“It’s the truth,” Dick said huskily.

  “You plumb sure you didn’t figure it might be a good idea if Bill was to die before he had a chance to see that girl claiming to be his daughter from the East?”

  A spasm of pain crossed Dick’s young face. “What’re you askin’ these questions for?” he demanded. “Is it anybody’s fault that Dad died durin’ the night? Sure, I’m ashamed I was too drunk to even know he was bad sick, but that ain’t no crime.”

  “Maybe not,” said Pat heavily. “But I can’t help thinking how handy it was for him to die right when he did. I reckon this ranch is willed to you, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I never asked him.”

  “But you know he figured on leavin’ it to you. And that girl comin’ along might upset the applecart if she an’ Bill had got together. I’m not forgettin’,” he went on significantly, “how Clay Porter wouldn’t let her come out here last night to see him. What was Clay’s interest in it?”

  “I don’t know,” Dick said bleakly. “You keep on actin’ like you thought Dad was murdered ’stead of dying natural-like in bed.”

  “You saw his face and the way he was twisted up,” said Pat harshly. “Does that look like he died easy in his sleep?”

  “No,” Dick agreed brokenly. “He must of been in pain. But it still doesn’t prove I could of helped him if I’d been awake and sober.”

  Pat walked slowly over to the roll-top desk and stood looking down at it. “Didn’t Bill always keep this desk closed?”

  “Yeh.” Dick had his face buried in his hands and wasn’t looking at him.

  “And locked?” Pat went on evenly.

  “Sure. It was one of them kind that locked automatically when you closed the top down.” Dick lifted his head and asked curiously, “Why’re you askin’ that?”

  Pat said, “Come over here.”

  Dick got up reluctantly and went to his side. He gazed down at the litter of papers with lackluster eyes and said, “It looks like Dad was workin’ here last evening and forgot to lock it.”

  “Did Bill ever leave his desk in that kind of mess when he was working on his papers?”

  Dick licked his lips and shook his head, looking baffled. “Nope. He always put all the papers away when he was finished.” He paused a moment and his voice trembled queerly, “Maybe he got took sick while he was working here.”

  “Was this desk standing open when you came home last night?”

  “I dunno,” Dick groaned. “I tell you I didn’t notice an’ don’t remember. It might of been I guess. I went straight to my room and to bed as far’s I know.”

  Pat closed the roll-top, and then pulled up on the handle. The top lifted easily. Watching him, Dick’s eyes widened and he sucked in his breath. “It ought’ve locked when you closed it like that. It always locked itself before.”

  “The lock’s busted,” Pat grunted. He pointed out the marks on the desk showing where it had been pried open. “Where’d your father keep the key?”

  “On his key-ring,” Dick faltered. He was looking down at the desk as though hypnotized by it. “I dunno why he’d have to pry it open less’n he lost the key or something.”

  “I don’t think Bill did pry it open,” Pat muttered angrily. “I think somebody else did … lookin’ for something. You knew he had some papers in there tellin’ about his real name being Wilcox and all, didn’t you?”

  Dick’s jaw dropped open slackly. He didn’t answer.

  “Didn’t you?” Pat seized him by the shoulder and shook him violently.

  “No,” whimpered the boy miserably. “I didn’t know what he kept in the desk. You keep actin’ like I done somethin’ wrong.”

  Pat shoved him back roughly. “I ain’t a bit sure but what you have. Maybe this ain’t strictly legal, but I’m the sheriff and I guess I got a right to snoop. I’m going through these papers right now an’ find out the truth about things … whether he’s the man that Wilcox girl is lookin’ for or not.”

  6.

  Pat Stevens had just finished going through every paper in the desk carefully when Sam got back to the ranch with Doc Trimble in tow. Doc was a fat little man with thick spectacles and an alcoholic complexion. At this hour of the morning Doc was still sober, though it was evident he’d had a few nips from an early bottle before Sam reached him in Dutch Springs.

  He came stamping up the path to the Four-V’s ranch house with his silvery hair gleaming in the sunlight and his black bag in his hand, and when Pat opened the door for him, he complained, “I don’t know why you had Sam drag me out here like this, Sheriff. Bill Freeman’s dead, isn’t he? That calls for an undertaker rather than a physician.”

