minutes and left some of the roughnecks disgruntled. I need to bump up production.” If her flippant answer annoyed him, he didn’t show it.
“How’s Corrine working out?”
Involuntarily, she glanced at the barrette and could have kicked herself for doing so. “She’ll be able to do more when her arm gets stronger.”
She could tell by the way Thatcher was looking at her that he knew she was hedging every answer to these questions. On the surface they might seem casual and random, but she knew they weren’t.
“Do you know Elray Johnson?”
That query genuinely threw her. “His name is vaguely familiar. Is he one of the—”
“Notorious clan, yeah. His cousin Wally was murdered recently. Elray discovered his body.”
“That’s it. I remember reading his name in the newspaper. What about him?”
He told her about the teen’s aborted attempt to steal a horse from Barker’s stable. “I took him to the jail and summoned the sheriff.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. You caught him before he stole anything.”
“But I sensed that he had something else on his conscience. Turned out, I was right. He confessed to stealing crates of corn liquor from a competing moonshiner.”
Those twinges of alarm became outright pangs. She was trembling on the inside, but managed to keep her voice steady. “From what I understand, that happens routinely.”
“This theft might’ve been routine if it had stopped at that. But it didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Last night, Elray and his cousin, Tup, went back to the same still. A decision they came to regret. There was an incident.”
Her heart in her throat, she asked, “What kind of incident?”
“One that warranted investigation. Tonight, when Sheriff Amos organized a team of deputies to return to the scene with Elray, I was more or less recruited to go along.”
That was the convoy she’d seen. Thatcher had been among those who’d discovered the location of their stills, and there he’d found the barrette she’d given Corrine.
Feeling that her silence might be a giveaway to her mounting anxiety, she said, “Like at Lefty’s. You were roped into taking part in the raid.”
He gave a mirthless smile. “Literally this time.” He told her about lassoing Elray. “But that’s neither here nor there. He was pressured into leading us to the site. Seemed like we covered miles of wilderness on roundabout roads. I thought the kid had been lying. But no, we found Cousin Tup.”
“At the still?”
“In a hole in the ground with his arm mangled so bad you couldn’t identify it as a human part.” His eyes holding steady on hers, he said, “It had been snared in a bear trap.”
By now her heart was pumping so hard, she thought she might faint. By a sheer act of will, she contained a sob pressing at the back of her throat. “That’s horrible,” she said hoarsely. “Was he dead?”
“Last I heard, he was still alive but short one arm.”
The strength to stand up deserted her. She sank down onto the end of her bed and hugged her elbows close to her body. “How awful.”
Thatcher sat down in the rocking chair in which she had planned to spend hours rocking Pearl in her lap, reading to her from storybooks, loving her. She had attached a cushion to the chair’s back, so she’d have something to lean her head against during nighttime feedings that had never taken place.
Thatcher placed his head on that cushion now and closed his eyes. “Whoever was operating the stills—there were at least two of them—had cleared out, taking everything with them. Setting that trap to catch a man stealing moonshine seemed extreme, a cruel thing to do.
“But,” he continued on a sigh, “Tup had stolen from them, and had gone back with every intention of stealing again and then destroying their property. He and Elray had been ordered by the family head, Hiram, to rain down hell on them. If they hadn’t caught Tup in that trap, if they hadn’t cleared out, chances are good they would be dead.”
He rocked two or three arcs. “I used to think the difference between right and wrong was clear-cut. Law and justice meant the same thing. But I’m not sure of that anymore.”
She studied him for a time. He looked like an everyday cowboy who lived from one day to the next, accepting and dealing with the vagaries of life without giving them much thought. Not so, Thatcher Hutton. Perhaps he thought too much, saw too much. “Who are you?” she asked in a hushed tone that conveyed her mystification. “Who are you, really?