by Lydia Olson
“Then, a few months later, I gave it back to him for luck when his daddy stopped coming to work because I was worried something was wrong. This thing, even if you don’t understand it, means a lot to him. He didn’t keep it just to use it as a weapon.”
“But he might have,” Deputy Wilkens suggested. “It is rather sharp. He might’ve kept it because it would make a good knife if he ever got in a tight spot.”
“The sheriff wasn’t stabbed, you idiot!” Eloise screamed.
“Eloise!” Dillion gasped. “Are you trying to get yourself into trouble? You haven’t even let the man explain the object’s significance.”
“Well, I’m assuming it was found somewhere in the alley,” she said. “And no one bothered to consider that maybe he just dropped it when he was getting off his horse or going to his room...?”
“It’s not that simple,” Ryan said. “This little shard of metal – which I recognize, because I was there when he dug it up – was found in the sheriff’s hand.”
“In... his hand...?” Eloise echoed. “But... it couldn’t have. Wilson didn’t even talk to the sheriff.”
“That’s what he told you,” said Ryan.
“Because it’s true,” she said, angry tears forming in her eyes. “I don’t know for sure what happened back there last night, but I do know that Wilson is innocent. Please, you have to give him a chance to explain.”
“Why?” Ryan said, raising his voice. “So he can convince us of the same lies he told you?”
“He has no reason to lie!” Eloise cried.
“Oh, then has he told you about his ownership of the land claim, too?” Ryan enquired.
“What?” Eloise said.
“Wait one second,” Dillion said, furrowing his brow. “What’s this about the land claim? What’s that got to do with Wilson – you didn’t tell me of this?”
“Sorry, sir, I thought it would be better if Deputy Wilkens told you,” Ryan said. “It’s come to my attention that Wilson owns the land claim to your ranch. He has since the day he arrived. And, judging by her reaction, this wasn’t something he thought important enough to tell Ellie, either.”
“You’re lying!” Eloise shrieked.
Filled with fury and with no idea where to put it all, Eloise swung her fist at Ryan’s face. Before she made impact, Ryan caught her arm and secured it behind her back. Eloise was a little surprised.
Ryan had never been able to dodge her punches before, let alone restrain her. He was acting completely different than the timid, shy man who asked her to marry him only days before.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Dillion said, nodding at the deputy. “It seems Wilson’s kindness was an act to learn the workings of our ranch before he stole it from us somewhere down the line. He’s been lying to you, Ellie, and making you feel like you could trust him. But to what end?”
“Someone’s lying, but it’s not Wilson!” Eloise insisted.
“Take him away,” Dillion said, gesturing toward Wilson’s room. “Ryan, if you would, take Ellie to Maudie with the instruction that she’s not to leave until everything’s been sorted out.”
Eloise swore and fought to get out of Ryan’s hold as the deputy threw open the door to Wilson’s room. In the shadows, she could see Lawson watching, a look of defeat on his face. He hadn’t gotten the chance to prove Wilson’s innocence, and he looked to have really believed in it.
Eloise heard Wilson’s calm voice talking back and forth with the deputy, but she knew he wasn’t as calm as he sounded. As his face came into view, Wilson smiled half-heartedly at Eloise. It seemed that he no longer believed she could do anything to help him.
“This isn’t fair,” Eloise muttered, her heart breaking a little.
The deputy guided Wilson toward the town jail, while several onlookers peered through doors and windows to see what was happening. Eloise noticed Wilson made eye contact with Ryan, raised an eyebrow, and then looked away. She couldn’t see Ryan’s face, but the look on Wilson’s told her that Ryan wasn’t particularly distressed by his arrest.
“You wanted this to happen, didn’t you?” Eloise spat.
“I would never wish this on a dear friend,” Ryan said, “but then, that man is no longer dear to me.”
Ryan restrained both her arms and shoved Eloise toward the saloon a little more harshly than necessary, causing her to feel completely helpless. Miss Maudie appeared in the doorway, looking just as defeated. Maudie must have known how much this was hurting her, Eloise thought.
Eloise leaned back and fought against Ryan’s grasp to watch Wilson for as long as she could, but in no time, he disappeared from her view.
With Eloise now in the saloon, and Wilson now in a cell, Ryan let go of Eloise and allowed her to collapse to her knees. She stayed on the ground, frozen in place, as she realized that this may have been the last time she would ever see Wilson alive.
