Shortly after the train left the depot, Cummins held a meeting of all his deputies.

“All right, boys, it’s time to go to work. You fellas know what stores, businesses, and homes you are responsible for. Get started, then bring it all to the saloon.”

“Marshal, maybe we had better ease up a bit,” one of the deputies suggested.

“Ease up a bit?” Cummins said. “What do you mean by that, Crack?”

“Well, I mean, some of the folks, at least the folks I’m dealin’ with, are beginnin’ to get contrary about payin’ taxes ever’ week.”

“They are, are they?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s just too bad,” Cummins said.

“So, what do I tell ’em when they start complainin’ like that?”

“Tell them it’s the law,” Cummins said. “If they want to live in my town, they have to pay the piper.” Cummins giggled. “And we’re the piper,” he said. “Are you going to have a problem with that?”

“No, I ain’t goin’ to have no problem with that,” Crack said. “I was just commentin’, that’s all.”

“If I want any comments, I’ll ask for them. What about the rest of you? Any of you have any trouble with this?”

None of the deputies responded.

“Boys, when you think about it, we’ve got us a real sweet deal here,” Cummins said. He laughed out loud. “You might say that what we have is a license to steal. Ever since the city council voted to put in the law tax, all we have to do is just control a few drunks, make sure nobody gets beat up, and arrest anyone who spits on the sidewalk. Now, what do you say you get to work?”

At the very moment Cummins was charging his deputies with the task of spreading out to collect the “law tax,” a secret meeting was being held in the back room of the Bank of Purgatory.

Joel Montgomery, the president of the bank, was conducting the meeting, and he poured himself a drink before calling the meeting to order. “Goodman?” he called. “Are you keeping a lookout?”

“Yes,” Goodman said. “There’s nobody out on the street.”

“Well, there will be soon. This is the day they spread out to collect their tax. So if you see anyone coming this way, let me know.”

“I will,” Goodman promised.

“Men,” Montgomery said. “There’s a bottle here. If any of you want a drink before we get started, get it now. Because once we get started, we’ve got some serious business to discuss.”

“It ain’t goin’ to work,” one of the men said. He was short, with a reddish tint to his skin, and a large, blotchy nose.

“What isn’t going to work, Amon?”

Amon Goff owned the leather goods store.

“All of us gettin’ together and tellin’ Cummins we ain’t goin’ to pay his taxes no more,” Amon said. “It ain’t goin’ to work.”

“And why won’t it work?” Montgomery asked.

“Because the tax is a law that’s done been passed by the city council. If we don’t pay it, why, they’ve got the right to put us in jail. What we need to do is get the city council to pass a law changin’ that.”

“And how do you propose that we do that, Amon?” Josh Taylor asked. Taylor ran the feed store. “There’s only seven men on the city council, and four of ’em are Cummins’ deputies.”

“I don’t know how we’re goin’ to get it done,” Amon said. “I just know that if one of us refuse to pay the taxes, we’re goin’ to wind up one of two ways. Either dead, or in jail.”

“Yeah,” a man named Bascomb said. Drew Bascomb owned the freight line. “Even if we fight back, we could wind up getting hung. You seen what happened to that stranger that rode in here today. Gillis tried to collect the five-dollar visitors tax and the stranger shot him. Now, I say, good for the stranger, ’ceptin’ he’s on the way to Yuma to get hung.”

“I heard about that,” Montgomery said. “Did any of you see it? I mean, how is it that it just happened today, and already the stranger has been tried and convicted? The judge isn’t even in town.”

“Cummins held the trial himself,” Goff said. “Within five minutes after it happened, Cummins had a jury picked and he held the trial right there in the Pair O Dice saloon.”

“That’s not legal, is it?” Bascomb asked. “I mean, can Cummins hold a trial without the judge?”

“You may remember that Cummins got himself appointed associate judge,” Montgomery reminded the others. “His authority might be questionable, but he probably was within his right to conduct the trial. Now, as to the trial itself, I’m sure there were all sorts of technical errors that would qualify for an appeal. For example, does anyone know if he had a lawyer?”

“Bob Dempster was his lawyer,” Goff said.

“Bob Dempster? Good Lord, was Dempster sober?”

“Ha!” Bascomb said. “When was the last time anyone saw Bob Dempster sober?”

“Damn, the stranger could appeal this case a dozen ways from Sunday,” Montgomery said.

“Maybe so,” Bascomb said. “But he just left on the train to Yuma. Chances are, he’ll be hung by this time tomorrow night.”

“Fellas, here comes Crack,” Goodman said from the window.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Goff asked. “Are we going to pay the taxes this week, or refuse?”

Montgomery ran his hand through his hair, then let out a long, frustrated sigh. “We’ll pay them,” he said. “Right now, we have no other choice. But I don’t intend to go on paying them. We’re going to put a stop to this. There is no way I’m going to let this go on forever.”

“How are we going to stop them?” Bascomb asked.

Montgomery shook his head. “I don’t know yet,” he answered. “That’s what we are going to figure out, as soon as we get organized.”

