“I’m standing here, ain’t I?”
She gifted him one last smile.
“Goodbye, Prentiss.”
Then she walked to Hackstedde and placed the fruit basket on the table.
“If we’re to keep our deal, my cousin is to get any of this fruit whenever he wishes.”
“Now we both know that wasn’t part of our deal,” the sheriff said.
“Then consider it changed.”
Hackstedde laced his hands behind his head and leaned back, entertained by the negotiation.
“Tack on a visit. I get four. My choice of girl.”
Clementine looked at Prentiss a final time, not in shame, but as if to say: This is what I will do for you.
“So be it.”
“Good, good.” Hackstedde gestured at the door. “You get home safely now. I’m sure there are many men awaiting your arrival.”
She went into the night without turning back. Hackstedde spoke more—he always did—but Prentiss heard none of it. He was strangely at peace. He journeyed his way back toward sleep. He thought there was a chance, however slim, that he might wake to Clementine’s voice once more. And if that wish was too much to grant, perhaps he might find her in his dreams. But as it happened, he got little rest. With Clementine gone, the reality of his predicament wended its way like a slow freight train toward his cell. And when the next person came through the door of the jail, it was Hackstedde’s deputy.
The sheriff reacted like a father proud of a son who had accomplished a task above his station. Tim, quite proud himself, informed him that Judge Ambrose had been delivered to Selby and was lodging across the street. The proceedings could take place first thing in the morning.
“Well!” Hackstedde said, taking off his hat. “If the office had medals, I’d award you one. Quite rightly so.”
Tim beamed, and Prentiss was galled that in accomplishing their petty objectives, all rendered to bring about his death, these two men, until recently strangers to each other, had located such a profound sense of achievement.
Hackstedde said he would get some rest and ride to fetch Webler with the good news come morning.
“You stay here,” he commanded Tim. “Watch our prisoner for me.”
Prentiss shut his eyes once more, and this time exhaustion claimed him. When he came out of his doze, Tim was the only man in the jail. He’d pulled a chair up to Prentiss’s cell. The candle on the desk behind the deputy had burned itself down to a nubbin. Gripping a peach from Clementine’s basket, he monitored Prentiss with a rapt fervor, his eyes sharp, as though Prentiss might take flight at any second. He took a bite of the peach, and juices oozed from the open wound.
Here, here was a simple man, Prentiss thought. Did he not see the bars? Why watch over him so intently? But when he considered what was to come, it seemed not so odd. In all the ways that counted but one, the noose was already tightened fast around Prentiss’s neck. A man waiting to die was a show by itself. Tim had just arrived early.
CHAPTER 21
Caleb found his army pistol down in the cellar, wrapped in a quilt, left to languish in the company of his grandfather’s hunting rifles. The house was pitched with an enveloping blackness. It was neither night nor morning but rather that long lull of hours between the two, a period of nothingness—one Caleb knew too well. He’d awakened to it often as a boy, half-asleep, transfixed by the way the thudding of his own heartbeat penetrated his thoughts, consumed by the terrible sensation that the rest of the world lay dormant, at peace, while he alone could gain no rest. He’d have done anything to avoid that pit of despair. Tonight he welcomed it.
He left the cellar and moved into the darkness outside. By the time his eyes had adjusted, the cabin was already some distance behind him. Each step felt bound to nothing. Old Ox was no longer home. None of this was. Even the cabin had the air of the unfamiliar. He’d swear to his room being smaller, and the passageway leading to the stairs tighter. It was as though the space, in his absence, had begun to shape itself to the contours of his parents, having forgotten the child who’d wandered off. In his heart, though, he knew the house hadn’t shrunk. He’d simply learned how immense the world was. Probably any man who returned to his boyhood would discover the exact same phenomenon.
He was in the fields now. His father’s plants were still unassuming, and the fact that they had spent so much time tending to them, with so little to show, was a lesson in perversity. Caleb reached down, felt under the topsoil beneath one of the plants, clasped its winding roots, and gave a tug. He didn’t haul them up. That was months away yet. He simply wanted to make contact—to see how far down they descended, and how far up they would have to travel to see the light of day. Anyone could tell you he hadn’t been raised a farmer, but the feat astounded him. Small miracles stowed away.