Marcia Muller: Crucifixion River

“He saved our lives.”

“It was his life he was interested in saving, not anyone else’s.”

“Perhaps. Does it really matter?” I lay down on the second bed and drew the counterpane over me. “Can’t you sleep, Missus Devane?”

“No. As tired as I am, I have decisions to rethink. What has happened here tonight is sufficient to make one reconsider the wisdom of the course she’s undertaken.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

She hesitated before speaking, the crochet needles clicking in the silence. Then, as if needing to unburden herself, she said: “Two years ago I had an affair with a friend of my husband. My marriage wasn’t a brutal one like yours, it was simply…empty. I seldom saw John. He was in state government and constantly traveling from Sacramento to San Francisco. When he was at home, he ignored the children and me. I needed someone, and Hugh…well, he was everything John wasn’t…kind, attentive, ardent. And so we became lovers. Our affair lasted six months.”

“What happened then?”

“John found out about us.”

“What did he do?”

“Immediately began divorce proceedings. The court awarded him custody of David and William, with virtually no visitation rights allowed me. Life in Sacramento soon became intolerable for me. You must be aware how society treats a divorcee, particularly one of an important man.”

“Caroline, I’m so sorry. Did Hugh stand by you?”

“For a time. But he’s a successful lawyer and the scandal was damaging to him, too. I no longer blame him for ending our relationship. He really had no choice.”

“What will you do now?”

“The only member of my family who hasn’t turned on me is my sister Mary. She and her husband have invited me to live with them on their farm in San Joaquin County. But I suspect they only want me as extra help with the chores and their seven children. It would be a hard life for me.”

“Then why go there?” I said. “With your nurse’s training…”

“That’s what I’ve been considering. No one in Sacramento would allow me to practice. But this is a large country, and John’s influence and the web of rumor only extend so far. If I could establish myself in a new city, rebuild my respectability, then perhaps once my children are old enough…” She sighed. “But it takes time and means to accomplish that. I have a great deal of the former, but none of the latter.”

I was silent.

“Well, I’ve burdened you enough with my troubles,” Caroline said. “You have far too many of your own, and you must be very tired. I’ll let you sleep now. Perhaps I can, too.”

But I didn’t sleep right away. Joe was alive because of Caroline’s ministrations; I owed her a debt of gratitude for that. I found myself thinking of the $3,000 I’d taken from Luke’s safe. I no longer needed it now that Luke was dead and I was a wealthy widow. The money meant little to me, but it would mean a great deal to Caroline Devane. She was so desperately unhappy, just as I had been before Joe came into my life. My fortunes had changed, and it was in my power to change hers, too.

She wouldn’t take the full amount if I tried to give it to her; she was too proud to accept money as a gift. But she might be persuaded if I offered part of it as a loan. I determined to speak to her about it in the morning, and not to take no for an answer.

Traces of light began to seep in around the shutters on the bedroom window. Almost dawn. Sophie stirred beside me; I knew she’d also been awake for some time, even though she’d lain still and silent.

“Stopped raining,” she said now.

“About an hour ago. Wind’s died down, too.”

“I heard you get up earlier.”

“Checking on Joe Hoover. Missus Devane was there with him.”

“How is he?”

“Alive and resting easy. No fever.”

“She’s a good nurse and a strong woman, troubled or not.”

“Yes, but he still needs a doctor’s attention. He can’t travel…we’ll have to keep him here until the peddler can send Doc Kiley out from River Bend.”

“That’s right. Shock offered to return there this morning.”

“Not for any selfless reasons, I suspect. He knows he has to report shooting Kraft to the sheriff, even with witnesses to back him up, before he can move on.”

“Do you think the slough’s passable yet?”

“Water seemed to be settling when I looked out earlier, but it’s still running high and there’s a lot of debris. I’ll know better when it’s light. We’ll ferry the stage across as soon as it’s safe.”

She lay quietly again for a time. Then: “Nesbitt?”

“Too many people here now for him to do much except bide his time.”

“If he doesn’t speak to you right away, bring it out into the open yourself. We have to know what his intentions are.”

“I will.”

Blackbirds cried noisily somewhere outside-a sure sign that the weather had improved. When it was quiet again, Sophie said: “I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“You have to. If Nesbitt’s bent on using that sidearm of his…”

“No. We’ll put Annabelle on the stage in Pete’s care, but I’m staying here. No matter what happens. I won’t run again, Thomas, any more than you will.”

I made no reply. I had told her about Boone Nesbitt last night, when we were alone in bed, and she’d said the same thing then-no more running and hiding, for either of us. There was no point in trying to argue with her when her mind was made up. Whatever happened with Nesbitt, we would face it together.

Eight years. Eight long, difficult years. We’d sought to convince ourselves that after so much time, this day might never come. And yet we’d never quite believed it. Patrick Bellright was a relentless, bitter, vengeful man with unlimited funds; he would never stop hunting me until his dying day. There would be a reward on my head, a large one, and it would carry no stipulations or caveats. Wanted-dead or alive.

It was a monstrous miscarriage of justice, the result of an accident that was not my fault, that I could not have avoided. A Sunday afternoon drive through Jackson Park in a rented carriage, a small child chasing a ball out of a line of shrubs and yelling loudly enough to frighten the horse. Thrashing hoofs, a scream, a crushed form sprawled in the roadway. We had rushed the child to the nearest doctor, even though Sophie and I were sure there was no life left in her. Marissa Bellright. Seven years old, and Patrick Bellright’s only child.

The rest was nightmare. Dire threats, a murderous assault by one of his hirelings that I’d barely escaped. And then flight, again by bare escape, and arduous travel across country to this isolated backwater and a new, hardscrabble life as ferrymaster and innkeeper-labors as far removed from my former position as newspaper reporter and columnist as Chicago was from Twelve-Mile Crossing.

I had been a fool to submit my sketches for publication in San Francisco. Yet of all the possible ways I might be found by Bellright’s hirelings, my pseudonymous writings had seemed the most remote. There was no way I could have anticipated a man like Nesbitt, whoever he was, making the connection between Harold P. Baxter and T.J. Murdock. But it had happened, and now it was too late. For me, but not, I vowed, for Annabelle or Sophie.

The dawn light was brightening. Sophie and I both rose, washed up, and dressed. She went to the kitchen to make coffee and get breakfast started, and I went to check on Hoover again. Mrs. Devane and Rachel Kraft were both with him now; the two women seemed to have developed a comradeship. There was no change in Hoover’s condition.

Nesbitt was alone in the common room, stoking up the fire as he must have done throughout the night because the room was still warm. There was no sign of the peddler, Shock. As I crossed to the front door, Nesbitt stood up.