The Heart of the Range

by William Patterson White

  CHAPTER XX

  DRAWING THE COVER

  "You don't understand it, do you, Peaches?" Racey inquired geniallyof Peaches Austin when he found himself neighbours with that slipperygentleman at the inquest.

  Peaches shied away from Racey on general principles. He feareda catch. There were so many things about Racey that he did notunderstand.

  "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 withme, and how I'm a-riding for a good outfit like the Bar S, when thelast you seen of me, Chuck was a-hazing me up the trail with my handsover my head. You don't understand it none. I can see it in your lightgreen eyes, Peaches."

  Peaches modestly veiled his pale green eyes beneath dropped lidsand turned his head away. He would have given a great deal to goelsewhere. But to do that would be to make himself conspicuous, andthere were many reasons, all more or less cogent, why he did not wishto make himself conspicuous. Peaches sat still on his chair and brokeinto a gentle perspiration.

  Racey perceived the other's discomfort and ached to increase it. "Didyou stay here three-four days like I told you to that time a few weeksago? And was Jack Harpe most Gawd-awful hot under the collar when youdid 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 forcomfort. He turned on Racey with a flash of defiance.

  "There was a feller once," said Peaches, "who bit off more'n he couldchew."

  "I've heard of him," Racey admitted, gravely. "He was first cousin tothe other feller that grabbed the bear by the tail."

  "I dunno whose first cousin he was," frowned Peaches. "All I know ishe didn't show good sense."

  "Now that," said Racey, "is where you and I don't think alike. I maybe wrong in what I think. I may have made a mistake, but I gotta beshowed why and wherefore. Anybody is welcome to show me, Peaches, justanybody."

  Racey accompanied his remarks with a chilling look. The perspirationof 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 toswim. 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 wasguessin' you did. I had hopes of you, Peaches. You've done gimme adisappointment. Yep, she's a cruel world when all's said and done."

  This was too much for Peaches. He resolved to shift his seat whetherit made him conspicuous or not. The gambler removed to a vacantwindowsill, 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'sarrival there were now present Dolan, who combined with his office ofjustice of the peace that of coroner, and twelve good men and true,the coroner's jury and most intimate friends, ready and willing atany and all times to serve the territory for ten dollars a day andexpenses. In addition to this representative group Alicran Skeel haddropped in from nowhere, Chuck Morgan had driven over with a wagonfrom Soogan Creek (mercifully the family at Moccasin Spring had notyet been informed of their bereavement), and Sheriff Jake Rule and hisdeputy Kansas Casey had ridden out from Farewell. Punch-the-breezeThompson had returned with the sheriff. Which circumstance eitherdisposed of the theory that Thompson was the murderer, or elseThompson had more nerve than he was supposed to have. Racey began tonurse a distinct grievance against Thompson.

  The main room of the saloon, into which the body had been brought fromthe back room, was a fog of smoke and a blabber of voices. McFlukehad not been idle at the bar, and the coroner's jury was three partsdrunk. The members had not yet agreed on a verdict. But the delay wasa mere matter of form. They always liked to stretch the time, and givethe territory a good run for her money.

  Racey Dawson, conscious that both Jack Harpe and Luke Tweezy werewatching him covertly, rolled a meticulous cigarette. He scratcheda match on the chair seat, held it to the end of the cigarette,and stared across the pulsing flame straight into the eyes of theMarysville lawyer. Tweezy's gaze wavered and fell away. Racey inhaledstrongly, then got to his feet and lazed across to the bar where JakeRule, with Kansas Casey at his elbow, was perfunctorily questioningMcFluke. The latter's hard, close-coupled blue eyes narrowed atRacey's approach.

  Racey, as he draped himself against the bar, was careful to nudgeCasey's foot with a surreptitious toe.

  "Jake," said Racey, "would I be interruptin' the proceedings too muchif 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 wasindustriously swabbing the bar top.

  "Mac," he said, easily, "when that stranger ran out the door how manygents fired at him?"

  "Punch Thompson," replied McFluke, the sushing cloth stoppingabruptly. "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, isthere? 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 orthe one leadin' outdoors?"

  "Why, the one leadin' outdoors, of course." McFluke's surprise at thequestion was evident.

