The elderly shopkeeper stepped into the street with the shotgun still lowered. "I did," she said.
Whitfield turned. "Mrs. Holloway, this does not concern you."
"It concerned me when Bragg's men took twelve dollars from my register last month."
The blacksmith joined her. "I saw who drew first."
Then the stable boy's father spoke. Then a woman from the hotel. One voice became four; four became nine. Whitfield watched authority move away from his badge and into the street around him. He holstered his revolver.
"Lock the living ones in the holding cells," he ordered. "We will sort out the rest when the county sheriff arrives."
It was a retreat disguised as procedure. Colette let him have it.
As the townspeople carried the wounded away, she reloaded only the chambers she had fired, one cartridge at a time: loading gate open, cylinder turning beneath her thumb.
Whitfield watched the ritual. "Four guns," he said. "That is a great deal of iron for one woman."
"Only when the law arrives on time."
His jaw tightened. Colette closed the loading gate.
"I'm looking for the man who killed Thomas Marsh in Carver's Bend."
Whitfield went still. The reaction lasted less than a second, but Colette knew it now: the same pause she had seen in Bragg, the same involuntary recognition.
"Never heard the name," he said.
"Bragg said that, too."
"Then perhaps you should accept the answer."
"Bragg also claimed he had not visited Carver's Bend in three years."
Whitfield looked toward the alley where Bragg had vanished. There it was again: recognition. And fear.