The gaunt Calamity looked up at Jerry and his face went carefully blank.

The hotel clerk said to Jerry Paddock, “Upstairs in a customer’s room. He was going through a man’s luggage.”

“Search him.”

The man with the rifle continued to hold Calamity’s arm while the hotel clerk went gingerly through Calamity’s pockets.

On their horses, Sewall and Dow watched. The older man was scowling; the younger looked eager and excited.

A little distance away, Finnegan and O’Donnell sat with their rifles across their saddlebows. They didn’t stir. Several of Paddock’s boys were watching them, narrow-eyed and ready for trouble, and Pack muttered to Joe Ferris, “I would just as soon be somewhere else just now.”

By way of reply he heard Joe’s long exhalation of breath: a sound of unhappy resignation.

The clerk’s search produced a small metal shaving mirror and a golden watch and chain.

From high on horseback Jerry Paddock said, “What’d you want the shaving mirror for, Calamity? To admire your pretty face?”

“It’s my mirror. It’s my own. Belongs to me,” Calamity said.

“Come again, you long-whiskered sinner. You haven’t shaved in ten years.”

The clerk was examining the watch front and back. He squinted at it up close and said, “Initials CJW.”

“What’s Calamity’s name? Anybody know?”

Calamity said quickly, “Christopher J. Williams, that’s my name.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper.

“Hell,” said the clerk, “his name’s Bill Smith. But they’s a guest registered in the hotel under the name of Clarence Worth, I think it is—anyways it was his room Calamity come runnin’ out of.”

Jerry Paddock said, “May as well hang him.”

Pack closed his eyes for half a second and then lifted his voice sternly. “Now, hold on.”

Paddock swiveled in the saddle to regard him with disdain.

Pack said, “If you lynch that man in front of all these witnesses, you’ll have to go to trial for it. Now, I’m not saying you’ll be convicted, but why invite the trouble?”

Joe Ferris said, “Put him in the Bastille overnight and I’ll take him over to Dickinson for trial tomorrow. That watch is evidence enough—he’ll go to prison.”

Watchful and insolent, Jerry Paddock touched each of them with his sliding glance. It lingered on Finnegan and O’Donnell. Pack couldn’t tell whether it was their presence that made him hesitate.

Bill Sewall said, “Hang him and you’ll have to hang quite a few of us, else we’ll be obliged to testify to what your lynch-party does here.”

For the first time anger glowed in Jerry Paddock’s deep-set eyes. “Who asked you to shove your Jew-loving nose in?”

From downriver Redhead Finnegan yelled, “Why don’t you go ahead and lynch the poor son of a bitch? Same as you been doing to all them good boys up and down the Bad Lands.”

Jerry Paddock’s muderous glare swiveled back toward the two hunters. “Red, if I want to kill a man, I kill him standing up and facing him. I don’t put a mask on and ride up on him in the middle of the night—”

“You mean like you shot Riley Luffsey? Was that standing up and facing him?”

In that moment of distraction Pack saw Calamity grab his captor’s rifle.

Pack, keyed to a twang-taut pitch as it was, jumped a foot at the bang of its discharge—it must have been cocked; it went off into the air—and for a moment Pack wasn’t clearly sure what was going on. He thought he heard Calamity say, “Make room—make room—I’m goin’!” and he had an impression of several men backing away from Calamity’s wildly swinging rifle…. He thought Calamity tried to run for it, toward the dubious sanctuary afforded by Finnegan and O’Donnell, but the path must have brought him tangentially toward Jerry Paddock because when Calamity looked up, Paddock’s under-shoulder revolver was out and cocked and leveled at him.

Pack blinked and tried to breathe. His attention steadied. There were guns up, all over the place, and he prepared to throw himself flat on the ground. He felt the distress in Joe Ferris and knew Joe probably was ready to do the same.

But there was a broken frozen instant of time in which nothing stirred, nothing at all.

Pack saw clearly the twisted sneer under Jerry Paddock’s Chinese mustache and the steadiness of Paddock’s cocked revolver, aimed straight at Calamity’s face. He saw too that Calamity’s rifle was not pointed anywhere near Jerry Paddock.

He heard Joe Ferris say, “For God’s sake, Calamity, don’t fight the drop.”

Pack could not believe his eyes then, for against all reason Calamity was swiveling the rifle, making his try—a wild fury distorting his face out of shape, a half-strangled sound escaping from his throat—and without compunction Jerry Paddock fired immediately.

The gunshot so close to its ear spooked Jerry Paddock’s horse. Jerry sawed at the reins and stood up in the stirrups, leaning hard to one side as the horse wheeled.

Pack saw that Calamity had fallen limp to the ground. An immediate stink lifted from him and drove men back—even these men whose nostrils were inured to the abattoir.

Pack peered through, ducking from side to side to get a view. Calamity was most certainly dead. Part of his face was gone, red and glutinous. Pack looked away and tried to stifle his nausea. He had never seen a man shot dead in front of him before. And I want never to see another.

*    *    *

The Concord was drawn up awaiting departure for Deadwood. Despite nay-sayers the stage line was in operation. The four coaches had been running since the thaw began. Like the others this handsome vehicle was painted black and gold, with the Vallombrosa coat-of-arms and a bold legend: U.S. MAIL—MEDORA STATE AND FORWARDING co. Admittedly that was a bit premature, as the Marquis had not yet been awarded a mail contract, but of course it was merely a matter of time.

Two passengers—drummers by the look of their travel-worn suits and threadbare carpetbags—got aboard. There didn’t seem to be much freight. The driver cracked his whip and yelled.

The coach rocked forward, drawn by four skittish teams. Pale dust smoked from its wheels.

It was mildly cool; there was an easy breeze. Huidekoper and Joe Ferris came across the intersection from the store to Pack’s place. With an air of urgency Joe said, “Mind if we come inside?”

Pack looked at him, not altogether in surprise. He went back into the Cow Boy office. The two men followed and Huidekoper looked out both ways along the street before he closed the door. His movements were somehow conspiratorial.

Pack said, “What is it?” although he already knew.

“Want to talk to you about what’s going on out in the hills,” said Joe.

Huidekoper said, “These are hard times for principles. Some people don’t seem able to afford them. We have got to rekindle a sense of proper morality in the populace. Your newspaper must be part of the effort. It’s a vital element.”

Pack said, “Now, I assume you’re talking about the Stranglers. Grim sort of proceedings, I know. But sometimes—”

“The hell,” Joe said. “They’re murderers, Pack. No excuses.”

Pack found it hard to keep his mind focused on what they were saying. He still felt lightheaded and a trifle nauseous. It had been two days but he hadn’t been able to rid the sight and stink of Calamity’s sudden corpse from the front page of his vision.

Huidekoper was talking. “In isolated camps and coulee cabins up and down the river, the Stranglers are going about their awful business with a relentless eagerness.”

He talks in paragraphs, Pack thought.

Huidekoper went on, his voice nearly accusing: “Do you know how many they’ve slaughtered?”

“No. Do you?”

“At least half a dozen,” Joe said. “May be more.”

“Not to mention,” Huidekoper mentioned, “that it’s becoming increasingly apparent they are not entirely averse to the lures of plunder.”