“Doc, I am disappointed in you. I can understand your reluctance to be a witness, but not your reluctance to be a juror. If not for the fact that I am going to be a witness, I would very much want to serve on the jury.”
“For crying out loud, Elmer, why would anyone actually want to serve on a jury?” Doc asked.
“Civic duty perhaps?” Brandon replied. “And just to see that for once, in this town, justice is done.”
“I guess that’s reason enough.”
“Also, I very much would like to irritate the hell out of Pogue Quentin,” Brandon added.
Doc laughed out loud. “Now that,” he said, “I can believe.”
Brandon started toward the door. “I would love to stay long enough for you to continue to heap praise on me for my brilliant article, but, alas, I must get to work. I have some posters to print for Milo’s Emporium,” he said. “I need to get them out of the way so I can go to the trial this afternoon to give testimony. Are you going to be there?”
“We’ve already been through all this, Elmer,” Doc said. “I’m not going to be a witness.”
“I’m not talking about you being a witness. I’m just talking about you being there to give me some moral support.”
Doc chuckled, quietly. “Moral support?” he said. He nodded. “Yes, moral support I can do. I’ll be there.”
“I’ll see you then.”
With a final wave to his friend, Brandon walked on down to the street another block and a half until he reached the newspaper office. Unlocking the doors, he stepped inside, shut the door, and walked over to open the curtains.
“Leave them closed,” a voice said. The voice was low and had a snakelike hissing quality to it.
Brandon felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, a hollowness in the pit of his stomach, and a weakness in his knees. Turning, he searched the shadows of his office for the origin of the voice. But because the curtains blocked the morning sunlight, the office was so dimly lit that he saw no one.
“Who is there?” he asked. “Who are you? What do you want?”
He saw something move deep within the shadows. Whoever it was, he was very short, so short that Brandon thought it might be a young boy. The quick fear he had felt was now replaced by a sense of irritation.
“What are you doing in my office, boy?” he asked angrily. “Does your mama know you are here? Get out—get on home with you.”
The figure stepped out of the shadows. He was small, but he was no boy. He was dressed all in black and was wearing a pistol belt that bristled with filled bullet loops. He wore a mustache, and even though his eyes were as dark as coal, they somehow seemed to catch the ambient light so that they were shining in the darkness. Brandon had seen this person only once before in his life, but he recognized him immediately.
“Cates!” Brandon gasped. “You are the one they call Snake Cates.” The fear returned. This time it was much more than a hollow stomach, weak knees, and raised hair on the back of his neck. This time it was a numbing paralysis that made it difficult for Brandon to stand, and even harder to breathe. He could feel his heart pounding
The small figure took a deep, hissing breath. Then his tongue darted out just before he spoke, adding to his snakelike demeanor.
“Mr. Quentin is very upset with you,” the small man said. “He has sent me to let you know just how upset he is. He wants you to put out another edition.”
“Another edition?”
“He wants you to tell the people of Santa Clara that you have been thinking about what you wrote earlier, and now you have changed your mind. He wants you to apologize in print.”
“I—I couldn’t do anything like that,” he said. “Why, I would be discredited for the rest of my life. I may as well not be a newspaperman anymore.”
“That’s the other thing,” Cates said. “After you apologize, he wants you to leave town. Forever.”
“No, I can’t do that. My Emma is buried in this cemetery. I intend to lie alongside her.”
“If you don’t agree to Mr. Quentin’s terms, you will be lying alongside her sooner than you thought.”
At that moment, Brandon knew that, no matter what he did, he was about to die. And from somewhere, deep inside him, he found a courage he didn’t know he possessed.
“You tell Quentin I said to go to hell.”
Doc Patterson was making an entry in his ledger about the puppy he had just examined when he heard the gunshot. Gunshots were not all that unusual in Santa Clara. Sometimes someone would get a little drunk, then shoot his gun out in the street. But it was too early in the day for that kind of gunshot.
Suddenly, Doc had an overwhelming sense of foreboding, and he stepped out onto the porch in front of his office. He saw Donovan standing just outside his leather goods store.
“Donovan, what was that?” Doc asked.
“Sounded like a gunshot.”
“Yes, but from where? And who was it?”
“Help!” a young boy shouted, running up the street in full stride.
“Johnny, what is it?” Doc called to the boy.
The boy stopped running. “It’s Mr. Brandon, Dr. Patterson.”
