Silver Creek - G.L. Snodgrass Page 0,32

be worse than dying. Being left alive to be a burden on others. A simpleton unable to care for himself. The thought sent a shudder down his back.

“You was in the war?” Luke asked him.

He nodded as he held up his right hand, missing two fingers. “Tennessee. Lost these at Vicksburg. Couldn’t pull a trigger so I got transferred over to being an orderly in the hospitals. After my enlistment ended, I got out of there and as far away as I could.”

Luke saw a thousand miles of despair in his look. This was a man who had seen too much pain and suffering.

“Well let me know if there is anything he needs. Anything I can do to help.”

McAdams shrugged. “It’s up to him at this point.”

Luke started to open the door when McAdams held out his hand to hold him back. “Are you the one who was looking into the killing of Rebecca’s uncle?”

“Yes,” Luke said as a surge of hope filled him. “Do you know anything about what happened when he left town? Anyone following him?”

McAdams shook his head. “No, I don’t know anything about that. But, I think you should know. He wasn’t well.”

“What do you mean? Tom?” Luke remembered the bar girl, Scarlet, mentioning that Tom had said he was feeling poorly and holed up in a room for two days until he felt better.

“I guess it don’t matter,” McAdams said. “Not now, me talking about him, but something was eating him from the inside.”

“You mean for real, or he was upset about something.”

The man shrugged. “I mean actually devouring him from the inside. I don’t know what it was but it came on him fast. The man was losing weight, losing strength and it wasn’t just old age. He had a right tender part just below the ribs. Said it had been getting worse. I can tell you, he knew he was dying. I gave him two bottles of laudanum and a couple of months to live.

Luke rocked back on his heels. Was that why Tom had sold out? He hoped to give Becky the money for a new start.

“Thanks, doc.”

“I’m not a real doctor, sheriff,” McAdams reminded him.

Luke laughed. “My father was a doctor. A right good one. But my sister knows more medicine and she’s the one I would go to if’n I needed fixing. I ain’t a real sheriff. You do the job. You get the title that goes with it.”

As Luke crossed back towards the office, he glanced over to the restaurant. Did Becky know about Tom’s illness? No, she would have told him. The knowledge was going to hurt. She would realize the man had done everything for her, only to have it snatched away.

An anger built inside of him. When he found the man who did this he, was going to make him pay. A man’s life should mean something. To have everything he had built and worked for taken away. It just wasn’t right.

He stormed into the office and pulled up short as the reality finally sank in. He was the sheriff. This town was now his responsibility. And what about Becky? She was furious at him. A cold shiver passed down his spine. Had he taken on a job too big?

Chapter Thirteen

Rebecca took in a deep breath of night air as Helen locked up behind them. The two of them fell into a stressful silence as they started down the boardwalk. It had been like that all day. Ever since her confrontation with Luke. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that the man she loved was repeatedly putting himself in danger. Risking himself and any chance she had at future happiness.

He doesn’t know, she reminded herself. And if he did, he’d probably laugh in her face. Her, little Becky Johnson sweet on Luke Parker. He’d find it amusing. The thought made her shoulders shudder as if someone had walked across her grave.

“I thought Chester was meeting us?” she asked Helen.

“At the stage station. He didn’t know when I’d be getting out of there.”

Rebecca nodded as she glanced over at the Sheriff's Office. A dull yellow lamplight shone from beneath the door. Her heart stopped for a moment but she had no choice, not really. She had to tell him the truth. “I’ll meet you at home,” she told her friend then stepped off the boardwalk and started across the street.

Her heart pounded in her chest. A dozen times she almost stopped but she forced herself