The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

  But no crow, no matter how comical, could hold her attention for long. Pa was inside that jailhouse. Hesitantly, Louisa pushed open the rough door. The sheriff, a stocky man with mournful eyes, stood at a small tin stove in the front room, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He looked up at her in surprise.

  “Why, you’re Jack Brody’s girl, aren’t you?” he asked, setting down the coffeepot.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Matilda Smirch said you run off. Folks’ve been worried sick about you. Where’ve you been?” asked the sheriff. “I thought your pa was like to knock down the walls of this here jail, wanting to go hunt for you.”

  “Please,” Louisa begged. “May I see him?”

  The sheriff opened and closed his mouth, as if he’d been about to say something and thought better of it. Louisa wondered what kind of awful things Mrs. Smirch had told him about her.

  “I’m right glad to see you safe and sound,” said the sheriff at last. “It was resting heavy on my mind that I left you with . . . er, folks who . . . er, well.” He looked embarrassed, his brow puckering as if he wished he’d kept his mouth shut after all. “C’mon, I’ll take you to your pa.”

  Pa was sitting on a bare, skinny mattress in a small iron-barred cell. He sat stone-still, hands on his knees, until he heard the footsteps and looked up.

  “Louisa!” he cried, leaping to his feet. “Darlin’!”

  “Oh, Pa!”

  She ran to the cell, reaching for him through the bars. The sheriff made gruff sounds and unlocked the door.

  “I reckon you’d like a minute to catch up,” he said, his eyes more mournful than ever. “I’ll have to lock you in, I’m afraid.”

  “O’ course,” said Pa softly. “I appreciate it, Chester.”

  The key clicked in the lock, and the sheriff exited hastily to the front room.

  “Oh, Pa,” repeated Louisa, burying her face in his shirt. His arms were strong around her and his whiskers prickled the top of her hair.

  “Pa, you have whiskers!” she said, drawing back in surprise.

  “They don’t allow razors in here,” said Pa, his eyes crinkling at her the way they always did. How could he smile, even in jail? But then his eyes were full of tears and he hugged her, hard.

  “Where’ve you been, Louisa? The sheriff came in yesterday afternoon and told me you’d run away from the Smirches! I about went crazy, locked up in here knowing you were out there alone somewhere, with the wolves and who knows what!”

  Louisa choked back a smile. If Pa only knew!

  “I was all right. I’m sorry, Pa, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just couldn’t stay there anymore. Mrs. Smirch . . . she . . .” She trailed off, unsure how to explain without mentioning the critters, and then she’d have to explain how she happened to get rid of them.

  Suddenly she realized that the brownie would just have to let her tell Pa about him. She couldn’t keep a secret like this from Pa. But getting leave to tell, and telling, could wait until after the trial. Right now the important thing was to save Pa’s neck—literally.

  But Pa was still going on about her having been missing.

  “Where’d you go, Lou?”

  “I was hiding, Pa. Near the hazel grove. I was fine. Yesterday I went home to our place to get some fresh clothes, and Jessamine found me and told me about the trial, so I came here.”

  “You came all that way on foot in one day?” asked Pa. He pulled back to look her in the eye. “Louisa, how on earth—”

  “I hate to bust in on you like this, Brody,” interrupted the sheriff, clearing his throat, “but the judge just came out his front door. Means I’d best get you next door.”

  “That’s fine, Chester,” said Pa, his voice all quiet and calm once more. He tucked in his shirt and slicked his hair with his palms. Louisa wished the sheriff had let him shave; he looked so scruffy this way. She hoped the jury wouldn’t be swayed by his appearance. He’d been doing chores when the sheriff rode up to arrest him that day, and here he was in the same worn work clothes, looking none too clean after a week of wear. Never mind my dress, thought Louisa. I ought to have had the sense to bring him a change of clothes.

  Pa caught her anxious scrutiny and flashed her a sudden grin.

  “Look a sight, don’t I?” he said. “Like someone I wouldn’t want to meet skulking around my property on a dark night.”

  “Oh, Pa!” cried Louisa.

