The Ballad of Emma O'Toole. Elizabeth Lane

muttered. “I’m ruined.”

      Devereaux exploded with strangled fury. “You’re ruined? Good Lord, woman, is that all you’re worried about—your precious reputation?”

      “Stop it!” Emma shot back. “You’ve no right to rave at me, you cold-blooded monster. If you hadn’t murdered Billy John, my reputation would be safe because I’d be a married woman on this day! Now—”

      His hand snaked through the bars to seize her wrist in a viselike grip. She twisted and struggled, powerless against the strength that yanked her flat against the bars of the cell, bringing her eyes within a handsbreadth of his own.

      “I’ll scream,” she threatened.

      “Scream and I’ll break your wrist.” The black heat of his gaze seared her soul. “You’re talking to a desperate man, Miss O’Toole, a man you just called a cold-blooded monster. Don’t underestimate what I can—and will—do if you push me to it.”

      “What do you want?” Emma’s voice was a raw whisper.

      “Just this.” His grip tightened, twisting her against the bars. Her eyes traced the scar on his cheek and the thick, black stubble that shaded his jaw—anything to avoid getting pinned by that awful, angry stare. “I want you to shut that lovely mouth of yours long enough to hear me out. Then I’ll let you go, and you can scream or faint or do whatever you damn well please!”

      “You’re hurting me!” She braced her free hand against the bars and tried to pull away, but his strong fist only clasped her tighter.

      “Hey, everythin’ all right back there?” The deputy’s nasal twang echoed down the corridor.

      The grip on her wrist tightened in warning. Emma glared into the gambler’s anthracite eyes. “Yes,” she said loudly. “Everything is quite under control.”

      She felt his fingers relax slightly, but he made no move to let her go.

      “I’m not afraid of you!” she said. “Do your worst, Mr. Devereaux. You can’t hurt me more than you already have. You killed Billy John! You destroyed two other lives, and, by heaven, you’re going to get exactly what you—”

      “Damn it, woman, listen to me! The last thing I wanted was to kill your Billy John. But he was pointing that big .45 at a helpless old man. He was in the act of pulling the trigger.”

      “That gun was too old and rusty to fire. It could only have been used for bluff.”

      “How the devil was I to know that?” His breath rasped in Emma’s ear. “From the way the young fool was waving that pistol around, I’m not sure that even he knew it.”

      “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