Chapter 27
Rafe watched Russ Dewayne’s brows furrow, the lines around the eyes grow deeper. Some of the warmth he’d initially showed Jack Randall faded away as he listened intently.
Every once in a while the sheriff’s gaze flickered over to Rafe, as if weighing the impact of the words being said. Dewayne listened in silence as his two sons swore several times in low voices.
When Randall had finished, Dewayne turned to Rafe. “Why in the hell didn’t you say something about this several days ago?”
Rafe shrugged. “Once you saw that brand, you weren’t going to believe anything I said.”
Dewayne turned back to Jack Randall. “Why are you telling me this now?” His tone was suspicious, as if there was still something Randall wasn’t telling him, some excuse for Randall’s actions, which clearly offended the lawman.
“I … was going to, I told McClary as much. That’s why he shot me. He thought he’d left me dead.”
“Why should I believe you? McClary is conveniently dead.”
Randall looked at Rafe, then back to Dewayne. “There’s no reason I should incriminate myself if it weren’t true, damn it.”
“Your daughter, perhaps. We know this man had others working with him. Maybe they threatened her.”
Rafe felt his jaw tighten. Dewayne would obviously rather believe anything that would excuse Randall. To hell with the truth. He stood restlessly, his anger explosive.
“Sit down!” Dewayne ordered.
“Why in hell don’t you just hand me over to that mob in Casey Springs?”
The sheriff’s face grew grimmer. “I’m sorry about that. If I had known, realized, I wouldn’t have taken you there.”
Rafe snorted, his bitter disbelief obvious. “Sorry? Why? I’m just an ex-convict who’s threatening the daughter of your leading most respectable citizen.”
“You also admit you’ve been robbing stagecoaches and the express office. Now sit down.”
Rafe balled his hands into fists but sat back down.
Dewayne sat back in his seat, studying each man carefully. “What a damn mess,” he said. “Jack, you say you knew McClary was committing those murders and you just let him go on doing it. You know that makes you an accomplice.”
Randall nodded grimly. “I wish I had an excuse other than cowardice, but I don’t. I wanted to protect what I’d built.”
Russ Dewayne shook his head. “I thought I knew you. And you,” Dewayne said, turning his attention to Rafe. “You were going to prove you were innocent by robbing stagecoaches?”
Rafe smiled wryly at the ironic tone in the sheriff’s voice. “I just wanted Randall exposed. I thought if I pushed him hard enough, he would resort to his old ways of getting cash.”
“It seems you managed that. You can share the same cell together.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Rafe said.
“No, I don’t suppose it was,” Dewayne said, staring at both of them with distaste, and then fastened a stare on Rafe. “Why in the hell did you come in with him, anyway? Wanted to make sure?”
Rafe shrugged. “I guess I reached the same conclusion you did. Stealing those payrolls was a pretty damn stupid thing to do, and I didn’t want to keep running the rest of my life.”
“Because of the girl?” Dewayne asked shrewdly.
“That’s … part of it.”
“What about the others who worked with you? Where are they?”
Rafe’s body stiffened. “They … are gone. I have all the money. They just wanted to help me. It was all my doing, my planning. No one was hurt.”
“Strangest damn bunch of outlaws I’ve seen,” Dewayne said, “giving up that kind of money. But do you really think it’s that easy? Forget armed robbery because you and your friends were doing it for what you considered a just cause? The law doesn’t work that way. I want to know who they are.”
“No.”
“You want to go back to prison real bad, don’t you?” Dewayne said.
Rafe’s lips thinned into a hard line. He didn’t answer.
The silence in the room was suddenly punctuated by the sound of hoofbeats outside. Michael Dewayne went over to the window. “It’s Quarles from Casey Springs with about twenty men.”
Dewayne looked toward his sons. “Ed, go out the back and get what’s left of my men over here. Michael, you stay with these two.”
He left the room, Ed behind him, and Michael went to the door, keeping it open just enough to hear as Russ opened the front door.
“Quarles?”
“I heard you captured the two men who escaped from my jail and my goddamn dumb deputy. I want them.”
“They’re my prisoners,” Russ said. “They’re going to stay here until I can take them to Denver. I heard you almost had a lynching there the other night. I thought you had more control over your town than that.”
“I want them, Russ,” the sheriff from Casey Springs said. “You don’t have anyplace to keep them.”
