The Lawman's Bride

The other doors were slightly ajar, indicating empty cells so she ran toward the front, pausing at a wheezing sound. The dog.

“Where are you, fella?” She stumbled across the room, smoke billowing from the rear now. Her lungs ached and her eyes burned. She couldn’t draw a breath that didn’t taste like ash.

“Anybody in here?” someone called from the open doorway.

“Yes!” She coughed. “I’m looking for the dog!”

“Get outta there, lady!”

Following the wheezing whine, she found the animal cowering under the desk. She had to get down on all fours and use every last ounce of strength to catch its front legs and drag the mutt toward her.

“Lady!”

The dog weighed as much as she did, and she was out of breath, but she tugged with all her might, inching the trembling animal toward safety.

The man met her at the doorway, and helped her lift the dog. Together they stumbled away from the burning jail until she collapsed in the middle of the street with the dog across her lap.

Several men gathered around and stared.

“Did someone go for the fire department?” she asked, her voice a rasp.

“Harry went,” was the reply. One by one they turned to watch the fire.

She coughed until her chest ached. Sophie moved the dog aside and used the hem of her skirt to wipe her running eyes.

When she could squint, she glanced around. The prisoner was nowhere to be seen. Sophie collapsed backward in the dust. Of all the luck.

What seemed like an eternity was only minutes as she waited. Finally the firemen turned out with their horse-drawn wagon holding barrels of water.

Marshal Vidlak and another deputy arrived and helped Sophie out of the street and over to a patch of dry grass. “You’re one o’ them girls from the Arcade, ain’t you?”

Sophie glanced at the man and nodded.

The younger deputy had gone back for the dog and laid him beside where Sophie sat. The poor animal sounded as though it couldn’t catch a breath.

“I’m surprised that damned dog made it out,” the marshal said. “Cain’t walk further’n two feet at a stretch.”

“I pulled him out,” Sophie said.

“The hell you say.”

“Sam!” came a concerned shout.

The dog’s head jerked up.

“Sam!” Unmistakable, that voice.

“Over here, Clay,” Marshal Vidlak returned.

Clay ran toward the gathering and hunkered down on one knee, looking from the dog to the girl with the soot-streaked face.

“Lady here saved your worthless mutt,” Hershel said.

“You saved Sam?” Clay turned his attention to the rescuer. Her midnight-dark hair was loose and falling over one shoulder. Even though the black streaks on her face melded with the darkness, he recognized her. “Miss Hollis?”

She nodded, turned her head aside and coughed so hard, it sounded downright painful.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she replied with a hoarse voice.

Sam’s breathing didn’t sound so good, but he licked Clay’s hand. Clay studied the smoke and ash rising from the nearly destroyed jail where the firemen were directing the water. He couldn’t turn the thought of Willard DeWeise over in his mind without bile rising in his throat. He glanced at Hershel, and the two men shared an uneasy look.

“Hell of a way to die,” Hershel said with a grimace.

Clay’s gut knotted.

“If you’re talking about your prisoner, he got out,” Miss Hollis croaked.

Clay turned and stared down. “He what?”

“He got out,” she repeated.

All three lawmen turned to listen.

“I—I was—” A racking cough halted her explanation. “I was in the park.”

Her voice was so low and raspy, they knelt to hear.

“The park across from the First Ward School?” Clay asked.

She nodded. “From the corner there I saw the flames. I ran this way. As I got closer, I saw the man you arrested from the lunch counter that day running out the door.” She pointed to the south. “He went that way.”

Clay was relieved to hear the man hadn’t turned to a cinder inside the jail, but the question of how he got out of a locked cell was damned puzzling.

“I heard the dog whining, so I just went in and helped him out.”

Clay and Hershel exchanged another baffled look.

“How the Sam Hill did DeWeise get out of that cell?” Hershel asked aloud.

“Someone had to have unlocked it,” Clay surmised. “One of the deputies.”

They turned and looked at the building. If one of the lawmen was still inside there, he was dead now.

“Account for all the men right now,” Clay ordered the young deputy.

“Yessir.” John Doyle shot away from them.