DRAWING THE COVER
"You don't understand it, do you, Peaches?" Racey inquired genially
of Peaches Austin when he found himself neighbours with that slippery
gentleman at the inquest.
Peaches shied away from Racey on general principles. He feared
a catch. There were so many things about Racey that he did not
understand.
"Whatcha talking about?" Peaches grunted, surlily.
"You--me--Chuck--everybody, more or less. You don't, do you?"
"Don't what?" A trifle more surlily.
"You don't see how and why Chuck Morgan is so all-fired friendly with
me, and how I'm a-riding for a good outfit like the Bar S, when the
last you seen of me, Chuck was a-hazing me up the trail with my hands
over my head. You don't understand it none. I can see it in your light
green eyes, Peaches."
Peaches modestly veiled his pale green eyes beneath dropped lids
and turned his head away. He would have given a great deal to go
elsewhere. But to do that would be to make himself conspicuous, and
there were many reasons, all more or less cogent, why he did not wish
to make himself conspicuous. Peaches sat still on his chair and broke
into a gentle perspiration.
Racey perceived the other's discomfort and ached to increase it. "Did
you stay here three-four days like I told you to that time a few weeks
ago? And was Jack Harpe most Gawd-awful hot under the collar when you
did see him final? And if so, what happened?"
Racey gaped at Peaches like an expectant terrier watching a rat-hole.
It may be that Peaches felt like a holed rat in a hole too small for
comfort. He turned on Racey with a flash of defiance.
"There was a feller once," said Peaches, "who bit off more'n he could
chew."
"I've heard of him," Racey admitted, gravely. "He was first cousin to
the other feller that grabbed the bear by the tail."
"I dunno whose first cousin he was," frowned Peaches. "All I know is
he didn't show good sense."
"Now that," said Racey, "is where you and I don't think alike. I may
be wrong in what I think. I may have made a mistake, but I gotta be
showed why and wherefore. Anybody is welcome to show me, Peaches, just
anybody."
Racey accompanied his remarks with a chilling look. The perspiration
of Peaches turned clammy.
"Meaning?" Peaches queried.
"Meaning? Why, meaning that you can show me if you like, Peaches."
This was too much for Peaches. He was out of his depth and unable to
swim. He sank with a gurgle of, "I dunno what yo're drivin' at."
Racey shook a sorrowful head. "I'm shore sorry to hear it. I was
guessin' you did. I had hopes of you, Peaches. You've done gimme a
disappointment. Yep, she's a cruel world when all's said and done."
This was too much for Peaches. He resolved to shift his seat whether
it made him conspicuous or not. The gambler removed to a vacant
windowsill, upon which he sat and looked anywhere but at Racey Dawson.
That young man leaned back in his chair and surveyed the multitude.
Besides the citizens found in the saloon on his and Mr. Saltoun's
arrival there were now present Dolan, who combined with his office of
justice of the peace that of coroner, and twelve good men and true,
the coroner's jury and most intimate friends, ready and willing at
any and all times to serve the territory for ten dollars a day and
expenses. In addition to this representative group Alicran Skeel had
dropped in from nowhere, Chuck Morgan had driven over with a wagon
from Soogan Creek (mercifully the family at Moccasin Spring had not
yet been informed of their bereavement), and Sheriff Jake Rule and his
deputy Kansas Casey had ridden out from Farewell. Punch-the-breeze
Thompson had returned with the sheriff. Which circumstance either
disposed of the theory that Thompson was the murderer, or else
Thompson had more nerve than he was supposed to have. Racey began to
nurse a distinct grievance against Thompson.
The main room of the saloon, into which the body had been brought from
the back room, was a fog of smoke and a blabber of voices. McFluke
had not been idle at the bar, and the coroner's jury was three parts
drunk. The members had not yet agreed on a verdict. But the delay was
a mere matter of form. They always liked to stretch the time, and give
the territory a good run for her money.
Racey Dawson, conscious that both Jack Harpe and Luke Tweezy were
watching him covertly, rolled a meticulous cigarette. He scratched
a match on the chair seat, held it to the end of the cigarette,
and stared across the pulsing flame straight into the eyes of the
Marysville lawyer. Tweezy's gaze wavered and fell away. Racey inhaled
strongly, then got to his feet and lazed across to the bar where Jake
Rule, with Kansas Casey at his elbow, was perfunctorily questioning
McFluke. The latter's hard, close-coupled blue eyes narrowed at
Racey's approach.
