Keegan's Lady (60 page)

Caitlin was almost afraid to place any importance on the mutterings of a delirious man. "Oh, Bess, do you think so?"

Bess snatched the wet rag from her hand. "I'll sit here with Patrick. Go, for heaven's sake. What have you got to lose?"

Nothing, Caitlin realized. Absolutely nothing.

She pushed slowly to her feet, her heart racing. It was a long shot. Probably a total waste of time. But what was she accomplishing here? Their father had kept daily journals and monthly ledgers. They were on shelves in his study, gathering dust. Had Patrick found something in them? Something that might have gotten him shot in the back for his trouble?

History repeating itself, Doc had said. Dear God, how could she have been so stupid? Someone had murdered Camlin Beckett twenty years ago. If not Joseph Paxton, then who? Bullets weren't fired by phantoms. Someone had shot Beckett in the back. Someone who might still be alive. Someone who probably wouldn't hesitate to kill again if he felt threatened with discovery.

Caitlin hurried from the surgery room. "Doc? Doc! I need to speak with you."

"Just a second!" he called. He spoke in a lower voice to someone else, then stepped out into the short hallway where Caitlin waited for him. "What is it, lass? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

Caitlin grasped both his hands, so excited she had to swallow before she could manage to speak. "Doc," she whispered urgently, "don't think we're crazy, but Bess and I think maybe Patrick found something at home in our father's journals, something to prove that Joseph Paxton didn't shoot Beckett!"

The elderly physician tightened his hold on her hands. "I know he's been rambling about some kind of journal, honey, but you can't put any stock in that. He's out of his head."

"Is he? Or has he been trying to tell us something?" She closed her eyes for a moment, striving to calm down. "Oh, Doc, I have to try. I'm going home to see what I can find. You mustn't tell anyone what I'm doing. Promise me? If Bess and I are right, that may be why Patrick was shot."

"Good Lord." The doctor's eyes grew dark with concern. "I never thought of that. Ledgers and journals. That's all he's talked about ever since they brought him in."

Hope welled within Caitlin. An almost violent hope.

"Doc, it could take me hours. Meanwhile, those men out there—they could go off half-cocked and hang Ace before I can get back. You have to go over there and talk to them. Try to calm them down. Keep them from doing anything stupid. Will you do that for me? Please?"

Doc drew his hands from hers and grasped her shoulders. "I'll try, honey. For you, I'll try."

Caitlin threw her arms around his neck and gave him a fierce hug. "Thank you! I'll never forget this. Never!"

She spun and ran from the building.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was after dark by the time Caitlin finished the search of her father's study and returned to town. She headed straight for the jail in hopes of catching Marshal Beiler before he left for the night.

She was at first puzzled, then alarmed, when she saw the crowd that had gathered under a large oak at the end of Main Street. In the bobbing torchlight, she could see a man astride a horse under one of the tree limbs. Even in the dusky light, the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head struck a chord within her. Ace. She would have recognized him anywhere.

Caitlin broke into a run. History was indeed about to repeat itself. Like Joseph Paxton twenty years earlier, Ace was about to be lynched by an angry mob.

A painful stitch lanced Caitlin's side by the time she reached the edges of the milling crowd. In her peripheral vision, she saw Doc standing off to her left. He had obviously failed in his attempt to calm these people down, for his expression was a mixture of apology and grim resignation. Men were yelling. Women were huddled together in groups talking. All of them seemed eager for the show to begin. The thought sickened

Caitlin, and she wanted to scream at them, revile them. A man's life was on the line. Didn't they comprehend that? This wasn't some kind of circus show, staged for their entertainment.

Caitlin knew she'd never be able to make herself heard above the rumble of the crowd unless she did something to get everyone's attention. Digging into ribs with her elbows and shoving at broad backs, she pressed toward the shifting ring of torchlight, waving the papers she'd ripped from her father's ledgers and journals above her head.

"Stop it! Stop this madness! You have to listen to me. All of you! You have to listen to me!"

"It's the O'Shannessy girl," she heard someone shout. Another man yelled, "Let her through. She should get to watch the bastard swing. It's her brother who's about to die, after all."

The throng of bodies suddenly parted, making a path for her. Caitlin stumbled forward into the circle of illumination. Her gaze swung immediately to Ace. His dark eyes held hers for a long moment, the bruises on his face barely visible in the shadows cast by the torchlight.

When he spoke, his Adam's apple made the knot in the noose around his throat bob up and down. "Go home, Caitlin. Please, sweetheart. I don't want you to see this."

He could have said anything else, and maybe it wouldn't have brought tears to her eyes. But to know he was concerned about her at a time like this, that was her undoing. His life was about to be forfeited. Didn't he comprehend that? These men hadn't notched the rope as he had done the night he nearly hanged Patrick. When the horse he was sitting on lunged forward, he would either get his neck broken or choke to death, neither of which was a pleasant way to die. He should have been quivering in terror. Pleading for his life. Maybe even furious. Instead, he was focused on getting her out of there. If Caitlin had ever needed proof of his love for her, she had it now. It made the thought of losing him all that much harder to bear.

