A Time for Hanging by Bill Crider Page B

had happened to Liz Randall, and they would be indignant.   The men over at the table, their heads together, would hear the cowboys talking, and because they felt the same way, everyone would get together.   Willie couldn't see beyond that, but he knew that nothing good would come of it.
    He was right.   It happened pretty much that way, with two exceptions.   One of them Willie didn't know about, since he didn't realize that Charley was a suspect in the case.   Charley left that part out entirely, making it sound as if Paco Morales was guilty beyond a doubt.
      The other exception was the way the upstairs girls reacted.   Willie hadn't thought about them.   They pretended to be afraid and put their hands to their mouths and talked about how a girl "couldn't even go out for so much as a little walk without getting killed by some crazy meskin."
    It was almost sickening to listen to them, but Willie did listen.   He seemed frozen at the bar, his head icily clear despite the liquor he had drunk.   He looked at Turley's bottle.   It was empty, but that didn't seem to matter now.   Willie didn't want any more.   It was useless to him now.
    "We oughta do somethin' about it," one of the ranch hands, a big, broad-shouldered man named Frank, said.
    "Damn right.   We oughta go down to the jail and tell the sheriff what we think about a town where a decent woman can't even walk outside without fearin' for her life," another cowhand said.
    "You'll have to do better than that," Ross said from the table. He was glad to hear the commotion, and he was already thinking about how it could benefit his own ideas.   "The one that did it's already out of the jail."
    "You mean the sheriff let him out?" Frank said.
    "No," Charley told him.   "The kid escaped."
    "That damn sheriff never was no good," Frank muttered.   "I guess there's nothin' we can do, then."
    "Sure there is," Ross said.   He was about to tell them what they could do when the batwings swung inward and Roger Benteen entered the saloon.
    The noise level dropped to nothing.   Everyone looked at Benteen, even the men from town.   They knew that he pretty much ran things around there, and they didn't know how much he knew about the situation.
    He didn't know anything, of course, but Davis drew him aside and filled him in quickly, once again leaving out any hint of that he might be involved with Liz Randall's death.
    Benteen was not a stupid man, however.   "Goddamn, Charley.   Did you have anything to do with this?"
    "Hell, no," Charley said.   "You know I wouldn't be mixed up in something like that.   Ever'body says the Morales kid did it."   He was beginning to see that if he could shift the blame entirely to the Morales boy, he would be in the clear.
    "Any evidence to that effect?"   Benteen liked to think of himself as a law-abiding man.
    "Those fellas saw him do it," Charley said, pointing over to Turley Ross and the others.
    "The preacher saw his own daughter killed?"   Benteen found that hard to believe.
    "No, sir, he wasn't with 'em, but those others, they saw it.   You ask 'em."
    "I will," Benteen said, and he did.
    Ross eagerly confirmed everything, and Benteen went back to Davis.   "We've got to do something about this.   Lucille's just on the verge of doing something crazy, and this might just push her over the edge, since you were involved with the girl.   Ross tells me that the boy's escaped from the jail, besides."
    "That's right," Davis said.   "The way I saw it, his mama came and let him out while the sheriff was busy calmin' Lucille down."
    "That's where he'll be, then," Benteen said.   "At home with his mama.   From what Ross says me, he was in pretty bad shape."
    "I guess so," Davis said.   He had an idea what was coming.
    So did Willie.   You could feel it in the room, like it was something in the air.   Benteen's men had all had just about enough to drink to make them a little wild, and some of the others had been drinking too,