Tatiana March - The Marshal's Wyoming Bride

“The little bitch, we have to do something.”

“No, leave her be.”

The one wearing a sergeant’s stripes dug out a few coins, tossed them down.

“Buy yourself a new dress, sweetheart.”

Heavy boots crashed past Dale’s hiding place. He counted the men passing. One. Two. Three. Only one more, and they’d be gone. He could go to Laurel. Help her. Comfort her.

A gunshot.

“Hey, Krieger, what did you do that for?”

“Couldn’t leave the little bitch telling tales.”

Dale woke up, the sheets soaked with perspiration, his body trembling, the nightmare still holding him in its grip. Two sets of patrician beauty, one merely a promise at sixteen, the other fully blossomed in her early twenties, merged in his mind. And it became clear to him that whatever the outcome of his investigation—whether Rowena McKenzie was guilty of murder or not—he could not let her die at the end of a rope.

Chapter Two

Tired and bleary-eyed, Dale ate breakfast in the hotel dining room. Sitting alone at a corner table, he fished a pencil stub from his pocket, tore a piece of paper from an old copy of the Arizona Weekly Citizen , and jotted down a list of questions:

1. Who was the man who caused a commotion when Revery was shot?

2. When did that man come into town and where was he now?

3. Had anyone seen Rowena McKenzie talking with Revery?

4. Who owned the wagon Revery crashed into the gully?

5. Who owned the wagon horse that ended the same way?

6. Had Rowena McKenzie lost any money in the swindle?

7. Who else had lost money and how much?

Not wasting any time, Dale tossed down his napkin, finished his coffee and set off to conduct his interviews. Outside, the street was quiet. Clouds had gathered in the sky again, and yesterday’s drizzle was turning into a few flakes of snow, the final gasp of winter. Good , Dale thought. The bad weather would keep people indoors and the storekeepers would have more time to talk.

He started with the barbershop. The small, dapper man with an oiled mustache gave him an assessing glance. “A haircut, sir?”

Dale nodded, took down his hat and settled in the reclining leather chair. Might as well use the time productively while he went about his business.

By early afternoon, he’d had his boots polished, his coat pressed, the fraying cartridge loops on his gun belt restored. He’d tasted three different kinds of angel cake, sipped whiskey and beer and tea and coffee. He’d listened to voices that ranged from shrilly female to the croak of an adolescent boy to the raspy cough of a man who smoked too much.

Everyone had good things to say about Rowena McKenzie. Pinares had been founded by Quakers, and although no one used thou or thee anymore, the abhorrence of violence that went with the religion was deeply ingrained in the community. In some other town, Rowena McKenzie might not even have been arrested for what she had done, but instead the citizens might have taken up a collection to reward her for so efficiently dispatching the conman who had taken advantage of their trust.

Dale’s best source of information was Alice Meek, the sturdy proprietor of the café where Rowena McKenzie worked. Needing little prompting, the woman talked in a breezy monologue while she chopped meat and vegetables for a stew, the only item on the lunch menu chalked to the blackboard by the entrance.

“The man that caused the commotion were a feller by the name of Robert Smith. New to town, he was. A small man, quiet and well spoken. A good customer at lunchtime. The first one to lay his money down for this mining claim. Kept telling everyone what a good investment it was. Went right off his head, poor soul. Don’t know what became of him. Rode off that very night. I reckon he took to hiding, too afraid to let his wife know he’d lost the money he was meant to use to bring his family out here. He were from Pennsylvania.”

“Did Miss Rowena get taken in by the swindlers, too?”

Carrot slices tumbled into the cauldron. “Miss Rowena? Invest? Poor lamb, she ain’t got a penny to spare. I’d like to pay her more but times are tough.” Mrs. Meek shook her head. “She’d been ill with a fever, Miss Rowena, but when she got to her feet again she went round warning people against parting with their money. Nobody listened to her, though, even though she has more book learning than any of them, of course excepting Mr. Carpenter—that’s the lawyer—and Reverend Poole.”

“Did you ever see her engage in private conversation with Revery?”

Mrs. Meek slammed the meat cleaver over a chunk of beef, mouth pursed, mental struggle evident on her rounded features. “Might as well tell you. Things usually come out anyway. Minna Tellerman—that’s the hotel owner’s wife—seen her come out of Revery’s room one night. Now, if it were any other woman, I’d think she been doing a bit of trade, if you take my meaning. But not Miss Rowena. She’s a lady, a real lady. Not a lady of the night.”

At his next stop, the livery stable, Dale discovered the wagon used in the escape had been rented but the horse, a big chestnut thoroughbred, had belonged to Revery, and he had ridden the animal into town. It was uncommon to have a horse trained for both harness and saddle, a detail which added to Dale’s suspicions.

A telegram to the Claims Recorder in the Warren Mining District received the surprising reply that the mining claim the swindlers had been peddling did in fact exist and had been legally filed, but the land had been sampled and was deemed worthless. However, the presence of the nearby Copper Queen mine in Bisbee, valued at nearly two million dollars, allowed even plain gravel to be marketed as if it were solid copper.

Dale returned to his room, compiled a list of the victims and the amounts they had lost. No one had been swindled out of more than one hundred dollars, a relatively modest amount in such an affluent town, and the majority of the victims had lost fifty or twenty-five dollars. It seemed the fraudsters were skilled in estimating what people could afford, and only allowed them to invest accordingly, using the excuse that they had a limited number of shares in the claim available and needed to give everyone an opportunity to profit.

When the list of investors was complete, Dale added up the total. Altogether, Revery and his accomplice, Robert Smith, had taken just over three thousand dollars.

Of course, Revery and Smith were unlikely to be their real names. Frowning, Dale searched his memory. He could recall reading about a similar case in Colorado a year earlier. On that occasion, the perpetrators had called themselves Edmond Rawlins and Billy Jones. One name with matching initials, the other so common it wouldn’t trigger any alarm bells. Everything tied together neatly. The only thing Dale couldn’t figure out was how Rowena McKenzie fitted into the setup. He got to his feet, glimpsed at his new haircut in the mirror and pulled on his freshly pressed coat. Time to find out.

* * *

It was not lonely in the jail. Women came to visit, delivering clean clothes and gossip. As long as the other two cells remained unoccupied, the nights were calm. The meals were adequate and the sheriff provided hot water to wash and the privacy to benefit from it.

If it hadn’t been for the worry about Claude and Eugene, and the guilt over having betrayed the people in Pinares that constantly chafed at her, like a pair of ill-fitting shoes, Rowena might have regarded her incarceration as a holiday. She harbored no fears about her own fate, for she took it for granted that the judge would believe her when the time came to reveal the truth. But today she felt restless. When her ears picked out a slightly uneven cadence of footsteps in the corridor, her heartbeat quickened.