Clutching the papers more tightly, she gulped for breath and grabbed for control. Now was no time for histrionics. No time to lose her perspective. Turning from her husband, she faced the crowd. "Where is Marshal Beiler?" she cried, shaking the papers in the faces of the men who stood closest to her. "Get him out here right now. This man didn't shoot my brother! And can prove it! If you hang him, you'll carry the guilt of it to your graves. Do you understand me?"

"How can you prove it?"

The speaker was Charley Banks, a big, brawny man whose eyes glowed with righteous anger. By his commanding stance, Caitlin guessed he'd been selected as the mob's ringleader and, as such, he was undoubtedly the most dangerous man present. On his say-so alone the people in this crowd would either release Ace or go crazy with primal blood lust.

Reminding herself of what Doc had said—that all o these men were basically good people—Caitlin straightened her shoulders, gathered her courage, and strode directly to Banks. Thrusting the papers under his nose she said, "The main reason you think my husband shot my brother is because you're convinced his stepfather shot Camlin Beckett. Isn't that right? The son of a back shooter following in his stepfather's footsteps?"

Banks darted a glance at the papers. "Might be. Might not. What have you got there, girl?"

Caitlin jutted her chin at him. "Proof in my father's own handwriting that Joseph Paxton didn't kill Camlin Beckett! And you'd better thank God I found it in time. You idiots have nearly hung an innocent man!"

"Caitlin, for God's sake, watch your tongue," Ace said from behind her. "These men are angry right now. Don't test their tempers."

Caitlin knew Ace was afraid Charley Banks would take offense and retaliate by striking her. At any other time, she might have quaked in her shoes. Right now she didn't care. She'd taken the punishment of a man's fists before.

She shook the papers under Banks's nose again. "If it tests their tempers to be confronted with the truth, then that's their problem, not mine. You're about to do something incredibly stupid, Mr. Banks. Something you'll regret until your dying day! Mark my words, I will press charges against you if you lynch my husband. And with evidence like this"—she shook the papers again— "there isn't a court in the land that won't convict you of murder! A hanging offense, Mr. Banks! And so help me God, I'll help build the gallows myself to see you executed!"

"Caitlin!" Ace exclaimed, his voice taut with warning.

Banks growled and snatched the papers from her hand. "What kind of evidence?" he asked sarcastically. "Something you hatched up to save his hide? It's a sad day, I'll tell you, when a woman tries to save the man who shot her own brother in the back!"

"That's right!" someone yelled. "Let's get on with it. He's guilty. We all know it."

"He's no more guilty than you or I!" Caitlin cried.

Banks was holding the ledger and journal pages up to the torchlight that flickered behind him. A strange expression crossed his face. "Hold on just a minute, boys. This is Conor's handwriting. I seen it often enough to know." His gaze sliced back to Caitlin. "What have you got here, girl? What is it you think you've found that's so important?"

A sudden hush fell. Caitlin knew it would take Banks as many hours as it had her to find the discrepancies in her father's ledgers, that he might have difficulty figuring it all out even if she pinpointed the entries for him.

A bluff. That was what was called for. The most important bluff of her life. And if she didn't carry it off, her husband would die.

"Those are pages from my father's journals and ledgers, as you can see. His entries substantiate the fact that Joseph Paxton, my husband's stepfather, paid good money twenty years ago to purchase the deed to the Circle Star Ranch. Yet when Paxton arrived here, he was ordered off the land. A swindle, plain and simple. And Paxton wasn't their only victim. My father worked in cahoots with four other men, Beckett, Dublin, Connel and Beiler. All of them were in on it, not once but several times, swindling innocent people out of their hard-earned money. Read for yourself!"

Banks gave a ledger page a quick once-over, his brows drawing together in a frown. "Show me."

"It's all there," Caitlin cried. "In black and white. Joseph Paxton came here to possess land he'd purchased in good faith from Camlin Beckett back in St. Louis. Almost immediately after he got here, my father and his friends, all armed to the teeth, paid him a visit and told him to leave. Paxton was a peaceful, God-fearing man, and he feared for his family's safety, so he agreed to go. But before he could, Beckett was shot in the back, and Paxton was accused of the murder.

"Stop and think!" she implored the crowd. "In my father's own hand, the admission is made. He and his four friends swindled people to make extra money. You all know how hard it is to make ends meet here, farming and raising cattle. Most of you originally came here hoping to find gold. Many of you were poor Irish immigrants like my parents, driven from your homeland by famine. You came here chasing a dream. Quick fortunes in gold! The very name of our town is testimony to that, a mining community gone bust so soon it never even got a proper name. My father and his friends discovered a way to earn money on the side, by swindling innocent people! That's how they always seemed to turn a better profit than the rest of you, by the sweat of someone else's brow."

"My God," a man in the crowd yelled, "I wondered how Conor always managed to get his hands on money. Drinking and gambling like he did must have cost a small fortune."

The man's outburst was the first sign that any of these people were even listening to her. Caitlin nearly went limp with relief. Then someone cried, "So that's why Paxton shot Beckett! He'd been swindled!"