A hush came over the courtroom as the lawyers arguing the case entered, followed by the defendant. Both Doyle Pettit, who was the attorney for the defense, and Franz Kreuger remained standing by their chairs. Their action stirred a murmur of confusion that ran through the courtroom crowd.
“Good God, what’s she doing here?” Simon muttered angrily under his breath, and Lilli noticed the tubercular-wasted woman being led to the front, a man on each side, half-carrying her to an empty chair behind the defense table. “She shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“Doyle obviously plans to play on their sympathy.” Dryness rustled through Webb’s voice as a grim watchfulness came over him. It was a clever move. Its brilliance was made even more apparent when the jury filed in and Webb saw it consisted of wheat farmers. He had the uneasy feeling he had underestimated Doyle Pettit for a second time, although he couldn’t see what Doyle hoped to gain by getting Kreuger off. Surely he stood a better chance of getting Kreuger’s land if the man were convicted.
Once Helga Kreuger was seated, Doyle Pettit sat down and motioned to his client to take the chair next to him. Kreuger did so slowly, his look turning malevolent when he saw Webb Calder in the second row.
“Calder is here,” he told Pettit.
“Don’t think about him now,” Doyle ordered, barely moving his lips as he issued the low warning. “And wipe that look off your face. If the jury sees it, you’ll wind up with your neck in a noose.”
“That’s what he’s hoping will happen to me.” Kreuger turned to face the judge’s bench.
“Then we’ll just have to fool him, won’t we?” Doyle looked at Kreuger and smiled with his eyes. There was a moment when he thought his appeal wasn’t going to work; then Kreuger’s expression changed to one of blankness. Doyle mentally reminded himself that Kreuger might be a simple matter to maneuver.
The judge entered and everyone stood as he pounded the gavel and called the room to order. The trial began.
With the entering of the guilty plea, Doyle Pettit then sought to prove that the act was committed under extenuating circumstances. Within minutes, Webb realized that it was Hobie Evans who was on trial, not Franz Kreuger. A dozen witnesses testified to the physical harassment and abuse they had suffered at the hands of the murder victim. When Evans was painted blacker than the devil, Pettit eloquently set about detailing all the hardships and losses Kreuger had endured—the killing drought, the crop wiped out by a plague of grasshoppers, the deaths of his children, and the debilitating illness of his wife. He compared his trials with those that beset Job in the Bible, trials he had borne in silence until he’d seen a neighbor suffering at the hands of a cruel, villainous blackguard. Then it had become too much for him. In summation, Pettit pleaded with the jury to show mercy for this man and his pitifully ill wife who needed him.
Webb listened to it all. Beside him, Lilli was transmitting her tension to him, strain whitening her complexion. When the jury filed out of the courtroom to arrive at a verdict, he took her hand and threaded his fingers between hers.
She couldn’t find any comfort in the gesture, although she held tightly on to his hand. No one left the courtroom, as if they all suspected the jury of twelve good and true men wouldn’t deliberate long over the verdict. In less than twenty minutes, they filed back in and took their seats.
When the judge read the verdict that found Kreuger guilty of a lesser charge and suspended the sentence, Lilli came to her feet. “No!” She angrily protested the decision that set Kreuger free. “No, you can’t do it!” Her hands were knotted into fists, clenched rigidly at her side.
Then Webb was standing and taking hold of her arms to restrain her. “It’s no good, Lilli.” His voice was low and rough. “You can’t change it.” His grip forced her to turn away as he guided her down the row to the aisle so they could exit the courtroom. She didn’t resist him, but her body remained stiff, everything held tightly in check.
Other people were already milling, some pausing to watch the touching scene as the handcuffs were taken off Kreuger’s wrists and he was reunited with his wife. Simon separated himself from the Calders and made his way through the crowd to Helga Kreuger, concerned that the trial had been too much for her.
Tears were streaming down her sallow cheeks as she lay in her husband’s embrace. She was too weak to cry or cough, making feeble attempts at each that just drained more of her strength.
Simon turned his scowling and angry countenance on Doyle Pettit. “Get her out of here,” he demanded. “She needs complete quiet and bedrest—and plenty of it.”
“I have a room for her at the boarding house up the street.” Doyle showed little concern as he signaled to the two men who had brought Helga Kreuger to the courtroom to take her back.
Franz protested, “I will take her home.”
“She’s in no condition to travel,” Simon Bardolpb snapped, “Can’t you see she’s sick? She needs rest, and I don’t just mean an hour or two. I’m talking days and weeks.”
The terrible sound of her cough convinced Franz when the doctor’s warning failed. Grudgingly, he assisted one of the men to help his wife to her feet and supported her while they made their way through the thinning crowd.
“How could you put her through an ordeal like this?” Simon looked narrowly at the man he had believed to be a compassionate individual.
“I had no choice.”
“No, I suppose she was a necessary tool in obtaining Kreuger’s release,” he said thinly. “So you used her and won. I hope you know what you’re doing by setting a man like that free.”
“I didn’t set him free. The judge did that,” Doyle reminded him smoothly. “As a doctor, it’s your duty to do all you can to save a patient. And it’s my duty to defend my client to the best of my ability. The right and wrong of something is for the judge and jury to decide. I can’t do that any more than you can play God.”
It was an unarguable comparison, but Simon still didn’t like it. It was written in the sternness of his expression as he pivoted away from Pettit, his opinion of the man rapidly dropping.
Outside the courthouse, Webb paused with Lilli on the sidewalk. She hadn’t said a word, but he’d seen the I-told-you-so look in her eyes the one time she had glanced at him. It had been her fear all along that Kreuger would somehow be set free, and he hadn’t believed it was possible. He had killed a man, shot him in the back in front of a score of witnesses, and he was walking out of the courthouse a free man. Webb watched Kreuger carrying his frail wife the last few yards to the waiting buggy.
“Webb, I want to go home. Now.” Lilli was seized by the urge and couldn’t shake it. It was an unreasoning kind of fear that she couldn’t explain. But it was suddenly imperative that they go back to the ranch this afternoon.
He took his watch from his vest pocket and looked at the time, “It’s late. We’d never make it before nightfall, and I’m not going to try to travel over those roads in the dark.”
“Please. I have this feeling we should go.” She looked at him earnestly, silently imploring him to listen to her. “I want to see Chase, and make sure he’s all right.”