The hammering had been going on for three days now. Funny, Jenny Clarkson thought, I always thought it took less time to build a gallows.

It then occurred to Jenny that she had never given the time necessary to build a gallows any thought at all.

But then, she had never considered that a gallows would be built to hang her.

Sheriff Clayton, none too courteously, had assured Jenny that the scaffold would definitely be finished before dusk today and that they would hang her at noon tomorrow.

"Oughtta be quite a shindig," the lawman smirked. "It's not every day the town sees a woman hung."

Jenny sighed. "Hanged," she said more audibly. "A picture is hung. A person is hanged." Not a person -- me. She shuddered, suddenly cold despite the heat of the day.

Clayton spit out a wad of chewing tobacco and removed his hat solemnly. "Why, thank you, teacher," he said with a mocking bow. "Hanged or hung, you'll be just as dead." He clapped his hat back on his macassared brown hair. "By the way, whaddaya want for your last meal?"

Jenny turned away from the barred window and leaned back against the wall of the cell, folding her arms across her bosom. Don't let him see how scared you are. "Lobster bisque, clams on the half shell, sole Florentine with capers, artichokes with drawn butter, a French baguette, followed up by fresh strawberries with sweetened whipped cream and a nice sauternes."

"Huh?" responded the primitive lawman. "Whatever all that damned stuff is, we couldn't get it for you in a hundred years."

Jenny shrugged. "I'm willing to wait."

It took a full minute for Sheriff Clayton to get the joke. He laughed in that horse neigh of his and said, "Yeah, I just bet you are."

Jenny smiled and closed her eyes for a moment. "Could I have a rare steak, carrots, fried potatoes and a slice of pie with coffee?"

"That we can do for you."

Jenny was sure that she would have little appetite this last night of her life. She walked over to the barred door of her cell. Wrapping her hands around the bars so he wouldn't see them tremble, she called out, "Sheriff Clayton, do you think my mysterious benefactor could arrange for a bath for me tomorrow morning before the hanging."

"Why? You had a bath just four days ago."

Four days ago. The morning of her conviction and sentencing on bank robbery charges.

Jenny sighed. "If I'm to meet my Maker, I'd prefer to do so with a clean body and a clean soul. You know I've made no attempt to escape or do anything else to abuse the privilege."

"You think I don't think Danny Clarkson and his gang won't try to come bust you out at the last minute?"

"Sheriff," Jenny responded with conviction, "I've been sweating in this jail cell for over a month since you arrested me and the gang escaped. My brother has given me up for dead or he'd have tried to bust me out before I stood trial."

"And your lover?"

"Lover? What lover?"

He laughed. "You're joking again. Like with the food." He glared at Jenny Clarkson. She stood against the jail cell door. She was nearly five feet nine inches tall and reed slender. Her chestnut hair was chopped off mannishly, framing an oval, high cheekboned, slightly suntanned face with dark brown eyes and a broad slash of a mouth. She wore a plaid cotton man's shirt tucked into worn black men's trousers with scuffed boots covered by the trouser legs. She was pretty in an understated way when she wore the Quakerish gray dress that hung on a peg in the cell. She had worn that dress every day of her trial and planned to wear it on the scaffold tomorrow. She was so small bosomed that in man's apparel she looked neither male nor female, but a combination of the two. The rumors that she had slept with every member of the Clarkson gang were unfathomable.

Jenny cocked her head noncommittally. "If you say so. But to answer the question I think you intended, I don't think Jesse Coltrane or any other members of the gang will be back for me. They saw my horse go down and me unseated. It's safe to guess they believe I'm dead already. By tomorrow it won't matter much. Could you please talk to someone about the bath?"

"Yeah, yeah," Sheriff Clayton said dismissively.

Jenny walked back to the cot and sat down, drawing her knees up and resting her chin on them as she wrapped her arms around her folded legs. She'd put up a good fight to save her life, but she'd lost. If her life wasn't going to pass before her eyes, certainly the events of the last month would...

July 1866

She had a feeling about the bank robbery in Loomis. A premonition of disaster, she would call it. She glanced around the outlaw camp. Her brother Danny and his partner, Jesse Coltrane, were huddled together, again discussing last minute details.

They had gone over it numerous times. The gang would ride into town separately, "coincidentally" all finding themselves in the bank at one o'clock. As the clock stuck one, they would take out their guns and hold any customers still while Danny and Jesse would force the tellers to clear out the cash drawers and safe. Then they would ride off in different directions to elude the posse and meet back at their hideout in three days to divide the loot.

Jenny held up the coffeepot. "Anyone want more coffee before I douse the fire?"

