impossible to know. Now I must return. There’s to be a tug-of-war and I’m the anchor for our troop.”
He teetered off toward the muster. In his wake, the sheriff muttered, “He was almost as useless when we were in pursuit of the Winnebagos. More of a threat to my men than the Red Man ever was.”
“She can’t have been dead for a few days,” I said, “because I saw her Thursday afternoon in Springfield. Lincoln and I met with her at Hoffman’s Row.”
The sheriff looked at me with interest. “Is that so?” he said. He stared into the sky for so long I thought he might have forgotten about my presence. Then he turned back to me and said, “That might explain a few matters. Except this one—what are you doing here today, Speed?”
“I thought perhaps she could use an extra pair of hands selling to the muster,” I said, thinking fast. “Her store was closed when I arrived, though, so I headed out here, to her house. That’s when I found her.”
“Yesterday evening,” he continued, “when I got home, Molly and your sister said I’d just missed you. They said I must have seen you as I rode up. But I didn’t. I wonder why.”
“I couldn’t guess, I’m afraid.”
“It is quite a coincidence,” the sheriff said, as if puzzling through matters slowly, “because I came here to arrest her after the muster. Prickett had become convinced she killed her niece and nephew.”
Even in my grief-stricken state, I had the good sense to gasp in surprise. Nonetheless, the sheriff looked at me with narrowed eyes.
“If there’s anything of relevance you haven’t told me,” he said, “I want to hear it now.”
I desperately searched for a plausible response, but my aching head proved barren. I was on the verge of confessing my intent to help Rebecca flee, a design now horribly for naught, when I suddenly hit upon a different answer, one that might actually help the sheriff find her killer.
“Rebecca—the Widow Harriman—wasn’t at a market fair at Buffalo Heart on the day her niece Lilly was killed,” I said. “A merchant who was there told me as much. I came here this morning to ask her why she’d lied to us. I think perhaps she was covering for someone else. Someone who’s now killed her, too.
“I confess I suspected Gustorf, the Prussian traveler,” I continued. “But he’s laid up under Dr. Patterson’s care now. He couldn’t have managed to come all the way here from Springfield to attack her, not with the condition of his leg.”
The sheriff was looking at the corpse with intense concentration. “I’ve a fair notion,” he said, more to himself than to me.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“I suppose there’s no harm in sharing this with you now,” he said. “We had thought it evidence of her guilt, but now I wonder whether it doesn’t still provide the answer, only a different one than we’d originally perceived.”
He reached inside the pocket of his commanding officer’s coat and pulled out a small packet of paper. As I unfolded it, I recognized Rebecca’s looping script. The writing was dated two days earlier, the day we had all met in Springfield. My heart pounding, I read:
Dearest Allan—
I regret having to leave you in such an unsettled state but the sun is getting low and I must be back on the trail. I am sorry we quarreled. I fear I cannot promise I will never again speak my mind. You have known all this time what your future with me would hold. I am and will remain my own mistress; it is my nature. You have desired to move forward with our plans nonetheless. I trust one confrontation will not change all that.
You know how much I want our union to materialize. How, in candor, I need it to do so. It has been an arduous few months but the obstacles are, at last, cleared away. My sister’s children sadly no longer present a concern. And your affairs seem settled too. I think it is time to tell the world what we have known since the Spring: that the two of us are destined to spend our final years together. As horrible as the present circumstances are, nothing that transpired today should change months of design.
Yours forever,
R.
“‘Allan,’” I said, looking up. I hadn’t taken a breath since I had started reading the letter. “Dr. Allan Patterson?”
Hutchason nodded. “She’d left it for him with the innkeeper Saunders, but Prickett managed to intercept