by P. A. Bechko
The banker strolled closer to the jail cells looking at Hollander sprawled on his cot, one knee up, wrist resting on it with studied indifference. When he spoke it was for Amanda’s ears.
“Never know at a trial. Could be someone might not remember things clearly. Could be I might remember you didn’t have anything to do with it. That it was just the drifter in the next cell.”
“You bastard!” Amanda ground out the oath, amazed at how easily it had come to her lips.
“Whatever you say.” He turned away, rejoining the sheriff at the door.
Stunned, Amanda turned back to Jake, her face hardening, a grimness matching his etching itself deeply into her features.
Chapter 3
Hollander had tried to prepare her for the verdict, down to the fact that it would take the good citizens of the town no time at all to make a decision. Even so, the outcome had shocked Amanda. How could it have been such a pre-determined event as far as her cell-mate had predicted? Abrupt, and unalterable, the sentence was as Jake had foreseen. They were to hang with the sunrise.
When she’d heard the sentence actually droned out loud, Amanda had endured a hard lump in her throat and a tightening in the pit of her stomach. Plainly the audience had expected her to break down and cry, but instead. she got mad. More furious than she’d ever been before in her life or, she reflected then with grim humor, was ever likely to be again in light of her fate. Like a bitter pill the injustice of it stuck in her throat right there alongside that lump, and she had wanted to swear and scream her rage in their pious faces. However, she’d managed to hold herself in check, not willing to give Berglund any more to gloat over than he had just witnessed.
So, her face had stilled into an emotionless mask with the smooth coolness of fine polished marble, and she had chosen to look only to the man who shared her fate—Jake Hollander.
Jake, touching her hand in a gesture of comfort, had stood close beside her, directing his insolent glare at the jury, the judge and John Berglund.
He had seen the instantaneous look of shock on Amanda’s face, and then had come the change. And that expression had been one of cold fury. She proved she wasn’t going to go to pieces on him. A wry twist of his lips had become an encouraging smile when they’d been led from the make-shift courtroom in the closed saloon, past the gallows that were already under construction in front of the livery, and back to their respective jail cells.
Once there the sheriff turned suddenly more human.
“Reckon I ought to ask you if there’s anythin’ special you’d like to eat, seeing as how you two didn’t get any dinner and this would be your last meal.”
The cell door clanged shut.
“Are you crazy? I don’t believe this,” Amanda said tightly. “You’re going to murder us both in a few hours, but now you want to bring us a midnight snack.”
“You’ve been found guilty of murder and robbery, and sentenced by the court,” the sheriff intoned, giving Amanda an unapologetic look. “I’ll do my duty and carry out that sentence.”
“I’ll have a thick steak, potatoes, black coffee, and some canned peaches if you can rustle them up,” Hollander’s low, commanding tone cut across both of them. “And bring the lady the same.”
“Have to get ol’ Marty out of bed . . .” Carson muttered.
“He can sleep tomorrow,” Hollander quietly reminded him.
“I’m not hungry,” Amanda remarked acidly as the sheriff departed on his errand easing the door quietly closed behind him.
“Eat whatever he brings,” Jake advised. “If we get out of here it could be days before either of us gets a chance to eat again.”
“How are we going to get out of here?”
“I’ve got a few thoughts on the matter,” he confided from across the bars. “But you’re going to have to go along with me.”
Amanda moved closer.
“How?”
“You’re already doing it.”
“What?”
“Sheriff sees us as a pair. Up ‘til now that hasn’t been good. But since he’s facing hanging a woman, we might be able to turn it our way. You let him know the only thing that’ll ease your last hours, is to eat your last meal here in this cell with me.”
Jake watched Amanda’s face, and damned if she didn’t show some color in those alabaster cheeks.
“I—I’m afraid I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
“You better get good, and in a hurry. Anything I ask for, he’ll be suspicious of, but he just might be blind enough to give in to you—if you let him think he might get a little something out of it.”
The red stain on Amanda’s cheeks spread. Her unusual green eyes darkened.
“Oh. Oh! You want him to think that you and I—that we . . .” she stammered in a soft, very small voice.
The wicked gleam was there in his light gray eyes when she dared to meet his gaze. He nodded.
“He already thinks that. But you can get his mind wandering in directions he shouldn’t be letting it meander.”
Amanda curled her hands over the cool bars. “You can’t think of something else?”
“Probably could. But we don’t have time.”
She swallowed hard.
“All right. But you’re not to take anything I say or do seriously, and I you better keep thinking about another way just in case he laughs in my face.”
“He’d never do that to a woman who looks like you.”
Oh, great, Amanda thought and leaned against the bars for support. If she didn’t escape with Jake Hollander she was going to hang. If she did escape, what, she wondered, did he intend to extract as payment? She knew possessed some moral code, but how far it extended beyond the boundaries of civilization, she couldn’t begin to guess.
Only a short time later the sheriff returned bearing a heavily laden tray. He wore a grim look, lines driven deeply in about the corners of his mouth, dark eyes flat and hard. When he reached her cell Amanda pressed close to the bars.
