AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mr. Sheriff and a man.”
Her heart fell like a stone. Who would the sheriff have brought with him? She started to ask Juanita but realized the futility of it. Could it be a suspect they wanted her to identify? “Is Rafael back?”
Juanita raised her dark eyes and looked daggers at her. “No.” As if it were somehow her fault that Rafael had gone out hunting down the robbers.
Chapter Fifteen
My immediate family consists of my widowed mother and my brother. Both of whom are eager to meet you.
When she walked into the main room, all eyes turned to her. In the midst of several people who were all a blur, Daniel stood with his arms folded, talking to the sheriff. For a second he was the only one she saw as his eyes landed on her and softened.
His mouth had been on hers; his hands had been on her body. Heat traveled down through her.
A chair screeched. Her attention jerked to the rest of the room’s occupants.
“Hello again,” said the artist who’d been on the stagecoach with her. He stood by the table. Mrs. Werner poured a cup of coffee.
“You two know each other?” asked Daniel.
“We arrived in Stockton together,” she said. “How are you doing, Mr. Crump? Hello, Sheriff.”
Daniel’s eyes darted toward the artist. He tilted his head slightly, and a look of puzzlement crossed his face.
“I’m doing well, Miss O’Malley,” Mr. Crump said. “The sheriff here has hired me to do a rendering of the two thieves who attacked the stage.” He pushed toward her a drawing of a masked man and a second man without a face. “Everyone saw the thief in front, but you are the only one who got a good look at the second man.”
The sheriff stepped toward her. “The stage company is offering a two-hundred-dollar reward for the two men. An accurate drawing on the wanted poster will help.”
“Do you think it is a good likeness?” asked Mr. Crump.
She examined the drawing. His eyes were the only features of his face that were identifiable, and she thought they might have been spaced differently from how Mr. Crump had them. He looked so eager she hated to say anything. Besides, how likely was it that a man could be identified from his eyes alone? “It is similar, but I didn’t see him for long.”
“Now, what do you remember about the other man?” Mr. Crump flipped open his sketch pad.
She had been so focused on the man she’d shot that she’d scarcely given the second man much thought. Or remembered the moment when time had seemed to stand still and their gazes had met.
“Why don’t you sit down, Miss O’Malley,” said the sheriff. He pulled out a chair for her next to Mr. Crump’s.
Oddly reluctant to describe the second man, she took the offered seat. “I mostly remember he had dark eyes, I think.”
“Don’t you remember?” asked Mr. Crump.
Mrs. Werner and Daniel watched her with interest. “He had that cape up over his nose and his hat drawn low. I think he had dark hair, but I don’t remember actually seeing his hair.”
“Do we really know more than the men were of Spanish descent?” asked Daniel.
“Well, just tell me if the eyes were similar in shape to the other fellow’s,” said Mr. Crump. “A person’s eyes can tell a lot about him.”
She looked in her mind’s eye and began describing. Mr. Crump asked her a lot of questions. Across the room the sheriff questioned Daniel about Rafael. She listened, intent on his answer.
“He is backtracking where they came from,” Daniel answered. “I should tell you one of the horses I reported stolen came back.”
“Miss O’Malley,” said the artist, jarring her back to his sketches. He pushed his sketchbook under her nose. “Like this?”
Keeping half an ear on Daniel’s description of the horse’s return, she frowned at the pencil sketch. “A little deeper set, I think.”
Mr. Crump bit his lip as he shaded more. “Would you say he was the same complexion as his companion?”
“No, lighter.” She shook her head as she stared at the pencil drawing. Recognition hovered just on the edge of her brain, but she wasn’t certain if she was relaying the second robber’s looks or eyes she had more recently stared into. She cast an uneasy glance toward Daniel.
His gaze met hers as if he was waiting to catch her look. He glanced at the sketch. A faint pucker appeared between his eyes.
“Were his eyebrows thicker or thinner?” Mr. Crump pestered.
