Zora Moore heard the shooting as she rode into Pawnee Bend, but there was so much of it she did not connect it with a fight. The racket coming from the direction of the railroad station was in itself assuring. She attributed it to a gang of cowboys celebrating the loading of a cattle train, or giving one of their comrades who was about to embark on new adventures a send-off. Perhaps somebody had married.
She rode to MacKinnon's hitching-rack undisturbed by the occurrence, quiet having fallen over the town again. There was some excitement around the depot, and a general movement of the town's inhabitants in that direction, but nothing unusual for a charivari such as the boys were likely to pull off wherever they might overtake a newly wedded pair.
MacKinnon was not in the office; there appeared to be nobody at all around the place. Zora stopped a boy who was pelting breathlessly toward the depot and inquired what the excitement was about.
"They've got Bill Dunham!" he panted, eager to give the news. "He's been standin' off the whole town!"
"Bill Dunham!" she repeated blankly, staring at the boy, a feeling in her as if the whole world had dropped
