The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff by Nancy Bartley

Author:Nancy Bartley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780295804545
Publisher: University of Washington Press

Chapter 15

IN THE SNOWY DAYS when the sighs of men were muffled in the white shawl of winter, the boy at his desk and the man by the window spoke of Shakespeare and Descartes, of sonnets and cycloids, transcendental numbers and transcendental verse. It would be in those days that the boy would begin to say “my beloved math” and dream of engineering planes and of a world unified by reasoning—a world explained in terms of patterns and probability and numerical sequences, a world with wings and possibilities, beyond the reach of the parole board.

As Broderick would describe him, Peter Miller was a “Colossus of Rhodes among Tom Thumbs,” and Herbert Niccolls's education was the better for it, as side by side they forged a friendship founded on the solid framework of the analytical world.

Miller spoke softly. Other men would come, too, softly padding along the rows of books and the boy would glance up from his own and gaze out the window.

To live inside the walls was to live inside the gates of hell, Miller knew. Here the lost souls were warehoused. Many were poor, most were uneducated. Too often they were threatened with bodily harm and starvation, and even the most passive faced the tedium of endless days with little to do. But it was different here in the library where within the musty volumes worlds unfolded at the turn of the page. He was pleased Rose had suggested that he tutor the boy.

Miller could hardly remember a time when he was free. It seemed so long ago. He had tried to make good. He came out west for a new start, to shake off the shackles of prison, breathe fresh sea air, and see the ragged peaks of the Olympic Mountains floating in the blue-gray horizon beyond the Puget Sound.

Then it happened. As anti-German sentiment swept the country, along with the rumblings of what in five years would be the World War, his broad Teutonic features drew attention. Although he was born in Pennsylvania and was only German on his mother's side, his features, coupled with the fact that he had spent time in a Missouri workhouse and in Sing Sing prison, were a combination that meant trouble. He found himself clapped in the Seattle jail facing a murder charge for a death he insisted he had nothing to do with. The man had died five years earlier in an alcohol-related event, but in order for the widow to claim the insurance money, the death had to be a crime or an accident. The widow hired a private detective to furnish proof, and five years later, after following a series of clues, the Seattle police arrested Miller.

First came burglary charges. He hired an attorney to represent him. But the attorney turned on him and not only elected to testify against him but in doing so claimed that during privileged conversations, Miller had admitted to breaking into two homes and to killing the Seattle saloon keeper.

Miller was placed

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