“Sheriff,” she spoke softly, tentatively, hoping Hollander wouldn’t be able to hear much, but very much aware he would. “would it be possible for Jake—I mean for us to share our meal, in the same cell? There’s not much time left.”
The words trembled on her lips and her eyes were momentarily downcast, her voice husky with meaning. God, she didn’t have to fake it, she couldn’t meet the sheriff’s eyes when she spoke the words.
Carson glanced quickly at the range rider lounging on his cot, his face a practiced study in blankness, then gave Amanda an appraising gaze which sent the blood flooding into her cheeks all over again.
A muscle worked along his hard jawbone as the sheriff considered the matter, more going on behind those deep-set dark eyes than Amanda cared to contemplate.
“What could it hurt?” she persisted. “No one need ever know.” She choked out the last word for effect.
Sheriff Carson’s face was written with suspicion and indecision right along with the grim certainty that he had been right about her guilt.
That look made something in Amanda’s stomach curl up in a hard knot, but his eyes reflected the guilt Hollander had predicted. They also mirrored a greedy desire.
Then she lowered her voice to conspiratorial whisper, forcing the words out in a seductive purr.
“If you let us have some time together, then maybe later, you and I could . . .”
“Ain’t very lady-like,” he remarked, but the key was extended in his hand.
Amanda threw everything to the four winds and gave him a sensuous smile. “Who said I was a lady, sheriff?”
“Was a helluva good act.”
“Any woman can do that if she has the right motivation.”
She didn’t even dare look in Hollander’s direction. The sheriff wavered between compassion and his own inclinations where she was concerned. She held her breath, an icy chill running up and down her spine, as she waited for him to make up his mind.
God she hoped Hollander
had another idea if this one didn’t work.
Just about the time when she was sure he wasn’t going to go for it, the sheriff gave a short nod.
“All right, but he stays put. You go to him.”
He stuck the key in her cell door and stepped back, drawing his gun as he placed the heavy tray on his desk, then gestured toward the keys.
“You open the door, step on out here and get the tray, then open his door and go on inside.” He leveled serious, darkened eyes on Hollander. “You don’t even twitch or I’ll blow you in two and the lady will have to swing alone.”
“This is her idea, not mine, sheriff, though I welcome the company.”
Sheriff Carson shook his head and frowned more deeply as Amanda slid one small white hand between the bars and turned the key in the lock, feeling the thick bolt slide free.
“Reckon I’m beginning to see how you got yourself involved in all this trouble, little lady,” he said evenly, his gaze centered on Jake. “If only you hadn’t killed Eddie.”
Amanda had it on the tip of her tongue to disclaim any connection with Eddie’s death, but what was the point?
In silence she collected the burdensome tray, turned primly on her heel and walked, straight-backed, to Jake’s cell. She balanced the tray on one hand and open the lock. She even broke into an unladylike sweat, staring at Hollander, every muscle knotted, waiting for him to move.
The Sheriff kicked the cell door shut after Amanda, then held his gun on Hollander with one hand while he turned the key in the lock with the other.
On her side of the bars Amanda bent to place the heavy tray on a small stool before the cot. The clanging of the metal door in its frame sent a shudder throughout her body. What had all that been if not a chance for him to jump Carson? Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? She sat down beside Hollander.
Here was beside a man she hardly knew, praying to run off into the wilderness with him. Well, what other choice was there? Breaking jail was immensely preferable to hanging.
The sheriff gave them both a disgusted look.
“I’ll be back directly.”
He turned and left, closing the door behind him.
Amanda turned to Hollander, wondering what had happened to her safe cocoon of a world.
“I thought you were going to do something.”
“Like what?”
“Knock him out. Steal the keys. I don’t know! Get us away from here!”
“And how would you propose I might have accomplished that?”
“By using the element of surprise to get the drop on him!”
“You think there was one?”
“Well . . .”
Amanda was suddenly wary, withdrawing slightly from close proximity to him.
Jake gave a snort of disgust. “He’s not going to give us much time. You’ve got him all hot and bothered now about what’s in it for him, and he wants to be damned sure to have enough time to collect. If you want to get out of here you’re going to have to do whatever I say without question until we get a good distance away from here.”
He gave her a measuring look. The woman was obviously not pleased with his pronouncement.
“Eat,” he commanded her gesturing toward the tray, “we don’t know when our next chance will be, but first, give me your petticoat.”
“What?” Amanda demanded. “I . . .”
Jake’s raised eyebrow stopped her in mid-protest.
“All right!”
She stood up abruptly, hands on hips.
He jerked the white cover from the tray and helped himself to the food while Amanda edged away several steps and wormed her way out of her petticoat. Tossing him the requested white undergarment, she dropped down onto the edge of the cot to follow his second order and dig into her own food, her stomach knotting at the smell of it.
“What are you doing?” She asked Jake between forkfuls.
“The best I can, Lady.”
“My name is Amanda, and there’s no reason to be sarcastic! Can I help?”
