“Minnie and Janet,” Nabors said.
“What? Are you crazy?” Minnie asked. “Janet is my best friend. I’m not going to fight her.”
“I agree with Minnie,” Doc said. “You can’t ask her to pick a fight with Janet.”
“It wouldn’t be a real fight,” Nabors said. “All it has to do is look like a real fight. And it has to take place outside so the whole town can come see it.”
“I don’t know,” Doc said. “What do you think, Minnie? Would you go along with something like that? And do you think Janet would?”
“Janet would if I asked her to,” Minnie said. “Especially now, after Sheriff Wallace killed Andy.”
“Do you think you two could make it look real?” Doc asked. “I mean, real enough that the men who gather to watch it will be convinced that you two are actually fighting?”
Minnie smiled, and nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, women have been putting on shows for men since the dawn of time. I don’t think we’ll have any problems in convincing them that it is real.”
“Will you arrange it with Janet?” Nabors asked.
“I’d be glad to,” Minnie agreed.
Half an hour later, Minnie and Janet walked across the street to the Cloverdale Emporium. They found a hat that was the only one of its kind in the store, and both of them reached for it.
“I saw it first,” Minnie said.
“No, I saw it first.”
“I did.”
“I did,” Janet said, and she grabbed it.
Minnie pushed Janet down and picked the hat up from the floor. Screaming angrily at her, Janet jumped up, then pushed Minnie outside, where the fight continued until they were standing in the street, shouting at each other, pushing each other, and pulling each other’s hair.
Though it looked as if they were very angry and doing their best to hurt each other, the pulling of the hair was very controlled. As Nabors predicted, though, the fight began to draw a crowd until soon, well over one hundred people, almost everyone of them men, were gathered in the middle of the street, shouting encouragement and laughing at the antics of the two women.
The young newspaper boy who worked for Cutler ran down to the sheriff’s office.
“Sheriff, you better come quick!” he said. “They’s two ladies fightin’ out in the middle of the street and it looks like they are tryin’ to kill each other!”
“A couple of women fightin'?” Deputy Beard said. “I want to see this!”
Sheriff Wallace came out of the jail and looked toward the crowd that had gathered at the far end of the street. The shouting and screaming, along with the shouts and laughter of the crowd, could be heard easily, even from this distance.
“What the hell?” Wallace asked as he started toward the disturbance.
Marvin Cutler was standing just behind the corner of the leather goods store, watching. As soon as Wallace started down the street toward the fight, he moved quickly to the front of the jail. Just before he stepped inside, he looked over at the newspaper boy.
“Tommy, you stay out here. If you see the sheriff comin’ back, you let me know,” Cutler said to his employee.
“Yes, sir,” Tommy replied.
Cutler went into the sheriff’s office, pulled open the middle drawer of the sheriff’s desk, then saw the envelope.
“I’ll be damned,” he said quietly. He picked up the envelope, then removed the letter and began to read.
* * *
That evening, Marvin Cutler worked late in his newspaper office, writing the story even as he was setting the type. So familiar was he with setting type that he was able to read and proof the story, even though every letter and every word was backward. When he finished setting the type, he perused it once more, then, with a smile of satisfaction, put the platen in place, and printed the first issue. It was the first “extra” issue he had ever put out.
EXTRA – EXTRA – EXTRA – EXTRA
Along with every other good citizen of the fair city of Cloverdale, this reporter sat in the court trial of Bobby Lee Cabot and not only watched, but celebrated the fact that Mr. Cabot was found guilty of the murder of August Fletcher. August Fletcher was, at the time of his tragic demise, a messenger for Western Capital Security Agency. This fine gentleman, a husband and father, was performing his duty aboard the Nevada Central train when, on the night of 21 August, the train was robbed and he was killed.
The Cloverdale News Leaf printed an article condemning Bobby Lee Cabot while praising the justice done in finding him guilty, and sentencing him to death by hanging. But recent evidence has come to light which convinces me that justice was not done. On the contrary, an innocent man has been found guilty, and he has been found guilty not because of a failure in the judicial system, but because of the perjury of one man, a man who, while purporting to be a servant of the people, has in fact been engaging in perfidious conduct that knows no bounds. That man is Sheriff Herman Wallace.
Those who followed the trial may remember that Mr. Cabot tried, on repeated occasions, to introduce into evidence the fact that he had sent a letter to Sheriff Wallace previous to the robbery, in which he disclosed all the information necessary to bring about the arrest of Frank Dodd and his gang. Sheriff Wallace claimed that there was no such letter, and indeed, without that letter in evidence, Cabot’s defense was ineffective.
