The hand of God
by Murray Leinster (1896–1975)
The 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.
- Short stories
- Western stories
- Murder
- Sheriffs
Read the opening
Author of “The Skipper Knows Best,” “The Red Stone,” etc.
It was very hot when the sheriff sucked meditatively at his pipe in the county jail and listened abstractedly to the buzzing of the mob outside. It was dark, of course. Mobs do not often form in daylight—not mobs who propose to lynch one not especially reputable citizen for the murder of another still less reputable one. The jail was dark and more than a little malodorous. A darky in one of the rear cells whimpered a little in entirely unreasoning terror. A moth blundered heavily about the yellow-flamed lamp.
The only other sound was the sucking, bubbling sound of the sheriff’s pipe. He rapped it out and rammed out the stem with a broom straw. There was a knock on the thick outer door.
“Huh?” said the sheriff heavily.
“Has he come to, yet?”
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About this edition
This free edition of The hand of God by Murray Leinster comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #78088, released 2026-03-02. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer.
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