The day before the judge was due to arrive in town, the sheriff permitted Hansard Morley to interview his client. He found Spur in an emaciated condition and weak from his wound and the lack of food. He was allowed to be in the store-room with Spur for no longer than thirty minutes and that gave them time to no more than go over the events of the evening of the murder as Spur knew them. Spur swore that he had not committed the crime and the attorney believed him. The young man left his client and found that he was greatly distressed to have found Spur, whom he had seen previously in Crewsville, reduced to such a poor condition. This distress quickly grew to anger and he sought the sheriff out. He knew that talking to Gaylor would do little good, but he could not stop himself from expressing his indignation.
He found the sheriff eating his noon meal in the hotel and told him straightway that he was not satisfied with the way in which the prisoner was being treated.
There was a stout gentleman sitting at the table with Gaylor and this turned out to be the prosecuting attorney. He treated the young lawyer with a patronizing air and more or less told him to run away and mind his own business. Morley’s rage was fanned to a white-hot heat and he said several things which later he might regret, as the prosecutor pointed out. If he wanted to make a complaint he would have ample opportunity to do so before the presiding judge on the following day.
‘That,’ he added, ‘should be worth seeing.’
Gaylor pointed out that he was having his lunch and that if Morley had business with him he could see him when he was through eating. Morley stormed out and took his rage back to Doolittle.
The lank freighter was sanguine about Spur’s chances. He now knew who the judge would be and he knew that the man was a strangler. Doolittle was disappointed in himself. He thought that by bringing a lawyer in for Spur he had done all he could do. He had sent word to Spur’s friends, but they had not made their appearance. Even if they arrived before the trial, he now saw that there was little they could do. Gaylor was confident. He would have all the evidence that was necessary to bring Spur to the rope. Doolittle wondered what motive the sheriff had for his actions. He knew the man was vain and a bully, but he had never had evidence that he was dishonest in the extreme. Sure, he collected taxes in a high-handed manner and he drank free at the saloons, but there had, to his knowledge, never been more than that.
The vague suspicion that the answer lay in Rube Daley’s diggings entered his mind. Had Rube found gold? He didn’t inform Morley of what was in his mind. The boy might have laughed at him.
Manuel Morales came to him in the evening.
‘They are going to hang this Spur,’ he said.
‘I reckon you could be right at that, Manuel,’ Doolittle said. ‘Have a drink. There ain’t a damn thing we can do about it.’
Morales poured himself a drink and sat.
‘I have been thinking,’ he said. ‘I have no proof. I am speaking only from my instincts. But this man Gaylor – he is bad.’
‘If you can judge him by those two roughs he uses as deputies, he’s bad all right,’ Doolittle said. ‘But how bad?’
Morales waved a fat forefinger in the air.
‘How bad? That is what I have asked myself.’ He prodded his sweating forehead with the same forefinger. ‘It is convenient. A stranger comes to our town. He goes to visit Rube Daley. He asks for Rube at the saloon. So it is known where he is going. He is knocked on the head. We know that is true. The head itself is evidence. And like a miracle the sheriff is on the scene. How does the sheriff know that Rube is dead?’
Doolittle nodded.
‘I’ve asked myself the same question. Hansard Morley will ask the same question in court. And I reckon he’ll get a pretty dusty answer. Gaylor’s got it all sewn up or he wouldn’t be so damned confident.’
‘But what can we do?’ Morales asked.
‘Why’re you interested in this man Spur all of a sudden?’ Doolittle demanded.
Morales came as near as he could to blushing. He looked on either side of the freighter and then at him.
‘It is my daughter,’ he confessed. ‘At last Juanita is interested in a man. She is crazy to choose a man who is preparing his neck for the rope,’
Doolittle started. What the hell had this man Spur that he didn’t have except a sentence of death hanging over him? Only two days before Lydia Carson had come to him and begged him to do something to save Spur. She had murmured a lot of nonsense about justice and all, but she didn’t have to spell it out to Doolittle. She had lost her head over the condemned man. She had taken just one look at him so far as Doolittle knew and here she was making a dream-hero out of the man. Doolittle ought to hate Spur’s guts. But he didn’t. Which said a good deal for Doolittle. He still wanted to help the man. But it was a mite galling to have the girl you had set your own heart on wanting to save the life of another man because she had fallen in love with him.
