The hand of God

by Murray Leinster (1896–1975)

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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.