Prologue

1890 – Ames, Texas

Emily Harris smiled contentedly as she put the last stitch in her embroidered pillowcase.

Emily could hear her three children playing in their attic playroom; every once in a while a shriek pierced the silence of the house, indicating the boys were once again teasing their little sister.

She smiled, set down her needlework and moved to the kitchen where she began supervising dinner preparations. Cyrus would close his office soon and the children would no doubt be hungry within the next hour.

In the attic playroom, Ben and Lewis were indeed torturing their little sister.

“Come on, Lucy. Don’t be a sissy little girl,” Ben taunted. He pulled a large steamer trunk from its place in the corner to where Lucy was standing.

            “Here, Lucy. Stand up on this. This is the Outlaw’s horse.”

At ten years of age, Ben’s stature allowed him to dominate most other children, and he took advantage of his size whenever possible. Especially when he towered over his siblings. Now, he easily grabbed a rope dangling from the beam above.

“Yeah, Lucy,” Lewis echoed. “Come on.”

Lucy eyed her brothers with suspicion. Her five-year old instinct told her this was not a good thing for her to be doing; yet she didn’t want to appear a baby in their eyes. Her brothers were not only her playmates, but also she idolized them as being the smartest, best looking children on the block, and she was eager to please them.

She climbed up on the trunk and stood, eyeing the rope Ben held in his hand.

“You mean you want me to put this rope over my head?” She asked Ben.

“Yeah. Put it on, Lucy. Here, I’ll help you.” He moved behind his sister and looped the rope over her head. “We’re playing Outlaw. And how can we play Outlaw if we don’t have somebody to be the Outlaw?”

“Girls aren’t outlaws,” Lucy bargained.

“Yes, there are some girls who were outlaws in the West,” Ben informed her.

Lucy considered this, coming from her smart brother, Ben. If Ben said so, it must be true.

“Okay,” she conceded. “I’m the Outlaw.”

Lewis snickered, mainly to impress his older brother. “Yeah, an outlaw. A girl outlaw, in a prissy blue dress.”

Ben ignored him, as he always did. “Good. Okay, we don’t have a rope hanging from a tree, just the ceiling beam, and you’re not on a horse, but this trunk can be your horse.”“

Lucy’s blue eyes rounded in curiosity. “What’s gonna happen now?”

“This is your horse. You know, the way they did it in the olden days. They would string up the outlaw on his horse, and then they’d whack the horse and make him bolt, and the outlaw would die by hanging.”

“Uh….I don’t know,” Lucy’s voice quavered.

“Sissy girl,” Ben countered.

“Yeah, sissy girl,” Lewis echoed.

“But won’t that hurt?” Lucy’s stance wavered.

“Naw. We’re just pretending. You can pretend hurt, if you want to. You’re a real good pretender, right?”

Lewis nodded at his brother and they both pushed the trunk out from under Lucy’s slipper-clad feet.

“Okay, you outlaw,” Lewis shouted, taking off an imaginary hat and dusting his trousers with it.

Lucy moaned softly, then came a gurgling noise. She raised her hands to her neck, flailed her slipper-clad feet while her eyes screamed in terror.

Lewis, surveying his sister’s plight asked Ben, “Should we cut her down? It looks like she’s not just pretending.”

“Naw. She’s a good pretender. Remember how she got you last week down in the cellar, when she pretended to trip over a box and hurt her knee? She cried real hard, and pretended like she was really hurt, bad. She’s good at that.”

“Well… if you say so.”

Lucy flailed her feet harder, no doubt with her last conscious thought hoping her feet would connect with the trunk, but it was far removed. Her hands struggled with the rope for a few seconds, she continued to make noises, and then her eyes closed and she was still.

***

Emily closed her sewing box, thinking how she loved her new house, so generously built by Cyrus before their marriage some eleven years ago. She remembered their marriage ceremony, which had been lavish and well attended by the powerbrokers in the county and state. Emily was attired in a white silk gown with long train and veil made of Chantilly lace, imported from Ireland. Her mother’s pearls adorned her slender neck and her black hair, caught up in decorative combs at the sides, allowed only a slender tendril to escape on either side of her porcelain face.

