you didn’t know he was left-handed, then?” Johnny sneered. “You wouldn’t! You never know! Coroners just don’t. They’re the lowest form of political infamy. All I got to know about a man is that he’s hired out to do a job of coronering to know that there ain’t no help for him.”
Gallup’s teeth fairly chattered with rage. Face working convulsively, he turned to the body as Johnny pointed to it.
“Look at the man’s pants, you old mossback!” Johnny exclaimed, excitedly. “Ain’t they all wore shiny on the left side just below the pocket? Nothing but the rubbin’ of his holster against that leg did that. And that worn-out place beside the pocket—the butt of his gun made that! Roll him over, Ritter, and let this poor old imbecile have a good look.”
Doc rolled the body so that they could see if this was so. Gallup’s face was red with rage. Was this upstart cow-puncher going to cheapen him and make his work ridiculous? Election wasn’t so far away, said Ritter’s eyes. Gallup caught the thought.
Old Kent was wringing his hands. Hobe and Tony said nothing, but their set faces were proof enough that Johnny Dice had dropped a bombshell.
No one seemed willing to break the silence which had crept over them. It grew so still that Gallup’s little throat noises sounded loud and ominous. He was weighing matters quite beyond the present trouble with Johnny.
“Well, Johnny,” he said at last in a tone very different from the one he had previously used, “there may be sense in your contention. No one can say what was so with a dead man and be sure of it. I never seen him wearin’ a gun; you never seen him, either. Tell me why anybody’d want to kill him. Sure wasn’t robbery.”
“Might have been robbery,” Johnny replied. “Forty-six dollars ain’t no money for a man to have on him in this country. It would have been a fine stall to have taken his roll and left that measly forty-six. And then, too, maybe somebody figured he had somethin’ on them. Might be a dozen reasons.”
“You don’t suspect any one, do you, Johnny?” Doc asked.
“You don’t have to suspect somebody to prove that murder’s been done.”
“Yes, Johnny,” Gallup cut in, “but you ain’t proved that murder’s been committed. You talk a lot, but it’s all guesswork.”
“Wouldn’t be guesswork very long with me.”
“You git that idea out of yore head,” Kent warned. “If yo’re workin’ for me you won’t have no time to go runnin’ around doin’ business the county pays some one else to do.”
Hobe saw the insurgent answer leaping to Johnny’s lips and he tried to stop it but he was too late.
“If you mean I’ve got the choice of bein’ fired or lettin’ somebody else do my thinkin’ for me—well, then, I’m fired.”
“Yore words don’t surprise me,” Kent cried. “I told Hobe this evenin’ that you’d bear watchin’.”
“That’s the blow-off,” Johnny said, angrily. “Ridin’ for you ain’t the thing I’m fondest of.”
“Yo’re talkin’ big now; you got a few dollars in yore pocket. You’ll go busted quick enough. Takes money to mind other folks’ business.”
“You’re as bad as he is, Jackson,” Ritter interrupted. “I ain’t so sure the boy isn’t right. If you need any money, Johnny, you let me know.”
This offer of assistance made Gallup chortle.
“I won’t want any money, Doc,” drawled Johnny. “A good horse and a pair of well-oiled guns are all I’ll need. I’m goin’ to find out who killed this man. How about it, Tony?”
“Eef you say so, Johnny, she’s so wit’ me.”
“Go to it, you young fool!” Aaron managed to articulate. “Kelsey’s in Reno. He’ll be back next week. Go see him! Maybe he’ll make you special investigator for this county.”
“I don’t have to see no prosecutin’ attorney!” Johnny’s words clicked off his tongue. “What I do, I’ll do on my own. If this man was murdered—by God, I’m goin’ to find out who killed him! It’ll be time enough to talk of seein’ Kelsey then!”
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST CLEW
Scanlon’s fear that the night was ruined as far as he was concerned proved well founded. Gallup paused to buy himself a drink. Kent and his foreman came down as the coroner went out. Hobe’s face was glum. The old man’s run-in with Johnny and his pal was only another evidence of his coming decay. For all of his fault, Johnny was a good man, and a better vaquero than Madeiras was not to be found this side of the Humboldt. Kent might figure that, come spring, they would be back asking to be taken on again. Hobe knew better than this. Johnny’s pride more than matched his temper.
Times there had been in the past when old Jackson Kent had not balked at winking an eye at the law. This present deference to it nettled Hobe. The Diamond-Bar was big and powerful enough to lay down its own law. No one more than Ferris had built up its traditions. A few men there are like him who can become so much a part of their work that a subconscious sense of ownership of the tools with which they toil takes possession of them. It was that way with Hobe. He was the Diamond-Bar.
Kent’s daughter, Molly, had healed some previous sore spots between the foreman and the old man, but this arbitrary handling of the Diamond-Bar men was poaching on authority long since held by the foreman. Kent would have been hard put to have found a way to hurt the man more.
“You better git the boys to bed,” the old man said.
Hobe’s face was sullen.
“Yes, sir.” It was the first time in years that Hobe had “sirred” the boss. Kent looked at him sharply, feeling the implied unfriendliness. He had the good sense, though, to say nothing.
Five minutes later the barroom was clear of Diamond-Bar men. Stuffy Tyler had fallen asleep, but big Hobe easily picked him up, and throwing him over his shoulder as if the man were a sack of meal, carried him to his bed.
Doc Ritter brought in a stretcher, and with the aid of Johnny and Tony, the dead man was carried to Ritter’s undertaking parlor.
Scanlon and Vin faced each other.
“Beats hell, don’t it,” the former asked sullenly, “how one man can put a town to bed? You’d almost think we knew the man—comin’ in here and dyin’ thata-way. You know what we stand to lose, don’t you?”
“We don’ lose not’in’, Scanlon. Money? We get heem by an’ by. Next election, though, we lose somet’ing.”
“Gallup, eh? Maybe so. The man ain’t got no ideas. You ’tend to the lights and close up, Vin. I’m dead tired. I’m goin’ to bed.”
“Let ’em burn,” the Basque snapped. “I can swim!”
Scanlon smiled as he recognized his own words of the early evening. But Vinnie put out the lights.
For
