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is for everybody in town to think I’m a helpless fool who got lucky, which isn’t too far wrong, I guess. But if I’m to go on being chief I’m going to have to live with being the fearless hero.” He laughed. “Even Skeeter was impressed, although he didn’t let it get in his way when it came time to question the boys. I’m glad he was there, though, or I guess they’d still be handcuffed to that pipe. Hugh Holmes got a motion passed real quick to build a jailhouse onto the fire station.”
    He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was talking very fast. Carrie got up and went to the big wood stove and stirred something. “I suppose you’re the chief now,” she said. “I think I had hoped to talk you out of it, to find something else for you to do, but after this I’d have the whole town against me.” She stirred slowly for a moment. “I’ll try and get used to it, Will Henry. But I want you to make me a promise.”
    “All right.”
    “I want you to promise me that you’ll always be real, real careful, that every time you see something coming on that could be dangerous even a little, that you’ll think about Billy and Eloise and me, and that you’ll do everything you can to be careful. Will you promise me that?”
    “Yes, I promise. I’m not fool enough to want to get hurt, Carrie. I’m not William S. Hart against the badmen, and I hope you believe that I’ll always think about you and the children.”
    She smiled for the first time that day. He went to her and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled. “Now get out of here and let me set the table for your dinner.”
    Will Henry stepped out the back door, aware now that Billy and Eloise had been playing in the back yard while he and Carrie had talked in the kitchen. He looked up to see Eloise, her hands up and her back against a tree. Perhaps six feet from her stood Billy, the Buntline revolver in his two small hands, pointing at Eloise’s head. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” he was saying. He had a thumb around the hammer and was cocking the pistol. Will Henry’s first reaction was to scream as loudly as he could at Billy, but in a small part of a second he realized that Billy might jerk the trigger and that Carrie, in the kitchen, would hear him and come to see what was the matter. Instead, he spread his hands and clapped them together once, as loudly as he could. Billy’s head jerked around. He dropped the pistol as if it had suddenly become hot and stood, wide-eyed, looking at his father. The Buntline lay on the ground, still cocked, still pointing in Eloise’s direction. Will Henry strode down the steps and across the yard and picked up the pistol. Billy seemed to be trying to speak, but nothing came out. Will Henry eased the hammer down, opened the retaining piece and turned the cylinder slowly as Billy watched. There were cartridges in all six chambers.
    He shook the cartridges out into his hand and put them into his pocket. Then he stuck the pistol into his belt, grabbed Billy by an upper arm, and spun him around, hitting him across the buttocks hard, once, with his open hand. He spun the boy around again. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was trembling violently. Angry as he was, Will Henry could not bring himself to chastise the boy further. After all, he himself had left the pistol, fully loaded and in plain view, on a straight-back chair in the living room, on top of his coat. “Take your sister around to the front of the house,” he said in a loud whisper. “Wash your face under the spigot and wait out front until you’re called to your dinner. Don’t you say a word about this to your mother, and don’t you be crying when you come in.” He forced himself to relax a little, to look less angry, to let the child know that it was all right now. “Go on,” he* said.
    As the children scurried around to the front yard, Will Henry walked quickly to the tool shed at the back of the lot. Inside he found a rusty pair