“Louder, Amelia,” Reed urged gently. “Lance’s life depends on it.”
“Mr. Calder didn’t do it!” she cried. “It’s my fault.”
“What’s your fault, Miss Amelia?” Harlan asked kindly.
She looked up, focusing on him, while tears streamed down her face. “I…asked Will Prewitt to help me get rid of him.”
“Him? You mean Calder?”
At Harlan’s question, Summer shifted her gaze to glance at the faces of the men above her, the ones who stood as Lance’s judges. Every one of them looked skeptical.
“They don’t understand, Melly,” she said in a low voice. “Tell them why you wanted to be rid of Lance.”
“Because…because…he was one of them. I was afraid of him.”
Summer watched the faces. Her sister’s tormented confession was too real not to believe, but still they weren’t convinced.
“She wanted revenge,” Summer explained quietly. “She blamed Lance for the trials she endured at the hands of his Comanche kin and wanted him to pay. Isn’t that right, Amelia?”
Amelia covered her face with her hands, but she nodded. “Y-Yes…”
“There never were any Comanches here, were there? You lied about that, too.”
“Y-Yes,” she said, her shoulders shaking with sobs, “I 1-lied. There never…were any Comanches.”
Beside her, Dusty put a comforting arm around her, as if he couldn’t stand her anguish.
After a minute, the uncertain voice of one of the men broke in. “But somebody stole all those cattle. If Calder didn’t do it, who did?”
“Amelia?” Reed prodded. “You have to finish.”
She swallowed a sob, then took a deep, shuddering breath. “Prewitt. Will Prewitt…stole all the cattle…and left be hind evidence to make it look like Indians at work…so Lance would be blamed. But I didn’t know.... He told me they would just make sure he left. He never said…they would try to hang him.”
The garbled, tearful admission of conspiracy was difficult to follow, but Summer could see it sinking in on every face: shame for nearly lynching an innocent man. Growing anger at being duped into it. All of them turned to look at Will Prewitt.
“We still got a rope,” someone observed. “We could make us of it.”
“No!” Summer surged to her feet. “We’re civilized citizens, not savages! Will Prewitt deserves justice, but there are adequate laws to punish him for what he did. He should be put in jail.”
“You’re right,” Harlan Fisk seconded. “We should stay within the law. We can take him to Georgetown until the district judge can get to him—”
“I ain’t going to any jail!” Prewitt retorted. He took a limping step backward, brandishing his rifle. “You won’t pin the blame on me. You try, and Miss Amelia’s going down with me. She’s the one told me to do it.”
All eyes turned on Amelia. She sat sobbing softly, her head bowed, while beside her, both Dusty and Reed stiffened.
Summer could feel the crowd’s hesitation: No one could possibly want to make Amelia suffer more, not after all she had been through.
“Well, now,” Harlan began awkwardly, evidently searching for words. “Miss Amelia wasn’t really in her right mind when she got back from up north…And she’s sorry now for what she did, aren’t you, Miss Amelia?”
“Yes,” she murmured in a raw whisper.
“I bet Lance would forgive her if she asked him to. Bu
t you, now…” Harlan looked piercingly at Prewitt. “There’s always been bad blood between you two. Even if he could overlook being framed, I don’t think he could forget how you tried to hang him just now by shying his horse. You almost killed him.”
Harlan glanced around him, as if gauging whether he had the support of the crowd. When several of the men nodded, he pushed back his hat to rub his forehead thoughtfully. “Fact is, I don’t believe there’s room for you both in the same county. I guess it’s up to Lance to press charges, but if it were up to me…I’d just as soon see the last of you, Will. Nobody wants a man they can’t trust for a neighbor.”
A murmur of agreement rose from the crowd, and Summer could almost sense their relief at having so reasonable a solution presented to them.