  "Jake," said Racey, "s'pose now you ask Punch Thompson what thestranger was doing when he cut down on him."

  The sheriff regarded Racey with his keen gray gaze. Then he facedabout and singled out Thompson from a conversational group across theroom.

  "Punch," he called, and then put Racey's question in his own words.

  "What was he doin'?" said Thompson, heedless of McFluke's agonizedexpression. "Which he was hoppin' through that window there"--here heindicated the middle one of three in the side of the room--"when Idrawed and missed. I only had time for the one shot."

  At this there was a sudden scrabbling behind the bar. It was McFluketrying to retreat through the doorway into the back room, and beingprevented from accomplishing his purpose by Racey Dawson who, at theinnkeeper's first panic-stricken movement, had vaulted the bar andgrabbed him by the neck.

  "None of that now," cautioned Racey Dawson, his right hand flashingdown and up, as McFluke, finding that escape was out of the question,made a desperate snatch at the knife-handle protruding from hisbootleg.

  The saloon-keeper reacted immediately to the cold menace of thegun-muzzle pressing against the top of his spinal column. Hestraightened sullenly. Racey, transferring the gun-muzzle to the smallof McFluke's back, stooped swiftly, drew out McFluke's knife andtossed 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 ofhandcuffs round the thick McFluke wrists.

  "Whatell you trying to do?" bawled McFluke in a rage. "I ain't donenothing! You can't prove I done nothing! You--"

  "Shut up!" interrupted Kansas Casey, giving the handcuffs an experttwitch that wrenched a groan out of McFluke. "Proving anything takestime. We got time. You got time. What more do you want?"

  The efficient deputy towed the saloon-keeper round the bar and outinto the barroom. He faced him about in front of Jake Rule. Thesheriff 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 andstop me from transacting my legitimate business whenever and whereverI feel like it."

  "You seem to know more ab
out it than I do. Alla same unless you feellike telling me exactly what all yore hurry was for, we'll have tohold you for a while. Yo're shore it didn't have nothing to do withyore saying the stranger run out the door and Thompson saying hejumped through the window?"

  "Why, shore I am," grunted McFluke.

  "Glad to hear that. But how is it you and Thompson seen the same thingdifferent 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 everyoneelse 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. "Askanybody. 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'tpackin' 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 beenpresent at the killing, for their versions. In every case, each hadseen eye-to-eye with Thompson. The evidence was overwhelmingly againstthe saloon-keeper. But he, a glint of fear in his hard blue eyes,stuck to his original statement, swearing that all men were liars andhe alone was telling the truth.

  Racey, standing a little back from the crowd, pulled out histobacco-bag. But his fingers must have been all thumbs at the momentfor he dropped it on the floor. He stooped to retrieve it. Themovement brought his eyes within a yard of the body of Dale. And nowhe saw that which he had not previously taken note of--an abrasionacross 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 oddlumpiness at the knuckles of the first and second fingers.

  Racey stuffed his tobacco-bag into his vest pocket and knelt besidethe body. It was cold, of course, but had not yet completelystiffened. He laid the two hands side by side and compared them.The left hand was as it should be--no lumpiness, bruises, or anydiscolouration other than grime. But now that the two hands were sideby side the difference in the right hand was most apparent.

  Certainly it was badly bruised across the knuckles and the skin wasbroken, too. Furthermore, there was that odd lumpiness about theknuckles of the first and second fingers, a lumpiness that gave theknuckles 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 helooked across the packed shoulders and between the peering heads ofthe crowd straight into the face of McFluke and the black eye adorningthat face.

  He rose to his feet and pushed his way through the crowd to the sideof 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 haveany 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 wantto 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--wentaway."

  "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 manyou'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. Hewould have liked to leave the questioned unanswered. But this wasimpossible. As it was, he was delaying his answer longer than goodsense warranted. Both Jake Rule and Kansas Casey were staring at himfixedly. Racey regarded him steadily, a slight and sinister smilelurking at the corner of his mouth.

  "Well," prompted Racey, "you'd oughta be able to tell us whether therewas any other fights while you was here?"

  "They wasn't," plunged Thompson. "Everything was salubrious till Dalestarted 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 thestranger?"

  "I done said so forty times," Thompson declared, peevishly. "How manytimes 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 youwere 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 thatblack eye?"