Paper Sheriff

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

LOVE
TO READ
?

LOVE
GREAT SALES
?

GET
FANTASTIC
DEALS ON BESTSELLING EBOOKS

DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX EVERY DAY!

Paper Sheriff

Luke Short

1

In the stifling June day court-room the Judge, distaste in his gaunt, exhausted face, addressed the all male jury.

“Normally, at the end of a long trial I thank the members of the jury for their patience and for their honest effort to arrive at a just decision. Eight of you men I do thank. Four of you will never receive my thanks.”

He leaned back in his chair and seemed to welcome its support. “You four have totally disregarded the sworn evidence of your elected Sheriff as well as the evidence of other witnesses. I can only believe this was done wilfully. By doing so you have made a mockery of justice.”

Now he put both his hands flat on the bench and leaned forward. “I think I know why you did it. The Assistant District Attorney is a woman prosecuting this case because her father, the District Attorney, was too ill to appear in court. To you she did not represent the court. She was only a lowly woman trying to get a man hanged. The court-room is no scene for the battle of the sexes, but you four took it upon yourselves to make it one. As a consequence, the jury could not agree and the defendant goes free. I doubt if you even feel ashamed—but I assure you I do.” He paused. “Bailiff, free the prisoner. The jury is dismissed; the court is adjourned.” He gavelled once sharply but the sound of it was lost in the uproar of the court-room.

The hard-packed earth in front of the stone Sutton County Court House was soon thronged by the crowd who had witnessed the trial. They seemed reluctant to leave. The last act of the drama was yet to come—the sight of a man they thought as good as dead walking down the Court House steps a free man. Men in worn range clothes, men in bib overalls, men in proper suits and their womenfolk, all waited for Orville Hoad, the man who shot Will Flowers in the back, to walk into the free summer sunshine.

When he did come out he was accompanied by his brother, Ty Hoad. Both men were middle-aged, but that was all, save their dark inheritance, they had in common. Orville Hoad, the taller and younger, had not bothered to clean up for his trial, as if it were of no consequence. He wore a dirty, collarless shirt, worn levis, scuffed cowman's boots and dusty Stetson, the clothes he had been arrested in two weeks before. His beard-stubbled face was long and the smile under his blade of a nose revealed stained and crooked teeth as he surveyed the scattered crowd.

Both men were met past the bottom of the steps by a half dozen men who moved forward in a group, shouting their pleasure. Ty Hoad stepped aside, smiling, so the men could take turns at wringing Orville's hand and clapping him on the back. Ty Hoad, dressed in the seedy propriety of a dark suit, was all chunky softness. The luxuriant pale moustaches only accentuated his buck teeth and gave him the appearance of a benevolent woodchuck. A yellowed panama hat and black string tie completed the illusion that this man might have been a visiting river boat pilot who had strayed a thousand miles from the broad Mississippi.

“Uncle Orv, you've got a fool's luck,” one of the young men shouted drunkenly. He pushed a bottle toward Orville, who accepted it and took three long gulps of the pale raw moonshine. When he had got his breath, he said, “I been missin' that, Buddy.”

To an observer watching this, the men around the Hoads would have seemed of a type. They were mostly lean, shabbily dressed, dirtier than necessary and in their unshaven faces was a pride of ignorance worn like a badge. They were all Hoads or married to Hoads and come to welcome one of themselves back into their shabby, whisky-sodden clan.

Buddy, facing Orville, now looked over his uncle's shoulder and said softly, “Oh, oh. Here comes Callie with her purty Sheriff.” He pronounced it as if it were spelled “Shurf.” Now he glanced at Ty Hoad. “Pa, you going to invite the Shurf to our party?”

Ty Hoad glanced sideways at the Court House steps where Sheriff Reese Branham and his wife Callie, Ty's daughter, were standing. Branham was a tall man with a dark and saturnine face which, at the sight of the Hoads, altered from its expression of sober friendliness into one of watchful reserve. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie, polished cowman's boots and an ancient, dust-colored Stetson. At thirty, he appeared to have the maturity and authority of an older man.

Even standing away from him, Callie Branham looked almost diminutive. She was a full-bodied girl, wearing a long-sleeved dress of blue print cotton that contrasted pleasantly with her thick reddish hair under its tiny bonnet. Hers was a Hoad face too, but a refined one—thin, without much color and with the sharply ridged nose separating pale eyes.

