Act I

A number of women are sitting working together in a big room not
unlike an old English tithe barn in its timbered construction,
but with windows high up next the roof. It is furnished as a
courthouse, with the floor raised next the walls, and on this
raised flooring a seat for the Sheriff, a rough jury box on his
right, and a bar to put prisoners to on his left. In the well in
the middle is a table with benches round it. A few other benches
are in disorder round the room. The autumn sun is shining warmly
through the windows and the open door. The women, whose dress and
speech are those of pioneers of civilisation in a territory of
the United States of America, are seated round the table and on
the benches, shucking nuts. The conversation is at its height.

**

BABSY [a bumptious young slattern, with some good looks] I say
that a man that would steal a horse would do anything.

LOTTIE [a sentimental girl, neat and clean] Well, I never should
look at it in that way. I do think killing a man is worse any day
than stealing a horse.

HANNAH [elderly and wise] I dont say it's right to kill a man. In
a place like this, where every man has to have a revolver, and
where theres so much to try people's tempers, the men get to be a
deal too free with one another in the way of shooting. God knows
it's hard enough to have to bring a boy into the world and nurse
him up to be a man only to have him brought home to you on a
shutter, perhaps for nothing, or only just to shew that the man
that killed him wasn't afraid of him. But men are like children
when they get a gun in their hands: theyre not content til theyve
used it on somebody.

JESSIE [a good-natured but sharp-tongued, hoity-toity young
woman; Babsy's rival in good looks and her superior in tidiness]
They shoot for the love of it. Look at them at a lynching. Theyre
not content to hang the man; but directly the poor creature is
swung up they all shoot him full of holes, wasting their
cartridges that cost solid money, and pretending they do it in
horror of his wickedness, though half of them would have a
rope round their own necks if all they did was known--let alone
the mess it makes.

LOTTIE. I wish we could get more civilized. I don't like all this
lynching and shooting. I don't believe any of us like it, if the
truth were known.

BABSY. Our Sheriff is a real strong man. You want a strong man
for a rough lot like our people here. He aint afraid to shoot and
he aint afraid to hang. Lucky for us quiet ones, too.

JESSIE. Oh, don't talk to me. I know what men are. Of course he
aint afraid to shoot and he aint afraid to hang. Wheres the risk
in that with the law on his side and the whole crowd at his back