Racey, as he draped himself against the bar, was careful to nudge
Casey's foot with a surreptitious toe.
"Jake," said Racey, "would I be interruptin' the proceedings too much
if I made a motion for us to drink all round?"
"Not a-tall," declared the sheriff, heartily.
Racey turned to McFluke.
When their hands had encircled the glasses for the third time, Racey,
instead of drinking, suddenly looked across the bar at McFluke who was
industriously swabbing the bar top.
"Mac," he said, easily, "when that stranger ran out the door how many
gents fired at him?"
"Punch Thompson," replied McFluke, the sushing cloth stopping
abruptly. "You heard him tell the coroner how he fired and missed,
didn't you?"
"Oh, I heard, I heard," Racey answered. "No harm in asking again, is
there? Can't be too shore about these here--killin's, can you? Mac,
which door did the stranger run through--the one into the back room or
the one leadin' outdoors?"
"Why, the one leadin' outdoors, of course." McFluke's surprise at the
question was evident.
"Jake," said Racey, "s'pose now you ask Punch Thompson what the
stranger was doing when he cut down on him."
The sheriff regarded Racey with his keen gray gaze. Then he faced
about and singled out Thompson from a conversational group across the
room.
"Punch," he called, and then put Racey's question in his own words.
"What was he doin'?" said Thompson, heedless of McFluke's agonized
expression. "Which he was hoppin' through that window there"--here he
indicated the middle one of three in the side of the room--"when I
drawed and missed. I only had time for the one shot."
At this there was a sudden scrabbling behind the bar. It was McFluke
trying to retreat through the doorway into the back room, and being
prevented from accomplishing his purpose by Racey Dawson who, at the
innkeeper's first panic-stricken movement, had vaulted the bar and
grabbed him by the neck.
"None of that now," cautioned Racey Dawson, his right hand flashing
down and up, as McFluke, finding that escape was out of the question,
made a desperate snatch at the knife-handle protruding from his
bootleg.
The saloon-keeper reacted immediately to the cold menace of the
gun-muzzle pressing against the top of his spinal column. He
straightened sullenly. Racey, transferring the gun-muzzle to the small
of McFluke's back, stooped swiftly, drew out McFluke's knife and
tossed it through a window.
"You won't be needing that again," said Racey Dawson. "Help yoreself,
Kansas."
Which the deputy promptly proceeded to do by snapping a pair of
handcuffs round the thick McFluke wrists.
"Whatell you trying to do?" bawled McFluke in a rage. "I ain't done
nothing! You can't prove I done nothing! You--"
"Shut up!" interrupted Kansas Casey, giving the handcuffs an expert
twitch that wrenched a groan out of McFluke. "Proving anything takes
time. We got time. You got time. What more do you want?"
The efficient deputy towed the saloon-keeper round the bar and out
into the barroom. He faced him about in front of Jake Rule. The
sheriff fixed him with a grim stare.
"What did you try to run for, Mac?" he demanded.
"I had business outdoors," grumbled McFluke.
"What kind of business?"
"What's that to you? You ain't got no license to grab a-hold of me and
stop me from transacting my legitimate business whenever and wherever
I feel like it."
"You seem to know more about it than I do. Alla same unless you feel
like telling me exactly what all yore hurry was for, we'll have to
hold you for a while. Yo're shore it didn't have nothing to do with
yore saying the stranger run out the door and Thompson saying he
jumped through the window?"
"Why, shore I am," grunted McFluke.
"Glad to hear that. But how is it you and Thompson seen the same thing
different ways? It's a cinch the stranger, not being twins, didn't use
_both_ the door and the window. Yo're shore he run out the door, Mac?"
"Shore I am. I seen him, I tell you." But McFluke's tone rang flat.
"Punch," said the sheriff to Thompson who, in company with everyone
else in the room had crowded round the sheriff and the prisoner,
"Punch, how did the stranger who shot Dale leave the room?"
"Through the window, like I said," Thompson declared, defiantly. "Ask
anybody. They all seen him. Mac's drunk or crazy."
