“Okay, let’s say we do that. I arrest all of them fifty people. Charge ’em with disorderly conduct. Then what? This jail here was built in 1888, Tom. The doors are steel, but the walls are partly adobe: a thirteen-year-old could bust out in twenty minutes if he put his mind to it. Okay, fifty people. And they’re hoppin’ mad, too, don’t think they ain’t. I’d be. Now we got nine 18 by 18 cells and two runarounds, mostly filled as it is. You begin to get the drift?”

The sheriff brought his pipe to life again. “I like to see a real civic-minded citizen, Tom, I do. Somebody all the time thinking about the community. Shows real fine spirit. I just wish that you and your paper had of seen to it that we got us a decent jail before you come in here bellering for me to arrest half the town . . .”

Tom ran a hand through his hair. The sheriff’s words stung, for it was all true. He hadn’t ever taken much interest in the condition of the jail. The man had a point, anyway.

“But let me tell you something else,” Parkhouse went on dryly. The way he looked, sitting there, made it suddenly easy to understand why certain people feared him. “Even if we had a calaboose the size of San Quentin, I still wouldn’t go out and start hauling everybody in. Tom, you don’t seem to see. Half of those people were kids. School kids. Throwing them in jail would be like giving them a Christmas present.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, every kid wants to get put in a cell for a night or so. It’s a lark. Hell, they’d have so much fun they’d probably tear this old place down to the ground!”

“Maybe so, but—”

“And here’s something else that I guess you ain’t thought about. Who, exactly, do we arrest? The ones who was actually touching the car? The ones in the street, whether they did anything or not? Or, just to be on the safe side, should we arrest everybody who attended the meeting?” Parkhouse chuckled. “That’d include you and your daughter. She was there, I heard.”

“Who told you that?”

“Jimmy, or somebody. What’s the difference? I’m just trying to show you why I can’t ‘take action.’ And I wouldn’t waste my time this way, either, if I didn’t know you was a man with some sense.”

Somewhere in the jail, somewhere upstairs, a voice was raised in song. It was not a particularly mournful or moving sound.

“But one thing still remains. A crime was committed and nobody’s been punished. They got away with it, clean. So what’s to stop them from doing the same thing tomorrow night?”

The sheriff took a bottle of pop from the refrigerator behind his desk and removed the cap.