“You’re tootin’ well right, they’re not! Scarin’ them god-dam poor niggers could cost us all a pisspot full of money!”

“Your wife said you’d gone fishing tonight,” Robert Lee Jefferson said. “At just what point on the river were you when the fire broke out?”

“I didn’t go fishing,” I said.

“Now, Corey,” Stonewall Jackson Smith said firmly. “I saw you heading toward the river myself with a fishing pole and line. I’d say that was pretty conclusive evidence that you did go fishing.”

“Well, now, I just don’t think I can agree with you,” I said. “I wouldn’t say you was wrong, but I sure wouldn’t say you was right, neither.”

“Oh, cut it out, Nick!” snapped Samuel Houston Taylor. “We—”

“Take t’other night, now,” I went on, “I seen a certain fella crawlin’ into an empty freight car with a certain high school teacher. But I don’t think that’s conclusive evidence they was shipping themselves somewhere.”

Stonewall Jackson turned fiery red. The others looked at him, kind of narrow-eyed, like they was sizing him up for the first time, and Mr. Dinwiddie, the bank president, turned to me. He was friendlier than the other fellas. He’d stayed pretty friendly toward me ever since the time I’d pulled him out of the privy.

“Just where were you and what were you doing there tonight, Sheriff?” he said. “I’m sure we’ll all be glad to accept your explanation.”

“Not me, by God!” said Zeke Carlton. “I—”

“Quiet, Zeke,” Mr. Dinwiddie motioned to him. “Go on, Sheriff.”

“Well, we’ll start right at the beginning of tonight,” I said. “I figured someone might try to start somethin’ with the colored folks, so I got out a pole an’ line and pretended to go fishing. The river runs right in back of colored town, you know, an’—”

“Yeah, hell, we know where it runs!” Samuel Houston Taylor scowled. “What we want to know is why you weren’t there to prevent the fire?”

“Because I had to make a little detour,” I said. “I seen a fella sneakin’ away from someone’s house, and I thought maybe he’d pulled something crooked. It looked like something I ought to investigate, anyways, just to make sure. So I went up to this house, and I was about to knock when I decided it wasn’t necessary and it might be kind of embarrassin’. Because I could see this housewife inside, and it was plain to see, as happy as she looked, that there hadn’t been no trouble. Aside from which she didn’t have hardly no clothes on.”

It was just a shot in the dark, of course. Sort of a double shot. I figured that with this many Pottsville citizens involved, someone was just about bound to be two-timin’ his wife, or someone’s wife was two-timin’ him. Or else he was god-dang suspicious that she was.

Anyways, it sure looked like my shot hit home, because it was the dangest funniest thing you ever seen, the way they acted. All of ‘em—or most of ‘em, I should say—glaring at each other and trying to keep their heads ducked at the same time. All of ‘em accused and accusing.