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Copyright © 2019 by Steven W. Horn. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Web—without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, please contact Granite Peak Press, P.O. Box 2597, Cheyenne, WY 82003, or email: info@granitepeakpress.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, corporations, organizations, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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The late November storm settled quietly over the city of Cheyenne. A gray blanket of snow-laden clouds had crept in unnoticed from the west, dragging its ponderous belly down the street toward the courthouse and scattering tiny flakes of snow, messengers of what was to come.

She raised her hand to touch a frosty swirl inside the cold hotel windowpane overlooking the scene below. We spend much of our lives waiting for death, she thought. It’s rarely a surprise. Her eyes were heavy with tears that would not flow. She had been trying to convince herself she had done everything possible to save him, but she knew there had to have been something more. It was her fault. She had waited too long.

Despite the earlier threat of snow that now fogged the morning air, the atmosphere outside had become carnival-like. A deathwatch should be solemn. From her vantage point above, she watched the press writhing like maggots on decaying meat. She hated them. They had tried and convicted him in their fabricated court of public opinion, and destroyed her in the process—though he was the main event and she nothing more than a sideshow attraction.

A ripple undulated through the crowd as it pressed against the line of guardsmen encircling the building, their rifles at port arms. She glanced at the mantel clock on the hotel bureau across the room. It was 11:08. Placing her hand on the window glass to steady herself, she leaned forward, her neck craned to the west in an attempt to see down the alley where the hearse was parked. Her warm breath steamed the icy windowpane. She wiped it with her sleeve then studied her reflection. It was shadowy, like her, with dark circles under eyes that craved emotional relief. She tucked a curl of hair behind her ear, slowly shaking her head from side to side. Her perfect lips suggested disappointment.

Several reporters broke from the crowd and hurried off to file their lies with their editors. Others tussled with their crews and each other, setting up their bulky camera equipment, jockeying for position. “Maggots,” she whispered.

She would be next. The vultures were already circling, waiting for her to stop struggling so they could peck out her eyes. The prosecuting attorney, an alcoholic running for office, was riding this bandwagon at the front of the parade. The rummy-eyed bantam rooster knew how to manipulate the press to his advantage and had cleverly used them during the trial. He had made a show of publicly swearing out the arrest warrant on her for perjury. The sheriff on the other hand had been sympathetic, even kind. He had repeatedly apologized to her after her arrest and had moved her out of the jail. She was put under house arrest at the hotel with a deputy posted in the hallway. She was even allowed to take her meals in the hotel restaurant while the deputy sipped coffee a few tables away.

It was unfair, all of it. She hated this city. She hated this state. Ultimately, she came back only because an innocent man was going to be executed for a crime she knew he did not commit. She had waited too long. Both sides knew what she had. The prosecutor had sent one of his minions all the way to Kansas City with offers of money if she would return and testify for the state. She had refused. Instead, she had repeatedly offered to testify for the defense. But his attorneys said they did not need her, that he would be acquitted based on the points of law. Now only the governor could stop this injustice. Himself a lawyer, he knew there were grounds for a pardon, at least a commutation. However, he was vulnerable. As the former secretary of state, he was the unelected successor to the recently deceased governor. The press smelled blood. They would destroy him. He would lose the party’s nomination for a legitimate term in an office that he found fulfilling, both economically and socially. Still, he had no choice. He had to meet with her.

Twenty-four years old and from a highly respected family, educated, and experienced in dealing with egocentric men, she made her case before the governor. Surely he would see how powerful and just it was. Undressing her with his eyes, he seemed more interested in her than in her sworn statement. His flirtatious remarks dripped with innuendo concerning her relationship with the condemned man, and men in general. He was slimy, but she refused to be intimidated by his insinuations and his offensive solicitations, unexpected as they were. She hadn’t expected being arrested within a few hours of her meeting with him either, charged with lying. Three others had also submitted affidavits in Tom’s defense, yet she was the only one accused of perjury. The only one arrested.

The press was making hay with the fact that she was being represented by Blake Kennedy, one of the attorneys who had lost the case against the state for which a man was about to be executed. She had no choice. She was broke. John, who believed her and believed Tom, was paying for her defense. He had stood by both of them through the trial, then the appeal. She had seen John less than an hour earlier as he rushed down the alley, head bowed, wiping tears from his eyes after saying goodbye to Tom.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. She had wanted to say goodbye too, to tell him what every man should know before he dies, that he will be remembered. She wanted to tell him about Victoria. She owed him that much. She wanted to tell him to name names and stop protecting the people who had betrayed him. But she struggled with the prospect. The press would have exploited her visit. They had already falsely stated that she had met with her lover in jail. What does it matter? I’m already ruined. There was so much she needed to tell him. I waited too long.