Now Callie tripped down the steps, ran up to her uncle and embraced him affectionately. “Uncle Orv, I knew they wouldn't hang you, I just knew it!”

Orville Hoad looked past her to the Sheriff and said quietly, “They sure tried, Callie.”

Now Reese Branham, his badge of office hidden by his coat, came slowly down the steps and approached the group, his grey eyes scanning each face, reading rightly in them the old dislike that now bordered on hatred.

Halting by his wife, Reese said, “Shall we go, Callie?” He didn't even look at Orville Hoad, who was watching him with a faint gleam of malice in his eyes.

“Aren't you going to say anything to Uncle Orv after what he's been through?” Callie asked.

“We've said enough to each other in the last two weeks. No.”

“Ain't you going to shake his hand?” one of the Hoads jeered.

“Sure,” Buddy said. “Reese only tried to hang him but he don't hold no hard feelings, do you, Uncle Orv? You'd be proud to shake the hand that would've put a rope around your neck, wouldn't you?”

“No, I think I'll use my hand to wrap around that bottle, Buddy. Give over.”

Buddy handed back the bottle of moonshine and they watched the older man drink. The onlookers, satisfied that they had seen the disappointing last act of the drama, now began to drift away. Orville Hoad handed back the bottle, wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and said, “All you folks come over to my place now. We'll have us a celebration.”

“The Sheriff too?” one of the Hoads asked slyly.

“Why, him too,” Orville said sardonically. “Ain't he one of us Hoads through Callie? Don't us Hoads stick together and help each other? Ain't he been helping me this last two weeks, feeding me, keeping me out of the rain, watching over me, taking real good care of me? Why, I can't thank him enough. Sure, he's invited.”

“I think I'll let Callie represent me, Orv. I've work to do tonight,” Branham said.

“Well, now, that's too bad,” Orville said. “I bet I know what you'll be working on. A frame for somebody else, now that you couldn't frame me.”

“Wrong guess,” Reese said patiently.

“Then maybe on that pretty woman lawyer,” Orville said.

Instinctively, unthinkingly, Reese backhanded him with his right hand with such force that Orville had to take a step back to keep his balance.

With a surprising lack of anger, Orville said quietly, “That must have come pretty close to where you live, Sheriff.”

“No. I just don't like her name in your mouth.”

Ty Hoad put his arm around his daughter's shoulders and said quickly, “I never like to see a ruckus around a woman. Now all of you quit. Let's move out to Orville's place.” He squeezed Callie's shoulder. “If Reese has got to work, you come with me, Callie. Afterwards you can drop me off and take the buggy home.” He looked at Reese now. “That all right with you, Reese?”

“Whatever Callie wants,” Reese said indifferently.

“I'll be home in time to get your supper, Reese,” Callie said.

All the Hoads, even Buddy and Orville, appeared satisfied with this compromise but each in his own way indicated to Reese by a look at him or at the others that this was at best a temporary truce. Branham turned and headed back for the Court House steps, with a premonition that would not be stifled. During the long days of Orville Hoad's trial, the testimony that he had been required to give had damned Hoad in the eyes of half the population of this county seat of Bale. Because he was married to a Hoad, he knew the Hoad clan, to a man, had expected him to lie unblushingly to protect one of the family. During the trial they had sat with mounting fury and hatred as he presented evidence of Orville's guilt and at the end of each court day they avoided him, losing themselves in the exiting crowd. They planned a reckoning with him, he knew, and didn't care. At the moment his bitter disappointment at the jury's actions was deep and sore. Mounting the steps, he tramped down the now empty corridor, heading for his office, a tall, tired man with rancor in his heart.

As he passed the open doors of the now empty court-room, he saw Judge Heatherly and Jen Truro seated at the defense's table, facing each other across it. Immediately Reese turned and walked into the court-room and the sound of his boots on the wood floor caused both Jen and Judge Heatherly to look in his direction. Reese took off his hat, walked through the gate in the railing and came up to the chair beside Jen Truro. She was watching him from wide-spaced eyes so black they were colorless. Her dark hair, a little dishevelled, framed a face that was now thoughtful and tired, holding a resignation that marred its almost classic beauty. She was dressed in a simple suit of dark grey with a white blouse underneath. She wore no jewelry and Reese knew that she had worn this unbecoming outfit during the long trial only because she did not want her clothes or her face to influence the jury and because this somber outfit looked as close to the lawyer's traditional dark suit as possible.