The wedding was held in the large parlor, with French doors open to the garden at the side of the house. The scent of gardenias hung heavily in the spring air, adding to the aroma of myriad floral sprays set around the house. Emily gazed about the scene before she descended the staircase on her father’s arm. Everything was perfect, she smiled to herself. Her wedding would be perfect. Her marriage to Cyrus would be perfect, and she would have perfect children. Emily repeated her vows in front of the assemblage and the bishop of the Methodist Church, serenely confident that she would lead a charmed and perfect life.

Three children arrived rapidly: Ben, Lewis and Lucy, and Emily couldn’t have asked for anything more. Ben, the eldest, was a mirror image of his father. An unruly shock of sandy hair fell over his blue eyes that seemed to see through a person clear to his soul. Active, intelligent and opinionated, Ben was the ringleader in all their games played in the attic playroom that Emily had furnished especially for her privileged children. A large rocking horse from England, hand-carved, larger than most, dominated the large room. Surrounding the signature piece were stuffed animals: a giraffe, a giant turtle and a camel. Raggedy Ann and Andy leaned alongside one book-lined wall and maps of the world adorned the other three walls of the attic room. Three small school desks were pushed against the walls, along with a large steamer trunk containing even more toys and books.

Lewis followed his older brother’s lead in their playtime and learning. Also blue-eyed, his hair coloring was lighter in color than Ben’s, and he seemed more compliant than Ben, less adventurous and perhaps a bit more inclined to be quiet and studious.

Lucy. Ah, Lucy. Stunningly beautiful little Lucy. In sharp contrast to her brothers’ fair coloring, the little girl’s dark eyes and black, curly hair captured everybody’s attention. She talked early, walked earlier than her brothers, and followed their every move with glee.

Even unto the point where she now hung limply from a rope thrown around a ceiling beam, her brothers solemnly eyeing her.

Emily strode through the door, drying her hands on her apron, saying, “What are you children doing up here? Didn’t you hear me calling you for ----?”

Her voice trailed off when her eyes came to rest on the girl hanging from the beam. The little girl’s fair complexion had turned beet red, her blue eyes closed in finality.

Emily screamed, her face turning white. “ Lucy!

“What happened? Boys, get a knife so I can cut her down. Now!”

Ben shrugged in response to Lewis’s head shaking in a gesture of “I don’t know where a knife is.”

Without waiting for the boys to respond, Emily frantically dragged the trunk to beneath Lucy’s feet. Stepping up on the trunk, she struggled with the noose, finally taking it from the girl’s neck. A red burn mark shone vividly in the sunlight streaming in the uncurtained window.

“Lucy,” Emily coaxed, “Lucy, wake up! Let me see you open your eyes.”

But there was no response, no breath in the child. No movement. It was no use.

Hugging her daughter tightly, Emily began rocking back and forth, crooning softly, “Lucy, oh my little angel. Oh, God, what happened?”

Lewis began picking up their wooden toys: a steam engine, a horse, and what passed for an Indian. “We were just playing, Mama. We were playing outlaws and cowboys, and Lucy was our outlaw.”

“You mean you did this?” Emily paused in her rocking long enough to absorb what her son was telling her. “You did this?” she repeated.

“We thought Lucy was just pretending,” Ben offered, “you know, like she always does. She’s a good pretender-er. I’ll bet she’s just faking right now.”

“What have you done?” Emily repeated, then her voice rose to a shout. “You killed your sister! She’s dead!”

Ben paused in his task of rounding up the toys and putting them in their toy box. He gazed steadily at his sister’s limp form. “We didn’t do anything. She was our outlaw, and she’s the one who stood up on the trunk. We told her it was just like the olden days, and the trunk was her horse, and instead of whippin’ a horse, we pulled it out from under her feet.” He looked up at the roof beam where the rope still hung. “We didn’t know it would hurt her, Mama, honest we didn’t.”

“Yeah, Mama, we didn’t know it would hurt her.” Lewis said solemnly.

But Emily said nothing, continuing to rock her dead child.

Ben moved closer to Lucy and poked her shoulder vigorously.

Lewis and Ben looked at each other. What do we do now? Their faces asked each other.

Ben broke the silence by asking, “Is dinner ready?”