Sycamore Hill

by Francine Rivers

  Jordan turned and strode out the schoolhouse without a backward glance. A moment later I heard his horse galloping away into the night. I sank down onto a chair and felt miserable. I wouldn’t blame him for hating me. My hand smoothed down over my abdomen. I shut my eyes and bent down, too desolate even for tears anymore.

  “Well, well, well,” came a satisfied voice from the doorway to my room. I looked up and stared in frightened surprise at the man standing there. “I couldn’t have planned things better myself.” The man heaved something at me. A length of rope snaked across the floor to my feet. I stared at it in horror, seeing the noose at the end. Then I looked up again.

  Tom Hallender unholstered his gun and aimed it at me.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Pick up the rope, Miss McFarland,” Hallender instructed me coldly. I did not move. I was unable to tear my eyes from the black barrel of his gun. His hand was steady, and he moved his thumb slowly to cock the hammer. It made a deadly click, sending a shock of terror through me.

  “I said pick up the rope,” he ordered in a low voice.

  I bent forward at the waist, feeling blindly for the rope at my feet. My eyes never once left his gun. I could not comprehend what was happening. Only yesterday Tom Hallender had been friendly, concerned about my welfare and future. Now he stood here in the shadows of the schoolroom, holding a gun on me. It did not make sense. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore, I thought. I could feel a rise of hysteria, which I choked down.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, my voice not seeming to be my own. The sheriff looked intent and determined.

  “It’s not what I plan to do. It’s what you’re going to do to yourself,” he told me, and his eyes dropped to the rope in my hand. I blinked, confused. Then my heart stopped. It started hammering again in hard, alarmed staccato thuds that sent a surge of adrenaline through my system.

  “I don’t understand,” I murmured, terrified that I did.

  “You’re going to hang yourself just like Prudence Townsend did.”

  My eyes widened, and my lips parted in a silent gasp. I watched as he moved slowly into the room, limping from his old wound. He unhooked the lantern as he came. He set it on the desk and leaned back negligently. He put his left arm across his chest, bracing his gun arm. The barrel never wavered from my head, but he carefully returned the hammer, and I breathed again.

  “I’ll give you a little assistance, of course,” he said with a wry smile.

  I strove for calmness. “Why should I want to do such a thing?” I asked shakily,

  “Loneliness.” He shrugged indifferently. "Tonight is Christmas Eve. Ah, I can see you’ve forgotten what day it is, Miss McFarland. And no wonder, with your friend Miss Greer dying on you, and then your lover walking out on you. But tonight is Christmas Eve, all right, and everyone else in this miserable, ungrateful town is home with their family, eating and drinking Christmas cheer,” he said bitterly. He gave a harsh laugh.

  “They aren’t giving a thought to people like you and me who give our lives for them. They don’t think to invite us,” he jabbed at his own chest, “into their homes to share their wealth.” His eyes were glittering resentfully in the dark. “You and I mean nothing but to save their skins, protect their belongings or educate their brats. That’s the truth, Miss McFarland, and you know it!” His mouth moved up into a humorless grimace.

  “But I don’t feel that way, Mr. Hallender,” I said quietly, wondering if the man had gone mad in his bitterness.

  “But that doesn’t matter,” he shot back. He hesitated before he went on in a lower voice. “It takes a strong person to live alone. And, Miss McFarland, you’re not a strong person. Or more to the point, people won’t think you were once they find you swinging from that rafter up there.” He pointed up to the front beam with the barrel of his gun.

  “But why?” My voice was shaking uncontrollably. The coil of rope in my hand felt as heavy as lead.

  Hallender’s eyes had never once left mine. My question seemed to discomfort him. “It’s your own fault it’s come to this,” he accused. “You should have taken the notes I left seriously. But you didn’t. I thought the noises and crying would do the trick. But you weren’t buying any of that either. So I pulled the nail from the front railing, hoping you would break your leg or neck reaching for that stray cat I set on the sill. But, hell, no!” he snarled angrily. “You were lucky and rescued the little nuisance without hurting a hair on your damn head.”

