“Don’t make us remove you from the Gathering House, Clemency,” Leland pleaded.
The parson sputtered, his face red. “I—I never—”
“Get out of here,” hollered someone at the side of the room. “He shows no remorse for his crimes!”
“Let him hang!”
Someone else cheered, and Calvin Buhrman helped escort Briard out the back.
“No!” Rebecca screamed, watching as her only ally was tossed unceremoniously from the hall. She pushed her way toward the front of the room, holding her hands out toward the Elders. “You can’t hang him! You’ve no proof.”
“He was overheard making threats toward Gideon Downing and later seen carrying a bottle of moonshine and rags.”
“He was drunk,” Rebecca shouted. “There’s no crime in being an old drunk. Send him to the stocks—but not the Gallows!”
“The same bottle was later found at the edge of the Downings’ fields,” Matthias said, and he withdrew a clear glass jug from a bag propped against his chair. The fire had misshaped it, leaving it half-flattened and bubbled on the edges, but the heat’s deformities couldn’t mask that it was a Danforth bottle.
Cyrus kept a small still at the back of his property, where he made moonshine with his surplus of corn after the harvest. It was immensely popular with the ranch hands, potent and strong. Cyrus was so proud of his spirits, he made his own bottles for them, giving the glass handle a distinctive, colorful flourish to represent the Danforth D.
Rebecca’s mouth fell open, and the protest in her eyes died away as she spotted the bottle. After walking to Matthias with stiff steps, she took it from him and examined the shot of color running through the small handle. “I made a batch of these last week,” she murmured. “They’re a different blue than we used last year….Papa?” she asked, turning to him. Doubt clouded her face, making her look impossibly small.
“So one of my bottles was found. It doesn’t mean I was the one who left it there.” Cyrus drew his brows together, struggling to make his features hold a look of contrition. “I admit, I was upset with Downing. I still am. One of them”—he pointed at my siblings and me—“destroyed my storeroom. You’ll never convince me otherwise. But I wouldn’t have burned down a man’s farm, no matter how drunk I was. And I’d certainly never go after Sarah. I’d never hurt a woman.”
“The bruises on Ellerie say otherwise,” Jonas reminded the room.
Cyrus snorted, disregarding the accusation. “I’m telling you, I was nowhere near that shed!”
Joseph Abernathy perked up. “What shed?”
“The supply sh—” Cyrus paused, suddenly aware of the trap.
“We never mentioned anything about a supply shed. Only that Sarah was burned in the fire.” Philemon turned his gaze on the Elders. “He’s implicated himself. Amos, you must see that!”
“What—no, that’s not what—I must have overheard you mentioning it.” Cyrus shook his head, edging back, poised to run. “I was not there. I was not—Rebecca!” he cried out as his eyes fell on her, a drowning man grasping on to whatever driftwood he could find. “Rebecca knows I was home all night. She’ll tell you! She’ll—”
“You were at the tavern late,” she reminded him with a shaking voice. Rebecca had always been painfully shy, and I couldn’t imagine how she felt now, having this conversation with the entire town listening. “I went to sleep before you returned. Mark did too.” She ran her fingers over the blue handle of the melted bottle before looking up with resolute eyes. “I don’t know when he came home.”
“Then there was—” He stopped short, whirling around to see who else he could call on. “There was that woman…at the tavern. I don’t—I don’t recall her name, but she was there, with me.” He frowned as if drudging the memories from a pool of spirits. “Calvin Buhrman—you must know her. New to town.” He shook his head. “Why the devil can’t I remember her name?”
Calvin looked warily about. He ran one hand over his closely cropped hair, his expression grim. “I don’t recall seeing you with any woman last night, Cyrus.”
“Of course you do. I bought her drinks—several drinks! Surely you remember all the money I laid down.”
“There was quite a bit of that,” Calvin agreed. “But it was only you drinking through it all. No one else.”
Cyrus’s neck turned purple, and I feared he might keel over from a stroke long before the Elders could decide what ought to be done with him. “That’s a lie! She was just a slip of a thing, dark hair, silvery eyes. A real beauty. But…her hands…they were awfully funny, though. Not like…not like they were supposed to be.” He glanced about the room. “Judd Abrams—you were there. You saw her.”
The rancher shook his head, blushing as he was called out. “Don’t recall seeing nobody.”
Cyrus nearly howled in frustration, jerking to and fro as he searched for allies. “Winthrop Mullins, I know I saw you staring at her! Tell the truth now, boy.”
Winthrop scratched at his freckled ears. “I suppose I might’ve been staring, but it wasn’t at any lady. You just cut such a strange picture last night, talking and ranting to yourself.”
“Myself?” Cyrus echoed.
Winthrop worked a bit of chewing tobacco to the side of his cheek, looking uneasy. “There just weren’t no one with you, sir.”
Amos McCleary swayed back and forth on his cane, mulling over the situation. “Do you recall what time Cyrus left the tavern, Calvin?”
“I do. Everyone else left around ten o’clock, but he just kept drinking. At midnight, I finally had to kick him out, told him we were shutting down for the night. The missus wasn’t pleased I’d let him linger for so long. Gave me a right earful about it.”
“It was that woman!” Cyrus insisted. “She kept asking about the storeroom, wondering who’d done it. She said we needed to make the culprit pay.”
The Elders exchanged weighted glances.
“She said we ought to go over and take something from that bastard Downing. Said we ought to…” His words tapered away as his eyes rolled into his head. He sounded drunk now, and I wondered if Jonas’s final swing had given the man a concussion. He listed forward, like a small child on Sunday morning, fighting sleep in the first pew. Then he snapped back awake. “I went home after the tavern. Thought I might sample some of my new batch. Make sure it was just right.” He glanced at the bottle in Rebecca’s hands. “Looked so pretty in the moonlight, all that new, blue glass.” He laughed, though nothing about this moment was funny. “New, blue.”