A Lady Like Sarah (28 page)

Justin lifted his head.
"His brother-in-law?"

"U.S. Marshal Owen was hitched to Marshal Briggs' sister."

A knot tightened in the pit of his stomach. This was worse than he'd thought. "But you didn't kill him. You tried to save his life." His thoughts raced. "How does he know about the marshal's death?"

"I told him," she said. "He asked me where Owen was and I told him."

He reached through the bars and gently brushed his finÂgers against her cool pale cheek.

"God will help us find a way to save you. Elizabeth needs you."

A shadow creased her forehead, and her lips trembled. "I told you, she needs someone better to be her ma. She don't need the likes of—"

"
I
need you," he said. "I love you."

She glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no one had heard. "
Shh
. If they know the town's new preacher takes a fancy to an outlaw, there ain't no
tellin
' what they'll do."

"I don't care," he said.

"I do," she whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.

"Sarah," Justin pleaded. "Please don't cry."

She pulled her hand away from his. "See what happens when you dress like a lady? I'm as leaky as an old water pump."

He dug through all the bills and coins in his coat pocket for his neatly folded handkerchief and then wiped away her tears. "I promise, with God's help, I'll find a way to get you out of this."

She managed a wan smile. "I reckon it's
gonna
take a miracle to get me out of this mess."

"Miracles happen," he said.

She wiped away the last of her tears, and her smile widened. A look of shining hope had replaced the earlier fear. "You wouldn't be
pullin
' my leg now, would you?"

He shook his head. "Miracles happen. You know they do.
Mira
the goat is living proof of that. Remember the ten plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea?"

"Don't forget the eighty-year-old woman
havin
' a baby."

Grinning, he squeezed her hand. Suddenly, something occurred to him.

"Sarah, you've just given me an idea. I think there might be a way to save you."

Anxious to put his plan into action, he spun around and called for the marshal to let him out, rattling the bars on the outer door with impatience.

"Wait!" she called after him, hands on her hips. "You can't say
somethin
' like that and take off, you hear? How do you expect to save me?"

He turned. "It's easy," he said with a grin. "All I need is God's help—and a quick tongue." He laughed at the expresÂsion on her face. "I'm not sure about the quick tongue, but I'll give it my best shot."

Marshal Briggs
sat with his feet on the desk, his hands folded across the generous mound of his stomach. Tapping his fingers together, he stared at Justin like a cat trying to decide whether a mouse was worthy of attention.

Briggs had permitted Justin to visit the prisoner out of respect for the church, but his disapproval of the preacher's visit was etched in every pore of his
sunbaked
skin. His musÂtache twitching, he indicated the ladder-back chair in front of his desk with a nod of his head.

"Did you get a confession from her, Reverend? Did she tell you how she killed my sister's husband in cold blood?"

Justin sat down and balanced his hat on his knee. He gave the marshal careful regard before responding. After what happened in Boston, he wasn't eager to divulge havÂing spent all that time alone with Sarah. It wasn't only his own reputation that worried him; he hoped to prove Sarah's innocence and, for that, he needed credibility. Any scandalous gossip about the two of them could only hurt his cause.

"I'm sorry about the death of your brother-in-law, and my sympathies are with your sister." Briggs said nothing, and Justin continued, "Miss Prescott had nothing to do with Owen's death. The two of them were ambushed,
and
Owen was shot in the shoulder.
Sarah . . .
Miss Prescott did everyÂthing in her power to save him."

"That's what she told you, eh?" Briggs dropped his feet to the floor and he hit the desk with his fist. "My brother-in-law left Texas for one purpose and one purpose alone, to track down Sarah Prescott. I don't care who fired the actual bullet. I hold the Prescott family personally responsible for his death."

"While the real killer goes free?"

The marshal's eyes glittered. "I'll have them all before I'm through, don't you worry
none
about that."

Justin fingered his hat. "Revenge is a poor excuse for justice."

The lawman's mouth twitched as if he fought to control his anger. "It would be to your advantage to stick to
preachin
' and let me worry about the likes of Sarah Prescott."

"I don't know about Texas, but in Boston, that would be considered a threat."

"Call it what you want," Briggs said, his mouth twisted in contempt. "Owen was a fine man. He was also a husband and father," Briggs said. "Thanks to
that.
. .
that woman, my sisÂter is a widow and his children orphans."

Justin chose his words carefully. He didn't want to say anything
that
could be used against Sarah. "Miss Prescott hasn't been charged with Owen's death."

"
More's
the pity." Briggs picked up a paper from his desk and waved it. "This here is a proclamation signed by the Honorable Judge
Fassbender
himself, ordering Sarah Prescott to hang for the death of a Wells Fargo passenger durÂing the course of a robbery. I'll just have to be satisfied with hanging her once."

"What if I prove that Miss Prescott was wrongly accused?"

"You're beginning to sound more like one of those fancy Boston lawyers than a preacher."

Ignoring the mockery in the marshal's voice, Justin perÂsisted, "She's guilty of no crime."

"She's a Prescott. Around these parts, that's crime enough."

"The real crime is hanging a woman without a fair trial."

"She had a trial, Reverend. When I took the oath of office, I vowed to uphold law and order. I have the full support and approval of the folks in this town."

"The full support, huh? Well, I guess we can't argue with popular opinion, can we?"

Justin stood and walked casually toward the door. His hand on the tarnished brass doorknob, he looked over his shoulder and regarded the marshal thoughtfully.

