When the low blast of a rifle echoed from the stables, he flinched. Then he rode onward, not stopping for anything or anyone until he reached Seattle. He didn’t slow his horse’s gait as he made his way through the throng of traffic on First Avenue.
When he reached the street that led to Copper Hill Prison, he felt sick knowing that his sweet daughter was there among the most hardened criminals, at their mercy. He had heard tales of what happened to the women prisoners there:
They were used in every way unholy—they were used.
This torturous thought spurred him on. He didn’t even notice the strain on his horse as it climbed the steep street. His eyes were set on the prison. If Elizabeth had so much as been touched by any of those vile men, he vowed to kill the sheriff. Then one day he would find the one who had made her life go astray—the outl
aw who had set the Indian free, and taken his Elizabeth as captive.
Earl could not move fast enough when he reached the prison. He jumped out of the saddle, secured his horse’s reins and rushed inside the prison. When he found the sheriff lazing behind the desk, chewing on his perpetual wad of tobacco, it almost threw Earl into a fit of rage. To think that this man could arrest his daughter without any proof of her guilt, then lock her up with the rest of the criminals, as though she was one, herself. . . .
Earl stormed to the desk and slammed his hands down on the paper-cluttered top. He leaned into Sheriff Nolan’s whiskered face. “I hear that you have my daughter at this godforsaken place,” he growled, his eyes red with anger. “You Goddamn idiot, go and set her free at once. Do you hear? Release her. Now!”
“That ain’t possible,” Sheriff Nolan said, turning his head so that he could let fly a string of tobacco into the spittoon. “She’s there until her trial, and then we may have our first hanging of a woman in the history of Seattle.”
Earl paled at the thought and his resolve weakened. “You can’t be serious,” he finally said. “My daughter isn’t a criminal. And you know it. Why are you doing this? Why would you want to take your troubles out on an innocent woman? The fact that someone got the best of you that day of the escape is the only reason you’ve arrested my daughter, isn’t it? You have to have a scapegoat. You’re makin’ her one.”
“That redhaired vixen daughter of yours ain’t as innocent as you want to believe she is,” Sheriff Nolan said, rising slowly from his chair. He made a wide turn around the desk and stood eye to eye with Earl. “She was used as a diversion to what was ready to happen. She flirted with me and once she had me, hook, line, and sinker, I was hit from behind.”
Sheriff Nolan slipped a hand inside his right pocket and took a ring of keys from it. He jangled the keys in front of Earl’s eyes. “There ain’t no rule sayin’ you can’t visit your daughter,” he said tauntingly as he held the keys closer to Earl. “Go on. She’s in the first cell. She’s a lucky one. She has the cell all to herself. Most other prisoners are cooped up together. But none complain. They like it that way when the night gives them the privacy to do what they damn well please with one another.”
Anxiety almost making him dizzy, Earl snatched the keys from the sheriff, then headed toward the door that led to the back room. He flinched when the sheriff stepped in front of him, and opened the door.
“You didn’t think I’d let you go visit your daughter alone, now did you?” Sheriff Nolan said, chuckling. He nodded toward the interior. “Go on. Get in the cell with her. But don’t forget, I’ll be watchin’ your every move.”
Earl set his jaw, then walked past the sheriff. When he caught sight of Elizabeth standing in a far corner of a cell, his gut twisted and tears splashed from his eyes. “Elizabeth,” he whispered. Just saying her name seemed to tear his heart to shreds.
He went to the cell. Elizabeth gasped when she saw him there. His fingers fumbled with the keys, trying to find the one that fit the lock.
She ran to the front of the cell. She clasped the bars. “Father, you’ve come,” she cried.
She then stared icily at the sheriff who was mightily amused watching her father try to find the right key.
Finally a key turned in the lock. Earl slammed the door open and rushed inside the cell, embracing Elizabeth. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“No one has harmed me,” Elizabeth said, giving the sheriff another cold glare. Then she pleaded, “Get me out of here, Father. I don’t want to spend another night in this . . . in this hellhole. It’s even worse than Maysie described. At night . . . at night—”
She stopped and turned her eyes away from him, haunted by the sounds that she had heard the night before. There were moans of pain, and many more of lusty pleasure. As the moonlight had filtered through the narrow windows, she had seen many varieties of sexual activity acted out before her. What she had seen had not only startled her, but sickened her as well.
Earl had seen and heard enough. He turned and faced the sheriff. “I demand you release her immediately,” he said, his voice growing louder with each word. “She’s no criminal and you know it. Set her free or I’ll—”
“If you so much as even look like you’re going to threaten me I’ll lock you up with your daughter and throw away the key,” Sheriff Nolan spit out between clenched teeth. He nodded at Earl. “Forget this foolishness of takin’ your daughter with you tonight or tomorrow. When the judge arrives from San Francisco, she’ll get her day in court. But until then, she’s mine. Do you hear? Mine.”
Earl’s jaw went slack and his heart fell to his feet. He realized that no matter what he said to the sheriff, Elizabeth was to remain in jail.
He turned slowly to Elizabeth and drew her gently into his arms. “I’ve got to go,” he whispered. “But I’ll manage to get you out of here. Somehow.”
“Please do,” Elizabeth whispered back, feeling safe and loved because he had come.
But then Earl whispered something else to her, something that proved that he had little trust in her. That he might even believe that she was guilty of helping in the escape.
“Elizabeth, whose hide are you protecting?” Earl whispered, not allowing her to jerk free when she tried. “Where’ve you been? With Indians? I saw the Indian saddle. Everett told me that you wore an Indian dress the day you returned home. Tell me, Elizabeth, why?”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together, refusing to respond. She was glad when the sheriff’s voice boomed from behind her father, making him release her from his tight grip.
“Come on, you’ve been in there long enough.” Nolan barked.
Her father stepped away from her and gazed into her eyes. She turned her back on him, dying a slow death inside over the way he was looking at her—as if he were the judge and jury, handing down a death sentence. Without her having even told him about Strong Heart, he seemed to already know her secret—the secret that she had thought to have locked safely within her heart.