It had been a little over a year since Danny found her living in the remnants of a slave shack on the burned out Vallequette plantation. He didn't like his sister being part of the gang, but after what had happened to her, Jenny hardly cared what he thought. She wasn't his virginal baby sister anymore. Besides, there was nowhere else for her to go.

Jenny doused and buried the campfire until it was cool enough to touch. She ran her fingers through her chopped-off hair. She'd cut her formerly hip-length hair with Danny's knife when she began to ride with them so she wouldn't be as easily identified as a woman and because it was easier to take care of in uncertain living conditions. She clapped her wide-brimmed man's hat over the shorn tresses and walked over to retrieve her gunbelt from her bedroll. She checked the pistol to make sure it was cleaned and loaded and then buckled the belt around her slim hips. She checked her horse's cinch and bridle and mounted astride. The other members of the gang were doing likewise.

Danny rode over to her, Jesse on his tail.

"You don't have to do this."

Jenny sighed. "You say that every time. I won't sit here in this hole and wait for word that you're dead."

"They won't kill me, Jen. These stupid farmers won't know what hit them."

"There are no guarantees, Danny. But I'm either a member of the Clarkson gang or I'm just a camp follower."

Danny's face reddened with rage. "Don't say that!"

Jenny's eyes narrowed. "Face it, Danny. It doesn't much matter whether I am or not, everyone will think it's true."

Danny raised his arm as if to strike her.

"Lay a hand on her and -- brother or not -- I'll kill you where you sit," said Jesse Coltrane in his gravelly voice.

Danny lowered his arm. "Just remember, be careful. We can't stop for you if you get wounded or captured."

Jenny nodded. "I understand."

Danny rode away. Jesse maneuvered his horse until he was parallel with Jenny's.

In a low voice, he said, "When the job is over, whaddaya say you follow me out of town? I can show you a good time."

Jenny peered from beneath her brim. Jesse was a big man, strong as an ox and neither gentle nor careful. His black hair was prematurely grizzled and he always seemed to have a couple days growth of salt-and-pepper beard stubble on his square, tanned face. She turned her horse's head to go.

He grabbed her upper arm harshly. "You're my girl, Jenny Clarkson."

She yanked out of his grasp. "I'm nobody's girl. I've told you before...Now, we've got a job to do." She rode off to join her brother as they rode out of camp.

•  •  •

The robbery itself was more or less a blur. Jenny remembered holding her gun on bank customers who trembled with raised hands while Danny and Jesse went behind the tellers' cages. Then she heard the cry and the gunshot, followed by Danny's voice saying, "Shit, Jesse, what'd you do that for?" and the panicked rush out of the bank.

Shoving her unfired pistol back into the holster she ran outside of the bank and mounted up. She heard shots fired behind her, then felt her horse crumple to the road, throwing her free. Without hesitation, Jenny lay face down in the road, her arms stretched over her head as far away from her gun as she could until a deputy sheriff forcefully yanked her upright and trotted her off to the jail at gunpoint.

The jail had been her home ever since -- the last home she would ever know.

•  •  •

Micah Peterman rode into town on his buckboard that afternoon. He nodded or tipped his hat politely in greeting to those that greeted him, but said little. Beneath the shadow of his felt hat he observed far more than he let on.

He could not fail to notice the progress on the scaffold. He drove his wagon beside the platform and called up to the carpenter who was industriously performing his task.

"Almost finished," Micah remarked.

The carpenter gestured with his hammer. "Near to it. Looks like we'll be hanging the little whore tomorrow noon. Should be quite a show," he added before returning to his work.

Micah veered the horse towards the end of the main street to a two-story frame house with a short white picket fence surrounding a small garden. A sign on the fence read: Claudius Plascove, Circuit Judge.

Micah braked his wagon and climbed down from the seat. He headed up to the front porch, climbed up the steps and knocked on the Judge's door. A black woman in a dark gray dress and white apron answered the door and soon ushered Micah into Judge Plascove's private office.

"Judge Plascove," Micah said quietly in greeting.

The white-haired, ruddy-faced jurist held out his hand and took Micah's thin, long-fingered one in his for a shake. "I don't believe we've met, Mr. ah..."

"Peterman. Micah Peterman."

"Ah yes, Mr. Peterman. What can I do for you this fine day?"

Micah looked down at his feet. "I wanted to ask you about the interpretation of an ordinance, Your Honor."

"Is this on a pending case?" the judge asked cautiously.

"No, sir," Micah responded. "It has to do with the Marital Parole Law."

Judge Plascove raised one white eyebrow. "The Marital Parole Law has only been in effect since a few months after the War ended."

