I stared at him.
“He said it was freight business.”
“It wasn’t.”
Victor stepped forward.
“That’s enough.”
Nathan ignored him.
“Samuel attended a county auction.”
My brow tightened.
“What auction?”
Victor barked, “Rusk!”
Sheriff Rusk raised his revolver.
Nathan turned slowly.
“You sure about this, Sheriff?”
Rusk’s hand shook.
Victor shouted, “Arrest him!”
Rusk swallowed.
Then he looked at Victor.
“I’m sorry.”
Victor blinked.
“What?”
Rusk pointed the revolver at Nathan.
“Federal paper doesn’t mean much if the federal man never leaves town.”
Nathan stared at him.
Rusk stepped forward.
“Unbuckle your gun belt.”
The crowd murmured.
Nathan looked toward me.
I saw something in his eyes.
Not fear.
Calculation.
Slowly, he removed his gun belt.
Rusk took it.
Victor exhaled.
His confidence returned immediately.
“There,” he said. “Much better.”
Nathan’s wrists were tied.
Then Victor walked toward me.
He brushed dust from my shoulder like a gentleman removing lint.
“I’m afraid your rescuer has complicated matters.”
I stared at him.
“What did Samuel buy?”
Victor’s hand stopped.
That was when I knew.
Nathan had spoken the truth.
Whatever Samuel had done in Stanton County, Victor Caldwell feared it more than he feared a federal marshal.
Victor smiled.
“Your husband bought nothing.”
Nathan spoke from behind Rusk.
“That’s a lie.”
Victor turned.
Nathan’s voice carried across the square.
“Samuel Hale paid forty dollars at the Stanton County auction on April seventeenth.”
Victor’s face went white.
“He didn’t borrow forty dollars.”
Nathan looked directly at me.
“He spent it.”
I forgot the ropes cutting my wrists.
“On what?”
Nathan opened his mouth.
Victor struck him across the face.
Hard.
Blood appeared at Nathan’s lip.
“Take both of them inside.”
Two men grabbed Nathan.
Another cut me loose from the post only to wrench my arms behind me.
As they dragged us toward the courthouse, Martha Greeley suddenly shouted from the crowd.
“Victor!”
Everyone looked at her.
She was sixty years old, barely five feet tall, and had spent twenty-two years selling coffee, flour, nails, and peppermint sticks.
Victor turned.
Martha looked at the abandoned whip lying in the dirt.
Then at me.
Her voice trembled.
“Shame on you.”
A sound moved through the crowd.
Low.
Almost like wind.
Victor stared at her.
Nobody had spoken to him that way in years.
Then Jonah Pike stepped beside Martha.
“You heard her.”
Another man moved forward.
Then another.
Victor’s riflemen turned toward them.
For several horrible seconds I thought the square would explode in gunfire.
Nathan shouted, “Nobody be stupid!”
The crowd stopped.
Victor smiled.
But it was no longer the smile of a king.
It was the smile of a man who had just discovered the walls of his castle were cracking.
They locked Nathan and me in separate cells beneath the courthouse.
For two hours nobody spoke.
I sat on a wooden bench with my wrists burning and Samuel’s name pounding through my mind.
April seventeenth.
I remembered that day.
