“He asked me to look in on you,” he said.“Didn’t he tell you?”
“He doesn’t tell me anything.”There was bitterness in her voice.“I don’t suppose you’re here to take me …”
“To Randall’s ranch?No, I’m afraid not.But I did bring you something to eat.”
He realized how little that was compared to her hope, and he added, “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”she asked.“Then let me go.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Rafe is my friend.”
“Enough of a friend to hang for?”There was a bite to the question, as well as real curiosity.
“Miss Randall,” he said patiently, “my brother and I would have died ten years ago if it were not for Rafe Tyler.I don’t take that kind of debt lightly.”
“How?”She was hungry to know about Rafe Tyler.To know his weaknesses, she told herself, even though she knew that wasn’t the entire truth.He was a mystery she wanted to solve, a puzzle with too many missing pieces.
Clint went on into the room.The mouse was sitting on the table.Clint suddenly grinned.“You’ve found Abner.”
“Abner found me,” the girl said.“He’s company.And better than some,” she added dryly, making it clear she meant Rafe Tyler.
Clint found himself liking Shea Randall.He’d feared tears, screams, incriminations, or worse.Instead, she had stated her case calmly, even with a little bite.He suspected she hadn’t given up.
“And now you have some food … eggs, bacon.”
But Shea was in no mood to be pacified.Or let him feel less guilty.“For the condemned?”she asked grimly.
“Do you feel like the condemned?”
“How would you feel locked in a small room, at the mercy of people you don’t know, for reasons you don’t understand?”
“Try it for ten years,” Clint said roughly.
“If you’re talking about …” She stopped, not knowing what to call Rafe Tyler.“He brought it on himself by stealing.”
“Did he?”Clint deliberately made his question provocative.
“What do you mean?”
Her puzzlement made Clint suddenly want to explain what Rafe Tyler obviously had not.But it wasn’t his place to explain.He could only talk about his own feelings.
“I met Rafe,” Clint said slowly, “when he was a captain and I was nineteen, my brother sixteen.We’d enlisted in the Union Army, but God knows we were as green as you can get.Captain Tyler was our officer, and he worked tirelessly to shape us up, but the army hurried us into battle before we were ready.Rafe made captain about that time, and we were assigned a new lieutenant, one as green as we were.
“The lieutenant was trying to make a name for himself.He ordered my brother to take out a sniper, and Ben got caught in the open and shot.The sniper kept firing at him.I went after him and took a bullet myself.No one could reach the sniper from our lines.The lieutenant panicked and told the others to withdraw, leaving us out in the open.Captain Tyler was riding by at that time and saw what was happening.He had orders to report directly to General Grant, but he disobeyed them and crawled out to help us.He was able to get close enough to kill the sniper, but not before he, too, was shot.”
Clint didn’t disguise the intensity of feeling he always had when he remembered that day.“Captain Tyler was the best officer I ever saw throughout the war.Do you really think a man who would risk his life, who would disobey orders to save two enlisted men, would do what they said he did?”
“People … change.”
“Not that much, Miss Randall.”
“He practically admitted …”
“Did he?Or did he just refuse to defend himself?No one listened before.”