Between mouthfuls of food, Jake tore and cut the voluminous undergarment she had given him into long thin strips and braided them together to form a long, rope-like coil. He looked at her and sighed a sigh of the damned.
“We need two things. My gun and a way out of here. First I’m going to get my gun.”
His gun, in its holster, lay on the far corner of the sheriff’s desk, nearly concealed by a thick book in front of it. Extending his arms through the bars, Hollander held the length of white rope, a loop in one end, and started twirling it in slow, rhythmic circles.
The too-light, make-shift lasso caught a corner of the book on the first try. Jake tugged it gently until the book fell from the desk smacking the floor with a crack like a pistol shot.
Amanda jumped, but the noise of the book’s fall did nothing to disturb the man manipulating the white rope. With steady hands he threw it again. This time it settled over the holster and gun. A gentle tug tightened the loop and Jake drew it evenly across the desk top toward them. The gun made the same drop over the edge of the desk as the book before it. A solid thump sounded as it bounced off the book and thwacked the wooden floor, but the loop remained taut and Jake pulled the weapon swiftly to his hand.
Guns had always frightened Amanda, but, at the moment, Hollander’s gun sliding across the dusty floorboards at the end of a petticoat rope was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. If they managed to get out of this, Amanda was determined she would learn to handle a gun, driven by the certainty that once she was proficient, she would never again feel as helpless as she had during the past hours.
Jake snatched up the gun and holster rig as soon as his straining fingers could reach it, took off the soft loop of cloth and, with deft fingers, strapped the gunbelt around his hips. Amanda thought that that was all there was to it. That they would simply wait for the sheriff to return and demand their release at gun point.
She was wrong.
Hollander had other ideas. They had to have a solid lead if they were going to have a chance.
He turned back to the plate of food, now nearly empty, stuffed more into his mouth and turned to the single barred window at the rear of the cell, dinner knife in hand. He worked swiftly, gouging out deep holes in the wooden frame that held the bars in place.
Amanda watched, curiosity high while he gathered dust and bits of wood in the indentations, piled closely against the metal bars. He brought a bit of flint and stone out of his pocket. He struck the flint firmly against the stone, and in only seconds a small flame flickered to life alongside one of the bars. Jake blew very gently on the feeble scrap of fire, fanning it delicately larger until it burned strongly.
“Keep that going,” Jake commanded Amanda.
She climbed up on the cot taking over the task of nurturing the flame. He got a spark at the base of the second bar started. As the fire spread where she gently blew on it, Amanda realized what he was doing and wondered if he’d be able to accomplish the feat in time.
As the two small flames flickered and wavered with the stirring of the night air, they grew higher, broader and more powerful, burning into the dry wood like it was paper. The third spark caught and flared at the base of the last bar. He pocketed the flint and they waited as the flames ate their way deeper into the wall spreading into the wooden structure of the jail.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Amanda ventured as the flames swelled and started crawling determinedly down the wall.
“Not likely,” Jake countered. “It was the best I could come up with on short notice.”
He snatched the blanket from the cot and stood tensely waiting while the flames jumped and curled around the bars, eating away at the wood from which they sprang. The warmth cast off by Hollander’s creation grew more intense as the flames stretched higher. Wrapping his hand in several folds of the thick blanket, he reached above the bright heat of the fire, pressing the heel of his hand against first one bar, then another, exerting al
l the force he could muster.
At first the wooden seating of the metal bars held firm along the sill, but when he withdrew and returned again with even more determination, they both heard the groaning, splintering of weakened wood. An instant later one bar popped free with a shower of glowing embers. He smothered the lively flames with the blanket, scattering embers and soot.
Amanda managed to snuff them out as Jake forced a second bar. When it gave way he shifted his grip on the threadbare blanket and tossed it over the smoldering wood, unleashing a thick column of white smoke that backwashed into the cell. Amanda gasped and gagged between stifled, hacking coughs.
Jake slid through the smoking, barless window with the agility of a cat, landing on his feet outside, clothing scorched in several places. Amanda hastily piled the remnants of their dinner in a napkin, stuffed half of a juicy peach in her mouth, and hopped back up on the cot, to follow him through.
He was waiting for her when she dragged herself through the still-hot, sooty opening and caught her when she was about to topple, drawing her the rest of the way out to place her lightly on the ground close beside him.
He paused only an instant peering into the surrounding darkness, then Jake’s left hand enfolded her cooler, smaller right one in a grip of warm strength before he moved out swiftly, pulling her along in his wake. Amanda clung to their extra bit of food, and whispered urgently in his ear as they approached the livery.
“Where are we going?”
“The horses,” he nodded to the phantom shapes visible through a crack where the door stood ajar. “Hope my gear is still with them.”
“Both of them are yours?”
There must have been something doubtful in Amanda’s tone because Jake gave her a look that could have withered desert grass.
“What? You figure I’m not a bank robber, but more than likely a horse thief? Do you really care?”
Amanda shifted on her feet. For an instant she had cared, but she decided quickly that her inherently honest upbringing could be damned. This was a matter of life and death. Hers.
As if reading her thoughts Hollander gave her a half grin.
