'Very. Mr. Buckingham shot a huge grizzly, but only wounded it. Those great beasts are extremely unpredictable, you know, and never more so than when wounded.'
'They will usually attack,' Longarm said. 'Their attack is so sudden and ferocious that men have often lost their nerve and then their lives.'
'So I've heard. But this particular wounded grizzly turned and ran. Mr. Buckingham, his guides, and their dogs dashed off into the woods after it. They trailed the grizzly for about two miles and the dogs were hot for the hunt. But then, a tragic thing happened. The grizzly circled around on them and went raging back toward their camp where the boy and his nanny were resting.'
Longarm stopped chewing. He could visualize the situation. An enraged and badly wounded grizzly, circlin back on its pursuers, probably to attack them from behind but instead chancing upon their unprotected camp to find a helpless woman and a boy.
'Are you sure that you want to hear the rest?' Lucy asked.
'Only if it has some kind of a connection to your Eastern education.'
'It has everything to do with it,' she said, continuing on with her story. 'The grizzly attacked the camp and the nanny tried to protect the boy, but one swipe from the bear broke her neck. The boy ran.'
'Not surprising, but the wrong thing to do.'
'Yes, well, the bear overtook the boy and mauled him. The boy lost consciousness, and the bear had started to drag him off into the thickets when the dogs attacked. Three of the dogs were killed before Buckingham and his guides could arrive. They shot the bear and found the boy bleeding to death.'
'And your father was able to save him,' Longarm said, guessing the rest of the story.
'Exactly.' Lucy wiped her eyes dry of tears. 'When they brought the boy to my father, he was more dead than alive. But Father somehow sutured up all the wounds and managed to beat off the infection. It was almost a miracle that the boy lived and his father was so grateful, he offered my father anything he wished.'
'Anything?'
'Yes.' Lucy's chest swelled with pride. 'My father wanted me to go to an Eastern school and maybe even become a doctor like himself.'
'But you didn't.'
'No,' she confessed, 'I was more interested in art and philosophy. And besides that, there was a tremendous amount of prejudice against women being anything more than nurses. So much so that almost all women doctors were educated in Europe. Did you know that?'
'No,' Longarm admitted. 'I've never even met a woman doctor.'
'They are very common in England, France, and Germany.'
'Is your father still alive?'
'No,' she said, 'he died about three years ago. Penniless, but beloved as always. When he passed on, I moved away. First to Albuquerque and then to Tucson.'
'Which is where you met your late husband?'
'That's right. He owned a huge ranch outside of Tucson, but in the summer he and his family would travel up to Prescott, where it is cooler. They own several thousand acres of ranch land up in the pines.'
'I see,' Longarm said.
'We were married only a short while. Don Luis was a wonderful man. He was almost twenty years older than I, and had been married before but lost his wife. We were quite happy.'
'But you fought,' Longarm said. 'There are witnesses who say that you fought on the night that your husband was killed.'
'That's true. We were having a serious disagreement and it was our very first. But I would never have killed my husband.'
'Can you prove that?'
Lucy's lovely face grew pinched and she slowly shook her head. 'We were alone. I remember the scene very well. We were standing before a big rock fireplace and Don Luis was pacing back and forth. I'm not going to tell you what our argument was about because that is irrelevant.'
'It won't be to a judge or a jury.'
She took a deep breath. 'Well, if I have to air the dirty laundry in order to save my neck, then I will. But suffice to say right now that we were both very upset. And then... then there was a single shot.'
'Originating from where?'
'I have asked myself that same question a thousand times and I honestly don't know.'
Lucy took a long, shuddering breath. She was clearly reliving the ordeal and shaken by the vividness of her memories.
'It could have come from a hallway but also from outside, because the windows were open and it was dark. I just don't know. All I remember is that my husband fell mortally wounded. He dropped to the couch and I screamed, then ran to him. I didn't hear them throw the gun that killed Don Luis at my feet. I swear it!'
Longarm wanted to believe the woman. It would have been hard not to believe her. She was pale and shaking, obviously gripped in the horrible memory of that moment. As he chewed on the half-raw sage hen, Longarm felt touched with pity.
'Then,' he said, 'you were framed.'