  “Don’t you worry, honey. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the jury’ll be nearsighted, all twelve o’ them.”

  But Louisa saw the grim look in his eyes behind the cheerful words. Pa, she realized, was scared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

  “ALL RISE FOR THE RIGHT HONORABLE JUSTICE Cornelius P. Callahan!”

  Judge Callahan took his seat and surveyed the crowd in the courtroom. “Courtroom” was perhaps too generous a term for the small, bare, sawdusty room the good citizens of Fletcher had provided for its legal proceedings, he reflected, but it was a sight better than some of the places in which he’d held trials. There was a hamlet in the southern tip of the county that had no more to offer him than a milking stool in someone’s barn. Fletcher, as county seat, tried to do things up as properly as it could.

  The tiny room was crowded with gawkers. The judge was not surprised; the trial of an upstanding and well-respected farmer like Jack Brody for the dastardly crime of thievery of tools and personal objects was a matter custom-tailored to rile the interest of the Fletcher townfolk. There were the Smirches in the front row: the two towheaded boys, jumping and climbing all over the bench; Malcolm Smirch, looking miserable in his Sunday clothes; and that pinch-mouthed wife of his, fairly quivering with excitement. Judge Callahan could swear he saw her lick her lips, like someone about to tuck into a feast.

  The rest of the benches were stuffed with townfolk: women and youngsters, mostly, and on two front benches, the jury—an array of men demonstrating varying levels of reluctance and eagerness. It was always an interesting feat, the judge reflected, to scrounge up enough fellows for a jury in these frontier towns that it was his fate to serve. Most of the men the sheriff approached made excuses—some of them not wanting to sacrifice a day’s work, and the rest not wanting to involve themselves in proceedings that might wind up arousing vengeful feelings in a convict’s kin and known associates. Chester Morgan had done quite well, thought Judge Callahan. No luck procuring lawyers, though, it seemed. Well, so much the better. The less speechifying, the better, in the judge’s experience.

  The door opened and in came the sheriff, holding tightly to the upper arm of Jack Brody. Brody held his head high, his face calm and resolute. Behind them walked a young girl in a rather dingy dress, her hair tightly braided. Someone made room for her on the edge of a bench. Her eyes were huge pools of worry. Judge Callahan sighed. He could almost hear Mrs. Mack sniffing “Poor motherless lass” in her indignant way.

  Why wasn’t the girl up front with the Smirch couple? the judge wondered. Weren’t they supposed to be looking after her? Well, he supposed if he were the Brody child, he’d want to keep his distance from his father’s accusers as well.

  Enough. The judge gave a sharp crack with his gavel on the table before him, as much to order his own thoughts as to quiet the folk in the courtroom. It was time to be impersonal, to hear the evidence and sift through the lies and misunderstandings to get at the truth. The truth was always there, like a nugget of gold in a prospector’s pan, but you had to wash away all the dirt and creek slime and fool’s gold before you could see it.

  The Fletcher bailiff was old Amos Pinker, who spent most of his time playing corncob checkers on the porch of Jed Button’s general store. He spruced up for his courthouse duties by washing the tobacco juice off his bare feet and combing a handful of lard into his hair. As his hair was decidedly sparse on top, his generous hand with the lard resulted in a shiny pate streaked with clumped strands that lay in greasy parall
el formation from his wrinkled brow to the nape of his neck. Judge Callahan was fond of old Amos. He was fond of anyone who took his work seriously, and Amos—on those infrequent occasions when work actually confronted him—met it with a most serious vigor indeed.

  “The court will hear the case of one John Warrington Brody, charged with the theft of personal property, namely one hatchet, one pocketwatch, one fine ticking clock in good working order, and one heirloom china doll most, er, beloved of its mistress.” Old Amos shrugged doubtfully as he echoed the phrases he’d been given by Mrs. Smirch in the tense moments before the prisoner’s arrival. Mrs. Smirch gave a sharp nod of satisfaction. Judge Callahan, watching the girl in the back of the room, saw how her lips tightened and her hands clenched white.