Two men carried his body on a stretcher to the hearse. It was covered with a dark rubber sheet. Men she did not recognize, dressed in black suits, accompanied it. A fine snow swirled down from the overcast sky. One of the men stood back and slowly removed his spectacles. He pulled a white handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the lenses before placing them back on his face, carefully wrapping the wires behind each ear. They would take him to the Gleason Mortuary, then to the train station. It was over. She had waited too long. Tom Horn had been hanged.

Sam closed his left eye, pressed his nose against the back of the camera, and looked through the viewfinder. He focused on the barn, from where he heard the distinctive sound of a hammer hitting steel. Heat waves rippled upward from the asphalt shingles under the noon sun of a cloudless Wyoming June day.

The historic Two Bar Ranch headquarters had probably changed little since the late nineteenth century. The weathered structures were in various shades of gray, as he had imagined they would be. Sam believed people had been conditioned to visualize history in black and white and gray, at least that period of history between the invention of the camera and the development of color film. When he thought of people and events from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1950s, he saw them in black and white. Bodies on Civil War battlefields, doughboys in trenches, landing craft on the beaches of Normandy, Lincoln to Eisenhower, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, big bands, rock ’n’ roll, Carole Lombard, and Joseph Cotton were all remembered as black-and-white images. Even his childhood memories tended toward the high-contrast monochromes of earlier films exposed through simple, fixed lenses. He liked the black-and-white medium. He always had. He believed that texture, shape, and clarity, rather than the flashy attraction of color, should capture the viewer’s eye. Creativity was limitless and challenging when using longer exposures and filters that produced tonal contrasts to define an image. Light and shadow became more prominent, hypnotic.

Sam had taken many black-and-white photographs of Annie. He had not looked at them in the thirteen months since her death. It was too soon. He would break down. Frequently he would see her in a crowd, always from behind, moving away from him. It was as though she were leading him. He was afraid it was her. It was never her. She was dead. He knew that. She had stopped breathing in a decaying barn, while he frantically resuscitated his daughter, Sidney, whom she had saved. Annie’s heart slowly rested for eternity. He would dedicate this book to her. He would dedicate all future books to her. And Sidney, he thought. His daughter had gone through so much. Annie was her best friend and she missed her too, in a different way. Sidney had coped by immersing herself in her final year of law school and relentlessly preparing for the Multistate Bar Exam coming up in July.

Ghost towns, logging camps, and mining—then and now—were what his new publisher wanted. Annie and Sidney had secretly written the proposal. Sam had grown tired of photographing cemeteries, and his first publisher had repeatedly rejected his request to work in his preferred black and white. This was his chance to be truly creative.

While researching local mining camps at the state archives in Cheyenne, he had found a picture of a large sophisticated camp on North Lodgepole Creek, northwest of the ghost towns of Federal and Islay. From the archived photo, it appeared to be as much a ghost town as a mining camp. Someone had written “Feldspar Mine” on the back of the photo. Sam had never heard of the mineral feldspar. Geology was not his thing. Even after a semester of earth science at CU, which he thought would be an easy way to satisfy his physical sciences requirement, he could not distinguish between igneous and sedimentary deposits. He had explored the Pole Mountain region of the Medicine Bow National Forest, between Laramie and Cheyenne. There he discovered several vertical shafts or open pits, dug or blasted into the cone-shaped granite outcroppings. This camp, however, was on the huge Two Bar Ranch to the north. He would need permission to trespass.

A man shuffled out of the barn and into Sam’s viewfinder. Old by cowboy standards, he was probably in his late seventies. He was wearing greasy, gray, pinstriped coveralls and a welder’s skullcap atop a mop of white hair that had not been cut in several months. Each seam across the toes of his cowboy boots was nearly burned through from years of welding sparks. Portly was a kind description of the squinty-eyed, weather-beaten septuagenarian who talked to himself. He gasped for air as he approached Sam.

Sam tucked his camera under his left arm, introduced himself, and quickly explained his mission and request to trespass.

“Uh-huh. Gus McMurdy, ranch manager here. Well, I’ll tell you boys somethin’,” he said with a whine, his white-beard stubble streaked with grease.

Sam looked around to see if someone else was behind him. There was nobody there except the two of them.

“Them Mennonites was a bunch of inbreds. Inbreds, I tell ya. They wouldn’t say shit if they had a mouthful.”

“Mennonites?” Sam asked, furrowing his brow.

“Squatters, nesters, cabbage-eatin’ pacifists. Pacifists, I tell ya.”

“They owned the mine?”

“No more than a bunch of ants own an anthill. They’d filed the claim. Horses pulled wagonloads of feldspar to the rail yards in Laramie. Horses, I tell ya. Don’t know why the dumb bastards didn’t haul it down to the tracks at Federal or Islay. They trucked it over the mountain to the UP in Laramie. It probably saved them a nickel. They was tightfisted SOBs. Squeaky tight, I tell ya. Conscientious objectors they were. Stayed home and bred like rabbits while their Kraut relatives shot the asses off good Americans. COs, I tell ya.”