At the same time Joel Montgomery and a few other citizens of the town were holding their meeting, Robert Dempster was sitting in a darkened room in the back of his office. A half-full whiskey bottle was on his desk in front of him, and he reached for it—drew his hand back, reached for it again, and again drew his hand back.

His head hurt, his tongue was thick, his body ached in every joint, and he had the shakes.

He reached for the bottle again, picked it up, and filled his glass, though he was shaking so badly that he got nearly as much whiskey on the desk as he did in the glass. Putting the bottle down, he picked up the glass and tried to take a drink, but the shaking continued, and he couldn’t get it to his mouth. He put the glass down, leaned over it, took it in his lips, then tried to lift the glass that way, but it fell from his mouth and all the whiskey spilled out.

In a fit of anger, Dempster grabbed the bottle and threw it. The bottle was smashed against the wall and the room was instantly perfumed with the aroma of alcohol.

“No!” he shouted in anger and regret.

He leaned his head back, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

Robert Dempster had not always been an alcoholic. In fact, he had once been a productive member of society, a husband, father, and vestryman in his church. As he sat in the dark room, his body rebelling against the denial of alcohol, he began to remember, though they were not memories he wanted to revisit. In fact, he drank precisely so he wouldn’t have to remember, but despite his best efforts, those memories, unbidden though they might be, came back to fill his brain with pain—a pain that was even worse than the pain of alcoholism.

“No,” he said aloud, pressing his hands against his temples, trying to force out the memories. “No! Go away!”

Benton, Missouri, five years earlier

Judge Dempster was studying the transcripts of the third day of a trial that, on the next day, would hear the summations before being remanded to the jury. The sound of a slamming door in a distant part of the Scott County Courthouse echoed loudly through the wide, high-ceilinged halls like the boom of a drum. Dempster paid no attention to it as it was a familiar sound. He should have paid attention to it, because while it was a familiar sound during the day, it was not a normal sound for ten o’clock at night.

“Hello, Judge,” someone said, interrupting Dempster’s reading.

Looking up, Dempster saw three men. All three had been regulars in the courtroom during the trial, but he only knew the name of the one who spoke. That man’s name was Carl Mason, and he was the brother of Jed Mason, the defendant in the trial. Jed Mason was being tried for murder in the first degree.

“Mason,” Dempster said.

Mason didn’t wear a beard, but neither was he clean-shaven. He had yellow, broken teeth and an unruly mop of brown hair.

“Nobody is supposed to be in here at this hour. How did you get in?” Dempster asked.

“You need to have the lock fixed on the front door,” Mason replied with a chuckle. “It didn’t cause us any trouble at all.”

“You have no business here.”

“Well now, Judge, that ain’t the way I see it,” Mason said. “The way I see it, my brother is goin’ to get hisself hung if this here trial don’t come out like it’s supposed to. So I figure I got the right of a lovin’ brother to be here.”

“You are welcome in court tomorrow for closing arguments,” Dempster said. “I think we will also have a verdict tomorrow.”

“What will that verdict be?” Mason asked.

“Well, Mr. Mason, I have no way of knowing what the verdict will be.”

“Sure you do. You’re the judge, ain’t you?”

“Yes, of course, I’m the judge.”

“Then see to it that my brother gets off.”

“Mr. Mason, I don’t think you understand. I am bound by the decision of the jury. If they find your brother guilty of murder, I will have no choice but to pronounce sentence on him.”

“Yeah? And what would that sentence be?” Mason asked.

“That he be hanged by the neck until dead,” Dempster said.

“That ain’t goin’ to happen,” Mason insisted.

“It very well may,” Dempster replied. “As I told you, it is up to the jury.”

Mason shook his head. “You better find some way to make it be up to you. If you don’t…” Ominously, Mason stopped in mid-sentence.

“Are you threatening me, Mr. Mason?”

“You?” Mason said. He shook his head. “No, Judge, you ain’t the one I’m threatening. I’m threatening them.”

“Them?”

Reaching into his pocket, Mason pulled out something gold and shiny, then lay it on the desk in front of Dempster.

“You recognize this, Judge?” he asked.

“It’s Tammy’s locket,” Dempster said with a gasp. He had given his twelve-year-old daughter the locket last Christmas, and she was never without it.

“And this,” he said, putting a wide gold wedding band down. Inside the wedding band were the names “Bob & Lil.”

“Lil’s wedding band,” Dempster said with a sinking feeling. “What have you done with my family?”

“You make the right decision tomorrow, and your wife and daughter will be fine,” Mason said.

“Please, don’t hurt them.”

Mason chuckled. “Like I said, Judge, that’s all up to you.”

Dempster went home to find his wife and daughter missing. There was a note on the receiving table in the foyer.

IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOU WIFE AND KID ALIVE AGAIN CUT MY BROTHER FREE

Dempster did not sleep a wink that night, and when he showed up in court the next day, he was exhausted from lack of sleep and sick with worry. As the courtroom filled, he looked out over the gallery and saw Mason and the two men who had come to visit him on the previous night. Mason held up a ribbon that Dempster recognized as having come from his wife’s hair, then smiled at Dempster, a sick, evil smile.

Dempster fought back the bile of fear and anger, then cleared his throat and addressed the court.

