Lawman. Laurie Grant
boy. But he steeled himself to remain impassive.
“We haven’t met, but I’m Sheriff Devlin,” he told • him. “You know how long a jail sentence a thief usually gets?”
The boy hung his head. “No, sir.”
“It’s about five years,” Cal announced, though he had no idea if this was true. “Did you take the licorice?”
The boy was silent.
“Ask him to stick out his tongue, and you’ll see what the little thief’s been up to,” Tyler suggested from behind him.
Cal felt a flash of irritation at the proprietor’s self-righteous tone, but he didn’t turn around. “Well?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
The boy looked at him for a second, then defiantly stuck out his black tongue—at the storekeeper.
Cal had to struggle not to laugh. “I guess that’s all the proof I need. Davy Richardson,” he said in a stern voice, “I hereby sentence you to five years.”
The boy blanched still further and gulped. “Don’t I get a trial or nothin’? I’m sorry, really I am!”
Cal allowed his face to relax slightly and let himself appear to consider the question. “Nope, no trial. A black tongue is pretty much all the evidence I need to convict you in this case. But I’d consider commuting the sentence…”
“C-commuting? What does that mean?”
“That means I’ll change your sentence to sweeping out the general store, then the jail office here, and when you’ve done so, I’ll declare you’ve paid your debt to society.”
Tyler huffed, “He won’t stick around five minutes to sweep. You’re lettin’ him off too easy, Devlin.”
“Oh, yes he will,” Cal said with certainty. “You know what happens if you don’t finish the job, Davy?”
Davy shook his head warily.
“I’ll form a posse and hunt. you down, and then you’ll get ten years, in addition to the hidin’ your father’ll probably give you when he finds out.”
“I ain’t got no father. He’s dead,” the boy informed him matter-of-factly. “But don’t worry, I’ll finish the job. Now let me outa here—please?”
“All right,” Cal said, removing the keys from the desk with an appropriate flourish. He unlocked the cell, and the boy sprang out as if he’d been there five years already.
“Now hold up there,” Cal said, when the boy would have followed the proprietor out the door. “On your way over to the general store, drop this off at the saloon,” he said, handing him the dirty plate and silverware that had been there ever since yesterday, when Sheriff Watts had been eating what turned out to be his last meal. “Tell them the new sheriff is ready for his dinner whenever it’s convenient, please.”
“Yes, sir!”
Cal waited until the merchant had taken his leave before grinning with satisfaction. He’d just settled the first case of lawbreaking since his term as sheriff had begun. Then he began to go through the desk drawers, which were as messy as the old sheriffs room had been. He supposed he was going to have to hire a deputy, too, for times when he had a prisoner to guard and his duties took him elsewhere.
That task completed, he figured it would be a while before dinner would be delivered from the Last Chance Saloon. He had time to explore a little.
He knew the buildings on Main Street already—the bank, the jail, the doctor’s office, the general store, the livery stable, the Baptist church, the saloon, the hotel, the millinery, the bathhouse and barbershop, and at the far end, across from Livy’s house, Gillespie Springs Park.
He strode down the side street between the bank and the hotel and came to South Street, or so the painted sign proclaimed it. He had already learned that South Street was deemed the more desirable of Gillespie Springs’s two residential streets. The prosperous townspeople—the doctor, the owner of the general store, the mayor, the saloonkeeper and their like—lived in modest but well-built stone-and-frame houses there, the lots separated by picket fences, most of them freshly whitewashed.
At the west end of South Street, up on a little rise, stood an antebellum mansion of red brick on a lawn shaded by ancient live oaks. A brass plate on the black, wrought-iron fence that surrounded the grounds proclaimed that Robert Gillespie lived there. Behind the house stood a circle of frame cabins, which probably had been slave quarters before the war.
So this was Robert Gillespie’s place. He apparently hadn’t believed in sharing his wealth with his younger brother, Cal mused, for the house Livy lived in, while comfortable, was nothing like this.
Leaving the Gillespie mansion behind, he crossed behind the Baptist church and came to North Street, which ran parallel, behind the bathhouse-barbershop, saloon and jail. Here, directly behind the saloon, was the ramshackle row of rooms known as the cribs, where a quartet of whores entertained their customers. The rest of the houses were mostly rickety affairs, too, little better than tar-paper shacks with tin roofs.
North Street was where the employees of the hotel and the bank, and Gillespie Springs’s few immigrants lived, and Long had told him almost all of the humble dwellings were rented from Robert Gillespie. Here and there Cal saw chickens scratching among the weeds that grew alongside the houses, and behind one unpainted, straggling picket fence a fat pink sow lolled in the sunshine. Down the street, three boys were kicking a ball back and forth.
South and North Streets might have been in different worlds, Cal thought as he cut back up the side street that ran between the saloon and the jail. He was tempted to go down to check on Livy now, but he resolutely put it off till after dinner.
The sounds of Jovita’s humming drifted up the stairs to the bedroom, and Olivia smiled. God bless Cal for finding her for me, she thought, and after I spoke the way I did to him, too. How would she have ever managed alone? She still felt weak as a newborn colt. She could hear the plump, middle-aged Mexican woman down in the kitchen now, rattling pots as she cleaned and straightened. A delicious smell wafted up the stairs, caused by the simmering chicken broth Jovita had promised “Señora Gillespie” for dinner.
Just as soon as she regained her strength, Livy would have to apologize to Cal for the harsh way she’d spoken to him, and thank him for hiring Jovita for her—and for saving her life, too, of course! Well, since he was now the sheriff, it wouldn’t be too hard to encounter him casually in town.
Olivia supposed most women would be so overcome with embarrassment at the thought of a man other than their husband having seen them in the midst of such an intimate, female crisis that they would be unable to face that man again. But she had never been one for false modesty. To blush and turn away when a man had saved her life would be unforgivable, in Olivia’s estimation, particularly when it was doubtful anyone else would have lifted a finger to help her.
She’d thank him politely, and that would be that. As much as her heart had warmed at the sight of him, she must not let on.
Cal Devlin had suffered enough in this life, she thought, remembering how he’d been listed as missing in action in the middle of the war, and later given up for dead by his family. Then, just recently, she’d overheard the gossip that he’d been found in Abilene, and was returning home.
It had been a shock, discovering that the bruised, beaten man lying unconscious in the dust at her feet in Bryan was none other than Cal Devlin, but while she and his brother transported him home in her buckboard, pulled by the horse she’d rented from the livery, Sam had filled in the gaps in the story. She’d learned about Cal losing his memory along with the sight in his right eye during the war.
Olivia had grieved inwardly, thinking how hard it must be to come home scarred and maimed, and find such hatred and intolerance in the very town where he’d once been so loved and respected.
When