by Laurie Grant
Discouraged, Sarah returned with Stoner to the hotel, which was little more than a glorified boardinghouse, just in time to eat the supper of stringy roast beef that was all that was available in the hotel dining room. By now the rainstorm had reached the town, and the rain pounding at the fly-specked windows and the accompanying rumbles of thunder seemed a fitting background for the despair that etched her heart. She had accomplished nothing today, nothing to help Morgan
Later that evening Sarah was in her room, sitting in her chemise and pantalets while Celia brushed out Sarah’s abundant blond hair and clucked over her suntanned face.
“We’ll have to bathe your face with cream and lemon every day if we ever hope to restore your complexion—”
Just then they heard footsteps, followed by a knocking at her door. Thinking it was her uncle come to bid her good-night and groan once more over the discomforts of his room, Sarah flung her dressing gown around her shoulders and bid Celia to let Lord Halston in.
To her surprise, however, it was a black woman, rather than Uncle Frederick, standing at the door.
“You the duchess?” the woman asked her without preamble. At Sarah’s startled nod, she added, “I’m Daisy, Miz Tackett’s maid. She’s downstairs, and she wants to talk to you.”
Before a surprised Sarah could say anything, Celia spoke up behind her. “Show your mistress upstairs,” she said with the arrogance of one servant to another. “Her grace was just preparing for bed, as you can see.”
The black woman frowned at Celia, then said to Sarah, “Miz Tackett, she cain’t climb no stairs. You want to see her, you have to come down, Miz Duchess.”
“It’s all right, Daisy, I’ll see her,” Sarah interrupted. “Just give me a moment.” She was intrigued. Tackett’s wife was supposedly dying.... Why had she come to see her?
Five minutes later Sarah, accompanied by Celia, who was clutching a lighted kerosene lamp, descended the rickety stairs into the darkness of the lower floor. The sight of a light flickering in the parlor led them there, and they found Daisy standing guard over a shawl-swathed figure sitting hunched over in a wheeled chair.
Sarah immediately went over to the figure. “Mrs. Tackett, I’m Sarah Challoner. It’s very good of you to call on me,” she said, holding out her hand.
Just then Celia succeeded in lighting the other lamp in the room, and with the increased illumination chasing the shadows from the dark room, Sarah could see that the cowboy had not exaggerated the situation. Mrs. Tackett was indeed dying. Her pearly-pale flesh was stretched tautly over protruding bones, and her eyes looked like the only part of her that still lived. It was impossible to tell whether she’d once been a beauty or not. But the hand that took Sarah’s, while cool and faintly clammy, had a surprisingly strong grip.
“Call me Nora,” the woman said, her voice rasping in between labored breaths. “I...I overheard...one of my husband’s ranch hands...telling him you’d come today. I...I know he didn’t let you in. I—I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Nora,” Sarah said gently, kneeling beside the chair so that the woman didn’t have to try to speak any louder. “He said you were...you were ill, and I can well understand not wanting to meet strangers—”
“Oh, I’m ill, all right,” the woman said, with a flutter of her hand indicating her shrunken frame. “It’s a cancer, the doctor tells me. But Carl...that’s my husband.. he wouldn’t have wanted me to...talk to you anyhow.”
“Oh?” Sarah said, hoping to encourage her to get right to the point. It didn’t look as if the woman had too much breath to spare.
Nora Tackett nodded. “I had to wait... until Carl passed out from his drinking...like he always does...of an evening. Then I had Daisy sneak me out of the house.”
“Why, Nora? Why, when you’re so sick?”
The woman managed a wan smile. “I’m not just sick—I’m dyin’. I might have a few days left...I can’t eat nothin’ now. Even Daisy’s chicken broth won’t stay down....” She shrugged. “I heard what happened to Morgan, how he got jailed in Austin ..about the trial.... I reckon I just wanted to set things right before I go an’ meet my Maker.”
Behind her, Daisy moaned. “Now, don’t you go talkin’ that way, Miz Nora. You the finest woman—”
“Hush, Daisy.” She paused, and she seemed to gather strength, for her voice was no longer whispery and hesitant. “But a few years back I could’ve spoken up and told the men who came to arrest Morgan that he’d been with me in my bed all night, so he couldn’t have been the one who robbed the stage. It was the truth, I swear it—as God is about to be my judge.”
