his rifle so that it was caught up under his left arm. His right hand, frank and unhidden, rested upon the butt of the heavy-caliber revolver sagging from his belt. Standing just within the room, he had stepped to one side of the doorway so that the wall was at his back.
"It was the Kid," some one answered, and was continuing, "He says it was self-defense … " when Norton cut in bluntly:
"Was Galloway here when it happened?"
"Yes."
"Where's Galloway now?"
It was noteworthy that he asked for Jim Galloway rather than for Kid Rickard.
"In there," they told him, indicating a second card-room adjoining that in which the Las Palmas sheepman lay. Rod Norton, again glancing sharply across the faces confronting him, went to the closed door and set his hand to the knob. But Jim Galloway, having desired privacy just now, had locked the door. Norton struck it sharply, commanding:
"Open up, Galloway. It's Norton."
There came the low mutter of a voice hasty and with the quality of stern exhortation, the snap of the lock, and the door was jerked open. Norton's eyes, probing into every square foot of the chamber, took stock of Jim Galloway, and beyond him of Kid Rickard, slouching forward in a chair and rolling a cigarette.
"Hello, Norton," said Galloway tonelessly. "Glad you showed up. There's been trouble."
A heavy man above the waist-line, thick-shouldered, with large head and bull throat, his muscular torso tapered down to clean-lined hips, his legs of no greater girth than those of the lean-bodied man confronting him, his feet small in glove-fitting boots. His eyes, prominent and full and a clear brown, were a shade too innocent. Chin, jaw, and mouth, the latter full-lipped, were those of strength, smashing power, and a natural cruelty. He was the one man to be found in San Juan who was dressed as the rather fastidiously inclined business men dress in the cities.
"Another man down, Galloway," said Norton with an ominous sternness. "And in your place … How long do you think that you can keep out from under?"
His meaning was plain enough; the men behind him in the barroom listened in attitudes which, varying in other matters, were alike in their tenseness. Galloway, however, staring stonily with eyes not unlike polished agate, so cold and steady were they, gave no sign of taking offense.
"You and I never were friends, Rod Norton," he said, unmoved. "Still that's no reason you should jump me for trouble. Answering your question, I expect to keep out from under just as long as two things remain as they are: first, as long as I play the game square and in the open, next, as long as an overgrown boy holds down the job of sheriff in San Juan."
In Norton's eyes was blazing hatred, in Galloway's mere steady, unwinking boldness.
"You saw the killing?" the sheriff asked curtly.
"Yes," said Galloway.
"The Kid there did it?"
For the first time the man slouching forward in the chair lifted his head. Had a stranger looked in at that moment, curious to see him who had just committed homicide … or murder … he must have experienced a positive shock. Sullen-eyed, sullen-lipped, the man-killer could not yet have seen the last of his teens. A thin wisp of straw-colored hair across a low, atavistic forehead, unhealthy, yellowish skin, with pale, lack-lustre, faded blue eyes, he looked evil and vicious and cruel. One looking from him to Jim Galloway would have suspected that one could be as inhuman as the other, but with the difference that that which was but means to an end with Galloway would be end in itself to Kid Rickard. Something of the primal savage shone in the pale fires of his eyes.
"Yes," retorted the Kid, his surly voice little better than a snarl. "I got him and be damned to him!"
"Bad luck cursing a dead man, Rickard," said Norton coldly. "What did you kill him for?"
Kid Rickard's tongue ran back and forth between his colorless lips before he replied.
"He tried to get me first," he said defiantly.
"Who saw the shooting?"
"Jim Galloway. And Antone."
Rod Norton grunted his disgust with the situation.
"Give me your gun," he commanded tersely.
The Kid frowned. Galloway cleared his throat. Rickard's eyes went to him swiftly. Then he got to his feet, jerked a thirty-eight-caliber revolver from the hip pocket of his overalls and held it out, surrendering it reluctantly. Norton "broke" it, ejecting the cartridges into his palm. Not an empty shell among them; the Kid had slipped in a fresh shell for every exploded one.
"How many times did you shoot?"
"I don't know. Two or three, I guess. … Damn it, do you imagine a man counts 'em?"
"What were you and Galloway doing alone in here with the door locked?"
Galloway cut in sharply:
"I didn't want any more trouble; I was afraid somebody … "
"Shut up, will you?" cried the sheriff fiercely. "I'll give you all the chance you want to talk pretty soon. Answer me, Rickard."
"I told him to lock me up somewhere until you or Tom Cutter come," said the Kid slowly. "I was afraid somebody might jump me for what I done. I didn't want no more trouble."
Norton turned briefly to the crowded room behind him.
"Anybody know where Cutter is?" he asked.
It appeared that every one knew. Tom Cutter, Rod Norton's deputy, had gone in the early morning to Mesa Verde, and would probably return in the cool of the evening. Frowning, Norton made the best of the situation, and to gain his purpose called four men out of the crowd.
"I want you boys to do me a favor," he said.
"Antone, come here."
The short, squat half-breed standing behind the bar lifted his heavy black brows, demanding:
"Y porqué? What am I to do?"
"As you are told," Norton snapped at him. "Benny, you and Dick walk down the street with Antone; you other boys walk down the other way with Rickard. If they haven't had all the chance to talk together already that they want, don't give them any more opportunity. Step up, Rickard."
The Kid sulked, but under the look the sheriff turned on him came forward and went out, his whole attitude remaining one of defiance. Antone, his swart face as expressionless as a piece of mahogany, hesitated, glanced at Galloway, shrugged, and did as Rickard had done, going out between his two guards. The men remaining in the barroom were watching their sheriff expectantly. He swung about upon Galloway.
"Now," he said quickly, "who fired the first shot. Galloway?"
Galloway smiled, went to his bar, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and standing there, the glass twisting slowly in his fingers, stared back innocently at his interrogator.
"Trying the case already, Judge Norton?" he inquired equably.
