Chapter 11 Summary

Alex Dumire, a forty-eight-year-old lawman, is hired by the citizens of Centennial to calm hostilities between sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers. A traveling circus that comes to town includes a sharpshooter named Cranby, one of those who traveled with the first cattle to Colorado. Cranby is among the casualties of a fire one night. Mervin and Maude Wendell arrive in town with their theater troupe and their ten-year-old son, Phillip. Their possessions are confiscated on orders of sheriff's from other towns to which they owe debts and the Wendells are offered a house, rent free for the first months, and a part time job by Mervin. Soon Dumire is the object of hero worship from young Phillip and he learns that the Wendells set up a scam so that they now own the house they'd been allowed to borrow.

One night, Maude sets...