Chapter Nineteen
Miss Maudie, who had finally convinced Eloise to get off the floor, sat beside Eloise in the back room of the saloon. Eloise stared directly in front of her and hadn’t said much since her arrival. She couldn’t understand why Ryan and her father would betray her like that, or why they would knowingly put Wilson’s life on the line over a technicality.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Miss Maudie said, stroking Eloise’s hair. “Please, say something.”
Eloise stayed silent. It wasn’t often that she had nothing to say, but there was too much information spinning around in her head to focus on just one thing. The way she felt now when she thought about Wilson was almost as distraught as how she’d felt when Edison had died.
“Why do the people I love always die?” Eloise finally said, straight-faced.
“How do you mean?” Miss Maudie chuckled nervously. “No one has died today.”
“You and I both know that Wilson’s gonna get hanged for this, whether or not he actually did it,” she said. “You and Daddy keep trying to convince me that Ryan’s the better man, but you saw the way he shoved me around. Wilson would never do that.”
“I know it’s hard to understand these things when you’re so young,” Miss Maudie said. “It’s not an easy thing to realize that sometimes the people closest to you aren’t who you thought they were. But you have to take these experiences as they come and let them be a lesson.”
“But I know it wasn’t him, because I was with him right up until it happened,” Eloise insisted, struggling to hold back her tears. “The only reason he didn’t fight back when they arrested him is because he couldn’t tell them the truth about why he was back there without hurting me.”
“Now, sweetheart, I wouldn’t go repeating that to anyone else, ya hear?” Miss Maudie said, suddenly stern. “In this town, that kind of comment could get you in just about as much trouble as Wilson is now. If he’s truly trying to protect you by keeping quiet, I’d say you best let him do it.”
“What a horrible thing to say!” Eloise said, glaring at Maudie. “You think I should just let him die to protect my reputation? What good would that do me?”
“I didn’t mean you should let him die,” Maudie amended. “Just let him come up with a story that doesn’t involve you. It’s the best way to protect you to leave you out of it as much as we can.”
Eloise paused for a moment. She was so tired of being angry that as much as she wanted to react angrily, she didn’t have the energy to.
Besides, she thought, all her anger had done up until now was make everything worse. For the first time in her life, she felt that she needed to react more like Edison or her mother would have. She needed to stay calm and reasonable.
“Maudie, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I really do, but I’m not gonna keep taking your advice if it keeps getting Wilson hurt,” she said. “You suspected him of stealing gold, and stealing from the sheriff, and now, you don’t seem too hesitant to assume he’s killed the sheriff.
“After learning the truth about how he got his gold and how he beat the
sheriff at poker, I have a hard time believing he would do anything as vile as killing a man. You saw him – he's been avoiding the sheriff and trying to prevent a conflict since the day he won the money.”
“And what about your daddy’s land deed, huh?” Miss Maudie pressed, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you think he was being just as noble by keeping that a secret from the both of ya?”
“I don’t know about all that.” Eloise sighed. “But if Ryan’s right and Wilson does have claim to the deed to our land, then I’m sure he had no intention of misusing it.”
“And how could you know that?” Miss Maudie said.
“Because I was the one keeping all that a secret from him,” she said. “There have been multiple times he’s tried to get me to open up about what’s going on with our land, and I just wouldn’t tell him. I didn’t want him to know we were at risk of losing everything... I have to believe his intention in not telling me was to keep me and my daddy from unwanted embarrassment.”
Maudie raised an eyebrow. “And you think he would’ve told you if you’d brought it up first?”
“I don’t know... I think he would,” she said. “But whatever his reason for keeping that from me, I feel in my heart that I have to tell the deputy the truth.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Maudie said, sternly.
Then she huffed, hopped to her feet, and stormed out the door. Eloise wasn’t sure if Maudie was mad at her and needed to step out for a breath of air, or if she was intentionally leaving the path open for Eloise to leave. Either way, she wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.
Carefully, Eloise peered through the door. She could see Maudie down the hall, smiling and chatting with some Whiskey Girls like nothing was wrong. What was curious, however, was that Lawson was leaning against the wall right beside the door as if he were waiting for Eloise.
“Took ya long enough,” he said, smiling.
“I’m not sure I understand what’s going on,” Eloise said.
“I found some evidence that not even Deputy Wilkens could deny raises some questions, if everything goes the way I’d like it to,” Lawson told her. “As it turns out, Miss Maudie was the one what gave me the evidence – she’s thinking Wilson might not be so guilty, after all.”
“Maudie believes him?” Eloise said, dumbfounded. “Does that mean Wilson’s been let out, then?”
