He lifted an awkward arm around her shoulder, drew her close. “You’re all right,” he said, thickly.
She looked up into his face. “What’s it all about, Grant?”
He told her briefly, quickly. “They killed Mark for his money. My money. The money he had in his belt. Killed him and buried him at night, somewhere in the hills. And it’s not the only case. There have been others like it. Men killed, men robbed and cheated.
“The river was dying,” he said. “Fewer boats were traveling and the passenger lists were thinner. Mark and I figured we ought to move to fresher fields and so he came out ahead to look them over. Headed for here first because we’d heard Gun Gulch was a good town.”
He shivered in the rising wind of dawn.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” said the girl. “Bob will be wondering what it’s all about and a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt your face.”
Side by side they walked across the vacant lot toward the sidewalk.
The fire in the Crystal Bar had almost burned itself out, but the street still rang with turmoil. Horses, freed from the livery stable, moved like ghosts in the first gray light of dawn. Culver stared over his shoulder at the smouldering ruins of the Crystal Bar and a faint, grim smile tugged at his lips. I didn’t do it deliberately, he told himself, but I sure paid Hamilton off for a part of what he did.
Nancy stopped short, clutching Culver’s arm. “Look, Grant. That man out there. What are they doing to him?”
Culver stared at the circle of men standing in the muddy street, shouting at the man they had thrust onto a wagon box. Even from where he stood, he could see the rope around the man’s neck and the deathly, twisted pallor that sat upon his face.
“You get back to the hotel, quick,” he snapped at the girl.
With swift strides he crossed the vacant lot, stepped onto the sidewalk. From the opposite side of the street a bull voice bellowed. “Somebody start getting them horses. We ain’t got all night to waste.”
Another voice laughed. “Hold onto your shirt, Mike. It’s almost morning now.”
Culver reached out and tapped the shoulder of the man who stood in front of him. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The man turned around and Culver saw that it was Jake, the printer.
Jake spat deliberately into the mud before he answered. “We’re going to hang the lousy son,” he said. “Just as soon as we round up some horses to take him out where we can find a tree, we’re going to string him up. Got to do something to convince folks around here it ain’t healthy to go out and burn down other people’s property.”
He spat in the mud again. “Course, no one gives a damn about the Crystal Bar, but it’s a menace, that’s what it is. That fire might of spread to the livery barn. Might have burned down half the town. The boys worked hard to save it and they ain’t in no mood for shilly-shallying.”
Culver sucked his breath in sharply. “You mean you figure that fellow set the fire?”
“Set it or had someone set it,” said Jake. “Logical man to do it. Hated Hamilton’s guts, he did. Feller I was telling you about. Barney Brown, over at the Golden Slipper.”
“But you aren’t giving him a chance,” protested Culver. “You should have a trial. Let him have a say about this hanging business.”
“Hell,” Jake said, disgustedly, “he’d deny he done it. Stands to reason he would. Him and Hamilton was fixing for a showdown and Barney got the jump on Hamilton, that’s all. Other way around, if the Golden Slipper had burned down, we’d hang Hamilton.”
Culver lifted his head, stared at Barney Brown. The man was scared clean through. Standing there in the wagonbox with the rope around his neck he suddenly was pitiful. His waistcoat was unbuttoned and his cravat fluttered in the wind. His hand came up nervously and clutched the rope that hung around his shoulders, then jerked away as if his fingers had touched a red-hot iron.
The crowd roared with laughter and the bull-like voice jeered:
“Don’t like the feel of it, Barney? Just wait until we tighten it a little.”
Someone yelled, “Where are those damn horses.”
“Let’s grab hold of that wagon and take it out ourselves,” shouted someone else. “We got enough men here. We can do it easy.”
Culver felt revulsion twisting at his vitals. A pack of cowards, he told himself. A pack of wolves. Big and smart and loud-mouthed because there were a lot of them because they could do whatever they wanted to do with Barney Brown and no one would hurt them.
He raised his voice. “You gents got the wrong man,” he shouted at them.
Silence fell, a shocked and restless silence. Heads turned to stare at him.
A growl came from the crowd, a fierce angry sound. The voice of the pack that is being robbed of the deer it has pulled down.
Beyond the wagon a huge man was moving forward, lumbering through the sea of faces, and the crowd parted quickly to let him pass.
Motionless on the sidewalk, Culver stood and watched him come. Huge and hairy, massive of shoulder, with a bushy beard and hair that hung down his neck and curled upward in a drake’s tail above the collar of his heavy woolen shirt.
It was the man with the bull voice, he knew. The man who had shouted the loudest and angriest, who had jeered at Brown … the man the men called Mike.
Six feet away Mike stopped, stood with arms akimbo, staring up at Culver.
“You said something, stranger?” he asked and his voice was like a drum beating in the street.
“I said you had the wrong man,” said Culver. “I’m the one who set that fire.”
A murmur ran through the crowd and it stirred suddenly, then settled back again, like a pack of wolves.
“All right,” said Mike, “we’ll hang you instead of Brown.”
He took a slow step forward and the crowd surged into life. Angry voices spat screaming words at Culver and through the words he heard the splashing, sucking sound of feet moving through the mud.
From behind him, a cyclonic figure flung itself at Culver, coat flying in the wind. A hand reached out and snatched the six-gun from his waistband, brought it up. Culver’s hand flashed out to grasp the gun and the flare of the muzzle blast was a hot breath against his palm.
Out in the muddy street, Mike reeled back, bull voice bellowing, hand clapped to his right forearm.
The crowd stopped, stood stock-still, the angry words frozen in their mouths, boots rooted in the mud.
Culver’s fingers closed upon the gun, wrenched it away from Nancy Atwood.
“I thought I told you—” he began, but she interrupted him in a rush of tumbling words.
“You big lummox, you’d stand there and never stir, even when you had a gun. Can’t you see what would happen to you if you didn’t stop them?”
Her voice caught and broke and she stood on the sidewalk, huddled against the terror of the moment, hands pulling the coat tight around her body.
Culver hefted the six-gun in his hand, looked out over the crowd.
“You boys still want to hang me?” he asked, softly.
They did not stir or move.
Culver looked at Mike. The man looked back, hand still clutching his forearm, blood oozing out between his fingers.
“How about it, Mike?” asked Grant Culver.
The big man shifted his footing. “Maybe we were a bit worked up,” he said. “Maybe we should of asked if you had a reason for starting that fire.”
Culver grinned. “That’s more like it. You can’t hang a man legal without having a trial. I’m plumb ready to stand trial any time.”