Gus had a tendency to repeat the subject of a sentence, followed by a personal pronouncement for emphasis. Sam was reminded of a Looney Tunes character, a large, strutting chicken named Foghorn Leghorn.

“I thought Mennonites were from Holland,” Sam said as he squeezed his chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“They was pacifists, too. But these ones sprechen sie Deutsch. German, I tell ya. Low German, to be exact. Lower than a snake’s belly. Pennsylvania Dutch they was. They had their own school up at the camp. Their books was all in German.” Gus grabbed a lariat that was hanging from a nail and began pulling the stiff rope through a loop at one end. “Well, I’ll tell you boys somethin’,” he said as he started to twirl the lasso above the ground.

Again, Sam looked over his shoulder, more subtly this time, to see if anyone else was present.

“I got no room for draft-dodging, freeloading zealots. I respect a man’s religious beliefs, but when it comes time to defend the Mutterland, you don’t wet yourself and stay home with the women.” Gus suddenly jumped agilely into the center of the twirling lariat, his arm raised above his head, his wrist circling the rope around his cherubic body.

Sam took a step backward away from the whirling rope. “You a veteran?”

“Let me think. I don’t think so. Too young for the big one. Tried to enlist for Korea.” He suddenly changed the twirling horizontal loop to a vertical rotating blur. He gingerly jumped through the loop then back again before allowing the rope to crash to the ground. “They wouldn’t take me on account I got no thumb,” he said, holding up his right fist and shoving it toward Sam. “Lost it in the dally roping a steer when I was a kid. Just a kid, I tell ya.”

“Lunch,” a woman’s voice called from the yard of the large, two-story ranch house behind Sam. Turning, he saw her as plainly as he had so many times before. She stood motionless, her hand in a salute over her brow, shielding her eyes from the harsh midday sun. Her dark hair, pulled into a low ponytail, glistened as she tipped her head sideways and smiled. It was Annie. He was sure of it this time. Blue jeans were tucked into her boots, and a white sleeveless blouse accentuated her slender figure. She stood half in the flickering shadow of the giant cottonwood trees that surrounded the house, and half in a shaft of sunlight that radiated heavenly from above. Her tan arms appeared dark against her blouse. He tried to swallow the painful lump that had formed in his throat. His hands began to shake. He was afraid it was her. He was afraid it was not her. He could not move.

“Join us for lunch. Cricket knows that camp better than most. She’ll take you up there after we eat.”

“I couldn’t impose—”

“You ain’t imposing. What did you say your name was?”

“Sam, Sam Dawson.”

“Gus McMurdy, ranch manager here,” said Gus with a vacant stare as if trying to remember why they were talking to each other.

“Cricket?” Sam managed to squeeze from around the dry lump that threatened his voice. He squinted to better make out the apparition who stared back at him from the lawn thirty yards away.

“My daughter. She won’t mind. She gets bored with only me to talk to most of the time. She can be a little on the bossy side. Bossy, I tell ya.”

Gus picked up the rope again and twirled it above his head, then suddenly let it fly toward the machine-shop door where it perfectly encircled an upright fifty-five-gallon drum.

“You’re pretty handy with that rope,” Sam said with little enthusiasm as he continued to stare at the reincarnation of the woman he loved.

“Should’ve seen me when I still had lead in my pencil. I had more piss and vinegar than brains. Rodeo pretty much took it out of me. It’s a wonder I can still walk, given all the horse wrecks I had on the circuit. Wrecks, I tell ya.”

“A roper?” Sam tried to sound interested.

“Well, I’ll tell you boys somethin’. Only in my later years did I rope things. I rode rough stock most of my career. I did ’em all. I did the timed events after I was too busted up to ride anymore. The only thing I ride now is a pickup truck. I listen for the dinner bell rather than the buzzer,” he said, patting his belly. “Let’s go see what my baby girl’s got for eats. You married, Mr.…?” Gus stalled again.

“Neither’s Cricket. Single, I tell ya.”

Sam stared at the woman who still held her hand above her eyes. He was afraid it was her.

Five days after the execution, the prosecutor filed a motion to dismiss the perjury charges against her. There was no pertinent case law—or statute—pertaining to an affidavit in a proceeding involving a pardon or commutation of a sentence, he contended. Two-and-a-half weeks later, with the typical glacial speed of the legal system, a judge agreed and she was released. She was out of time, out of money, out of patience, and tired of washing her underwear in the bathroom sink. Her stockings had holes in them, and both blouses she had packed had food stains. She wanted out of this wretched state, the farther the better. She missed Vicky—her mother was a saint for watching over her. She, too, needed relief. But first, she needed to set the record straight.