“Not quite,” Lawson admitted, stepping away from the wall and adjusting his coat. “I’ve been waiting to hear if ya remembered something that would disprove my theory. You heard what Mr. McKinnon had to say about the lucky charm, and I needed to hear if you still believed Mr. Pace was innocent after learning of it. Now that I’ve heard what you said, I think it’s time to move forward.”
“Move forward with what – what did you and Maudie find?”
“A witness,” Lawson whispered, leaning close to Eloise’s face.
“Someone witnessed the murder? Why didn’t they come forward sooner?” she said.
“No, not to the murders – to everything that happened before it. You see, the sheriff wasn’t alone before he went to the stables, and his companion heard everything that happened in that alley.”
“Everything... with me...?”
“No, fortunately no – my witness was only there for a moment. Although, I would say what they did hear corroborates Mr. Pace’s story perfectly well. We only need to get to the station to make it known,” he said.
“And Miss Maudie’s not going to stop me?” Eloise wondered.
“Miss Maudie made it perfectly clear that she has no intention of being a babysitter to a grown woman,” explained Lawson. “She’ll take care to make sure you’re safe, but she has no intention of holding you captive. She just can’t be seen letting you slip out, so we best leave before she gets done with her chatting.”
Eloise didn’t wait another second. She scurried down the hall, quietly passed through the crowd in the saloon, and slipped out the front door. Lawson was close behind her, but she couldn’t help but notice the witness he spoke of was nowhere to be seen.
“Is the deputy just gonna take your word for it, that you have a witness?” Eloise asked him.
“Uh, no, but the situation’s a little, uh, tricky,” he said. “My witness has a certain kind of relationship with the deputy, and, uh, the witness is trying to think of how to explain their presence with the sheriff last night without compromising that relationship.”
“What does that mean?” Eloise paused in front of the jail.
“Well, let’s just put it at this,” he said. “I have a woman who claims she was with the sheriff... more or less canoodling last night. He left her in the alley to untie his horse and she remained in the alley, because she saw someone come out of the shadows between her and the sheriff and follow him.
“She wasn’t close enough to see much, but she saw the shadow of that man ahead of her and then heard a loud thud. Terrified the man had just attacked the sheriff, she ducked into the stack of logs Maudie keeps in the alley, and then saw Wilson run past her, holding his head.
“At first, she thought Wilson was the man who had come out of the shadows to attack, but she noticed Wilson’s head bleeding, and realized the thud was someone hitting him. She thought the sheriff must’ve bested him and scared him off, but then the shots fired a moment later.”
“So, we have proof that the shots were fired after he left the alley!” exclaimed Eloise.
“It’s not quite that simple,” Lawson cautioned. “We have one witness that saw the shadow of a man coming in and out of an alley, and we have a dozen witnesses that saw a man in Wilson’s clothes leaving from the stables. We’re gonna need more than that to prove his innocence, but it is certainly a good start, if she’ll talk.”
“But she doesn’t want to tell the deputy. Is it for the same reason Maudie doesn’t want me to?” Eloise said.
“Her situation’s a little more compromising,” Lawson admitted. “Says the deputy was what introduced her to the sheriff, and she and the sheriff were not meant to be canoodling.”
“If she doesn’t talk, then what am I to do?” Eloise asked. “I can’t just keep lying to protect my honor when Wilson’s at risk of the hangman’s noose if I stay silent. Shouldn’t this woman feel the same? Shouldn’t she believe a man’s life is more important than her secret?”
“The difference between should and will is a complicated matter, but I’m afraid it’s likely you’re on your own in that regard,” he told her. “I’m afraid there’s no way to make her come forward. I’ve already tried telling her a man’s life is in her hands, but she’s more worried about her life than his.”
Eloise stared at the jail, dreading what may come after she stepped inside. She had never felt as afraid as she did right now.
No more than a month ago, she was convinced she could get the deed to her father’s land back, run the ranch herself, and do everything the men could do, all while proving that she wouldn’t need to change a thing about herself to do it.
Now, everything was crumbling down, and the world proved to be crueler than she expected. In that moment, she thought of her brother, and the time he said she’d have to become an adult one day. At the time, she didn’t understand what he meant. But right now, being forced to decide between the life of someone she loved and her own honor, she did.
“Maybe Wilson was right about this place.” Eloise sighed. “It really has failed him again and again. But I’m not gonna fail him.”
“Mind you, I do intend to tell Deputy Wilkens what she saw,” Lawson assured her, “and I’ll keep digging after that. I only won’t say who she was, which means there’s little chance it’ll change his mind right away.”