Sarah sat back on her heels, rocked by the revelation that Tackett’s wife was the very woman who had been Morgan’s sweetheart, the very woman who could have given Morgan an alibi for the night the army payroll was stolen.
Behind her, the black woman began to weep.
“But I didn’t tell,” Nora Tackett continued, “because I knew if I did, everyone in town would know I wasn’t the innocent girl I pretended to be. Oh, I wanted Morgan Calhoun, all right—I’d even been engaged to him once—but when he came back from the war people started talkin’ about how he’d been raiding with Mosby during the war, and how wild he’d been and probably still was. I—I could see it was only a matter of time before he was accused of something, and I was...afraid. I knew Carl Tackett wanted to marry me, and I wanted to be the wife of a man with land. And once Morgan fled town, it wasn’t long till Carl owned the Flying C,” Nora Tackett continued.
“But...if Morgan didn’t steal the payroll and kill the stage driver, who did?” asked Sarah.
“I don’t know for sure...but I suspect it was Carl.” Nora told her. “He and Morgan are about the same height, and both have dark hair. With a mask on, it’d be hard to tell who it was. He was the one who told the soldiers that he thought Morgan did it, while I...kept quiet, to my shame. I’ve paid for the wrong I did Morgan every day of my life, Sarah Challoner.... Carl Tackett is a cruel, penny-pinching man, you see, and I think he guessed I was with Morgan that night, so he’s made my life hell....” She paused, clearly out of breath.
“Mrs. Tackett, you’re very good to tell me this,” Sarah said. “But...are you—can you possibly testify to this, in court?” Even as she asked the question, her eyes told her that what she was asking was impossible.
Nora Tackett shook her head, and a tear trickled down the faded cheek. “I’m sorry...I don’t think I’d live through the journey. I’m in such pain...the laudanum doesn’t even keep the pain down now.”
Sarah tried not to let her crushing disappointment show. To have come so close... “Then how can what you’ve told me—”
Nora Tackett interrupted. “I can’t go testify, but I can still sign my name if you wanted to take down what I said, Duchess. Wouldn’t that be almost as good?”
Sarah rubbed her hands together. “But we’d need a witness—two would be better. It can’t be me, naturally, since I’m known to be..a friend of Morgan’s,” she added, stumbling over what to call herself to this woman who had also known Morgan intimately, so many years before.
“Go wake Marshal Stoner, Celia, and the woman that owns this place,” Sarah instructed her servant. “Two will suffice as witnesses to the document.”
“So that’s why you asked the marshal along on this jaunt, niece,” said a familiar voice behind her, startling Sarah, for she hadn’t heard Uncle Frederick enter the room.
An hour and a half later, the statement providing Morgan’s alibi on the night of the army payroll robbery had been signed in Nora Tackett’s wavering hand and witnessed by the sleepy-eyed marshal and the proprietress of the Calhoun Crossing Hotel.
“Thank you, Mrs. Tackett,” Sarah said, bending over to kiss the pale cheek. “And God bless you for what you’ve done. Should you even go home? Why not stay in town, so that the doctor will be nearby?” She couldn’t bear to think of this woman going home to Carl Tackett, who might enact some savage reprisal if he learne
d what his wife had done.
Nora Tackett looked exhausted, but she managed one more smile. “You’re welcome, Duchess. But don’t you worry about me Carl’ll still be sleepin’ off his drunk by the time I get home. Daisy won’t tell him what I’ve done tonight—” she looked at the black woman, who nodded in staunch agreement “—and by the time he finds out, I’ll likely be beyond his reach, anyway. I—I can tell you’ll be good to my—to Morgan. Give him a kiss for me, would you?”
“I will,” promised Sarah, touched.
“And you marry him and give him lots of pretty babies, okay? I could have done that, you know, if I hadn’t thought more of my pride than of Morgan’s life.”