She and John would meet in Denver with the publisher at Louthan Press. The media had wanted the kiss-and-tell details. Now the public would learn the truth, and all the press’s lies would be exposed. Her affidavit—the one the governor had dismissed, the one the prosecutor had claimed was perjury and imprisoned her for—would now be made public. It would appear as an appendix to the autobiography of an innocent man executed for a crime he did not commit. It would be a vindication for both of them.

He had entrusted his handwritten story to John the morning of the execution. She had not yet read it. Together they would edit the manuscript and provide their statements—and those of the others—which showed his true character as a patriot, a war hero, and a man of the law. The book would sell. She had to concede that the newspapers had insured it would sell. They had fueled the public’s insatiable appetite for scandalous gossip. It was the trial of the century, after all.

The press had smeared his public image from the beginning. They had made him out to be a monster, an anachronism that belied their view of themselves as “civilized.” The book would set the record straight. They had both been victimized by corrupt politicians and the libelous press. If she had the money, she would sue them all. She would make them sorry. The truth would burn their skin like a red-hot poker. They would feel the pain of the public’s scorn. She would get her pound of flesh and bait fish hooks with it. There would be a vindication.

John seemed sure that all would be well, eventually. Money was becoming a problem for him. He no longer had financial support from the nameless men who stayed in the shadows, men who demanded secrecy. They were the very men who had refused to come forward and defend Tom, the man they had hired to protect their wealth.

There was something horribly wrong with the justice system in this state. Everyone was related to, or at least in business with, someone with a family connection. She found it disturbing that the defense team all lived in the same neighborhood as the prosecuting attorney, the judge, the governor, and a U.S. senator who owned all of them. It was one big happy family that protected each other’s interests. Why had she not been called to testify? They knew she could blow the case wide open. They wanted him dead. They were scared of what the press would do to their political ambitions and development plans for a city and state that most people still thought of as the Wild West. She would expose them. She would write the true story and it would endure. Newspaper articles turn yellow and become brittle with age. Books, if cared for, last for centuries. She would make them sorry. There would be a vindication.

The sheriff himself had knocked on her door to inform her of the dropped charges and her release. There was no apology. Still, there was a kindness in his voice that indicated his concern for her. He gave her a ticket to Denver, which she believed he had purchased with his own money. He knew she wanted to leave. This was his way of saying she needed to leave. Not “good riddance,” exactly. Rather, it would be best for all concerned if she left.

“You executed an innocent man,” she said softly while maintaining eye contact with him.

He stared at her with sad eyes for a long moment, said “Yes,” then turned and walked away without closing her door.

Strangely, she had not shed a tear. Perhaps grief had been supplanted by anger. After all, she barely knew the man. Now her eyes burned and welled with tears. It was finally over. She could accede to emotional release. She looked at the ticket and drew a deep breath. There would be a vindication.

She was petite, almost diminutive, much smaller than Annie. Older, too, with a few strands of gray emanating from her hairline, her ponytail fastened with a tooled leather concha. Sam believed that “cute” did not apply to a woman in her midforties. Beautiful was too glamorous a term, and handsome was much too masculine. She was more than attractive. He settled on pretty. She had dark, somewhat sleepy eyes that seemed to reflect even the most muted fingers of light that streamed through the kitchen curtains. She had difficulty maintaining eye contact with him. Her perfectly delineated upper lip was dimpled slightly at the corners and easily turned upward into a smile. Soft, rounded cheekbones and a matching chin that seemed animated when she pursed her lips into a pout, gave her a childlike look that was captivating. Her name was Cricket, a name so straightforward and small, it suited her.

“Is Cricket your given name?” Sam asked somewhat awkwardly as she poured lemonade into a tumbler of ice next to his plate.

“Gleana,” she said softly without looking at him, then gently bit her lower lip.

“Excuse me?” he tilted his head like a dog hearing a flute.

“Gleana,” she repeated with a smile.

Sam noticed the crooked incisor that distorted her smile ever so slightly. He looked at her with raised eyebrows, but said nothing.

“A bit masculine, don’t you think?” she asked.

He knew better than to respond. He noted her slender neck with its graceful curve and the shaded hollow below her throat.

“It’s a good Scottish name. Scottish, I tell ya,” Gus blurted.

“Take that stupid beanie off, Dad.”

Gus pulled the skull cap from his head and tossed it on the counter behind him.

“What about those grimy coveralls?”

“I ain’t got nothing on ’cept my underwear.”

Cricket took a deep breath and placed her hand on her hip. She looked sympathetically at Sam as if apologizing for her father. “It’s Gaelic from the word glean, meaning valley.”

Sam smiled and nodded. He said nothing.

“Could of named you Thelma or Elsie or Sylvia,” Gus said as he crushed soda crackers over his bowl of tomato soup. “Those are nice girl names. Feminine, I tell ya.”

