Preacher's Assault

John Bryce—Publisher

Millie Bryce—Office Manager

The letters were broad and black, outlined in white and gold. That sign, once a source of pride, was now no more than a few discordant letters on the remaining shards of glass.

Not one letter of Millie’s name remained.

At the moment John was standing inside the office of the Fullerton Defender, surveying the damage. The perpetrators had done more than just break his front window, they had also trashed the office. His arm was around his wife, and he held her close to him as she sobbed quietly. Type had been scattered about the room, newsprint had been ripped and spread around, the Washington Hand Press, by which John put out his weekly paper, was lying on its side.

They had come to the newspaper office directly from their breakfast table, after City Marshal Tipton told of the break-in. More than a dozen citizens of the town had already been drawn to the scene of the crime by the time John and Millie arrived. The group stood in a little cluster on the boardwalk in front of the building.

The perpetrators had left a note.

Don’t be writting no more bad artacles about

Lord Denbigh or we will kum back and do

more damige to you nex time.

“Who would do such a thing?” Millie asked between sobs.

“It’s fairly apparent, isn’t it?” John replied. “Denbigh did it.”

“We don’t know that,” Marshal Tipton said.

“The note doesn’t suggest that to you, Marshal?” John asked.

“Just the opposite,” Tipton said. “Denbigh is an educated man. Now, I’m not as smart as you are, but even I know how to spell the words come, and damage.”

“I don’t mean Denbigh did it himself,” John said. “I mean he had it done.”

“Maybe there are just some people in town who got upset with you because you’ve been coming down pretty hard on Denbigh in your stories. Denbigh has done a lot of good for this town.”

“Really? What good has he done?”

“Let’s just say he does a lot of business with the town.”

“Yes, by allowing only the businesses he wants to stay, and squeezing out the others. He’s killing this town, Marshal Tipton. And the people in town know it, only they are too frightened to do anything about it.”

“So you plan to mount a one person campaign do you, Bryce?”

“If I am the only one willing to do anything about it, then yes, I will mount a one person campaign.”

“Uh—huh,” Tipton said, stroking his jaw as he surveyed the shambles of the newspaper office. “And look what it got you.”

“It has set me back a bit, I’ll admit,” John said. “But it won’t stop me. It’ll take me a day to clean up. I’ll have the paper out this Thursday, just as I do every Thursday.”

“I’ll help you pick up all the type, Mr. Bryce,” a young boy of about twelve said.

“Thank you, Kenny.”

“I can go get Jimmy to help too, if you want me to.”

“That would be nice,” John said. He turned toward the group of people still standing outside the office, and seeing Ernie Westpheling, called out to him.

“Ernie, would you help me set the printing press back up?”

“Sure thing.” Ernie, who had been a colonel during the Civil War, was a local businessman who owned a gun store.

A couple other men also volunteered to help, and within a few minutes the printing press had been righted and was once again in its proper place. John surveyed it for a moment or two, then patted the press with a big smile.

“Not a scratch,” he said. “It takes more than a few of Denbigh’s hooligans to put ole George out of business.”

“George? I thought your name was John,” one of the men who had helped him said.

“It is. George is the name of my printing press.”

“You’ve named your press?”

“Sure. It’s not only a part of this newspaper, it is the heart of the newspaper.”

“What are you going to do about your window?” Ernie asked.

“I’ll have to order a new glass from Bismarck,” John said. “In the meantime I guess I’ll just board that side up.”

“What are you going to do about this, Marshal?” Ernie asked.

“I’ll look into it, see if I can find out who did it,” Tipton replied. “But if I don’t come up with any witnesses, I don’t know what I can do.”

“There has to be a witness somewhere,” Millie said. “It had to make a lot of noise when they broke out the window.”

“You live no more than a couple blocks from here, Mrs. Bryce. Did you hear anything?” Tipton asked.