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he yelled in a squeaky voice.
    He heard a woman behind him clear her throat in protest, and turned. "Pardon me, madam," Lawyer Lapham said, lowering his watery eyes apologetically. He'd broken wind when he turned, and he wasn't sure which had offended her.

5
    NEAR MIDAFTERNOON , Willie Monroe rode into Polkton flanked by Pook Pine, Deputy Sam's freckled son, who'd been sent to the Double W to fetch him. On a frisky pinto, the boy held his head high, feeling great importance because he'd summoned the sheriff. He'd chatted with Kate while Willie saddled up.
    Ahead of them Polkton sprawled quietly in weathered boards, substantial granites, and new brick. Starting at Decatur Street, the town of about fifty buildings of varied vintages meandered like patchwork in both directions, hacked out of plateau pineland. There was talk of bricking Decatur, but for now it was hard-packed dirt. Saloon Row, off near the depot to the west, shared a shabby, already dying street with five brothels and three miner and lumberjack boarding-houses. Across town the Chinese and Mexicans had their shanties. Two new churches, along with the big brick courthouse, dominated the low skyline. Mountains rose on all sides of the town.
    Willie liked Polkton and most of the people in it. He'd seen it mushroom from a few hundred miners and timbermen and cowmen up to nearly three thousand citizens in twelve years. It had been settled as a soldier's post, expired in the sixties, and then came to life again in the seventies.
    News of the holdup had eddied along the streets, and Willie heard an occasional shout of "Go git 'em, Sheriff." Then there was a derisive voice: "Better late than never, Sheriff." He nodded without looking at the sources along the boardwalks and beneath the porch overhangs. He had powerful enemies, like rancher Earl Cole, as well as friends.
    He'd taken the day off to repair Kate's buggy out at the ranch.
Bad timing,
he thought.
    Cantering through light traffic of wagons, buckboards, and bicycles, staying well clear of a gasping steam buggy, he could now see a dozen or more people on the courthouse steps. He knew they weren't waiting for an eclipse He shook his head.
    Sam Pine was there. So was the stationmaster. He spotted Lawyer Lapham. There were assorted businessmen. Grayson, who owned the bank, for one He'd holler. Then he saw the massive frame of Earl Cole.
I might have known it,
he thought. The wolves were honing their fangs. Cole was by far his worst enemy.
    Moving briskly out to the steps was P. J. Wilson, the prosecuting attorney assigned to the county. Willie let out a gloomy breath and slowed Almanac to a walk. He could almost smell the anger and frustration on the steps.
    Wilson shouted, "Willis, this is the third train robbery in a year!" The pompous little red-haired peacock was bristling outwardly, but Willie knew that beneath the bristle, he was jumping with delight. Bad news for the incumbent sheriff was good news for P. J. Wilson.
    Part of his problem as sheriff, Willie believed, was Wilson's constant, dedicated undercutting. Skimpy of height and always simmering because he had to look up, the fashion-dandy DA was the sour well that had fed the Paiute rumor. More than that, Willie had long suspected that Wilson had made a preelection deal with Earl Cole to share land parcels. Cole's licking in the polls upset the money cart. There were no other evident reasons for Wilson's hostility toward him.
    Willie saw Dobbs, the skinny straw-haired Tombstone man who had bobbed up shortly after the election, hovering near Cole. Owner of a hacking cough that identified him wherever he went, Dobbs was definitely a hired gun, if Willie could believe the reports on him. He was again certain Dobbs had shot him, and that Cole had paid for it, proof or not. It was a score he intended to settle some day, one way or another.
    He went casually on up to the hitching post and dismounted before answering, with measured blandness, "You're the