“Dad was devastated that I was a girl.”

“I’ll tell you boys somethin’. You know why the doctor holds a newborn up by the feet and smacks their behind?”

Sam smiled and said, “I’ll bite.”

“So he can knock the peckers off the dumb ones. Girls, I tell ya.”

Cricket rolled her eyes and shook her head. She slid a toasted cheese sandwich from her spatula onto the plate in front of her father. “Eat your lunch, Dad, and try not to embarrass me any further.” She turned toward Sam. “I’m named after a distant relative.”

“My grandmother on my mother’s side, your great-grandmother, it’s not that distant. Great-grandmother, I tell ya.” Melted cheese ran from the corner of Gus’s mouth.

“She was Scottish?” Sam asked.

“Aye, she was a mere slip of a girl who came into this country with nothing more than a tartan skirt and a thick Scottish burr. Scottish, I tell ya.”

“She was German, Dad, born and raised in Missouri. Your dad, Grandpa McMurdy, was Scottish. Or at least he had a fondness for the malted barley they distilled there. His liver is perfectly preserved in a cemetery outside of San Luis Obispo, California.”

“Cricket’s hobby is gynecology.”

“Genealogy, Dad. You know better. I apologize for my father’s crude behavior, Mr. Dawson. He thinks he’s being funny.”

“I’ll tell you what’s funny, and that’s a good-lookin’ girl like you cooped up with and lookin’ after an old man like me. You ought to be with people your own age. Young people, I tell ya. How old are you, Mr. Dawson?”

“Oh, here we go,” Cricket sang with frustration. “He never misses an opportunity to play matchmaker.”

“Well?” Gus said. He looked at Sam expectantly.

“Well, what?” Sam asked.

“How old are ya?”

“I’m old enough to know better than to get involved in a family squabble.”

Cricket placed a toasted cheese sandwich in front of Sam. “Good answer, Mr. Dawson.”

Gus speared a dill pickle from a bowl. “What year is that old Jeep you’re driving?”

“It’s a ’53 Willys wagon.”

Without hesitation Gus said, “I was twenty-three when that thing was new. There wasn’t a bull or a horse I couldn’t ride. Ten short years later I was cowboying for the Lazy R and tendin’ a newborn Cricket. That was the year the President was shot. Assassinated, I tell ya.”

Sam glanced at Cricket. She drew in a long breath and shook her head.

“I was born in 1963 also,” Sam said to Gus without looking at Cricket. “I turned forty-six last February.”

“You satisfied now?” Cricket said, turning back toward the cast-iron griddle on the gas stove.

Gus ignored her. He smiled at Sam and said, “Her birthday ain’t ’til November. She’s only forty-five.” He winked at Sam. “Single just like you,” he added casually.

Sam stared at the clever septuagenarian who one minute seemed lost, and the next sharp as a tack. Sam did not respond.

“Kids, Mr. Dawson?”

“I have a daughter. She just graduated from law school last month at UW.”

“That’ll come in handy someday. Say, you know what to do if you find a bunch of lawyers buried up to their necks in sand?”

Sam knew the answer. He looked at the old man.

“You add more sand,” Gus blurted out, laughing.

“Everyone’s heard that old joke, Dad. Eat your lunch.”

“When the end comes there’ll be only three critters left,” Gus said. “Cockroaches, coyotes, and lawyers.”

Gus looked around the table. “Where’s the meat? What kind of vegetarian meal is this?”

“You don’t need to eat meat three times a day. Again, I apologize for my father’s behavior, Mr. Dawson. He thinks he can get away with saying anything he wants just because he’s old.”

“Well, I’ll tell you boys somethin’,” Gus said with a smile. “One of the advantages of getting old is the ability to say what’s on your mind. It’s called honesty.”

“It’s called losing your social filter,” she said without turning to face her father.

Sam saw the frustration in Cricket’s face. She now avoided all eye contact with him. As harmless as her father seemed, Sam had surmised that Gus was one of those people who jockeyed constantly to be the center of attention, never showing interest in other people. His only questions of Sam were segues to his limited, well-rehearsed topics that always put him front and center. He was reminded of the governor he had worked for as press secretary. He, too, was a storyteller who was interested only in perpetuating his self-image with grandiose tales while ignoring the unimportant little people around him.

“Gleana-meaning-valley, your dad said you might be able to show me the way to the old Mennonite mining camp.…If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Sam added.

“I killed me a bull elk up there a few years ago,” Gus interrupted. “Might have been the year before or maybe…,” he trailed off, lost in thought. “I think he was a world record. I don’t hold with that type of thing. Shot it with a 30-30 Winchester Model 94, open sights at better than three hundred yards. It was the best shot I ever made and the damndest deed I ever done.” Gus winked at his daughter, who had turned suddenly to shoot her father a look of disapproval.