  I remembered Orphan perched on the windowsill that dark night. I had wondered how such a small kitten could have got herself into such a high, precarious place. And Ross Persall had said the railing had been tampered with.

  “Then I tried offering you a loan yesterday,” Hallender continued dismally. “After Miss Greer’s funeral you looked like you were ready to get away from Sycamore Hill. But you turned me down. That left me with no choice. I had to kill you. I thought I had last night, but it seems you have a very hard head, Miss McFarland,” he said dryly.

  “You hit me?”

  He made an affirmative movement of his head.

  “And you’re the one who has been making all the crying noises and eerie sounds?”

  “None other.”

  “But I don’t understand why you’re doing all this? What have I ever done to make you want to do these things... or to kill me?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you,” he told me harshly. “But I have to. Like I said, it would never have come to hanging you if you’d taken my earlier warnings seriously. Now I’ve got no choice but to kill you.”

  I licked my lips tensely. “But I saw Prudence Townsend. How did you manage that?”

  His eyes left mine for the first time, but only for an instant. Then he smiled slightly. “Good try, but it won’t work. If you saw anything, it was out of your own imagination. There’s nothing here, Miss McFarland—nothing that is except you and me. And in a little while it’ll be just you hanging up there, dead.” He jerked his head upward to indicate the beam, and I swallowed hard.

  “It won’t be slow like it was for her,” he assured me almost kindly, and I felt the hysterical impulse to laugh. Then I recalled his vivid picture of Prudence jerking frantically at the end of the rope as it slowly strangled her. Kicking and kicking.

  Hallender straightened away from the desk, impatient to get on with his deed. “Bring the rope over here.”

  I couldn’t have moved even if I had wanted to. I licked my lips again. The back of my neck felt wet with perspiration.

  “Come on. You’re not making this any easier for me.”

  “Why should I?” I gasped, affronted and terrified. He wanted me to make things easy for him?!

  “Stalling isn’t going to do you any good,” he muttered.

  “You should at least tell me why you’re doing this!” I cried, desperate for time.

  “Money,” he retorted simply. “The ‘root of all evil,’ as our self-righteous minister would tell you.”

  “Money? But how are you going to get money for murdering me?” I asked, bewildered.

  “The money is stashed here. You’ve been sleeping over it for months.”

  “I don’t know anything about any money,” I said blankly.

  “Well, since you’re going to die for it, I might as well tell you about it.” Hallender settled back against the desk again. I felt a moment’s reprieve.

  “Three men robbed the bank a year ago. They got off with a little short of a hundred thousand dollars,” he explained, and raised his brows expressively. “Now do you get it?”

  I stared at him, remembering the stories I had heard about the robbery. “You mean you organized the robbery?”

  “I had nothing to do with the robbery,” he said, irritated by my suggestion. He shifted restlessly. “I’m the sheriff, remember? It was my job to go after those thieves and get the money back... and bring them in any way I could. Well, I caught up with them. They backtracked on m
e and tried to set up an ambush. But it backfired. I got them instead. One at a time, Indian style. But I risked my neck doing it.”

  My eyes widened as comprehension sank in. “You mean you murdered those men and kept the money from the robbery?”

  Hallender’s mouth tightened, and the knuckles of his gun hand stood out, white. “I told you I risked my life for that money. It’s mine by rights. The town owes me something for thirty-six years and a bum leg.”

  “That... that may be true, Mr. Hallender. But one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “How much is a man’s life worth? I’ve been lamed once for this town. I got a couple of pats on the back for that. If I’d been killed, they would have given me a pine box. I’m taking that money!”

  “But why didn’t you just take the money then and keep going? Why did you come back here?”