“Last night, while going over the transcripts, I found clear and compelling evidence of prosecutorial misconduct,” he said.

The prosecutor had been examining his notes prior to his summation, but at Dempster’s words he looked up in surprise.

“What?” the prosecutor said. “Your Honor, what did you say?”

“Therefore, I am dismissing all charges against the defendant. Mr. Mason, you are free to go.”

“What?” the prosecutor said again, shouting the word this time at the top of his lungs. “Prosecutorial misconduct? Judge, have you lost your mind? What are you talking about?”

“Are you crazy, Judge?” someone shouted from the gallery, and several others also shouted in anger and surprise.

“This court is adjourned!” Dempster said, banging his gavel on the bench. Getting up, he left the courtroom amid continued shouts of anger.

“Judge, what happened?” his clerk asked when he returned to his chambers.

“I have to go home,” Dempster said.

“Is something wrong?”

“My wife and child,” Dempster said without being specific. “I must go home.”

Dempster’s house was four blocks from the courthouse, and he half-ran, half-walked, calling out as he hurried up the steps to the front porch.

“Lil! Tammy!”

Pushing the door open, Dempster stopped and gasped, grabbing at the pain in his heart when he saw them. His wife and daughter were on the floor of the parlor, lying in a pool of dark, red blood. They were both dead.

“No!” he cried aloud. “No!”

The Missouri Supreme Court offered condolences to Dempster for the loss of his wife and daughter, even as they removed him from the bench and disbarred him. After that, Dempster had no choice but to leave town. He took a train to St. Louis and there boarded a train heading west. He had no particular destination in mind, settling in Purgatory because he felt that the name of the town brought a sense of poetic justice to his own situation. As he explained in a letter he wrote to his brother; “If I could have found a town named Hell, I would have settled there.”

Dempster forced the memories away, returning to the present—a run-down office in a flyblown town. He looked at the broken bottle and the whiskey stain—which had become symbolic of his life. In the beginning the drinking seemed to help ease the pain, but as time went by the whiskey, which had once helped him by temporarily blotting out the memory, took over his soul. The man who had once been the odds-on favorite for appointment to the Supreme Court of Missouri was no more. That man would never be back.

Dempster put his head down on his desk and sobbed until his throat was raw and his tears were gone.

“Dear God,” he said. “I cannot get any lower than this. I want to die, but I don’t have the courage to kill myself. Take me, now. Please, dear God, help me beat this or take me now.”

Incredibly, Dempster’s “prayer of relinquishment” had an almost immediate effect. A sense of calm came over him, a peace that passed all understanding, and he knew what his first step had to be on the long road to recovery.

Getting paper and pen from his desk, Dempster wrote a letter.

To the Honorable John C. Frémont,
Governor of Arizona Territory

Dear Governor Frémont:

My name is Robert Dempster. I am an attorney at law, practicing in Purgatory. I feel it incumbent upon me to call to your attention the condition of affairs here in Purgatory. We are a town that is literally without law, except for the law as administered by Andrew Cummins, who is acting as both marshal and associate judge.

I could list a catalogue of offences he has perpetrated and is perpetrating against the citizens of our town, such as draconian taxes and heavy-handed application of the laws he chooses to enforce. To help him, he has a force of no fewer than eight deputies, all this for a town of less than three hundred people.

However, it is not to seek relief for our own condition that I write this letter. Rather, it is to point out a specific incident that is so glaring that I believe intervention is in order, either from your own resources or the resources of the federal government. I am talking about the trial, conviction, and sentencing of a man, all within one hour of the alleged violation.

The man in question, Matt Jensen, rode into town innocently enough, and was accosted by Moe Gillis, one of Marshal Cummins’s deputies. Gillis ordered Jensen to pay a five-dollar visitors tax, but Jensen refused, saying he would ride on out of town. In the resultant disagreement, Gillis was killed. Jensen was arrested and brought to trial within minutes of the incident, and I was appointed to defend him.

I must in all candidness report to you that I am an alcoholic, and was debilitated by an excessive use of alcohol. Despite the fact that I was in no condition to mount an adequate defense, I was appointed by Marshal Cummins, who, for purposes of the trial, abandoned his roll of marshal and assumed the mantle of associate judge.

During the course of the trial, Jensen claimed that Gillis drew first, and my personal knowledge of Moe Gillis is such that I do not find that claim unrealistic. I was given only fifteen minutes to prepare for this case, which did not allow me to look for eyewitnesses. Later, an eyewitness came forth to testify that he had seen the incident, and the eyewitness’s story confirmed Jensen’s claim, thus making the killing an act of self-defense. When I took the report to Marshal Cummins, he dismissed it out of hand, and in front of me, ordered one of his deputies to perjure himself by signing a statement that he had also been a witness.

I call upon you, Governor, to please intervene in this case to stay the man’s execution (he is to be taken to Yuma), and if that is not possible, to please appoint someone to look into the conditions in this town.

This town has some decent people, Governor, and could be a vibrant and productive community, if only the tyranny of an evil marshal and his minions could be removed.

Sincerely
Robert Dempster