“His neck was swoll up like a drowned puppy. Full rut, I tell ya. All covered with mud from his wallow, his tines shined white from workin’ his rub. The ole boy was all slicked up and ready to give them cows the what for. Just when he was thinking he was king of the jungle, along comes a hundred seventy grains of silver-tipped lead. He never heard the shot. Dead, I tell ya. He had a tallywacker on him as big as a studhorse.”

“That’s enough, Dad,” Cricket said with a sharp edge to her voice.

Gus looked at her with his hurt-child expression. He said nothing more.

“I’d be happy to take you up to the camp, Mr. Dawson,” she said, attempting a smile.

Her grin reminded Sam of Annie’s hesitant smile when she was unsure of herself. He studied her for a long moment before nodding his thanks. She was not Annie. Her name was Cricket.

A woman does things in her twenties that she cannot explain. Things that seem to be driven by some internal yearning that threatens to explode if not satisfied. She wondered if other young women wanted romantic adventure with the same compulsion she had experienced when she left the comforts and security of home. Poise and dignity were an act. Reputation and integrity were refinements for older women. A lady of unblemished virtue refrained from those behaviors that were glorified and held in esteem for men. Unfair as it was, it was accepted by a society that marginalized and discriminated against women as inferior members of the species. Independence came with a price. The cost haunted her, yet endured warmly when all else seemed cold and chaotic. She would always remember those two days. They served as a point of reference, an eyeblink of time against which she would compare all things wonderful during the rest of her life. He had taken away her youth and, with a single experience, pushed her across the threshold into adulthood.

The press had published lurid stories that sensationalized her relationship with a killer. The public clamored for more, fascinated by the fictionalized attraction of polar opposites. He was the unrepentant murderer and she the aristocrat-turned-whore. They knew nothing.

She took a deep breath as she watched the brown landscape pass by her window. It had started to snow again. She touched the glass to gauge the outside temperature. It was cold. A shiver ran across her shoulders as she remembered the frigid water of Miller Creek, how it made her skin rough and her nipples erect, so hard they hurt. She had never seen a man naked before. There was no grace or composure, only a deep infatuation with sexual pleasure that engulfed her every sense, her entire being.

The all-absorbing passion was short-lived, followed by deep embarrassment. She clutched the collar of her blouse and could not bring herself to make eye contact with him. Instead, she stole glances of his muscular body as he dressed. He was easily more than a foot taller than her and was built in perfect proportion to his height—broad-shouldered, deep-chested, full-hipped, and without an ounce of fat. He had muscles of steel, stood straight as an arrow, and walked with a suggestion of swagger. His strong jaw, chin, and nose were belied by his full lips that so easily curved into a smile. Scars from bullets and knives only accentuated her fascination. He embodied everything that had attracted her to the West. Her most private thoughts had become a reality. He was almost twice as old as she and seasoned in the ways of intimacy. They were polar opposites.

The inquest, trial, and appeal had taken almost two-and-a-half years, leading up to the November 1903 execution. It was now 1905. Vicky would turn three in April. She loved her daughter. She was beautiful, tall for her age, with dark, intense eyes like his. Her mother, Frances, had assumed the role of nanny. She acted as if illegitimacy and shame were an everyday occurrence. Frances had moved from Hannibal to Kansas City under the pretense of caring for a maiden aunt who had taken ill. Her motherly instincts had been suppressed by the deaths of two of her three children. Now she hovered over Vicky like a hummingbird over a red flower, her life renewed with purpose.

Vicky had never asked about her father. That question would surely come in time. Hopefully, by then they would be settled someplace far away where they had not heard of her infamous father, somewhere free from the fragments of daily life that burdened her. She would make a home where the relentless hounding of yellow journalism would not reach them. It would be the polar opposite of Wyoming.

Your dad is quite a character,” Sam said without looking at her. Cricket sat in the passenger seat of his Willys as they bounced south along a two-track, dust rolling up behind them. The old flat-fender Jeep growled in second while climbing the steep grades up the escarpment on the east side of the Laramie range.

“Yes he is,” she said with a smile, then bit her lower lip. “He’s the last of a breed. Pretty harmless. He takes some getting used to. He’s getting terribly forgetful lately. I worry about him. I hope you weren’t offended by his antics.”

Sam smiled. “Not at all. He’s entertaining, not like some of the other ranchers I’ve met in this area.”

“Oh, he’s not a rancher. He’s a cowboy. Dad has never owned an acre or a beef cow in his life.” There was a note of resentment in her voice.

“You a native?” Sam asked.

“Heavens no,” she laughed, her crooked tooth fully exposed. “I’m like a military brat. I’ve been to more schools than I care to count. When I was growing up my dad never stayed in one place for more than a few years. Funny, this is the longest he’s been anywhere. He hired on with the Two Bar when I was in law school. Dad’s always chasing rainbows. He’s getting old, and I think he knows it.” Cricket looked out the passenger window then turned back toward Sam. “I think it’s something more than age-related memory issues. Sometimes he gets confused, and it scares him.” She paused then added, “Me too.”

