“Laugh while you can,” Gaines said, turning in the saddle and looking over his shoulder at his Sheriff Foster, growing smaller in the distance. “You may not be laughing so loud when I’m wearing the sheriff’s star. Hell,” he continued, swiveling back around to stare the mirth off Crittenden’s face, “when I’m sheriff, you may not be laughing at all.”

* * *

Ditch made his way around to the back of the schoolhouse, staying low. It was daytime, and he had to exert extra care not to be seen. He carefully peered through the rear window and saw the familiar rows of young children seated in their chairs. Alice Nettles, one of the town’s only two schoolteachers, was at the chalkboard explaining a math problem. Her husband, Rodney Nettles, taught the older children in the room next door. He’d been Pritchard and Ditch’s teacher for the past few years.

Ditch was looking for Idelle Pritchard. While eavesdropping from his hiding place in the hayloft at the Atherton stables, he overhead Dovie Pritchard tell Samuel that she and Idelle were staying at the Nettleses’s place. Ditch crept silently away from the schoolhouse and made his way across the yard to the house, situated next door.

He found Idelle sitting on the back porch. She was wearing a rust-colored dress and had her long, blond hair in a ponytail. Her crystal blue eyes were red from lack of sleep and crying. She was aimlessly drawing circles in the dirt with a stick. Ditch didn’t know it, but Dovie left Idelle in Atherton while she went out to inspect what was left of her home and care for her husband’s remains.

“Hey Idelle,” Ditch whispered from behind the cover of the woodpile. “Over here!”

She dropped the stick and looked up. “Ditch!” she cried out, and ran over to him.

“Hush!” he cautioned. “Don’t call out my name, for heaven’s sakes!”

As Samuel’s best friend, nine-year-old Idelle Pritchard had known Ditch Clemson her entire life and had a crush on him for most of it. Though he wasn’t tall and muscular, like her blond-haired, blue-eyed brother, Ditch possessed an agile, wiry build, and had dark brown, wavy hair and even darker eyes. She thought he was the handsomest fellow she’d ever seen.

“Why’re you hiding?” she asked. Ditch grabbed her wrist and pulled her down behind the woodpile.

“Best you don’t ask,” he answered. “All you need to know is if I get found, I’m done.”

“Why aren’t you in school?” she said.

“Why aren’t you?” he countered.

“Mrs. Nettles let me have the day off,” she said softly, “on account of Pa being dead.”

“I know,” he said. “I helped your brother bury him. I’m powerful sorry, Idelle.”

She nodded, and for a moment it looked like she might begin crying again.