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
Mr. Crump persisted, and she finally said impatiently, “Thicker, much thicker.”
Daniel arched his perfect eyebrows as if to question her short answer. When she looked back at the sketch, the eyes no longer reminded her of Daniel’s, but she couldn’t really remember the robber’s, either.
Juanita slipped in the door and looked at the drawing of the first robber. “Oh.”
Everyone looked at her.
She narrowed her eyes, looked at Anna and said, “It look like Martinez.”
“Martinez, the former owner of this rancho?” asked the sheriff.
Daniel jerked as if someone had kicked him. His tanned skin turned chalky.
Mrs. Werner rushed to the table and grabbed the sketch. “No! It does not look like him.”
She turned to Juanita and spoke sharply in Spanish to her.
“Stop it,” said Anna. “Yelling at her won’t help.”
What was wrong with Daniel? She tried to meet his eyes, but he was staring narrow-eyed at his mother.
“Well, it wouldn’t be Mr. Martinez,” said the sheriff. “He’d be in his sixties now, but could he have had a son?”
Daniel barked a laugh, then cut it off with a cough. No one answered.
Daniel looked ill. If he feared his cousins were about to be exposed as the robbers, feeling sick would be expected. His tension was palpable. He tightened his arms across his chest and rocked on his feet while watching his mother.
Mrs. Werner slapped the drawing on the table and thrust out her chin. “It does not look like any Martinez I know.”
“Have you seen any of the Martinez family members lately, ma’am?” asked the sheriff.
Anna stared at Juanita, who had gone pale and was shaking. She stood up and went around the table and put her arm around the girl. She questioned her gently, “Do you know this man in the drawing?”
Daniel asked her a question in her native language.
Juanita spoke a few words in Spanish, then curled to hide her face in Anna’s shoulder.
“She says there are quite a few Martinezes related to the man who used to own the ranch, but he never married.”
The sheriff nodded. “That was what I thought.”
Anna rubbed Juanita’s back. “It’s all right. You’re being very brave.”
“Juanita would know the Martinez family best,” Daniel said. “She’s at least met them in Mexico.”
Juanita slipped out of Anna’s hug and gathered breakfast dishes off the table.
“Why aren’t you out tracking with your brother, Danny?” asked the sheriff. “You seem good at it, too.”
Daniel hesitated a minute, then said, “The grapes will be ripe any day now. I can’t risk missing their peak.”
The sheriff nodded. “Do you have enough, Mr. Crump?”
“I believe so.” The artist surreptitiously slid the controversial drawing into the pages of his sketchbook and closed it. “Thank you, Miss O’Malley.”
The sheriff smiled at Anna. “Have you had occasion to fire that rifle, Miss O’Malley?”
“No, but I keep it by my bed just in case.”
The sheriff cast a sharp look at Daniel.
Mrs. Werner whipped her head around and stared at Anna. The tension in the room was as thick as stew. Questions swirled in Anna’s brain.
“Danny, tell your brother I want to talk to him as soon as he’s back.” The sheriff tipped his hat to them. “Ladies.”
She considered running out after the sheriff, but really she had nothing to add. She didn’t know what had upset Daniel so much. He’d suspected his cousins before Juanita recognized them.
Anna’s thoughts tumbled. She must have misunderstood the sheriff—because the old owner couldn’t still be alive. Not if Mrs. Werner owned the ranch. Martinez had to be Mrs. Werner’s maiden name. But of course it must have been. Valquez must be the surname of her first husband. The prior owner must have been Mrs. Werner’s father or perhaps an uncle.
Still, they had confirmation that the robbers were their cousins, just as Daniel had told her. And now the sheriff knew.
The door shut, and Mrs. Werner and Juanita began a rapid argument in Spanish. She heard Rafael’s name, then the word loco, but it was one of the few Spanish words she could identify and the rest became a spatter of gibberish. She lost interest in trying to follow the conversation.