Sam glanced at her perfect profile. He wanted to ask her personal questions, but remained silent.

“Anyway, he finally ended up in the area where he wanted to be, sort of a homecoming. Mom was able to enjoy a stable home for almost twenty years. She had a heart attack a couple of years ago. She died in her sleep.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Sam shifted into third gear at the top of a hill. “Both of my parents are dead. I still miss them.”

“After the funeral I stayed to help out and never left.”

Sam looked at her. “You said this was a homecoming. Was your dad born here?”

“No. His grandmother taught school here, just up the road near Iron Mountain. I never knew her. She died in 1949. Apparently she had fond memories of the place and always talked of coming back here to visit. She was sort of my namesake.”

“Glendolene, actually. Turn right after the cattle guard.”

“Your dad said your hobby was genealogy.”

“Not really. It’s sort of a means to an end, I guess. You’d be surprised what you can discover with a little digging.”

Sam snickered. “No I wouldn’t. Trust me. I’ve dug up a few family skeletons that were better left buried.”

She nodded. “Just out of college, I got mixed up with the wrong guy and embarrassed the family. It’s now officially a skeleton in the family closet. But we’ve got a significantly bigger secret, one of those hush-hush things that nobody talks about. Take another right at the fork just over the hill.”

Sam glanced at her. She stared straight ahead, the bill of her ball cap shading her face.

“The camp sits in a bowl just below those digs,” she said, pointing at the mounds of red granite spilling from three vertical shafts. A serpentine ridge ran east and west above the valley filled with willows and beaver ponds.

Sam looked at his fly rod suspended from the headliner above him. He wanted to ask her if she fished but was reluctant to change the subject. “You’ve got my attention,” he said, leaning slightly toward her.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear the big family secret. Besides, it’s a little embarrassing. You’ll have to drive across the creek at the bottom of the hill. It’s kind of deep right there, but it’s hard-bottomed. You can do it in two-wheel. Don’t stop.”

“Do you fish?” he asked suddenly, surprised by his own words.

Cricket looked at him, her head tilted to the side. “No.”

“Do you want to learn?”

Sam wrestled the steering wheel between boulders, attempting to stay above the deep ruts leading to the stream.

“Do you have children?”

“Just one, but I ate it.”

Sam reflexively hit the brake just as they entered the stream.

“Don’t stop. Gun it or you won’t make it up the bank.” She braced herself against the dashboard.

The Willys lurched from side to side and growled as Sam shifted into low gear and stepped on the gas pedal. He stopped at the top of the embankment on the other side of the stream and looked at her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes you did. Look, Mr. Dawson, in spite of my father’s presumptive meddling of revealing our ages and marital status, and providing you lunch and a guided tour of the ranch, I’m here to tell you that I’m not interested. Is that clear?”

“Very. I didn’t mean to imply that I was interested in pursuing—”

“Bull. Your kind is always interested.”

“My kind?” Sam blurted out defensively.

“You’re a man, aren’t you?” She looked at him with narrowed eyes.

He did not know what to say. He thought she might be a man-hater. Sam had run across them before. Independent, educated, opinionated, and, most of all, agitated. They often seemed just as angry that they were born a woman as they were at being treated like the weaker sex. They believed it was a man’s world, and they resented it. The key was to back off without being bitten and absolve himself of any wrongdoing. He turned away from her and cleared his throat. “I lost the love of my life a little over a year ago,” he said softly. “I assure you that I, too, am not interested. I’m sorry if I seemed otherwise.”

Cricket continued to stare at him for several seconds, took a deep breath, and withdrew her fangs. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. It was perfunctory. “The camp is in the flat just over the hill.”

The Mennonites had been orderly in the design of their working community. The buildings were laid out with an engineer’s precision. There were no houses. The long rectangular remains were communal, perhaps barracks. Sam wondered if they were sexually segregated or if it was strictly a man camp. The ruins of a school answered his question. A blacksmith shop and stable were easily discerned. Interestingly, there was no church. At least there was no recognizable structure in the familiar design of a church.

Sam secured a Nikor 21mm f/4.0 onto his Nikon. He screwed a Polaroid filter over the wide-angle lens, looked through the viewfinder, and frowned. He opted for a little longer focal length with a 35mm f/2.8, more of an all-purpose lens that still gave wide coverage and good depth of field. The light was all wrong. He looked toward the sky repeatedly, shading his eyes against the harsh midday sun with the flat of his hand.

