The Ballad of Emma O'Toole Read online

  “Billy John was the gentlest person I’ve ever known! He would never threaten an old man, let alone shoot him.”

  Logan Devereaux’s frustration exploded in a muttered curse. “Find the man and ask him. He’s about seventy—thick, white hair and a glass eye. Doc, they called him. He said he was a retired dentist.”

  “Doc—Doctor Kostandis.” The old man had filled Emma’s tooth when she was thirteen, she recalled. The following year, he’d lost his son in a mining accident, and his whole world had collapsed, followed shortly by his reputation and his career. “He drinks,” she said. “All day, every day. By that time of night, I’d wager he was so drunk he wouldn’t remember anything that happened.”

  “He didn’t look drunk. Damn it, he didn’t act drunk.”

  “He never does. He just drinks quietly until he passes out somewhere.” Pressed against the bars, Emma studied the stormy face of the man who’d killed her lover. She steeled herself against the desperation in his eyes as he spoke.

  “Ask somebody else, then. There were other men there. They saw that the fool boy had an extra ace. They saw—”

  “I don’t care what you think they saw, or what you say Billy John did. He wasn’t a danger to anybody. And you...” She glared at him through the hot blur of her tears. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  Her bravado was no good. She was on the verge of sobbing now. Something flickered in the hard, black eyes that watched her, but Logan Devereaux’s fist didn’t loosen its grip on her arm.

  “By all that’s holy, you’ve got to believe me,” he rasped. “I was only trying to stop the boy. I aimed for his shoulder. I never meant to kill him.”

  “But you did!” Emma plunged into the well of her anger. “You pulled the trigger and killed a defenseless young man. If that isn’t murder—”

  He released her so abruptly that she stumbled backward. “All right, Emma O’Toole, you win!” he snapped. “I’ve tried to tell you the truth. If you don’t want to listen, there’s no reason for you to be here. Go on! Get out!”

  Turning his back on her, he stood facing the rear wall of his cell. Emma regained her balance, then stalked past the leering deputy and out of the jail.

  She wouldn’t come here again, she resolved as she strode up the boardwalk. Even behind bars, there was something about Logan Devereaux that made her feel vulnerable. He was a dangerous man, compellingly handsome, with the Devil’s own persuasive tongue. If she let herself listen to him, she might come to believe his lies and break the promise she’d sworn on her mother’s grave to keep.

  Emma walked faster, her thoughts churning. Only as she passed Birdwell’s Emporium and glimpsed a reflection in the freshly washed glass did she realize, to her horror, that she was being watched.

  Scores of curious eyes were following her every move along the boardwalk.

  Peering more closely into the reflection, she could see the far side of Main Street, where men and women stood in clusters, whispering and pointing at her.

  Each and every one of them clutched a fresh copy of the Park Record.

  Chapter Two

  Emma’s personal belongings, stuffed into an unwashed flour sack, were waiting on the front stoop when she returned to the boardinghouse. Everything she owned was there—her faded gingham work dress; her spare chemise, stockings and threadbare drawers; the rosewood hairbrush that had been her mother’s; and the faded tintype of her father in his captain’s uniform.

  From the kitchen at the back of the house, Emma could smell the mutton stew simmering on the cookstove. Her nostrils sucked in the rich, oniony fragrance and her stomach growled as reality crept over her like a winter chill. She didn’t know where her next meal was coming from. She had no money, no food and no place to go except the tumbledown miner’s shanty where Billy John had worked his claim.

  She did have friends—mostly hired girls like herself, or former schoolmates who’d married miners. They would give her sympathy, but none of them could afford to take her in. They were as poor as she was.

  For an anguished moment, Emma hesitated on the stoop, torn between pride and need. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She could pound on the door until Vi opened it, then fling herself on the old woman’s mercy. She could weep and plead and promise.

  But trying the door would only bring her a needless tongue-lashing. Vi Clawson had the Record delivered for her boarders every morning. She had, no doubt, read Hector Armitage’s story and acted on her own grim principles. The sinner had been cast out. No amount of pleading would change Vi’s mind about that.