"Actually, sir, it isn't the law I have a question about, it's an understanding of its wording."

"Its wording?" the judge echoed. "Come to the point, my boy."

At thirty-two years old it had been a long time since anyone had called him "boy." Micah continued, "I understand when male gender is used in wording a law it's supposed to apply to either men or women unless the law states otherwise."

"That is correct," Judge Plascove replied. "The grammatical albeit somewhat suggestive truism 'he embraces she' applies in the Missouri statute books."

"This law uses male gender. Would you say the 'he's' in that law refer to women as well as men."

The jurist frowned. "I never considered it before. The ordinance was passed to alleviate the shortage of farmhands due to war casualties, but its intent is not specifically given in the statute."

"So then it might apply?"

"Have you something in mind, Mr. Peterman?"

Micah smiled peculiarly. "I do indeed."

•  •  •

Some raucous music floated through the air from the saloon. Its rowdy cadences filtered in through the barred window of the jail where Jenny sat waiting for the dawn.

If there was ever a time to feel sorry for oneself, it was now. Jenny had cried at intervals ever since night fell. All she knew was that she was going to die. Tomorrow morning she was going to put on that ill-fitting gray gown and climb up the freshly-built scaffold steps. The sheriff would put a noose around her neck and someone would pull a handle that would drop her through the floor. If she was lucky, she would die instantly. Otherwise she would dangle, choking and frightened, until finally her air was cut off and she ceased to be.

It was hard to stay within herself. It was hard not to curse Jesse for shooting Leon Purdy. It was harder still not to curse Danny for abandoning her to this fate without a second thought.

The local preacher had been by earlier in the evening. Jenny had never been particularly religious, but she was willing to listen to him until she realized that his words were not those of comfort but of censure. She asked him politely to leave, saying she would pray for God's forgiveness in her own way.

Right now, sitting wrapped in the thin blanket, clad in one of the chemises and drawers given her by her mysterious benefactor, Jenny tried to pray.

"God, I've always believed in you. I've done what I've had to do to survive and it hasn't always been right. I could have stayed in camp but I chose to ride with the gang...

"God, I don't want to die. I'm not going to make any bargains with You because I have nothing to bargain with, but if You could see Your way clear to letting me live past tomorrow, I'd be eternally grateful. I'm only twenty-five. Surely You have some task I can do on Earth more important than anything I could possibly do in Heaven. Please think about it, God."

•  •  •

Well after midnight, the door between the sheriff's office and the jail opened and Deputy Filer stepped in.

"You asleep, Clarkson?"

A gravelly voice answered, "If I was I wouldn't be now."

"Someone to see you."

"Not the preacher again."

"Nah."

Filer unlocked the cell door and allowed the visitor in. He hooked a lantern on a rail and exited, locking the door behind him. Jenny looked up from her crouched position on the cot.

Into the eyes of a thin man.

Those dark, blue-violet eyes were deep set in a face so gaunt and pallid as to seem skeletal. The man had a strong aquiline nose and equally strong jaw surrounding a mouth that looked surprisingly soft for someone so lean. His hair was a dark blond, short, limp and lifeless. His mouth was framed by a tawny, drooping mustache.

He was very tall, well over six feet, but appeared to be as thin below the shoulders as his face was. His clothes -- a blue chambray work shirt, brown wool trousers, a brown buckskin jacket -- all seemed too large for his frame, as though he had been heavier but had never bought new clothes to accommodate his present build.

It seemed to Jenny that he might have been a reasonably handsome man at some time in his life, but now he was too emaciated for her to tell. She reckoned his age to be in his early to middle thirties.

For a while the man stood there, a look of vulnerable anxiety on his lean features. She had never seen a man show emotion so plainly on his face.

"Welcome to my parlor," Jenny finally said, spreading her arms to indicate the expanse of her cell. "Please forgive its somewhat disordered state. I have something of a journey facing me tomorrow and I wasn't exactly expecting a gentleman caller."

He loved the way her educated speech was gentled by her soft Georgia accent. He glanced down at the slim, blanket-wrapped body. She was beautiful, not in the fashionable way his late wife Melissa had been, but in her intelligence and dignity. Even with her tear-streaked features she was beautiful.

"I saw you at the back of the courtroom every day during my trial. You were the only person in the gallery courageous enough to look me in the face. Sometimes I thought you were the only one in the courtroom who wanted me to be acquitted."

"Maybe I was. He and I were only passing acquaintances, but Leon Purdy was a popular fellow."

"I'm sorry he's dead. I got the jury to believe it wasn't my doing -- for all the good it did me."

"Well, maybe it did do you some good."