  “I want you do some official checkin’ up, Doc.” Pat glanced behind him at the slumped figure of Dick in a big rawhide chair. “I want to know what Bill died of, and when he died, and how sick he was last time you saw him.”

  “I saw him last week and he was a perfectly well man. Except for some wrenched muscles in his back from a fall. I advised him to stay off a horse for another month or so, and to take it easy. But he was as healthy as you are otherwise.” The doctor stopped to look at the boy and sniffed the air suspiciously. “There wouldn’t be drink in the house, would there?”

  “I’m afraid not. Dick saw to that last night.” Pat grinned and led the untidy little fat man toward the death-room, adding, “If you’ve got anything for a hangover you can dose Dick up after you’ve looked at Bill.”

  “I don’t know anything about hangovers,” said Doc Trimble seriously. “Never have ’em myself.”

  “Way to work that is never get plumb sober, isn’t it?” Pat asked with a grin.

  The doctor wasn’t at all abashed. “I find it a pleasant way at least. In here, eh?”

  Pat stood aside to let the doctor go in first. Trimble glanced at the dead man on the bed, went to windows and lifted both shades to let brilliant sunlight flood the room. He came back to the bed and pulled the coverlet off Bill Freeman’s twisted body.

  Standing in the doorway, Pat’s eyes widened in surprise as he did so. He’d only pulled the cover down to expose Bill’s face previously, and hadn’t realized the rancher was still fully clothed under the cover.

  Doc Trimble frowned down at the corpse, and removed his glasses to wipe the thick lenses carefully with the tail of his shirt. He settled them back on his nose and said, “H-m-m.”

  Sam Sloan came up beside Pat as the doctor leaned over the body. He had stayed behind outside to tie up the doctor’s team hitched to his buckboard, and he told Pat quietly, “Nobody I talked to has seen Clay Porter since yesterday. I passed the word around that you wanted him here.”

  Pat nodded. He was watching Doc Trimble with concentrated attention as the medico rolled back the corpse’s eyelids, poked the stiff body here and there, and then bent to make a minute examination of his neck.

  He straightened up and said brusquely. “Bill Freeman was strangled. Somebody choked him to death.”

  Pat straightened and let out a long rasping breath. It was what he had subconsciously known ever since he first looked at the contorted features of the dead man, but even so the official pronouncement from Trimble had a terrific impact.

  He asked hoarsely, “How long’s he been dead, Doc?”

  “That’s difficult to say.” Trimble stepped back and cocked his head on one side and studied the corpse through half-closed eyes. “Rigor mortis is complete. That means at least twelve hours. Possibly twenty.” He dragged out a heavy gold watch and snapped it open. “It’s a little after ten now. U-m-m. Some time between five yesterday afternoon and ten last night, for a guess.”

  “Can’t you come closer than that, Doc? Don’t the city doctors do things to set it closer than that.”

  Doc Trimble pushed down his spectacles and glared at Pat over the gold rims. “I can do anything any city doctor can do. If you want a Post Mortem, why didn’t you say so? I’ll need to know exactly what he ate last, and exactly when he ate it.”

  Pat nodded and asked grimly, “Can you do it here, Doc? That post whatever it is it’ll take?”

  “Of course not,” Trimble said scathingly. “I’ll have to take him into my office. I need a stimulant for that sort of work.”

  Pat stepped back and told Sam, “Help Doc wrap him in a blanket and carry him out to the buckboard. Sooner you get at it the better, Doc.”

  He went back into the living room. Dick Freeman leaped up and blurted out, “Did he … what does the Doc say?”

  “He says Bill Freeman’s dead,” Pat told him. “It was right after sundown when you an’ Clay left the hotel. About seven o’clock. How fast did you ride comin’ back?”

  “I don’t know.” Dick’s voice trembled. “Not very fast, the way I recollect it. But we came straight along.”

  “Didn’t take you more’n an hour, I reckon?” Pat pressed him.

  Dick shook his head and looked bewildered. “I reckon not.”

  “Which’d put you-all here not later than eight,” mused Pat. “Did you fix anything to eat after you got back?”

  Dick shook his head miserably and mumbled, “I reckon not. I sure don’t remember it if we did.”

