Shadow of a Star by Elmer Kelton

Author:Elmer Kelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THE HOT SUMMER SUN HAD LOST ITS FURY AND WAS rapidly dipping into blood-red clouds on the skyline. The horsemen rode with their prisoner past the shack Jim-Bob had shared with Dan Singleton. Jim-Bob glanced once at the shack, thought of Dan, and looked quickly away. He wondered how he would be able to make himself return there. Usually the red dog Ranger would come out to greet him any time he happened to ride by the shack. He didn’t see him now, and he wondered where the dog was.

Old Grammon and the blacksmith brought up the rear in a Kendrick wagon, hauling the wounded Mont Naylor to town. The word spread out before them like concentric rings that followed the dropping of a stone into still water. People stood silently on front porches and steps of their homes to watch the passing of the riders and wagon. Moving on down into town, the posse found a crowd gathered around the stores and saloons, the blacksmith shop and hotel. All eyes dwelt on this bank robber who had killed two men as thoughtlessly as other men might kill a rabbit. No one in the crowd had much to say. The quiet anger in their eyes spoke for them.

A disturbing thought began to creep into Jim-Bob’s mind. Harvey Mills voiced it. “I got a prickly feelin’ at the back of my neck. That jailhouse may not be any place for honest men tonight.”

Jim-Bob asked anxiously, “You think they’d lynch him?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me any. I never saw a man deserved it any more than Buster Fox does.”

“But he’s a prisoner, Harvey. It’s up to the law to hang him in its own due time.”

Harvey shrugged. “What is the law, Jim-Bob? It’s nothin’ but a set of rules people have made up to help them live with each other. It’s not sacred in itself: The people can change it. And these are people. If they decide to rush things up, is that much different from goin’ by the law and takin’ the long way around? The law does it for them if they don’t do it for themselves. It winds up the same.”

Jim-Bob had never thought of it in just that light. Fact of the matter, he had never thought about it much one way or the other. As he saw it, a law enforcement officer was not supposed to worry about the merits of the law. He was supposed to accept it as it was and see that it was carried out. He was a man who moved about his job with a quiet pride and an unshakable confidence, standing aloof from those who argued and wrangled. He simply saw his duty and did it. At least that was the way it was with John McClain and Mont Naylor. It was the way Jim-Bob wanted to have it for himself.

“If we were goin’ to kill him,” he said firmly, “we ought to’ve done it out yonder when he still had a gun in his hand.

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