Smoke of the .45. Harry Sinclair Drago

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!”

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