“You need to stay here. Haynes has already chosen Kane. I didn't have any say in it.”

“I want to go. You need me. If it comes to trouble, you're outgunned up there. There's four of them up there. You don't want to be going after them with three. You need me. You could get killed.”

“Well, Martin, that would leave the door to my office wide open for you. It would be a stroke of good fortune.”

“I'm not after your job, Frank.”

“Martin, we all tell lies. All of us. It's just what people do. And mostly, it don't make a lot of difference. Mostly it's harmless. But when you start telling lies to yourself, that's when the trouble starts. And that's what you're doing right now. You're lying to yourself so that you don't have to lie to me. You most certainly are going after my job. You've been going after it since before I hired you.”

“All right, but I don't want to get your job because you got killed. I want to be sheriff someday. But I don't think this is my time. I didn't have any plans to run against you in the next election.”

“But now you do.”

“Not yet, Frank. Not yet.”

McBride didn't want to damage Martin's chances at a future career, for Martin would be sheriff one of these days, soon enough, but he didn't want to put him in the way of danger, either. Between the weather and the evidence that Haynes and maybe Kane as well had blood in their eyes, it looked like a dangerous piece of work. It was more than duty for Haynes and Wootan. This was personal. It had the stink of money.

Perhaps it was fear or moral failure that held him back. He was being tested by the Lord. And tests were always difficult. A man had to bolster his faith until it was the strongest force he had at his command. “Screw thy courage to the sticking point.” He had heard that somewhere. It wasn't in the Book of Mormon but probably the Bible. And he recognized that those were the words of the Lord being spoken directly to him. “Screw thy courage to the sticking point.”

“Get ready, Martin.”

Kempton looked at him as though he had said something in French or Martian.

“Really?” Kempton asked.

McBride nodded. “You're going. Get your stuff together. I'll get word to our wives that we won't be home tonight and will likely miss services tomorrow. But I'll get you home.”

“You sit up here with me,” Haynes directed McBride. “Let the young ones ride in the back.”

“I don't mind riding back there.”

“I mind you doing it. Come up here.”

It was a nearly new flatbed truck with wooden rails, a light-duty International Model H. McBride climbed in, and when he was settled, the truck lurched forward, headed northeast out of town, then south toward Klondyke.