Stu: “That’s a hell of a thing to spring on me, Nick.”

Glen: “Interesting. Goes back to what we were just talking about, too. Let him finish, Stuart—you’ll get your innings.”

Nick: “The headquarters of this Department of Law and Order would be in the Boulder County Courthouse. Stu would have the power to deputize men on his own up to thirty, over thirty on a majority vote of the Free Zone Committee, and over seventy on a majority vote of the Free Zone in public session. That’s the resolution I’d like to see on the next agenda. Of course we can approve until we’re black in the face and it will do no good unless Stu goes along.”

Stu: “Damn right!”

Nick: “We’ve gotten big enough to really need some law. Things are going to get flaky without it. There’s the case of the Gehringer boy racing that fast car up and down Pearl Street. He finally crashed it and was lucky to walk away with nothing worse than a gash on his forehead. He could have killed himself or someone else. Now everybody who saw him doing that knew it was nothing but trouble, M-O-O-N, that spells trouble, as Tom would say. But nobody felt they could stop him, because they just didn’t have the authority. That’s one thing. Then there’s Rich Moffat. Probably some of you know who Rich is, but for those of you who don’t, he’s probably the Zone’s only practicing alcoholic. He’s a half-decent guy when he’s sober, but when he’s drunk, he’s just not accountable for what he does, and he spends a lot of time drunk. Three or four days ago he got a load on and decided he was going to break every plate-glass window on Arapahoe. Now I talked to him about that after he sobered off a little—in my way of talking, you know, by note—and he was pretty ashamed. He pointed back the way he come and said, ‘Look at that. Look at what I done. Glass all over the sidewalk! What if some kid gets hurt in that? I’ll be to blame.’”

Ralph: “I got no sympathy. None.”

Fran: “Come on, Ralph. Everybody knows alcoholism’s a disease.”

Ralph: “Disease, my ass. It’s getting sloppo, that’s what it is.”

Stu: “And you’re both out of order. Come on, you two, pipe down.”

Ralph: “Sorry, Stu. I’ll stick to reading Nick’s letter here.”

Fran: “And I’ll be quiet for at least two minutes, Mr. Chairman. I promise.”

Nick: “To make a long story short, I found Rich a broom and he swept up most of the mess he’d made. Did a pretty good job, too. But he was right to ask why someone didn’t stop him. In the old days a guy like Rich couldn’t get anywhere near all the high-tension booze he wanted; guys like Rich were just winos. But now there are incredible amounts of booze just waiting around to be lifted off the shelves. And furthermore, I really do believe that Rich never should have been allowed to get past his second window, but he broke every window on the south side of the street for three blocks. He finally stopped because he got tired. And here is one more example: We had a case where a man whose name I won’t mention found out that his woman, who I also won’t name, was spending her afternoon sack-time with a third party. I guess we all know who I’m talking about.”

Sue: “Yeah, I guess we do. Big man with his fists.”

Nick: “Anyway, the man in question beat up the third party and then the woman in the case. Now I don’t think it matters to any of us here who was right and who was wrong—”

Glen: “You are mistaken there, Nick.”

Stu: “Let the man finish, Glen.”

Glen: “I’m going to, but it’s a point I want to come back to.”

Stu: “Fine. Go ahead, Ralph.”

Ralph: “Yep—getting toward the end now.”

Nick: “—because what matters is that the man in question committed a felony crime, assault and battery, and he is walking around free. Of the three cases, this one worries ordinary citizens the most. We’ve got a melting-pot society, a real hodgepodge, and there are going to be all kinds of conflicts and abrasions. I don’t think any of us want a frontier society here in Boulder. Think of the situation we’d have if the man in question had gotten a .45 out of a pawnshop and had shot them both dead instead of just beating them up. Then we’d have a murderer walking around free.”

Sue: “My God, Nicky, what’s that? The thought for the day?”

Larry: “Yeah, it’s ugly, but he’s right. There’s an old saying, Navy, I think, that goes, ‘Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.’”

Nick: “Stu’s already our public and private moderator, which means people already see him as an authority figure. And personally, I think Stu is a good man.”

Stu: “Thanks for the kind words, Nick. I guess you never noticed that I wear elevator shoes. Seriously, though—I’ll accept the nomination, if that’s what you want. I don’t really want the goddam job—from what I’ve seen down in Texas, police work is mostly cleaning puke off your shirt when guys like Rich Moffat barf on you, or scraping dummies like that Gehringer boy off the roads. All I ask is that when we put it up to the public meeting, we set the same one-year time limit on it that we’re setting on our committee jobs. And I intend to make it clear that I’m stepping down at the end of that year. If that’s acceptable, okay.”

Glen: “I think I can speak for all of us in saying that it is. I want to thank Nick for his motion, and get it on the record that I think it’s a stroke of genius. And I second the motion.”

Stu: “Okay, the motion is on the floor. Any discussion?”

Fran: “Yes, there’s some discussion. I have a question. What if somebody blows your head off?”

Stu: “I don’t think—”

Fran: “No, you don’t think. You don’t think so. Well, what’s Nick going to tell me if what you all think is wrong? ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Fran?’ Is that what he’s going to say? ‘Your man is down in the county courthouse with a bullet hole in his head and I guess we made a mistake?’ Jesus Mary and Joseph, I’m going to have a baby and you people want him to be Pat Garrett!”

There was another ten minutes of discussion, most of which is irrelevant; and Fran, your ob’nt recording secretary, had herself a good cry and then got herself under control. The vote on nominating Stu to be Free Zone Marshal was 6–1, and this time Fran would not change her vote. Glen asked to be recognized for one last thing before we closed the meeting.

Glen: “This is middle-think again, not a motion, nothing to vote on, but something we ought to chew over. Going back to Nick’s third example of law-and-order problems. He described the case and finished by saying we didn’t have to be concerned with who was right and who was wrong. I think he was mistaken. I believe Stu is one of the fairest men I’ve ever met. But law enforcement without a court system isn’t justice. It’s just vigilantism, rule by the fist. Now suppose that fellow we all know had gotten a .45 and killed his woman and her lover. And further suppose that Stu, as our marshal, went out and collared him and put him in the calaboose. Then what? How long do we keep him there? Legally, we couldn’t keep him at all, at least according to the Constitution we adopted at our meeting last night, because under that document a man’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now, as a matter of fact, we all know we’d keep him locked up. We wouldn’t feel safe with him walking the streets! So we’d do it even though it would be patently unconstitutional, because when safety and constitutionality are at swords’ points, safety must win out. But it behooves us to make safety and constitutionality synonymous as quickly as we can. We need to think about a court system.”

Fran: “That’s very interesting, and I agree that it’s something we ought to think about, but right now I’m going to move that we adjourn. It’s late, and I’m very tired.”

Ralph: “Boy, I second that motion. Let’s talk about courts next time. My head’s got so much in it right now that it’s going round and round. This reinventing the country is a lot tougher than it looked at first.”