  Sam Sloan came striding out, puffing under the weight of Bill Freeman’s stiff body wrapped in a blanket. Dick recoiled and shuddered at the sight, covering his face with both hands. Pat detained the doctor as he was following Sam out, “Can you tell anything about how drunk a fellow’s been the night before by seeing him the next morning?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want you to look Dick over. He claims he drank a quart of whiskey las’ night. A pint of it riding home, and the rest after he went to bed. He claims he don’t remember anything after getting here about eight o’clock.”

  Doc Trimble’s eyes glinted with curiosity behind their thick lenses. He didn’t ask Pat any questions, but took the boy’s pulse, looked at his tongue and eyes, checked his respiration and asked him a few questions.

  He shrugged when he finished and told Pat, “He wasted a lot of whiskey last night, all right. If he’s as unused to drinking as he says, a pint could easily black out his memory. He evidently threw up during the night, so he hasn’t so much of it left in him.”

  Pat said, “He did. I saw the mess in his bedroom.” He hesitated before asking, “Could he have done things after drinkin’ a pint without remembering them? I mean … I’ve seen fellows that kept right on walkin’ and talkin’ and fightin’, even, when they were passed out and didn’t know what they were doing?”

  “You’re asking if he could have strangled his father last night without knowing he did it this morning,” the doctor said precisely without looking at Dick, speaking as though the boy wasn’t there. He took off his glasses and polished them carefully.

  “Yes. It’s possible, Pat. The human mind has a peculiar way of protecting itself against such shocks. While drunk, there is a tendency to forget things one doesn’t wish to remember.” He settled the glasses back on his nose and looked at Dick curiously but without pity. “He knows subconsciously, of course, whether he did such an awful thing or not. He may not realize he knows it, but he does.”

  “I didn’t,” Dick sobbed out frantically. “I couldn’t have done it. I was too drunk. I don’t remember anything.”

  Both men completely disregarded his outburst. Doc Trimble went on quietly, as though discussing nothing more important than the symptoms of a common cold:

  “Alcohol has a way of releasing one from binding inhibitions, of stimulating secret and shameful desires. In other words, a drunken man is extremely unlikely to harm a person he loves. It’s difficult to force him to do anything contrary to his innermost desires.”

  “You’re tryin’ to say,” said Pat roughly, “that Dick couldn’t have murdered Bill Freeman when he was drunk unless he’d been thinkin’ about murdering him, and wanting to while he was sober.”

  Dr. Trimble said, “Precisely.”

  Pat said, “Come out into the kitchen.” He led the way out, and explained briefly what Dick had told him about coming home the preceding night. “We still don’t know where Clay Porter is nor what his story will be,” Pat concluded, “but here’s these dirty dishes. You were askin’ what Bill ate last, an’ when. There’s a pot of beans on the back of the stove, an’ you can see that beans and cold biscuits were eaten off that plate. Maybe Dick or Clay ate off it last night. There’s two dirty coffee cups but just one dirty plate.” He turned his head and called, “Come in here a minute, Dick.”

  Dick came to the door slowly. He kept opening his mouth and closing it, like a fish freshly drawn from the water. His bloodshot eyes were angry and staring.

  Pat said, “First. Tell us when you and Clay left the ranch yesterday.”

  “About three o’clock.”

  “Were the dishes all cleaned up in here when you left?”

  “Yeh. I washed ’em after dinner. There was a pot of beans on the back of the stove an’ some cold biscuits, and Dad told us he’d fix his supper if we weren’t back by sundown.”

  “Would he have washed his dishes after he got through?”

  “Can’t you see he didn’t?” asked Dick resentfully, gesturing toward the dirty dishes on the table. “He ain’t been doing anything around the house since he hurt his back.”

  Pat said, “That’s all,” curtly, and turned to Dr. Trimble.

  Dick didn’t turn away from the doorway. In a voice that held a curious mixture of wrath and fright, he exclaimed, “I can see what you’re fixin’ to do. You’re tryin’ to hang it on me. But I couldn’t of done it. I was so blamed drunk I couldn’t hardly stand up when I got off my hawse.”