"Look," Jenny said impatiently, "even though I saw you every day and feel a little like I know you, we've never been formally introduced." She held out her hand. "My name is Genevieve Louise Clarkson, but they call me Jenny."

He took her hand and held it for a moment. His was a large, long-fingered hand; callused from hard work but as fleshless as the rest of him. She also noticed his hand was cold. Whether from nervousness or thinness, Jenny didn't know.

"My name is Micah Peterman," the thin man said. "I own a small horse farm just outside Loomis." He noticed a book lying open beside her. "What are you reading?"

Jenny picked up the book. "Hamlet," she said, quoting "'To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, that's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause...'" She looked up. "Strangely philosophical reading for the last night of my life, but I do enjoy Shakespeare."

"I was impressed by your performance in the courtroom."

Jenny snorted. "Thanks, but a rare lot of good it did me."

"You beat the murder charge."

"And I'm still going to die tomorrow."

"Maybe not, Miss Clarkson."

Jenny's head shot up. "What do you mean?"

"Have you ever heard of the Marital Parole Law?"

Jenny shook her head. "I haven't exactly had time to thoroughly study the Missouri Statutes."

He fought a smile. "No, I imagine not. Anyway, it was enacted about a year ago because of the shortage of men in the state since the War. It says if a condemned felon not convicted of rape or murder agrees to marry an unmarried landowner and remain married for a minimum of seven years, the death sentence is suspended and then commuted completely at the end of seven years whether the marriage continues or not."

"You said this law was designed to alleviate a shortage of men?" Jenny splayed fingers through her ragged waves. "Despite my short hair, I haven't exactly been considered a man."

Micah smiled warmly. "Indeed not. But I did a little checking. The intent of the law is not written into the statute and only uses the word 'he' in reference to the felon. In Missouri, the use of 'he' also means 'she' unless the law specifically states otherwise."

Jenny blinked, connecting the logic of his statements. "Are you saying because I was acquitted of the murder charge I might be eligible for parole under this law."

"That's exactly what I'm saying. I even checked it out with Judge Plascove to make sure I understood it before I came here."

"So all I have to do is find some landowner in this county to marry me and I don't have to be hanged." Jenny laughed bitterly. "Who'd marry me?"

"I would."

Jenny looked in those dark eyes. Sincerity was etched in his lean features.

"Why? Why would you want to marry a convicted felon and hold yourself out to ridicule and scorn from your fellow citizens, not to mention how they're going to feel about you cheating them out of my hanging?"

"Miss Clarkson, can you cook and sew and keep house?"

"Of course. I kept house for my father after my mother died and for my cousins during the War. It's been a while, though."

"The truth is, Miss Clarkson, I need a housekeeper more than I need a wife. I have four wranglers who work for me who need a cook and a large house that needs taking care of."

"Then why marry me? Why not hire a housekeeper?"

"Call it a woman shortage. Unmarried women are hesitant to risk their reputations to take on a live-in position in a household with five unmarried men."

Of course, I have no reputation left to harm. "I should tell you, Mr. Peterman, that I'm not a virgin."

Micah blushed. Jenny found that endearing. She had never seen a man blush. Even her late fiancé J.C. Vallequette had never gone red in the face except with anger.

In a quiet voice Jenny felt reverberating to her soul when Micah answered, "Meaning no disrespect, Miss Clarkson, but I reckon I'd be more surprised to find out that you were than that you aren't. But that means little. I don't expect you to endure the intimate duties of a wife."

Endure? Jenny remembered how J.C. had fumed when she suggested he bed her than continue to bed slave women. J.C. had made it very clear he considered her a lady, capable only of doing her duty after marriage. Thus, they'd never been lovers before he was killed in the War. No, it had taken a patrol of Yankee soldiers to initiate her. And she never wanted to endure that kind of intimate duty again. But for a man to decline sex! She had never heard of that.

"Why marry me, Mr. Peterman, if the thought of touching me disgusts you? Seven years is a long time to bear the company of a repulsive woman."

Suddenly, Micah took her hands in his. "No, Miss Clarkson, don't think for a moment that I don't find you attractive."

"Under this law, must the marriage remain unconsummated to be dissolved, then?"

Micah shook his head. "No, that's not it."

"Are you one of those men who would rather bed other men?"

Micah paled and his eyes widened in a moment of terror before calming. "No, Miss Clarkson, I'm not. I've been married before. My wife and son died of typhus fever in 1864. It's that...how do I tell you this?" He inhaled and exhaled deeply several times, his face drawn with indecision about what he was going to tell her. Finally, a little bit coldly, he said, "Miss Clarkson, I need a housekeeper, but I can't find one. You need a reprieve from the noose, and I'm the only one you're going to find at this late date. That ought to be enough."

