The gunshot was loud, it had been close by, not on top of his business, but close enough. Phin jumped up and started for the door, pausing to think of getting his pistol, then realizing that only one shot had been fired, so someone either accidentally fired a shot, or, someone shot someone else, he was out the door and could see a crowd gathering at the Municipal Building. Whoever it was that was shot was there. So he was off at a trot.

He reached the crowd and in fine fashion burrowed to the front, only to find the Town Marsha laying in the doorway, plainly the victim of the shooting. He would not waste words asking mundane questions, as it was clear who was shot. So the who and the what were satisfied. The why of it was another matter entirely.

Guyer was deputizing Hannah Corry, Ty Thornton, and Quentin Cantrell so something was brewing, and there was a boy standing back, who looked bedraggled and beat up, who was he and what was he doing at the Marshal's office? A set of questions for later, but he began looking around. Where would the shooter have been? His gaze stopped at the Stardust and the attached shop to the right of it. Might be worth having a look while everyone else was tending to the Marshal, as they should, the shoot would be long gone, but there could be a trail, or footprints if the back of the building was used, There were stairs leading up, he knew that.

So Phine McVay decided to investigate.

He eased away from the crowd of on-lookers as the doctor arrived, and the fellow Cabot Flagg he recognized from an earlier shooting. There were enough people to handle whatever request there was. But his curiosity had the best of him. Now, who? Easy enough to figure out, top of his list, the Steelgraves, Case, or Elias, not that either of them would venture in to do it, they had men more than capable of doing it.

Why? Because Guyer posed a threat to either of them or simply that he stood for law and order and with him out of the way, they could do as they pleased, when they pleased, and how they pleased. But it could be someone with a long-standing grudge or even a recent misunderstanding. Yet to him, if what he thought was correct, someone had laid in wait to shoot him, not Hanah Cory, or this Tyrell Thornton, but Speed Guyer.

He made his way between the buildings to the rear of the shop attached to the saloon. The ground was chewed up from hoof prints, there were plenty of droppings as if there had been a horse tied, or ground hitched in the same spot or nearly the same spot for more than one morning or afternoon. The prairie grass that had been there was eaten to the ground, There were signs that the tree that was there had been stripped of bark recently. The ladder that led to the roof awaited him.

He made the climb easily enough, and from where he stood it was clear to him, this was where the shot had come from. The field of fire was clear, only the overhang across the front of the Municipal Building could have been an obstruction, but once he knelt down, it was clear that the overhand would not come into play.

There were cigarette leavings, but no spent cartridge. That seemed odd because for accuracy it would have had to have been a rifle used in the attempt on the marshal's life. He paused, attempt? It may well have been successful. He could see where the accumulated dust on the roof had been disturbed where the man had lain in wait. Waiting for the perfect shot. Whoever had shot Guyer had spent time on the roof waiting.

So he stood, looking around at nothing, just thinking that Speed Guyer had been stalked. A man, certainly not a woman, was responsible. He had been hunted like an animal, and whoever was guilty may well have been hired, unless, it was someone out of his past that had come for him. Thinking about either Case or Elias, who were undeniably suspects, it did not seem to be their style. No, their men were the face you down on the street types, and it would have been their men as neither Case nor Elias would face a man on the street in a straight-up gunfight, then again, Case just might.

The breeze caught his hair as he stood there, a stray strand brushing across his brow. Someone had thrown down the gauntlet.

He felt a chill.

Odd, he thought, standing there looking out at the range, the trees, and the brush that bordered the east side of Kalispell. He had never taken the time to see the beauty of it, and it seemed wholly inappropriate to realize that beauty now, at this moment with the Marshal fighting for his life from an assassin's bullet.

There would be men better equipped than he to follow up on what he had seen so far, Phineas McVay was no tracker, he would admit that freely, the ground was chewed up pretty good. He suspected that men used the back entrance to the Stardust for any number of reasons, so tracking might prove difficult, but then, what did he know? It was possible the tracks that would trace the shooter would be lost in the other tracks, or stand out from the others.

So, Phin made his way down the ladder easily enough, and walked back to the boardwalk across from the Municipal Building, and paused. What would happen now was certainly in the hand of Doc Danforth and the Almighty. He was not a religious man, and he had his difficulties with God dating back to the passing of his wife, yet he realized it would take a bit more than just a skilled doctor to mend Speed Guyer.

So he walked back toward the office, considering the headline, and the following article.