"One more thing, Marshal.
I'll be bringing Miss Prescott's . . ." He hesitated and cleared his throat.
"Her daughter to see her later today."
It wasn't exactly a lie as Sarah was, in fact, Elizabeth's godmother. More than that, she was the only mother Elizabeth had.

Briggs sat back in surprise. "Miss Prescott has a daughÂter?" he sputtered.

"Her name's Elizabeth. She's still a baby. It sure is going to be tough on her, growing up without a mother."

The lawman rubbed his chin. It was obvious from his dark expression that this was not welcome news. "I didn't know she
was . . ."
He caught himself. "That's not my problem."

"Maybe.
Maybe not," Justin drawled. "Of course when word gets out that you're stringing up an infant's mother, the folks around here might take issue with the way you carry out justice. You just never know, do you? The public can be so fickle at times.
Especially during an election year."

Justin glanced at the
Vote for Briggs for County Sheriff
sign in the window. Similar signs were plastered all around town. Briggs had his eye on bigger and better things, but according to Ma, he was fast losing ground to his opponent. Briggs obviously counted on a Prescott hanging to turn the tide in his favor.

Justin placed his hat on his head and opened the door. "Good day, Marshal."

M
a had just finished feeding Elizabeth when Justin returned to the boardinghouse.

"She's a little angel," she declared, shifting the sleeping baby onto her shoulder and patting her on the back.

Justin ran a knuckle along the baby's cheek. "That she is." He turned a chair around, straddled it, and folded his arms on top of the ladder back.

"Do you know anything about the county sheriff? I believe his name is
Bockoven
."

Ma heaved a sigh. "At one time, he was the best. He helped us through all that terrible Indian trouble." Ma told him about Rocky Creek's Indian war and how her husband had been killed while defending the town against a raid. The
Comanches
were finally moved to a reservation in Indian
territory
, thus effectively ending their Indian troubles and making the fort outside of town obsolete.

"The sheriff took an arrow to the back during that raid. He recovered, but he was never the same and got worse over time. It's like the arrow poison kept eating away at his brain or something. They tried to hide it, but old man
Thompkins
rode out to see him recently. Though he and the sheriff have been friends for years, the sheriff didn't even know who he was."

"That's too bad," Justin said. Abandoning any hope of getting
Bockoven
to intervene on Sarah's behalf, he decided to put his second plan into action. "Tell me, if I wanted the whole town to know something important, how would I go about spreading the word?"

Ma
lay
Elizabeth in her tiny crate before answering. "If you want it spread accurately, you could tell the Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive."

"Is that still a problem?" he asked, surprised. Boston's medical community had come a long way in preventing such tragedies.

"Not so much anymore. Doc Myers is up on all the latest medical advancements. If he declares you're dead, you better believe that you are." She hesitated a moment. "Speaking of the doctor, it might not be a bad idea to take the baby to see him. He has this instrument that can administer smallpox vacÂcinations with hardly any pain."

He hadn't thought about taking Elizabeth to a doctor and he felt a surge of guilt. "Yes, that's a good idea. I'll take her." Anxious to get back to the original topic, he leaned forward. "I'm not so much interested in accuracy as I am in speed. Who would I go to if I wanted news spread fast?"

Ma's yellow-toothed grin looked like ripe corn. "In that case, Reverend, you tell the ladies of the Rocky Creek Quilting Bee."

"The quilting bee, eh?"
He sat back and smiled to himself. Well, what do you know? Texas wasn't all that different from Boston, after all.

The ladies of the Rocky Creek Quilting Bee met in the widow Mrs. Taylor's home two afternoons a week and just happened to be meeting that very next day. According to Ma, no marÂriage, birth, or death was considered official until a quilt marking the occasion was made and presented to the family with great fanfare by the group's leader.

Following Ma's directions, he found Mrs. Taylor's clapÂboard house and knocked on the widow's door. The door flew open on its own, but the ladies inside were too busy chatting to hear his knocks.

He stepped into the cool parlor that opened to a dining room. The quilters sat around a long, narrow table covered with colorful fabric scraps.

No one noticed Justin standing in the doorway, Elizabeth in his arms. She was dressed for the occasion in a pretty blue frock that Ma had whipped up on her hand-cranked sewing machine.

Justin waited politely for an opening in the conversation to introduce himself. But the longer he stood, the more he feared he would never get a word in edgewise.

Their nimble fingers were hardly able to keep up with the latest gossip that flowed around the table like rising floodwaters.

"If you ask me," one older woman sniffed, "Sarah Prescott is getting exactly what she deserves."

A young woman who was obviously with child shook her head. "It doesn't seem right to me. A woman can't vote, but she can be strung up like some common horse thief just because she's a Prescott."

"It's not just because she's a Prescott," another quilter argued. "She and her brothers shot that passenger in cold blood. The marshal says she's also responsible for Marshal Owen's death."

A woman with a sharp, pointed nose rose to her feet. "If that's true, she deserves her fate!"

Everyone talked at once until a matronly woman wearing a big feathered hat spotted Justin. She clapped her hands together until the room grew silent,
then
turned to him. "May we help, help you?"

Justin introduced himself. "I'm Reverend Wells, the new pastor of the church, and this is Elizabeth."

The woman who appeared to be the leader of the group rose and swept toward him, apologizing profusely. "Oh, yes, yes, I heard you arrived. It's about time Rocky Creek had a pastor of its own." While most of the other women wore unadorned bonnets, the leader's outlandish hat looked like a flock of birds about to take flight.