  Clutching her bundled possessions, Emma turned away from the boardinghouse and trudged back down the road. The grim pounding of the Marsac Mill paced her steps like the cadence of a dirge.

  She remembered her mother, how the good woman had been left widowed and destitute with a young daughter to raise. She’d taken any work she could find, and that included scrubbing floors and emptying chamber pots in a whorehouse on Silver Creek Road. But Mariah O’Toole had raised her daughter with solid values. Even now, Emma felt her mother’s comforting presence. Somehow, like Mariah, she would find a way to survive.

  Two well-dressed women paused to stare at her from a passing buggy, their breaths fogging the icy spring air. Lifting her chin, Emma willed herself to ignore them. She felt as if she were walking naked through the ankle-deep mud, her secrets bared for the whole town to see, but she was too proud to let it show.

  This wasn’t her fault, she reminded herself. If that gambler hadn’t shot Billy John, she wouldn’t be in this awful mess, walking the streets, hungry, penniless and exposed as a ruined woman.

  Once more Emma willed her anger to fuel her waning strength. She would rise above this, she vowed. She would keep her mind and heart focused on what really mattered—keeping her word to Billy John, and seeing that the gambler paid for what he’d done.

  She’d reached Main Street and was passing outside the open door of a saloon when the twang of a guitar drifted to her ears, with a nasal voice rising above the plaintive tune. Something about the song caught Emma’s attention. With mounting horror, she listened to the words.

  On an April night when the stars were out

  And the moon shone like a jewel,

  Billy John Carter spilled his red, red blood

  For love of Emma O’Toole, oh, yes...

  For love of Emma O’Toole.

  The gambler’s gun was cold, hard steel.

  The gambler’s heart was cruel,

  A bullet blazed, a young man fell,

  The lover of Emma O’Toole, oh, yes...

  The lover of Emma O’Toole.

  There was more to the song, but Emma didn’t wait to hear it. Snatching her bundle close, she fled for Woodside Gulch and her one last refuge.

  * * *

  Logan slumped on the edge of his bunk as the footsteps of Alan Snedeger, his court-appointed lawyer, faded into silence. Until a few minutes ago, he’d clung to the hope of justice and freedom. Now he could almost feel the hangman’s noose jerking tight around his throat.

  You shot the boy, Mr. Devereaux. That is the one indisputable fact in this case. Your best hope would be to plead guilty to second degree murder and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Otherwise, the prosecution will do their best to see you hang.

  Logan’s fists balled in frustration at the memory of the lawyer’s words. He’d hoped, at least, for a public defender who’d give him the benefit of the doubt, and would accept that the gunshot had been an act of defense rather than murder. But even that was too much to expect in this godforsaken hellhole of a mining town.

  The mercy of the court! An ugly knot tightened in Logan’s chest as he pondered the realities. With a murder charge proven against him, even a merciful court would lock him away for half a lifetime. Anything, even execution, was preferable to the stinking hell of prison. Mercy of the court be damned! He was going to fight this! He would go free or die!

  “So, how are you faring today, Mr. Devereaux?” Logan glanced up to see Hector Armitage grinning at him through the bars like a schoolboy bent on tormenting a caged lion.

  “Who let you in here?” Logan growled. “Where’s MacPherson?”

  Armitage leaned against the wall, making it clear that he had no plans to leave. “The good deputy is next door at the Satin Garter,” he said, “presumably drinking the whiskey I just paid for.”

  Logan bit back an oath. “A waste of good money, Armitage. After that newspaper article, what makes you think I’d give you the time of day, let alone the ammunition to do more damage?”

  There was no hint of repentance in the man’s face as he shrugged. “I had a deadline to meet, and you weren’t exactly the soul of courtesy.”

  “So you went after that poor fool girl and made a local spectacle of her.”