Morales was saying: ‘She has lost her senses over the man. Each day she goes with food for him. Each day she endures the insults of the odious barbarians who guard him. It is hard for a father to bear. I think if it were not for her, this man would be dead by now.’
What kind of a fellow was this Spur, Doolittle demanded of himself, that he could have two women like Lydia Carson and Juanita Morales panting over him? There wasn’t a scrap of justice in the world.
His mind switched. He wondered if the Basque had found Spur’s two friends. He wondered what action they would take if they reached here in time. He also wondered if he had done the right thing. If the news ever leaked out that he had aided and abetted Spur it might go badly for him. What the hell, he thought. A man had to do what he thought was right. The thought of Cusie Ben and the Cimarron Kid somehow lifted his spirits. Maybe they would pull something spectacular. That might be nice, especially if it gave that strutting pig Wayne Gaylor his comeuppance.
‘You know, Manuel,’ he said, ‘I have a feelin’ in my water that Spur ain’t goin’ to hang.’
‘My friend,’ Morales said, creasing his fat face in a frown that spread from his forehead to his three chins, ‘it would take a miracle.’
‘Maybe,’ Doolittle said, ‘that’s what we’re goin’ to see.’
Morales finished his drink, bid him good night and departed,
Doolittle sat on, smoking and drinking, thinking about Lydia Carson. His last thought before he retired to his bed, however, was: I wonder if I could lend a hand if them two boys’re going to bust Spur out of there.
He reminded himself that he was a respectable business man, but the thought lingered till he fell asleep.
The following day, the Crewsville stage drove in bearing a dignitary of the court in the shape of Judge Hugh Maiden. Tradition has it that judges should look the part. That is, they should have white or at least gray hair, a dignity of mien befitting their station and an air of knowing if not of wisdom. The man who stepped down from the rocking stage-coach and cursed the driver in no uncertain terms for the needless speed of the drive, the roughness of the trail and his inept handling of the horses could have been a hardware salesman. The driver who was a man of standing in his chosen profession, if not in the eyes of his honor, replied in a manner demanded by the judge’s own. He spat with the skill of long practice and missed the judge’s boots by no more than an inch.
Both the sheriff and the prosecutor were there to greet Maiden. He received their greetings with little more than a grunt and gazed around at the town of Sunset without enthusiasm, even with hostility. This was his natural look. He gazed upon the whole of mankind with neither love nor compassion and, habitually looking for sin and criminality in his fellows, seldom failed to find it.
The town had turned out to see him. The coming of his honor was an event. He always provided first-class entertainment and drama. He belittled counsel and was the scourge of malefactors. His language was rich, to the point and sometimes downright vile. His court would be full and he would wield his power to the delight of those who would not suffer through it. He was, they all told each other, a real character and a holy terror. Even the sheriff and the prosecutor, men accustomed to having their own way and ruling their little worlds, found themselves insignificant in the presence of this undersized, large-headed man with protruding eyes and a mouth like a wolf-trap. It didn’t surprise anybody that Maiden was a bachelor and hated children. Women did not come into his scheme of things. The only pleasure he derived from life, one assumed, was administering what was laughingly called justice.
He now demanded first a drink and then a room in the hotel to retire to. The journey had played hell with his constitution and he must rest. They escorted him to the hotel, the sheriff and a deputy carrying his grips, installed him in the best room in the place and put a whiskey and glass on the table. He took off his boots, sat at the table and filled his glass with whiskey. He offered nobody else a drink, declared that court would be convened in the saloon at ten a.m. the following morning and if anybody disturbed him before nine, he would have their entrails for galluses. Gaylor and Cantrell retired.