Now Sarah’s heart was wrenched with pity. What she said was true—so much would have been different if the ill woman sitting before her had not prized her reputation and the security of her future so much. But at least she had done the right thing now, before it was too late. If only Nora Tackett’s letter could be enough to clear Morgan Calhoun’s name of the other charges, too!
Chapter Thirty
Three days after Sarah’s journey to Calhoun Crossing the trial began, and it was now into its second day. So far, the judge had appeared unmoved as Morgan, under oath, had described how the rumors had begun upon his return to his hometown after the war, rumors that implied he had not left behind the raiding, thieving ways he had learned as one of Mosby’s Rangers, rumors that over the next three years steadily discredited him as an honest man.
Army officers and the journalists who had come from as far away as St. Louis were already speculating about how soon Morgan Calhoun would hang when Matthew Quinn, his lawyer, recalled his client to the stand.
“Mr. Calhoun, did you know a lady named Miss Nora Lane?”
Just as Quinn uttered the name, a commotion erupted in the spectators’ rows in the back of the courtroom. Sarah, who sat in the front of those rows with her uncle and Celia, turned in her seat and saw that a man had jumped to his feet, his face furious.
“Your Honor, I object! That was my late wife’s maiden name, and I object to it being sullied by this—this outlaw!”
So poor Nora Tackett was now at peace, Sarah mused. God rest her soul. And this red-faced fool was Carl Tackett, her husband. Tackett may once have resembled Morgan in his height and general build, but no more. The intervening years—and too much nightly drinking—had made him paunchy and sallow-faced. But Sarah guessed that his eyes had always been small and mean.
The district federal judge lifted his head and stared at Tackett with bored eyes. “Who are you?”
“Carl Tackett, Your Honor. Nora Lane Tackett was my wife.”
“Well, Mr. Tackett, you’re not an attorney, so you can’t object. While I’m sympathetic to you in the loss of your wife, I’d suggest you not repeat such an outburst.”
Sarah watched Tackett sit down, his face sullen.
“Mr. Quinn, you may continue,” the judge said in his sonorous monotone.
“Mr. Calhoun, how was the late Nora Tackett, née Nora Lane, significant in your life when you were living in Calhoun Crossing?”
Sarah watched conflicting emotions streak across Morgan’s face as he sat on the stand. He’d been astonished when she’d returned to Austin and shown him the letter, and sad, too, when he’d heard that the woman he had once loved was dying.
“Before the war she was my sweetheart,” Morgan said, his voice steady and clear. “We were engaged for a time. We planned to marry after the war. Then after I came back, and the rumors started that I was rustlin’ cattle and so forth, she...she came to me and broke our engagement.”
“How did you feel about her then?”
Morgan kept his eye on Quinn as he answered, “I—I still loved her, but I understood. With all the whisperin’ about me, with every rustled horse and missin’ cow bein’ blamed on me, she was afraid of bein’ married to a man who’d end up behind bars—or even bein’ hanged.”
“But eventually the lady let you know, in no uncertain terms, that she still had a certain, um, passion for you, did she not?”
Once again Sarah saw Tackett leap to his feet, wild-eyed with rage. “Your Honor!” he cried.
“Mr. Tackett, sit down and shut up!” the judge shouted.
Quelled, Tackett sat again, but he continued to focus a hateful glare on Morgan.
Morgan looked down and was silent. Sarah ached for him, knowing he was torn between uttering the truth that could help him and keeping silent to avoid sullying a dead woman’s reputation.
“Mr. Calhoun, I would remind you, you are under oath,” Quinn said gently.
“Yes, she did,” Morgan said at last.
“Objection!” cried the prosecuting attorney. “Calls for a conclusion by the witness as to the state of mind of a deceased lady, one who is obviously now unable to defend herself!”
Matthew Quinn looked unruffled. “I’ll withdraw the question, and ask instead what the lady, then Miss Nora Lane, did. Is it true that on the night of August 8, 1869, she came to you at your house on the Flying C Ranch and offered herself to you?”
A buzz of conversation like the hum of a million wasps ensued, and the judge had to pound his gavel and shout, “Order! Order! Quiet, or I’ll clear the courtroom!”
When silence had been restored, Morgan finally said, “Yes, she did,” but he was clearly uncomfortable at the admission.
