The man—Smithson—was dead, all right, but his killer or killers hadn’t been content just to carry him away or let him lie. No, whoever or whatever had killed him had felt the need to leave a calling card—his severed head—which they’d sat atop a thick, wooden post so that the vertical railroad tie resembled a grizzly kind of totem pole. Otherwise, save for a nearby pile of spurned entrails, there was no trace of him.
“Now I want you all to take a long, hard look at this,” said Rimshaw, projecting his voice so that everyone could hear him, even those in the back of the mob. “And I want you to remember it next time someone gets the wise idea to question my judgement.”
Williams scanned the crowd, Katrina beside him, trying to gauge their mood, seeking signs of a lynch tenor. Because Rimshaw
