“Where did you find him just now?”

  “Up yonder where he said he’d be. He had a dozen calves rounded up when I come on him.”

  “See here, Sheriff.” Clay Porter stepped close and tilted his head to look up into Pat’s face as he stood on the porch above him. The Four-V’s foreman’s voice was rough but subdued, “You say Bill was murdered? How? Who done it? Did Dick see him?”

  “Dick claims he was passed out dead drunk. That’s your doin’.”

  “D’yuh reckon … he could have done it?”

  Pat said, “I’m taking him in for it.” He turned and went into the house, told the boy quietly, “Pack yourself a few clothes, son. Enough to last you a few days in jail anyhow.”

  7.

  Dick Freeman remained in a dazed and sullen mood all during the ride to town and while Pat was locking him up in the iron-barred adobe jail at the rear of the courthouse. He accepted his arrest apathetically, and for the life of him, Pat couldn’t decide whether that was a sign of guilt or not.

  At the ranch, Clay Porter had hotly argued with Pat about arresting the boy, insisting there wasn’t a shred of real evidence against him, pointing out that the boy was so drunk anyone might have stopped by the ranch during the night and committed the murder without waking Dick from his drunken stupor.

  This, Pat had to admit was quite true; but where was the motive for anyone else to murder Bill Freeman? Even Porter had to admit that Freeman didn’t have a single known enemy. Yet he insisted that Dick didn’t have any motive either. Even if it should turn out that Bill Freeman was really named William Wilcox.

  Pat didn’t waste time arguing the point with Porter at the ranch. For one thing, he knew Dick Freeman would be safer locked up in jail after the citizens of the Valley learned the details of Freeman’s murder and the youth’s lack of an alibi. He was bound to be suspected by Freeman’s many friends, and Pat figured it would be better all around to have him locked up safe while the investigation proceeded. If he was guilty it would prevent his making a getaway; and if innocent, it might easily prevent a miscarriage of frontier justice.

  Clay Porter rode into town with the trio, angry and silent and preoccupied. He stood at the jail door as Pat was locking the boy up, to give him a final word of advice and encouragement:

  “I don’t believe you ever done it, Dick. Don’t get to broodin’ over what maybe might have happened while you were too drunk to remember. I’m gonna do some investigatin’ myself, an’ I’ll see that you ain’t railroaded.”

  Pat Stevens padlocked the iron door and walked slowly back to the lean-to office in the rear where Sam was waiting. Clay Porter followed him, his face dark with anger and his jaw aggressively outthrust.

  “I’m takin’ a hand in this deal,” he announced, following Pat into the small office. “I reckon I’m about the only friend Dick’ll have when word gets around you’ve arrested him.”

  Pat pulled off his hat and tossed it on a nail in the wall. “I need all the help I can get,” he admitted frankly. “But I wanta warn you, Clay, that you’re not in too good a spot yourself. If we do prove Dick did it while he was drunk, you got to remember it was you that got him drunk. That makes you what the law calls an accessory before the fact, I reckon … an’ you can get a good long time in prison for that.”

  “Don’t you reckon I’m thinkin’ about that?” raged Clay Porter. “Shore, you’d like nothin’ better’n to send me up too. That’s one reason I aim to prove it wasn’t Dick.”

  “Fair enough,” Pat agreed. “But I reckon you got to admit Dick didn’t like the idee of losing out on the ranch to that girl at the hotel.”

  “Shore, it sorta flabbergasted him,” Porter snorted hotly. “But he didn’t think for a minute she was tellin’ the truth. He wasn’t worried none. Neither one of us ever heard Bill Freeman say anything about bein’ named Wilcox.”

  “That’ll all come out as soon as Winters gets back from Pueblo,” Sam observed.

  “Shore it will. That’s why Dick wasn’t worryin’ none about losing the ranch last night,” snarled Porter. “We talked about it ridin’ home an’ he was plumb easy in his mind about waitin’ for Winters to get back and tell who Wilcox really is.”

  Pat said, “If you can prove that, I’ll admit Dick didn’t have any reason to murder his foster-father.”

  Porter’s features darkened grimly. “You got my word for it.”

