"Nailed down. Couldn't be up there. Let's skin out."
The other seemed to be protesting; the near fellow's answer was impatient. "What would he be climbin' up from outside for? Lots of better places to hide. Let's skin away before that wildcat Fancher gets back. Me, I don't hone—"
They left. Chaffee waited a long time to make sure. In fact he held down the trapdoor the best part of an hour, hearing the traffic of the street grow heavier. It sounded as if a great many men were riding into Roaring Horse. Leaving the door he crawled to a port and studied the street. More homesteaders were assembling in groups. He also noticed Locklear, the three hired gunmen and Perrine's crew posted indolently here and yonder. Woolfridge appeared from the direction of the courthouse and walked rapidly across Chaffee's line of vision, looking neither to right nor left. The afternoon slid along, the sun's rim tipped toward the western hills, blurred by intervening clouds. Darkness threatened to arrive prematurely. And Fancher was back in his office, swearing to himself in full, irascible accents. Chaffee, cramped and cold and hungry, felt that the time for patience was at an end. He crawled to the trapdoor, listened a moment, and struck it sharply by way of warning. Fancher challenged: "Who in the name of—" and stopped. Chaffee dragged the door half away and looked down. Fancher's face was wrinkled in anger, but that shifted to concern when he found who was above him. Chaffee dropped to the desk, dragging the door back into place.
"So you was the one who moved my furniture—"
"Nope. Couple of gents investigatin' while you were gone. I heard 'em. They tried the trap but I spraddled it, belly flat."
"They done it before. Boy, I'm certainly glad to see you back and alive. But it ain't any place for a fellow with a price tag on his jeans. You're sittin' on a crater. Whoever moves first starts somethin'. But if said fellow don't move first he's apt to be blown to perdition. Jim, unless I'm as crazy as a loon that street is goin' to run red before long."
"Who's so sore as all that?"
Fancher was genuinely disturbed. He was nervous; the mark of worry lay in his eyes. He crossed to the desk and pulled up a copy of the county weekly, indicating a story spread over the center of the front sheet and surrounded by the black border of reversed column rules. "Read that."
It was the story Gay Thatcher had brought from the governor. No attempt had been made to stretch it out or to dress it up. The first paragraph began it and the second paragraph ended it, but these two paragraphs linked together made the story stark and bitter:
This newspaper, along with several other newspapers in the territory, received from the Roaring Horse Irrigation and Reclamation Corporation copy for an advertisement to be published in our columns. The substance of the advertisement, as readers will recall, was to invite settlers into this country to buy land on the implied promise that a dam was to be built. We received the copy for this advertisement on the eighteenth of November. Remember that date.
We have since been informed by the governor of the territory of a letter written to him—and printed below—by the president of the Power Company in which that official says the Roaring Horse Irrigation and Reclamation Corporation was notified as early as the fifteenth of November that no dam was to be built. Compare that date with the one above.
Chaffee dropped the paper, turning his head from side to side. It both surprised him and confirmed a doubt. The doubt was of Woolfridge's honesty, but the surprise came of having to believe that Woolfridge would ever expose himself to such a backslap. "Doc, this is an awful strong statement. What it deliberately says is that Woolfridge knew there wasn't going to be any dam two days or three days before he sent out the ad."
"Philips has run a newspaper all his life," countered Fancher. "And he knows what's libel and what ain't. He ain't sayin' what you claim he says. Not in so many words. He's puttin' two facts together and lettin' folks do their own guessin'. And he got them facts straight or he wouldn't of printed 'em. When the governor steps into this mess you can bet your sweet life something's rotten."
"I don't see it," confessed Chaffee. "Woolfridge is slick. He's smart. He's wealthy and he's educated."
"An' built up a fine scheme," said Doc Fancher. "A get-rich- quick scheme. But somewhere along the line he left a gate open. Left it open an' behind him, never thinkin' about it. The slick and the smart and the wealthy and the educated dudes in this world do them tricks just as often as you and me. And what's to come of it? What's going to happen in Roaring Horse? Jim, it scares me."
"You're clear," observed Chaffee. "Why worry?"
But Fancher went right on as if he hadn't heard. "This come out four-five days ago. It's traveled like the stink of a stockyard on a windy day. Everybody knows it; everybody's been talkin' about it. It's sorter snowballed up. At first it sorter seemed to miss fire. A homesteader asked Woolfridge about it. Woolfridge laughed in the man's face. Yeah. And what he said was that plenty of people would try to throw a monkey wrench in his business. Get the idea—persecution, jealousy, plain meanness. Uhuh. It seemed to satisfy these birds for a while. I give the man credit for cold, cast-iron, double-riveted nerve. But pretty soon folks got together. Talked about it, figgered it out. It's been growin' stronger every day. They was around fifteen homesteaders here when the news broke. Thirty-forty more came since—all from the adjoinin' counties. I've watched 'em gather from the window here. And I tell you the look that's settlin' in their faces makes me cold."
Chaffee was going around the edges of this business, testing it for himself. "Woolfridge could say that the power company was only denying the story about the dam because of policy. That they didn't want to commit themselves until work was actually started."
"Which he later did say," answered Fancher. "But how does that excuse stack up against the fact that the power company wrote to the governor and the governor made it his personal business to have that letter printed? Folks have been doin' some heavy thinkin'. The governor ain't goin' to mix up with the power company if it's only a bluff. Folks have decided that much. All right. And they've been lookin' back over Woolfridge's record hereabouts. Satterlee dyin' sudden. Stirrup S being froze out. Your own case. Each of them things didn't look like so much at the particular time. Put 'em all together and they seem mighty funny. It leaves a bad taste. The homesteaders are out money. They're in a state of mind. The old-timers around here recollected all the hell raisin' that went on. And they're a long ways from peaceable. It only needs one match to light up the bonfire. From what I been hearin' this afternoon I think the match is lit."
"What's that?"
"You," was Fancher's succinct answer.
"Me?" demanded Chaffee. "Shucks, those homesteaders don't know me. Never saw me."
"Yeah, but they've been hearin' a lot about you recent. That's another item to build up a feelin' against Woolfridge. Well, they've heard you're back. A mob is funny. Anythin's apt to send it on a stampede. Woolfridge has put up a bold face. He had the situation under his hand. He's powerful. But here you are back again and that takes the play out of his control. The crowd feels the change. That's all it needs."
"Here," protested Chaffee, "I'm not going to lead any lynch party."
"Don't you try to stop none, either," Fancher warned him. "Men ain't reasonable at a time like that. Your best friend is just apt to spit in your face and knock you down."
"Which I know blamed well," agreed Chaffee, remembering the time Stirrup S was set to hang the gambler Clyde. Dusk was coming unannounced through the window. Chaffee was reminded that he had set himself a chore. "I'm goin' out a minute, Doc. Stay till I come back, will you?"
"Now listen—" began Fancher. But Chaffee shook his head, opening the door and pulling it behind him. He went down the stairway. The walk was deserted at that particular point and he swung himself into the adjoining alley and ran along to the back end of the buildings. The Gusher was beginning to show lamplight, the kitchen door stood open and a flunkey leaned in the aperture smoking a cigarette. Chaffee knew that flunkey. He also knew the Gusher cook. So he walked on and confronted the flunkey; the latter snapped his cigarette through the air, muttering: "Great guns, where you come from?"
"Who's