  “We’ll hear from the accuser first,” said the judge, and Mr. Smirch came forward to take the witness’s oath. Old Amos stepped forward with a Bible, and Mr. Smirch laid his left hand upon it.

  “Raiseyerrighthand,” intoned Old Amos. “Do you—er, what’s your first name, son?”

  “Malcolm,” muttered Mr. Smirch.

  “Do you, Malcolm Smirch, swear to tell the truththewholetruthandnothingbutthetruthsohelpyouGod?”

  “I do.”

  Mr. Smirch took his spot on the tall stool in the witness box. Judge Callahan listened quietly as he recounted the events at Jack Brody’s farm the week before. Smirch’s story seemed straightforward enough. His hatchet hadn’t been in its usual spot, so he’d walked to Brody’s to borrow his; it appeared that Brody was quite neighborly in this regard, obligingly lending his tools or his time whenever Smirch needed assistance. While Brody was sharpening his own hatchet for Smirch’s benefit, Smirch’s boy had gotten into Brody’s old dugout and found there the very hatchet Smirch had misplaced, along with his pocketwatch, his seven-day clock, and his wife’s china-headed doll.

  At the mention of the doll, Mrs. Smirch dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, but Judge Callahan couldn’t for the life of him detect any trace of moisture in those hard, eager eyes.

  “All right. So I’m given to understand that these objects went missing from your place, and they were discovered on the property of Mr. Brody here. Is that a correct assessment?”

  “Yes sir, your honor.”

  “Other than the fact that the items were found on Brody’s property, do you have any evidence that ’twas Brody himself who took them?”

  “Well, no, your honor, but—”

  “Fine, fine. And before this day, when you found your things in his dugout, how would you have characterized Mr. Brody?”

  “Characterized, your honor?”

  The judge noticed several members of the jury furrowing their brows. One of the perils of a classical education, he often reflected, was a predilection for vocabulary of an obfuscating nature. He tried afresh.

  “What sort of man would you have said he was?”

  Mr. Smirch frowned, crushing the hat he was holding. “Well, I dunno. I guess I’d have said he was all right. Uh, I mean, he’s been a good neighbor to us over the years. Until this.” His eyes darkened. “I thought he was my friend. Until he started stealin’ things from right under my nose.”

  The gavel rapped down. “That’s enough. We’ll not go leaping to conclusions quite yet, sir. You may return to your seat.”

  Mr. Smirch stood, his hat completely crushed between his two large, calloused, angry hands. He strode back to his seat on the front bench, gesturing exasperatedly for his boys to slide over and make room for him again—their fidgety bodies had oozed sideways to fill all available space. Mrs. Smirch stood up and smoothed her bonnet strings, clearly expecting to be the next witness called. It was always amusing to Judge Callahan that the very folks who had least to do with a case thought themselves vital to its progress. Mrs. Smirch had already made it plain, in interviews with the sheriff, that she knew nothing whatsoever about how the missing objects got from her home to Brody’s dugout. She hadn’t even noticed the doll was missing until her husband came home with it.

  “I’d like to hear from the defendant next,” said the judge. Mrs. Smirch gave an offended sniff. A member of the jury chuckled—the town banker, the judge thought, or perhaps it was that fellow with the string tie who played piano in the saloon next door.

  Jack Brody was sworn in and his story matched Smirch’s, point for point. He hadn’t been in the dugout for years, not since his wife died. They’d been in the frame house for several years before her death and the dugout wasn’t used for regular storage.

  “I don’t reckon we’ve ever had so much to store, your honor, that the barn couldn’t be holdin’ it,” said the defendant wryly.

  “How do you explain, then,” asked the judge, “the appearance of Mr. Smirch’s possessions in your dugout?”

  “I can’t explain it at all, your honor,” said Brody. “I’ve been sittin’ in that cell for a week, puzzlin’ it out. I didn’t put them there, and I know it wasn’t my daughter. I asked her, and she always speaks the truth.” He nodded at the child in the back of the courtroom, who sat tensely poised as if she might fly off her bench at any moment. She nodded back at her father, looking for all the world like a martyr about to be thrown to the lions.

