000 02508cam a22003733u 4500
001 78088
003 UtSlPG
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006 m
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040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPS
100 1 _aLeinster, Murray,
_d1896-1975
245 1 4 _aThe hand of God
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
490 1 _aProduced from the July 25, 1930 issue of Short Stories magazine.
500 _aRelease date is 2026-03-02
508 _aPrepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net)
520 _aThe hand of God by Murray Leinster is a crime-mystery short story written in the early 20th century. It centers on a small-town sheriff confronting a lynch mob while sifting clues to uncover the true killer, probing the tension between mob justice, lawful procedure, and what people call “the hand of God.” On a sweltering night, a mob gathers to hang Sam Blake for shooting Kittinger outside a country store, where “open-and-shut” evidence seems to damn him: he’s found unconscious in a nearby blacksmith shop with a recently fired rifle and a clear motive. Determined to uphold the law, the sheriff stalls the crowd and notices a crucial inconsistency—there are two spent shells tied to a single heard shot. Inviting only two men inside, he catches Pete Brown, Kittinger’s nephew, in a lie about seeing the victim from a blocked vantage point, proving Pete watched from the actual murder site and had framed the drunken Sam earlier by firing Sam’s gun and planting him. After a brief struggle the sheriff arrests Pete, faces down the mob by laying out the facts, and disperses it, with the supposed “hand of God” revealed as a small human oversight exposed by stubborn, level-headed policing. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1930
653 _aShort stories
653 _aWestern stories
653 _aMurder -- Fiction
653 _aSheriffs -- Fiction
830 0 _aProduced from the July 25, 1930 issue of Short Stories magazine.
856 4 _uhttps://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/PU/SHST_1930_07_25.pdf
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78088
999 _c118808
_d118808