High Noon

The large bell resting in the basement of the old Courthouse commemorated the time when there was a bell foundry down there. A small hammer on a chain invited you to strike it. ‘Don’t,’ Judy said. ‘Someone might hear you.’

Upstairs was the rest of the story. There, under glass, was Wyatt Earp’s very own six-shooter, a faded sepia photograph of dentist, gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday, pictured with his girlfriend Big Nose Kate, and a contemporary newspaper account of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, apparently all done and dusted in under thirty seconds. ‘Come on,’ Judy said.

Upstairs again was the old courtroom itself, preserved just as it must have been in those riotous days and how you saw it in some of those Western movies, while down below in the sun-baked courtyard was the four-poster gallows. They didn’t hang about back then.

‘Let’s go,’ Judy said, not in the mood for jokes.