Bragg stared at the wounded marshal. For the first time since Colette entered Hollow Creek, he looked afraid.
"You will testify," Colette told him.
"Against a lawman?"
"Against your lawman."
Bragg looked at the townspeople surrounding him. There was no laughter left in Hollow Creek.
Whitfield survived the night because the town doctor returned from a ranch call before midnight. The bullet had passed along his side and missed the organs that would have killed him before dawn. Colette had not aimed to spare him: at that distance, with Mrs. Holloway between them moments earlier, she had aimed to stop the rifle. Chance spared his life; Colette decided the court could give that chance meaning.
At sunrise, three riders left Hollow Creek in different directions: one carried a message to the county sheriff, one rode to the nearest telegraph station, and the third went to Carver's Bend with Mrs. Holloway's written statement and the marked ace sealed inside an envelope.
The county sheriff arrived two days later with four deputies. He found no gang ruling the street; he found six surviving prisoners in the cells and storeroom: Rafe and two other wounded men, two who had surrendered, and Silas Bragg bound alone in the second cell. The gang member who fired at Colette from the porch lay in a coffin awaiting an inquest.
Every count was recorded. Every weapon was tagged. Every witness gave a name. That mattered: fear thrives on stories no one is willing to sign. Hollow Creek signed twenty-three statements.
Bragg resisted until the sheriff offered him a choice between testifying to the Carver's Bend murder or carrying the full weight of conspiracy, witness intimidation, extortion, arson, and Whitfield's attempted escape. He chose himself, as men like Bragg often do.
His account matched Mrs. Holloway's: Whitfield had dealt from a marked deck, and Thomas exposed him. Bragg had been financing the game and taking a share of the winnings. When Whitfield followed Thomas into the street, Bragg expected another beating; instead, the deputy fired. Bragg erased the evidence, threatened the witnesses, and helped Whitfield leave town. Months later, he used two indebted councilmen to place Whitfield behind Hollow Creek's badge. In return, the marshal ignored every crime Bragg's gang committed.
The frightened drover who had sent Colette after Bragg had not lied: he had seen only the final moments from the end of the street—Thomas falling, Bragg standing nearby, then Bragg riding west with Whitfield. Terror had filled the pieces his eyes could not supply. Colette had built eight months of certainty inside that missing space.
She thought often about how close certainty had come to killing the wrong man. Bragg deserved a prison cell: he had profited from Thomas's murder and corrupted an entire town. But he had not pulled the trigger. The difference did not make Bragg innocent; it made the truth exact. And justice, Colette had learned, could not survive without exactness.
The territorial district judge did not reach Carver's Bend until late autumn. By then, the cottonwoods along the creek had turned yellow, and the first snow had appeared on the distant mountains.
The delay frustrated Colette. Vengeance could be completed in a heartbeat; justice demanded statements, hearings, witnesses, and patience from people who had already waited too long.
She stayed. Mrs. Holloway stayed, too. So did two former saloon workers who came forward after learning Whitfield no longer controlled Hollow Creek: one remembered Thomas's empty hands; the other remembered Bragg gathering the marked cards after the shooting.
Whitfield entered the courtroom without a badge; without it, he looked smaller. He tried to call Thomas violent; the witnesses corrected him. He claimed self-defense; the angle of the shot and the testimony contradicted him. He claimed Mrs. Holloway had mistaken his face; then the prosecutor produced the employment record showing that Deputy Amos Whitfield had resigned from Carver County the morning after Thomas died.
Bragg testified last—not from courage, but from self-preservation. It was enough.