When they reached the crowd, Corrigan took the lead, shouldering through the mass of people with Matt and Bud close behind. Corrigan kept saying: “It’s the sheriff. Let me through. It’s the sheriff.”
When they reached the platform, they found Cole Talbot and Jim Long and several others standing beside a body that was covered by a canvas. A hush had fallen over the crowd and no one understood what had happened or seemed to know what to do. It was just as well that people didn’t know the whole story, Matt thought.
The dead man was Uncle Pete Fisher. When Matt lifted the canvas to look at the body, he saw that Fisher had been hit dead center in the chest. Blood had spread across his shirt from the bullet hole.
“Did he say anything after he was shot?” Matt asked.
Talbot shook his head. “Not a word. He had just jumped up on the platform and held up his hands as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t have a chance. We moved him off the platform to the ground. Doc was right here, but there wasn’t anything he could do.”
“Cole, you and Jerry move the body to the coroner’s office,” Matt said. “The governor’s going to be here any minute. Jim, you introduce him when he gets here and tell the people that Jerry nailed the men who killed Uncle Pete.”
“What about those other shots that came later?” Talbot asked.
“That was when we nailed the men who got Uncle Pete,” Corrigan said. “All right, Cole. Let’s get this body out of here before the governor sees it.”
Matt’s eyes locked with Corrigan’s. They were thinking the same thing, he told himself, that Pete Fisher, remorseful over his part in the murder plot, had jumped up on the platform, knowing that the killer who was waiting for Ben Wyatt to appear would see his white beard and mistake him for Wyatt.
“I’ve got to make an explanation to these people,” Long said worriedly.
Some of it has to be told, Matt thought. He nodded, and said: “There was a plot to murder the governor and the killer made the mistake of taking Uncle Pete for the governor.”
Matt turned away as Dick Miles’s rig appeared around the corner. The band had started to play again, ragged music but better than no music at all. Matt asked several men to move the bodies of the dead outlaws to the coroner’s office. He made no explanation to the men who went to the house with him beyond saying that the dead outlaws were the ones who had shot Uncle Pete Fisher.
As soon as the men left with the bodies, Matt stepped into the house and picked up the satchel. He found Nora and Jean sitting on the couch, white-faced and dry-eyed.
The tears will come later, he thought. He lingered only long enough to say: “Pete Fisher is the man they shot. They must have mistaken him for the governor.”
He went out through the front door and walked rapidly toward the bank, wanting to lock up the money in the safe as soon as he could. The whole story would come out in time, but right now he didn’t feel like making an explanation to anyone. He wasn’t sure he had done right. All he knew was that everything had turned out better than he had hoped an hour ago.
Now, walking along the side of the courthouse square, he heard the governor’s booming voice: “You people are to be congratulated for this fine accomplishment. Republicans, Democrats, and Populists would agree on one thing. As long as men and women in our great state of Colorado have the initiative that it takes to raise enough money to carry through a fine project like this. . . .”
Matt hurried on to the bank. He would lock the Matt hurried on to the bank. He would lock the money in the safe and get back to the courthouse in time to hear the end of the speech. He would shake the governor’s hand and thank him for coming to Amity; they would have lunch and the band would play some more and later there would be dancing in the Masonic Temple.
Then Matt took a long breath. He thought: My children have not been hurt. The governor is alive. We still have the money to finish the dam.
He could ask for nothing more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wayne D. Overholser won three Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and has a long list of fine Western titles to his credit. He was born in Pomeroy, Washington, and attended the University of Montana, University of Oregon, and the University of Southern California before becoming a public schoolteacher and principal in various Oregon communities. He began writing for Western pulp magazines in 1936 and within a couple of years was a regular contributor to Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine and Fiction House’s Lariat Story Magazine. Buckaroo’s Code (1947) was his first Western novel and remains one of his best. In the 1950s and 1960s, having retired from academic work to concentrate on writing, he would publish as many as four books a year under his own name or a pseudonym, most prominently as Joseph Wayne. The Violent Land (1954), The Lone Deputy (1957), The Bitter Night (1961), and Riders of the Sundowns (1997) are among the finest of the Overholser titles. The Sweet and Bitter Land (1950), Bunch Grass (1955), and Land of Promises (1962) are among the best Joseph Wayne titles, and Law Man (1953) is a most rewarding novel under the Lee Leighton pseudonym. Overholser’s Western novels, whatever the byline, are based on a solid knowledge of the history and customs of the 19th-century West, particularly when set in his two favorite Western states, Oregon and Colorado. Many of his novels are first-person narratives, a technique that tends to bring an added dimension of vividness to the frontier experiences of his narrators and frequently, as in Cast a Long Shadow (1957), the female characters one encounters are among the most memorable. He wrote his numerous novels with a consistent skill and an uncommon sensitivity to the depths of human character. Almost invariably, his stories weave a spell of their own with their scenes and images of social and economic forces often in conflict and the diverse ways of life and personalities that made the American Western frontier so unique a time and place in human history.
OTHER LEISURE BOOKS BY WAYNE D. OVERHOLSER:
BITTER WIND
RAINBOW RIDER
WHEELS ROLL WEST
WILD HORSE RIVER
THE LAW AT MILES CITY
TWIN ROCKS
COPYRIGHT
A LEISURE BOOK April 2008
Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
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New York, NY 10016
Copyright 2007 by The Estate of Wayne D. Overholser.
“Sunset Trail” first appeared under the title “Scalp-Orphan of Sunset Trail” in Frontier Stories (Winter, 47). Copyright 1947 by Fiction House, Inc. Copyright renewed 1975 by Wayne D. Overholser.
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