—dww
Danny Morgan found Jack Harris in the coulee back of the shanty.
Someone had shot Harris straight between the eyes and he lay on his back, one leg bent under him and his arms thrown wide, as if a giant hand had slapped him backward violently. Harris’ gun still was in its holster. His eyes stared at the silent sky. His mouth sagged as if, before he died, he’d had time to be surprised.
Morgan’s hands lifted to his gun butts, then dropped away. There was, he realized, no further danger now. The man on the ground had been killed hours, probably days before. Probably shortly after Morgan had left for Butte City.
Slowly, Morgan glanced around. The prairie swells marched in serried ranks to the high horizon that hemmed in the bowl that held the spread. And the bowl was empty, empty to the sun and little gusts of wind that puffed and eddied down the coulees. Nothing stirred within it, no sign of life at all.
The cattle would be down in the brakes, at the lower end of the ranch.
Up ahead, jutting out of the coulee’s side, was a jumbled ledge of broken rocks. Morgan’s eyes narrowed, hard in the bright sunlight. Those rocks were the only cover anywhere nearby, and were within easy rifle shot.
He walked up the coulee, climbed to the cluster of boulders. On the slope just below the rocks lay something white … a cigarette, half burned, unconsumed tobacco spilling from the paper. A man sitting in the rocks above could have flipped it there.
Among the boulders Morgan found other stubs. All of them half smoked.
Someone, obviously, had squatted there, nervously puffing while he waited.
Crouched among the rocks, the ranchman stared back down the coulee to where the body of his partner lay. A tenderfoot couldn’t have missed a shot like that.
A tiny breeze, hot in the midday sun, stirred down the coulee, fluttering something that lay within the shadow. Morgan reached out his hand. It was a tobacco sack, turned inside out, as if the man who had waited there had been determined to get out of it the last shred of leaf.
Staring at the sack, Morgan tried to marshal his thoughts.
Jack Harris had had his moments of bad temper, his sullen days, but he was not a trouble maker, he got along well with the folks he met. Morgan racked his brains for some enemy Harris might have had, could think of no one.
Could the killer have been someone from out of Harris’ past? Someone who finally hunted him down? Something that finally caught up with him?
That, pondered Morgan, might have been the reason Jack had been so anxious to sell out. Although the last winter had been enough to make anyone want to sell, with more than half the cattle gone before the spring thaw came. Although it hadn’t hit them any worse, perhaps not as hard, as it had hit some others. The Diamond C, Jay Crawford’s big ranch just to the south, had lost more than 20,000 head.
A horse nickered from the shanty. Probably Harris’ horse, still standing just as Morgan had found him, saddled and bridled, waiting with drooping head outside the shanty door. Almost as if he knew his master was dead.
Then Morgan saw the riders, three of them, coming up the draw, the horses picking their way through the grove of cottonwoods that grew above the spring.
Morgan clambered down the hill, walked down the coulee and waited beside the dead man until the three drew rein.
«Howdy, sheriff,» said Morgan. «Just fixing to ride in and see you.»
The burly sheriff sat his horse easily, carelessly, stared down at Harris’ body. Morgan nodded to the other two. One of them was Harry Kress, the sheriff’s deputy, the other Hank Fridley, Diamond C foreman. They nodded, saying nothing.
«What do you know about this, Danny?» the sheriff asked.
«Not a thing,» said Morgan. «I just found him. Not more than an hour ago. The sidewinder that done it hid out in them rocks up there.»
The sheriff nodded. «How come you didn’t find him until just now?» he demanded. «From the looks of him, he’s been dead for quite a long spell, I’d say.»
«I just got back. I started out for Butte City a week ago.»
The sheriff looked at him sharply. «You and Jack have another fight?» he asked.
«We had some words,» admitted Morgan. «Crawford made us an offer for the spread and Jack wanted to sell. I wanted to hang on. Upshot of it was I left for Butte City to try to raise the money to buy out his share.»
The sheriff slid from his horse, waddled over to the body.
«Clean a piece of work as I ever see.»
He stared at Morgan solemnly. «How come you took so long to Butte City and back? Go on a little toot?»
«I never got to Butte City,» said Morgan. «End of the first day out, my hoss got snake-bit. Had to hole up beside the creek for a while and wait till he could travel. Then I hoofed it back here, leading him. Took me three days to make it.»
«You mean you never did get to Butte City? All this time you been sittin’ out on the prairie, takin’ care of a snake-bit hoss?»
Morgan flared angrily. «Just what are you trying to say, sheriff?»
The deputy laughed. «Don’t monkey around with him no more, Fred. Go ahead and tell him what you got on your mind.»
For a moment silence struck and froze them where they stood, with not a single one of them moving a muscle.
Then the deputy spoke. «I wouldn’t go for them guns if I was you, Danny.» Fridley laughed softly.
«You’re all plumb loco,» yelled Morgan. «Why would I kill Jack? Him and me was partners. Why we …»
«Shut your trap,» said the sheriff, «and wave your paws. I’m going to take your guns.»
«Someday,» declared Morgan, «I’ll just naturally gut-shoot all three of you for this.»
«You better hurry, then,» said Kress, mockingly. «Because it won’t be long before you’ll be stretching hemp.»
From the tiny window in the rear of the jail, Morgan stared out over the crazily twisted land of turreted bluff and angry purple canyon. The setting sun hung in the west, intensifying the weird colors.
His head buzzed with a thousand questions. Who killed Harris? Why?
How come the sheriff put in an appearance just when he did? Of course, the sheriff had explained that. Said Hank Fridley had found Harris’ body and ridden in to report it. But never before in the three years he and Harris had lived on the spread had Fridley been at their place. And why, above all, had the sheriff been so quick to pin it on him?
Morgan shook his head. Nothing added up, nothing came up right.
A knock came at the door.
«Yes, what is it?» Morgan called.
The door, a heavy wooden affair, creaked open.
«Visitor to see you,» declared Deputy Kress.
A tall man, dressed in broadcloth coat and polished boots, the dust of the trail clinging to his clothes, loomed in the doorway. It was Jay Crawford.
«Howdy,» said Morgan. «This is a right nice thing for you to do.»
Crawford lumbered into the room, the floor boards creaking under his heavy tread.
«Heard you was in trouble, Danny,» he said, «and hurried right over. Thought maybe I could help.»
«They think I killed Jack,» said Morgan.
Crawford sat down heavily on the single bench in the room. «So the sheriff told me. Said you ain’t got much of a case.»
Morgan shrugged. «Maybe the sheriff’s right. I was stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a snake-bit hoss. Can’t nohow prove where I was, I guess.»
Crawford wagged his head. «Sorry you got into anything like this, Danny. Been watching you and Jack. Ready to offer a helping hand if anything went wrong. But you seemed to be making out all right. Sent some of the boys over this afternoon to look after things for you.»
«Much obliged,» declared Morgan.