you answer?" Norton said coolly.
"Sure." Galloway kept his look steady upon the sheriff's, and into the innocence of his eyes there came a veiled insolence. "Bisbee shot first."
"Where was he standing?"
Galloway pointed.
"Right there." The spot indicated was about three or four feet from where Norton stood, near the second card-room door.
"Where was the Kid?"
"Over there." Again Galloway pointed. "Clean across the room, where the chair is tumbled over against the table."
"How many times did Bisbee shoot?"
Galloway seemed to be trying to remember. He drank his whiskey slowly, reached over the bar for a cigar, and answered:
"Twice or three times."
"How many times did Rickard shoot?"
"I'm not sure. I'd say about the same; two or three times."
"Where was Antone standing?"
"Behind the bar; down at the far end, nearest the door."
"Where were you?"
"Leaning against the bar, talking to Antone."
"What were you talking about?"
This question came quicker, sharper than the others, as though calculated to startle Galloway into a quick answer. But the proprietor of the Casa Blanca was lighting his cigar and took his time. When he looked up, his eyes told Norton that he had understood any danger which might lie under a question so simple in the seeming. His eyes were smiling contemptuously, but there was a faint flush in his cheeks.
"I don't remember," he replied at last. "Some trifle. The shooting, coming suddenly that way …
"What started the ruction?"
"Bisbee had been drinking a little. He seemed to be in the devil's own temper. He had asked the Kid to have a drink with him, and Rickard refused. He had his drink alone and then invited the Kid again. Rickard told him to go to hell. Bisbee started to walk across the room as though he was going to the card-room. Then he grabbed his gun and whirled and started shooting."
"Missing every time, of course?"
Galloway nodded.
"You'll remember I said he was carrying enough of a load to make his aim bad."
Norton asked half a dozen further questions and then said abruptly:
"That's all. As you go out will you tell the boys to send Antone in?"
Again a hint of color crept slowly, dully, into Galloway's cheeks.
"You're going pretty far, Rod Norton," he said tonelessly.
"You're damned right I am!" cried Norton ringingly. "And I am going a lot further, Jim Galloway, before I get through, and you can bet all of your blue chips on it. I want Antone in here and I want you outside! Do I get what I want or not?"
Galloway stood motionless, his cigar clamped tight in his big square teeth. Then he shrugged and went to the door.
"If I am standing a good deal off of you," he muttered, hanging on his heel just before he passed out, "it's because I am as strong as any man in the county to see the law brought into San Juan. And"--for the first time yielding outwardly to a display of the emotion riding him, he spat out venomously and tauntingly--"and we'd have had the law here long ago had we had a couple of men in the boots of the Nortons, father and son!"
Rod Norton's face went a flaming red with anger, his hand grew white upon the butt of the gun at his side.
"Some day, Jim Galloway," he said steadily, "I'll get you just as sure as you got Billy Norton!"
Galloway laughed and went out.
To Antone, Norton put the identical questions he had asked of Galloway, receiving virtually the same replies. Seeking the one opportunity suggesting itself into tricking the bartender, he asked at the end:
"Just before the shooting, when you and Galloway were talking and he told you that Bisbee was looking for trouble, why weren't you ready to grab him when he went for his gun?"
Antone was giving his replies as guardedly as Galloway had done. He took his time now.
"Because," he began finally, "I do not belief when Señor Galloway speak that … "
His eyes had been roving from Norton's, going here and there about the room. Suddenly a startled look came into them and he snapped his mouth shut.
"Go on," prompted the sheriff.
"I don't remember," grunted Antone. "I forget what Señor Galloway say, what I say. Bisbee say: 'Have a drink.' The Kid say: 'Go to hell.' Bisbee shoot, one, two, three, like that. I forget what we talk about."
Norton turned slowly and looked whither Antone had been looking when he cut his own words off so sharply. The man upon whom his eyes rested longest was a creased-faced Mexican, Vidal Nuñez, who now stood, head down, making a cigarette.
"That's all, Antone," Norton said. "Send the Kid in."
The Kid came, still sullen but swaggering a little, his hat cocked jauntily to one side, the yellow wisp of hair in his faded eyes. And he in turn questioned, gave such answers as the two had given before him.
Now for the first time the sheriff, stepping across the room, looked for such evidence as flying lead might have left for him. In the wall just behind the spot where Bisbee had stood were two bullet holes. Going to the far end of the room where the chair leaned against the table, he found that a pane of glass in the window opening upon the street had been broken. There were no bullet marks upon wall or woodwork.
"Bisbee shot two or three times, did he?" he cried, wheeling on the Kid. "And missed every time? And all the bullets went through the one hole in the window, I suppose?"
The Kid shrugged insolently.
"I didn't watch 'em," he returned briefly.
Galloway and Antone were allowed to come again into the room, and of Galloway, quite as though no hot word had passed between them, Norton asked quietly:
"Bisbee had a lot of money on him. What happened to it?"
"In there." Galloway nodded toward the card-room whose door had remained closed. "In his pocket."
A few of the morbid followed as the sheriff went into the little room. Already most of the men had seen and had no further curiosity. Norton drew the blanket away, noted the wounds, three of them, two at the base of the throat and one just above the left eye. Then, going through the sheepman's pockets, he brought out a handful of coins. A few gold, most of them silver dollars and half-dollars, in all a little over fifty dollars.
The dead man lay across two tables
