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look as if she was close to giving birth. The driver led her to a porch rocker and urged her to sit down.
    Joshua yanked his watch from his vest pocket to check the time. “I sure hope they get this stage moving soon,” he said.
    “I see the driver coming this way,” Annabelle said.
    He opened the stage door and poked his head inside. “Sorry, folks. We’re not going anywhere just yet.”
    “What’s wrong?” Annabelle asked.
    The driver tilted his head toward the inn. “I’m afraid there’s been a murder, ma’am. The man who was traveling with you yesterday was stabbed to death some time last night.”
    She pressed her hand against her chest. Had the man’s death been a result of what she’d witnessed the night before ?
    After she caught her breath, she said, “And I-I may have been the last one to see him alive.”
    “I’ve sent a man to Lake Andes to fetch the sheriff,” the driver said. “He’ll probably have some questions for you.”
    He offered his hand to help her down from the stage.
    “How long will we be stuck here?” Joshua asked. “My wife and I are supposed to be in Deadwood on Saturday for her sister’s wedding.”
    The driver shrugged a shoulder. “Sorry for your troubles, but I’m not leaving my wife here alone with a dead man. She’s in the family way. Besides, the murdered man came in on this stage last night, and I’m not moving this rig until the Sheriff says it can go.”
     
    Annabelle sat in one of the porch rockers and watched the stage driver pace back and forth across the yard. He wouldn’t allow anyone to go back into the inn, and the heat of the day was steadily rising. She removed the fan from her purse and waved it around her face. As hot as she was, Daisy must have been miserable.
    “Are you alright?” Annabelle asked.
    The woman nodded but Annabelle couldn’t help noticing the tremor in her hands.
    “I’m fine,” Daisy said. “I’ve just never seen anything like that before. There was blood everywhere.”
    “Where did you find him?”
    “In the root cellar right outside the kitchen,” Daisy said. “I can’t figure out what he would have been doing in there.”
    “He was such a strange person,” Annabelle said. “He hardly said two words during the whole trip from Tyndall.”
    “He listed his address as Yankton,” Daisy said. “But he boarded the stage in Tyndall for some reason.”
    Annabelle opened her purse again and took out a handkerchief to pat away the beads of perspiration popping out around her hairline. Had he been murdered only steps away from her while she finished her bath and dressed ? And what about the diamonds ? It seemed to be taking forever for the law to get to the way station.
    “How much longer do you think it will be?” she asked.
    “It’s a little over eleven miles to Lake Andes,” Daisy said. “Riding our fastest horse at a good gallop, it takes around forty-five minutes to get there. Duke might have had to wait on the sheriff or the undertaker.”
    Her head snapped around at the sound of horses hooves. Daisy got to her feet and ambled to the edge of the porch. “It’s them,” she said.
    Annabelle joined her on the steps. Along with Duke, she saw two other men on horseback and a man clothed in a black suit and black top hat, driving a wagon. The stage driver went to meet them and said a few words to the two men wearing badges before they all started toward the inn. One of the lawmen was an older man with patches gray around the temples and deep lines around his mouth and eyes.
    The other man seemed to be much younger and…familiar. She’d seen him before. He’d held the door for her at the train depot in Yankton.
    “That’s Marshal Johnson, in case you were wondering,” Daisy said. “He must have been in Lake Andes today. Good thing, too. Sheriff Tuttle couldn’t catch a killer if one turned himself in.”
    “How did he get the job?” Annabelle asked.
    “He’s the only one who’d take it.” She sat