“And did you take her to your bed, where both of you stayed until morning?”
“Yes.” Then Sarah saw that Morgan was looking right into her eyes, and she tried to project all the love she felt for him into hers. It’s all right, love. That’s all in the past, and we’re going to win this, you’ll see.
“No more questions, Your Honor,” Quinn said.
Morgan was then cross-examined, but the prosecutor failed to find any holes in his story, and said in a disgusted voice as he dismissed Morgan from the stand, “As the late Mrs. Tackett’s husband has expressed, it’s very convenient for your case that the lady is dead.”
Quinn seemed to have been waiting for that moment. He pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“Your Honor, I’d like to have this statement admitted into evidence. It was dictated by the lady herself, just a few days before her untimely death from cancer—”
At this point Tackett launched himself from his seat and ran at Quinn, his hands outstretched as if he meant to choke the Yankee defense attorney. He might have succeeded, too, if several blue-coated officers hadn’t managed to catch up to him first.
“Mr. Tackett, you are now under arrest for contempt of court,” the judge announced. “Take him down to the brig and let him cool off,” he directed the officers who were holding the struggling Tackett.
“Your Honor, might I suggest letting him stay, though under guard, of course?” Quinn suggested. “I have a reason for my suggestion, of course, which will become apparent.”
“Very well,” the judge agreed, eyeing Quinn with some surprise. Tackett was forced back into his seat, but he was now flanked by soldiers, and an armed sergeant stood watching him from the nearby aisle.
Quinn now handed the paper to the judge, who put on spectacles and read it, then gave it back to the attorney.
“Mr. Quinn, why don’t you just read the letter aloud?”
“I’ll do that, Your Honor,” Quinn said, apparently unable to resist shooting a grin at Sarah. She smiled encouragingly back.
“To whom it may concern: I, Nora Lane Tackett, aware that my death is imminent, and desiring to go to my Maker with a clean conscience, do hereby set down an account of what happened on the night of August 8, 1869.
“On that night I went to the Flying C Ranch, and went into the ranch house, where I found its owner, Morgan Calhoun. He seemed surprised to see me, but when I informed him I had missed him, he made me welcome. I asked him to embrace me, and he obliged. As God is my witness, Morgan Calhoun had always behaved in a gentlemanly fashion toward me, even when I broke our engagement, but I w
ent there that night with the intent of seducing him into making love to me, and that is exactly what happened. During the night Morgan Calhoun never left his house, nor did I. In fact, I was still there when the sun rose the next morning, though I departed soon after, and managed to steal back into my widowed mother’s house so quietly that she never knew of my night of illicit passion.
“It was not until later that I heard of Morgan Calhoun being arrested for the murder of the stage driver and the army payroll robbery that had taken place that night, but I can swear that he could not possibly have done either crime, because he was with me the entire time. It is my decided opinion—though I cannot prove it—that the man whom I later married, Carl Tackett, was the man who robbed the stage carrying the army payroll and killed the driver, for after Morgan fled town Carl had the money to buy the ranch, which had been seized by the government, and he had never had much money before.
“In this statement I would like to apologize to Morgan Calhoun for my cowardice, which resulted in him being accused of a crime he never committed, which I believe forced him into a path he would never otherwise have taken.
“Signed with my hand this seventeenth day of October, 1872, Nora Tackett.
Witnesses present: Jackson Stoner, U.S. marshal, and Flora Wilcox, owner of the Calhoun Crossing Hotel.”
There was silence for the space of several seconds as the judge and the rest of the court absorbed the impact of the written statement, and then pandemonium reigned.
Once more, the judge shouted and pounded his gavel until the court was quiet enough for Matthew Quinn to announce that he was calling Marshal Jackson Stoner to the stand.
In quick succession Quinn questioned the marshal and Flora Wilcox, and both confirmed that Nora Tackett had dictated that very statement in their presence. The prosecutor was unable to bully them into saying the statement had been made under any sort of duress, or motivated by monetary persuasion by anyone, such as Morgan Calhoun’s English friend, Sarah Challoner, the Duchess of Malvern, who had been writing down the ill woman’s statement as she dictated it.