"I'm going to die tomorrow. I reckon I shouldn't be so particular. Surely there are a host of widows in this town who would jump at the chance to marry you."

"Right," Micah said sarcastically. "I was captured by the Rebs in '62 and spent the remainder of the War in an assortment of Confederate prison camps. We spent that time hovering on the brink of starvation, wracked by dysentery and disease, dying by the hundreds..."

That's why you're so thin, Jenny realized, though it had been more than a year since the surrender.

"Anyway, when they brought me home I was more dead than alive. I came home to find that my wife and son died on the same day while I was languishing in prison."

Jenny saw the surprisingly broad but thin shoulders slump. She had been too busy trying to survive to worry about losing anyone she loved. And Danny had survived the War.

She found herself wanting to run her fingers through the strands of his tawny blond hair. A small voice told her it was absurd that with her life on the line she was actually considering comforting him. Jenny had never felt this kind of sensation. Where they had come for this sad husk of a man she would never know.

"So you don't really want to get married again."

She saw Micah's jaw tighten beneath his sunken cheeks. "No," he said dully as he put some distance between them. "I can't just contract for your services like mill owners can with convicts. Marriage is the only solution that solves both of our needs. I get a housekeeper; you get a parole. The law only allows the commutation if the felon marries the landowner. Once we're married, nobody is going to question or care if it's a marriage in name only as long as we stay married for the required seven years."

"Mr. Peterman, I have nothing left. I have two complete outfits: The gray gown I've been wearing in court and the men's clothing I was wearing when I was arrested. My gun and grip were confiscated by the County to pay for my keep. And my saddle was falling apart, so I doubt it was worth much. You'll need to buy me clothing and basic necessities. They needn't be expensive, but they will cost money."

"Money is tight right now, but I have enough to buy you what you need."

"What I'm saying is this: I have nothing to offer you in exchange for this unbelievable thing you're doing for me. All I have to offer are my industry and my fidelity. If you marry me, I promise I'll do nothing to cause you shame. If you want a marriage with no sex..."

"It's not..."

"You're saving my life. You're the answer to a prayer. During the last year of the War and since then I did what I had to do to survive. I'm not proud of it. But I promise you, if I'm your wife, I'll have no man in my bed excepting yourself. I'll likely be called a whore regardless, but you deserve that respect."

"Were you one?"

Jenny smiled ruefully. "It depends on how you define the word. You can get pretty cold and hungry standing on principle. What does it matter anyway? You need a housekeeper and I don't want to be executed. You're willing to offer me marriage to give us each what we need. I will be happy to marry you, right now, tonight, if you want."

Micah smiled. It lit up his melancholy face. He walked back to stand in front of Jenny, but before he could do anything else, Jenny placed her hands on both sides of his face, stood on her toes and kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

"What was that for?" His heart pounded at her touch.

"To thank you for saving my life."

"You saved your own life, Miss Clarkson."

"Jenny."

"Micah."

"Micah," she repeated and kissed his cheek again.

Micah stepped back and turned toward the cell door. He turned back to face her. The look in his eyes seemed strangely like longing, but mixed with melancholy. "Jenny, would you object to letting your hair grow out again?"

She shook her head, surprised he would care. "Not at all. It's only been short a year."

"Why wear your hair short?"

The day Danny and Jesse found her in the slave shack near the burned out Vallequette plantation she hacked off her hip-length hair with her brother's bayonet. If she was going to be riding with men she wanted no obvious reminders of her womanhood. "Why is yours short?"

Micah shrugged. "Easier to take care of, I suppose."

"That's as good a reason as any. Micah, who were you planning to have marry us?"

"I hadn't thought. Preacher Edwards, I suppose."

Jenny frowned. "I'd prefer not. Do you think you could ask Judge Plascove?"

Micah raised an eyebrow. "He's the man who sentenced you to death."

"And the one who gave you the means to avoid it."

"Jenny, do you think you got a fair trial?"

She nodded. "Actually, I do. The judge could have been far less accommodating to me than he was. A bad judge can tear apart a defendant representing himself if he wants to."

"Sometimes you sounded like a real lawyer."

"My father was a lawyer -- a good one. Sometimes I helped him research cases. He always said that if I had been a man, perhaps I could have been a lawyer, too. Of course, if I had been a man, I probably would have ended up dead on some battlefield."

"I'm glad you're not a man."

"So am I," Jenny responded with a grin. "So am I."

Copyright © 2003 by Elise Dee Beraru