  “A local spectacle? You don’t know the half of it. When the Eastern papers get the story over the wire, the lovely Miss O’Toole will be a national heroine. I even wrote a song about her and passed out copies!” The reporter’s ginger eyes glittered in triumph.

  “I heard the damned song from next door,” Logan snarled. “Now, are you going to tell me why you’re here?”

  “When I smell a good story, I go after it, and I smell a good story here, with you.”

  Logan glared at the wretched little man. “So what is it you want?”

  “The story of your life, Mr. De
vereaux.” Armitage inched closer to the bars. “Every detail, from the first day you can remember. I want to know what brings a man to this state of depravity and desperation and, I guarantee you, so will every reader in the territory.”

  The man clearly had no interest in giving Logan a fair chance to give his explanation of the tragic events. He just wanted more ammunition to continue painting Logan as the villain.

  “So what’s in this for me?” Logan mouthed the question, knowing its answer would only deepen his disgust.

  “Money, Mr. Devereaux! And plenty of it. Maybe you’ve got a sweetheart of your own, hmm? You’d like a chance to leave her set for life, rather than have her struggle to scrape out a living when you’re gone, wouldn’t you? Or if there’s a child—is there a child? Oh, you may well hang—there’s nothing I can do to prevent that. But this way you could leave something behind.” The reporter’s eyes narrowed calculatingly. “I’ll be wanting exclusive rights, of course. A contract may be in order. And that way, you can designate, for whomever you chose, a percentage of—”

  “Go to hell,” Logan interrupted, his voice soft, like the warning hiss of a cougar.

  “I beg your pardon?” Armitage blinked.

  “You heard me the first time.” Logan stretched out on the bunk, his deliberate yawn masking a heartfelt urge to lunge at the bars, grab the little muckraker by the throat and squeeze the miserable life out of him. “I’m not interested in lining your pockets. If I’m going to hang, I’ll do it with my privacy intact, thank you. I’m certainly not going to give it up for a slimy little scandal-chaser like you.”

  “You’re making a grave mistake, Mr. Devereaux. It would be very foolish to drive away a representative of the only paper in town when it’s public opinion that will decide if you live or die.”

  “I thought that’s what the trial was for.” Logan’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. He watched as the reporter fumbled in his vest pocket and came up with a small white card, which he flipped between the bars.

  “Think it over,” he said. “Let me know when you change your mind.”

  “I won’t.” Logan lay motionless, contemptuously indifferent. Armitage turned to go, then paused, an impish grin lighting his face.

  “Almost forgot—I do have one piece of news for you. They’ve appointed the judge for your trial. Want to know who it is?”

  Logan feigned a doze, ignoring the bait.

  “Well, then, let me tell you. Judge Simmons, who’d most likely have heard the case, is back East for his daughter’s wedding. And Roy Bamberger, the local alternate, is down with gallstones. So...”

  He paused for dramatic effect. Logan opened his eyes and allowed a twitch of his left eyebrow to betray his interest.

  “So they’re bringing in a judge from Salt Lake City. The Honorable T. Zachariah Farnsworth. A Mormon judge! I hear tell he hates outsiders—gentiles, as the Mormons call them. He looks on Park City as a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and as for gamblers and gambling...” A malicious sneer stole across Armitage’s features. “Why, Mr. Devereaux, nothing would give a man like Judge Farnsworth greater satisfaction than writing your sinful, debauched soul a one-way ticket to hell!”

  “Are you finished?”

  “For the most part. But there’s one more thing I want you to know, Mr. Gambler. Whether you cooperate with me or not, this murder is going to make my reputation as a journalist. I’ll be there to cover your trial, and I’ll be there, standing right beside the lovely Miss Emma O’Toole when you walk up those steps to the hangman’s noose. I’ll be there to describe the terror in your eyes as the hood slides over your face, and the jerk of the rope as you drop. You’re mine, Devereaux, whether you cooperate or not. This is my story, and I won’t be finished with you until I’ve walked away from your grave!”

