Tom complied.

The sheriff got back on
his mount, his gun still pointing at Tom, while he spoke to his deputy. “I’ll
scale the hill and look up there on horseback.” He moved a few paces up the
clover field, impatient to climb the hill as soon as the inventor was bound.
“Hurry up, Jeff.”

The deputy clicked the
handcuffs open and was about to place them on Tom’s wrists.

The inventor’s head
dropped, his face no longer visible. He stood disconsolately waiting to be
shackled.

Then suddenly in the
distance, Tom heard a sound he knew well. His head shot up and his heart
pounded with hope.

A rumble rocked the
tranquil air like thunder. It vibrated the ground under the men. Then a barrage
of sputtering and clanging assaulted the air, the likes of which neither the
lawmen nor the horses had ever heard. The lawmen gasped in astonishment and the
horses shrieked as an unknown menace suddenly came toward them.