The Rubber Band

"I've told you a lot of wild tales about the old days in Nevada. I've told you this one too, hut I'll repeat it here briefty. It was at Silver City, in 1897. I was 25 years old, so it was 10 years before I met you. I was broke, and so was the gang of youngsters I'm telling about. They were all youngsters but one. We weren't friends, there was no such thing as a friend around there. Most of the bunch of 2000 or so that inhabited Silver City camp at that time were a good deal older than us, which was how we happened to get together- temporarily. Everything was temporary.

"The ringleader of our gang was a kid we called Rubber on account of the way he bounced back up when he got knocked down. His name was Coleman, but I never knew his first name, or if 1 did 1 can't remember it, though I've often tried. Because Rubber was our leader, someone cracked a joke one day that we should call ourselves The Rubber Band, and we did. Pretty soon most of Silver City was calling us that.

"One of the gang, a kid named George Rowley, shot a man and killed him. From what I heard-I didn't see it-he had as good a right to shoot as was usually needed around there, but the trouble was that the one he killed happened to he a member of the Vigilance Committee. It was at night, 24 hows after the shooting, that they decided to hang him. Rowley hadn't had sense enough to make a getaway, so they took him and shut him up in a shanty until daylight, with one of their number for a guard, an Irishman. As Harlan Scovil would say-I'll never forget Harlan-he was a kind of a man named Mike Walsh.

"Rowley went after his guard, Mike Walsh. I mean talking to him. Finally, around midnight, he persuaded Mike to send for Rubber Coleman. Rubber had a talk with him and. Mike. Then there was a lot of conspiring, and Rubber did a lot of dickering with Rowley. We were gathered in the dark in the sagebrush out hack of John's Palace, a shack out at the edge of the city-"

Clara Fox looked up. "My father underscored the word city."

Wolfe nodded. "Properly, no doubt."