  “Which ain’t enough,” Pat told him flatly. “You’re a good friend of Dick’s, an’ maybe he promised you part of the ranch if you’d help him get it.”

  With a smothered curse, Porter swung his fist at the point of the seated sheriff’s jaw. Pat rocked sideways with the force of the blow, and Sam Sloan leaped in with his gun drawn. He slammed the heavy barrel of his .45 across the side of Porter’s head, and the Four-V’s foreman crumpled up on the floor with a loud sigh. Sam leaned over him and extracted his gun from its holster, straightened up to ask Pat, “How bad did he hurt you?”

  “Not too bad.” Pat straightened his chair and waggled his jaw wryly. “I sort of asked for that,” he admitted. “How bad did you hurt him?”

  “He’s comin’ ’round,” Sam announced disgustedly. “I didn’t get a good enuff swing or I woulda cracked his head wide open.”

  Porter groaned and struggled up to a sitting position. His hand darted down to his empty holster, and he glared malevolently at Sam when he found his gun missing.

  “Get up off the floor,” Pat said tersely. “An’ give him back his six-gun, Sam.”

  “I better keep it. He’s liable to …”

  “He’s not liable to do nothin’,” Pat said evenly. “Don’t swing on me again,” he admonished Porter mildly as the man got to his feet.

  “I had plenty of cause,” Porter said thickly. “You as good as accused me of coverin’ up for Dick so’s to get a cut out of the ranch after he gets it.”

  “I didn’t accuse you of anything. I showed you why your evidence mightn’t be accepted in court. Holster your gun and ease up a little.”

  Sam handed him back his .45 butt first, and Porter hesitated a moment before shoving it down into its leather. “Maybe I did go off half-cocked,” he muttered ungraciously, “but I shore didn’t like what you were thinkin’.”

  “I got to think that way,” said Pat shortly. “Right now I don’t know anybody that could have had a reason to kill Bill Freeman except Dick. Him being afraid Bill might really be the William Wilcox the girl is lookin’ for.”

  “S’pose he was?” argued Porter. “What good would it do Dick to kill him? That wouldn’t change anythin’. If the gal is Bill’s daughter an’ can prove it, she’ll still get the ranch, won’t she?”

  Pat leaned back and got out the makings and thoughtfully rolled a cigarette. “Dick might’ve thought she couldn’t prove it if Bill died before she got to him for him to recognize her.”

  “Mr. Winters is still s’posed to know all about it,” Porter reminded him.

  “Dick was mighty drunk las’ night. Maybe he forgot about Winters.”

  “There must be some papers to show he was Wilcox … if he was. He had all sorts of papers in that desk of his he kept locked.”

  “Why d’yuh reckon he always kept his desk locked?” Pat parried. “Sounds like he must have had something to hide, all right.”

  “Not necessarily. It was the kind that locked every time you shut it down. I’ve heard Bill cuss it more’n once when it locked on him an’ he’d forgot to put on his key-chain.”

  Solid footsteps pounded along the board-walk outside and stopped at the door. There was an impatient knock as the three men turned their heads to listen. Sam Sloan took a step forward and pulled the door open. It was Joan Wilcox’s fiancé.

  Paul Munson was frowning with worry and his black eyes were narrowed. He stepped inside and said abruptly, “I’ve been hearing rumors around town that Joan’s father was murdered last night. Is that true?”

  “Bill Freeman was murdered,” Pat told him.

  The Easterner clamped his lips together and thrust his square jaw forward. “Are you trying to becloud the issue, Sheriff? Didn’t we agree last night that this man who calls himself Freeman must really be William Wilcox?”

  “You an’ the girl sort of decided that between yourselves,” Pat drawled. “I haven’t seen any real proof of it yet.”

  Munson took another step forward and struck his doubled fist down on the table in front of Pat. “It sounds to me like a plot to deprive Miss Wilcox of her rightful inheritance. You and your deputy here both recognized Freeman from his picture. Are you going to deny that?”

  “Wait a minute,” protested Pat. “I can’t say that Sam or me either one recognized Bill Freeman. We said it looked sort of like him.”