  “And you haven’t seen anyone else on your property? No tramp or rover who might be using your dugout as a shelter?”

  “No one, your honor. Since the last time I came to town—last April, it was—I’ve not laid eyes on anyone besides my own daughter and the Smirch family here.”

  “If it wasn’t him, it had to be the girl!” cried Mrs. Smirch. “Impertinent thing, she is, and she’s got—”

  “Order, order!” shouted the judge, banging hard with his gavel. “Madam, you have not been given leave to speak in these proceedings. If your testimony is required, you will be properly sworn in before we’ll hear one more word out of your mouth.”

  He beetled his brows at her, knowing from long experience how that cowed the most fiery-tempered heckler.

  “All right, then, Mr. Brody. Before we move on, is there anything else you’d like to tell the court?”

  The members of the jury leaned forward almost as one body, eager to hear what Brody had to say.

  “Well, sir, only this: there were some o’ my own things in that dugout too. Things I’d missed, and some I hadn’t, but none o’ them put there by me. Or by my Louisa. I don’t know how they got there. And what puzzles me so, your honor, is that they weren’t the sort o’ things you’d expect a tramp to take. Say there was some poor feller without a roof over his head, and he happens along and sees I’ve got this old dugout sittin’ empty. Why does he go and fill it up with a clock and a doll and a jar full of buttons? Wouldn’t he be more like to steal food?”

  Brody shook his head. “It just don’t add up. We don’t have much, your honor, but we’ve got a good amount of grub stored against the hard months. Salt pork, dried fish, berries, cheese, meal. Not a speck o’ that has gone missin’. Come to that, all a fellow’d have to do is knock on the door and ask for a meal. But no one’s done that, and no one’s taken anything at all to fill a hungry belly, and the things he did take were set out in that dugout as pretty as you please. I have to say, your honor, I’m as eager to know the truth of the matter as you are.”

  Mrs. Smirch broke out into accusatory cries once more, and all over the courtroom was a gabble of whispers and speculations. Judge Callahan hammered on the bench until the ruckus died down and told Brody to return to his seat.

  “We’ll hear from your daughter next.”

  Privately, the judge had begun to work out an explanation that made sense. It contradicted a piece of Brody’s testimony, but Jack Brody wouldn’t be the first parent to have a blind spot where his child was concerned.

  It had to be the girl.

  The clock, the doll, the old dugout—it made sense. The child probably had fond memories of living there when her mother was alive. She’d decided to fix it up as a playhouse, and once she started, well, sh
e must have gotten carried away.

  Not that it was a light matter, oh no. It pained the judge to think of having to bring the child’s actions to the scrutiny of the crowd in the courtroom. She’d done wrong, for certain. Not just taking things that didn’t belong to her, but lying to her pa and letting him be carted off to jail . . .

  Poor mite, she’d probably been living in fear and misery all week. And yet, as he watched her walk bravely down the center of the room toward the dock, her small chin held high just like her pa, meeting his gaze directly, it gave him pause. Judge Callahan had seen many a guilty party in his day, and this child didn’t behave like a person with a great weight on her conscience.

  Ah, well, he’d have the truth out of her soon enough.

  Old Amos stepped forward with the Bible. “Do you swear to tell the truththewholetruthandnothingbutthetruthsohelpyouGod?”

  The girl hesitated, one hand on the Bible, the other raised to take the oath . . . but she shook her head. Her hands dropped.

  “I’m sorry.” She looked at the judge, her eyes beseeching. “I can swear to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth—but I can’t swear to tell the whole truth.”

  His Honor Cornelius P. Callahan had heard a good many startling pronouncements in his day, but this one, coming from this mite of a lass, took the prize. At her words the courtroom had erupted into exclamations, the voice of the agitated Mrs. Smirch rising above them all like a train whistle.

  “You . . . what . . . I never . . . ,” sputtered the judge. At last he collected himself and gaveled the chattering masses into silence.

  “Would you mind explaining that remarkable statement, young lady?” he asked severely.

  “Yes, sir,” whispered the girl, cutting an anxious glance at her pa. He was staring back at her with the same anxious expression.