A Rancher's Pride - By Barbara White Daille Page 0,33
out, straightening almost into one solid line.
From her seat in the corner, Ellamae looked up.
Beside him, Sam could see Kayla tense.
“Well, Sam,” the judge drawled, looking from one to the other of them, “it’s not clear to me why I’m the one doing the telling. But you know I never mind giving out explanations.” He looked at Kayla. “Your sister got herself involved in an automobile accident.”
“When?” she asked.
“As I recall, this happened only a few days before she left Flagman’s Folly for good.”
“How do you know this?”
The judge frowned, and Sam knew she’d just crossed a line. But the man answered mildly enough. “It was common knowledge, practically soon as it happened.”
“I was on the volunteer rescue,” Ellamae spoke up. “She’d rolled her car into a drainage ditch between town and the ranch. Lordy, she’d gotten thrown around pretty bad. No seat belt.” She shook her head.
“Fortunately,” the judge added, “there were no other vehicles involved. And no other passengers.”
“I—I see.”
Sam heard Kayla give a deep sigh. When she turned toward him, he stiffened. She hadn’t trusted in his honesty before. Nothing she could say would make up for that now.
“I’m sorry.” She looked at him, her eyes shining. “I didn’t know—”
“Yeah.” He turned away, his step heavy. So, now she did know. The truth. It made no difference. Had he really expected it to change anything?
“Sam, please—” Her voice broke. She moved around to stand before him. “I’m truly sorry. I saw the cuts and bruises, and I only knew what Ronnie told me.”
From across the room, he heard Ellamae’s gasp.
Now she and the judge knew something, too, and they hadn’t had to work very hard making the leap to figure it out.
“Let’s just go,” he said.
She gestured to Becky, and a second later he heard sneakers on the wooden floor. He was about to start out of the courtroom when the judge called his name. Freezing in place, he took a deep breath. After what seemed a long while, he turned back.
First he looked down at Becky, standing beside him.
Then he looked at Ellamae, who stared, her eyes huge.
Finally he looked at Judge Baylor, the man who’d always managed to slap him down. The man who’d never let him forget his past. And who had the power to decide his future.
The judge came around his desk and rested one hand on the wooden railing in front of the row of spectator seats. Sam eyed him, saw the man’s knuckles tight on the rail and knew what to expect.
“I doubt you need me to put this in words,” the judge said, in the softest voice Sam had ever heard come from him. “But I’ll share it, anyway. You can’t take things out on this young lady for believing what your ex-wife said. We all know only what others are willing to tell.”
You could’ve heard a cactus flower drop to the floor in that room.
Even Becky, as if sensing something wrong, stood without moving.
He couldn’t look at Kayla. Didn’t want to see what would show in her face.
“Yeah,” he said at last, staring across the courtroom again. “Gotta hand it to you, Judge.” He laughed without humor. “You just summed up the whole history of my bad marriage, right there in that one short sentence.”
SAM THOUGHT JUDGE BAYLOR had finished making his point.
He’d thought wrong. The man had only begun.
When he’d asked Sam to stay for a “short spell in my chambers,” Kayla had looked suspiciously at them both.
He could just see the protest on her lips, the indecision in her eyes. But, finally, she simply said she would go ahead to the market with Becky, and Sam could meet them when he was done.
Unwilling to let her hear whatever else the judge wanted to say, Sam had agreed.
Now, in chambers, Judge Baylor sat back in his swivel chair and eyed Sam up and down.
He immediately flashed back more than a decade ago to the day he’d come before the judge for the first time.
Right after the night he’d set fire to the Porters’ barn.
He tried to push the memory away and managed to do it—only to face the judge’s double-barreled glare and to hear the man putting his own thoughts into words.
“Y’know, Sam, it’s been a while since you first came into my courtroom.”
“Yeah.” And since then, the judge had never managed to see any good in him.
No surprise, since Sam hadn’t been good for much for a while after that. The judge’s warning that he’d toss him