  “So you’re backing out on us now?” said Munson scornfully. “Looks to me like a put-up job between you and that adopted boy, and maybe this foreman here.” He looked at Clay Porter venomously. “You prevented us from going out to the ranch last night to establish Joan’s claim … and now her father is murdered before she is able to reach him.”

  Pat’s gray eyes were bleak as he surveyed the angry Easterner before him. “You sound like you think I knew Bill Freeman was due to be killed last night.”

  “What am I supposed to think?” Munson demanded. “Looks to me as though you’re all in it together.”

  Sam Sloan was standing back and a little to one side of Paul Munson. His face darkened with anger and he took one step forward, swung a back-handed slap against the young man’s cheek that sent him reeling back against the door.

  He straightened up and started forward with blazing eyes and swinging fists, but Pat shoved his chair back and leaped in between the two men.

  “You had it comin’,” he grated at Munson. “Stand back before I throw you in jail. And you lay off, Sam,” he threw over his shoulder angrily. “You’re gettin’ too danged free with yore gun and fists this mornin’.”

  “Did you hear what he said?” Sam demanded. “Plain accusin’ you of helpin’ to murder Bill Freeman.”

  Pat nodded. He said grimly, “Munson don’t savvy things in Powder Valley very good.” He turned back to the Easterner and said, “You’re talkin’ like a fool. You know Mr. Winters has got proof whether Bill Freeman’s name was Wilcox or not. Soon as he gets back to town an’ says it’s so, she can put in her claim for Bill’s ranch.”

  Paul Munson was holding a handkerchief up to his rapidly darkening cheek. “How do I know he isn’t in the plot with you too? Maybe you’ve fixed it with him to deny the whole thing? Perhaps I don’t know much about you Westerners, but I know what my fiancée’s legal rights are.”

  Pat reached behind him and jerked the door open. He said, “Get out.”

  “I’ve got a right here. I demand …”

  Pat put his calloused palm against Munson’s face and shoved hard. The young man staggered backward over the threshold, and Pat pulled the door shut with a slam.

  Clay Porter laughed softly as Pat stalked back and picked up his overturned chair. “Looks like yo’re right plumb in the middle, Sheriff.”

  Pat didn’t laugh. He sat down and pulled his six-gun. Resting it carelessly on the table in front of him, he said, “You can get out too, Clay.”

  Porter started to protest, but a look at Pat’s face changed his mind. He said hastily and weakly, “All right. No need to get on yore high-horse,” and went out the door.

  Pat sighed and looked over at Sam Sloan, “Purty soon they’ll have me thinkin’ I choked Bill Freeman to death last night.”

  Sam laughed and pulled up a chair to sit down opposite him. “It’s mighty funny how folks get wringy about gettin’ holt of a dead man’s property. When he ain’t even buried yet. Looks tuh me like the hull thing’d be easy settled by lookin’ through Bill’s papers tuh see was he named Wilcox or not.”

  Pat shook his head wearily. “I went through everything in that desk at the ranch. Not a thing showing he is or ain’t Wilcox. But that desk was broke into last night, and somebody else had been through the papers first. I reckon if there was any proof, it’s gone by now.”

  “Dick?” Sam exclaimed. “He had the same idea after killin’ Bill. He knew it wouldn’t do him no good if there was any proof in the desk.”

  “Looks like that’s it.” Pat frowned and reholstered his gun. “But it doesn’t add up to Dick bein’ as drunk as he and Clay claim. With a pint of whiskey inside him, I don’t believe he’d have sense enough to search the desk.”

  “We just got his word an’ Clay’s that he was that drunk,” Sam reminded him.

  “There wasn’t much doubt about his hangover this mornin’. And I had Doc Trimble check him just to make sure he wasn’t putting on. Doc ought to know how much a man has been drinkin’.”

  “Shore,” said Sam excitedly, “but we don’t know when he drank that quart of whiskey. S’pose him and Clay are both lying, an’ he didn’t drink any on the way home. He could of did what he thought he had tuh do while he was cold sober, then went to bed with the bottle so’s he could pretend he was so drunk in the night he didn’t even wake up when Bill was gettin’ killed.”

  Pat’s fist thumped softly on the table. “That makes more sense than anything I’ve thought up yet. If they were in it together … an’ fixed up their story las’ night before Clay rode off to Dorr’s to get himself an alibi. Yes-sir. I think we’ve got Dick right where he belongs to be right now.”