  “If I’d done that, I’d never have had any peace. I’ve been a lawman near all my life. I know what goes on. My face would have been plastered all over the state... and country for that matter. I’d have had someone on my trail for the rest of my life. No, thank you.” He shook his head. “It was better this way, hiding the money and waiting until I could retire. That way it’d just be another unsolved robbery where the thieves got away with it. In time I could go someplace far away and enjoy my good fortune.”

  “Why don’t you just take the money now and go?”

  “I wouldn’t be out of here five minutes and you’d be setting the town on me,” he declined.

  “But you could have come in here any time I was out, or at night when you were pretending to be Prudence, and moved the money somewhere else. Why didn’t you do that? Why do you have to kill me?”

  “You think I just stuck it in a desk or something?” He laughed. “All that money? Ten big bags of it, Miss McFarland! No, ma’am.” He laughed then as though greatly amused and satisfied with himself.

  “Where?” I asked, glancing around as though I might see it.

  He laughed again, slapping his leg in obvious enjoyment. “You’ve been sleeping on it for months.”

  “What?” I breathed. “My cot?”

  “It was the most obvious place I could think of, but which others would discard for the same reason. It’s sewn right into your mattress. In fact, there isn’t much mattress stuffing left in that bed of yours.” He laughed again. “Everything went perfectly. I was careful when I brought the money up here, but someone heard me working in here. They spread the word that it was that schoolmarm’s ghost. People just avoided this place all that much more. After Miss Townsend killed herself, people didn’t want to come up here anyway. But after they heard about the sounds, they really stayed their distance. I never expected them to find another schoolteacher so soon—not sooner than a year anyway. And by that time it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have retired, come up here and got my money and been out of the state. But then you showed up,” he said in resigned dismay.

  “I didn’t expect you to find the money, even though you were sleeping on it. But it still worried me. What if you were one of those women who stashes her savings inside her mattress instead of in the bank? It really worried me.” He gave a harsh sound in his throat.

  “People won’t believe I killed myself,” I said quietly, sounding more assured than I was.

  “You think not?” He raised graying brows derisively. “There are plenty of reasons I can think of why people will believe it.” He smiled unpleasantly. “You’ve been acting mighty strange lately, kind of dazed and depressed. I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. I overheard Sadie saying her aunt was concerned about you, and that’s why she went to the schoolhouse. But if that isn’t enough, there are plenty of other reasons.”

  “Like what?” I stalled for more time to think.

  “I overheard a damned good one just before I came in. Bennett! Couldn’t be more perfect if I had planned it myself. There were rumors that Miss Townsend killed herself because she fell in love with someone and was scorned by him.” He frowned slightly. “I wonder if that was Bennett too. Pretty active fellow.” He smiled slightly. I remembered what Margaret Hudson had said, and I wondered if I had just been another of his amorous victims.

  “Nobody will believe it. Everyone has seen the antagonism between Jordan and myself,” I told him.

  Hallender grinned mockingly. “But he was your lover, wasn’t he? I heard that much. He was pretty blunt about it. ‘Spreading yourself like a whore in a field about the creek,’ I think is the way he put it,” he said crudely, bringing a humiliated flush to my pale cheeks. “I never figured you for the type. But Bennett ought to know, huh?” Hallender’s eyes looked down over me speculatively, and a cold feeling spread through me.

  “Nevertheless,” I stammered, “people won’t believe it.”

  “Bennett was right when he said people believe gossip.” Hallender shrugged. “Everyone believes he killed his wife. I know he didn’t, of course.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What faithless things women are,” he grunted. “You believed it too.” He shook his head slightly. “No wonder he was so mad.”

  “How do you know?” I repeated, the answer very important to me.

  “Being sheriff, I had to know all the facts of what happened so as to decide if a warrant had to be issued. He told you the truth. From what I heard from witnesses at the ranch, his high-and-mighty bitch of a wife was little better than a lush. And I smelled the brandy on her myself when Bennett brought her body in that day. That Gutierrez woman was there in the house when Mrs. Bennett had her accident. Mrs. Bennett had been drinking. Her usual morning relaxation, I suppose,” he sneered. “And apparently she was coming down the stairs for another bottle when she tripped on the rug. The doc said she was probably dead before she hit the bottom. Broken neck.” Hallender snapped his fingers. “Just like that.” He paused, shifting the gun slightly. “An accident. But people prefer to believe the worst.”

