“I will have some order here!” the judge said, and slammed his hand down on the table top. “Or I will clear you people out into the street. Now, I am not going to have that whole bunch from San Pablo in here cluttering, either. Anybody hear who was witnesses in particular?”

“Looks like all of them,” Bacon said, in an unhappy voice.

“Send out and tell old Ike he and three others can come in.”

Bacon went outside, and the judge drummed his fingers on the table top. Skinner glanced covertly at Gannon with mixed anxiety and disapproval. Mosbie chewed on a cheekful of tobacco and leaned on his shotgun. French and Hasty stood together against the rear wall. There was a silence outside, and a shuffling of feet. The top of a woman’s hat appeared among the sombreros, and men moved aside to let Kate Dollar through. She entered the jail, tall and richly curved in a black jacket and pleated skirt. There was a string of jet beads around her neck.

“Here now, Miss Dollar!” the judge said. “This won’t do! This is no place for a lady. Now, see here!” he said, as she came on in. Gannon looked up.

“Why not?” Kate Dollar said. “Aren’t ladies allowed in a court of law?”

“Well, now — this isn’t any real court of law.”

“Well, I am not a real lady, Judge,” Kate Dollar said, with a tight smile. There were titters behind her, and the judge pointed a finger at the men in the doorway.

“Miss Dollar, it just won’t do. Dirty, stinking, foul-mouthed men—”

“I don’t mind. Pretend I’m not here.”

“Well, get a chair for her. You, Pike!” Skinner hurriedly set out a chair and she sat down, carefully spreading out her skirt and folding her hands in her lap. She looked once at Gannon, without interest.

There was another disturbance outside and the men in the doorway parted again, this time to let through Wash Haggin and Quint Whitby, who were carrying old man McQuown on his pallet. Chet Haggin entered behind them, his face grave; the others were angry and wary. They set the pallet down and the old man raised himself on an elbow and gazed around him with venomous, grief-filled eyes that settled finally upon Gannon.

“Well, Ike,” the judge said. “Lost your son.”

Old man McQuown nodded curtly. His white beard had been brushed until it looked as fine and light as silk. “Never thought I would live to see it,” he said in his harsh voice. “Backshot by one he’d took in an orphan and befriended too. God damn your black Blaisedell-bought soul, Bud Gannon!”

“Johnny says he didn’t shoot your boy. You prepared to swear he did?”

“I God damn am!” old McQuown cried. “And how Blaisedell sent him to—”

“We’ll have no cussing in here!” the judge said. “There is a lady present and this may not be any court of justice but we will pretend it is. All right now! Hearing’s in session and you are to show cause why Johnny Gannon ought to be sent up to Bright’s City to proper court, Ike McQuown. Now: I am nothing here but judge on acceptance, like I have said in here about three thousand times already. Johnny, are you going to accept me here?”

“Yes,” Gannon said.

“You, Ike?” the judge asked. “Being plaintiff?”

Old McQuown nodded again.

“Pike, you are appointed sergeant-at-arms. I’ll have the artillery collected and put by.”

Skinner, moving as stiff-legged and cautious as a dog among unfriendly dogs, took six-shooters from the Haggins and Whitby, and then from the others inside the jail. He stacked the Colts on the table before the judge and hung Mosbie’s shotgun on the pegs on the wall. The judge had donned the steel-rimmed spectacles, from which an earpiece was missing. He held out the Bible to Skinner and nodded toward Gannon. “Swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, Johnny. Put your hand on the book and swear.”

“I swear,” Gannon said, and Skinner turned with the Bible to old McQuown.

“I swear,” old McQuown said contemptuously, and Skinner moved along to the others, who also swore.

“All right,” the judge said. “Did you shoot Abe McQuown, Johnny Gannon?”

“No,” Gannon said.

“Who says he did?”

“I say so,” old McQuown said. The judge looked at the others.

“I say so!” Whitby and Wash Haggin said, at the same moment.

“Tell me about it then, one of you,” the judge said, and leaned back in his chair. Old McQuown told how it had happened, in his harsh, fierce, old voice. “You saw him, huh?” the judge said, when he had finished. “You and these boys saw Johnny clear in the door there, did you?”

“Said I saw him and swore to it,” old McQuown said.

“I saw him clear, Judge,” Whitby put in.

“All right. Now you tell it your way, Johnny.”

Gannon told his version of what had happened, while old McQuown stirred and muttered and cursed to himself upon his pallet, Wash Haggin and Whitby scowled, and Chet Haggin bit his lip.

“You drawed on Abe McQuown twice then, like Ike said?” the judge asked. “But you claim you didn’t go back there after leaving. Heard shots, though?”

Gannon nodded. Pike Skinner was watching him closely, while Mosbie scowled back at Wash Haggin.

“Did you say how you and Blaisedell was going to get even?”

“No.”

“He said it!” old McQuown cried. “Didn’t he, Quint?”

“He said it all right,” Whitby said. There was a stirring and whispering among the spectators in the doorway. Kate Dollar stared at Whitby, and, when she caught his eye, shook her head a little. Whitby flushed.

“You?” the judge said, to Wash Haggin.

“Oh, he said it all right,” Wash Haggin said, evading Kate Dollar’s gaze.

The judge shifted his attention to Chet Haggin.

“I didn’t hear him say it,” Chet Haggin said.

“You are saying he didn’t say it, then?”

“I didn’t say that. I just didn’t hear it. He might’ve said it without me hearing it.”

“Uh-huh,” the judge said. “Now,” he said to old McQuown. “You are not claiming Blaisedell was with him, are you?”

“Might’ve been. I claim Blaisedell put him up to it.”

“Swear it, you mean?” the judge said. “You can’t—”

“Damned right I swear it!” old McQuown yelled. “And these boys’ll swear it too! It stands to reason, don’t it?”

“Ike, I have told you once I’m not going to have any cussing in here. There is a lady present.”

“What’s she doing here, anyhow?” Whitby growled.

Kate Dollar smiled, and said in a clear voice, “I am trying to see if any of you boys will look me in the eye when you lie.”

The judge slapped his hand down on the table. “Ma’am, you will keep hushed or I will clear you out of here!”

Chet Haggin said, “Cousin Ike, I don’t see how you are going to swear to a thing like that. We don’t—”

His brother swung around toward him angrily. “Chet, you know well enough Blaisedell put him up to it!”

Old McQuown raised himself on his elbow again. “There is not a man in the territory that don’t know Blaisedell was out to kill my boy, and was out for it ever since he came here. Abe a peaceable, law-abiding boy that—”

Someone in the doorway snickered loudly. The judge swung around and pointed a finger at the offender. “You! Get!”

Old McQuown’s breathing sounded very loud in the silent room. He rubbed a hand roughly over his eyes. His voice shook as he continued. “Abe wouldn’t give him cause to pick a fight, not wanting to kill a man that was marshal even if he was pure devil. So Blaisedell couldn’t get at him, and he had to send a dirty, rotten, nose-picking backshooter of a—”

“Never mind that,” the judge said. “That’s irrelevant and a matter of opinion too. Now, you say every man knows Blaisedell put Johnny Gannon to it?”

“Said so.”

“Well, now, Ike, maybe everybody knows it. But I will put it to you that everybody knows too how you and these same boys here, and your son, has gone up to Bright’s City to court and swore false I don’t know how many times to keep some of yours from prison or hanging for what they did and what everybody knew they did. Now what do you say to that?”