  8.

  Mr. Winters had had himself a very good time in Pueblo. Now, he was paying for it. He held his aching head in both hands as the little combination train jolted its way through the hot afternoon toward Hopewell Junction, and he was glad it would be another six months before he went to Pueblo again.

  The Dutch Springs storekeeper and postmaster always managed to have a good time on his semi-annual buying trips to the southern Colorado city, and on his way home he was always fervently glad they came only every six months. He was a big jovial man, a widower for many years, and his general store was the only one in Powder Valley. Supplying the needs of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles, Mr. Winters had a very large business and, consequently, was one of the most important out-of-town customers of the big wholesale house with which he dealt. As such, the salesmen and executives of the wholesale concern always entertained him lavishly while he was in the city, and saw to it that he enjoyed himself.

  Like last night, for instance. Mr. T. Mayhew Grant, general manager of the wholesale house, had been his host for his last night in the city. Also a widower, ten years younger than his guest, and with an unlimited expense account at his disposal, Mr. Grant had provided an evening of lavish entertainment.

  On the whole, it had really been all clean fun. Mr. Winters was a deacon in the Dutch Springs church and not a man of sinful inclinations, but not too old to enjoy kicking up his heels while in the city. Although in his middle fifties, he still appreciated a well-turned calf and a pretty face; and it had been a pleasant surprise when he entered the suite in Pueblo’s best hotel that Mr. Grant had engaged for the occasion and found Carol and Caprice waiting for him with his host.

  Both girls were quite young and quite beautiful. Wearing a daring amount of rouge and low-necked evening gowns that displayed a great deal of their white shoulders and smooth bosoms, they were drinking bubbly champagne out of long-stemmed crystal glasses when Mr. Winters made his appearance.

  Carol was tall and dark-haired and slender, with a large bust and a very small waist. She held herself gracefully and had a very ladylike manner. Caprice was fluffy and blonde and plump. She giggled a lot in a high-pitched voice, and called T. Mayhew Grant, “Daddicums” and pawed him affectionately after getting outside of three glasses of champagne.

  Mr. Winters thought Caprice was a cute little thing, but he was well pleased that he was not the object of her affections. Carol was more reserved, and much more to the liking of the deacon of the Dutch Springs church. She had a lazy way of lifting long black eyelashes to look up at him, and a grave smile for his somewhat heavy-handed witticisms. She was the sort of girl (Mr. Winters thought to himself) with whom a man could be friendly and let himself go for an evening of fun without fearing the affair would go too far.

  So it had been a very successful evening. Mr. Winters and Carol sat side by side on a red plush love seat and drank champagne and he told her about his store in Dutch Springs and the lighter side of life in Powder Valley until a pair of white-coated waiters served an excellent dinner in the private living room of the suite.

  There were exotic things to eat served under silver domes, with a cold white wine to accompany the fish course, and sparkling Burgundy with the meat, and a sweet liqueur in tiny glasses after the dessert.

  Mr. Winters was not a drinking man, but he liked to let himself go twice a year while he was in the city. By the end of his liqueur, he was squeezing Carol’s hand, and he found himself somewhat wistfully (if fuzzily) wishing she weren’t quite so ladylike.

  Carol did let him kiss her cheek while he was helping her on with her wrap preparatory to a visit to the Golden Moon dancehall and gambling establishment de luxe on the outskirts of town. Now, as he sat in the stuffy little coach at the end of a string of cattle cars bouncing toward Hopewell Junction and recalled the incident, he found himself believing he might have kissed her lips instead of her cheek if he’d been just a bit more insistent. Carol’s lips had been red and luscious and, well, inviting. He remembered the smell of her perfume as she stood close to him, and he didn’t mind his headache and the bad taste in his mouth so much.

  She had danced very close to him at the Golden Moon too, and hadn’t seemed to mind at all when he pressed his cheek against her hair.

  Yes, he decided, as he bumped on toward Hopewell Junction, Carol had certainly liked him a lot. He couldn’t help believing he had given her something of a thrill, and the belief brought him a feeling of devilish pride.