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died, making the score an even twelve, to the undertaker, to the town clerk, who had just spoken to state-police headquarters.
    Then a small boy pulled at my jacket and wanted to know whether I was Mr. Cutter. When I replied that I was, he told me that he had been sent from the hotel, where a long-distance call was waiting for me.

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    6
    Instead of telling me what a fine story I had filed, Oscar Smith, who was calling from New York, suggested that I stick to reporting the facts instead of making judgments and pronouncements.
    â€œWell, damn it all,” I began, “what kind of judgments have I been making?”
    â€œNever mind that now. Did you interview Ben Holt?”
    â€œDo you know what’s been happening here?”
    â€œI read your story.”
    â€œI haven’t even had lunch.”
    He sympathized with me and suggested that I find Holt and get a story from him, and that I could send it in along with a follow-up on the gun battle. I left it at that and went down to the dining room of the hotel, where I had a sandwich and a glass of beer, and where a traveling man gave me his views on the gun battle and the rumor that the entire county would be placed under martial law, a rumor, incidentally, that had no foundation in fact. When the bus boy came to clear the dishes away, I told him who I was and said that he could earn a dollar by taking me to Ben Holt. He swore that he did not know where Ben Holt was.
    The doctor who had been called in to attend the wounded man was eating lunch in the dining room, and I went over to him, introduced myself, got his name and address, and learned that the wounded man had bled to death before he arrived. “I drove twenty miles for nothing,” he said with annoyance. He was one of those men with no opinions and no attitudes. From the way he spoke, one would conclude that gunfights which left twelve men dead happened at least once a week.
    His name was Phelps—Tecumseh Phelps—and, like others involved in that incredible sixty-second massacre, he went down into his own tiny niche in history, indexed and cross-indexed in the files where ancient newspapers are remembered. He was fat and tired, and he told me how bad his heart was, so bad that it was a plain wonder that he went on from day to day. “I could drop dead right here,” he said, “right now this minute, right here. Maybe it’s a medical miracle that I don’t. So you see, sonny, everything isn’t as simple and clear as you’d like it to be. I killed a half a day, by golly. And who’s going to pay my fee, that’s what I’d like to know. The mayor? I put it to him straight, and he says he has no responsibility for the Fairlawn detectives. So then I ask him how about this deputy’s leg I took a bullet out of and bandaged up. Collect from the deputy, he says. Do you know what I collected from that deputy?” I shook my head. “Guess,” he urged me. “Go ahead and guess, sonny.” I shook my head again. “Well, fifty-five cents—won’t even pay for my lunch here. Said it was all the money he had in the world. Can’t get blood from a stone, can you? Good heavens, sonny, this is the poorest town in the nation. Why, this town is so poor the sparrows tell each other to avoid it. You know what they say—nothing poorer than a miner, nothing poorer than a miner’s town. And now I got to go and take care of an infection in Ben Holt’s hand. You ever heard of Ben Holt?”
    I nodded.
    â€œI’ll collect five dollars for that or I won’t touch him. You can be sure of that.”
    â€œWhere is Ben Holt?” I asked, picking up his check.
    â€œYou don’t have to do that, sonny.”
    â€œMy pleasure.”
    His eyes narrowed suddenly, and he asked me what I had in mind. He was not such a fool as he appeared to be, and I put it straight to him that my editor in New York wanted a personal interview