Twelve Dead Men by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.; Johnsto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I’ll do it,” a voice said from the saloon’s entrance. “I’ll serve.”

Ace looked around to see Lee Emory standing there, holding the batwings open. The newspaperman came on into the Melodian.

“That gives you two members of your jury, Mr. Buchanan,” Emory said. “Surely there are ten more men here who aren’t afraid.”

“You don’t know what McLaren’s bunch is capable of, Lee,” a man called from the bar.

“I know what good Americans are capable of,” Emory said. “I know they’re capable of standing up to evil and tyranny wherever they find it, like the men who stood in the road at Lexington and Concord with muskets in their hands and watched the British troops marching toward them. Or the men who rallied behind Andrew Jackson at New Orleans and pushed the redcoats back into the sea, or those who crossed the line Colonel Travis drew in the sand with his sword at the Alamo. I know there are some Texans here. Some of you probably have relatives old enough to remember that revolution.”

“That was war,” a man objected. “The whole country was at stake.”

Emory hooked his thumbs in his vest, and Ace thought how much newspapermen were like politicians, even though they probably would never admit that. They all liked the sound of their own voices, although usually those words were in print, not spoken from some platform.

“You think nothing’s at stake here?” Emory asked. “I’d say the whole country is very much at stake! If you start letting lawbreakers go simply because you’re afraid to see justice done, how long will it be before the entire nation is overrun with criminals? If a dog comes at you, snarling and snapping, do you throw it a chunk of meat and hope it’ll go away? No! You stand up to it and let it know you’re not afraid of it! It’s the same way with two-bit bullies and bravos like King George and Santa Anna and, yes, like Pete McLaren! You can stand up to him and do the right thing now . . . or you can live the rest of your lives in fear.” Emory drew in a deep breath and blew it back out. “It’s as simple as that.”

Silence reigned again following the impassioned speech.

Finally, with a scrape of chair legs on the floor, Colonel Charles Howden stood up from the table where he’d been sitting. “Lee is right. If we let McLaren get away with what he’s done, it’s only a matter of time until Lone Pine isn’t a fit place to live. I’ll serve.”

Sitting at a table as far across the room as he could get from Colonel Howden was Crackerjack Sawyer. The words were barely out of Howden’s mouth, before he was on his feet, too. “If a damn Yankee can do the right thing, then by God, a good Confederate can go him one better. Mr. Buchanan, a jury needs a foreman, don’t it?”

“That’s accepted procedure, yes,” Buchanan agreed.

“Then I’ll volunteer for the job!”

“Wait just a minute,” Howden said.

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