  Logan willed his nerves to freeze as Armitage left the jail. But dread was a leaden weight in his stomach. Thanks to an obnoxious little man in a checkered suit, the trial, the verdict and the hanging had all become sickeningly real.

  From down the street came the tinkle of a tinny piano and an off-key tenor voice singing the song that had become all the rage—a mawkishly written piece of doggerel that grated on Logan’s nerves every time he heard it.

  Dying he lay in his sweetheart’s arms

  As his blood spread out in a pool.

  “Avenge my death,” he whispered low.

  “Avenge me, Emma O’Toole, oh, yes...

  Avenge me, Emma O’Toole.”

  Logan cursed the treachery of circumstance. He’d been on a roll that night, winning big against two wealthy mine owners, enough to last him for months, maybe even get him to Europe or South America, when that wild-eyed young fool had walked in and ended it all.

  What had happened to his winnings? Probably snatched up and pocketed by some bystander when no one was looking. And that was a pity. If the verdict went against him, which seemed likely, he would have wanted the girl to have the cash and mining stock certificates. No matter how much her bullheaded refusal to listen to the truth irked him, it would be the least he could do for her and for the child his bullet had orphaned.

  Was this the end fate had decreed for him? Logan did his best to scoff at notions of destiny, but as the son of a French Creole father and a half-breed Cherokee mother, superstition was bred into his very bones. On his twentieth birthday his grandmother had read his tarot and predicted a violent life. Three years later, he’d fled New Orleans with blood on his hands. Now it had happened again. Maybe he was fated to meet death at the end of a rope. If so, he would face the scaffold with his head held high. The only thing that shook his confidence was the thought of rotting away in a prison cell, instead....

  But never mind that, he wasn’t going down without a fight. His lawyer might be an unassuming little toad of a man, but Logan had detected a glint of intelligence in those pale blue eyes. The next time they met, Logan swore, he’d be ready with a plan and insist that the lawyer follow it. He would find a way out of this mess or die at the end of a rope. Prison was not an option.

  * * *

  The trial of Logan Devereaux was the nearest thing to a circus the small county seat of Coalville had ever seen. The ten days it had taken to arrange for the judge, appoint the lawyers and select the jury had given Hector Armitage time to wire his story to papers all over the country. As for the notorious ballad, it had taken on a life of its own, spreading like the germ of some vile plague.

  The defendant had been spirited from Park City to Coalville under cover of darkness to avoid any chance of vigilante justice on the way. There, in the plain rock building that served as jail and meetinghouse, he was locked in a cell with a view of the gallows out back. His punishment, if merited, would be swift and sure.

  Emma was now living in Billy John’s old mining shanty. She’d filed the papers for transfer of his claim, but lacked the strength to work it. And with no money to buy healthy food, she knew she would only get weaker. She needed a job, but given her condition and the scandal, who would hire her? The only thing that gave her any strength at all was the thought of the trial, and the justice that would soon be served.

  She’d despaired of finding a ride to Coalville on the trial date. But she needn’t have worried. Abel Hansen, the prosecutor, had called her as a witness and offered her a seat in the back of his buggy.

  Thus it was she found herself seated in the second row of the spectator section, waiting for the trial to begin. Dressed in her drab gray frock, with her hair pulled back in a knot, she was aware of how haggard she looked. She’d scarcely slept in days and had eaten little more than the dried pinto beans she’d found in an old Arbuckles’ coffee tin. Soaked and boiled over a tiny campfire, the beans were barely edible. Soon even those would be gone.

  The courtroom overflowed with people. Those who couldn’t get in waited outside in a sea of buggies, where a carnival atmosphere had taken over. Clearly, the picnicking, drinking revelers hoped to cap off the day’s festivities with a hanging. Earlier, as the prosecutor led Emma through the clamoring crowd, a man with a guitar had struck up the infamous ballad. Raucous voices had joined in the song. By the time she entered the courthouse and reached her seat, Emma had been on the verge of fainting.