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of pliers. He twisted the lead from all six cartridges and emptied the powder charge onto the dirt floor. He rummaged around until he found a chisel and a ball peen hammer. He placed the pistol in the bench vise and locked it. Then he chipped at the firing spur on the hammer until it broke off, rendering the weapon useless. He put the pistol back into his belt, gathered the empty shell casings and the lead, took them around back of the shed, and mixed them with the contents of the garbage can. Then he leaned against the back of the shed and vomited.
    Later, as they ate their midday meal, each quiet with his own thoughts, Will Henry said, “That pistol Frank Mudter gave me is too old-fashioned to be any good to anybody, so I broke off the firing part of the hammer to make it harmless. Billy, why don’t you clean the rust off it, and we’ll keep it as a souvenir.”
    He smiled at the boy, and the boy smiled back.

    Chapter 7.
    WILL HENRY left the house after his midday meal and walked up the hill to Broad Street. He turned left and started toward the corner where Broad met Main Street, where the bank was. He had to pass a number of stores on the way, and he was nervous about it. He knew that word of the arrest that morning would surely have got around by this time; he began to wish the incident had never happened.
    As he approached the hardware store, he saw Ralph McKibbon, the owner, standing out front talking to a man. “Hey, Chief!” Will Henry winced. McKibbon came over and punched him playfully in the ribs. “I hear you really took care of those bank robbers this morning! Whole town’s talking about it! Why, you’ve only been chief a couple of hours, and everybody feels safer already!’ Will Henry mumbled something, smiled as best he could, and continued on toward the corner, receiving greetings and congratulations from three more people on the way. He stopped outside the bank and looked at the window. A man was nailing boards over the broken glass. He walked inside.
    “Why, Mr. Lee! Or I guess I should say, Chief Lee.” Miss Bessie Simmons, the teller, was smiling broadly from her cage. “I sure do want to thank you for catching those awful men this morning.”
    “Well, Miss Bessie, I just wish we could have done something to stop them before they scared you so bad.”
    Harold Bowen, the clerk, came over. “Just get me a pistol, that’s what I told Mr. Holmes. Just get me a pistol, and we won’t have that kind of trouble no more. I could have shot both of them dead this morning.” Will Henry remembered that Harold had been lying on the floor weeping, when he had come into the bank after the robbery.
    “Harold, I don’t think those boys would have shot anybody even accidentally. They were drunk, but they weren’t killers. They just shot those holes in the window to scare you. They were so scared themselves when we caught them that they seemed almost relieved. I think this thing this morning was just a kind of fluke. But if it ever happens again, you dcrjust what you did this morning. It’s no use getting killed for a few hundred dollars of somebody else’s money.”
    “Well, it’s our duty to protect folks’ money here. They put it in the bank and they expect it to be safe. We need a pistol or two around here, that’s what we need.”
    “What did you do with those two boys, Chief Lee?” Miss Bessie asked.
    “Skeeter Willis took them up to the county jail. The council has voted to build us a jail onto the new firehouse here, so we’ll be able to handle it if something like this happens again. Matter of fact, I’m due over there in a minute to talk to Mr. Holmes and Skeeter about it. Just wanted to see if everything was all right here.”
    He excused himself and crossed the street toward where the new firehouse was being built behind the city hall. There was a sound of hammering and sawing as he approached. He walked through a half-completed doorway and looked at what was being built. There was