“It appears you don’t either. I can guarantee they won’t escape from here.”
“It’s my jurisdiction.”
“Hell it is. The crimes occurred in my territory. I voluntarily took a prisoner to your jail, thinking he would be safe. I was mistaken. Now take your men and get out of here.”
“Not without those prisoners. No one escapes from my custody.”
“Nor is anyone taken from mine,” Russ Dewayne said coolly. “And don’t even think about trying.” He looked out. Men were coming out of his bunkhouse, rifles in hand, surrounding the mounted men.
“You haven’t heard the last of this,” Quarles said.
Dewayne shrugged. “Take your complaint to the governor. I never wanted this goddamn job, but now I have it, I’ll do it my way.”
Rafe could hear every angry word from the sheriff, every calm one from Dewayne. He sensed the simmering fury in the visitor’s sudden silence.
Rafe’s estimation of Russ Dewayne continued to grow. He knew Dewayne had been right. Neither he nor Randall would have lasted the night in the Casey Springs makeshift jail.
“You’ll pay for this,” the sheriff blustered as he made his retreat.
“Maybe,” Dewayne said calmly, stepping out on the porch. Rafe couldn’t hear any more. Several minutes later Dewayne returned, chomping down on a cigar.
“Now where were we?” he asked.
Rafe paced back and forth across the bedroom he now shared with Jack Randall. A guard sat outside the window, and another outside the door. Dewayne had obviously meant exactly what he’d said when he’d predicted Rafe and Randall would share a cell.
This room was a damn sight more comfortable than a cell at the Ohio Penitentiary, but it was a cage nonetheless.
He wished to hell he knew what Dewayne thought, but the lawman had been uncommunicative, and his expression poker-faced. Rafe had not the slightest hint of what to expect of him, not after he refused for the second time to give Dewayne the names of the men who rode with him.
He had been given several minutes alone with Shea, just to hold her, to feel her strength and faith. He hadn’t dared kiss her, because that invariably led to something else he couldn’t afford at the moment.
She had looked at him with questions in her eyes.
“Your father did everything he said he would,” he said gently. For her own peace he wanted her to forgive her father, even if he never could.
“Why don’t they let you go, then?”
“I still robbed those stages,” he said, “and then I’m not entirely sure Dewayne believed everything … your father said.”
“What … will happen to him?”
“He’ll probably stand trial.”
She leaned against him, and he knew she was seeking his strength, when all the time she was his. He finally said the words that had been in his mind and heart. “I love you, Shea. I have no right to … tell you that now, but …”
Shea looked up at him with those damn expressive blue-gray eyes that always seemed to reach inside and see what no one else had ever seen. “You didn’t have to tell me,” she said. “You’ve told me in so many other ways. But … but I’m so glad you did.”
He gathered her closer to him, wondering how anything so … perfect could have happened to him, wondering whether it had come too late.
And then the knock on the door, and Dewayne stood there, waiting for him.…
Randall had been silent ever since he, too, had been incarcerated in this luxurious jail.
He had taken a chair and placed it where he could look out toward the mountains and had directed his gaze that way.
There was nothing left to be said between the two men.
Their enforced proximity did nothing to alleviate the tension between them.
Rafe took the bed, pillowing his head on his hands. He was too tired to even think any longer, which was a blessing. His eyes closed and oblivion took over his thoughts.
Russ Dewayne took three days to check out the stories. He knew he couldn’t take much longer. Quarles would be hammering at the door of anyone with any influence.
He’d sent a telegram to the Army Department for details of the court-martial.
He checked with the remainder of Randall’s hands to make sure Randall couldn’t have killed the miners, and he questioned Shea at length to make sure that Rafe couldn’t have committed the murders.
She’d finally told him she had been with Rafe, but that he had in no way kidnapped her.
To avoid throwing blame on Ben or Clint, she said that part of her original story was true, that she had become lost and Rafe had found her. She told Dewayne about the bear and said that was why she had stayed with Rafe, to nurse him after he had rescued the cub at her request.
She also told Dewayne about finding the box with the letters and the money, and the clipping about the court-martial.
Russ finally decided that Sam McClary had been behind the killings, that he had been killed in self-defense by Rafe Tyler.
The other matters were more complicated.
It worried him that he had been so wrong about Jack Randall, and that he had jumped to conclusions about Tyler because of the brand. If Tyler had been lynched …