The Heart of the Range Part 46

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 surrept.i.tious 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 gla.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 sh.o.r.e 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, sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e he run out the door, Mac?"

"Sh.o.r.e 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.

"Sh.o.r.e," 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."