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shouted.
    Lukens turned toward the sound. He seemed dazed at first. Then he focused on Matthew, who gave him a drink from a canteen he’d placed near Lukens’s hand.
    “God, it hurts,” Lukens moaned.
    “Bear it as best you can,” Matthew said. “I’ve paid these boys to take you to a doctor in Portland. He’ll treat you.”
    A breeze brushed Lukens’s back and brought a new spasm of pain. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.
    “Damn you,” he swore at Matthew. “This is your fault. You were seduced by that witch like the rest of them. If you’d fought for me—”
    More pain brought Lukens up short, and he started to weep. His client’s ingratitude stung Matthew, but he told himself it was the pain talking. He signaled to the boys, and Peter Farber snapped the reins. Lukens gasped as the wagon bounced along the hard ground. Matthew turned back toward the field and noticed a crowd regrouping. He’d spent his lunch hour caring for Lukens and would have to pick Farber’s jury on an empty stomach. He remembered an old adage about no good deed going unpunished as he trudged back toward the makeshift courtroom.

CHAPTER 6

    H arry Chambers’s establishment stood near a narrow bend where the river slowed before rushing forward as a short stretch of white water. There were no windows in the rear wall of the inn and no moon to light the way, so Matthew used the muted sound of sluggish water churning around the debris that choked the passage to guide him to the riverbank. A log had washed ashore behind a stand of cottonwoods. Matthew sat on it and waited to see if Worthy Brown’s information was correct. The gentle shush ing of the river made his eyes heavy, and the sultry night air worked like a sleeping potion. Matthew had almost dozed off when the sound of men approaching jerked him awake.
    “Do you have the money?” came the nervous inquiry of a clearly inebriated individual known to Matthew as Otis Pike, a slender man in ill health who had been chosen earlier in the day to sit as a juror in Farber v. Gillette . Pike had seemed sympathetic to Farber’s cause, and Matthew had been surprised when Barbour left him on the jury.
    “Will I have my verdict, Pike?” asked a voice Matthew had no trouble identifying as Caleb Barbour’s.
    “I said I’d deliver, and I will.”
    “Have the others agreed?”
    “Yes, yes. Now let me have my money. I don’t want us seen together.”
    Matthew’s initial impulse was to rise up and face the conspirators, but he was armed only with his knife, and he had heard that Barbour was a mean shot. After a moment of indecision, Matthew moved deeper into the shadows and crouched down. He listened to the clink of coins changing hands and a promise that more would be forthcoming when Gillette won his verdict.
    Matthew’s legs were beginning to cramp, and he worried about making noise if he moved, but Pike saved him by walking off. Barbour followed soon after, leaving by a separate path so as not to be seen with his coconspirator. Matthew considered following Pike to discover the identity of the other felonious jurors, but Pike had too much of a head start, and Matthew knew that there was a risk that he would be discovered eavesdropping. As he waited in the shadows for Barbour to get far enough away that he could risk standing, Matthew wondered if he should confront Benjamin Gillette. He had never heard a word that would suggest that Gillette was the type of man who would try to subvert justice, but Matthew could not be certain that Gillette was not in on Barbour’s scheme.
    When he could stand it no longer, Matthew rose up and stretched his cramped muscles. He had not slept well since leaving Portland, and he reckoned that there was only a slim chance that he would sleep tonight. As he headed back to his canvas room at the Hotel Parisian, he hoped that some miracle would bring him relief from his fatigue and a solution to his dilemma.

CHAPTER 7

    M atthew Penny