  Pat said, “Go back and sit down.” He shrugged and told Trimble, “There you are about what Bill ate last an’ when. If we don’t find out different from Clay, it looks like we can figure Bill ate some beans about sundown. Will that help?”

  “It will help a great deal,” Trimble told him. He studied Pat shrewdly and lowered his voice, “Do you think the boy in there did it? He always struck me as being weak but not vicious. A boy’d have to have a mighty strong streak of meanness in him to up and kill a man who’d been as good to an orphan as Bill Freeman has been to him.”

  Pat said, “I know.” He didn’t tell Doc Trimble about the possible motive for murder in the person of the attractive young girl from Philadelphia who threatened to displace Dick as Bill Freeman’s heir. He simply said, “You can see why the time Bill got killed may be mighty important. When we find Clay, we may know a lot more about it.”

  Sam Sloan entered the front door excitedly as the two men came out of the kitchen. “Jess Dorr is ridin’ up the road with Clay Porter,” he reported. “I got you all loaded up, Doc.”

  Trimble said, “I’ll be getting along.” He went out to his buckboard and Pat followed him out to stand on the steps.

  Jess Dorr was a neighboring rancher whose spread adjoined the Four-V’s on the north. His headquarters was about six miles northward, along the upper slope of the Valley. He was a big, raw-boned, taciturn man with a meek wife and a brood of seven children at home. He and Clay Porter were loping up the road from the north side by side. They turned into the ranchyard and checked their horses twenty feet from the doorway in which Pat was standing. Porter flung himself from the saddle and stalked forward, his features dark with wrath.

  “What’s this all about, Sheriff? Jess came ridin’ out to hunt me up and say I was wanted here pronto. One of his boys heard it in town that you was gettin’ out a warrant for me. What the hell’s the idee?”

  Pat hooked his thumbs in the front of his gunbelt and nodded toward Dr. Trimble’s buckboard disappearing in a cloud of dust toward town. “Doc’s takin’ Bill Freeman to town.”

  “Is he took bad?”

  “Dead,” Pat said laconically.

  “Shore now, that’s tough,” Porter ejaculated. “I didn’t know he was that bad off.”

  “Did you come home with Dick last night?”

  “I shore did. If I hadn’t he mightn’t of made it home.”

  “Drunk, huh?”

  “Drunk as a hoot owl.”

  “On a bottle of whiskey you bought for him?”

  “Awright,” blustered Clay Porter. “So I bought it for him. I figured he needed it las’ night. He was mighty down in the mouth about that gal poppin’ up and claimin’ to be Bill’s real daughter.”

  “So you got him drunk?” Pat said angrily.

  Porter shrugged. “I didn’t know he was drinkin’ so much on the way home. He was holdin’ it good till he got off his hawse right in front of the door. Then I saw he’d downed near half of the bottle an’ couldn’t hardly stand up.”

  Pat’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What did you do?”

  “Me?” Porter frowned at the question. “I unsaddled his hawse for him an’ then I rode on over to Jess’s to put up for the night. I didn’t hanker to nursemaid a drunk kid, and I wanted to get an early start this mornin’ working some of our dogies down outta them high coulees next to Jess’s south fence. Saved me a couple of hours workin’ time by startin’ at daylight from there, and without no help these days there ain’t enough daylight hours to get all the work done.”

  “Did you tell Bill or Dick where you were going?”

  Porter shook his head. “I’d told Bill yesterday afternoon. I just rode on over to Jess’s after unsaddlin’ Dick’s hawse for him.”

  “Didn’t you go in the house at all? To see Dick got to bed all right?”

  “No, I didn’t. I figgered he could make it to bed. Look here, Stevens. Why’re you askin’ all these questions?”

  “Bill Freeman was murdered last night.” Pat’s words were harsh and angry. He turned his attention to Jess Dorr who had dismounted and sauntered forward. “What time did Clay reach your house last night?”

  “I reckon ’twas about eight-thirty. Not much later’n that. Mirandy was still settin’ up with me and she fixed him some vittles when he said he hadn’t et no supper.”

  “And he stayed there all night?”

  “Till daylight this mawnin’. He was honin’ to git out an’ git started to work pushin’ them dogies down to lower ground ’fore we got a heavy snow in the hills.”