“I reckon you’re right,” I said. “Just in case we had to, though, and I’m just asking for information, do you suppose you could get out a court order t’make a doctor do his duty?”

“We-el”—Robert Lee leaned back and pursed his lips—“I imagine that’s something that one could do ‘de jure’, but not ‘de facto’. In other words you’d have a paradox—the legal right to do something that was factually impossible of accomplishment.”

I said I’d be god-danged, he was sure one heck of a smart man. “I reckon my head’s plumb bustin’ from all these things you been tellin’ me, Robbie Lee. Maybe I better run along before you give me some more information, an’ it pops wide open.”

“Now, you’re flattering me,” he beamed, standing up as I did, “which reminds me that I should compliment you on your conduct in today’s affair. You handled it very well, Nick.”

“Why, thank you kindly, Robert Lee,” I said. “How does the election look to you by now, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I think you’re a cinch to win, in view of the unfortunate talk about Sam Gaddis. Just keep on doing your job, like you did today.”

“Oh, I will,” I said. “I’ll keep on exactly like that.”

I left the hardware store, and sauntered back toward the courthouse, stopping now and then to talk to people, or rather to let them talk to me. Almost everyone had about the same idea about the killing as Robert Lee Jefferson. Almost everyone agreed that it was an open and shut case, with Uncle John killing Tom and then Tom, dead as he was, killing Uncle John. Or vice versa.

About the only people who didn’t see it that way, or said they didn’t, were some loafers. They wanted a coroner’s jury impaneled, and they were ready and willin’ to serve on it. But if they were that hard up for a couple of dollars, I figured they hadn’t paid their poll tax, so what they thought didn’t matter.

Rose had heard the news from probably two, three hundred people by the time I got back to the courthouse, and Myra said I had get out to the Hauck place right away and bring Rose into town.

“Now, please hurry, for once in your life, Nick! The poor thing is terribly upset!”

“Why for is she upset?” I said. “You mean because Tom is dead?”

“Of course, I mean that! What else would I mean?”

“Well, I was just wonderin’,” I said. “She was terribly upset last night when she thought he might be comin’ home, and now she’s terribly upset because she knows he ain’t. Don’t seem to make much sense somehow.”

“Now, just you never mind!” Myra snapped. “Don’t you dare start arguing with me, Nick Corey! You just do what I tell you to, or you won’t make much sense! Not that you ever did, anyway.”

I got the horse and buggy and drove out toward the Hauck farm, thinking to myself that a fella hardly got one problem settled before he had to take care of another one. Maybe I should have foreseen that Rose would be coming in and staying with Myra and me tonight, but I hadn’t. I’d had too many other things on my mind. So now I was supposed to see Amy tonight— I’d just better see her if I ever wanted to see her again. And I was also supposed to stay at home—Rose would think it was god-danged peculiar if I didn’t. And I just didn’t know what the heck I was going to do.