  Ellen Greer’s words almost exactly, I remembered. I had been no better than anyone else. I was in love with Jordan Bennett, and yet I had always had some doubt. No wonder he hated me. I closed my eyes, remembering his face as I had last seen him. What would he think when they found my body? Would he blame himself, adding to his already unhappy situation?

  “But all that has nothing to do with me,” I muttered, looking at Hallender. I had to find some way out of this mess.

  “No? A lot of scandal surrounds Bennett. You’ve heard it. It would just take a small hint here and there to add your suicide to his other list of sins. Pretty, young schoolteacher falls for rich rancher; he scorns her; and she kills herself,” he rattled off unemotionally. “Not a new story, but believable enough for my purposes.”

  Hallender was right. People would believe it. Even my own mood and actions of the last weeks would serve to strengthen the story. When Hallender exposed the sordid rumor of my relationship with Jordan, that would only add to the reasons he had already catalogued of why people would believe I had taken my own life.

  Hadn’t I contemplated it only last night when I had believed mistakenly that I had seen Prudence Townsend? Some instinctive desire to survive must have probed my subconscious. What other explanation was there for what I had seen?

  “It’s time to quit the talking,” Hallender said ominously. He jerked the gun in a silent order. “Pick up the rope,” he repeated. My hands were perspiring. “Pick it up,” he said yet again.

  I made my decision. If I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be by hanging. I let the rope fall from my fingers. He cocked the hammer again, and I waited silently.

  “Pick it up, damn you!”

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “You think I won’t shoot you, is that it?” he snarled. Something in his eyes told me he was uncertain. And I knew why. If he shot me, he would arouse the town. Everyone would know I had not killed myself, and his story would be useless. Suspicions would be rampant, and people would begin asking questions, wan
ting to know why I had been murdered. What would be the motive?

  What if I jumped up and ran? I wondered suddenly, my heart pounding. If he pulled the trigger instinctively, he wouldn’t miss this close. And besides, he was an expert marksman as well. But would he fire? Was I willing to find out? As though sensing my thoughts, Hallender straightened and moved forward.

  “If you shoot me, everyone will know this is murder,” I told him shakily. His mouth flattened out into a hard line. He moved forward relentlessly. The gun seemed to stretch out closer.

  “I could shoot you point-blank in the head. It’d still look like suicide,” he whispered chillingly. Sweat ran between my breasts as he put the barrel of the gun up against my temple.

  “Where would I get a gun, Mr. Hallender? I couldn’t afford to buy one on my income, and if I could, it would have been from Olmstead or Thompson. They both would know I had no gun,” I reasoned. No one was going to help me out of this. I thought of Jordan and realized with sudden regret and dismay that he had been watching the schoolhouse, protecting me. Something I had told him must have aroused his suspicions.

  But Jordan was gone now. I was alone. I looked up at Hallender’s narrowed, cold eyes and knew that he would give me no mercy. The barrel of his gun yawned at me bigger than Ellen’s open grave. If I was going to live, I would have to rely on my own intelligence to manage it.

  Hallender took a couple of steps back. “Pick up the rope,” he repeated harshly, shifting with obvious impatience. My heart drummed loudly in my ears, and my head began to ache so badly, I thought it would burst. His knuckles whitened as he held the gun. I could see that his hand was not quite steady. I waited to hear the explosion of noise and feel the pain shattering my head. A cold numbness and unknown resolve began to possess me. Hallender had spoken the truth. He did not want to kill me, and I was not going to let him. Not if I could prevent it.

  “Who will find my body, Mr. Hallender?” I asked in a soft, amazingly calm voice.