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“Justice?” she cried. “You call this justice? Lord, Uncle Abner, just how much more humiliation do you think Dancing Cloud can take? Why can’t you stop this? Let us be on our way. Please, Uncle Abner. Please stop this. You are a man of power in the community. One word spoken and he’d be released.”
Abner clutched his fingers to her shoulders. “Lauralee, it’s not that simple,” he said hoarsely. “Now settle down. We’ll get this straightened out. You’ll see.”
“He shouldn’t have to spend one minute behind bars!” Lauralee screamed. She ran after Dancing Cloud as he rode away, the sheriff holding the reins of his prisoner’s horse. “Let him go!”
She stumbled, then jerked away from her uncle when he came and tried to comfort her.
She turned and ran to the stable. She took one of her uncle’s horses from a stall, saddled it, then swung herself into the saddle. “By damn I shall stop this if I have to shoot that damn sheriff and deputy!” she screamed at her uncle, then rode away, getting only a slight glimpse of her aunt at the door, her face drawn and pale from the commotion at hand.
Nancy left the house and stood on the front porch. She welcomed Abner’s strong, comforting arms as he came to her and drew her into his embrace.
“Abner, Abner,” Nancy murmured. She eased away from him and gazed into his eyes. “You know you could have stopped this thing. Did you allow it to happen, hoping that might prevent Dancing Cloud from marrying Lauralee? Could you truly stand by and see that man hang only because you don’t want to give up Lauralee?”
Abner took Nancy’s hands. “You know me better than anyone else and yet you can think that of me?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Nancy, trust me. I’ll make all wrongs right.”
“Will you, truly?” Nancy asked, tears spilling from her eyes. Her shoulders slouched, her head hung, she went back inside the house and closed the door between herself and her husband.
Abner sighed heavily. He kneaded his chin.
Then he went to his horse and buggy and headed back in the direction of the city again. He was truly torn with what he should, or could do. Quite possibly if he did not make things right for Lauralee, his wife as well as Lauralee would hate him for eternity.
Frowning, he drove down Broadway.
He had much to think about.
He had decisions to make.
* * *
Lauralee paced the floor inside the jail, the keys rattling in the sheriff’s hand as he came from the back room where the cells were lined against opposite walls.
“And so do you feel like a much bigger man today since you have incarcerated a savage, Confederate Cherokee?” she asked, glaring at him. She lifted a chin haughtily. “I wish to see my future husband. If you don’t give me permission, I shall do it, anyhow.”
“You’re a goddamned spitfire, ain’t you?” Sheriff Decker said, slamming the keys onto his desk. “And you’re plannin’ on marrying’ that son of a bitch Indian?” He laughed raucously. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
Lauralee stamped away from him and went to the back room. The small barred windows in each cell allowed only a fraction of light to shine through them. But Lauralee had no trouble finding Dancing Cloud. He was the only prisoner.
An empty, gnawing ache at the pit of her stomach came with seeing her beloved behind bars. She stepped up to the cell and circled her fingers around the cold bars, glad that at least the handcuffs had been released from Dancing Cloud’s wrists.
“Dancing Cloud, oh, Dancing Cloud, what can I say to make up for what is being done to you?” Lauralee sobbed, melting inside when his fingers covered hers. “Darling, I swear to you, I will find a way to get you out of here. You won’t have to spend an entire night behind bars. I will come for you. After it is dark, expect me to find a way to get you out of here. Then we shall leave immediately for your home in the mountains.”
“Do not do anything that will endanger yourself,” Dancing Cloud said thickly. “I will be released soon. I am innocent. An innocent man does not stay behind bars for long.”
She looked over at him. Tears burned her eyes. Doesn’t he know that he is not just any man who will go before a judge and jury? she thought. He is an Indian! And he fought for the South during the war, not the North. Those two things alone would cause enough prejudice among the jurors to make sure that he would hang for a crime that he did not commit.
“It’s all Kevin Bank’s fault,” Lauralee hissed out. “He hated you the minute he saw you.”
“Men like him do not live with peace in their hearts,” Dancing Cloud said, his voice drawn. “He is a tormented man, filled with much hate. He only used me, a Cherokee, to focus the hate on this time. Tomorrow? It will be someone else, perhaps white.”
“Darling, I must go now,” Lauralee murmured. “I owe it to Nancy to go to her. I saw how distraught she was. I worry about her having another heart attack. But I will leave when she is asleep tonight. I will come for you. You shall not be here for lang.”
They kissed. She gave him a lingering, soft look, then turned on a heel and left. She walked past the sheriff without a word. When she got outside and found her Uncle Abner leaving his buggy, she looked at him for a moment, then started to move past him.
She stopped when he reached out and grabbed her by the arm and turned her toward him.
“Don’t blame me for any of this,” he said thickly. “You must remember my standing in the community. I am a judge. I can’t take sides. But I will see that Dancing Cloud is treated well while he is incarcerated, and that he gets a fair trial.”
“Why not spend your precious time finding the one who truly stole the stallion?” Lauralee said, her voice breaking. “Uncle Abner, please do right by Dancing Cloud. He is the world to me.”
