FOOT-LOOSE
The crowd began trooping downstairs as Doc put the body back on the
bed and covered it. Johnny Dice shook his head as he turned to
follow his friends. There was something wrong about this affair. He
felt it long before he was able to put his fingers on anything
definitely suspicious. His tilt with Gallup was of no consequence.
The old man disliked him because he refused to take the coroner
seriously. And then, too, Johnny and Tony had been stringing along
for some years. Aaron had foreclosed a small mortgage on one of
Tony’s relatives. That made bad blood between them.
Johnny’s suspicions crystallized as Doc lifted the body. He saw a
bit of evidence that no man on earth could contradict. His nerves
began to tingle. This man had not killed himself!
Gallup caught the grim smile on Johnny’s face.
“What you waitin’ for?” he asked.
Johnny continued to smile provokingly. “Ain’t no one sittin’ up for
you at home, is there, Aaron?”
The old man’s face went scarlet at this continued heckling.
“By God,” he cried, “I wisht I was twenty years younger! You’d stop
your insolence.”
“That’s so, Aaron. I forgot that. I’m sorry.”
Johnny meant it, too. The old man was an almost helpless target.
Johnny stooped to hide his chagrin and picked a little curl of wool
from the floor.
The action had been unpremeditated, but as his fingers closed upon
the tuft of wool it became charged with importance. Too late. Johnny
tried to palm it. Aaron saw him.
“What’s that you’re pickin’ up?” he demanded.
“A piece of the golden fleece—I mean the creosoted fleece,” Johnny
said with a laugh. “Want it?”
“’Course not, you idiot.”
“You’d better go downstairs, Johnny,” Kent advised. “You and Gallup
remind me of a pair of clawin’ cats. If you ain’t got no respect for
old age, you ought to have for the law, and them that represents
it.”
Something in Kent’s tone made Johnny resent this advice.
“Respect for the law?” he asked. “I’m plumb hostile to law when it
gits as stupid as this. I pick up that bit of wool, and what does it
mean to him? Nothin’! Well, it ought to.”
“How so?” Gallup snapped.
“There ain’t been no sheepman in here tonight. It’s wet outside. The
wind ain’t blowin’ wet wool into this room. How’d that piece of
fleece git here? And while I’m about it, no one has proved to me
that this gent killed hisself. I could have slipped up here and
bumped him off while he slept, held the gun close enough to singe
hair, too. Droppin’ it on the floor as I went out wouldn’t take no
brains at all.”
“What you think don’t interest me,” old Aaron said hotly. “Vin was
downstairs. He’d have known if any one came up here.”
“You run along, Johnny,” Kent again urged.
“Somehow I just don’t like bein’ told to mind my own business
thataway,” Johnny flared, losing his own temper. “I want to tell Doc
and the rest of you that that man couldn’t have killed
hisself—leastwise, not like this.”
“Couldn’t?” Doc Ritter echoed.
“That’s what I said—couldn’t! That bird was a left-handed gent.
Left-handed men ain’t shootin’ themselves in the right temple! ‘By
his own hand’!” Johnny repeated Gallup’s words with fine contempt.
“Oh, hell! Are you fools or what? This man was murdered—shot down in
cold blood!”
“Ain’t nobody but a smart aleck like you tellin’ that a dead man was
left-handed,” the coroner roared.
“Oh, 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!”