He retrieved a manila folder from the Willys and pulled out a copy of a photo he had discovered in the state archives. He walked around the camp as if the photograph were a treasure map, attempting to find the spot from which the original was taken. The photographer and date of the photo were unknown. There were no people in it, no manufactured goods by which to define the period. Behind the north barracks he found the foot warmer and part of an old woodstove. It said, “German Heater…Quincy, Ill,” and was patented in 1910 and 1914. The camp was newer than he had originally believed.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Cricket asked from behind him.

Startled, Sam whirled around with a somewhat stricken look on his face.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to spook you.” The smile on her face said otherwise. Her eyes sparkled mischievously, and the corners of her mouth twitched as if repressing an outright laugh. Perhaps she was mocking him. His uncertainty made him uncomfortable.

“I’m trying to find the spot where this photo was taken,” he said, handing her the black-and-white image. “I need to recreate the shot for a comparison of then and now.”

She turned the photograph in several different directions as she looked around her, like a monkey doing a math problem, and shook the photo as if expecting the answer to fall to the ground. “The downward angle suggests that it was taken from that hillside,” she said, pointing to the rocky crag above the camp. “Let’s take a look.” She started off in the direction of the hill.

“Do you think it would be possible for me to come back here when the light is more favorable?” Sam said without following. He hoped the irritation he felt was not evident in his voice.

Cricket turned and looked at him. She studied his face for a long moment. “You mean by yourself?”

“Look, Mr. Dawson, I think maybe we got off on the wrong—”

“Call me Sam,” he said, smiling.

She looked away, staring into the distance. An afternoon breeze tormented a strand of hair from behind her ear, pushing it recklessly across her face. “Call me Cricket,” she said, meeting his eyes, then added, “I’m still not interested.”

Neither of them looked away. It was almost dinnertime when Cricket finished her story.

Sam noticed that his daughter would occasionally reach behind her ear and adjust either the volume or the program of her hearing aids. In recent months he had caught her watching his mouth carefully when he spoke.

“Everybody’s heard of the case. I did a paper on it in my second year of law school. Heck, there was even a retrial staged a few years back, complete with a retired Wyoming Supreme Court justice presiding. The primary evidence was ruled as inadmissible, and the credibility of the prosecution’s key witness was seriously undermined. The end result was pretty predictable. The jury acquitted him posthumously. Amnesty International even got involved in the vindication process with an appeal to the governor for a posthumous pardon. Their reasoning stated something to the effect that the defendant’s statements had been coerced and that other evidence was questionable. The governor basically said, ‘Bite me,’ and refused to pardon him—Da-ad, how can you put ketchup on a gourmet meal that I slaved over for nearly twenty minutes?”

“Picante sauce would be better, but we’re out. What was the governor’s rationale?”

“Well, for starters, judicial practices change over time. What a judge deems inadmissible today doesn’t have a lot of relevance to what a judge might have ruled sometime back.” Sidney pushed her heavy glasses up on the bridge of her nose then stabbed a forkful of lettuce from her salad bowl. “Plus, it’s pretty hard to guarantee impartiality when you take things out of historical context by restaging those things years later.”

L2 struggled to her feet. She was given to Sam by Annie after the untimely death of her bloodhound predecessor, Elle. At nine-and-a-half years old, she was becoming arthritic. A strand of drool descended from the corner of her mouth as her eyes darted from Sidney’s plate to Sam’s in anticipation of a handout. “Hold on, girl,” Sidney said. “I’ll be sure to save you a bite.”

“What about wrongful death? Does she have a case?”

“You’ve said it a million times: As long as there’s a living, breathing attorney, you can get sued. Two things come immediately to mind. First, can this woman prove she’s related genetically or legally to the deceased, and, second, how was she injured by his death? Each state has its own wrongful death statute. Most have a statute of limitations, three years typically. It’s two in this state. There’s usually an exception to the limitation if the wrongful death was caused by a public entity. Cripes, is this going to be on the bar exam? I’ll need to bone up on this stuff. Can’t I just enjoy a nice dinner at home without you planting seeds of doubt in my mind?”

“Relax, Sid. You’ll do fine. I was just wondering, is all. It’s kind of interesting.”

“Look, it’s a miscarriage of justice for sure if someone is executed for a crime they didn’t commit. The whole issue of capital punishment is usually brought to the fore when somebody gets zapped for something they didn’t do. It happens. Is it wrongful death as the law originally intended? I don’t know. I’d have to do some digging. What does she want? Money, clear the family name—what? As I remember, the deceased didn’t have two nickels to rub together. She’s obviously seeking civil damages. I think there has to be some sort of intentional infliction of emotional distress—”

“Eat your dinner, sweetie. I didn’t mean to start a fire in that legal mind of yours.” Sam smiled at his daughter. He could see the wheels turning. Her eyebrows scrunched together and her eyes got smaller when she was about to sling an accusation his way. She looked like her mother. Marcie, Sam’s ex, had a way of holding her head just before she let fly a preposterous incrimination.