"Yo're a liar!" snarled McFluke. "I tell you he run out the door."
"Aw, close yore trap!" requested Thompson with contempt. "You ain't
packin' no gun."
"Lanpher," said the sheriff, "how did the murderer get away."
"Through the window," was the prompt reply of the 88 manager.
The sheriff asked Harpe, Coffin, Tweezy, and the others who had been
present at the killing, for their versions. In every case, each had
seen eye-to-eye with Thompson. The evidence was overwhelmingly against
the saloon-keeper. But he, a glint of fear in his hard blue eyes,
stuck to his original statement, swearing that all men were liars and
he alone was telling the truth.
Racey, standing a little back from the crowd, pulled out his
tobacco-bag. But his fingers must have been all thumbs at the moment
for he dropped it on the floor. He stooped to retrieve it. The
movement brought his eyes within a yard of the body of Dale. And now
he saw that which he had not previously taken note of--an abrasion
across the knuckles of Dale's right hand. Not only that, but the hand,
which was lying over the left hand on the body's breast, showed an odd
lumpiness at the knuckles of the first and second fingers.
Racey stuffed his tobacco-bag into his vest pocket and knelt beside
the body. It was cold, of course, but had not yet completely
stiffened. He laid the two hands side by side and compared them.
The left hand was as it should be--no lumpiness, bruises, or any
discolouration other than grime. But now that the two hands were side
by side the difference in the right hand was most apparent.
Certainly it was badly bruised across the knuckles and the skin was
broken, too. Furthermore, there was that odd lumpiness about the
knuckles of the first and second fingers, a lumpiness that gave the
knuckles almost the appearance of being double.
He picked up the dead hand and gingerly fingered the lumpy knuckles.
Then, in a flash of thought, it came to him. The hand was broken.
He raised his head and looked across the room. And as it chanced he
looked across the packed shoulders and between the peering heads of
the crowd straight into the face of McFluke and the black eye adorning
that face.
He rose to his feet and pushed his way through the crowd to the side
of the sheriff.
"Can I ask a question?" said he to the officer.
"Shore," nodded the sheriff. "Many as you like."
"Thompson," Racey said, but watching McFluke the while, "did Dale have
any trouble here with anybody besides the stranger?"
"Not as I know of," came the reply after a moment's hesitation.
"He didn't have any fuss with anybody," spoke up Luke Tweezy.
"I was talking to Thompson," Racey reminded the lawyer. "When I want
to ask you any questions I'll let you know."
"Huh," Luke contented himself with grunting, and subsided.
"No fuss a-tall, Thompson?" resumed Racey.
"Nary a fuss."
"And you was here alla time Dale was here?"
"I was here before Dale come, and I was still here when Dale--went
away."
"In the same room with him?"
"In this room, yeah. In the same room with him alla time. Shore."
"Then if Dale had had a riot with anybody else but the stranger man
you'd 'a' knowed it."
"You betcha. He didn't have no trouble, only with the stranger."
"Did anybody else have any trouble with anybody while you was here?"
At this Thompson frowned. Where were Racey's questions leading him?
Was it a trap? Knowing Racey as he did, he feared the worst. He
would have liked to leave the questioned unanswered. But this was
impossible. As it was, he was delaying his answer longer than good
sense warranted. Both Jake Rule and Kansas Casey were staring at him
fixedly. Racey regarded him steadily, a slight and sinister smile
lurking at the corner of his mouth.
"Well," prompted Racey, "you'd oughta be able to tell us whether there
was any other fights while you was here?"
"They wasn't," plunged Thompson. "Everything was salubrious till Dale
started his battle."
"And when did you get here?" pursued Racey.
"Oh, I'd been here all night."
"And you dunno of any other brush except the one between Dale and the
stranger?"
"I done said so forty times," Thompson declared, peevishly. "How many
times have I gotta repeat it?"
"As many times as yo're asked," put in the sheriff, sharply.
"Didja see anybody get hurt--have a accident or something while you
were here, Thompson?" Racey bored on.
Thompson shook an impatient head. "Nobody got hurt or had a accident."
"Then," said Racey, turning suddenly on McFluke, "how did you get that
black eye?"